4 ms·

How many deaths per capita for US versus other industrialized countries?

rovolo 7y ago
Deaths per capita will be most important at the end of the pandemic. Right now you're better off looking at case-fatality-rate, day over day rate of new cases, and the current number of cases. Right now the US is at 52K cases and ~650 deaths. That is ~1% fatal, but that can decrease by more testing or increase because it takes time to die. Currently 0.01% of the US has tested positive and 0.0002% of the US has died. The worry is that those numbers double every 2-3 days and will cause an unprecedented spike in the number of hospitalizations. You can try predicting the number of deaths by looking at a semilog plot: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
- lurquer 7y ago
  US is 18th in deaths per capita. (And falling.) In a thread criticizing the US, it is odd that this simple fact isn't mentioned. Or, alternatively, the importance of the fact is minimized. (Even more odd that the US per capita death from covid is less than U.K., Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark and many other countries whose health-care systems are routinely praised on this site.)
  - rovolo 7y ago
    Because the virus is spreading exponentially, the rankings for per-capita cases/deaths are going to be highly dependent on how long the outbreak has been going on in that area. Is the US's health care system worse than Palestine, Honduras, Cuba, and Pakistan? I see you're using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ for your rankings. The per-capita rankings are very sensitive to small populations. I think these 9 should be considered outliers: San Marino (basically Italy): 21 deaths; Andorra: 3; Cayman Islands: 1; Luxembourg: 9; Iceland: 2; Channel Islands: 1; Curaçao: 1; Norway (half the pop of Sweden, but the cut-off has to be somewhere): 14; Slovenia: 6. That leaves 10 places which I agree are currently doing worse in deaths per-capita: Italy, Spain, Iran, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, UK, Denmark, Sweden; and 5 places doing roughly the same: Portugal, Austria, Germany, Ecuador, Greece. However, the number of deaths per-capita is doubling every 3 days in the US. If we do 3 days worse then other countries, we'll pass Denmark and Sweden. A week worse and we'll pass the UK. 10 days and we'll pass France, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.
    - lurquer 7y ago
      >The per-capita rankings are very sensitive to small populations. I think these 9 should be considered outliers: I agree. Time will tell about the final rankings. But, the US health-care system is far more robust and creative than many of these other systems. Health-care COST is a legitimate debate. But, at the end of the day, when it comes to care, you are generally far better off in a US hospital than one of the others. In any case, we shall see...

Deaths per capita will be most important at the end of the pandemic. Right now you're better off looking at case-fatality-rate, day over day rate of new cases, and the current number of cases. Right now the US is at 52K cases and ~650 deaths. That is ~1% fatal, but that can decrease by more testing or increase because it takes time to die. Currently 0.01% of the US has tested positive and 0.0002% of the US has died. The worry is that those numbers double every 2-3 days and will cause an unprecedented spike in the number of hospitalizations. You can try predicting the number of deaths by looking at a semilog plot: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

lurquer 7y ago
US is 18th in deaths per capita. (And falling.) In a thread criticizing the US, it is odd that this simple fact isn't mentioned. Or, alternatively, the importance of the fact is minimized. (Even more odd that the US per capita death from covid is less than U.K., Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark and many other countries whose health-care systems are routinely praised on this site.)
- rovolo 7y ago
  Because the virus is spreading exponentially, the rankings for per-capita cases/deaths are going to be highly dependent on how long the outbreak has been going on in that area. Is the US's health care system worse than Palestine, Honduras, Cuba, and Pakistan? I see you're using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ for your rankings. The per-capita rankings are very sensitive to small populations. I think these 9 should be considered outliers: San Marino (basically Italy): 21 deaths; Andorra: 3; Cayman Islands: 1; Luxembourg: 9; Iceland: 2; Channel Islands: 1; Curaçao: 1; Norway (half the pop of Sweden, but the cut-off has to be somewhere): 14; Slovenia: 6. That leaves 10 places which I agree are currently doing worse in deaths per-capita: Italy, Spain, Iran, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, UK, Denmark, Sweden; and 5 places doing roughly the same: Portugal, Austria, Germany, Ecuador, Greece. However, the number of deaths per-capita is doubling every 3 days in the US. If we do 3 days worse then other countries, we'll pass Denmark and Sweden. A week worse and we'll pass the UK. 10 days and we'll pass France, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.
  - lurquer 7y ago
    >The per-capita rankings are very sensitive to small populations. I think these 9 should be considered outliers: I agree. Time will tell about the final rankings. But, the US health-care system is far more robust and creative than many of these other systems. Health-care COST is a legitimate debate. But, at the end of the day, when it comes to care, you are generally far better off in a US hospital than one of the others. In any case, we shall see...