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0 pointsumanwizard1y ago0 comments

Covid was spreading in many countries before the US. Off the top of my head I remember China, Korea, Italy and Spain.

And no country of significant size avoided it, regardless of whether they were led by Trump or not.

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tzs1y ago

I don't know if any of these would count as being significantly sized, but Japan, Australia, and South Korea handled it a lot better than the US [1] when it comes to deaths per 100k. Interestingly, Australia and South Korea did have more cases per 100k than the US[2].

[1] https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

[2] https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

rsynnott1y ago

The Australian cases would largely have been after the vaccine was available, I think (though Australia did screw up the rollout; they could’ve done better there) so you’d expect a lower death rate.

userbinator1y ago

Also worth looking at Denmark, France, Hungary, Romania, and the UK.

ars1y ago

So basically it's good to be an island?

rounce1y ago

An interesting thing to look at is the differences between European countries differing responses and how that worked out for them given many are connected via land borders.

userbinator1y ago

People strongly recommended closing the US borders in the early stages of the pandemic, but they were dismissed as racists.

cheaprentalyeti1y ago

I can show multiple videos up to the end of Feb 2020 where Anthony Fauci said this wasn’t something to be too worried about, it was going to probably remain under control…

hyeonwho41y ago

I went skiing in Korea during the next to last weekend of Feb 2020. Best skiing of my time there, because the mountain was already empty of people due to public concern. By that time we were already wearing N95 masks: I remember discovering it was very hard to talk with both a ski mask and an N95 on.

By mid Feb, Korea was already covertly acquiring mask materials and preparing a ramp up in testing. I believe we had working PCR tests in my local hospital by mid March, and mask rationing in April. This made me very skeptical of the competence of the US public health establishment.

Edit: Skiing was Feb 21 to 23, just before Daegu locked down. The Mask rationing started early March: https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=292662

zzzeek1y ago

The US pandemic response team that Trump fired included a significant presence working onsite in China

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-us-slashed-c...

blackeyeblitzar1y ago

I hit the paywall. But if this is about the same thing I’m thinking of, one reason to be careful about the work China’s CDC was doing (at times with visiting staff from the US) is they were one (among many) source of lab leaks of SARSv1:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7096887/

hedora1y ago

This was the US working in China, with the government’s permission. It was an international task force that was operated by the US govt.

Also, if look up biological weapons research papers from Wuhan, you’ll find that many were done in collaboration with the US, and with US funding.

o11c1y ago

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. No country avoided it entirely, but a lot of them managed to get rid of at least half the deaths (keep in mind that that's with still with individuals people being rebellious), sometimes more.

Excess mortality per capita is the useful number to look at, since it's immune to scaling problems and the "but diagnosis!" argument. Although it may include "too scared to go to the doctor", that can't be too much of a contribution since that contribution shouldn't spike so much. Let's look at some numbers, smearing the spikes:

* in 2020-2021, South Korea's and Japan's excess death rate hovers below 5%

* in 2020-2021, Canada's, France's, and Germany's excess death rate hovers around 10%

* in 2020-2021, the US's excess death rate hovers around 20%

* in 2020-2021, Spain and the UK have spikes so high (but narrow) that I'm not even going to try to average it out. I would guess they're somewhere near the US for 2020 but better in 2021.

* in 2022, South Korea finally had a bad spike, but averaged over the year it's still only maybe 20%.

* in 2022, in almost all countries it hovers around 10%, and the timing of the swings is very similar between countries

* in 2023, in all countries it hovers around 5%

Source: first chart of https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid ; I've done the calculus by eye with rounding since I don't want to look up billions of numbers to do the math the hard way.

(Frankly, Korea and Japan did even better than these numbers say, since their population is skewed elderly in the first place)

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tzs1y ago

[1] https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

[2] https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

rsynnott1y ago

userbinator1y ago

Also worth looking at Denmark, France, Hungary, Romania, and the UK.

ars1y ago

So basically it's good to be an island?

rounce1y ago

An interesting thing to look at is the differences between European countries differing responses and how that worked out for them given many are connected via land borders.

userbinator1y ago

People strongly recommended closing the US borders in the early stages of the pandemic, but they were dismissed as racists.

cheaprentalyeti1y ago

I can show multiple videos up to the end of Feb 2020 where Anthony Fauci said this wasn’t something to be too worried about, it was going to probably remain under control…

hyeonwho41y ago

Edit: Skiing was Feb 21 to 23, just before Daegu locked down. The Mask rationing started early March: https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=292662

zzzeek1y ago

The US pandemic response team that Trump fired included a significant presence working onsite in China

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-us-slashed-c...

blackeyeblitzar1y ago

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7096887/

hedora1y ago

This was the US working in China, with the government’s permission. It was an international task force that was operated by the US govt.

Also, if look up biological weapons research papers from Wuhan, you’ll find that many were done in collaboration with the US, and with US funding.

o11c1y ago

* in 2020-2021, South Korea's and Japan's excess death rate hovers below 5%

* in 2020-2021, Canada's, France's, and Germany's excess death rate hovers around 10%

* in 2020-2021, the US's excess death rate hovers around 20%

* in 2020-2021, Spain and the UK have spikes so high (but narrow) that I'm not even going to try to average it out. I would guess they're somewhere near the US for 2020 but better in 2021.

* in 2022, South Korea finally had a bad spike, but averaged over the year it's still only maybe 20%.

* in 2022, in almost all countries it hovers around 10%, and the timing of the swings is very similar between countries

* in 2023, in all countries it hovers around 5%

Source: first chart of https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid ; I've done the calculus by eye with rounding since I don't want to look up billions of numbers to do the math the hard way.

(Frankly, Korea and Japan did even better than these numbers say, since their population is skewed elderly in the first place)

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