Based on current trajectories, I estimate it will be about another two weeks till Mexico also surpasses the UK. At which point the top three death toll countries will all be in the Americas (US/Brazil/Mexico)
As for comparing countries, I’ve been watching the deaths per million and how countries have been moving up and down the top ten list.
Poor Belgium has held the top spot for a long time. I’m not sure what happened to them.
The UK, led by Boris “I’m still shaking hands” Johnson, had been steadily moving up the list to secure a number 2 spot, but they seem to mostly have a handle on the situation.
Then comes Spain, who had a disastrous first spike where the 7 day moving average hit 866 deaths at the peak, which is equivalent to 6000 U.S. deaths. And cases seem to be rising again.
Italy has been sliding down slowly. Being one of the first to be hit, they have a good excuse.
Sweden has been rocketing up the charts like a bad Taylor Swift song to take the number five spot. Their ascent has been slowing, but I think they will overtake Italy soon.
Then comes France, another hard hit European nation that seems to have things under control now.
I was surprised this morning to see Chile had bumped USA out of the number 7 position. South America is getting hit pretty hard right now.
Then comes good ole USA who seems determined to win this battle at all costs. Skyrocketing case numbers and rising deaths means they will surely secure one of the top spots. Congratulations America.
Peru is next representing another South American country I hadn’t taken much notice of.
Rounding out the top ten is Brazil. We all know about them and we all know they’ll be moving up in ranks, too.
Note: I didn’t include smaller nations with fewer than 100 deaths.
Rural areas are starting to feel some strain:
Florida says it is experience a shortage of remdesivir:
That is bad news indeed, it is also bad news for anywhere else that suffers a huge surge in cases since it means remdesivir is going to be in short supply.
It also means that the outlook for other nations especially in Mexico, and South America is bleak indeed because US will surely be in a position to ensure it is prioritised at their expense.
It may well be very bad for US international relations as a result
More bad news…
Yes. I used to teach nursing students in the Miami area. My ex-students have been saying they were running out of meds a week or two ago.
Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, says the data is clear that it is “young people” who are “driving this new surge” of coronavirus infections. “…what I think is happening is that, understandably, innocently, but not correctly, the younger individuals are saying, well, if I get infected, so the chances of it is that I won’t even have any symptoms, so who cares? That’s a big mistake.”*
14,425,865 total cases
604,917 dead
8,612,192 recovered
In the US:
3,833,271 total cases
142,877 dead
1,775,219 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
The US count looks off to me and sure enough there are no numbers for today for Louisiana, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the military.
Also, Texas supposedly had about a 50% reduction in new cases from yesterday.
Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, says the data is clear that it is “young people” who are “driving this new surge” of coronavirus infections. “…what I think is happening is that, understandably, innocently, but not correctly, the younger individuals are saying, well, if I get infected, so the chances of it is that I won’t even have any symptoms, so who cares? That’s a big mistake.”*
Except: there’s actual research on this, and it doesn’t support what Fauci thinks. While both younger and older people are aware that the risk of dying or being hospitalized with Covid-19 increases with age, young people tend to overestimate the risks (both for everyone, and for them personally), while old people tend to underestimate them. Specifically, young people tend to think that “people like them” have roughly a 2% risk of dying if they contract the disease (in reality it is much lower), while the 70-and-older age cohort think “people like them” have a 1% risk (in reality it is much higher). Young people also think they have a much higher chance of contracting the disease in the first place, and of being hospitalized if they do.
It’s one study and there are some limitations (for example, they deliberately excluded people whose math skills are so bad that they can’t tell that 2 in 100 = 20 in 1000, which might be a pretty big chunk of the population!), but it doesn’t support the “young people don’t care whether they get infected because they don’t believe they can get very sick” narrative. I would guess that a much bigger factor is that young people are more likely to have jobs they can’t do from home, and, possibly, to be living with several unrelated adult roommates rather than in a single family unit that can isolate more easily.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University predicts that daily cases may be at 800,000 per day already, will hit 1,000,000, and that deaths may hit 800,000 by the end of the year.
Note that the current infection rate being reported in the news, and used by Dr. Fauci, is for confirmed cases only.
That theory cannot be proven. (At least, not without far, far more than what we have now.)
“Unable to release” bothers me.
14,644,360 total cases
608,911 dead
8,735,298 recovered
In the US:
3,898,550 total cases
143,289 dead
1,802,338 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
By Tuesday there will be over 4,000,000 total cases in the US.
You mean, over 4M confirmed, tested cases.
Thank you for your helpful and insightful post.
What are the current best estimates for actual number of infections in the US (not just confirmed infections)?
I only watched snippets of the Trump interview on the weekend, where he was challenged on how the US rated on Covid cases.
Can anyone tell me what the chart that was brought out was measuring?
My money’s on “tomorrow’s breakfast menu”
Seriously, I think it was just a random piece of paper - he didn’t even make much of a pretence of reading it before vaguely waving it around with a “yeah, it says we’re the best”. He certainly wasn’t going to let anyone else have it to see
(but yes, a photo of the page would be priceless)