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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

If you want to talk about misleading, you are the one who just changed goalposts from "most infections" to "mortality per capita." I would hope the healthcare system of the most advanced economy on earth would fare better than "middle of the pack" when it comes to mortality.

If you're arguing that figures should be adjusted for population then fine. Let's look at infections per capita, where U.S. is currently 12 out of 200--significantly higher than any other western democracy, even those that have done more testing per capita. Hardly middle of the pack: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

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> Let's look at infections per capita, where U.S. is currently 12 out of 215--significantly higher than any other western democracy, even those that have done more testing per capita.

Sure, but according to that source it's also among the middle of the pack of developed countries in the mortality rate, and considering the relatively high testing rate in the US compared to other developed countries the mortality rate seems like a slightly better first approximation. It seems like you considered the high infection rate but didn't adjust for the high testing rate besides noting that some of the countries with more testing have a lower infection rate. This ignores the countries with a lower rating rate and similar or higher mortality.

I don't like to use infection as a standard because that depends 100% on how much testing you do. So it's easy to fake by just doing less testing.

Deaths is much harder to fake, and if you checked you would see there isn't any actual medical treatment, mortality rates aren't going to change much given basic care, so it's an excellent way to compare countries (except maybe those that are too poor to even have the basics).

> I don't like to use infection as a standard because that depends 100% on how much testing you do

As I pointed out, our infection rate is higher than European countries that have a testing rate >= ours. So that is a fair comparison. I.E. our positivity rate is higher.

Source please for testing rate? Both for the European countries, and for the individual US states (looking at the US as one lumped whole will give misleading results because different states are at different points in their infection, some are ending like NY, and some are starting like CA).

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

You can click through to get more granular on the country, state, and county levels.

> I would hope the healthcare system of the most advanced economy on earth would fare better than "middle of the pack" when it comes to mortality.

But this is the healthcare system widely derided as the _worst_ in the developed world. Methinks if we were dead last in deaths per capita you’d be saying you aren’t terribly surprised either.

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