IHME Projections for Leading Coronavirus Countries and Lives Savable by Masking

Update August 30th.  In the MTV Awards, everybody is masked, including the dancers.  Lady Gaga received many awards, and was always wearing creative masks.  She stressed that everyone should wear masks.  This should have a lot more influence than all of the projections below.  They also stressed voting.  The US is about to reach 6 million reported cases.  That is over 1.8% of Americans.  The US has 23.8% of the 25.2 million world cases.  Our death to case fatality ratio is 183,000/6 million = 3.05%.

India is now included in the IHME world country projections.  It could eventually have more deaths than the US, but masking could save 154,000 deaths by December 1.  On that date with current projections, India will have 445,000 deaths, but could lower them to 291,000 with masking.  The US will have 317,000 deaths, but could lower them to 250,000 with masking and save 67,000 lives.

We present the world’s leading countries in Coronavirus Cases, and then some special choices, where many lives could be saved by complete masking, or which have unexpectedly large increases.  They are ordered by the most lives projected to be lost by December 1.  As usual, world data are not all collected on the same basis.  The last column is lives saved with masking.

While India may exceed the US in deaths on December 1 by 40%, they have four times the population.  Their GDP per Capita is $2,000, while the US is $63,000.