After we realized that we had uncontrollable spread, we should have done what most epidemiologists were recommending: Use social distancing until we had it under control enough for contact tracing to work. Reopen when you have enough testing+tracing to control the spread.

I know that people dismiss South Korea's success because it is easier to control importation of the virus when you are a small country (that is almost an island, given the negligible movement between S. and N. Korea). But that ignores the fact that they had over 10K cases very early (early March or Feb). If you have 10K cases in your country, you can't control it by being lucky and being isolated. Quarantining travelers, Isolating suspected cases and vigorous contact tracing worked. Currently they are around 7 deaths per million, while we are at 616 deaths/million. That is a huge difference.

That is what Spain and the UK did and they are either in worse shape than us or in the same place. Im not convinced the results would have been any different with a hard national lockdown. Spain's situation makes me think its wishful thinking and there are other factors involved.

amercer said:

---

I think they've definitely handled it better, but it's not really about the numbers. Europeans have a lot more trust in their scientific and political leadership than we do here. So they can do things like wear masks AND open schools, without too much protest (an interesting counterpoint to that is the large anti vax movement in Germany which I had no idea existed)

I would like to know why some of the smaller northern counties had such high per capita death rates though.

---

You'd be wrong on all points, and also are ignoring in this analysis the different temperate/climate zones in both Europe and the US (as shown in flu/coronavirus cases over a period of years).

If anything, their confidence in their political leadership has led to more deaths, if you follow the actual science to it's logical endpoints. Masks have no impact on the virus, and lockdowns very little. The side effects are manifest, as the link (video) I provided in the previous post showed.

I'd like to see one scientific study showing masks/lockdowns have impacted excess deaths in a given region, before engaging in serious debate further. I've seen no such data, despite the sometimes sanctimonious claims many have made and fervently believe.

nm

AggieMD95 said:

---

By this logic the health systems in Africa have scoreboard on everybody

---

By what logic?

Yes, Africa has done great; generally younger populations, largely on HcQ.

SirLurksALot said:

---

nortex97 said:

---

AggieMD95 said:

---

By this logic the health systems in Africa have scoreboard on everybody

---

By what logic?

Yes, Africa has done great; generally younger populations, largely on HcQ.

---

They also have very limited testing. Hard to know how widespread the virus is if you don't test for it.

---

Agreed, which is why I don't consider them particularly interesting from a statistical perspective. The data is basically poor.

The data analysis we are afforded in mass media is perhaps even worse, though.

how can you compare reported numbers when every country has a different standard on what is a covid death and what is not.

If we're going to mandate things and take away personal freedoms, we need to forget about the masks. We need to mandate a few laps and take away the right to choose french fries.

Interesting that in every category the population for Class Three Obesity was greater than Class Two

nortex97 said:

---

To the OP this coronavirus is not actually unusual and we're not doing better/worse than Europe (well, NY and NJ did much worse the first few months, but that's politics related).

Here again is some real analysis instead of message board grandstanding; the bottom line is neither Europe, nor the US, should be treated the same/studied as identical in susceptibility/patterns to upper resp. viruses like the flu or covid/wuhan.



Shutting down or mandating masks is irrelevant, and there's no science showing either have/should have any impact. It's all theater.

---

This is the best summary I have seen of the data!

Do you mind posting the source link to this chart? I would like to share it with a few people.

I think this is it.


https://ehrn.org/obesity-and-covid-19-severity/

Breaking news - there have been no new cases of COVID-19 in the Australian Capital Territory for over 12 weeks. Life is pretty much back to normal now... without travelling though.

Ivor Cummins got some pushback, as one would logically expect. Here he responds to some of this;

More good discussion from Ivor (this was based on a radio interview):