COVID-19 Deaths In The US: How We Compare To Other Countries? : Goats and Soda - NPR

"is lowest in numerous categories" when it comes to the pandemic — including "case death." This measure, which epidemiologists call the "case fatality ratio," calculates the number of people with COVID-19 who eventually die from the disease.

As Swan noted during the interview, you can in fact calculate the per capita death rate for a country's population — that is, the number of deaths per 100,000 people.

Neither per capita death rate nor case fatality ratio "fully reflect the effectiveness of a country's response," said Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University.

has the eighth-highest number of deaths per 100,000 people: 47.93 deaths from the coronavirus for every 100,000 Americans.

Belgium has the highest per capita death rate: 86.3 deaths per 100,000.

The country's case fatality ratio is 3.3%, meaning that for every 100 people with COVID-19, only about three die.

If there is more COVID-19 transmission among communities in a specific country, then there will be more infections and consequently more deaths in that country — and presumably a higher per capita death rate.

In Belgium and the U.K., which have the highest number of deaths per 100,000 people, the median ages are 41.9 and 40.0 years, respectively.

has now averaged 1,000 or more a day for over a week, the per capita death rate is not necessarily the best metric by which to compare mortality among countries.

According to Chatterjee, the case fatality ratio may be a slightly better indication of how well a country is doing in responding to the pandemic and preventing infected people from dying.

has the 24th-highest case fatality ratio.

So despite the daily death toll of 1,000 in the U.S., there is some truth to Trump's assertion that the low case fatality ratio is a positive sign in the United States.