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At the time of writing (11 July 2020) the USA have almost 3.2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, while Europe has slightly over 1.8 million with the USA passing Europe around 10 May 2020 (two months ago) at around 1.3 million cases. But if you look at deaths then Europe has almost 185 thousand, while the USA have (only) 134 thousand. On 10 May 2020, Europe's death total stood at almost 151 thousand and the USA have not yet caught up. Taken together these numbers seem to imply a much lower case mortality for the USA than for Europe, for which I have not been able to come up with an explanation (other than that the numbers are bad).

Why does there seem to be such a big difference in case mortality between the USA and Europe?

EDIT: since 13 September 2020, both death totals have reached the level of 194 thousand with 6.5 million confirmed cases in the USA and 3 million in Europe.

Chris Rogers
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hkBst
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  • Death recording can be very different for one thing. Recording a death due to covid has reportedly been inaccurate in Europe in some cases. If that is true, then that can skew results. Whereas a covid case may not be recorded elsewhere but instead be recorded as "natural causes". But that is open to opinion – Chris Rogers Jul 12 '20 at 15:33
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    I'm not so sure I would trust numbers from the US either because it's been so heavily politicized. There's also the fact that Europe was hit earlier, and medicine knows how to treat COVID better now than it did a few months ago. I frankly doubt there's a real, substantial difference in mortality between first world countries. – Carey Gregory Jul 12 '20 at 16:00
  • Article in the Guardian that raises a similar question. – hkBst Aug 23 '20 at 12:05
  • I don’t think you can make this comparison. Germany has a much lower case fatality rate than Italy, but simply because the average age of patients is much lower in Germany. – Narusan Sep 13 '20 at 08:35
  • With the above comments, just throwing this into the mix, but perhaps the USA body, collectively, has less resilience to insult than the European body. – zombiefeeder Aug 05 '23 at 02:22

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