Global Comparisons
One of this pandemic’s biggest tragedies lies in the simple fact that, while our entire planet is facing essentially the same challenge, the leaders who ultimately made the big public health decisions showed precious little interest in learning from each other’s experiences. As a result, of the roughly 7 million people whose deaths were officially reported (likely no more than half the actual casualties), far too many were avoidable deaths.
Prior to the arrival of Omicron in early 2022, fairly reliable statistics on new cases enabled objective comparisons among nations as to the outcomes of their diverse strategies for controlling COVID transmission. At that point, most governments severely restricted access to the accurate PCR testing upon which those statistics depended. At that point death rates, an admittedly lagging indicator, became the best metric for comparison. Unfortunately, governments increasingly stopped that reporting as well. In April of 2023, even USA COVID death statistics were no longer being published.
As of September 1, the World Health Organization terminated its weekly statistical update, which means that we now lack any objective basis for global comparisons and have therefore dropped the many charts which had long populated this global section of our site.
The final statistical table to the right provides something of a report card on Canada’s success or lack thereof in protecting the health and lives of its residents through the pandemic up to April 2023. The exact date chosen represents the last available US data.
Our comparison was between the Canada and all other large nations, arbitrarily defined as those with populations of 25 million or higher. For purposes of a more realistic comparison, the statistic used is reported deaths per million people. Of the 53 nations meeting that criteria, the table reports on the 20 with the highest death rates. While Canada is ranked 17th in that list, that really means the 17th worst out of 53 nations. Given that most have far fewer resources than Canada on a per capita basis, that certainly not a showing in which Canadians can take pride.
