Looking at a map from bing.com/covid and it is baffling me how there are so many less cases through Russia, and India. These huge countries have fewer reported cases than the state of Louisianna. Climate, location, urbanization all make me think there should be more cases there. Anyone have an answer to this? Is this just a lack of testing? Or have those countries done something to help stop the infiltration of the virus?

Russia is definitely experiencing hundreds if not thousands of cases. They just probably don't have the testing capabilities and the land mass is too large to account for every corner of that gargantuan country.

And India's already got a bottom-heavy demographic pyramid, so their total incidence rate (NOT stratified by age) will seem much lower and maybe not so much worse than flu.

To me Russia is a bit like China. Their numbers are highly suspect. I expect China's reported numbers are off by a factor of 10. Partially due to actual underreporting by the government, and partially due to incorrect diagnosis or not testing positive.

I think Russia is in a similar circumstance. Except unlike China who is testing a ton of people, I don't know that Russia has the capability.

My guess is there are thousands of cases in India.

I was shocked to learn today, that Russia's population is only 144 million.

By comparison, Japan has 128 million.

Parody (sort of) Twitter account, "Russia Denies", but you get the point:

I'm surprised we aren't seeing more cases in Africa. They have a very young median population so it may be that they are less severe cases and just seem like the flu.

agsalaska said:

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My guess is there are thousands of cases in India.

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India has a large poor population in crowded area. There is no way they don't have a lot of cases.

jenn96 said:

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I'm surprised we aren't seeing more cases in Africa. They have a very young median population so it may be that they are less severe cases and just seem like the flu.

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It will help much of Africa that they aren't as connected to the rest of the world. Not as many people travel to China and other affected places... Also, I doubt they have the resources there to do much testing.

AustinAg2K said:

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jenn96 said:

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I'm surprised we aren't seeing more cases in Africa. They have a very young median population so it may be that they are less severe cases and just seem like the flu.

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It will help much of Africa that they aren't as connected to the rest of the world. Not as many people travel to China and other affected places... Also, I doubt they have the resources there to do much testing.

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A lot of Chinese work in Africa these days. The virus is there, but they don't have the capability to test for in it most parts of Africa.

AgGrad99 said:

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I was shocked to learn today, that Russia's population is only 144 million.

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And they're not growing. They're fighting to maintain.

Anyways, Russia's economy has been hanging by a thread even since the collapse of the USSR. Moscow's authoritarians are often worse than China when it comes to economic transparency.

Maybe Russia somehow has avoided the worst. But they're not going to be open about something that could push their economy over the edge.