Quoted from DakotaMike:One thing to bear in mind, is that despite what it may feel like, the US is actually doing better in deaths per capita/million than many other countries. Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, the UK, Italy, France, and the Netherlands all have more covid deaths per capita than we do in the US, as of 2 days ago. Something to ponder. And for some reason, they're all Western and Northern European countries. And most (all?) have nationalized healthcare systems, if that matters in covid-response.
So I do actually wonder how "bad" we really are doing as country overall dealing with covid-19. I suppose it's all relative.
I'm from Belgium. We were told in the news in the beginning that our country did bad in comparisons because we counted too careful.
Even untested deaths (especially in the beginning there were not enough tests available) that were suspicious (flu like symptoms), elderly people in nursing homes, .. were all counted as C19 deaths.
Some info here: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2020/04/23/international-press-on-corona-champion-belgium/
The last few week the message changed. Counting more strict doesn't explain all of the difference, compared to deaths in a normal time (a year before).. it seems C19 did impact our country more than some neighbouring countries. Could've been because of holidays, in february we had a week of holiday in schools and many people went skiing in Austria and Northern Italy in the villages that had initally a lot of C19 cases, and brought this back home with them.
As for the European countries - I don't think nationalized healthcare matters, at least not for our country.
In Belgium we had enough icu beds and ventilators, everyone with issues was hospitalised. Some hospitals even started to decrease their number of beds as they were over prepared.
In other countries there weren't enough beds available, or decisions were made who was hospitalised and who not.
Imo the population density is the biggest factor here. My country is just like one big city / suburb / metropolitan area.
There are some open spaces and rural areas but that's all very limited in size. I don't think you can travel anywhere for more than 5 to 10 miles without encountering a village.
Comparing figures related to density will give with other countries (like the USA) with massive open spaces and 'real' rural areas will always be in the advantage of the countries with massive rural areas where no-one lives. You should only compare metropolitan areas or areas that are similary dense if you want to compare numbers of deaths / population.