First, the bad news. Starting the day that 100 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed, the United States has reached 35,000 confirmed cases faster than any other country, even China.
However, much of that is due to finally getting some testing done, which is a good thing. Probably a more important metric to watch is the number of deaths. Here are the top 10 countries sorted by total deaths.
Among these countries, the speed at which the U.S. has ramped up deaths since the first one is only average (it took 18 days to go from 1 to 100 deaths, 23 days to go from 1 to 400) . South Korea is given a lot of credit for their extreme testing and rightly so, it took them 29 days to get up to 100 deaths. Surprisingly, France did even better, staying under 100 deaths for 31 days after their first.
I expected to see Italy as the country that hit 100 and 400 deaths the fastest at 12 and 17 days, respectively. However, Spain is in even bigger trouble than Italy was, taking only 10 days and 14 days to get there.
Italy is still the country with the highest daily number of deaths per day, however Spain is catching up fast.
Below are the cumulative totals. Italy has passed China long ago and Spain is on track to become the second country to do so.
It’s even worse for Spain when you consider population sizes. It could be where Italy is in a matter of days.
If you live in the United States, you can take comfort in the fact that, at least for the time being, the cumulative number of deaths per million population is barely on the chart. If total deaths per capita is the Scary Index, Italy and Spain are ones setting the bar.
All of these charts are available and interactive at this site.
