Today’s US State deaths per million. I’ve removed states and countries with fewer than 25 total deaths to keep the statistical comparison more valid, and only included those states ahead of the curve for the US as a whole (currently 8 deaths / million).
Italy … 178
Spain … 157
New York … 54.6
Netherlands … 50
Belgium … 44
France … 40
Switzerland … 38
Iran … 33
Louisiana … 32.5
Washington … 26.3
UK … 21
New Jersey … 18.1
Sweden … 14
Portugal … 14
Michigan … 13.2
Denmark … 13
Austria … 12
Connecticut … 9.5
Ireland … 9
Colorado … 8.1
USA … 8
There also might be differences in how deaths are tracked. Some countries are not classifying any deaths outside a hospital as COVID-caused. Other countries might have numbers of deaths closer to the Netherlands, but they just aren’t counting them.
60 singers showed up for choir practice. Three weeks later, 45 of them have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or its symptoms, at least three have been hospitalised, and two are dead.
Canada reports a bad nursing home outbreak in Muskoka, Ontario with 9 deaths and 30 infected staff, with more deaths likely.
Terrible news. Canada obviously has a more disperse population than New York. Any city has lots of travellers, lots of people with chronic disease, lots of people flouting or unaware of advice, high demand for services and equipment, people living in high density areas forced to share elevators, etc. Lots of cities have similar risks.
I was saddened to see how many NYPD paramedics and police were affected. It is tragic people on front lines anywhere lack access to the full array of protective equipment and if any lesson is learned, I hope this one is near the top.
But places that got it earlier, or at the same time, got fewer deaths, and some places are seeing cases level off and would appear to be highly unlikely to reach this level of fatalities. California got hit just as early but isn’t nearly this bad.
But even if one compares New York to similarly populated places, like Southern Ontario, or the Montreal area, it’s not even remotely comparable. New York is far, far worse than any similar U.S. state, even the densely populated ones.
A survey was done of 1200 or so Canadians who recently returned home. About 75% are not self isolating - with 61% going to grocery stores and 30% holding social gatherings. That’s not that surprising, and I’m not sure how much that matters. But it could matter an awful lot.
Canada has at least ten deaths today, and while in comparison this might not seem large, it shows there is a long way to go and it is anticipated the next week will be bad. On the whole, social distancing works. But it’s not that easy to do. It is remarkable how important food, exercise and entertainment become. And maybe pro sports should be an essential service. Maybe the Warriors will be back at full-strength by the time the season restarts?
The thread is a fine thing, and the information on “breaking news” from those on the ground in different regions valuable for all of us in real time … but do you really think future historians will be looking HERE for documentation of the facts? Really?
Quite possibly. Digging through old diaries, personal memos, letters buried in trunks in people’s attics, is part of the “original source material” research that historians do.