A few days ago I posted a chart showing the current case rate of COVID-19 in the US and its peer countries in Europe. We look fairly good on this metric because COVID is spiking in Europe right now but not in the US.
In the end, though, what matters is the cumulative number of cases and deaths during the entire run of the pandemic. On that metric, here's where we are so far:
There are two things I take away from this. First, and most obvious, the United States is at the very top of both charts. Obviously our approach to the pandemic looks pretty bad.
Second, though, is that a number of European countries are starting to catch up to us on case rates and there are already several that are very close to us on death rates. We still have a while to go before COVID-19 reaches its endemic stage, but once we get there and look back, I wonder just how much impact all the different approaches to lockdowns etc. will end up having? I think it's obvious that the answer will be "more than zero," but how much more? As time goes by I'm less and less confident that I know the answer to that.
The US was in the middle of the pack until the current administration took over.
Yeah, right. The summer surge in cases and deaths that brought us to the top was a ruby red state phenomenon in many ways. The current administration can't fix stupid. The past administration epitomized stupid.
This. Other countries were rational (relatively) with policies and vaccines, while Redneckistan worshiped Covid over science.
and blueneckian??? did?? Nope. They didn't.
The middle of what pack? The ten or so countries selected here?
On January 20 the United States's cumulative covid death rate was well above the European average, well above the Latin American average, and many times higher than the world average. In all the world, only Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Czechia, and a few much smaller European countries had higher death rates than the United States.
Ey18 must be SurfSki's tagger name for Jabberwocking.
That's Kevin's choice of frames, not mine.
Yes, Kevin's selection is not great for rating the United States against most of the world, or even against most of Europe. And even those big advanced countries of western Europe are still going through another big wave, so the ordering in this particular horse race will change.
Indeed. The administration's failure to order medical SWAT teams to bust into people's homes in Red America and forcibly jab needles into arms is indeed what's to blame for the country's current covid challenges.
If only Merrick Garland had the gutsiness of Janet Reno...
One thing that struck me when this all began was someone charted out the waves of deaths during prior pandemics, and the diminishing returns prevention had with the public had with each wave. Can't imagine having large groups and media fighting said prevention this time has or will help future Covid waves.
Get rid of testing on vaccinated people, Covid would fall off the front page. It's purely a system driven virus. The rerise of flu cases this year shows its decline.
1. vaccinated people can spread the disease
2. long covid in breakthrough cases is a thing, and so far the studies aren't promising
you are spreading deadly misinformation.
Oh, right, and
3. The hospital systems are overloaded with covid patients who are .... (wait for it) UNVACCINATED.
Nope. Hospitals are not overloaded. That is the point. The yry declines are large.
I know it's a waste of time, but you can't possibly show me any actual evidence that hospitals aren't overcrowded can you?
Geez, go away.
You go away. Hospitalization was 90000 this time last year. Peaked in early January at 133,000. Either educate yourself or stop posting. When the January/February fall off occurs again, maybe you will learn seasonality. Ignorant anti-science types like yourself need cleaned out from America.
Depends on the area. Delta hit first in the South, then moved North rather than hitting the entire country at the same time like the winter 2020 wave. In Texas, nearly every hospital hit new highs of patients in August/September 2021.
Again, it also depends on age. It's why the vastly more vaxxed Florida struggled. Either adjust for age or get out.
Who care if they spread disease or not. Long Covid is 1.4% of people. Simply not that large or impactful. Please, spread and finish this up.
This is no different than OC43. Ignorant schmucks that deny science should be sent to reeducation camps. You fit the bill.
I would describe a disease that disables 1.4% of the population as very large and impactful.
Right-wingers simply don’t care that 1,000 corpses continue to pile up every day.
They will dance, and Bolinas, and weave to avoid confronting the horror of hundreds of thousands of Americans perishing.
The Republican Party is a death cult.
You make an interesting point. Both the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations had somewhat learned that lesson and in the materials left for Trump it was recommended to hit the virus very hard in the first wave to either preempt or dampen down subsequent waves. This was the idea behind the Korean, Chinese, Kiwi, etc approach and it certainly contributed to their relative successes.
But the Trump administration and the European countries to which Kevin looks for comparison took an almost relentlessly minimalist approach and we’ve seen spike after spike and wave after wave.
Dipshit. You can stop coronavirus spreads by "hitting it hard". That doesn't work because it's airborne dweeb. The ObamaBush scenario is in case of a "contagion" style outbreak which requires military cordon.
This is far away from that. Most died here were sickly elderly people. Let it play out, it would be gone in 2 years. Why my my is it down yry. Next year will be endemic. Morons like you Guthman are no different than Paul I am hiding my true ancestry Gosar. Elitist know it alls. Reeducation awaits for both.
No need to be nasty. Many—the vast majority of countries, in fact—are not experiencing our death rates.
It’s just that right-wingers don’t care about Americans dying.
I think what's conveniently vanished down the memory hole is that nearly all of our European peers decided pretty early on that they were done with Covid-19 and it didn't really matter to them whether Covid was done with them. In every instance, the European countries locked down to weakly and opened up way too early; especially, every holiday was a death sentence for thousands here and in Europe. Even Germany suffered from this inability to forgo even a single holiday
But what Kevin rather conveniently reveals is the ease with which one can lie with number. I don't see countries like New Zealand or Korea or even Taiwan, Australia, or China on this chart when those countries were far more serious about public health than ourselves and Europe. Let's see a chart comparing those countries to the US—then we will see that what distinguishes this country is our willingness to suffer large numbers of pointless deaths and long-term illnesses.
This is an excellent point. I always thought highly of Germany, until I saw they just couldn't sit still in the face of the plague
Back in the Summer, during the Olympics, people were talking about how terrible it was that Japan hadn’t cancelled the games and how their cases were spiking. Japan’s Covid death count is currently 146 per million. If this country had that death rate Trump would have been re-elected and would have been declared Emperor by now.
Doubt it. Asians are more immune. Scientifically proven. Ditto Africa.
"Individuals of Black and Asian ethnicity are at increased risk of COVID-19 infection compared to White individuals; Asians may be at higher risk of ITU admission and death. These findings are of critical public health importance in informing interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality amongst ethnic minority groups."
From The Lancet:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)03374-6/fulltext
Spades, you're wrong, again. Surprise.
Dipshit, it's not ethnically the reason why their immune systems are resisting. It's the fact they have had more coronavirus outbreaks over the last 50 years, largely unreported by media. Their natural immunity is stronger. Your wrong again fool.
You’re not your. For Chrissakes, it’s be nice if the person calling other people morons, idiots, dipshits etc learned the difference between you’re and your, something taught in elementary school.
You’re not your. For Chrissakes, it’d be nice if the person calling other people morons, idiots, dipshits etc learned the difference between you’re and your, something taught in elementary school.
Case counts are irrelevant.
Plague rat.
Well Kevin, whoever does the “looking back” will need to keep in mind that one country equals one approach mindset is wrong and will have to separate country from multiple approaches. For example, Germany is spiking right now, but they are not in lockdown. So Germany does not necessarily equal lockdown approach.
Yes, this is exactly right. There’s counties coming out of lockdown who have mostly beaten the virus through mostly vaccinations and some degree of limitations on indoors activities for unvaccinated people. But Kevin doesn’t include countries like Portugal, Spain, and Denmark. Neither does he breakout parts of this country that are doing better through a combination of masks for indoors activities, vaccines, and vaccine passports.
Looking back, people who pay attention to what got results will understand what got results. Every country in Kevin’s chart except Canada took a minimalist approach to lockdowns and basic public health measures. That’s why there doesn’t seem to be much difference among these countries; they all except Canada took the same approach and they’ve mostly reaped what they’ve sown.
Canada would have had even better results had it not been for the idiotic DeSantis of the North, Jason Kenney. In his infinite stupidity he declared the pandemic over during the summer and removed absolutely all types of restrictions vowing to never again impose them, calling prior ones a big mistake (he was also the only Premier in Canada who thought it was a good idea to cut back on healthcare funding and pick a fight with healthcare professionals in the middle of a pandemic). That decision caused Alberta to drive the bulk of Canada's third wave. Eventually the number of deaths and the overcrowding at hospitals forced him to put back in place most of the restrictions he had removed bringing the numbers back down again, but by then far too many people had paid his idiocy with their lives.
"... to be fair..."
Like that mattered. Age demographics were bad in Alberta. Restrictions or no restrictions you were going to have problems.
Alberta has the youngest population of any Canadian province.
Thanks for that info. This is a major problem with Kevin’s approach. The US works out very much the same way—initially a blue state/urban crisis with a poor and inadequate response from the feds and state governments who, in fairness, would normally have followed the feds lead. Over time, however, with sensible public health measures and high uptake of vaccines, those areas are contributing very little in terms of cases and deaths. Now, it’s the red states and the willfully unvaccinated who are entirely the problem—but this reality is not reflected in the chart.
We need to remember folks, Covid vaccine helps keep the symptoms of Covid from being severe, in many cases. It is not protection from getting Covid, at all, nor are those who have been vaccinated, free from getting Covid and dying. Remember, vaccination keeps the severity down and those with all vaccinations can still carry Covid. Masks and hand washing!
Nope, hand washing then social distancing. Masks have a low efficiency rate of only 20%. N95 masks which most people don't have, are modestly better. You keep on repeating scientifically debunked data. You represent why nobody takes your kind no more seriously than anti-covid vaxx dweebs.
"A conclusion can be reached based on the current studies: correctly wearing masks of all kinds, despite their different designs, functions and effectiveness, will to a large degree reduce the overall risks of COVID‐19 infection and enhance general protection from coronavirus."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/
Spades, wrong, again. Surprise
Nope, that study has been long refuted. 20% is all you got. Deal with it.
No it hasn't. Care to prove me wrong?
There is no current evidence that hand-washing accomplishes anything. You get covid by inhaling covid viruses, not by touching covid viruses.
Incorrect. Vaccinated people are substantially less likely to be infected with covid. The vaccines are not PERFECT protection from getting covid, but they are good protection. Masks are a good idea. There is no current evidence that hand-washing accomplishes anything. You get covid by inhaling covid viruses, not by touching covid viruses.
Poland but not Belgium?
Well, now I see Belgium. Not sure if I missed it at first, or if there was an update to the chart(s).
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/more-people-have-died-of-covid-this-year-than-last/
Looking at it that way is pretty misleading though, isn’t it? A huge number of “this year’s” deaths were a product of the holiday surge in cases. January to mid-February were horrendous.
You mean a pre holiday surge. Cases actually topped in December in terms of growth.
Shirley Mother Jones would not publish anything misleading?? …
Snarcasm aside I do think it shows something of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t as far as who occupies the White House.
No, it's not misleading. You have to put your cutoff somewhere, and Jan. 1 is the first day of the year, hence a sensible starting date for annual statistics.
I want tom draw attention to the country doing best on both of Kevin's charts, Canada. I started the pandemic in Scotland and moved back to Canada in August, 2021. Since my wife is American and one of our sons lives in Massachusetts, I have been following the US response closely as well. I big conclusion I can draw is that Canada has had a much more consistant focus of the pandemic from the Federal Government, most of the Provincial Governments and healthcare system. Also when the right-leaning Alberta government did declare the pandemic over thsi summer and of course cases increased dramatically, the Primier and his party became the most unpopular in the country and his party is rebeling against him. Contrast this reaction to that in the red states like Florida and North Dekota.
Absolutely correct. The general opinion is that it was Kenney (who is really the Canadian version of DeSantis or Abbot) who cost the Conservatives the recent Federal Election. After people soured on Trudeau for calling an election in the middle of a pandemic to take advantage of his high popularity (mostly due to his handling of the pandemic at the federal level), for a while it looked like the Conservatives were poised to take over, that is until the cases and deaths started to pile on in Alberta thanks to the idiocy of Kenney, causing the rest of the party in other provinces to try to run as far away from him as possible (this despite Alberta being the biggest stronghold of the party). Unfortunately for them (and luckily for everyone else), by then many of those that were on the fence or considering giving the Conservatives a chance feared Kenney like policies could come to the Federal government and decided to pick another option.
Where is Spain? Also, I’ve heard Czechia has been very lax. I wonder where they are.
I have no doubt that the CSA will be the worst.
Maybe they’d vax up more if we called it the Sherman virus.
Did Even the Liberal Kevin Drum just admit Ron de Santis became president today
We know that older people are more likely to be hospitalized and/or die, it would be nice to try to account for this in these kind of comparisons. Without an attempt to correct for this, guesstimating the effectiveness of different actions is......pointless?
Imagine showing death rates in American preschools vs retirement homes and trying to draw conclusions without considering the very different populations in each group.
Others also make the good point that many countries are left out of the chart which makes it misleading.
The United States is a country of 330 million and many distinct sectors, each with substantially different mitigation efforts. It's overall death rate doesn't tell us much.
Take California as an example. Big, nearly 40 million, and also has a vaccine-resistant "red zone" in the Central Valley, so it's a good example of a complex country and how policies have played out. The state's deaths/million is 1,872, much better than the U.S.'s 2,397, and Mississippi's 3,437 (!!) Having 1/4 less deaths /MM than the U.S. and 1/2 that of Mississippi looks pretty good.
As to "several [countries] are very close to us on death rates", yes, there are a few, but there are enough with half the rate or less to make the case that good policy and a compliant populace makes a substantial difference.
It's overall death rate doesn't tell us much
Why not? If, the US ends up suffering a lot more covid death proportionally than, say, Canada or Germany (or Spain or France or Japan or Australia), doesn't that at least tell us that the pandemic was more deadly in America than in these other countries? That's not the whole story. But it would be a pretty important fact if that's how it ends up.
Also, all modern societies feature plenty of "complexity." The US hardly seems unique in this regard—not in 2021. But even if the US is in first place on that score, why isn't it noteworthy that the US doesn't seem to be managing its complexity very well (at least with respect to public health)?
I think Dana’s comment was with regard to Kevin’s last paragraph in which he seems to cast doubt on the efficacy of lockdowns and other mitigation efforts. I live in the 9 county San Francisco Bay Area the population of which is approximately 7.5 million. That’s larger than many States. The SF Bay Area is pretty famous for having taken mitigation efforts very seriously with some of the highest vaccination rates in the country and, particularly in the most populous areas, heavy compliance with masking and distancing. If we were a state, we would have one of the lowest deaths per million in the country. The SF Bay Area has about half the total California rate.
I firmly believe that the lockdowns and other mitigation efforts are the reason for this lower rate. My take on the impact of different approaches to lockdowns is that when lockdowns etc are adhered to they are successful.
Please. Weather and health demographics play a bigger role. You forget age idiot.
Before we consider "age idiot" we would need to know the SF Bay Area's age demographic. I have no reason to believe there are less old people in San Francisco than the national average.
In the main, other high income countries don't suffer from A) vaccine hesitancy rates as high as the United state; B) sub-national units of government that are actively trying to sabotage the national government's effort to fight covid; C) the implacable opposition of one of its two most powerful political parties to any and all efforts to fight the pandemic; D) a whole-ridden healthcare system; E) a partisan judiciary highly likely to sabotage the government's efforts to fight the pandemic; F) a vast and powerful and— let's face it, mainstream—media sector devoted to maximizing the death toll.
Sure, you can find examples of some of these things in other rich countries, but only the United States brings all of them together in with such spectacular intensity and destructiveness.
A wager that, when all is said and done, the United States of America ends up having a quite bad pandemic by high income country standards looks like a safe bet to me.
This will all be covered in chapters 17 and 18 of a future Edward Gibbon's tome about America's decline and fall.
Vaccine hesitancy is irrelevant. But your to stupid to get it.
Apparently yore two stupid to master basic grammar.
You forgot the most important aspect Jasper - our intense desire to do ANYTHING, even the most outrageous things to avoid doing things the government told us to do.
Ivermectin, internal UV lights, bleach injections. Our scarcity of common sense and trust in doctors is very apparent. We are only beginning to see this in the other rich countries, who are not objecting to COVID vaccines but do NOT want to go into another lock down.
The Internet has made rumors, innuendo, and quack cures our "reliable source" of medical information. Kinda like election fraud that changed the course of history according to Rudy G, only to be told NOW that he never had time to investigate those bogus claims so he shouldn't be held accountable.
We are believing the Sham-Wow guy and Mike Lindell. We believe the National Inquirer over the NY Times.
The Internet has made Marge the manicurist the Information Ministry. We have become the most dumb-downed nation on the planet. And we see nothing wrong with that.
Kinda like believing that post infection immunity is BETTER than vaccines
Or that Delta was named Delta because of the implication that India was getting sick and tired of it being called the Indian Variant. (It was named that because there were 3 Variants of Investigation at the time, all originating in India, and WHO decided to use the Greek alphabet to differentiate between the variants rather than numbers - thank God)
We have been constantly surprised by this disease, and at the same time we've all become arm chair QBs on the matter - and at the same time allowed for our medical system to reap enormous rewards for having the MOST cases and the MOST deaths
Yeah, we're exception all right
Looking at this, it's pretty clear that there are three bands: Canada, Denmark and Sweden lead the pack, followed by Germany, Austria in a second group. The first group is 4-5X better and the latter is more than 2X better than the US.
The worst group are countries where people don't have much trust in the country's government.
Thanks, Biden
Yes, it certainly says something that "the world's longest undefended border" makes that much difference.
Pitts Mike
"The first group is 4-5X better and the latter is more than 2X better than the US"
That is a damning statement against our health care system, and our lack of concern for our fellow man.
Speaking of Europe: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59363256.amp “ Covid: Huge protests across Europe over new restrictions”