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?

It has only really taken hold in a way similar to europe in one state so far, so expecting it to get far far worse and can imagine the USA is going to be by far the worst affected due to their health care system being more like the third world coupled with their western attitude towards it in the early days. Not going to be a good combination.

Our numbers of cases and daily deaths at the moment in the UK are what was experienced by Italy and Spain at peak, so I would imagine that this is peak for us now, as it was predicted to fall at the easter weekend. Going on from their experience, it will carry on at the same level for 1 week then start to fall very gradually. If this is not peak, then its very bad news!

Our numbers of cases and daily deaths at the moment in the UK are what was experienced by Italy and Spain at peak, so I would imagine that this is peak for us now, as it was predicted to fall at the easter weekend.

It seems more likely that the UK is still at least a week away from peak, and the deaths will be higher than Italy and Spain.

Very dense population lots living in apartment blocks sharing lifts and stairwells, subway etc. Also lots of poverty.

For overall US not terrible, for NY it's horrific.

New york - even more dense than london, even more small flats no housing, people still going out to work, wider spread so poor are poorer and less healthy. It's awful.

We (the uk) have a larger population than Spain/Italy)
Should it really be a huge surprise if we have more casualties?

• USA generally. No or delayed attempt to slow the spread of the virus. Not seen as a problem.

• NY and other large cities have a huge population of poor people many of whom have health issues which would have been resolved or managed if they had had access to decent health care. They did not. So they are weaker when they get hit by the virus.

• No welfare state. If you do not work you do not eat and you get evicted. Poor housing. overcrowding, poor diet, morbid obesity, smoking drug and alcohol problems all on a scale beyond that you see in Europe.

All make it more difficult to fight off any illness.

• A grossly underfunded public hospital system. Too few ICU beds, not enough ventilators. Not enough PPE so lots of staff off sick. System overwhelmed so not everyone getting treated.

• Stick all of the above into a megacity with a fetid mass transport system and where social distancing is really difficult and you have the perfect storm.

47% of people in the US are obese. Maybe this has something to do with it?

Should it really be a huge surprise if we have more casualties?

Well, you'd hope that the UK had learnt from Italy and Spain's experiences and would be flattening the curve sooner, thus reducing deaths.

But that doesn't seem to be happening.

Propaganda is rife, just like Spanish flu didn’t start in Spain but was given the name to deflect from the large death rates in other countries - the same pattern is emerging 100 years later

Brit wife yet another post where you sound a facetious twat. Why don't you learn a little human gratuitousness??

I've just seen on the news that there were 800 deaths in New York today, with a population of 8.6 million. Statistically that's worse than anywhere else, those poor people.

@worriedmama16 so Britwife provides facts and she’s a facetious twat? How about all of the ghouls that want to revel in the US death rate? Which, once again a little louder for those in back, is less than the UK!

I'm surprised that the death rate in the US is so low actually, when comparing it with recorded cases 2-3 weeks ago. Trump suggested yesterday that cases were decreasing already and they'd flattened the curve, but the people who have sadly died this week were infected weeks ago, when they were identifying 10K cases a day. They're now recording 30K cases a day, so surely it can't have peaked there already although it would be great if that was the case.

Sorry I should have said Trump suggested the curve was flattened because deaths were decreasing already, not cases. They're still rising.

It's starting to spread. I have Facebook friends who live in the back of beyond Idaho or somewhere like that they've had cases start in the last week.

Ohhh...goody. Now everyone will have something to crow about here.

Pathetic...

I would imagine the general health of the population might be a factor. It would be good to have some statistics on the profiles of deaths in the US to see if things like obesity is a factor.

@saltinesandcoffeecups I'm not sure what you meant by that comment, isn't this a discussion forum?

Flattening the curve isn't about reducing deaths or cases, it's about reducing the speed at which they're increasing.

There's a good Newsweek article about it here.

www.newsweek.com/all-cities-states-us-that-are-flattening-coronavirus-curve-1496620