RFK Jr. Said the US Had the World's Highest COVID Death Rate. It Wasn't Even Close.

Using Johns Hopkins University mortality tracking data through March 2023, PolitiFact found Peru had the highest per-capita COVID-19 death rate in the world at 665.84 deaths per 100,000 people — nearly double the U.S. rate of 341.11 deaths per 100,000, which ranks 14th globally ^[1][3]. Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania also posted higher per-capita rates than the United States ^[1].

By case-fatality ratio the gap is even starker: Peru's was 4.9% against the 1.1% case-fatality ratio in the U.S. ^[1]. Analysis drawing on Our World in Data and Brown University's Pandemic Center likewise found that by excess-mortality measures, countries including Russia, Mexico, and Brazil also exceeded U.S. figures ^[3].

The U.S. does lead in one measure — raw total deaths, at over 1.1 million, more than any other single country ^[1][3]. That is the only sense in which Kennedy's claim has any basis, and it is not the measure he cited: he specifically said "death rate," a per-capita concept, not total count.

FALSE. No standard method of measuring COVID-19 mortality — per capita, case-fatality ratio, or excess mortality — supports Kennedy's claim that the U.S. had the world's highest death rate. Only by raw total death count, a different statistic he didn't cite, does the U.S. lead ^[1][3].