Here is some no spin facts on where we are with the COVID 19 crisis. This data is the raw data on infections and death rates showing some of the trends we can see.

The first metric to look at is the percentage of people who have died in the U.S. from this virus. This is fairly straight forward to calculate. As of this writing we have had 404,689 deaths. The population of the United States is 330,022,000. To get the percentage you do the following math:

• Deaths divided by population
• 404689/330022000 = 0.0012
• This number times 100 to get percent = 0.12% (one tenth of one percent.)
• The total percent of the U,S, Population that has died from COVID 19 is 0.12%

Deaths per million

One point of interest is the U.K., they are seeing a significant spike in deaths. Well above other countries. There have been many reports of how out of bad the U.S. is with respect to other countries, particularly European countries, with respect to deaths and progress in fighting the virus. These might make you to believe that the U.S. leads as the worst of the developed nations in managing the outbreak. Here are the actual numbers (Source Our World Data).

This chart shows the 7 day rolling average number of deaths per million people over time. As you can see by the chart above the U.S. is not at the top of the list of countries in a metric that is reflective of how a country is doing overall. The United Kingdom and Germany have higher death rates but in general the U.S. is still slightly worse off then Europe as a whole.

As you can see from the plot above the 7 day average COVID-19 number of new case per million is better than the United Kingdom but not as good as Europe. One concerning point is that the total number of infections in the U.K. is down but the deaths are significantly up. This trend is not in line with the other countries. With the lockdowns in the U.K. and the efforts they are taking the fact that the cases are down is good but this is not in line with the extreme upturn in deaths. You have to wonder why this is. Is something different in their heath care of those who are sick?

The good news is we are seeing a recent downturn in the number of new infections as well as the deaths in the U.S. Perhaps the vaccine effort is starting to pay off as more and more people get the shot. This is in addition to those who have an immunity from getting COVID 19 itself.

Hopefully this data will help you understand where we are. With the vaccine being distributed we should start to see significant drops in these numbers and that will be a welcome sight.