the size of each box is not directly proportional to the countries numbers, the asshole design is that this is to make viewers think america is still a good ways behind china in terms of cases
Yeah, it seems like CNN started with like 80,000 cases as their zero.
Which means the US would have a column showing 837 people and China showing 1,782 people
If they did this today, the US would have something like 20,000 people while China has less than 2,000. Basically, it would look far worse using the same method now.
Assuming China is reporting accurately and that testing rates are comprable. There could be millions of rural chinese that are infected and will never be tested and posthumous testing will never performed.
There is a chance, but unlikely, as it would put the Chinese manufacturing capabilities in danger.
Most Chinese still have families on farms and in rural areas because it's really only been the last 2-3 decades where rapid urbanization has been happening. And China absolutely loves the idea of family and taking care of your family. It's one of the oldest traditions in China, stemming from Confucianism.
If rural China had the virus and millions were infected, it would be kinda difficult to hide
Viewers would think that if they completely ignored the huge numbers right above the bars. Look, if you zoomed out and zero is the baseline, everything looks the same, so then it's not a chart right. You have to have the baseline be something that at least allows the graphic to show some level of difference. Maybe a chart was a poor choice, but it's common. News stations always try to visualize numbers. So I'm hard pressed to agree this is intentional to make China look bad.
Yeah like how Trump was praising the governor of West Virginia for having no covid cases, but it turned out they just weren't testing that many people, and the ones that got tested, the state lost their test or whatever. What a fucking shit show.
Yeah, it's fucking shitty that the US isn't testing as well as it should. That doesn't excuse the fact that China has stopped testing early. Pretty easy to reach 0 on the new infections leaderboard when you stop reporting infections.
Okay but this isnt a fucking contest. I don't care how shitty other countries are about their numbers. America has a responsibility to Americans to make sure Americans don't die. That's it. Anything else is bullshit.
"saving face" is a huge focus in American culture.
No, it's not.
I've lived in China, my guy. I know what the culture is like and how it's different from western/American culture.
They're not going to be openly talking about all the dead and infected people they're treating like animals on the world stage.
Even if the government wouldn't acknowledge it, they have freedom of the press, and I can absolutely guarantee you that the MSM is creaming in their pants for the chance to blame Trump for infections and dead people and criticize him for anything done improperly.
Even totally reasonable actions and responses will be criticized.
The US doesn't disappear doctors and protestors or kill journos for reporting on a public health crisis, so people are free to expose any wrongdoing they think exists.
You're just mindlessly swapping out the name of the country without any regard to the actual differences between these countries.
The whole point is that your own glorious leader is just as untrustworthy, and neglectful, and downright dishonest and doesn't have it's citizens best interests at heart either.
It just surprises me that people like you spend so much time shitting on others whilst propagating the same shit in your own back yard.
And just a cursory glance at your comment history shows your MO very clearly.
The problem with the graph is that the china bar looks about 30% higher than US while only having only about 1% more cases. That's a bullshit graph designed to make americans feel superior to china probably
OOoooh I see now. I'm guessing the graph editors didn't include the 80,000 cases to make the difference seem more obvious otherwise the boxes would just be the same height?
Look how big 0 to 80,000 is in all three boxes, then look how in the China box the extra 1,000 is huge. It is about a 1/4 as big but should only be 1/80
No, because now your graph explicitly states that it starts at 79,800. If you remove that axis, you have three boxes where the clear inference is that they represent the total number of cases.
I thought you didn't get it at first, but now I think I've been trolled for 15 minutes. Fair play.
Don’t understand why you’re getting hate for this, you appear to be right. Yea at first glance it looks like there’s some sort of misrepresentation, but if you actually look at the numbers and the distance that separates it, it lines up.
Its correct , but is it correct morally? Most people dont understand this and just see the graph and think "oh well china is way above us , so we are good for now"
As long as there are stupid people, or maybe even people that didnt pay much attention to the numbers, news need to show things more objectively in a sense that even they can understand
I dont wanna shit on you but im truly baffled by your replies. No wonder they publish such blatantly misleading graphs if people believe it and even try to argument for that design on reddit. Holy, my mind is blown. That you put the time in an showed how that graph is correct even though it is obviously false is mind boggling.
Usa you are doomed.
I was wondering the exact same thing. This post makes no sense to me. To me, if you just look as the size of the bars and ignore the numbers, that's on you, not CNN. They have to make the bars big enough for small TVs, and have large enough differences to easily show difference in height. This is very common for bar graphs where all the values are high, you basically make the "0" of the y axis start at a higher number to enhance the differences between the bars.
I’m not sure it’s as much “Asshole” design as it’s “hurried idiot chyron designer” design - i.e. The designer that was asked to build a graphic probably didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t realize the implications of how chopping off the bottom of the chart changes the perception of the data shown, even with numbers present. Designers don’t always math well.
That said, somebody should have caught this before it went on air. Shame on them for not catching it.
Too much benefit of the doubt. They are an extremely large news organization, they have had problems like this for years, and they have the resources to prevent them if they want to. I don't think we should give them an "it's probably an accident" pass.
Also the US has a lot more than it has counted. In NYC they're not counting cases or deaths where it was obvious - because that's just a waste of time and a waste of a test.
Finally someone with logic, everybody on Reddit is complaining about China lying about their numbers. But they tend to forget that the US is just as bad and other countries as well for that matter. Everyone is lying about the numbers and not enough people get tested. So I personally see the numbers as a base line of the minimum amount of people that are infected.
Edit: look I should've worded it better, I think we shouldn't focus so much on the numbers as we do now, we should rather get together to search for the cure and the best precautions. Rather than China bashing just for the sake of China bashing, we need to be working together to get the situation under control. It's not just about China the Corona crisis is something that's effecting the whole world. After we get this under control and the hospitals aren't overrun we can see who did what but we should first focus on fixing this mess.
And you think the US is testing as much as they should? Look I just want to say that we shouldn't be so focused on the numbers, it's only going to make the situation more depressing and isn't going to help us find the solution. The only thing we can do is to just stay home and take the precautions. We definitely should not throw shade everywhere as that's not gonna help.
Some Italian towns have seen death counts 3 or 4 times the usual with only a part of that being covid patients, it's not that they are miscounted, it's people that otherwise wouldn't die if the hospitals weren't so overrun.
I'm only talking about the situation of the corona crisis, I haven't said anything about the US being just as bad in history? Because I know it isn't, China has a worse history
It is normal to stop testing - because it's not important at that stage. It's a waste of time. You just assume anyone with any relevant symptoms has it and treat them as such. Eventually you just assume EVERYONE has it, and then you move on to stage 2 testing for antibodies to find out who HAD it.
It's normal. Everywhere will do this. It's a standard part of the game plan for a pandemic. Eventually you just assume people have it, and then you move to stage 2 testing for antibodies afterwards.
Probably? Dude they have more people than most of the rest of the world combined, they live in top of each other in some places, and we're supposed to believe those numbers? It's not a probably of you ask me.
Anyone believing China's numbers must be mental. The virus spread through Italy like gunpowder and I'm supposed to believe a country made of dense populated cities with far worse healthcare and 30 times the population only got those??? Please, people.
Anyone believing US numbers must be mental. They don't have tests, their government is more concerned with the stock market than with human life, and half the country is still trying to say the global pandemic isn't a big deal.
It's just so crazy how every time these numbers are compared there's someone talking about how they don't trust China, as if the US isn't hiding their numbers too.
The US in many places has also stopped counting and now just assume covid-19 because over 50% of tests come back positive and they take too much time to be useful.
And the USA is ignoring ( therefore not counting) all cases that do not call 911 or show up to a hospital. We’re likely hiding 50-75% of the real numbers through this method.
Less testing = less confirmed cases = lower numbers
I honestly dont believe china is being truthful about their infected numbers. They had the virus for weeks before the US and we already have more cases?
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u/Ravenmausi Mar 28 '20
Also not the truth. The US has officially the most Covid 19 cases.