Wednesday, September 16, 2020

"Look How Well Sweden Is Doing!"

      Without comment, COVID-19 deaths per million for Sweden, other Nordic countries (which have broadly similar cultures and governments) and the United States as of 16 September 2020:

Sweden.......574.6 deaths per million population
Denmark......109.2
Finland.......61.4
Norway........49.9
Iceland.......28.3
U.S. ........598.8


     This can be taken as a rough proxy for hospitalizations at ten or more times the rate, and as an even rougher proxy for infections.  As treatment improves, the ratio of deaths to hospitalizations (or to infections) declines -- and the lower the rate, the more people will get the advantage of those improvements.

     While the U.S. doesn't look so great in that chart, if you lump us with all of the EU, our death rate puts us somewhere in the middle third of the group, neither the worst nor the best.

     Sources: Statista's "COVID-19 deaths per capita" page and "Mortality Analysis" at Johns Hopkins.  The JHU page gives deaths per 100K, so you've got to move the decimal for deaths per million.

3 comments:

Paul said...

So 1 in 19 million odds is what I have heard

Not sure as 598 per million is .000598. Still pretty long odds on catching it

It might be a bugger if you get it but I am washing my hands and wearing a proxy mask. I think I will survive this

Roberta X said...

Not going to get into a big debate on this; the point is, Sweden is not doing outstandingly well. They're C students just like us.

And maybe it's just me, but if I have to roll the dice (and we all do), the more the odds are in my favor, the better. YMMV.

rickn8or said...

While the U.S. doesn't look so great in that chart, if you lump us with all of the EU, our death rate puts us somewhere in the middle third of the group, neither the worst nor the best.

"We're mediocre! We're mediocre!"