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.
