Tuesday, April 14, 2020

HOW IS AMERICA DOING IN THE BATTLE AGAINST CORONAVIRUS?


How is the USA doing in the battle against the Coronavirus? To hear the news media, we’re doing just awful. If you look at the website https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%20#countries it sure looks like we’re doing a slop job. We’ve got more cases than any other country, and we’ve had more deaths than any other country. We’ve really fumbled the ball on this thing. Or have we? One statistic that the chart on the Worldometers website doesn’t include is the population of each country. Another is the rate of death per 100,000 population. Another statistic is the percentage of deaths per number of infected. Let’s look at the top six countries on Worldometers’ chart.

First off, we notice that the top six countries for infections are America and five Western European countries. These countries are some of the most open countries in the world, and we can expect that infections will cross their borders and spread easily in the absence of drastic measures not in keeping with traditional Western freedom. Being averse to surrendering freedom, all these countries were slow to take those drastic measures, and therefore they’ve all got infection totals at 93,000 or more (as of April 14, 2020). This is one of the consequences of living in an open society.

But which of these countries has the worst problem with Coronavirus? Let’s look at the raw numbers.

Ranking the countries by number of cases (as of April 14), we get this array:

Country
Cases

[1] USA

588,466
[2] Spain

172,541
[3] Italy

159,616
[4] France

136,779
[5] Germany

130,434
[6] United Kingdom

93,873
It doesn’t look good for the USA, does it?

Now let’s rank them by number of deaths:

Country

Cases
Deaths
[1] USA

588,466
23,711
[2] Italy

159,616
20,465
[3] Spain

172,541
18,056
[4] France

136,779
14,967
[5] United Kingdom

93,873
12,107
[6] Germany

130,434
3,220
There are some changes in the order, but the USA is still number one. Doesn’t look good, does it?

But we should look at a more revealing statistic than mere raw numbers. What percentage of the population have contracted Coronavirus? (Populations were determined by reference to that infallible source of truth, Google):

Country

Population
Cases
Percent Infected
[1] Spain

46,940,000
172,541
0.367%
[2] Italy

60,360,000
159,616
0.264%
[3] France

66,990,000
136,779
0.204%
[4] USA

328,200,000
588,466
0.179%
[5] Germany

83,020,000
130,434
0.157%
[6] United Kingdom

66,650,000
93,873
0.141%
The rankings change drastically, and by this measure the USA doesn’t look so bad. We’ve dropped to fourth.

Of the confirmed cases, how many patients have died (as of April 14)?

Country

Cases
Deaths
Percent deaths
[1] United Kingdom

93,873
12,107
13%
[2] Italy

159,616
20,465
13%
[3] France

136,779
14,967
11%
[4] Spain

172,541
18,056
10%
[5] USA

588,466
23,711
4%
[6] Germany

130,434
3,220
2%
Another shakeup in the rankings, and America drops to number five. The much-maligned medical system of the United States seems to be doing a pretty good job of saving the lives of confirmed Coronavirus patients.

Last, let’s look at deaths per 100,000 population:

Country

Population
Deaths
Deaths per 100K
[1] Spain

46,940,000
18,056
38
[2] Italy

60,360,000
20,465
34
[3] France

66,990,000
14,967
22
[4] United Kingdom

66,650,000
12,107
18
[5] USA

328,200,000
23,711
7
[6] Germany

83,020,000
3,220
4
Once again, only Germany is doing better than the USA in deaths per 100,000 population.

Of course, as Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” and the pandemic is far from over; but so far it doesn’t look to me as though the USA is doing as awful a job containing the Coronavirus as many in the media would have us believe.

2 comments:

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  2. Thanks for breaking these numbers down and explaining it. Very interesting.

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