Donald Trump on Tuesday falsely claimed the United States has the lowest coronavirus mortality rate in the world — yet another attempt to convince Americans that he has done a good job containing the virus.
"'COVID-19 (China Virus) Death Rate PLUNGES From Peak In U.S.' A Tenfold Decrease In Mortality," Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, pointing to a headline from The Washington Times, in which he changed the name of the deadly disease that coronavirus causes to a racist epithet. "We have the lowest Mortality Rate in the World. The Fake News should be reporting these most important of facts, but they don't!"
The United States has anything but the lowest mortality rate in the world when it comes to the coronavirus.
In fact, the U.S. has the seventh-worst coronavirus case-fatality ratio among the 20 countries facing the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
According to the data, the United States has a 4.4 percent case-fatality ratio. Numerous other countries have better case-fatality ratios than that, including Iraq (4.1 percent), Brazil (four percent), and Colombia (3.7 percent).
When looking at the number of coronavirus deaths per 100,000 people in a country's population, the United States fares even worse.
According to Johns Hopkins, there have been 39.82 deaths per 100,000 Americans in the U.S. That number is second only to the United Kingdom, which has seen 66.66 deaths per 100,000 people.
Trump has made the mortality rate lie multiple times, including on Monday, when he tweeted: "Why does the Lamestream Fake News Media REFUSE to say that China Virus deaths are down 39%, and that we now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World. They just can't stand that we are doing so well for our Country!"
Earlier on Monday, he tweeted the lie again.
"BREAKING NEWS: The Mortality Rate for the China Virus in the U.S. is just about the LOWEST IN THE WORLD!" Trump tweeted. "Also, Deaths in the U.S. are way down, a tenfold decrease since the Pandemic height (and, our Economy is coming back strong!)."
Trump's lie about the mortality rate comes as public opinion has soured on his coronavirus response — so much so that it's severely imperiling his reelection bid.
More than half of Americans, or 56.3 percent, disapprove of Trump's coronavirus response, according to a polling average from FiveThirtyEight. That disapproval number has been steadily increasing since March, when the outbreak led states to start shutting down to try to stop the spread.
In that same time period, Trump has fallen even further behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
At the beginning of March, Biden had a 4.1 percent lead inFiveThirtyEight's national polling average. Biden's national lead has now more than doubled, to 9.6 percent.
To date, more than 130,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States — a number that is poised to grow as cases of the virus skyrocket.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
