How do you figure that? Taking the example of Germany, their numbers of new cases and new deaths from the same source are ~2x less than the US per population. By what metric is Germany doing much worse than the USA right now?
Germany is basically the best case for Europe and had 199 deaths today, with a quarter the population of the US (who had 485 deaths).
* 506 deaths in France (a fifth of the US population)
* 213 in the UK (equiv. to 1000/day in the US)
* Switzerland tracking at 100 deaths a day, equivalent to over 4000/day in the US
* 162 deaths in Czechia, equiv. to 5346/day in the US
EU cases started climbing earlier than the US, and new daily cases have peaked and are descending.
Plotted here, 1 September to present, are the largest EU states: France, Spain, UK, Germany, and Italy, vs. US. (The tool is capped at five comparisons). Shown are new daily cases, normed to population, 14 day smoothing (to clarify trend).
Substitute otheer countries as you prefer. Note that Poland, Czechia, and Switzerland have comparatively small populations (38m for Poland v. 84m for Germany).
US cases are still climbing, EU are falling. France peaked on 2 November, 14 days ago, deaths attributed to those cases are just now being reported, but willdecrease rapidly.
Meantime US cases are still growing exponentially, with over 1 million new cases (at a 3% CFR) in the past week alone.
Calling the US situation "better" than Europe is ignoring the inevitable tragedy facing the US. As with this past spring, a few weeks lag on the epidemic curve can not be represented as evidence of superior situation. The future is here, it's just distributed more in Europe than the US presently. The US will get what's due it within 2-3 weeks, possibly sooner.
We're just discussing different things. I'm talking about the number of deaths occurring right now in Europe, as a response to the original comment I replied to. You've added a lot of context about the number of cases and what's likely to happen in future. I don't disagree with any of that.
1. Cases today translate directly to deaths in the 2--4 week future, at a best-case rate of 0.5% CFR and far more plausibly 1.5--3% CFR, based on present reported cases.[1]
2. US new cases per capita are at least on par if not worse than Europes's.
3. EU daily case rates are trending at worst flat, and are generally decreasing.
4. US case rates are rising, at an acellerating rate.
The US today reports 158,363 new cases (7-day average), and a 3% CFR. In ~2--3 weeks, likely daily deaths will be 2,375--4,750, or 7.5--15 per million.[2]
Germany, to use your favoured example, reports 18,363 new cases (7-day average), and a 2% CFR. In ~2--3 weeks, likely daily deaths will be 367--550, 4.4--6.6 per million.[3]
All Europe reports ~220,000 new daily cases (16 Nov 2020, not smoothed). in ~2--3 weeks, likely daily deaths will be 3,300--6,600, 4.4--8.8 per million.[4]
To provide an analogy, you're laughing at Europe being in a ditch whilst the US is racing toward a cliff's edge. Assessments of present health or wealth must include obvious future consequences or risks. You entirely ignore these, and reframed the initial criterion to do so.
Your analysis suffers from presentism and risk blindness and is utterly flawed.
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Notes:
1. I'll ignore the fact that reported fatalities undercount true COVID-19 fatalities as demonstrated by overall excess deaths by about 30% per an August 2020 New York Times report and other independent studies and data.
2. Using 1.5--3% CFR.
3. Also using 1.5%--35 CFR, despite Germany's lower experienced CFR.
4. Again at 1.5--3% CFR. Based on reported values, whic undercounts recoveries, experienced CFR is ~4%.
I did not "redefine" or "reframe" anything. From the beginning I chose to use recent daily deaths per capita as my measure of how badly a country is being hit by COVID "right now". It is true that my first response did not make this explicit, and in retrospect I should have done so. Please read all my comments charitably, as I have done with yours.
I have already agreed that the measures you are using are also valid and that the trends are bad. However your points 1-4 are entirely about cases, trends, and the future, which has nothing to do with the point I made.
Accusing me of "laughing at Europe" is the sort of toxic rhetoric which doesn't belong on HN and frankly says more about you than it does about my argument. I live in one of the worst-hit yet most-developed countries, and some of our ICUs have run out of beds.
"Beginning" means from the moment I conceived the idea in my mind. Again, please try interpreting things charitably, otherwise you will make poor assumptions and end up arguing against your own imagination.
If you re-read this thread you will see that I am not arguing against the points you made, at all. I'm saying (over and over) that you have failed to address the extremely simple point that I made. I've replied to your other comment, so let's leave it there. All the best.
I did look it up myself. I used the 7 day moving average to get more stable results and Germany is 2x better than the US in new cases/deaths per million right now even while having 3 to 5x less cases/death in total since the start which means it also has a more vulnerable population at this point. I didn't pick Germany, you did, and claimed it was "much worse". And it's not the best case, there are several countries doing better or much better than Germany.
As for the other examples Europe is now having a second wave after successfully suppressing the first one. The US has never suppressed the pandemic, or at best is now at a third wave, and thus has a currently less susceptible population from all the cases and deaths it has already had. And even then it's still having more new cases and new deaths than the well managed countries in Europe (Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, etc). It's hardly in a better situation right now as you claim. The worst countries in Europe are at the US accumulated average, some are catching up but the US is also spiking right now.
Over the past few weeks (i.e. right now), the number of deaths per capita in the European country I live in is far higher than the number of deaths per capita in the USA. Some of the best hospitals on Earth are running out of ICU beds. My country is not alone in this, as you can see in the numbers I provided. This is the context for my response to the original commenter.
You have a different way of measuring the problem and you are extrapolating into the future, and that is also fine. We are just making different points.
I'm not measuring different things. I've used initially the definition that seemed most appropriate to me as you didn't provide any and then the definition you chose. You're now using as an example an unnamed country. With the examples you gave it wasn't true in either of the metrics.
I've already given you the numbers for Germany which was your other example. It is actually 2x better than the US. Your claim was "most of highly-developed Europe". Germany isn't even the best case and the total EU metric also says the opposite.
Germany is at 177 deaths per day with 84 million people, for 2.1 deaths per million per day. The US is at 1170 deaths per day with 332 million people, for 3.5 deaths per million per day. That's a factor of 1.7x worse by the US. In number of new cases it's worse.
You're doing math with the "Today" numbers that are not always reliable because not all US states have reported sometimes. The 7 day moving average numbers are more reliable.
It's also very easy to lookup countries like Denmark, Finland and Norway that are much much better. Picking individual small countries is not a great methodology, particularly Czechia that did extremely well in the first wave and thus has a much more susceptible population.
231 million people, 1807 deaths, more than 2x as bad as the USA. And that's before adding Switzerland, Czechia, and other countries where things are worse.
It's also irrelevant that Czechia did well in the first wave. This is about who is doing worse right now as measured by actual humans dying. The reasons don't matter.
So from "much worse" it's now "not materially worse". In reality the numbers say Germany is actually much better, and it's 84 million people that you are now excluding from the analysis.
Picking other individual countries is a poor analysis. Take the whole EU or another group that's comparable to the US. Otherwise the same can be done for US states. But you were also given numbers for those that showed the opposite and doubled down. You already have a conclusion are are making the data fit.
> It's also irrelevant that Czechia did well in the first wave. This is about who is doing worse right now as measured by actual humans dying. The reasons don't matter.
It's not irrelevant in the context I used it. Which was to explain how you were cherry-picking a very specific case.
Population - Country - Deaths
60,427,888 - Italy - 731
65,328,048 - France - 506
68,021,208 - UK - 213
37,831,020 - Poland - 357
8,678,393 - Switzerland - 72
83,783,942 - Germany - 257
11,608,351 - Belgium - 195
Look at the map. These are reasonable choices. I haven't cherry picked them, e.g. I included Germany and excluded Czechia.
This is 335M people and 2331 deaths.
That is AT LEAST DOUBLE the current daily death rate in the USA.
There are many other ways of grouping European countries to achieve the same outcome, which is to show that contrary to the original commenter's position, right now, the USA is not the worst hit place on Earth, if you measure the problem by the number of people who are currently dying every day. I live here and that is the number that matters the most.
Here is my original comment, which is totally consistent with the numbers above (with the exception of Germany as an individual nation, but this is irrelevant as it's now in the aggregate):
"This is not correct. If you adjust for population size, most of highly-developed Europe is doing much worse than the USA right now. That includes Germany, Switzerland, etc."
Of course you can select many other ways of grouping the data and many other ways of choosing the numbers to achieve the outcome you want. That is not relevant to the point I have been making.
