Why are so many people dying in the US?

[Nixby3]

Just that really

The US seem to have a very high infection and fatality rate particularly New York it seems.

According to the BBC their hospitals have spare capacity. I know they require health insurance- is it a poverty issue? Could Trump have dealt with this differently?

Bear in mind that the USA has a population of 330 million, about 5 times that of the UK. Whereas NY is particularly badly hit, and there are other hotspots, overall it’s not as bad as Europe at the moment.

According to the BBC their hospitals have spare capacity.

Many states aren’t especially badly affected, at least yet. However it does seem to be quite well spread now with many states having over, or close to, 100 deaths.

Yes but once you put deaths in relation to the populatio

There's been other threads about this but essentially :

Healthcare access is still means tested

National aversion to taxation as a concept means poor public service infrastructure

Trump doesn't give a shit

Isolation rules are being set at state level. Some governors are taking this really seriously, others are not.

New York is densely populated and a international travel hub like London. The amount of people just using the trains every day is huge. Not really a surprise it is spreading so quickly.

The US had just double the number of deaths yesterday than the UK, despite having five times the population

You should be asking why so many people are dying in the UK

John Oliver did a really good segment but it's been pulled off YouTube

pocketem
New York now has more cases than any country in Europe

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-us-canada-52239261

I'm not being goady but can't understand why and genuinely interested to hear people's opinion

Demographics and population churn.
Combination of ethnicity (vitamin D levels), poverty limiting access to lifelong health care (lower starting level of health) and the sheer volume of migration into major cities as well as the dense transport through (subway etc).

Healthcare and governance generally is also much more decentralised which complicates response.

I expect to see similar issues in India for very similar reasons.

Death rate will depend on how many people are infected before you take lockdown type actions, how close packed people are & what medical resources are accessible

Suspect that they had a lot of infection before stronger isolation ? 22 March lockdown in New York ? So you would not expect peak deaths till about 22 April?

Transmission is high due to close proximity and mass transit. Unfortunately, data is showing that obesity is a real risk factor for adverse outcome, particularly in the NYC cases.

I travelled through Miami airport on my way to the UK a couple of weeks ago and they didn't have a clue. Fingerprints being taken using the electronic pad, no anti bacterial hand gel to hand, border agents touching passports, staff wearing gloves touching their faces, no masks, no social distancing. I used half a bottle of gel between us over 50 minutes. They didn't have a clue . . .

We are worse than US in terms of death numbers per 1m population, by about double I think. And NY is our London really so it's not surprising they are higher numbers just as London is.

We are still in a worse position than they are at the moment.

As midgebabe says, a lot of people would have been carrying the virus to New York during February and early March via JFK airport and Newark airport. New York City has the highest volume of international travel on the east coast of the U.S.

Then combine that with the fact that New York is a very densely populated city, very tightly packed. If you're moving around New York you're part of a tightly-packed crowd: on the sidewalks, in the train stations, on the subway platforms and cars, restaurants, shops, supermarkets. You're picking up the virus in taxis, Uber cars, touching handrails on escalators, pressing buttons at cash points. It's like London only much more densely populated.

High rates of underlying healthcare problems combined with a lack of affordable healthcare means populations are more vulnerable as a start point.

Trump doesn't really believe it or grasp the danger until it was too late. Some states are still deeply in denial.

Culturally, curtailing personal freedoms is hugely controversial and strongly rejected - even in blue states and cities like NYC.

Terminate at will policies also mean that if you are sick or should be isolating you could be fired for not turning up to work and there is not the same level of government safety net so people keep going to work and spreading it.

The whole American capitalist system is perfectly designed to ensure that the most vulnerable suffer the most in a crisis such as this.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

The death rate in the US is lower than:

Spain
Andorra
Italy
Belgium
France
Netherlands
UK
Switzerland
Sweden
Luxembourg
Bermuda

I'm not sure why you're asking the question OP?

It’s a big country with a lot of people. NYC is v crowded. Response is v scattered. Some states like Massachusetts shut down early (heading into Week 5 of lockdown), others didn’t. People were partying in Florida over spring break.
Trump underplayed it.
Resources are divided between states and the federal level and they are fighting over it. And passing the buck. The biggest hospitals are ready for it but a lot of rural America is served by smaller less specialised hospitals that are quite far apart.

Think about the size of the populations first. The death rate in the UK per million is more than double what it is here and we have had the virus longer. We are also testing about double the number of people. Does that have something to do with a lower death rate? Maybe. We also have far more ICU beds and ventilators pet capita than the UK. Maybe that has something to do with it.

New York is badly hit, as is Michigan, but most places are nowhere near as bad as Europe. I live in a county half the size of Northern Ireland and this county has had 5 cases and no deaths. Two of the 5 have completely recovered. So 3 active cases. Overall in this state we have started to flatten the curve. Also there is a lot more respect for the social distancing guidelines because it has been far more sensible. No reporting of people for buying wine and chocolate. No drones flying over us to see if we are sunbathing.

If I do catch the virus, I’m glad I’m here and not in the UK.

Transmission is high due to close proximity and mass transit.

Yes - I'm sure this had a huge effect in NYC.

For once I'm quite glad much of the rest of the US has a terrible mass transit system. Not often I say that.

nearly a 1000 people dining a day in the uk, and is it headline news on any paper? a PM who openly shook hands without protection, with patients suffering from coronavirus - then catches it himself. probably best to worry about our own country before turning attention elsewhere

The US is doing a lot of things wrong but per million pop has less cases, is testing more and has less deaths than the UK

Of those infected the highest death rate % is Italy, followed very closely by the UK. For now.
Italy has peaked, the UK hasn't, so those figures will change. The Netherlands is up there for % of deaths X infected people too. As of course, is Spain. Though like Italy, Spain seems to have peaked.

Forgot to add pic.