4 ms·
Whatever one thinks the optimal response to a pandemic should be, the fact that several nations of western Europe (e.g. France) with much different policies, ha
by rossdavidh 5y ago
Whatever one thinks the optimal response to a pandemic should be, the fact that several nations of western Europe (e.g. France) with much different policies, have per capita mortality the same or higher, suggests that the policies used were not a major determinant of the outcome.
If you plot per capita mortality for France and Sweden, they are almost identical, swapping places five times so far. Currently Sweden is slightly lower, but really they're about the same. France and Sweden have policies at the opposite ends of the spectrum. If the differences between those two countries are not enough to make a measurable difference in mortality, then none of the policies used in western countries are making a significant difference one way or the other.
- autoliteInline 5y agoExactly. There's a bunch of opportunities for understanding by looking at different political units, but it's all lost in the posturing.
- varelse 5y agoWhy not focus instead on countries that did get this under control then? Some of them are even western.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoYou mean island countries? South Korea is essentially an Island, since it has been completely shut off from NK for decades.
- thedrbrian 5y agoBecause it's going to be very hard to move France or Germany into the Pacific. Hell just moving them a few hundred miles into the Atlantic will be difficult .
- taeric 5y agoAre there good patterns here? Last I looked, it seemed more that there were nations that just hadn't been hit, yet. Especially as more of the heavy hit nations get it under control with vaccines, unless full isolation is the plan for the other nations, I'm not seeing an end game.
- varelse 5y agoPattern #1: Don't politicize the pandemic. Pattern #2: Enforce mask mandates Pattern #3: terminate public officials who won't enforce immediately I'd say something about vaccines as well but I don't want to trigger the engineer epidemiologist demographic they are very fragile. But, you know, Israel (not an island nation even).
- taeric 5y agoWhile I agree with those points, my understanding is that the evidence is actually rather thin right now. About the only pattern that has consistently played out, is nations getting cocky and then getting smashed. And this doesn't address the end game. Vaccines are about the only route that makes sense. The rest seems to be akin to thinking condoms alone could solve STDs. They definitely help. They aren't getting is to the end, though.
- varelse 5y agoCondoms bought time to come up with a treatment for HIV in the same way that masks bought time for us to arrive at vaccines, no?
- 8note 5y agoFrom a practical standpoint, different countries are really different both in culture and infrastructure. What worked in China was welding people into their houses, but that's not going to work of most people don't have metal doors
- varelse 5y agoI'm long past the point of believing anti-vaxxers who insist on loudly cosplaying this like it's the Holocaust should be welded into their homes if only because it's a lot cheaper than building camps for them to really enhance that cosplay they themselves opted into. And you don't even have to actually weld them in there all you need to do is put ankle monitors on them.
- rich_sasha 5y agoIt’s a good point, but it is also more complex. For example the severity of policy response tends to be proportional to local severity of the disease. You can imagine a situation where all countries have a different, fixed propensity to Covid, and adjust their policy until they hit some universal level of containment. You’ll then see a world with very different policies but identical outcomes. I think it is hard to disentangle those two in general.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoYour France vs Sweden statistic disturbed me so I looked into it and Sweden seems to have by far the highest Covid deaths in the Nordic countries. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coronavirus-deaths-in-the-nordics/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coron... I’d like a per capita chart but I can’t find one. Norway has about half the population of Sweden and has 18x less Covid deaths though. Maybe France and Sweden are too different to compare directly? https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-09615-3 https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... Norway and Sweden seem a much better comparison and they had pretty much opposite responses to Covid. “Norway closed educational institutions, and banned sports and cultural activities; Sweden kept most institutions and training facilities open.” To me this implies Covid lockdowns etc may have caused a ~ten-fold reduction in per capita death rate.
- tomohawk 5y ago<s>Yah, because you must only compare Sweden to "other nordic countries" </s>
- perardi 5y agoA per capita chart? Our World In Data is great for that. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=USA~GBR~CAN~DEU~FRA~SWE~KOR~TWN#cumulative-confirmed-deaths-per-million-people https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=USA~GBR~CAN~...
- 1cvmask 5y agoThe way countries measure covid deaths is also relevant. Unless it has changed you were counted as a covid death in Sweden if you died in a car accident and happened to have covid. Norway would count you as a car accident death in their statistics.
- 8note 5y agoIt's the same thing with a gunshot, you have been shot in the heart, but you died due to lack of oxygen in your brain, and thus you did not die of a gunshot wound
- Zababa 5y agoFrance had more death that it could because the governement refused to rely on private hospitals, to maintain the narrative than the budget cuts on public health didn't prevent them from doing their work.