How has America Performed in the Global Test of Covid 19 Pandemi

How does America Compare to all other countries in the Global Test of Covid 19 Pandemic?  If the U.S. has performed as well as Germany, 82% of deaths could have been prevented.

New York City

Tomorrow, September 21, 2020, will mark two milestones for the Covid 19 Pandemic in the United States. It will be eight months since the first reported case on January 21, 2020, and the number of deaths will almost certainly pass the 200,000.

The Covid-19 Pandemic started in late December 2019 from China, and has become a global comprehensive test of scientific integrity, social coherence, economic capability, political honesty, and governing competence for all countries around the world.

According to CNN as of September 20, 2020 at 10:45 a.m. ET, the global cases and deaths have increased to 30,777,611 and 956,976, respectively, while the U.S. has accumulated 6,768,997 cases and 199,299 deaths, both being the most among the 215 reported locations in the world.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock at 4:20 p.m. ET on 09/20/2020, the U.S. population has passed 330 million while the world population is approaching 7,683 million.

As many news media have rightly pointed out, with only 4.3% of world population, America has accounted for 22.0% of the global cases and 20.8% of global deaths.

While the disparity between the population percentage and the case and death percentages is jaw-dropping, it does not tell us how America has performed in this global test comparing to all other countries. 

The CNN website https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/

sources the data from the authoritative Johns Hopkins University, and provides not only the number of cases and deaths for 215 countries or locations, but also the ratios of cases and deaths per 100K people.

 

One measure in pure arithmetic term on how one particular country has performed in this global pandemic is that this country’s infected cases and deaths as the percentages of the respective global counts should be close to its population as the percentage of the world population. In another word, since the U.S. accounts for only 4.3% of the world population, it is not unreasonable to expect its infected cases and deaths as the percentage of the global counts should not be far from 4.3%.

Now some might argue the above arithmetic measure is unrealistic because the challenge posted by the Covid 19 Pandemic is too complex particularly for a big country like the U.S. Well, let’s take a look at one particular country that has long been well-regarded for efficiency, yes, Germany. The largest country and most advanced economy within the European Union, Germany reported its first case on January 27, 2020, six days after America’s first case. Like the U.S., Germany has a federal system where states have high autonomy.  In fact, Germany has one disadvantage compared to the United States. According to the http://statisticstimes.com/demographics/countries-by-population-density.php Germany’s population density at 240 person per sqkm is almost seven times as much as the U.S.’s 36 persons per sqkm. However, Germany has reported 0.9% of cases and 1.0% of deaths in the global counts, amazingly close to its population being 1.1% of world population.

 

 

If we apply Germany’s performance as the benchmark to the G-7 countries, we can calculate two scores for each country, and then rank these seven countries by the total score as follows:

Setting Germany as the base index score of 1.00 for cases and 1.00 for deaths, 2.00 for total score, then Japan would score 0.19 for cases and 0.11 for deaths, yielding a total score at 0.30, the best performance by far among the G-7.  Canada has earned the third-best total score @ 3.45. However, the U.S. has the worst total score by far at 11.69 while the U.K. being the second worst at 7.49. Japan’s success is even more remarkable once it is taken consideration these two factors: (1) its close proximity to China and (2) the highest population density @ 347 person per sqkm among the G-7 club.

 

Applying the same arithmetic calculation among the large OECD club, we can see New Zealand has become the clear winner by far, followed by Japan, Latvia, and Australia as the top 4, while Germany ranked 15^th, Canada 19^th, and the U.S. second worst with Chile dead last at the bottom. Notably, even Mexico has performed better than the U.S. with total score of 6.94 and ranked 27^th. It is somehow surprise to see both the U.K. and Sweden ranked so low, 28^th and 30^th, respectively. However, the government in these two countries have attempted the so-called herd immunity strategy. 

If we take the above analysis one step further, we can ask how many infections and deaths could have been prevented if each country performed at least at the German-index level. The top 12 countries from New Zealand to Turkey outperformed Germany, hence they have had fewer infections and deaths than Germany. If the U.S. had performed as competently as Germany, there would have been only 1,090,060 infections and only 36,335 deaths, which means 5,678,937 (or 84%) infections could have been prevented, and 162,964 (or 82%) lives could have been saved within the first eight months of this pandemic.

Every concerned American should be sobered by these two figures, and think hard what our country and we the people collectively could have done differently during this pandemic.  Meanwhile, according to the CNN, to 31 states recorded increase in infections, 25 states reported increase in positive testing results, both are likely resulted from the Labor Day long weekend.