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> Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included So this excludes New Zealand. I think that’s an important po

> Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included So this excludes New Zealand. I think that’s an important point, as due to strict lockdowns we’ve had at least six months with no restrictions on movement at all, except through the border. We’ve had three community outbreaks and each time lockdowns combined with contact tracing have stopped the spread. I’m no epidemiologist so have no clue if there’s other factors in play, but I appreciate having cafes and offices open.

rossdavidh 6y ago
Lots of New Zealand's neighbors are orders of magnitude less than Europe and the Americas, also, so it's not clear what to make of that. However, I think the rationale for using only countries with > 100 deaths would be that it's not looking at how to prevent things from starting, but rather what strategies are effective once they've already gotten seriously going (which was already the situation for many countries a year ago).
- sitharus 6y ago
  New Zealand did have serious local spread last March, our R value was over 2. We’ve never been able to completely prevent Covid-19 outbreaks.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  It also excludes Vietnam, a country with 100M bordering China, with the first evidence of community spread outside of China, which has experienced a total of 35 deaths so far in the pandemic. They also credit their success to effective lockdowns and contact tracing (tracing up to 3 degrees of connection, so typically putting more than 100 people in isolation for every case identified). Edit: fixed geographical mistake :).
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    FWIW, by all accounts (I have family there), COVID is endemic in Viet Nam but simply isn't reported. Lots of elderly people were seriously ill with unusual "pneumonia" but the government doesn't test them. The sick people with likely COVID were being turned away from the hospitals, so many traveled to their family homes in the countryside. COVID doesn't exist because they refuse to measure it. Which is about what you'd expect there.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      I don't have any family or other contacts there personally, but everything I've read about it completely contradicts what you are saying. The WHO and UN and foreign media organizations have had nothing but praise for their COVID-19 response, except for accusations of human rights violations in other areas. So I don't think your "by all accounts" comment is justifiable in any way. Here is an excerpt from a WHO report [0]: > Early activation of a strong response system, including surveillance and risk assessment, laboratory, clinical management and IPC, and risk communication, which enabled Viet Nam’s successful control of COVID-19. Here is the UN summary [1]: > Viet Nam’s response to the health system aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most effective in the world and this is now increasingly recognized at the global policy level. The country has now controlled the virus and pandemic multiple times including the recent outbreaks which started in Da Nang on July 25, 2020 after the country had achieved 99 clear days of freedom from local transmission of the COVID-19 virus Here is Reuters reporting about this [2]: > “It is organised, it can make country-wide policy decisions that get enacted quickly and efficiently and without too much controversy,” said Guy Thwaites, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City. Thwaites’s laboratory has been helping to process tests. > Thwaites said the number of positive tests processed by his organisation’s lab was in line with government data. He said the hospital where he works on the wards – Ho Chi Minh City’s 550-bed Hospital for Tropical Diseases, serving a population of 45 million people in southern Vietnam – had not admitted any additional cases not reflected in the government’s numbers. Here is the BBC [3]: > Speckled among the praise showered on Vietnam for its handling of Covid-19 were some questions about the accuracy of the authoritarian state's data, which medical and diplomatic communities had widely agreed was reliable. > "The new deaths reported shows that there is transparency in reporting Covid-19 in Vietnam and that previous 'no deaths' should have not been questioned in the first place," Dr Huong Le Thu, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, tells the BBC. [0] file:///C:/Users/ionut/AppData/Local/Temp/Viet-Nam-MOH-WHO-COVID-19-Sitrep_(7Mar2021)_final.pdf [1] https://vietnam.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/UN%20Assessment%20on%20the%20Social%20and%20Ecnomic%20Impact%20of%20COVID-19%20in%20Viet%20Nam_merged.pdf https://vietnam.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/UN%20Asse... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vietnam-fight-insi/after-aggressive-mass-testing-vietnam-says-it-contains-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN22B34H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vietna... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53690711 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53690711
xeromal 6y ago
People always use New Zealand and Australia as a shining example, but as an average joe, my first though is that they're already isolated which gives them a tremendous advantage. I think the more valuable examples are in asian countries where they share close land borders. I'd assume that their cultural differences enable to comply with the rules a bit more than western countries so I don't know if it was even possible to prevent something like that in countries like the US. There's just too much resistance to control like that and the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police
- ghaff 6y ago
  >the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police In all fairness, the US could seal its borders pretty tightly if it wanted to. But the land borders were kept open for commercial purposes and we allowed passenger flights in and out. And there are lots of reasons why shutting all that down would have been politically and economically challenging. But we could have done so (which is not to say we should have).
  - xeromal 6y ago
    Yeah, I appreciate your comment and agree with you. They weighed the options and clearly though covid was easier to deal with than shut borders. For a time, I remember being reported or downvoted for even suggesting the economic impacts of a true, complete shutdown. I still don't know what the better strategy was.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Especially with Canada, shutting the border would have been untenable in all probability, perhaps to the degree of creating real food issues. Certainly the two countries are very intertwined economically. Air travel could have been shutdown for a bit, at least other than to let Americans get back home. But no way it would ever have been sealed for months.
      - jdavis703 6y ago

rossdavidh 6y ago

Lots of New Zealand's neighbors are orders of magnitude less than Europe and the Americas, also, so it's not clear what to make of that. However, I think the rationale for using only countries with > 100 deaths would be that it's not looking at how to prevent things from starting, but rather what strategies are effective once they've already gotten seriously going (which was already the situation for many countries a year ago).

sitharus 6y ago
New Zealand did have serious local spread last March, our R value was over 2. We’ve never been able to completely prevent Covid-19 outbreaks.
tsimionescu 6y ago
It also excludes Vietnam, a country with 100M bordering China, with the first evidence of community spread outside of China, which has experienced a total of 35 deaths so far in the pandemic. They also credit their success to effective lockdowns and contact tracing (tracing up to 3 degrees of connection, so typically putting more than 100 people in isolation for every case identified). Edit: fixed geographical mistake :).
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  FWIW, by all accounts (I have family there), COVID is endemic in Viet Nam but simply isn't reported. Lots of elderly people were seriously ill with unusual "pneumonia" but the government doesn't test them. The sick people with likely COVID were being turned away from the hospitals, so many traveled to their family homes in the countryside. COVID doesn't exist because they refuse to measure it. Which is about what you'd expect there.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    I don't have any family or other contacts there personally, but everything I've read about it completely contradicts what you are saying. The WHO and UN and foreign media organizations have had nothing but praise for their COVID-19 response, except for accusations of human rights violations in other areas. So I don't think your "by all accounts" comment is justifiable in any way. Here is an excerpt from a WHO report [0]: > Early activation of a strong response system, including surveillance and risk assessment, laboratory, clinical management and IPC, and risk communication, which enabled Viet Nam’s successful control of COVID-19. Here is the UN summary [1]: > Viet Nam’s response to the health system aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most effective in the world and this is now increasingly recognized at the global policy level. The country has now controlled the virus and pandemic multiple times including the recent outbreaks which started in Da Nang on July 25, 2020 after the country had achieved 99 clear days of freedom from local transmission of the COVID-19 virus Here is Reuters reporting about this [2]: > “It is organised, it can make country-wide policy decisions that get enacted quickly and efficiently and without too much controversy,” said Guy Thwaites, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City. Thwaites’s laboratory has been helping to process tests. > Thwaites said the number of positive tests processed by his organisation’s lab was in line with government data. He said the hospital where he works on the wards – Ho Chi Minh City’s 550-bed Hospital for Tropical Diseases, serving a population of 45 million people in southern Vietnam – had not admitted any additional cases not reflected in the government’s numbers. Here is the BBC [3]: > Speckled among the praise showered on Vietnam for its handling of Covid-19 were some questions about the accuracy of the authoritarian state's data, which medical and diplomatic communities had widely agreed was reliable. > "The new deaths reported shows that there is transparency in reporting Covid-19 in Vietnam and that previous 'no deaths' should have not been questioned in the first place," Dr Huong Le Thu, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, tells the BBC. [0] file:///C:/Users/ionut/AppData/Local/Temp/Viet-Nam-MOH-WHO-COVID-19-Sitrep_(7Mar2021)_final.pdf [1] https://vietnam.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/UN%20Assessment%20on%20the%20Social%20and%20Ecnomic%20Impact%20of%20COVID-19%20in%20Viet%20Nam_merged.pdf https://vietnam.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/UN%20Asse... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vietnam-fight-insi/after-aggressive-mass-testing-vietnam-says-it-contains-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN22B34H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vietna... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53690711 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53690711

xeromal 6y ago

People always use New Zealand and Australia as a shining example, but as an average joe, my first though is that they're already isolated which gives them a tremendous advantage. I think the more valuable examples are in asian countries where they share close land borders. I'd assume that their cultural differences enable to comply with the rules a bit more than western countries so I don't know if it was even possible to prevent something like that in countries like the US. There's just too much resistance to control like that and the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police

ghaff 6y ago
>the amount of land border that'd we'd have to police In all fairness, the US could seal its borders pretty tightly if it wanted to. But the land borders were kept open for commercial purposes and we allowed passenger flights in and out. And there are lots of reasons why shutting all that down would have been politically and economically challenging. But we could have done so (which is not to say we should have).
- xeromal 6y ago
  Yeah, I appreciate your comment and agree with you. They weighed the options and clearly though covid was easier to deal with than shut borders. For a time, I remember being reported or downvoted for even suggesting the economic impacts of a true, complete shutdown. I still don't know what the better strategy was.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Especially with Canada, shutting the border would have been untenable in all probability, perhaps to the degree of creating real food issues. Certainly the two countries are very intertwined economically. Air travel could have been shutdown for a bit, at least other than to let Americans get back home. But no way it would ever have been sealed for months.
    - jdavis703 6y ago