Poorer Eastern European Nations Could Teach the West a Lesson on #Coronavirus: In Eastern and Central Europe, infections have largely been kept under control and governments are starting to loosen lockdowns. With @drewhinshaw via @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779
By Sunday, Spain had lost 350 people per 1m of its population to #COVID19 , Italy 322, Belgium 314, France 202, and Britain 145. Romania, in contrast, had lost 15 per million, the Czech Republic 12, Poland 5, & Slovakia 0.4 @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st3562d64c4c454b14870f858e0f26bbc9
As the west dithered, poorer countries of Central and Eastern Europe, fearing their relatively weak health care systems would be overwhelmed by the virus, moved more quickly to enact strict social-distancing rules and restrict movement to contain outbreaks https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st3562d64c4c454b14870f858e0f26bbc9
Germans celebrated Carnival, Italians flocked to soccer games, Britons packed concert stadiums. U.S. spring breakers partied & filled Gulf-Coast beaches well into March. Those events later proved to have had a super-spreader effect, disseminating the virus https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st3562d64c4c454b14870f858e0f26bbc9
He invoked The Plague by Albert Camus as an allegory for how the Western world was caught off guard by the #coronavirus pandemic. “It turned out that faith in your own progress would not protect you from a new disease,” @SlawomirDebski said. @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
North Macedonia now operates a generational curfew, under which people over 67 have had their free public transport pass revoked and aren’t allowed to leave their homes after midday. @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
As Prague went into lockdown, U.K. PM Johnson told Brits they could continue attending mass sporting events. Two days earlier President Trump said, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
NY Gov. Cuomo boasted on March 2 that his city had the world’s best health care system “We don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.” NY didn’t issue stay-at-home orders until March 20, when 15,000 had been confirmed infected https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
“In the West, people believe that high-tech societies with very good health care could deal with anything, and that created an illusion that they would have the time and tools to fight a sudden pandemic,” said @SlawomirDebski https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
For weaker ex-communist Europe, a situation “where the state can be left unable to manage a situation is not stuff for novelists,” he said. “It is ingrained in living memory.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/poorer-eastern-european-nations-could-teach-the-west-a-lesson-on-coronavirus-11586718779?shareToken=st79a117fdb6cb411794f57a326f1598fe
Greece Shows How to Handle the Crisis. Basically countries with memory of hardship, crisis, epidemic were much quicker than others. Including Taiwan, S.Korea, Israel, Finland https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-10/greece-handled-coronavirus-crisis-better-than-italy-and-spain
#Coronavirus: Fauci says US 'could have saved lives' with earlier action https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52264860