11 ms·

Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?

30 points by irtefa 6y ago

snicksnak 6y ago
I hate to say this but after reading the whole article I feel I like I wasted my time. The article is way too long and reads more like a novel than an informative piece. Unfortunately, the article does not contain any new or interesting revelations or insights, nor does it go into more depth on individual aspects that its title might promise. Its conclusion can probably summarized as "We don't really know yet, probably population, health standards and living conditions, government policy and communication, maybe T-Cells, definitely poor data".
- onorton 6y ago
  > The article is way too long and reads more like a novel than an informative piece That is what is expected from the New Yorker
  - snicksnak 6y ago
    I know that's the New Yorker's style, it's just not my cup of tee. My comment is completely subjective and my personal opinion, I only read it because I thought the title was interesting and I expected the question to be addressed with some new insights.
    - ralfd 6y ago
      I read your comment first and then checked if the submission was from the NewYorker.com domain ...
- arkitaip 6y ago
  You can't really expect anything more insightful at this time, especially from a pop science article. It will likely take years, if not decades, before we truly understand covid-19 in-depth.
  - taeric 6y ago
    It would be nice to see an enumeration of the currently running hypothesises.
- captain_price7 6y ago
  > the article does not contain any new or interesting revelations or insights, I don't know what exactly you mean by "new", but remember it's not published in a scientific journal. It isn't supposed to contain anything fully original. For us common folk- I think there were lots of new & interesting stuff there.
- mynegation 6y ago
  One takeaway for me was the possible importance of how prevalent is the congregate senior living in rich countries. Although it seems to me the most probable is still plain old gaps in testing and reporting.
- crmd 6y ago
  It’s a story that doesn’t go anywhere. I like the New Yorker but this writing isn’t up to their usual standards IMO.
- prof-dr-ir 6y ago
  I am really sorry but I think it is almost factually incorrect to say that the article does not contain new insights. Unfortunately I also cannot parse your sentence that "does it go into more depth on individual aspects that its title might promise" in a way that rhymes with what I just read - maybe you can elaborate? The article is about the ways scientists are attacking an intriguing scientific question with enormous societal importance. It certainly does not have the answer to the question in the title, and if you kept reading while expecting one then maybe you missed the phrase "the greatest conundrum of the pandemic" in the introduction? Altogether your comment, and the support it gets here, make me despair a bit for the popularization of science in general. Is such a well-written report on the scientific process itself dismissed so easily? Do we really only care about the answers?
etretr 6y ago
Although COVID isn't quite this, a virus that effectively kills off those in rich countries and leaves the poor mostly intact could be regarded as a global public good, an essential leveller to chip away the hegemony of wealthy nations. And wouldn't that just be a delightful end to the tyranny of modern imperialism?
- ehnto 6y ago
  Interesting outlook. When those poor nations become wealthy nations soon afterward, would you wish death upon them instead? Or will they somehow be absolved of the guilt that wealth seems to imply?
- macspoofing 6y ago
  I guess you'll be first in line to sacrifice your life to end 'modern imperialism'?
- jojobas 6y ago
  No it wouldn't. "The modern imperialism" made kings of mere 200 years ago look poor in comparison with today's tradesmen in many respects such as transport, healthcare, heating and many more. Hundreds became billionaires, billions got out of mud huts. Somewhat tangent, a virus killing even 20% of the West (and spare the rest) would spell unimaginable doom on said rest by second-order economic effects.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  How do you envision wealth being transferred between the newly less populous wealthy countries and the poorer countries? It seems like a more likely outcome of what you're discussing is a concentration of wealth into fewer hands in the wealthy countries.
kickling 6y ago
Would be interesting to see covid deaths per country in relationship to how many carry risk factors (age, obecity, etc.) in each country.
- simion314 6y ago
  I would also check if there is a correlation with mask usage, like you grab pictures from public places and count the mask wearing percentage, you could maybe(I could be wrong) the level of solidarity/cooperation (or insert your preferred term here ) and see if this variable correlates at all.
- adrianb 6y ago
  And don't forget that countries have different ways to count COVID deaths. In the UK it's everyone who dies of any cause within 28 days of a positive test. Some other countries only consider COVID deaths if the patients had pneumonia. And depending on the testing (availability, sensitivity) the death counts could be underestimated as well. It will be an interesting challenge to get compatible statistics from different countries.
  - pasabagi 6y ago
    > In the UK it's everyone who dies of any cause within 28 days of a positive test But not everyone who has 'coronavirus' on the death certificate... Just to be clear here, if excess death rates are to be believed, it's likely that the UK is under reporting deaths. PS: The "any cause" thing is also untrue, as far as I can see. Apparently, 88% of COVID patients who die do so within 28 days, so you can sort of guess at the undercounting going on here.
- adevx 6y ago
  Absolutely, I think that would help policymakers get a better grasp of what measures help best in reducing the scope of these outbreaks. It is well understood that age, hypertension (stress?) and obesity are major driving factors of covid-19 hospitalizations [0]. I would love to see governments spending as much money/resources on stimulating a healthy lifestyle as the do on vaccines and lockdowns. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm
Havoc 6y ago
It's got to be something demographic / socio economic. The fact that the one place in Africa that got hit hard also happens to be the most industrialized/westernized place can't be a coincidence. That leaves a lot of options though. Diet? Obesity? Social habits? Ability to travel internationally? Pollution of some sort? Plastics? Could be anything
- netsharc 6y ago
  Last year I read a theory that there was correlation between antibiotics in food and the death rate, the hardest hit areas of Italy and Spain make lots of preserved meats using a lot of antibiotics, meaning there's more of antibiotic-resistant bacterias (if their diet has a lot of antibiotics, it would follow that they're evolving the toughest bacterias), and that the super-bacterial (secondary) infection kill the people who've been weakened by the viruses. In Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-tar-koronaviruset-saa-mange-liv-i-italia-erik-martiniussen https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-... Without actually knowing the situation on the ground, I'd say there's less antibiotics in food production in India/there's more bacteria going around that Indian immune systems are better prepared to fight the bacterias or antibiotics work better to kill them. But well, it's another theory...
ethbr0 6y ago
(I am not an epidemiologist) (Edit: Please ignore below. Checked the latest literature and cross-reactive antibodies have not demonstrated correlation with either preventing infection or hospitalization. [0] [1] [0] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/does-prior-exposure-to-coronaviruses-protect-you https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/do... [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20227215v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20227215v... (pending publishing in Cell, but linked ArXiv for availability) ) Because pre-existing coronavirus antibodies have been proven cross-reactive to SARS-CoV-2. And different populations have different endemic coronaviruses circulating in them. This isn't some great mystery. This is a normal Tuesday for how human immune systems are supposed to work, as a species.
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  Also worth noting the extreme correlation of preexisting obesity epidemics and negative covid health outcomes. Obesity makes you 3 times more likely to be hospitalized for covid. When looking at the world map of obesity right next to the world map of covid mortality, the correlation/causation is startling. America and Europe have the most obese people and the worst covid health outcomes, Africa and Asia have the least obese people, and the best covid outcomes.
  - isolli 6y ago
    Vitamin D plays a role as well, I believe (or at least weather conditions, as demonstrated by the extreme seasonality of the pandemic).
- tiahura 6y ago
  And different populations have different endemic coronaviruses circulating in them. In this age of widespread global travel, is that true anymore?
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  >Checked the latest literature and cross-reactive antibodies have not demonstrated correlation with either preventing infection or hospitalization. [0] [1] The sample size of this study was only 251 people, apparently all from France, according to a comment on the study, though I could not confirm or deny that fact from searching through the source text. In order to rule out cross reactivity, we'd need a much larger study comparing samples across many regions.
akyu 6y ago
Occam's Razor, the data is bad, and bad in different ways between countries.
- macintux 6y ago
  They tackle that explicitly on multiple levels. “Probably not” is the best tl;dr.
  - akyu 6y ago
    We must have read different articles. Quoting... >With respect to the raw numbers, underreporting is an enormous problem; differences in age distribution, too, make a very deep cut, and perhaps the models must further calibrate their weightings here. They go on with the complex speculation about other causes, but obviously bad data is a huge driver of this anamoly. Bad data we can be sure of, the rest is speculative narrative.
    - macintux 6y ago
      The implication of your first comment was that the answer is straightforward. The article makes a strong case that bad data only closes the gap partially.
vfclists 6y ago
Pathogenic priming, immune "enhancement" brought about by too many flu vaccinations?
rossdavidh 6y ago
You know, this is not quite the issue I find interesting. More intriguing to me is, with the ratio of cases and deaths differing by orders of magnitude, even between countries of similar wealth levels, age demographics, etc., why has it not been the primary topic of conversation? Australia and New Zealand have covid-19 stats more similar to the rest of east Asia than they do to the U.K. or other (more genetically similar) European-descended nations. Why is this not the overwhelming focus of our research? If it's not genetics, and it's not wealth levels, then there's something environmental in Taiwan, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, etc. that is different than in France, U.S.A., Italy, etc. I mean their levels are more than an order of magnitude better. Why is this not our primary focus of discussion?
- bluedino 6y ago
  If you talk to Australians they attribute it to their lockdowns.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    Of course, that's only a temporary and very blunt band-aid. They still need to vaccinate pretty much everyone above the age of 20.
    - anotherevan 6y ago
      Agreed, but it has worked well for us until such a time as vaccines are available.
- NickM 6y ago
  I think there is not much discussion because the answer is clear, and also unpalatable: it comes down to political and cultural differences. We never successfully implemented the kind of strict lockdowns and other measures that worked to control the virus in other countries.
  - gpderetta 6y ago
npilk 6y ago
I'm surprised this article doesn't discuss obesity, as it's clearly correlated with worse COVID-19 outcomes [1]. America's high obesity rate (>40%) seems like a pretty plausible cause for increased deaths and hospitalizations from the pandemic. [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.051936 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....
captain_price7 6y ago
The bit I found most interesting: They found that the total number of “all cause” deaths reported between May and August almost doubled in India compared with the same period in each of the past five years. “Is that because the number of covid deaths in the country has been vastly underestimated?” I asked. “It’s impossible to have a decisive answer,” Shah told me. “But the pattern of the excess deaths doesn’t really shout out covid as the cause. It just doesn’t... The telltale signatures of covid just aren’t there,” he said. He won’t venture any hypotheses about the cause of the excess deaths. But among the possible candidates are indirect consequences of the pandemic: wage loss, displacement, malnourishment, forced migration, and disruptions in health care...
- jgalt212 6y ago
  don't tell the NY Times. They are eager to attribute any and all excess deaths to COVID. Otherwise, their strong support of the lockdowns would have no reasonable basis.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Poor countries don’t have half of their country suffering from obesity.
reasonattlm 6y ago
An entire article pondering regional differences in COVID-19 mortality and severity without saying anything about differing demographics of (a) aging and its comorbidities and (b) obesity and its comorbidities. SARS-CoV-2 is severe in old people and obese people, and very few outside that demographic. Wealthy nations have a much higher obesity rate than poorer nations. The US has ten times the number of obese individuals than India, three times as many as Nigeria. Wealthy nations have a larger proportion of the population in older age cohorts. The US has five times as many 65+ people as Nigeria. I have no idea why the media persistently chooses to avoid these points. The research community has been turning out review papers by the score to point out, very bluntly, that COVID-19 mortality falls near entirely on the old and the obese.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  Because media is in a business of building narrative, not reporting on facts.
- nl 6y ago
  A direct quote from the article that addresses that point: When his researchers analyzed the data by age, location, and gender, they found that excess deaths tended to be observed in younger cohorts, and in rural rather than in urban settings; nor was there evidence of the usual coronavirus skew toward greater lethality in men
pid_0 6y ago
I have noticed differing levels of mask compliance between population groups.
diego 6y ago
The explanation the article doesn't give: 1) The category "country" is useless for this comparison. Monaco, Taiwan, New Zealand and China are all countries. 2) Population clustering, movement, demographics and culture, public policy. Move those dials in random directions, add exponential contagion and luck.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Koiwai 6y ago
- China: lock the fuck down - The West: this is anti human! - China: the pandemic is gone - The West: they must be hiding the real numbers - The West: we should lockdown - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: we should lockdown - The West: China Virus! - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: we should lockdown - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: China Virus! ... - The West: why can't we control the pandemic

30 points by irtefa 6y ago

I hate to say this but after reading the whole article I feel I like I wasted my time. The article is way too long and reads more like a novel than an informative piece. Unfortunately, the article does not contain any new or interesting revelations or insights, nor does it go into more depth on individual aspects that its title might promise. Its conclusion can probably summarized as "We don't really know yet, probably population, health standards and living conditions, government policy and communication, maybe T-Cells, definitely poor data".

onorton 6y ago
> The article is way too long and reads more like a novel than an informative piece That is what is expected from the New Yorker
- snicksnak 6y ago
  I know that's the New Yorker's style, it's just not my cup of tee. My comment is completely subjective and my personal opinion, I only read it because I thought the title was interesting and I expected the question to be addressed with some new insights.
  - ralfd 6y ago
    I read your comment first and then checked if the submission was from the NewYorker.com domain ...
arkitaip 6y ago
You can't really expect anything more insightful at this time, especially from a pop science article. It will likely take years, if not decades, before we truly understand covid-19 in-depth.
- taeric 6y ago
  It would be nice to see an enumeration of the currently running hypothesises.
captain_price7 6y ago
> the article does not contain any new or interesting revelations or insights, I don't know what exactly you mean by "new", but remember it's not published in a scientific journal. It isn't supposed to contain anything fully original. For us common folk- I think there were lots of new & interesting stuff there.
mynegation 6y ago
One takeaway for me was the possible importance of how prevalent is the congregate senior living in rich countries. Although it seems to me the most probable is still plain old gaps in testing and reporting.
crmd 6y ago
It’s a story that doesn’t go anywhere. I like the New Yorker but this writing isn’t up to their usual standards IMO.
prof-dr-ir 6y ago
I am really sorry but I think it is almost factually incorrect to say that the article does not contain new insights. Unfortunately I also cannot parse your sentence that "does it go into more depth on individual aspects that its title might promise" in a way that rhymes with what I just read - maybe you can elaborate? The article is about the ways scientists are attacking an intriguing scientific question with enormous societal importance. It certainly does not have the answer to the question in the title, and if you kept reading while expecting one then maybe you missed the phrase "the greatest conundrum of the pandemic" in the introduction? Altogether your comment, and the support it gets here, make me despair a bit for the popularization of science in general. Is such a well-written report on the scientific process itself dismissed so easily? Do we really only care about the answers?

etretr 6y ago

Although COVID isn't quite this, a virus that effectively kills off those in rich countries and leaves the poor mostly intact could be regarded as a global public good, an essential leveller to chip away the hegemony of wealthy nations. And wouldn't that just be a delightful end to the tyranny of modern imperialism?

ehnto 6y ago
Interesting outlook. When those poor nations become wealthy nations soon afterward, would you wish death upon them instead? Or will they somehow be absolved of the guilt that wealth seems to imply?
macspoofing 6y ago
I guess you'll be first in line to sacrifice your life to end 'modern imperialism'?
jojobas 6y ago
No it wouldn't. "The modern imperialism" made kings of mere 200 years ago look poor in comparison with today's tradesmen in many respects such as transport, healthcare, heating and many more. Hundreds became billionaires, billions got out of mud huts. Somewhat tangent, a virus killing even 20% of the West (and spare the rest) would spell unimaginable doom on said rest by second-order economic effects.
mauvehaus 6y ago
How do you envision wealth being transferred between the newly less populous wealthy countries and the poorer countries? It seems like a more likely outcome of what you're discussing is a concentration of wealth into fewer hands in the wealthy countries.

kickling 6y ago

Would be interesting to see covid deaths per country in relationship to how many carry risk factors (age, obecity, etc.) in each country.

simion314 6y ago
I would also check if there is a correlation with mask usage, like you grab pictures from public places and count the mask wearing percentage, you could maybe(I could be wrong) the level of solidarity/cooperation (or insert your preferred term here ) and see if this variable correlates at all.
adrianb 6y ago
And don't forget that countries have different ways to count COVID deaths. In the UK it's everyone who dies of any cause within 28 days of a positive test. Some other countries only consider COVID deaths if the patients had pneumonia. And depending on the testing (availability, sensitivity) the death counts could be underestimated as well. It will be an interesting challenge to get compatible statistics from different countries.
- pasabagi 6y ago
  > In the UK it's everyone who dies of any cause within 28 days of a positive test But not everyone who has 'coronavirus' on the death certificate... Just to be clear here, if excess death rates are to be believed, it's likely that the UK is under reporting deaths. PS: The "any cause" thing is also untrue, as far as I can see. Apparently, 88% of COVID patients who die do so within 28 days, so you can sort of guess at the undercounting going on here.
adevx 6y ago
Absolutely, I think that would help policymakers get a better grasp of what measures help best in reducing the scope of these outbreaks. It is well understood that age, hypertension (stress?) and obesity are major driving factors of covid-19 hospitalizations [0]. I would love to see governments spending as much money/resources on stimulating a healthy lifestyle as the do on vaccines and lockdowns. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm

Havoc 6y ago

It's got to be something demographic / socio economic. The fact that the one place in Africa that got hit hard also happens to be the most industrialized/westernized place can't be a coincidence. That leaves a lot of options though. Diet? Obesity? Social habits? Ability to travel internationally? Pollution of some sort? Plastics? Could be anything

netsharc 6y ago
Last year I read a theory that there was correlation between antibiotics in food and the death rate, the hardest hit areas of Italy and Spain make lots of preserved meats using a lot of antibiotics, meaning there's more of antibiotic-resistant bacterias (if their diet has a lot of antibiotics, it would follow that they're evolving the toughest bacterias), and that the super-bacterial (secondary) infection kill the people who've been weakened by the viruses. In Norwegian: https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-tar-koronaviruset-saa-mange-liv-i-italia-erik-martiniussen https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikk/i/awEP27/derfor-... Without actually knowing the situation on the ground, I'd say there's less antibiotics in food production in India/there's more bacteria going around that Indian immune systems are better prepared to fight the bacterias or antibiotics work better to kill them. But well, it's another theory...

ethbr0 6y ago

(I am not an epidemiologist) (Edit: Please ignore below. Checked the latest literature and cross-reactive antibodies have not demonstrated correlation with either preventing infection or hospitalization. [0] [1] [0] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/does-prior-exposure-to-coronaviruses-protect-you https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/do... [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20227215v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20227215v... (pending publishing in Cell, but linked ArXiv for availability) ) Because pre-existing coronavirus antibodies have been proven cross-reactive to SARS-CoV-2. And different populations have different endemic coronaviruses circulating in them. This isn't some great mystery. This is a normal Tuesday for how human immune systems are supposed to work, as a species.

loveistheanswer 6y ago
Also worth noting the extreme correlation of preexisting obesity epidemics and negative covid health outcomes. Obesity makes you 3 times more likely to be hospitalized for covid. When looking at the world map of obesity right next to the world map of covid mortality, the correlation/causation is startling. America and Europe have the most obese people and the worst covid health outcomes, Africa and Asia have the least obese people, and the best covid outcomes.
- isolli 6y ago
  Vitamin D plays a role as well, I believe (or at least weather conditions, as demonstrated by the extreme seasonality of the pandemic).
tiahura 6y ago
And different populations have different endemic coronaviruses circulating in them. In this age of widespread global travel, is that true anymore?
loveistheanswer 6y ago
>Checked the latest literature and cross-reactive antibodies have not demonstrated correlation with either preventing infection or hospitalization. [0] [1] The sample size of this study was only 251 people, apparently all from France, according to a comment on the study, though I could not confirm or deny that fact from searching through the source text. In order to rule out cross reactivity, we'd need a much larger study comparing samples across many regions.

akyu 6y ago

Occam's Razor, the data is bad, and bad in different ways between countries.

macintux 6y ago
They tackle that explicitly on multiple levels. “Probably not” is the best tl;dr.
- akyu 6y ago
  We must have read different articles. Quoting... >With respect to the raw numbers, underreporting is an enormous problem; differences in age distribution, too, make a very deep cut, and perhaps the models must further calibrate their weightings here. They go on with the complex speculation about other causes, but obviously bad data is a huge driver of this anamoly. Bad data we can be sure of, the rest is speculative narrative.
  - macintux 6y ago
    The implication of your first comment was that the answer is straightforward. The article makes a strong case that bad data only closes the gap partially.

vfclists 6y ago

Pathogenic priming, immune "enhancement" brought about by too many flu vaccinations?

rossdavidh 6y ago

You know, this is not quite the issue I find interesting. More intriguing to me is, with the ratio of cases and deaths differing by orders of magnitude, even between countries of similar wealth levels, age demographics, etc., why has it not been the primary topic of conversation? Australia and New Zealand have covid-19 stats more similar to the rest of east Asia than they do to the U.K. or other (more genetically similar) European-descended nations. Why is this not the overwhelming focus of our research? If it's not genetics, and it's not wealth levels, then there's something environmental in Taiwan, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, etc. that is different than in France, U.S.A., Italy, etc. I mean their levels are more than an order of magnitude better. Why is this not our primary focus of discussion?

bluedino 6y ago
If you talk to Australians they attribute it to their lockdowns.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  Of course, that's only a temporary and very blunt band-aid. They still need to vaccinate pretty much everyone above the age of 20.
  - anotherevan 6y ago
    Agreed, but it has worked well for us until such a time as vaccines are available.
NickM 6y ago
I think there is not much discussion because the answer is clear, and also unpalatable: it comes down to political and cultural differences. We never successfully implemented the kind of strict lockdowns and other measures that worked to control the virus in other countries.
- gpderetta 6y ago

npilk 6y ago

I'm surprised this article doesn't discuss obesity, as it's clearly correlated with worse COVID-19 outcomes [1]. America's high obesity rate (>40%) seems like a pretty plausible cause for increased deaths and hospitalizations from the pandemic. [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.051936 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....

captain_price7 6y ago

The bit I found most interesting: They found that the total number of “all cause” deaths reported between May and August almost doubled in India compared with the same period in each of the past five years. “Is that because the number of covid deaths in the country has been vastly underestimated?” I asked. “It’s impossible to have a decisive answer,” Shah told me. “But the pattern of the excess deaths doesn’t really shout out covid as the cause. It just doesn’t... The telltale signatures of covid just aren’t there,” he said. He won’t venture any hypotheses about the cause of the excess deaths. But among the possible candidates are indirect consequences of the pandemic: wage loss, displacement, malnourishment, forced migration, and disruptions in health care...

jgalt212 6y ago
don't tell the NY Times. They are eager to attribute any and all excess deaths to COVID. Otherwise, their strong support of the lockdowns would have no reasonable basis.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Poor countries don’t have half of their country suffering from obesity.

reasonattlm 6y ago

An entire article pondering regional differences in COVID-19 mortality and severity without saying anything about differing demographics of (a) aging and its comorbidities and (b) obesity and its comorbidities. SARS-CoV-2 is severe in old people and obese people, and very few outside that demographic. Wealthy nations have a much higher obesity rate than poorer nations. The US has ten times the number of obese individuals than India, three times as many as Nigeria. Wealthy nations have a larger proportion of the population in older age cohorts. The US has five times as many 65+ people as Nigeria. I have no idea why the media persistently chooses to avoid these points. The research community has been turning out review papers by the score to point out, very bluntly, that COVID-19 mortality falls near entirely on the old and the obese.

xyzzyz 6y ago
Because media is in a business of building narrative, not reporting on facts.
nl 6y ago
A direct quote from the article that addresses that point: When his researchers analyzed the data by age, location, and gender, they found that excess deaths tended to be observed in younger cohorts, and in rural rather than in urban settings; nor was there evidence of the usual coronavirus skew toward greater lethality in men

pid_0 6y ago

I have noticed differing levels of mask compliance between population groups.

diego 6y ago

The explanation the article doesn't give: 1) The category "country" is useless for this comparison. Monaco, Taiwan, New Zealand and China are all countries. 2) Population clustering, movement, demographics and culture, public policy. Move those dials in random directions, add exponential contagion and luck.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Koiwai 6y ago

- China: lock the fuck down - The West: this is anti human! - China: the pandemic is gone - The West: they must be hiding the real numbers - The West: we should lockdown - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: we should lockdown - The West: China Virus! - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: we should lockdown - The West: we should not lockdown - The West: China Virus! ... - The West: why can't we control the pandemic