Most coronavirus mortality tables don't take the vast differences in age structures across countries into account. Yet it's been widely known that mortality rates differ drastically across the age groups. Therefore a given mortality rate can have different implications, depending on the age structure of a country. Given equal death rates, a country with a younger population may have had a far greater spread of the virus or a lower efficiency of the counter-measures, than an older one.

At the same time, covid mortality rates have been widely perceived as indicators of countries' anti-covid policy efficiency. In reality there are numerous other factors, ranging from genetics to how internationally connected a country is. It's therefore impossible to assess policies through a single mortality indicator.

However, age structures are available for all the countries and are easy to account for. The age-structure-adjusted mortality indicator (ASAMI) I came up with essentially recalibrates each country's covid mortality so that we get an idea of how big its mortality might have been, had its age structure been the same as the USA's. For instance, Paraguay's deaths per million rank is 28th in the world, but taking the relative youth of its population into account, that number corresponds to the 4th place.

From the policy perspective, even assuming we could find the precise effects of various policies, death rate isn't the only parameter to consider. Let's say, slightly reducing covid mortality at the expense of sharply reducing personal freedom and wealth isn't justified per se. The ASAMI however does provide a better idea of how the outcomes in terms of covid deaths compare accross countries, even though insufficient to judge the policies.