Many people who complain about the US approach to handling Covid don’t actually look at the data.
Looking at just a few other developed countries; Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Spain, we have higher survival rate than all of them.
We also have comparable “death per million” to them with the exception of Canada.
This is literally an accidental “apples to apples” comparison of treatment and care.
Does this mean that our healthcare system is superior?
We were cutting edge on treatment and obviously the vaccine. You left out Asian countries in your post. Our HC system and Covid response is obviously worse than most Asian countries.
South Korea did a little better than us, but we did a little better than Japan.
It is suspected Asians have some immunity to COVID.
Which would explain their extremely low number of infections.
But the rate of death of those infected is pretty similar to other areas.
In deaths per million, we’re 14th worst in the world. A couple of those worse than us are tiny microstates, so it’s really around 12th. And, that’s better than it was a couple of months ago. Through most of this, we’ve been about 10th.
I actually expect we’re going to get better in these rankings. We’re getting the vaccine out to the population better than Europe (not sure why) and they’re dealing with a 4th wave that we’re seeing only in certain places.
Talking about 2 different things.
Our death per million is higher due to our cases per million being higher.
But, our death rate of those that contract the disease is better than almost everybody.
Yes, but I haven’t been hearing that much criticism of the treatment people receive. The US is doing poorly in containing the spread of the virus, not in treating it.
I am actually bringing this up in the broader sense.
Most studies regarding health care aren’t “apple to apple” and have numerous irrelevant variables.
This is an easy way to see what system works best in treating people.
I’ll put it this way. On average, on the most common health measures, things like longevity, infant mortality, etc., I’d rather be in any other wealthy nation than the US.
OTOH, if I had a serious disease and good health insurance, I’d rather be in the US. We have more specialists and fewer GPs than most countries.
We also have a large latino and black population. They do not handle COVID as well.
Europe had a very large elderly population.
Asia seems to have a natural immunity to COVID.
I saw one chart but I can’t seem to find it again. I will see if I can find it again. Basically, it tried to normalize the data but it showed rural areas did as well as urban areas which isn’t expected.
Rural areas tend to do worse because fewer doctors, less-skilled doctors, facilities that are less equipped, etc The Urban areas tend to have top-tier medical facilities tied to research schools.
I found the article interesting because it left many questions.
some of those variables aren’t measured the same in every country.
You should compare those numbers to the white population. We are in line with most other nations of white people.
Hispanics tend to live longer along with Asian. Black people tend to live shorter lives.
The differences you’re talking about are not likely to be genetic for the most part. It has to do with nutrition, poverty, access to resources, including health care. Also, Europe is more diverse than you might think. There are black and Asian people there.
Not to the degree we do.
Look at Germany. The non-white population is about 3.2%. That is a fraction of our POC population
EU didn’t have a Warp Speed type effort. They will benefit from vaccines developed in US but they need to get in line. And while Europe’s healthcare system is better than ours, I don’t know if they have a FEMA/Guard system like we do to push out shots fast.
I’m surprised to see Canada moving so slow. They won’t offer the vaccine to every Canadian until late summer or fall.
I don’t know what is going on there, but their protocols have affected thousands of people in the border cities where there used to be a lot of regular movement back and forth across the border. Last numbers I’ve seen they have fully vaccinated only about 2% and about 14% have had one shot.
Full disclosure, this is the second year we’ve cancelled a planned trip to the Canadian Rockies.
Wow, even the worst of the worst in the US is doing exponentially better than that.
The vaccines weren’t developed entirely in the US (Pfizer is a German company) and Warp Speed has little to do with the rollout. Other wealthy countries have the same access we do. (Poor countries are another story; they’ve largely been shut out so far).
Our rollout would not be going as good as it is without the production capability that Warp Speed enabled.