what can you say about the european countries, though?

well, italy and spain and france have a lot of old people - something that's actually not true in the uk, who cannot use that excuse. the swedes are more like the former, and have drastically outperformed them. the swiss are also a very old country that, no doubt aided by the geography, have done even better.

you would actually expect lower death rates in the united states because the life expectancy is lower, and that's actually working out. it's just that there's 330 million people in the united states, which is the size of all of western europe combined. i went over this once before....

the germans have done exceedingly well on first glance, but they are not as old as the other countries in europe, either. they're well ahead of china or the united states, but a little behind the uk, actually.

and, in canada, we're going to hand our homework in after the due date.

so, putting those countries into tiers,

1) the countries that have done very, very well relative to their demographics would be the swiss & germans.
2) the swedes have outperformed other countries with very old populations, but have not done quite as well as the swiss. the french also did noticeably better than the spaniards or italians.
3) italy & spain were hit hard, but are very old.
4) the uk is not as old as these countries, but performed as bad or worse. the americans are doing a little better, but are even younger, and are also a little behind in the pandemic curve. we'll have to see if the americans can beat the british or not in the end, but they may not, and this poor performance may in the end be a legacy of thatcher-reaganism.

and we need to wait for canada to finish, but it looks like we'll be more comparable to the swedes or french, and not as good as the germans or swiss.