The COVID-19 Death Rate In the US Is Fairly Normal

I don’t have any special reason for posting the following two charts, but I’m doing it anyway. The top one shows new COVID-19 deaths for the United States and every European country bigger than a few million people. The bottom one shows the same thing, but it’s cumulative deaths.

(In the bottom chart I omitted Belgium because who the hell knows what’s going on there? In any case, their numbers are allegedly so high that it wrecks the scale for everyone else. They are currently at about 1,600 deaths per million.)

Anyway, I suppose I do have a reason for posting these charts after all: to show you roughly where the United States stands on COVID-19 mortality compared to its peer countries in Europe. The answer, generally speaking, is that we’re high but not wildly high. It’s fashionable to pretend that the US response to COVID-19 has been disastrously, unconscionably bad, but that’s really not true. We could have and should have done better, but we’re not really all that different from other similar rich countries.

(Cases are a different matter. The US really does lead in the number of COVID-19 cases, but we also have a very low case fatality rate, which is why our death rate is not too far above the average. Is this because we test more people and therefore include more marginal cases? Is it because our health care is better? Is it because we skew younger than most European countries? Inquiring minds want to know.)

UPDATE: A reader emails to suggest that “confirmed deaths” might not be an accurate measure. The truth is that nothing is a completely accurate measure, and you can go down an endless rabbit hole trying to slice and dice the data. However, in this case we also have a measure called excess deaths, which is a calculation of how many deaths above normal various countries have recorded this year. As you can see, the US is no great shakes, especially during the summer, but generally speaking it’s still in the middle of the pack.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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