In every newscast, every newspaper article and every public dtatement by a Democrat, the United States is said to have the most coronavirus deaths. This is true. But the US is a big country. The more important number is deaths per 100,000 population. Johns Hopkins authoritative website gives that number for every country, but does not give it for American states. When those numbers are available, the impact of the virus looks very different.
First, lets look at the ten states with the most deaths (August 4 data):
New York: 32754.
New Jersey: 15842.
California: 9708.
Massachusetts: 8657.
Illinois: 7770.
Florida: 7627.
Texas: 7271.
Pennsylvania: 7254.
Michigan: 6477.
Connecticut: 4437.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Right now the news is dominated by the situation in the Midwest, Arizona, Texas, California and Florida. Only California is in the top five. The Midwest, where the siutation was highlighted as grave by Birx yesterday does not appear in the top ten. On CBS News they even laugh about the high death numbers on Arizona, Texas and Florida, but never reveal that the death rate is low.
Of course, the absolute number of deaths, the only statistics most people ever hear about, has to be considered in relation to the population. San Marino, which has the worst rate of deaths per 100,000 is very small. So here are the 2015 estimates of the populations of those ten states:
USA total 321.4 million.
New York: 19.6 million.
New Jersey: 8.9 million.
California: 38.4 million.
Massachusetts: 6.7 million.
Illinois: 12.8 million.
Florida: 19.6 million.
Texas: 26.5 million.
Pennsylvania: 12.7 million.
Michigan: 9.9 million.
Connecticut: 3.5 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States; citing ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates – 2011–2015″. U.S. Census Bureau. Archived from the original on February 13, 2020.
Note that the Johns Hopkins website does not provide a source for the population numbers it uses, so it is impossible to determine exactly how they produce their international death rates. Oddly, Johns Hopkins does not provide any state by state death rates. Here’s why:
This easily generates the rates of deaths per 100,000 on a state level, a set of numbers I have never seen mentioned:
New York: 167.1 per 100000.
New Jersey: 178.0 per 100000.
California: 25.2 per 100000.
Massachusetts: 129.2 per 100000.
Illinois: 60.7 per 100000.
Florida: 38.9 per 100000.
Texas: 27.4 per 100000.
Pennsylvania: 57.1 per 100000.
Michigan: 65.4 per 100000.
Connecticut: 177.4 per 100000.
Because people so rarely see the death rateh per 100,000, these numbers seem very arbitrary, so here are the ten countries with the highest rates. Note the United States ranks tenth, a fact NEVER mentioned in the mainstream media.
San Marino: 124.32.
Belgium: 86.25.
UK: 69.63.
Andorra: 67.53.
Peru: 62.54.
Spain: 60.99.
Italy: 58.20.
Sweden: 56.44.
Chile: 52.03.
USA: 47.93.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
So, how do American states compare with the ten countries with the highest rate of deaths per 100,000:
New Jersey: 178.0.
Connecticut: 177.4.
New York: 167.1.
Massachusetts: 129.2.
San Marino: 124.32.
Belgium: 86.25.
UK: 69.63.
Andorra: 67.53.
Michigan: 65.4.
Peru: 62.54.
Spain: 60.99.
Illinois: 60.7.
Italy: 58.20.
Pennsylvania: 57.1.
Sweden: 56.44.
Chile: 52.03.
USA: 47.93.
Florida: 38.9.
Texas: 27.4.
California: 25.2.
It is not hard to see that the US pandemic is largely a pandemic in Connecticut (until now I did not know it was a center of the virus), New York, New Jesey, and Massachusetts. In fact, about half of all coronavirus deaths in the United States are in those four states. If you subtract those four states from the national average, the death rate per 100,000 for the United States falls to about 25th, with a lower rate than Canada or Switzerland. (Canadians are happy to gloat about the high US rate.)
Without the Black Lves Matter protests, a series of ignored mass contagion events, the US response to coronavirus, outside those four states, would be among the best in the world.