The USA now has more than 100 deaths per one million inhabitants, joining an exclusive – but shameful – group of just nine major countries. The USA is the only member outside Western Europe.
Other nations (above one million inhabitants) with more than 100 deaths per million are Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden.
The USA has now overtaken Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Iran and Denmark on death rate.
USA now the global epicentre
Of the nine members of the 100 club, the USA is the only country with new infections and deaths both still rising rapidly. The USA has recorded more deaths in the last four days than in any previous four day period. This is true only of Sweden among those nine countries. Sweden’s rate of new cases, however, is slowing substantially while America’s is increasing alarmingly, as shown in the red graph, above.
Most developed countries, including Spain, are beyond the peak rate of deaths and now have steadily declining fatalities. See green graph.
The continuing rise in the USA is strong prima facie evidence it is the only developed country whose policies are not succeeding in curbing the epidemic’s spread.
Active cases also rising
The USA clicked over another critical numeric yesterday, reaching 40% of all the world’s active cases. This is despite comprising just 4.25% of the world’s population.
The trajectory here has been rapid. When the World Health Organisation first declared a global emergency on 11th March, the USA had less than one per cent of the world’s infections. This reached 10% on 18th March, then 20% on 26th March and broke the 30% barrier on 3rd April.
Illustrated another way, the top ten countries by active coronavirus cases are, in order, the USA, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Turkey, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands and Belgium. Of these ten, the USA now has more active cases than the other nine combined.
This confirms that almost everything the US administration has tried has failed. All measures have been too little, too haphazard, too poorly thought through and far too late.
Destructive disinformation
Efforts to curb the pandemic are severely hampered by the Trump administration’s concerted campaign of lying to the American people at virtually every point.
Why would anyone need to bother with social distancing or other precautions if:
“We’ve handled the situation incredibly well ... Everything is perfect ... the United States has the most robust, advanced, and accurate testing system anywhere in the world ... We’re now the king of ventilators ... The research and development that we’ve done at the federal level has been absolutely incredible ... Ultimate victory in this war will be made possible by America’s scientific brilliance. There is nothing like us. There is nobody like us. Not even close ... We did the right thing. We saved maybe millions of lives by doing it the way we did it. We’re seeing great numbers in almost every state. We’re seeing big drops ... We are seeing a lot of good signs ... A lot of great people have been involved and a lot of great decisions have been made.”
None of that – from Friday’s White House press briefing - is completely true. Much of it is the direct opposite of the truth.
All of it serves to deny that this is a global war and the battle in the American theatre is being comprehensively lost.