Yes Canada just surpassed the USA cases per capita (in Alberta). I think personally it is incorrect to attribute case numbers to political leanings or even figureheads. How can we argue that one candidate is more "science" than the other? Where is the experimental control group or null hypothesis? Is it unethical to have a placebo group here? I would argue weakly, yes. But there is actually a group who didn't want to lock down at all! And the opposite group who will refuse to allow them to even be a control group.

When I look at the link you provided, my conclusion is that US among the worst in deaths/capita, and about an order of magnitude above the median...

But to your parent's point, the US outcome was comparable to other countries we'd consider peers, like the UK and France. I feel like this point, that other similar countries did poorly, is sometimes missed when talking about the US response.

The list puts the US at 1.8%. The minimum I’ve found is 0.2%. Most countries seem to hover around 1-2%. There are countries with 9+%. How did you come to your conclusion?

You're looking at the case-fatality ratio, your parent is looking at the deaths per 100k population.

Looking at these two numbers suggests to me that while the US did very well at treating cases, we allowed far too many people to become infected.

I agree with your assessment.

Also Covid mortality scales exponentially with age, and US life expectancy is 5-6 years lower than say Spain or Italy.

They're looking at the deaths per capita, not the case-fatality ratio.

Look at the full table, not the small chart on top.

Australia had about 1/4 of that. Granted it’s an island but I don’t think illegal entry into the United States was a big factor. They locked down the borders and we never did.

FWIW seasonality, geography, and travel patterns seems to have played a large part in how long a country had to decide before enacting measures that would make a difference.

It would seem that any country that was in summer during the spread had the advantage to stomp out virus when the trend was low (and in the case of the islands - shut down all travel).

When large chunks of UK use the London Subway system (or other mass transportation), while the USA is filled with people in personal cars... you have to wonder why you want to compare ourselves to our European allies.

The USA is far more rural and less urban than Europe. We should have had a major advantage in this fight.

Our population concentration is similar. New York by itself host as much people as London while being much smaller.

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-vs-london-comp...

UK has 66-million people with 128k COVID19 deaths, or 0.2% of its population.

North Dakota has 762k people with 1.5k COVID19 deaths, or 0.2% of its population.

Except... I bet you that North Dakota is far more rural than UK on the average. North Dakota was supposed to have huge COVID19 advantages: its extremely rural. Its got a very car-centered independent culture. For North Dakota to have similar death rates as European centers (or urban US centers, like NYC), is a failure upon North Dakota. It squandered its advantage.

>I bet you that North Dakota is far more rural than UK on the average.

That appears to be pretty true. The UK is roughly as urban as Arizona.

Interestingly Arizona is also 0.2%.

Maybe being rural is not as big an advantage as people assume.

Using vaccine hesitancy and mask wearing behaviors as proxies for how many preventative measures were adopted regionally, it looks to me like being rural is helpful but also higher risk behaviors more likely. IE, being spread out helps, but people who live there don't take as many precautions.

New Mexico (which is Rural but liberal: with extremely high uptakes in COVID19 Vaccine) is also at 0.2% death rate.

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Its very possible that the % is set in stone due to human nature.

My mom was VERY lax about COVID19 restrictions until someone close to her died in January 2021 (pretty late into the pandemic).

Once those stories of people "inside your social circle" start dying, then you start realizing its a serious threat.

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Rural folk may have advantages, but they won't change their behavior until someone close to them dies (which might be this 0.2% death rate, roughly one-in-500 people). It is said that the typical person's direct social circle (people in your family + you work with + studied with + your church group) extends to ~500 people or so.

Since the "size of people's social circle" is roughly constant no matter where you live (be it in a city or rural area), the 0.2% rate before "average person notices" is constant.

That's 0.2% of all people dying. Sometimes its necessary to emphasize what the "denominator" of this fraction is... this fraction is surprisingly consistent across many areas.

Just looked it up.

16% of UK citizens use mass transit daily or every few days.

1 in 10 in the USA as of 2015.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/07/who-relies-...

> if the US was so bad, why is the death rate in the US inline with other large countries?

Because the US is not uniquely bad. Those other large countries had severe failures.

I think people have higher expectations for the US. I certainly do.