17/7/20: COVID19 Update: USA vs EU27

Snippets of news from the Land of Publicly Global Disaster:

Georgia: GOP Governor Brian Kemp suing the Democratic mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, because she mandated use of protective masks in public. Kemp issued an executive order banning cities and towns from mandating masks.

Oklahoma: GOP governor Kevin Stitt is infected with COVID19, a few days after he was out in a crowded restaurant and shopping, without wearing a mask.

Federal level of venality: 

And then there are the numbers, if the above snippets were not bad enough.

The U.S. continues to add to the deaths toll that is now well in excess of the entire EU27 death toll - even without adjusting for the fact that the EU27 has much larger (not to mention, older) population:

In per capita terms, the U.S. is a basket case for COVID19 deaths, compared to Europe (two orange lines below):

How bad are per capita death rates in the U.S. compared to the EU27? 40 percent worse!

The #COVIDIOTS, led by the COVIDIOT-in-Chief in the White House drone on about testing rates and volumes. Yep, Florida is currently testing 16.1% POSITIVE rate - more than 3 times the 'norm' for other advanced economies. Arizona is reporting 30% positivity rate. But, never mind: higher rates of testing should be leading to earlier detection of COVID19, and, thus, lower death rates, including on per capita basis. In the Orwellian world of the US of A, the opposite holds.

Now, new cases, daily counts:

Europe may or may not experience a 'second wave' comes Fall, but at least it has smashed the first wave. Remember the outcries from the Washington's Kommentariate about EU27 failures back in March? Now, look at the blue bars and weep.

And deaths, the ones that Trump boasts about falling:

A major uplift in new cases arrivals started in full-swing around 24-26th of June.

These are earlier detection cases, impacting increasingly healthier younger adults in the U.S. Which means that the lags between detection and hospitalization are longer, and the lags between increased hospitalizations and increased deaths will be longer still. In the earlier stages of the pandemic, when European cases were booming, it took 7-14 days for the effects of increased cases to start feeding through to increased deaths. In the U.S. case today, this should be 14-21 days. Worse, in Europe, reporting of deaths - in particular hospitals deaths - was much faster, more centralized. In the U.S. it can take up to 2 weeks for the death that occurs today to arrive into deaths statistics. These lags in the U.S. are driven by the lack of coherent framework for hospitals to report deaths and by the mosaic of local regulations on recording deaths.

The above means that a massive - literally off-the-scale by global standards - new cases arrivals rates in the U.S. are yet to start feeding through to deaths counts. But that will happen, folks, so the blue bars in the last chart are bound to go up.

These lags are, in part, behind the superficially favourable comparative for the U.S. compared to the EU27 in terms of mortality rate from COVID19 or the percentage of detected cases that result in deaths. The U.S. mortality rate is currently at 3.87% against the EU27 rate of 10.32%. Let's take a look at these numbers, because they have been paraded by the White House as evidence of the U.S. winning the war on COVID19.

The White House claimed that the U.S. has the lowest or one of the lowest mortality rates in thee world. This is false. Out of 55 countries with more than 25,000 cases of COVID19 detected, the U.S. ranks 23rd highest in terms of mortality rate.

This is far worse the position than one should expect. Remember:

1. U.S. community-based pandemic started at least a week after the EU27 and the rate of increases in early cases in the U.S. was much slower than in the EU27;
2. Early stages of the U.S. pandemic were highly concentrated (NYC, LA, Bay Area);
3. Much of the U.S. cumulative cases additions took place in most recent 3 weeks period, while much of the EU27 cases arrived in March-April;
4. The U.S. demographics are much more favourable to better chances of survival from COVID19 than EU27 demographics, especially in countries such as Italy, France and Germany.

The above facts mean that the U.S. should at a relative advantage to the EU27 in facing and treating increasing numbers of new cases. Alas, it is not.

U.S. mortality rate of 38.7 per 1,000 cases is statistically higher than the mortality rate for all countries with > 25,000 cases, ex-EU and UK. It is above the median for the top 55 countries in terms of the number of cases, and statistically indistinguishable from the global average.

The 'shining star of the US of A' is exceptional not in a positively distinguishing way: the U.S. currently performs worse on its best self-proclaimed aspect of the COVID19 pandemic than 

• Afghanistan
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Belarus
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Dominican Republic
• Ghana
• Honduras
• India
• Israel
• Kazakhstan
• Kuwait
• Nigeria
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Panama
• Peru
• Phillippines
• Portugal
• Quatar
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• UAE

The U.S. mortality rate from COVID19 is higher than that for 11 members states of the EU27. And it is bound to get worse, once the lags between cases detections and deaths start dissipating. 

Note: Here is thee latest from the Banana Republic of Georgia

Which explains why, in the largely illiterate (logically & mathematically/statistically) population of the U.S. of A., Trump's bullshit flies through much of the voters.