Read on Twitter
There are basically three buckets of countries when it comes to making COVID comparisons:
1) Asian + Island nations (Australia/NZ)
2) Western Europe
3) The U.S. https://twitter.com/ModeledBehavior/status/1313209835350093824
1) Asian + Island nations (Australia/NZ)
2) Western Europe
3) The U.S. https://twitter.com/ModeledBehavior/status/1313209835350093824
What happened in category #1 that made them so successful?
In Asia: Draconian measures (China) and VERY diligent test-and-trace when cases were <100.
In Australia/New Zealand: Islands where the virus developed late with ability to shut down imported cases.
In Asia: Draconian measures (China) and VERY diligent test-and-trace when cases were <100.
In Australia/New Zealand: Islands where the virus developed late with ability to shut down imported cases.
NO Western society has yet been able to replicate Asia's success stories. Cultural differences undoubtedly play a role here.
The only way not to have thousands of deaths was to do contact tracing on VERY early cases. Nowhere else did this.
The only way not to have thousands of deaths was to do contact tracing on VERY early cases. Nowhere else did this.
Now, to Western Europe. Differences in deaths between the U.S. and Europe aren't as big as you think. In fact, the U.S. is in the middle of the pack.
One (relative) success story is Germany. Most other population centers had it bad, and Europe's second wave may be picking up now
One (relative) success story is Germany. Most other population centers had it bad, and Europe's second wave may be picking up now
But, as we see here, even Germany looks bad compared to Asia + Australia/New Zealand.
These are two fundamentally different categories.
These are two fundamentally different categories.
If we want to say we failed compared to South Korea, fine. But so did virtually everywhere else, even Germany. But South Korea doesn't seem to be a model that's scalable, and the approach they followed seems to be off the table for now.
If you want to say we failed compared to Germany, also fine. It's a big, diverse Western society. But so too did the UK, Italy, France, and Spain. These are more direct analogues to Germany and also in the basket of countries some would consider more "enlightened" than the US.
There's a lot of cherry-picking involved when trying to make the case that the US is uniquely worse. When doing so, most people carefully hand-pick their countries, metrics, and timeframes.
Using the broadest and best metrics possible: deaths to even out testing differences and cumulative over the entire period to even out timing differences, the failures are many and success stories are few. And the failures include many with strict lockdowns.
