While with its small population and geographical island isolation, containing the virus was relatively easy for New Zealand compared with large population countries, the American figures certainly provide food for thought. On a pro-rata population basis New Zealand would have almost 4,000 deaths instead of 25.
There’s no doubt the abomination in the White House has been a factor with his initial dismissing of this plague as a matter of concern. Nevertheless in fairness, the American figures when compared with Britain, France, Italy and Spain are not as extraordinary as at first sight.
Why? Because those four advanced countries’ fatalities from the virus, on a population basis, are virtually identical to America’s, indeed Spain’s and Britain’s are higher.
The fact is there are massive discrepancies between countries for reasons which can only be speculated about.
At the outset, say six months back it was assumed Africa, Indian and Pakistan for example, would for poverty reasons see their populations decimated. In fact by comparison with western nations they’ve got off relatively lightly.
Not so Latin America, most countries reporting death figures in line with the prosperous western nations.
Then there’s Laos, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and some other Oriental nations with relatively miniscule death figures when compared with America etc. South Korea was in that category a week back but is now suddenly experiencing an enormous surge.
In short, at present there’s no clear patterns in the contagion or death tolls to explain the discrepancies between nations.
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So, it’s Trump’s fault that the US casualty figures are in line with other Western nations? Since global warming and racism are also his fault I guess that makes sense.
Ironically it is cities and States run by Democrats who were Covid scoffers in February and March, that contribute virtually all the excess mortality “from Covid” in “US aggregate” data. If you take out New York and consider it separately, it is the worst in the world, and “the rest of the USA” falls to about 30th place, from the “US aggregate” position of around 7th.
These Democrat Covid scoffers were screaming at Trump for “waaaacism” when he closed the borders several weeks before our St Jacinda did.
Oh, and New York infamously dumped dying Covid patients into rest homes, promptly killing everyone else there. How progressive voters can re-elect these people and still lie straight in bed, is beyond me.
But in all fairness, as per my long comment below, New York was going to be bad anyway because of shit weather when Covid arrived, and famous levels of crowding and “vibrant urbanism”.
Because people vote for personality. If they like you, they listen to you and hear your line – and only your line. If they don’t like you, your “truths” are non existent to them. Politics is a personality competition to a massive degree…this is why Jacinda lets Maori have and do whatever they want, if they protest an scream: She simply cannot be seen to be beating up on Maori, no matter the facts. Her image can’t take that hit.
The countries of SEA have little obesity. USA and Italy and Spain have much obesity. Also, SEA countries work as a community, as did NZ, to control virus spread. These are important factors I think.
China has largely controlled the virus, despite its size, although many local outbreaks and local quarantine. As always, the mere mention of China will no doubt bring out the racist conspiracy people who unfortunately are too common in the comments section.
Can you elaborate on the “racist conspiracy people” Fang.
I’ve got some serious concerns regarding the the fascist Chinese regime, is that the sort of thing you’re alluding to.
Thanks.
Holding people, or nations, to account should never, in itself, be considered racist. Complaints of alleged racism (and I can’t see any here) are often used to shut down valid criticism.
Any mention in the past by myself regarding China has led to ridiculous conspiracy theories, theories totally proven false and sometimes (not always), race based.
Would the virus spread have been different had it originated in, say, the USA? I think not. In fact, probably much worse, as the USA lacks the community cohesion to handle community wide threats.
Mistakes happen, and unfortunately the China government can never publicly admit a mistake, as it must, for its survival, always show its power.
Bluey, to clarify, you are right. I am so often embarrassed by Chinese in NZ who when they are caught doing wrong shout ‘racist’.
My point is that, as bad as the China government is, it is still not the evil that so many in the west think, and many Kiwi are very uninformed as to just what China now is and how it now operates.
Plenty of non Chinese people are very well informed about the crime syndicate that is the CCP. It is not ‘racist’ to criticize the CCP, and to paint is as ‘racist’ is pretty low – albeit predictable. . . The CCP themselves continuously pull the ‘racism’ card to distract critics abroad and cultivate xenophobia at home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac&t=1987s is an analysis of C19 data. It’s a really good place to start if you want to clear away governmental and media trash and focus on data instead. It’s worth a look.
Excess deaths will tell the tale by December 31st. And in the case of Sweden they already have:
The key takeaway here is that if you had never seen or read anything but these numbers you would have no idea that there had ever been a disease epidemic called Covid-19 in Sweden in 2020.
why then has the King of Sweden stated that the Swedish response to COVID has been a failure?
I suspect that most of the 4,000 lives “saved” by Ms Ardern actually died during the year in any case, from their co-morbidities…
Still, this is no reason why the NZ media can’t produce a blockbuster movie called “Ardern’s List”, where our beloved princess single-handedly saves the multitudes.
I suspect that casting beautiful people in their twenties and thirties to play the saved ones might score better ratings that showing people in their mid-nineties with co-morbidities like dementia being saved.
This slight amendment in age profile could just be described as artists prerogative?
Look Bob, we had 2,100 cases that are known. Add one or two zeroes to that number for the unknown cases.
Covid-19 is not the “Spanish flu” as proven by our own [presumably non-corrupted] figures, but only the flu. If Covid-19 was so bad then our death rate would be in the hundreds from 2,100 cases. Instead it got people who died primarily of a terribly weak body (ANYTHING can kill those who are frail enough).
We’ve yet to add up the death toll from Covid-19 induced stresses. Trump was the first political leader to state what needed to said: “We must make sure the cure is not worse than the disease itself”. He towers above our own prime minister because he makes officialdom answer to itself. Jacinda, well intentioned I’m sure, just does what “the big people” tell her to do.
Newspapers don’t sell that well in Africa, and the rest you can work out from here.
Essentially all of the difference between western and 3rd world death tolls is down to shape of their demographic pyramids.
Most of third world has low average age – Africa is just 18, 13 years lower than any other continent, and only 3% over 65. Teenagers and children have nearly zero fatalities. Compare to Italy or Germany with average age of 45 and >20% over 65. Your chance of dying of covid is equivalent to about 4months of your normal risk of death, and that risk goes up about 10x with every 20 years of age.
It does look like there are “no clear patterns” in the outcomes, everyone is seeing what they want to according to what their politics is. I say it is obvious that the randomness can be made sense of if you realize that the WHO is wrong about how this virus spreads; it spreads mostly in superspreading events via aerosols indoors. It does NOT spread nicely and predictably according to the rate of “R” from one person having contact with one other person. It depends on the dose of aerosols breathed in by the victim; which is dependent on fresh air per person; HVAC system settings; duration people are present; and how vocal people are getting.
Rest homes are bad not just because vulnerable people live there, but because they are stuffy and unventilated to prevent chills and colds, and aerosols build up indefinitely and people are there 24/7.
The reason there are disparate outcomes from region to region, is climate and weather; more fresh air is enjoyed in mild climates and weather, including the circulation of it indoors. It is obvious nonsense that it spreads by contact, or it would have gone everywhere uniformly before the world became alert. If people can take infection by contact, thousands of miles away by air travel, then the even greater numbers of people travelling within their own country by plane, train, bus and car would have taken it everywhere. All of China, all of Italy, etc.
By the way, it obviously doesn’t spread on airliners themselves, and the explanation is very high rates of fresh air introduced and stale air expelled in flight.