Analysis by Keith Rankin.
The large western economies account for by far the most covid19 deaths in the world. Even Germany, with a covid19 death incidence of 100 per million is well above the world average to date of 50 deaths per million people.
Of these large countries, only the United States looks likely to overtake another; by the end of June, United States covid19 deaths could be on a par with those of France.
It would be most truthful to say that the covid19 epicentre is the North Atlantic rather than North America; NATO if you will. (While Latin America is catching up, it has 77 reported covid19 deaths per million people, well short of the 320 in the USA and 570 in the UK.)
The recent growth for the United States – shown by the slope of its line – appears to be very similar to the growth of the world in general. Both US and World covid19 death incidences have increased by about 50 percent in May. It is not clear that the United States will slow down ahead of the rest of the world.
Belgium leads the world in covid19 deaths with 820 per million (though tiny San Marino has 1,240 deaths per million; 32 deaths in a country with about the same population as Pukekohe).
This chart shows countries of interest with populations below 60 million. Of these countries Spain is second worst. While the statistics for Spain seem to show some of the dead having recovered, in reality some deaths have been reclassified. Nevertheless, there were many deaths in Spain in March and April when testing rates were too low; so the official number is an undercount.
The undercount in the Netherlands appears to be greater, though. This appears to be due to both very low testing rates (even lower than Sweden), and a practice of encouraging nonagenarians to die at home, untested and uncounted.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s and Canada’s deaths keep growing. While Swedish authorities seem happy to let the disease take its natural course, Canada – though with lower overall numbers than Sweden to date – seems to be struggling the most to stem the tide of deaths. Its total covid19 deaths have doubled during May, whereas New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and China have had only tiny numbers compared to previous months.
For recovering countries – generally the countries with high testing rates – the spotlight goes back on identified cases, rather than deaths. In the Anglo-Celtic countries, case growth is particularly low in New Zealand and to a lesser extent in Australia, the other four countries still have a long way to go to start flatlining in the chart.
Ireland is worth a mention here. Its timeline for both cases and deaths almost exactly follows that of the United States. So, while its known case incidence has been higher than the United Kingdom, its death rate per capita has been lower. The other good news for Ireland is that its growth of cases appears to have stabilised, unlike the United Kingdom, United States or Canada. This appears to be due to a higher testing rate in Ireland than the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. Canada and the United States have had the lowest testing rates of the Anglo-Celtic countries, and show the fewest signs of control over the pandemic disease.
