Joseph, I said, “we don’t know how accurate any country’s statistics are.” “Any country” includes China. I also said (regarding the PA/Hamas, but applicable to many countries) that they could be “lying or simply [don’t] have robust data gathering.” I expect that countries with a free press are more likely than other countries to have accurate numbers for obvious reasons.
I have been consistently calling out Trump’s lies about testing. He cites absolute numbers. I cite per capita numbers. As for deaths, the U.S. is not in a great place on a per capita basis either. We’re #9 if you leave out tiny countries like San Marino and Andorra. The top 8 are Belgium, Spain, Italy, the U.K., France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Ireland. All those countries except the U.K. and Sweden seem to have flattened the curve more than we have, so it’s likely they will move down in the ranking and the U.S. will move up.
Correlating COVID deaths with the political affiliation of the governor isn’t very logical. How about we look at something that’s more logical, population density? I looked at the top 8 states (actually 7 states plus D.C.) for population density. In order of density they rank as follows in terms of COVID deaths per capita: #5, #2, #7, #4, #3, #10, #12, and #1. To clarify, D.C. has the highest population density and is fifth highest in per capita COVID deaths, while New York has the eighth highest population density and the highest per capita COVID death rate.
Densely populated states tend to have Democratic governors. They also tend to be on the Atlantic Ocean. To say that they have a high rate of COVID deaths because they have Democratic governors makes as much sense as saying the virus washed ashore from the Atlantic.