These days, Trump is vigorously defending that the United States is among the top countries to effectively address the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of that defense is the harmonized ratio that concerns the number of COVID deaths. Maybe it’s good to see if Trump has a point here. To this end, Mr. Node has established such ratios for the seven jurisdictions in his project. He calls them d-rate1 and d-rate2. D-rate1 represents the ratio between the number of deaths and the number of people tested. D-rate 2 represents the ratio between the number of deaths and the size of the population of the relevant jurisdiction. Node gives those numbers in percentages for the seven jurisdictions in Table 1.
| d-rate Tabel | ||
| Jurisdicties | d-rate1 | d-rate2 |
| China | 5.53 | 0.00 |
| USA | 3.47 | 0.05 |
| France | 16.69 | 0.04 |
| the UK | 15.33 | 0.07 |
| the Netherlands | 11.67 | 0.04 |
| Brazil | 3.64 | 0.04 |
| Global | 4.03 | 0.01 |
Trump is right. The US d-rate1 ranks internationally among the lowest and France’s among the highest. However, France is currently significantly better in terms of COVID-19 control than the US. This apparent contradiction (high d-rate1 and good control) is explained by the fact that the height of the number is related to the number of tests taken and thus decreases as the proportion of tests has increased. The number gives the relationship between the number of deaths and the number of tests. Apparently, testing in Europe has been much more focused than elsewhere. There is not much more to it.
D-rate2 gives the COVID death rates of the local population. They are shown in hundredths of percentages. Here the UK stands out above the other countries. The US, Brazil and the world will follow suit. That is to be expected when we look at their numbers of new infections. Measures can be taken against this. But these are not yet considered opportune in the US and Brazil of today.