It's (yours) an arbitrary way of looking at the data in an attempt to make it look like the US response was somehow competent or comparable to others. Per capita means nothing, it's not even being used in a consistent context and manner by those who try to use it (more on that later). Their COVID-19 isn't "more deadly" than ours, as you suggestted. It's the same disease that may develop in people infected with the same virus.
But back to the arbitrary part - why not apply this filter when comparing the US to more populous nations? Why only cherry pick a subset of European countries?
Total deaths in China and India: 62, 253
Total population: 2,746,000,000
Total deaths in the United States: 176,806
Total population: 328,000,000
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See how silly it is to cherry pick data in such a way and try to focus on X number of cases or deaths per N population? Why not use the percentage of people who still subscribe to cable TV? Or who own red automobiles? Or what about using deaths per 500k instead 100 million (or whatever figure the Trump admin is using today)?
The funny thing is, is that at current trajectories the US will have worse looking figures than the countries you cited sooner rather than later anyways - so what then? Needlessly move the goal posts again while ignoring the full context of the data to try to prove a nothing of a point? Out of morbid curiosity I really am interested in what poorly thought out statistical garbage they dream up next.
And I chose those nations for obvious reasons: they're comparable to the US in governance, lifestyle, and modernization. Their healthcare systems are comparable in efficiency, though it should be noted that theirs' are far more accessible for all of their citizens. And, most importantly, they had a strong federal response even if some of their dunderhead leaders took several weeks longer than they should have (UK).
Finally, of course until it's eradicated case numbers rise. That's not some keen insight you're imparting there. The main difference here is that
every other first world nation has enjoyed periods of flattening,
consider spikes of a few dozen to a few hundred cases a concern - and over a thousand a catastrophe. Meanwhile we're still sacking them up by the tens of thousands because we still - still - don't have a federal response.
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As a side note, another sad story from the south: the University of Alabama tried to open early on August 19th. Predictably, they had an immediate outbreak:
566 cases in about six days
When will conservatives learn?
Good luck, I'll be rooting for your community. We need some good news once in a while in the US about this pandemic.
