There is no good metric for comparing test rates as well, tests per million makes no sense when a lot of states within the country have almost zero cases. India's less than 5% positive ratio on tests even in hotspot regions do not indicate a massive lack of testing.

This extremely simple point is missed by almost everyone, to the point where I think it's malicious (hey US media).

> Comparing cases is pretty meaningless if you don't also compare test rates.

True. I'd argue that there are other factors such as demographics, time elapsed since first cases, etc. But I guess it's hard not to. Specially for media needing to fill column inches or otherwise capture our attention :-) It should be possible to simply look at numbers and draw any conclusions but it seems to be very difficult for human beings to do that. We feel the need create a narrative around and find an explanation for our observations.