Raw Data: The US Is the 7th Worst Country in the World for COVID-19 Deaths

After hearing Donald Trump blather away about how great the United States has done in its battle with COVID-19—based on a completely meaningless statistic—perhaps you’d like to see how we’re really doing. Here you go:

We are the seventh worst in the world, behind only Belgium, the UK, Peru, Italy, Sweden, and Chile. At the rate we’re going, in a few weeks we’ll probably be the third worst country in the world. And that’s despite a huge and extremely competent health care system.

There was no good reason for this. Maybe we never had the self-discipline and patience to be Germany (109 deaths per million), but even moderately decent leadership could have cut our number in half and had us trending downward instead of heading back up.

Competence matters.

NOTE: For space reasons in the chart, only every third country is labeled. I also deleted tiny statelets.

UPDATE: The original chart was too confusing. It now shows every country, not every third. The downside is that the type is teensy.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate