Ireland ranked 10th, USA 11th among countries (with 1000+ reported #COVID19 cases) by deaths per 1 million population

There is loads of data available and I know by posting what I have below, I’m open to accusations of “cherry picking”, but these are metrics I consider to be significant. If we must insist on comparing countries on handling of the COVID19 crisis then IMO, morbid a task though it may be, the most important thing to do is level off the death figures by population of country.

First of all I felt it important to exclude the teeny tiny countries like San Marino and Andorra so I drew the line at countries with a minimum of 1000 reported cases.

As you can see, among over 200 countries, Spain and Italy, the most notorious for their handling of the situation, are at or near the top, though it is interesting to see Belgium between them. France and UK round out the top 5 and the entire top 10 are all in Europe.

The reason I included population density (people per square km) on the chart is that many have claimed it to be a factor in relative growth among nations. For me, this theory is disproved by the numbers since so many in the top 20 in the world are ranked 100th or lower on the planet in density.

Finally the second graphic shows a statistic I feel isn’t being highlighted anywhere near enough. Apparently there have been over half a million reported cases of COVID19 around the world which have reached a conclusion, and of these, 79% have recovered. This number has remained steady over the past couple of weeks. For me this gives us a general (if extremely basic) idea of what kind of outcome to expect from a diagnosis.

Of course I appreciate the caveats involved with this information, not least of which is the fact that most countries vary in the way they report their data. For example, apparently the US has only been reporting deaths from hospitals, Ireland is well behind on testing so there may be COVID deaths left out, and as for China’s figures, well, who knows.

But it’s important we remain engaged with information as much as we can, if not too much throughout the day as we try to get through the lockdown. JLP

	Country	Total deaths*	Deaths per 1m pop*	Density rank**
1	Spain	18,255	390	118
2	Belgium	4,157	359	33
3	Italy	21,067	348	70
4	France	15,729	241	94
5	UK	12,107	178	49
6	Netherlands	2,945	172	32
7	Switzerland	1,174	136	68
8	Luxembourg	67	107	57
9	Sweden	1,033	102	193
10	Ireland	406	82	139
11	USA	26,064	79	174
12	Iran	4,683	56	156
13	Portugal	567	56	101
14	Denmark	299	52	88
15	Austria	393	44	104
16	Germany	3,495	42	60
17	Slovenia	56	27	108
18	Norway	139	26	203
19	Canada	903	24	222
20	Iceland	8	23	227

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