Latest Numbers on COVID-19 Cases in OECD Countries (2020-05-12)

While COVID-19 pandemic subsides in most countries, two cases are worthy of attention – that of Sweden and the United States.
From the very beginning Sweden was attracting world’s attention for choosing absolutelly different strategy from that of majority of Western countries. Up to now Sweden is not changing it’s strategy of much lighter constraints. Swedish public, as polls show, supports it. Alas presently Sweden has established itself as sixth in COVID-19 mortality rates among OECD countries.
As neither the mortality nor the incidence curve in Sweden is not going down as fast as in other countries, it becomes absolutely certain that at least the final virus wave will make Swedish rates even worse. True to itself, Sweden still maintains it’s strategy is effective and will prove itself even more so in the new COVID-19 wave.
On the other hand, various comparisons can be made. Including those confirming that tighter constraints do not necessarily lead to better control of a viral outbreak. The United Kingdom, for example, tried to maintain a strategy similar to Swedish one, but introduced much stricter restriction on March 23. Despite this through all this time UK’s performance curve (not to mention the numbers themselves) hasn’t gotten any flatter than that in Sweden. And Sweden, incidentally, is now performing better than the UK.
In terms of relative rather than absolute numbers, the US used to be in a far better position than a large proportion of European countries. But it seems that with the wave of virus declining very rapidly in European countries, the U.S. is only approaching the peak of the epidemic. It is possible, that final rates of the COVID-19 epidemic in the US will approach those of most suffering European countries.
More stats and possible comparisons can be found in the charts below.