Apples to Apples: International statistic comparisons for Covid-19

[Tom Rinaldo]

Just did a little number crunching, and I was careful not to cherry pick the data. I started by focusing on those nations that so far have been most impacted by Covid-19 as per this chart at Statista:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1028731/covid19-tests-select-countries-worldwide/

I compared numbers among nations that rank in the top 20 worldwide for reported Covid-19 cases. However I only used those nations that are members of N.A.TO. for the purpose of this comparison. So I included the United States (#1) the UK (#3) Spain (#5) Italy (#6) Germany (#7) Canada (#11) France (#15) and Belgium (#18). These are all advanced western societies by anyone's definition. This list does not include any number of nations that have received special praise for their handling of Covid-19 and/or for their avoidance of a serious epidemic within their borders, nor other basket cases like Brazil: Only advanced western nations that have reported high numbers of Covid-19 infections, some seeming to manage their outbreaks fairly well, others not, are on this list. So this in no way compares how the U.S. is faring compared to an extremely well managed nation such as New Zealand.

Note: The United States has a total population of 331,002,651. The other seven nations I included have a total population of 373,496,554.

OK, the numbers. Since the beginning of this pandemic the U.S. has reported a total of 2,438,689 Covid-19 cases. Over the same period these other 7 N.A.T.O nations included have reported a total of 1,356,561 Covid-19 cases. During this pandemic the U.S. has processed 29,714,195 Covid-19 tests to date, while the other 7 nations have processed 28,801,395 tests. So with 88.6% of the population of the other 7 nations combined, the U.S. has conducted 3% more tests than those nations combined with 80% more confirmed Covid-19 cases.

As for Covid-19 deaths to date the figures look slightly better for the U.S. for the moment. We have 123,794 deaths total to date while the other 7 countries now have 168,684. Again, on a comparison basis, the U.S. with 88.6% of the population of those other 7 N.A.T.O. nations "only" has 73.4% as many deaths as those other nations. But, as most people know, pandemic deaths are a trailing indicator, and this is merely one snapshot in time. Look at the figures reported both by the U.S. and the seven other N.A.T.O. nations for June 23rd:

U.S. new cases: 35,383. U.S. new deaths: 874
Germany new cases: 659. Germany new deaths: 17
U.K new cases: 921. UK new deaths: 280
Belgium new cases: 200. Belgium new deaths: 17
Italy new cases: 113. Italy new deaths: 18
France new cases: 517. France new deaths: 57
Spain new cases: 248. Spain new deaths: 1
Canada new cases: 268. Canada new deaths 17.

On June 23rd the U.S. reported 35,383 new Covid-19 cases, the other 7 nations combined 2,986.
On June 23rd the U.S. reported 874 new Covid-19 deaths, the other 7 nations combined 407
Source of above data: https://virusncov.com/

Even the overall comparative testing numbers above are deceptive because the need for testing in the U.S. is still ramping up as the pandemic keeps claiming more lives here, while the need for testing in the other nations noted is declining as less and less people there are falling ill to Covid-19.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Good Post!

I like going to Statista, too! Great site.
One thing to keep in mind on deaths.
Insurance companies are up in arms over the extra life insurance payouts, that are unexplained by COVID.
Florida, for instance, had 4,700 deaths due to pneumonia from 2015 to 2019.
They have 5,100 so far this year. More in 6 months than in the prior 5 years.
A huge increase in pneumonia deaths during a respiratory pandemic. Hmmmmm.
And insurance companies aren't freaking out over just 5,000 unexplained deaths. 4,000 might have been in actuarial predictions already. But, a thousand in this state, a thousand over there, etc. has insurance companies paying out $3-5 billion dollars on dead clients they can't explain. That(!) will freak them out!
So, our death number is likely understated by several thousand. Maybe as much as 20%.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. Thanks. It's a great site that I only just discovered

I fully agree with your reasons for suspecting a Covide-19 fatality under count. I hadn't thought about the insurance companies.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. I Know Some Actuaries

4 of them.
I'm getting info first hand.
Back in the late 90s, I taught a short course class in proportional hazard analysis involving partial least squares fits for testing.
The actuaries pursuing an advanced degree were taking it.
I was the same age or just a little older than all 4 of them
So, we've stayed in touch over the years.
One is retiring this year, so he's joining my ranks!

[lagomorph777]

4. Apples to apples would be per-capita. Did you do that?

[SoonerPride]

7. 4% of the global population and 25% of the global COVID deaths

That's all I need to look at.

[lagomorph777]

11. in other words, more than 6x worse than everybody else.

...including shithole countries

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. Feel free to do your own crunch

My point was to take a basket cross section of other advanced western nations with a total population similar to the U.S. which slanted toward other nations that did not escape the onslaught of this pandemic. And then present the actual numbers in each category for both the U.S. and that grouping of similar nations.

The source website has per-capita data for each nation, go for it if you think that makes it clearer, but I feel that term gets overly leaned on because though succinct it is not always widely understood. Instead I literally did the addition; this many people, this many tests, this many cases, this many deaths. I think literally breaking it down into hard numbers is a more stark means of comparison.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I'm somewhat dubious on the accuracy of reported deaths for the US,

more so than for the other countries.

The other poster here discusses it much more thoroughly. Few Covid-19 deaths in Florida, but a massive increase in "pneumonia" deaths?

We're becoming more like a third world country.

[Tom Rinaldo]

10. Hey Crunch! I am too.

But I was looking for a way to illustrate how badly the U.S. is doing that only relies on the actual figures being reported by advanced Western democracies, and for the sake of this exercise I chose to still include the U.S. under that definition. Through various levels of manipulating and/or hiding data it may well be possible for the U.S. to under report deaths, and it certainly seems plausible to me that the U.S. may be one of the worst offenders among our "peers" in that regard, but even the reported figures do not look good. And they are getting far worse by the day.

[unblock]

6. interesting analysis!

i've been using a more simplistic death rate analyis to compare u.s. to the rest of the world.

i've been using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

as of yesterday, the rest of the world has 478,949 total deaths, minus 123,473 u.s. deaths, equals 355,476 deaths in the rest of the world

total population was about 7,793,300,000 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/), minus 330,965,224 in the u.s., equals population of 7,462,334,776 in the rest of the world

so the death rate for the rest of the world is 335,476 / 7,462,334,776 = 0.004496%.

applying that rate to the u.s. population gives 330,965,224 * 0.004496% = 14,879, rounding up.


so if we just managed the way the rest of the world did, on average, including the new zealands and the brazils, weighted by population, then we'd have 14,879 deaths instead of the actual 123,473 deaths.

so roughly 88% of u.s. deaths are due to something unusual in america that isn't going on, on average, in the rest of the world.

i think anyone other than a hyper-partisan republican would agree that donnie and the republicans loom large in that "something unusual in america"....

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. Yes, that comparison should be all that it takes to establlish how poorly we are doing

But some try to wriggle out of it through claims like "you can't trust the data coming from China and Russia" or "some parts of the world have not yet had major exposure to Covid-19" etc. which is why I instead compared the U.S. to an appropriate control sample.