Italy is a bad country to compare with. Compare the US with a country which has a good record on covid.
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That presupposes that various nations use the same testing criteria for cases, and they don’t, so deaths (and even then that is subject to variation) are probably meaningful but then there are the various strategies like lockdowns etc. and when they were applied after the first death.
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But, COVID isn’t an emergent base-rate thing. Six months ago no one in Italy had COVID, just like six months ago no one in the US had it. In both countries first one person had it, then two, then four, and so on. The US always had the potential to get to a higher number, simply due to having more people. That means the US can do two, maybe three, more geometric progressions, but since neither country is saturated yet that isn’t relevant (yet). But that was never pre-ordained - it was a choice the US made.
If anything, you could frame it in terms of respective resources available - what GDP does Italy have, vs what GDP does the US have, and use that to draw inferences about which country has more resources to throw at a problem, and therefore which country “should” have a higher - or lower - number of infections and deaths.
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Its popular to talk about Technical Debt these days but when discussing the vulnerability of a population to a pandemic, maybe we should have a metric like Public Health Debt. This is the effort we would have to spend to bring our population to baseline health, even before the pandemic takes off.
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So much this. Here’s my favorite source. Our World in Data - Confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people.
Deaths in the US have been doubling every ~5 days for the past ~15 days. If that continues, that crosses 250K in ~21 days. Why 250K? I figure if Trump keeps deaths under 250K he will claim victory and will have the election to lose.
IANADr.
It won’t be long and the US will top the statistics no matter which possible metric you pick and no matter which parameters you choose to factor in or factor out.
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Every country has - often implicitly and unconsciously - already decided on an acceptable population baseline health. Most of the time the differences between countries are mostly masked, because different countries have different key drivers of ill health at any given time - heart disease vs cancer vs smoking vs pollution vs firearms vs whatever. So, you know, it’s easy enough to claim national exceptionalism as an excuse or reason for the differences.
Except for now. Right now every country is facing exactly the same problem within a timeframe that is offset by - at most - one month, maybe two. Which makes the effects of all those prior implicit and unconscious decisions about acceptable baseline health starkly obvious.
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So what? Italy has 4.98X the number of deaths per million! China is lying about their numbers in a fashion that is hard to fathom, along with everything else about this virus and the US must exceed the number of fatalities and cases if the virus’ lethality is consistent. Again, and this is important, outside of a few countries, the only real statistical outliers are China and the Koreas.
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We’re talking about a group of people who think the four Americans who died because of Hillary’s supposed inaction in Benghazi are a bigger scandal than the tens of thousands of Americans who died after Trump’s inaction on Covid-19.
If we’re going to win over any Trump voters it’s not going to be through careful consideration of the numbers.
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Italy has a population density of 201/km^2 vs the US at 33/km^2, or 6x. Population density has a nonlinear positive influence on viral spread, so it’s not as straightforward as you imply.
Good choice.
Italy has 4.98 x the number of deaths per million, 6x the population density, and a population that is almost 10 years older per person. Unless you can pull in all those factors, you really can’t criticize one particular statistical method vs. another. And if you can factor in all those variables, plus some others (like smoking rates) then, congratulations(!) you’re an epidemiologist and someone we should be listening to right now. If you’re not, maybe don’t throw stones from your glass house.
Also, the racist statement about China lying about their numbers really needs to stop. The US is lying about it’s numbers through sheer lack of testing. Other sources have crunched the numbers in NYC and other hotspots, and shown that deaths not attributed to COVID-19 have gone up 8x, which strongly implies that the US death rate is heavily under-reported.
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The one that has had a great deal of success in controlling the disease, or the one denying they have any cases? Yes, they can both be called statistical outliers, but lumping them together doesn’t tell us anything.
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Like South Korea
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Right? The Chinese government had issues out of the gate (arresting that one doctor who later died of it), but they pretty quickly corrected ship and did the right thing (ordering the lockdown). They also very much worked with the WHO and other organizations, too. We rejected the tests that were developed by the WHO, so that Trump could give someone a chance to profit off human misery and death. As a result, we remain far behind on testing.
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Does anyone have numbers/charts where they’ve normalized everything by comparing deaths to population?
I mean, this is bad, but I have no idea on perspective of where we really are in terms of percentage? It won’t bring anyone back, but it would help my tiny brain (and some idiot friends who think a dinner party at someone’s house but still six feet apart is a good idea) understand something tangible.
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The newest estimate was ~60K which if we actually hit would be an action win. Personally I’d give Trump a point on the score bored if we actually manage this.
~200k was the older estimate and I fear that still might happen.
My prediction is we do well, slack off, and get a 2nd round that is worse than the first. I hope I am wrong.
It’s worth noting as a milestone, but comparing us to others can give people a warped sense of perception.
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This is about the best one I’ve found. Frequently updated.
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For a good visual comparison of deaths per million of different western countries and the different trend lines normalized to a “day 0” for each location, I like Kevin Drum’s charts:
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I would seriously question that model. New York is on track for a minimum of 20k deaths, even now that they seem to be flattening the curve. Watch for Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Georgia follow in their footsteps due to lack of response or slow response.
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Yep. It will hit communities of color and working class communities here the absolute hardest…
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I am doubtful as well. I can’t recall who makes and runs the models off the top of my head, but I recall Fauci quoting it last week.
Of course if things change with the next model they will update their estimates.
It doesn’t do anyone any good to have estimates too high or too low on purpose. Two low you look like a failure when the real numbers are too high. Too high of an estimate and you look like fear monger in hindsight. So, IMO, it behooves everyone to give as accurate estimates as possible - not that 100% accurate estimates are even possible at this point.
