It is strikiing how much of his reputation for journalistic integrity @DouthatNYT was willing to trade away for a chance to claim that Trump’s pandemic response was mediocre. 1/N https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/opinion/sunday/covid-19-trump.html

bc "You’ll be more likely to predict a nation’s pandemic toll if you know where it’s located …”

he compares outcomes in the US with those in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.

Did he think that readers would not notice that he just happened to omit any comparison to Canada? 2/N

Over at http://Vox.com , @germanrlopez noticed. 3/N

And this is only the start. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/9/9/21428769/covid-19-coronavirus-deaths-statistics-us-canada-europe

In the sequel to “Calling Bullshit,” @CT_Bergstrom could devote an entire chapter to the deceptions and misstatements in this one column. 4/N

For now, I’ll just leave you with the facts.

1. The current death rate in the US is far worse that every other country in W. Europe that http://covid19-projections.com  tracks. Oh yes, and far worse than Canada too.

2. @DouthatNYT ’s measure of total deaths tells you a lot about the intensity of the pandemic in the early days, but nothing about the quality of the policy response.

He says that in Western Europe, “ … only Germany has been a great success …”

3. Using either the current deaths measure or the total deaths measure, there is nothing unique about Germany.

Denmark, Austria, Germany, Iceland, Norway and Finland are virually indistinguishable.

Oh, wait. Joke’s on me. He slipped in the qualifier that “Of the five most populous countries in Western Europe …” before his claim about German exceptionalism.

So he gets an AG Barr award for exceptional dissimulation. Woohoo. @CT_Bergstrom will have a field day.

Oh and then, you’ll love this doozy.

"But actually both Spain and France have seen late-summer infection waves that have brought them above or close to our infection rate.”

But see the data on deaths for this week.

Even AG Barr wouldn’t go that far.