[russellw]

A bit more of a dive into the USA numbers.

North Dakota has the highest identified infection rate with 10,837 cases per 100k of population although South Dakota (9,446) isn't far behind. For comparative purposes, the US national average is 4,525/100k and Australia is 109/100k. Maine (975) and Vermont (779) are the two lowest and the only states below 1k/100k cases.

New Jersey has the highest mortality rate with 195 deaths per 100k population, with New York (180), Massachusetts (157), Connecticut (144) and Louisiana (141) all well above the national average of 86.95/100k (Australia is 3.5). At the other end of the scale Vermont (12.6/100k), Oregon (23.9), Utah (28.6) and North Dakota (29.8) are the only mainland states below 30/100k although Hawaii (18.5) and Alaska (19.3) are also under that number.

The third metric; case mortality rate (CMR), is really starting to look more like a measure of how well the hospital system copes with an outbreak because (as we have noted previously) the real CMR is probably somewhere around 1-2% and significant deviations from that are either based on low testing volumes (which make it look worse than it really is) or 'creative' classification of deaths (which make it look better).

That aside, the US national CMR is 1.92% which is better than our 3.248% but there are four states over 4%: Connecticut (4.03), Massachusetts (4.35), New Jersey (4.71) and New York (4.76). Conversely, there are several states below 1%: Utah (0.44), Wyoming (0.72), Nebraska (0.87), Oklahoma (0.88), Wisconsin (0.9) and Idaho (0.94).