COVID-19 & US healthcare system - thread relapse

[robkelk]

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.

...

Well, then, let's compare with a country that has a larger population than the USA.

All statistics from Wikipedia, as of this posting. All percentages done by simple arithmetic, rounded to no decimal places.

China:
Total population (2019 estimate): 1,427,647,786
Number of reported cases: 82,918
Number of reported deaths: 4,633
Reported deaths per million people: 59
Virus arrival date: 1 December 2019 (5 months, 1 week and 3 days ago)

USA:
Total population (2019 estimate): 328,239,523 (23% of China)
Number of reported cases: 1,379,185 (1664% of China)
Number of reported deaths: 81,289 (1755% of China)
Reported deaths per million people: 4099 (6947% of China)
Virus arrival date: January 13, 2020 (3 months and 4 weeks ago) (74% as long as China)

So... The USA has a reported death toll 17.55 times that of China's and a reported death toll per capita 69.47 times that of China's - and got there in three-quarters the time China took.