Two months ago, I looked at the per capita COVID-19 death rates around America and the globe, and what we might learn from them. Let’s revisit what has happened between May 21 and July 20. You may be surprised by what the data show.

While there are no foolproof forms of data due to a variety of issues with standards for collecting and classifying information, deaths are the ultimate bottom line and less susceptible to the vagaries of testing regimes. Preventing deaths is the paramount goal of our health-care system. I’m using the same source here, the COVID-19 Dashboard from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Note that some of the reported deaths here may be people who died before May 21 but were only recorded later.

We start at the regional level. Here is what the world’s regions looked like in late May…