MORTALITY: Re-ranking nations

Sandra Boynton in her rant against President Trump uses deaths from COVID-19. It is far from instructive on the subject.

She uses the words “death rate” then completely fails to use numbers that represent death rates. In order to use the word “rate” you need to compare two things such as time/distance, distance/fuel usage, or in this case, population/deaths. I used the CIA World Fact Book statistics for populations of the listed countries and using the standard CDC nomenclature for death rates (number of deaths per 100,000 population) came up with this in order of death rates, largest to smallest all per 100,000 population: U.K. 69.9, Italy 56.5, Sweden 56.1, Spain 48.8, France 44.8, USA 42.5, Mexico 30.6 and Canada 30. Putting the USA in third lowest, and I don’t trust Mexico’s numbers.

You will notice that the top rates represent countries that have or purport to have national health plans, Canada wins the race but also has a very large country with a relatively small and rural population.

KENT SETTY

Hayden