2/1/21: Covid19 update: U.S. vs EU27

In previous posts, I covered Covid-19 updates for the last week of 2020 for:

• Worldwide trends: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/2121-covid19-update-worldwide-numbers.html;
• Europe and the EU27: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/2121-covid19-update-europe.html; 
• Countries with more than 250,000 cases: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/2121-covid19-update-countries-with-250k.html; and
• BRIICS: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/01/2121-covid19-update-briics.html.

In this post, let's take a look at the latest data for the U.S. compared to the EU27.

Weekly counts of new cases and deaths, illustrated above, suggest that:

• Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced three waves, against the EU27's two of the pandemic. The EU27's 2nd wave appears to have crested in week 45, while the U.S.' current wave continued to rise through week 51 of 2020. Week 52 data is hard to interpret, as it represents poorer quality of data due to the holidays season.
• Over the last 8 weeks, US new cases exceeded those in the EU27 by 337,233.
• The EU27's 2nd wave appears to have crested in week 48 in terms of deaths, while the U.S.' current wave continued to rise through week 51. Once again, we should ignore, for now, week 52 data.
• Over the last 8 weeks, US new deaths continued to run below those in the EU27. On population-adjusted basis, US deaths cumulated over the last 8 weeks are 33,622 lower than those in the EU27. Over the entire pandemic period, US deaths currently exceed those in the EU27 by 69,416 on population-adjusted basis.

The last point is worth considering more closely:

• Since the start of Wave 2 in the EU27 (Wave 3 in the U.S.), EU27 deaths per capita have been converging with those in the U.S.
• At the start of the EU27 Wave 2, U.S. excess total deaths per capita exceeded those in the EU27 by 87%. Latest excess is 26% and it was 28% in week 51.
• Adjusting for differences in population, U.S. excess deaths relative to the EU27 fell from the Wave 1 maximum of 103,038 to 69,389 today. 
• Adjusting for differences in population, U.S. excess deaths relative to Europe fell from the Wave 1 maximum of 122,441 to 117,690 today. 
• Adjusting for age differences and population size differences, the U.S. pandemic is associated with 135,343 excess deaths compared to the EU27.

Despite the big negatives, mortality rates have declined for the later waves of the pandemic in both the EU27 and the U.S.:

Note: the above chart is not adjusted for demographics differences between the U.S. and the EU27, which means that part of the amelioration in mortality rates in the U.S. relative to the EU27 is down to these differences.

Lastly, rates of change in cases and deaths, both, suggest that the pandemic Wave 2 (in the EU27) and wave 3 (in the U.S.) are still at risk of re-accelerating as new data arrives and as we intergate more accurate figures for Week 52 of 2020:

Finally, a summary table for comparatives:

The table above clearly shows the reality of the pandemic impact differences between the EU27 and the U.S. to-date. Through week 52 of 2020, the U.S. performance is consistently worse than that of the EU27 in all metrics, but one: mortality rate per 1,000 positive cases. This only difference is most likely accounted for by the factor exogenous to the pandemic policy responses in the two countries, being down primarily to younger demographics of the U.S. population.