I'm afraid that the relevant metric will always be 'per capita' or as you noted 'per million people'. The USA's pretty big and has a rather sizable population after all, so even if the per capita numbers are the same as Spain or Italy the USA's total of deceased would still handily outnumber Spain and Italy, combined.
But that doesn't mean the USA is handling it well. Its case rate is rather sizable, and with the manner in which certain sections of the population are handling the measures in place that case rate will grow and keep growing. And thus so will its casualties.
But that doesn't mean the USA is handling it well. Its case rate is rather sizable, and with the manner in which certain sections of the population are handling the measures in place that case rate will grow and keep growing. And thus so will its casualties.