Why do some countries have such high cases but low death rates in comparison?

[Uhoh2020]

The worldometer figures are so confusing. Countries like India, Brazil, USA all have higher case numbers than us in the UK but the amount of deaths in comparison to cases is so much lower. Why is that? Surely it cant be down to our health care system as that is far from poor?
I know the UK deaths shown are deaths in settings not just hospital and also anyone who has died with a positive test is counted in the way we record the deaths. There will be a number of cases of deaths that would have happened anyway regardless of Coronavirus who happened to be positive at time of death.

196* positives not 296

@flack - OP was referring to worldometer, which only tracks the officially tested numbers for each country. I've seen many people on different threads comparing that data, so I don't think many people are aware of the complexities involved in attempting to do so.

Two main factors, 1. Until mid May you couldn't get a test unless you met certain criteria so mildly infected people didn't get counted and 2. We are counting everyone who has a positive test as being covid if they die when it could have not been a factor in their death, other countries aren't doing this

@MeanMrMustardSeed

Another fan of more or less

@okiedokieme I think it should be compulsory listening!

I think some of it is down to treatment options. In the US, medics were saying very early on that they recognised people with covid were dying with blood clots, so they immediately started trying different anti clotting agents. In this country, medics are very cautious and everything has to go to trial first. We still have different clotting agents on trial, unable to use, whereas in the US, they just use them and save lives. It also took us months to announce a successful trial of a new drug, but in other places, theyve been using similar drugs from the start.
We also announced people couldnt go the hospital unless their lips were blue. This undoubtedly caused several thousand deaths.