Covid cases should be most commonly displayed as "Cases per 1 million pop".

[Quixote1818]

This is a better indication of how a state is handling things with both NORTH and SOUTH DAKOTA doing the WORST! I know South Dakota hasn't done hardly anything to slow the spread. No mask mandate, no closing of businesses etc.

California is actually in 41st place when ranked based on population. You can click on that tab that says "Cases per 1 million pop", to get it to display the states this way.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[Karadeniz]

1. I'd like to see both figures.

[hardluck]

2. Why cases/million?

Why not deaths/million or hospitalizations/million or % of hospital beds available? I'm not sure cases is the most important factor.

[Silent3]

4. I think the main point is to use per capita figures, instead of raw numbers...

...regardless of whether you're talking about cases, deaths, or hospitalizations. Comparisons between states, and between countries, are much more meaningful that way.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. I tend to think deaths per million is a much better

metric.

Using that, Belgium is by far the worst country. Oddly enough, no one ever talks about it. I wonder why.

[Quixote1818]

5. I would agree but the NE US got hammered early before they knew how to handle this

So NY, MA, NJ, CT etc. have the highest number of deaths per million and almost all of them came in March and April.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. Those early deaths are what happens when your HC systems are

completely overwhelmed. It’s why we will have 320K deaths by Dec 19. Because it’s coming soon again - only this time it’s everywhere.

[rictofen]

6. It should've been that way for international comparison too

I suspect most people know that, but it's more fun (and politically expedient) to talk about the US being "number one!"

[Klaralven]

7. Even better would be cases per million population over the last 7 days

Using the 7-day moving average washes out the "weekend effect" of less reporting on the weekend and a corresponding bump in cases at the beginning of the week as the data comes in.