Forum Topic

USA better?

I am trying to understand why the UK's Covid-19 deaths per million population are a lot worse than those of the USA. Population per square mile looks like a possible factor?

David Ainsworth ● 2236d9 Comments

And Germany's social distancing is 1.5 meters, not 2.

Elizabeth Balsom ● 2236d

I agree, Peter, population density is not the only factor (if it were, the value of R squared would be 1), but it clearly is one factor, which was all I meant in my post.

Richard Carter ● 2236d

Population density is going to be a major factor.  Comparing the UK with, for example, New Zealand, isn’t going to tell you a huge amount that will be helpful.As Richard helpfully depicts, New York’s deaths / million are 5x that of the UK, even though they’ve conducted 5x the amount of tests / million than we have.  New York is, however, including all likely deaths from Covid, regardless of location, whereas we are currently only including hospital-based deaths where CV was present.  As others have said, it will take months / years before we can draw any meaningful, evidence-based lessons.  For now, however, Germany remains the fascinating outlier

Craig Fordham ● 2236d

Population density seems a plausible factor in 'Western' countries, but densely populated Singapore and Hong Kong might undermine the theory.

Peter Evans ● 2236d

I think part of the explanation lies in population density: if you plot it for each state against cases per million, there's a moderately strong correlation (R squared = 0.547) but with some outliers, New York being the obvious one; on this, England comes out rather lower than the trend line:

Richard Carter ● 2236d

It looks like New York State's deaths are nearly a third of the US total currently, and c.3,000 lower than the UK total. New York State's population density is four sevenths of the UK density."Possibly too soon to do comparisons?"Probably.

David Ainsworth ● 2236d

True, Ed

Michael Ixer ● 2236d

I've not done the arithmetic, David, but how does the UK compare with, for example, New York state? Also, in the same way that the UK is behind some EU countries, transmission through the US is probably staggered? Possibly too soon to do comparisons?

Michael Ixer ● 2236d

US have ramped up testing and they have a good team (excluding Trump) as well as some exceptional state governors.Stay at home saves lives but so does identifying asymptomatic carriers.

Ed Robinson ● 2236d