Hopefully we all know that case #'s of Covid are a joke. They are 100% reliant on testing. Such a small % of the population is being tested that it is impossible to base any number off of testing. That includes "Cases", "Mortality Rate", etc. "Cases" is a dependent variable, entirely dependent on % of population tested, and no country in the world has the % over 1% which makes that number beyond ridiculous. (Even South Korea is at about half a percent).

An interesting number that google has on their site is a per capita case number. I don't understand why nobody really talks about per capita, yet in a pandemic, the size of the potential pool of infected matters. Instead people only want to talk absolute numbers. (until Trump posts that we've tested 300,000 people - then the per capita hounds crawl out of the woodwork).

If I expand that to a per capita death number you can see where the US really stands.

The worst country in the world is San Marino, with 624 Deaths per million people. (0.06% of the population has died due to something related to Covid). Huge number. If the US hit THAT number we would have the 180,000 deaths that the CDC keeps talking about. But that number is 500% WORSE than even Italy.

Italy is #2 at 125 deaths per million (0.012%) If we go as bad as Italy is now, the US would end up with 37,000 deaths (mid severity Seasonal Flu - albeit in a compressed time frame which makes it feel far worse).
Spain is at 73/million
Iran = 24/Million (Iran has been hysterically talked about digging mass graves to dump bodies in, but if the US was just as severe as Iran we would have 8,000 deaths - which would be far lighter than the lightest flu season on record).
Netherlands = 20
Switzerland = 17
Denmark = 6
Sweden = 4

Worldwide Average = 2.9 or (.0003% of the population has died).

Where is the US? 2.7 people per million or 0.00026% of the population.
Utah? 0.3 people per million or < .0001% of the population.
Granted it's early and that number can only go up.

Considering that between .5% and 1% of the population dies of all causes each year, so far worldwide for every 1,000 deaths of all causes, covid has caused 1.

Interpreting that, the US needs to see the death toll rise 50X, not double, not triple, not ten fold, but 50X from where we are now just to match Italy, and have as many die as the flu.

At a threefold rise, I predict full on panic, yet we would still be almost 20X LOWER than Italy at that point. At 3X the deaths, we are still half of Switzerland per capita.

Note: This is not a "don't flatten the curve" post. Spreading things out can help. This is more of a "our ability to understand numbers and their severity is horrible as a country".

Per capita death wise, we are at the same place Italy was when they were at 150 deaths. That was over 3 weeks ago, and nobody believes that we are 3 weeks behind Italy. Closer to 1-2 weeks behind by most estimates.

Not trying to send an agenda - this virus scares me. It's unknown. We as humans don't deal well with unknown. The numbers however, are interesting.