Of all the frustrating, unhelpful reporting that’s happened during the current health scare, most maddening is the constantly repeated statistic about the United States having more deaths than any other country. Yes — the U.S. is also much larger than any of the other countries giving us an honest or accurate count.

Comparing total numbers between countries is useless. That's like pointing out in horror that the U.S. has 100 times more toilets than Ireland, and wondering why Americans have to use the restroom so much.

Why shouldn’t we have more toilets? And, for that matter, more deaths? We have far more people than any major European country — 5 times as many as Britain and 7 times as many as Spain.

Right now, according to numbers kept by the New York Times, the U.S. has had about 42,500 coronavirus patients die. Italy has the second most at 25,000. That would be frightening if not for the fact that the U.S. population is more than 5 times the size of Italy’s.

When looking at deaths caused by the virus, population has to be taken into account. When you account for the population size, the U.S. is doing far better than many other developed Western nations.

The New York Times chart looks at deaths per 100,000 people in each country. For the U.S., it’s 13 deaths. In Italy, it’s a staggering 42. France's 21,300 translates to 32 deaths per 100,000 people. Spain has 22,000 deaths, or 47 for every 100,000.

The death rate in the U.S. is well below those three countries, and below those of Belgium, (55 per 100,000) the United Kingdom (27), the Netherlands (24), Sweden (19), Ireland (16), and Switzerland (15).

Given that New York and New Jersey have much higher, European-like death rates, population density is probably a major culprit in spreading the disease and increasing the number of deaths. But it's also worth looking at the rates of death among those confirmed to have COVID-19.

These numbers are less reliable than population and number of deaths — the rates might decrease as testing ramps up and finds the virus in more people who lack symptoms. But for now, it is evident that the U.S. healthcare system, even in hard-hit New York City, has not been overwhelmed in the way other countries have. It makes sense, then, that a much smaller share of our COVID patients should be dying than those in other countries. In the U.S., the death rate among confirmed cases is less than 6% — compare that to Italy (13%), France (13%), the U.K. (14%), Belgium (15%), Sweden (12%), and Spain (10%).

Even in hard-hit New York State, 8% of confirmed coronavirus patients are dying. So, in addition to living in less dense environments, we also seem to be keeping a lot more of our patients alive.

Among the countries that have endured high infection rates, all things considered, the U.S. is one of the safest places to be.