As of today, USA has 26 deaths per million, and Germany 17. There is a good chance that due to limited testing the USA infections are under reported.
When the testing in USA will ramp up, the absolute infection count will go up, and the relative death counts in both countries might look more similar.
First, I don’t think this is the best way to look at the data. Maybe one country got hit with a lot more initial exposure than the other. Based on the article posted Germany is testing a lot for quite a while, they had a working test even before Italy got hit. US is likely behind Germany, we have yet to see the worse. I mean the east side of Michigan is swamped, we have yet to get hit anywhere close to them on the west side.
Second, and this is what caught my interest, their ICU mortality looked better than others. If you are on a vent in the ICU, the reported mortality is somewhere in 50-80% range, quite bad.