Just HOW Inneffective is the USA's Response in Comparison

@eladar said
Look at the liberal leaders in Europe. Their countries are doing horribly.

Face it, this came from China and no establishment type would stop it.

Which liberal leaders would that be?

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Taiwan and Singapore have done exceptionally well at keeping the death rate and rate of infection low.

@suzianne said
Lockdowns don't kill people, no matter what Trump says.

I tend to disagree, I believe they will kill people. I have an associate that works with the department of human services and they have been warned that domestic violence and child abuse will rise. ( hotlines have been set up) it is highly likely that this will result is deaths. Of coarse I am NOT suggesting that one out-ways the other.

@joe-shmo said
Looking to have a rational discussion on devising a simple/effective ranking for how well certain countries are doing. I keep hearing certain people shouting how terrible the USA is responding to this.

Here is what I propose as a simple scoring system. Improvements are welcome.

all data comes from
https://www.worldometers.info

I first sorted the data by Total D ...[text shortened]... eople down with mere opinion.

So as I said, I welcome thoughtful critiques, improvements, ect...

the data would need to have some way of determining how much warning one had. ie, you may have had your 1st case late but knew that it was coming and did nothing. That should skew your rating lower. I am suggesting that those hit 1st may appear worse as they had little or no warning if this is not in the calculation.

@jimmac said
the data would need to have some way of determining how much warning one had. ie, you may have had your 1st case late but knew that it was coming and did nothing. That should skew your rating lower. I am suggesting that those hit 1st may appear worse as they had little or no warning if this is not in the calculation.

Yeah, Deepthought suggested we instead look at "starting the clock" for each country at a threshold of when the infection was well underway in terms of Cases per Million. Ie the rate of infection became exponential, I am working on that, there is a good bit of data to crunch. That should level the playing field more with respect to your concern.

I am going to do this for countries with populations greater that 10 Million ( The mean population of the data is about 35 Million - I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere - where I had a reasonable chunck of countries to work with). I have to manually go into each graph to obtain each figure for cases per million at onset of exponential growth. Furthermore, I am going to factor median age into the score. If you have an old country, you shouldn't be overly punished in terms of Deaths per million.

Thank yor for your reply.

@proper-knob said
A good comparison would be against South Korea, by all accounts they have been the 'gold standard' in how to combat a pandemic. 70,000 tests carried out in the first week after the 1st confirmed case. Only 174 deaths.

South Korea will be in the comparison. It makes the Population >10 Million first round cuts. I suspect China will be #1

@eladar said
It is just a flu virus that can turn nasty, usually with either long term heath issues or the elderly.

But because this flu virus is one that is new, they want to say it is not a flu. Wait 5 years then it will be a flu.

It’s not influenza, it’s Corona.

It is sort of in the name...

@joe-shmo said
Looking to have a rational discussion on devising a simple/effective ranking for how well certain countries are doing. I keep hearing certain people shouting how terrible the USA is responding to this.

Here is what I propose as a simple scoring system. Improvements are welcome.

all data comes from
https://www.worldometers.info

I first sorted the data by Total D ...[text shortened]... eople down with mere opinion.

So as I said, I welcome thoughtful critiques, improvements, ect...

Revision 1:

Filtering of Data:
Populations Greater than 10,000,000
Then By: Test/Million > Test/Million Data Set Mean ≈ 2000

So we start with countries of reasonably large population, and above average Testing rates.

The I went through each of those and figured out Cases per Million at the onset of exponential growth. This is proposed to be a better measure than comparison on date of 1st reported case.

Perform this by inspecting a Log-Log Plot of Total Cases. Where the graph stabilizes becoming approximately linear record number of cases ( there was some level of subjectivity in this data).

Cases/Million @ Onset = Cases/Population*10^6

I then further removed Cases/Million @ onset > 4 ( this remove 4 of the 16 Countries From the list Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and Greece - all relatively low populous countries compared with the remaining data set)

Next, I computed a Score in the following manner.

Score = (Tot Deaths/Million)*(1/Pop Density)*(1/Med Age).

Then Sort from Smallest ( Most Effective) to Largest ( Least Effective).

Results:

Country…….Test/Million…Population.....Pop Density....Med Age....Cases/M.....Score
Azerbaijan......……..3,452...….....10,139,177...……….123...…......…..32...…....1.1...……..1
South Korea...........8,875......……51,269,185.........….527.........….....44...…….1.1………..1
Russia............……….4,379......…...145,934,462......……..9......………...40...…….0.1...…......8
Czech Republic.....6,926...……….10,708,981......…...139.........…….43...…….1.8............8
Germany............…..10,962......…..83,783,942......…...240............….46...…….1.6......….14
United Kingdom....2,560...…...….67,886,011......…...281.........…….40......…..0.8.........47
Portugal...…..............7,952.........…..10,196,709...……..111...……...….46...….....2.1.........51
Australia.........…...….11,203......……25,499,884...……...3…...…......….38...……..2.5.........88
United States......…...4,097......…...331,002,651...…….36......…...…...38......…..0.3...…..161
France......…...………...3,436.........…...65,273,511......….119...…...…….42...........2.9........200
Italy.........….........……..10,252..............60,461,826......….206............…..47......….3.8........251
Canada.........…………..8,021......……...37,742,154......…….4............…...41......…..0.5...….366
Spain...............…...…...7,593............….46,754,778......…...94.................45............1.2...….593

Again, further input to possibly improve measure is welcome.

Edit: I forgot to add Deaths/Million Column. The formatting is to much to adjust.

Country...…......Deaths/Mill
Azerbaijan...…...........0.5
South Korea...………...3
Russia............………....0.3
Czech Republic...…….5
Germany......…............15
United Kingdom...….53
Portugal.........…......…..26
Australia............…...…...1
United States.........…..22
France..........................100
Italy..................….........243
Canada...........................6
Spain.............................251

Note: China and perhaps some others ( I haven't fully looked ) have been removed from the set due to missing Testing Data. Also, the USA has 6.5 times the mean population of the remaining data set.

@joe-shmo said
Revision 1:

Filtering of Data:
Populations Greater than 10,000,000
Then By: Test/Million > Test/Million Data Set Mean ≈ 2000

So we start with countries of reasonably large population, and above average Testing rates.

The I went through each of those and figured out Cases per Million at the onset of exponential growth. This is proposed to be a better measure than ...[text shortened]... to missing Testing Data. Also, the USA has 6.5 times the mean population of the remaining data set.

Score = (Tot Deaths/Million)*(1/Pop Density)*(1/Med Age)*10,000

I multipled Score by factor of 10,000 to remove decimals - I forgot to show that.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Yes and San Marino is heading the list in deaths per million and narrowly behind the Vatican City in cases per million. One extra death in Iceland creates 3 extra deaths per million. A single event where twenty extra people are infected because of one individual can really skew their figures. I think it's reasonable enough for joe shmo to introduce inclusion criteria, even if just to keep his workload down.

@shavixmir said
It’s not influenza, it’s Corona.

It is sort of in the name...

Exactly. - It's better described as severe pneumonia than a flu.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

I explained why I removed those countries. This was meant to be a limited comparison. I'll repeat. When I calculated Cases/Million at onset Exponential Growth ( the criteria used to judge epidemic timescale), the values of the above countries were 5 to 10 times the values of the remaining countries on the list. They have a right to be compared, but according to the currently "best accepted criteria" ...they should be on a different list.

1) This is intentionally about the best performers, with comparable populations to the USA. 10 Million Populations are a already a stretch. USA has single cities with near those populations. What does it mean to compare those vastly different scales of response?

2) Vietnam didn't make the list because I also chose a criteria of Testing/Million. That number is 776 Tests/Million. I think strong testing is a good criteria for consistency of the data? The mean Test/million for the data set was approx. 2000. Vietnams 776 falls significantly short of that. If it makes you feel better ( ignoring the criteria by which I judged everyone else), they currently sit at number 0.