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Taiwan. 7 people have died. No major economic impact. Now exporting masks to other countries. No brushing aside deaths of the elderly and disabled as if those p
by claudeganon 6y ago
Taiwan. 7 people have died. No major economic impact. Now exporting masks to other countries. No brushing aside deaths of the elderly and disabled as if those people’s lives were nothing.
Their’s was demonstrably the best strategy and everyone else is just making excuses.
- simonh 6y agoTaiwan and Germany have the advantage that they have strong domestic medical testing industries. This allowed Germany to do 5x to 10x as many tests as France, Italy and Spain. In turn this enabled them to accurately map the spread of the disease and use targeted tactical lockdowns to eliminate outbreaks at the local level. Korea did the same. Without the same testing capacity, this strategy simply wasn’t available in most other countries. However now that testing capacity has ramped up, we should be able to employ more efficient lockdowns from now on. It’s still not a magic wand though, Germany’s economy has still suffered significantly even with a relatively efficient lockdown.
- claudeganon 6y agoOk, now do Vietnam. Also, the choice to offshore medical supply infrastructure was a deliberate one by many wealthy countries. That this was foolish and short-sighted is not any more of an excuse than anything else with their poor responses.
- hjnilsson 6y agoVietnam has a population 10 years younger than Taiwan / Sweden / Germany. This is a very significant factor when we are talking about Covid, and explains the very low mortality rate in Vietnam. But yes: Vietnam still did great, most likely thanks to very early intervention (as early as January).
- claudeganon 6y agoVietnam has low mortality because they stopped the spread of the disease early on. If they had allowed it to sweep over the country, like Sweden, this population age difference might have been a factor. Thankfully, it never came to that.
- roca 6y agoNow explain New Zealand. Lots of very different countries have beaten the virus in different ways. Apologists for the failed US response have to resort to special pleading: "it's not fair to compare the USA to South Korea ... or Taiwan ... or Germany ... or Australia ... or New Zealand ... or Japan ... or Vietnam ... or China ..." American exceptionalism at its least fine.
- simonh 6y agoOf course some countries have dramatically different demographics, geography and medical systems than others which can have a huge effect. As has been pointed out in a parallel thread Vietnam locked down all international travel very early, and demographically has a far younger population than most nations which has a huge effect on relative mortality rates. For New Zealand they have an extremely widely geographically dispersed population, which you can think of as built-in demographic social distancing. They also locked down early and there was strong popular support for the lockdown. It's really pretty ridiculous to expect radically different countries with completely different geography, demographics, medical systems and lockdown policies as though they're all assumed to be equivalent as a default. Specific local conditions can have a massive effect. But anyway I'm not even sure I understand what your point is Why do you think these countries outcomes were so radically different from, say, that in New York, or Lombardy? Or what's happening right now in Texas?
- hatefulmoron 6y ago> For New Zealand they have an extremely widely geographically dispersed population I don't know the answer, but is this actually true? Sure, the density as measured as a ratio between population and land mass indicates a dispersed population, but is the population not centered in a handful of cities? A quick search indicates that Auckland, a single city, contains a third of New Zealand's population.
- roca 6y agoThat's right. That's where I live. Auckland is not super dense, but then neither is LA and look at that now.