It's kind of whack to use absolute # of cases instead of per capita numbers when country populations vary by orders of magnitude.

Countries with slightly fewer cases than USA (Turkey, France, Germany) all have MUCH smaller populations so it doesn't make sense to say they're doing "better"

Is it? I'm just pointing out that the USA still getting a lot of cases. I'm not saying that other countries are doing better. Would it be better to point out that just under a 1000 people a day are still dying from it in the US? What's the better metric?

The US is the third most populous country in the world. Even if the pandemic were over and COVID were incredibly rare and evenly distributed throughout the world, it would be the expected outcome for the USA to be #3 in the world for new cases because we are #3 in the world for total number of people.

>Would it be better to point out that just under a 1000 people a day are still dying from it in the US?

No, any sort of absolute count is going to be equally misleading. For example my city had 5 covid deaths yesterday. Does that mean that we're 200x safer than the rest of the US? Of course not, it just means that you're comparing two populations of different size.

>What's the better metric?

Anything that's normalized by population size. For example per capita new cases or per capita deaths.

>What's the better metric?

The question was rhetorical. There is no better metric for showing the pandemic is still on going. If you have 50k cases a day, and 1000 deaths a day, it doesn't matter if other countries are lower or higher, it's clearly on going.

Right now the 7 day avg is below 700 deaths per day and has been steadily declining since the peak in January when it was over 3,000. There's been roughly a 5x reduction in cases as well (45k cases per day over last week down from 260k per day over the worst week in January). To me the strong downward trend indicates that we're cruising towards the end of the pandemic. I can't see it lasting another 4 months, let alone another year (although the COVID rate might never return to 0).

How many deaths per day would you use as a threshold for being past the middle of the pandemic?

1000 deaths, 700 deaths. It doesn't matter. Is the pandemic still on going? Yes. The answer is yes. I really don't care to get into the minutia when the answer is still yes.

Can you explain how the case count is even remotely relevant if anyone that wants a vaccine can get one?

Because you're still getting 50 thousand a day regardless?