Quote (Ghot @ Mar 7 2020 04:37pm)
I'm arguing the claim by Saucy in post #443... and other similar sentiments by Saucy in this thread. I am disagreeing with Saucy's point that the virus will spread faster in the US.
Then you should be looking at cases/population, not deaths/population.
But, equally as importantly:
Quote (Ghot @ Mar 7 2020 10:49am)
My comparison is for comparing medical systems. Aka free and not free. The medical systems have nothing to do with "contracting" the disease.
Quote (Ghot @ Mar 7 2020 04:37pm)
I am disagreeing with Saucy's point that the virus will spread faster in the US.
You should probably start by picking a stance.
Here are your 3 claims in these brief quotes:
1) My comparison is for comparing medical systems
2) The medical systems have nothing to do with contracting the disease
3) I am making a claim about the relative rates of infection
Those 3 statements in conjunction are logically contradictory.
Either:
1) You are making a comparison about medical systems and looking at the relative rates of infection (which, you aren't doing, but for the sake of argument) because the rate of infection is correlated to the medical system's performance (despite your explicit statement that it is not)
2) You are making a comparison about the medical systems, because the medical systems don't have anything to do with contracting the disease, you are looking at the death rate (which I have previously explained to you is not what your numbers signify, and you agreed)
3) You AREN'T making a comparison about the medical systems, because you're looking at the relative rates of infection and medical systems have nothing to do with contracting the disease (which, I believe, you've expressly stated you're NOT doing)
4) You've abandoned your original argument and are moving the goalposts (either accidentally, because you've forgotten your original stance, or intentionally because you weren't quite sure what it was you stood for at the beginning of the argument and have been deciding as you've been arguing)
I think what you're trying to do is look at the death rates for each country. Which is what I previously explained: deaths per capita don't mean anything in this context because the rate of infection between the two nations is not congruent. Yes, you're correct: it IS a statistic. So is COVID-19 deaths per annual pound of beef consumed. Those both have roughly the same usefulness in this discussion.
In order to continue, please consider the following:
1) What is your argument, precisely? Boil it down into a concise thesis statement.
2) What statistics actually support a comparison across the situations I'm trying to compare? Think about looking at two situations that are analogous, and then investigating what the numbers say. It's a little bit harder, and you might not like the results you find, but at least you'll be making a genuine argument, and we all might learn something.