So want to preface all of this by saying that I think, overall, the US did a horrible job with COVID.

But people have ignored the data for the entire year in comparing how we did relative to the rest of the Western World.

I omit Taiwan, China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand...because they are all isolated, and were able to close their borders. The rest of the world was unable to do that for a host of reasons.

In any case, Here are seven Western countries, with their cumulative death/million rate.

So, clearly the blue is worst, right? And the purple, on the bottom, is best?

And those in the middle are largely similar.

We all agree on that, right?

Before we get to the answer of the above, here is cumulative deaths. The US is larger than all the other countries listed put together, don't forget.

So what was the answer for the first chart?

See below.

The worst performing...was BELGIUM. And that was true for the entire year.

Germany performed the best.

The rest (Italy, Spain, US, France, Sweden) are all within arms reach of one another.

Now here is where it gets interesting. What happens when you only look at the last quarter of 2020?

Below is the answer.

The UK does the worst with US trailing. But see Germany and Sweden...they've largely caught up. Spain seems to be doing slightly better (but I think that is a data fluke).

So what does this all tell us?

1. The US, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium all did horrid early on...but this MIGHT have been largely luck.
2. Sweden's strategy failed; their early success likely was luck.
3. Germany is doing generally better, but catching up quickly.

I can't for certain say what made the difference...but more and more data I see leads me to believe that LUCK, more than anything else, led to early variances. Of course, early on, peak disease led to far more deaths because we didn't know how to treat the virus.

However, the law of averages kicks in eventually. And so countries like Germany, who might just have gotten lucky early on, now are starting to lose the roll of the dice.

I'll be curious to see hard core studies investigating if one policy or another really showed long term benefit. The more I see...the more I think it probably didn't.

EXCEPT BORDER CLOSURES.