Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On Tuesday's Amanpour & Co. on PBS and CNN International, host Christiane Amanpour incorrectly claimed that the U.S. is "doing the worst" in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in spite of "spending the most" as she spoke with New York Times science reporter Donald McNeil.
McNeil only singled out Sweden as having a worse death rate than the U.S. even though most major countries in Western Europe have substantially higher per capita death rates.
After Amanpour asked McNeil to respond to President Donald Trump's recent bragging about testing rates in the U.S., the Times reporter started by taking personal shots at the President:
DONALD MCNEIL, NEW YORK TIMES: Look, this is the same guy who said, "Inject yourself with disinfectant -- stick ultraviolet lights into your lungs." This is not somebody whose grasp of science is even third grade level. So the idea that he could be quoting epidemiological statistics and be expected to get them right is terrifyingly wrong. I mean, our deaths per million are relatively high -- not as high as Sweden. For some reason, the far right wants to follow the Sweden model. If they look at the deaths per million, Sweden is doing worse than we are...
He then praised Germany's testing levels and argued that much more testing is needed in the U.S. Amanpour followed up by exaggerating how badly the U.S. has performed compared to other countries:
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: There's been quite a lot of very worrying reporting about what Covid has done to the American health care system. I said that it spends the most of any country on health care, and yet … there are rural hospitals completely unable to cope -- completely broke and can't deal with what's going on. And, as you say, if there's another wave, it could just break the system. Again, just for our viewers, how can it be that the country that spends -- well, you make the distinctions because people don't understand how the country that spends the most on health care is doing the worst and is the epicenter of deaths and infections right now.
In fact, the total per capita numbers of confirmed deaths is generally higher in Europe than in the U.S. As of May 13, the total death rates are substantially higher in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium; and somewhat higher in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
In the UK, the number currently stands at 48.8 while it is 40.4 in France, in contrast with the U.S. where the rate stands at 25.8 per 100,000.
In Switzerland, the per capita rate is slightly less than in the U.S. while rates are much lower in Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and Portugal. In Germany, the number notably is 9.4.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, May 12 Amanpour & Co. on PBS and CNN International:
DONALD MCNEIL, NEW YORK TIMES: Look, this is the same guy who said, "Inject yourself with disinfectant -- stick ultraviolet lights into your lungs." This is not somebody whose grasp of science is even third grade level. So the idea that he could be quoting epidemiological statistics and be expected to get them right is terrifyingly wrong. I mean, our deaths per million are relatively high -- not as high as Sweden. For some reason, the far right wants to follow the Sweden model. If they look at the deaths per million, Sweden is doing worse than we are, and most of their deaths are in nursing homes as ours are. But the deaths are not going to stay in nursing homes -- they're going to extend out of there.
So Germany is ramping up a testing regimen -- you have to remember the different population size. Their tests per million population are higher than ours. South Korea's tests per million population are way higher than ours. We're a very large country -- we need a lot of tests. Harvard estimated probably at least five million tests a day (are needed). Admiral Gerard today was talking about I think it was 40 million tests per month, so that's a little more than a million a day because the point is, if you're going to use tests as surveillance -- meaning you test a lot of healthy people so you catch the asymptomatic, you know where the disease is popping up... You have to have a lot of tests -- millions and millions, as in five million a day. Otherwise, you have no idea where the virus is, and your only indicator is that your emergency rooms get overwhelmed. And when that happens, too late.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, on that note, there's been quite a lot of very worrying reporting about what Covid has done to the American health care system. I said that it spends the most of any country on health care, and yet, as you know much better than I... there are rural hospitals completely unable to cope -- completely broke and can't deal with what's going on. And, as you say, if there's another wave, it could just break the system. Again, just for our viewers, how can it be that the country that spends -- well, you make the distinctions because people don't understand how the country that spends the most on health care is doing the worst and is the epicenter of deaths and infections right now.
. Craig Millward
