Math Is Not His Strong Suit, Folks

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | July 9, 2020 |

Honest to God, one of the first items on Joe Biden’s agenda — should he win the Presidency, God willing — is to establish some sort of baseline test for intelligence in order to qualify for the Presidency. I’m not saying you have to be a well-educated genius (although, helpful!), or even that you are have to be able to spell hamberders or know the difference between counsel and council, or understand that “unpresidented act” is not a thing.

But, like, there still should be a baseline, you know? Like a basic grasp of science, reading, and at least an eight grade understanding of math. Can someone tell me what this means?

For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as we have, is that our TESTING is much bigger and better. We have tested 40,000,000 people. If we did 20,000,000 instead, Cases would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2020

OK, the 1/100th thing aside (so he’s told us this a tiny fraction of times times?), umm, that’s not how it, uh, works. OK, so first of all: We have administered 40 million tests. A little more than 3 million came back positive. China has administered 90 million tests, and 83,000 came back positive (that number is obviously wrong, but also, it’s 7 million, which is what it would be according to Trump’s calculations). If you do testing correctly, which is to say, early and often — and combine with contact tracing and mask wearing — you actually get fewer cases over the long term. Trump seems to believe that the virus only exists because of tests, or, like, that testing creates the virus, when in fact, testing is designed to allow us to isolate cases and reduce the number of infections.

Anyway, this is all hurting my head. If feels like:

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2020

He’s right about one thing, though: If we tested more in hot spots in Texas, Arizona, and Florida, there’d be more positive tests because the tests cannot keep up with the demand for them there. On the other hand, you can administer 40,000,000 tests in Germany and you’d probably still end up with very few cases.

Anyway, I can’t try to explain math to Trump anymore. Here’s some tweets:

FOR THE 0.01TH TIME, THE REASON WE SHOW SO MANY CASES COMPARED TO OTHER COUNTRIES IS BECAUSE I AM DUMB AS A ROCK, HAVE NO ABILITY TO LEAD DURING A TIME OF CRISIS, AND AM THE WORST EXAMPLE OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NARCISSISM AND AN IQ OF 30 ARE COMBINED. NOT REPORTED!
— Liddle’ Savage (@littledeekay) July 9, 2020

NOT REPORTED! The U.S. has a stupid president b/c he wasn't tested properly. If he had been tested, our misery would be cut in half.
— B Citizen (@atalknut) July 9, 2020

For the e²^π/5 √(φ √5 - φ)th time, the reason we lead the world in COVID Deaths, is because our BURIALS are so much bigger and better. We have buried 134k people, twice as many as any other country. If we only buried half the people, Deaths would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED! https://t.co/PiGE03zpnU
— Michel Paradis (@MDParadis) July 9, 2020

For the 1/1000th time, the reason so many women say I sexually assaulted them is so high is because people have asked them questions about it. If we didn't ask questions, accusations of rape against me would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED! https://t.co/8374DtzOjJ
— regularguy (@regularguy) July 9, 2020

Look, for the 100th time, if we had 40,000,000 pregnant woman but only administered 20,000,000 pregnancy tests then we would halve the number of births in our contry. Everyone knows this and yet… NOT REPORTED!
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 9, 2020