Updated again
On Tuesday, the USA was in 8th place behind France & South Korea. Yesterday, we moved ahead of them to 6th place behind China. Today, we passed both China and Iran to take 4th place.
China has had over 80,000 confirmed cases, over 70,000 have recovered, and they have very few new cases. Iran has also had more cases than us, but they’ve also had more confirmed recoveries. So, here’s a rough order of countries by active, unrecovered cases, according to Johns Hopkins’ data and doing the math in my feverish head.
37,000 Italy
17,000 Spain
15,000 Germany
13,000 USA
With our larger population, the virus already confirmed in every state, and our lack of federal leadership, we will continue to climb quickly. We’ve conducted fewer tests than any of the countries ahead of us, so our real number is likely a multiple of the number reported. Expect the number of US cases to rise quickly, when testing finally begins to roll out nationwide.
To the doubters who commented on my first list (since deleted), note that we’ve already climbed halfway to the top since Tuesday.