Why the U.S. is Losing in the “War” against the corona virus: Part 1 The Data

This post is based on data from early May; much may have changed since then. The title of this post isn’t meant to be provocative. There is little doubt that we are fighting a “war” against the corona virus. Winning that war would mean the reduction of new infections and new deaths to acceptable levels. Winning that war would also mean that our economy and our society would return to something like normal: unemployment in the single digits, schools opened, and travel becoming more frequent. The exact metrics for when we would agree that we have won the war are very unclear. But what is clear is that “Mission Accomplished” is at best many months away. What is also clear is that compared to other countries we are not doing very well.

The facts are these:

• The U.S. has the most corona virus cases in the world (five times more than the next country, Italy)
• The U.S. has the most deaths from covid-19 (two and a half times more than Spain)
• On a per capita basis, The U.S. has more cases than other large Western countries except Spain; but it also has fewer deaths per capita than other Western countries except Germany

In this post we will focus on the question of the number of corona virus cases. In later posts we will examine the question of the number of deaths due to the epidemic.

Let’s look at the rate at which covid-19 is spreading. The charts below present data on new covid-19 cases for a number of wealthy countries in the United States and Europe. All of these countries have had serious outbreaks, with death rates (total known corona virus deaths per one hundred thousand population) ranging from 69 deaths per 100,000 population (Belgium) to 8.3 deaths per 100,000 (Germany). The U.S. has only 21 deaths per 100,000 people.

France and Germany have similar profiles with respect to new cases (but not deaths). Since early April the number of new cases has been falling in both countries; right now they are clearly on the down slope. At the beginning of April there were 5,700 new cases in France and over 6,000 new cases in Germany. In one month new cases declined to 1,300 in France and 700 in Germany. These are dramatic declines.

For the hardest hit countries in Europe there are more divergent paths. Italy and Spain (which along with Belgium had the highest death rates in Europe) are now also on the downside of the new case slope bringing new cases down to 2,000 and 1,000 respectively, whereas the United Kingdom is still plateauing at around 5.000 new cases.

The United States is also on a plateau, with new cases hovering around 30,000 a day (six times the number in the UK and 15 times the number in Italy) and since early April.

Because of the huge size of the United States, looking at the data on a country-wide basis obscures some important trends. The New York Times reports that if we remove the case load for New York City, new covid-19 cases for the rest of America are still on the rise, going from 17,000 per day in mid-April to around 21,000 today. 

The same pattern is found in other areas, as early hot spots in cities saw new infections fall, while infections in rural areas have begun to rise. For example, look at Texas and Oklahoma. The chart on the right shows new cases in Texas, with the darkest blue line showing new cases for Texas as a whole, the line at the bottom representing Houston, and the middle line showing data from Texas with Houston removed.  The Oklahoma chart shows data for the entire state, Tulsa and Oklahoma City combined and the rest of the state without Tulsa and Oklahoma City. In both states, while the outbreaks in the urban areas are now somewhat controlled, the number of cases elsewhere are growing.

While there is evidence that the covid-19 epidemic is slowing down in the United States as new cases are on the decline in many locales, there are other places where the number of new cases is increasing. Moreover, many epidemiologists fear a second wave in the fall that could be as challenging as the first, if not more so. In terms of case load, the epidemic in the United States has been one of the worst in the world. There are many reasons for this, including culture and policy. Our next post will examine some global successes and contrast them with what has been happening in the United States, in order to determine what we could have done better, and what we should do in the months ahead,