Wednesday, March 4, 2020

it's worth pointing out that the united states has 158 cases and 11 deaths from coronavirus, and canada has much fewer cases, but zero deaths.

germany has 322 cases and zero deaths. switzerland has 93 cases and zero deaths; the uk has 87 cases and zero deaths. spain has 2 deaths out of 228, and france has 4 deaths out of 285. there is one death in san marino. while most countries have seen few cases, the only other country with deaths is italy, which has a very high poverty rate.

if you look at just france, the mortality rate is 1.4%. in spain, it's 0.8%. put together, and it's 6/513=1.1%. add the uk & germany & switzerland, and it's 6/1015 = 0.5%. i'm not cherry-picking countries in western europe - the more countries i add, the lower the death rate gets, because there aren't any more deaths.

while there are probably unreported cases, the official numbers put the death rate in the united states at nearly 7% - 15x as high as western europe.

why is that?

could it have something to do with the health care delivery system in the united states?

this is the best argument for medicare for all that's ever existed....just look at the numbers. if you're an american, you should be embarrassed - your mortality rates are comparable to those of developing countries, not those of the industrialized world.