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  • 2020-06-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Trump Say 'There's Many Per Capitas'? (en)
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  • During the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of Spring 2020, one the familiar features of the daily news cycle was the White House coronavirus task force briefings, at which President Trump frequently spoke and answered questions from the press. Trump regularly boasted at these briefings about how the United States led the world in COVID-19 testing until he finally stomped out of one after being challenged by a reporter to explain why it was important to cast virus testing as if it were a global competition. CNBC reported that: Trump's boasts about America's being the world leader in testing led to many debates over the tests' accuracy, particularly in how most was being reckoned -- was it more accurate to count the gross number of tests being performed (which would generally be higher for countries with larger populations), or to measure the proportion of a country's population that had been tested to date, otherwise known as per capita testing (which is a better gauge of efficiency). CNN reported that: Some critics asserted that, based on responses offered by Trump when questioned about testing rates, that the president didn't even understand what per capita meant: The remarks offered in the above meme are accurately reproduced. During a May 20, 2020, meeting with Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas, Trump reiterated his common pronouncement that increased testing made the U.S. look bad in comparison by revealing a greater number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. than in other countries: When asked about how U.S. testing compared to that of other countries on a per capita basis, Trump strangely asserted that there's many per capitas and questioned per capita relative to what?: Trump appeared to be making the point that whichever metric one used, number of tests or per capita testing rate, the U.S. ranked as the highest in the world (although the latter claim was false). But his proclaiming that there's many per capitas and questioning what per capita relative to what was cryptic beyond explanation. The term per capita literally means by heads, or per person. Many different concepts can be measured on a per capita basis (anything from car ownership to hamburger consumption), but such measurements are always relative to one thing (i.e., number of people), as many commenters pointed out: (en)
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