Total US confirmed infections: 8,777,432*
Average US infections last 7 days: 71,833 (new record high)
Total US deaths: 226,695
Average US deaths last 7 days: 806 (vs. recent low of 689 11 days ago)
*I suspect the real number is about 15,000,000, or 4.5% of the total US population
Source: COVID Tracking Project
The pandemic is once again raging out of control in parts of the country, and it is likely to be far worse over the winter months.
Let’s start today by comparing the US with the EU countries plus Canada.
While in Canada the virus is still under control, on average, the EU is seeing nearly twice as many daily infections per capita as the United States:
The EU is at parity with the US now in terms of deaths, and that can be expected to rise further as well:
Here are new infections and deaths per capita for the US as a whole:
Although the infection rate is worse than ever, because of either a change in the demographics of those infected (younger vs. old people) and/or better medical treatments, the death rate is nowhere near what it was early in the pandemic.
The two worst States for both infections and deaths are North and South Dakota, shown below:
Again, the death rate is nowhere near that of NY or NJ early in the pandemic.
Turning to the bottom 10 US jurisdictions, the infection rate has recently been rising in all of them except for some Pacific islands and the three States of northern New England:
The same is true of the bottom 10 US jurisdictions for deaths – although again this is not a “bad” death rate compared with earlier in the pandemic, or compared to other States and countries:
Finally, New York is still in the bottom 10 for per capita infections, and California just above – but both show recent increases:
In terms of deaths, New York is still doing well, and California is still slowly declining – although that may change with the recent uptick in infections there:
While this is dour news, there is a silver lining. Hopefully I will no longer have to read articles that GLEEFULLY point out that America is doing worse than the EU…Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wise to look at other countries and see what they are doing better than us. But too many people were acting as if they were rooting for the USA to do worse, like they WANTED us to be worse. I always found that baffling.
Jen
I do not mean to burst your bubble, There are three EU countries which surpass the US when considering cases per 1 million. They are Belgium, Czech Republic, and Montenegro. Every other EU country is below the US. I suspect England may be worst than the US except I can not find it. I would not crow about the US. We have far more resource than other countries and our approach to Covid is third world. Here is a resource for you yo biew what I am talking about in ranking. I used “Total Cases per 1 million” so many columns to the right. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Please do not take this as a rebuke of your comment. It is just that trumpians and trump will not be happy till they blow the country up. The only positive coming out of this is the SS Trust Fund woill last longer due to so many people dying, young and old.
It was the UK and they are lower than the US. Deaths globally are 3%, In Michigan, it is 5%.
The US is two weeks behind because of Geography (latitude). Just wait.
The US is two weeks behind because of Geography (latitude). Just wait. Besides – if you look at the deaths figures – you are only looking at the marginal figures. Look at the area below the curve – the accumulated figures.
So what is the message about EU and USA comparison? I lived 14 years in 4 different EU nations and that experience was that the social rhythms of live seemed very similar to the US in France (particularly) and Spain. A little less in Greece and Czech Repulbic, although I lived in a very rural part of the Czech Republic that starts now to feel similar to the rural Brown county Wisconsin areas I am getting to know better. For an infection that is not constrained by inoculation and spreads via social contact I expected that the US and France for sure would end up in a similar place. People and societies have long-time habits and can change them to some degree but the end result is still going to be pretty high social velocity. Giving up high school football, as one example, seems like a relatively small sacrifice, but there is a distribution of sentiment around that that probably would astonish people who have minimal interest in that activity. Apart from analytic models, there never will be proof positive, but my sense is that social live here in Green Bay is very attenuated, but very possibly it is a case where the transmissibility of this infection is such that cutting back on potential exposure by 50% does very little. Like you normally drive 100 mph but it turns out an accident at 50 mph has almost as good a chance of killing you anyway. You need to slow down to 30 mph but the population of drivers just cannot adjust to that in only a few months.
Eric:
Lets look at:
Covid cases per million:
Wisconsin 37,801 (increased by ~1000 cases per million today – 38,707)
US 28,091
France 20,391
People per Square Mile
Wisconsin 105
US 93
France 47
Do you see a correlation by looking at people per square mile and cases per million?
As far as speed? “You decide on your speed, but physics decides whether you live or die.” For every increase in speed of 5 miles per hour there is an exponential increase in the severity of a crash.
As Reason is saying there is clearly a strong seasonal component to the disease. Coronaviruses tend to come in two seasonal modes with Dec-Feb or Mar-May peaks (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.567184/full). Give the fall off in the Spring and the rapid rise we’re seeing currently, the Dec-Feb peak mode seems the most likely to correspond to COVID-19.
Policy, epidemiological, and medical interventions can play a role (a significant one as can be seen in the Canadian vs US data), but we are going to be swept along irrespective of our efforts until we have the tools to break the disease. Since the US has no coherent policy in place to moderate the disease and in fact we appear at a national level to be working on its behalf, we can expect a worst-case outcome. This is going to be a rough winter.
A follow-up to my previous comment on seasonality. I read through at least the public portions of the papers cited by the paper I referenced for the seasonal data. Unfortunately, the quality of the data is relatively poor. That doesn’t invalidate my thesis that COVID-19 is seasonal, but does not strengthen it as much as I had supposed.
Another component to the issue of seasonality is the question of what drives it. There is still not a clear consensus answer to that question and the answer is likely to be multi-variant. But without that information, it makes formulating policies challenging.
Frankly, the breadth of the research in this field is shockingly scant for something which impacts our lives so frequently. We need to dramatically increase our efforts in understanding and fighting diseases.