Comparing Covid in Mexico and the U.S.
Letter to my sister sharing research to ground our discussion in facts and stats
Actually, I've given this matter considerable thought, and been frustrated by how difficult it is to get information that is comparable between the two countries on vaccination against Covid. So tonight I decided to devote some time to it, in light of our conversation today, so that I am on firmer ground to compare the two countries.
First, I verified the population of the U.S. vs. Mexico: 333,495,437 vs. 130,711,159. That gives us a ratio of 2.55 Americans to Mexicans, which is important to keep in mind when we look at numbers.
Both countries have achieved about the same rate of vaccination. About 75% of adults in the U.S. are at least partially vaccinated, and in Mexico it is 76%. In the U.S., 56.7% are fully vaccinated; in Mexico it is around 53%, again the numbers are quite similar.
Numbers vary depending on your source of information, of course. Since Mexico hasn't started vaccinating anyone under 18 yet, I tried to get figures that did not include those under 18 in the U.S. However, the number of adults in Mexico is calculated by everyone 15 and older, so it doesn't seem possible to make a strict comparison. It will have to be rough.
In an article that I read in The Economist in Spanish dated yesterday, I found the numbers who have been fully vaccinated (50,197,534). There are another 17,496,491 who have received at least one dose.
https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Pandemia-en-Mexico-Secretaria-de-Salud-reporta-381-nuevas-muertes-por-Covid-19-20211014-0101.html I did the math myself to get the 53% of Mexicans who have been fully vaccinated. There are wide variations in this percentage, depending on the source.
I used the total number of adults in Mexico, age 15 and over (even though ages 15-18 cannot get the vaccine yet here.) which is 94,112,034 Mexican adults. I got these numbers from Worldometer. Then I divided the number who have only been partially vaccinated (17,496,491) into this number to get 53%. I could not find this percentage of Mexicans partially vaccinated anywhere, so I had to do the calculations myself.
I cannot find demographics in Mexico for the age group of 15-18. I was trying to get a sense of how many children there are in Mexico in proportion to adults. It seems to be about 72% adults over the age of 15.
The U.S. doesn't consider an individual an adult until they are 18 or over. By that reckoning, 77.9% of the U.S. population are adults. So, the distribution of adults to children is roughly the same in both countries, more or less.
Now that we have established that the rate of vaccination is comparable, let's look again at what's happening today.
According to the WHO website, the U.S. has had 97,320 news cases in the last 24 hours. Cases have surged in Alaska, Colorado, Montana, the Dakotas, Utah and Wyoming. CDC reports that number as being 87,870 as of Oct. 14, leading the world in new cases.
So there is some variance in reported numbers between the WHO website and the CDC.
On the WHO website, 6,320 new cases were reported in Mexico in the last 24 hours. We did have a huge surge in August, but the numbers have dropped sharply since then. In the U.S., the numbers are disproportionately high, considering the ratio of 2.55 Americans to Mexicans.
Of course, there are ongoing fluctuations in the number of cases, so this is only a snapshot. If Mexico had proportionately the same number of new cases as the U.S. today, it would be 34,458, not 6,320. We have to allow for the fact that numbers are no doubt underreported in Mexico.
It was surging here in August, alarmingly so. However, I'm not seeing any surges in Mexico currently. There are only 94 new cases in all of the large state of Michoacan today.
Now let's compare the number of deaths in both countries since the pandemic started. In the U.S., it is reported as 715,179 on the WHO website. On the CDC website, the number is 720,228. So some variance there.
In Mexico on the WHO site, 283,193 deaths are reported. If you multiply this number by 2.55 (remember that’s the ratio of Americans to Mexicans), it would be 722,142, quite similar to the number in the U.S. who have died. So the Covid pandemic has hit Mexico equally hard, but it isn't worse here.
Here’s a good article on the pandemic in California.
The state of California is far more populous than the Mexican state of Michoacan, 39.51 million to 4.749 million, or a ratio of 8.32 Californians to Mochas.
California has 6,188 new cases today. Michoacan has 194 new cases today. If you account for the variation in population and multiply 194 by 8.32, you get about 1,614 cases. So I'd say that Covid is far worse in California right now than in Michoacan, the state where I live.
Of course, that could all change tomorrow. Everything is relative, though. Enough stats for me for a long time to come.