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A mannequin sporting an "I Love N.Y.” T-shirt and ball cap and a "New York Tough" mask stands for sale
at a gift shop in New York City's Times Square on Aug. 2. Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
The Daily Signal
How Much Do You Know About COVID-19? Take This Quiz
Doug Badger
August 04, 2020
1. True or False: COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the U.S.
False. It’s not even close. As of July 25, the most recent date for
which Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data is available,
there were 135,579 deaths related to the contagion, less than 1% of the
more than 1.5 million deaths that have occurred in the U.S. so far this
year.
COVID-19 isn’t even the leading cause of death among the elderly,
although it accounts for more than 9% of deaths among those 65 and
older. Cancer and heart disease continue to claim the most lives by far
in this age group, while unintentional injuries cause the most deaths
among people under 45.
2. True or False: The U.S. has the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world.
False. As of Aug. 3, there were 158,706 COVID-19-related deaths
nationally, according to Worldometer’s data, the most in the world. But
with a population of 330 million, the U.S. is also among the world’s
most populous.
The more accurate metric of comparison is the COVID-19 death rate per
million population. By that standard, the U.S. ranks eighth among
countries with populations of 1 million or more, behind Belgium, the
U.K., Spain, Peru, Italy, Sweden, and Chile.
3. True or False: The U.S. has more confirmed cases than any other
country because it has tested much more extensively than any other
country.
False. As of Aug. 2, the U.S. had performed nearly 181,000 tests per
million population. That placed us ninth in the world, behind the
United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Denmark, the U.K., Singapore, Russia,
Lithuania, and Israel. All of those countries except Bahrain reported
fewer cases per million population than did the U.S.
4. According to the CDC, how many children under 15 had died with COVID-19, as of July 25?
a) 42; b) 420; c) 4,200; d) 42,000
(a) Of the 135,579 deaths associated with COVID-19 that the CDC had
tallied as of July 25, 42 were among children under 15. That represents
about 0.3% of the deaths in this age group.
COVID-19 is not even among the 10 leading causes of death among
school-aged and preschool-aged children. Ironically, while children
under 15 account for less than 1% of COVID-19 deaths, and the elderly
account for 80% of deaths, public debate centers on reopening schools,
not on making nursing homes safer.
5. True or False: Sweden, the only country in Europe that didn’t impose
a lockdown, suffered far more COVID-19-related deaths, on a population
basis, than any other European country.
False. Supporters of lockdowns have repeatedly decried Sweden’s refusal
to impose them on its population, forecasting an epidemic of medieval
proportions.
The number of confirmed cases in Sweden peaked on June 24 (later than
in most European lockdown countries) and has declined sharply ever
since. Sweden has had fewer COVID-19 deaths per million population than
Belgium, the U.K., Spain, and Italy, all of whom deployed widespread
lockdowns.
6. True or False: Florida’s COVID-19 deaths now rival those of New York.
False. If you got this one wrong, you’re in good company. White House
coronavirus task force head Dr. Deborah Birx recently announced that
the Sunshine State, along with Texas and California, was now one of
“three New Yorks.”
That’s a distortion.
The virus is spreading among Floridians, and the number of
COVID-19-related deaths has been rising and will continue to do so. But
as of Aug. 1, Florida’s deaths-per-million population (327) ranked
below the U.S. average (475) and well below the rates in New York State
(1,685) and the neighboring states of New Jersey (1,790) and
Connecticut (1,243).
Equating the conditions in Florida this summer with those that
prevailed in New York and the Northeast this past spring is recklessly
inaccurate.
In fact, the list of counties with the most coronavirus-related deaths
hasn’t changed all that much since late April, according to
USAFacts.org data. Eight of the 10 counties that led the U.S. in deaths
at the end of April were still on the top 10 list at the end of July.
New York City and surrounding counties in New Jersey and on Long Island
filled eight of the slots on April 30 and still occupied six of them on
July 31, including three of the top five. Only one county from Birx’s
“three New Yorks”—Los Angeles County—made the list.
7. Wearing a mask will: a) Prevent you from getting COVID-19; b) Make
you sick; c) Both of the above; or d) Neither of the above.
(d) Masks have taken on mythical proportions in the public imagination.
“I think if we could get everybody to wear a mask now,” CDC Director
Dr. Robert Redfield said on July 15, “I think in four, six, eight
weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”
First, there’s the imprecision of his forecast. (Does he think it’s
four, six, or eight weeks? What does he mean by “under control?”) Then,
there’s the utopian nature of the hypothetical (How would you go about
getting everyone to wear a mask? All the time?) suggests that Redfield
was making another of those unsubstantiated, off-the-cuff statements to
which public health officials seem prone.
On the other side, social media resonate with warnings that masks
deprive the body of oxygen. So, will wearing a mask prevent you from
getting infected or send you into a stupor of hypoxia?
Neither.
“Masks may help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the
virus to others,” according to the CDC. They don’t protect the
mask-wearer, but they may protect others from the mask-wearer.
The CDC says that wearing a mask “may” have this effect because
scientific certainty isn’t possible. You can’t conduct a properly
controlled experiment that yields scientific proof that masks really
help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
If there’s no definitive proof that masks work, why wear them? Mostly,
commonsense. Scientists seem fairly certain that COVID-19 is spread by
droplets, although there’s some evidence it’s present in aerosols.
Either way, it’s on our breaths.
There also is evidence that people who don’t know they’re infected can
spread the disease to others. By imposing a physical barrier, masks
reduce the speed and spread of our breaths. That’s thought to lessen
the chance that a person who doesn’t know he’s shedding virus will
spread the infection.
So, it’s a good idea to wear one—unless it sends you into a swoon.
8. True or False: 20% of the U.S. population has had the coronavirus.
False. A survey of 1,000 Americans by the international polling firm
Kekst CNC found that most of us think that the virus has infected 20%
of the population.
As of Aug. 2, Johns Hopkins University had tallied nearly 4.7 million
cases, or about 1.4% of the U.S. population. Of course, many COVID-19
cases go undiagnosed, so the survey respondents may not be as far off
as they seem.
It’s also worth noting that Americans aren’t alone in overestimating
the extent of the pandemic in their country. The same survey found that
people in the U.K., Germany, France, and Sweden also overestimated the
percentage of their countrymen who had contracted the disease.
9. True or False: Everyone, regardless of age, who gets the coronavirus is equally at risk of serious illness and death.
False. COVID-19 is a serious disease primarily for the elderly, especially those in nursing homes.
As of July 25, the CDC’s most recent publicly available data reports
that people 65 and older account for 80% of COVID-19 deaths, although
they make up less than 17% of the population.
People under 45 (58% of the population) account for less than 3% of coronavirus deaths.
A recent study by Syracuse University researchers set out to estimate
more precisely the age-related mortality risk of coronavirus infection.
The researchers drew on data from studies performed around the world to
estimate the number of people who have been infected with the
coronavirus.
This group is larger than the number who have tested positive for the
contagion. They found that the infection fatality rate—the percentage
of people who have been infected with the virus (including those who
are never tested) who die—is very different for younger people and
older adults.
“The estimated [infection fatality rate] is close to zero for children
and younger adults,” they concluded, “but rises exponentially with age,
reaching about 0.3 percent for ages 50-59, 1 percent for ages 60-69, 4
percent for ages 70-79, and 24 percent for ages 80 and above.”
10. True or false: According to those same Syracuse University
researchers, a person under 45 who is involved in an accident is three
times more likely to die than a person in that same age group who
contracts COVID-19.
True. That study compared the relative risks of death from accidental
injury and infection with the coronavirus. Its authors estimate that
people under 45 who have an accidental injury caused by something other
than an automobile accident have 0.03% (3 chances in 10,000) of dying
from that injury, compared with a 0.01% (1 in 10,000) chance of dying
if they contract COVID-19. Those in that age group who are involved in
traffic accidents face a similar 1-in-10,000 risk of death.
Rate Yourself
0-4 correct: Poor. Don’t blame yourself. You’ve probably relied on CNN,
The New York Times, or similar sources for your COVID-19 information.
5-7 correct: Not bad. You understand the pandemic better than most.
8-9 correct: Very good. Getting just one or two questions wrong probably ranks you among the most knowledgeable Americans.
10 correct: Excellent. If you’re not too attached to your day job, you
might want to apply to run the White House coronavirus task force.
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