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South Korea, Germany and Taiwan have done well. Most other countries really mishandled it. Denial until the last minute with no preparedness even when neighbour

by azepoi 7y ago

South Korea, Germany and Taiwan have done well. Most other countries really mishandled it. Denial until the last minute with no preparedness even when neighbour countries were already in dire situations.

screye 7y ago
Must mention India in some sense too. Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved swiftly. It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But, even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi made good decisions.
- satya71 7y ago
  Na, they're reacting too late. Given India's size and lack of healthcare infrastructure, they should have shutdown international travel and tested exhaustively early on. They let it get out of control and now are imposing a haphazard shutdown. The shutdown is needed, but there are too many reports of poor people going hungry for days.
joe_the_user 7y ago
South Korea, Taiwan and ... uh, China have done relatively well. They each have the virus under relative control. I don't see Germany doing anything well except testing. IE, they haven't controlled infecting, which is increasing exponentially[1]. Germany originally had an ideal seeming death rate of only 0.2%. But that was a rather illusory achievement that could be explained by finding all the infection but not stopping them (they're at 0.6% now, a significant increase and this will naturally continue increasing). By Tomas Pueyo's important calculation, one death implies up to 800 infections (1% death rate plus three weeks of doubling from when the patient contradicted the disease)[2]. So if you did find all those infections, you can see a very low apparent death rate but you wouldn't have reduced the actual death rate or the infection rate and you'd still be hurdling towards the situation of having so many cases your health system is overwhelmed and your death rate shoots up. Angel Merkel said 30-70% of the country might catch the virus, which is pretty much poisonous "herd immunity" Koolaid that Boris Johnson spouted (now that fatalities have spiked in the UK, he's singing a different tune and I hope Merkel will also). [1] https://cv19info.live/germany/ https://cv19info.live/germany/ [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
- adventured 7y ago
  There's absolutely zero evidence to support that China did well. What are their real case and death numbers? We'll never know, because they've lied about everything from day one. They have been the exact opposite of transparent about anything. China only had ~82,000 cases, but Italy, Germany and Spain are all going to surpass that? Yeah right. Inflate China's numbers by 10x and you might be close. In late January / early February they magically changed which cases they were counting toward their official figures, intentionally excluding mild cases that tested positive. That's what produced the instant tapering you see in their case numbers from that date in time forward. It's also why their case growth graph looks so unique - bizarre - compared to everyone else that has had a bad outbreak.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > There's absolutely zero evidence to support that China did well. There's supply chain evidence that things are going back to normal on China side. They wouldn't be able to hide all these deaths that would happen if they just told the sick people to go back to work. Meanwhile, there's very little evidence that would suggest their numbers are lies. Sure, they weren't exactly forthcoming at the beginning - but then again, until few days ago, US government was lying even more than they did, and yet we don't assume this means today's numbers are bullshit (as opposed to being limited by still-lacking testing capability).

by azepoi 7y ago

screye 7y ago

Must mention India in some sense too. Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved swiftly. It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But, even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi made good decisions.

satya71 7y ago
Na, they're reacting too late. Given India's size and lack of healthcare infrastructure, they should have shutdown international travel and tested exhaustively early on. They let it get out of control and now are imposing a haphazard shutdown. The shutdown is needed, but there are too many reports of poor people going hungry for days.

joe_the_user 7y ago

South Korea, Taiwan and ... uh, China have done relatively well. They each have the virus under relative control. I don't see Germany doing anything well except testing. IE, they haven't controlled infecting, which is increasing exponentially[1]. Germany originally had an ideal seeming death rate of only 0.2%. But that was a rather illusory achievement that could be explained by finding all the infection but not stopping them (they're at 0.6% now, a significant increase and this will naturally continue increasing). By Tomas Pueyo's important calculation, one death implies up to 800 infections (1% death rate plus three weeks of doubling from when the patient contradicted the disease)[2]. So if you did find all those infections, you can see a very low apparent death rate but you wouldn't have reduced the actual death rate or the infection rate and you'd still be hurdling towards the situation of having so many cases your health system is overwhelmed and your death rate shoots up. Angel Merkel said 30-70% of the country might catch the virus, which is pretty much poisonous "herd immunity" Koolaid that Boris Johnson spouted (now that fatalities have spiked in the UK, he's singing a different tune and I hope Merkel will also). [1] https://cv19info.live/germany/ https://cv19info.live/germany/ [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...

adventured 7y ago
There's absolutely zero evidence to support that China did well. What are their real case and death numbers? We'll never know, because they've lied about everything from day one. They have been the exact opposite of transparent about anything. China only had ~82,000 cases, but Italy, Germany and Spain are all going to surpass that? Yeah right. Inflate China's numbers by 10x and you might be close. In late January / early February they magically changed which cases they were counting toward their official figures, intentionally excluding mild cases that tested positive. That's what produced the instant tapering you see in their case numbers from that date in time forward. It's also why their case growth graph looks so unique - bizarre - compared to everyone else that has had a bad outbreak.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > There's absolutely zero evidence to support that China did well. There's supply chain evidence that things are going back to normal on China side. They wouldn't be able to hide all these deaths that would happen if they just told the sick people to go back to work. Meanwhile, there's very little evidence that would suggest their numbers are lies. Sure, they weren't exactly forthcoming at the beginning - but then again, until few days ago, US government was lying even more than they did, and yet we don't assume this means today's numbers are bullshit (as opposed to being limited by still-lacking testing capability).