I just took the 20 African countries with the lowest GDP per capita, the ones ranked #35 - #54 in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita.
Using the Worldometers stats they collectively have a population of almost 428 Million people (about 30% more than the US), and they have reported 48,973 cases of Covid-19 and 910 deaths, with 621,855 tests conducted (1,453 tests per Million).
That has got to be a significant undercount of cases and deaths based on the limited amout of testing in Africa, right? The US has conducted 128,281 tests per Million people, or about 88 times as much as these African countries. So let's multiply both the case and the death numbers from Africa by this factor:
Africa (adjusted): 4,323,519 cases (
10,103 cases per Million), 80,338 deaths (
188 deaths per Million)
United States: 3,413,995 cases (
10,312 cases per Million), 137,782 deaths (
416 deaths per Million)
Are my calculations pure BS because the African countries may be at an earlier stage of the pandemic? Because the undercount in the African countries may be by even more than a factor of 88? Some other reason?
I think the discrepancy in the number of deaths could easily be explained by the fact that mostly old people die of Covid-19, and the African countries have a very young population.
Still, the mere fact that this comparison is being made, and that I don't know whether the US comes out ahead of 20 of the poorest nations in the World, doesn't reflect well on the US, IMHO.
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There is nothing right in my left brain.
There is nothing left in my right brain.