5 ms·

Why is Canada's Covid death rate so much lower than US?

2 points by belltaco 5y ago

nradov 5y ago
That article is factually incorrect about obesity. Rates aren't similar in Canada and the US. In 2020 the rates were 28% in Canada versus 42% in the US. We know that obesity is a serious risk factor for COVID-19 death so that must account for part of the difference.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  I'd also like to see a comparison of smoking rates, alcoholism, substance abuse, and so on. This tbings compromise health, and Covid does better against the compromised. It feels like it's been largely a pandemic of the compromised. Unfortunately, the media and the politicians don't have to capital to deliver such facts.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
> The availability of universal health insurance is the "simplest" explanation for Canada's lower infections and deaths, said Ross Upshur, a professor of public health at the University of Toronto. I can see how care can mitigate deaths, but not lower infections. Anyone have insights?
- nradov 5y ago
  No one in either country really has accurate numbers on actual infections because most patients never get tested or officially counted. There hasn't been any widespread, ongoing random population sampling so we're left to guess based on a few isolated seroprevalence studies. The US CDC estimated that the actual number of infections is about 4 times the number of "cases", but there's a wide error bar on that number.
tgflynn 5y ago
The only Covid related statistics I somewhat trust for country to country comparisons are the excess mortality statistics. Here' a site that compiles them: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-per-million-covid?tab=chart&country=USA~FRA~CAN~GBR~ESP~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-... There's quite a bit of variation between Western countries. Among large countries in Western Europe France and Germany are near the low end while the UK, Spain and Italy are higher by roughly a factor of 2. The US is above everybody and Canada is well below everyone else. If you're trying to tell some kind of story about why some country is better or worse than another, it may be quite difficult to make it fit this data.
lhorie 5y ago
The article seems to be trying to make a case that the explanation is simple (vaccination and universal healthcare), but I think in doing so, it dances too close to just saying what people want to hear. As someone who's gone back and forth between the US and Canada, it was clear to me that there's a stark contrast in numerous aspects of pandemic handling between the two countries. Canada travel policies imposed quarantines since very early in the pandemic vs virtually non-existent restrictions on the US side until fairly late in the game. And while the US was mostly ok with telling people to mask up to go to stores (and in some places, barely even that), Canada effectively shut down in-store shopping for a large number of product categories for extended periods of time. Even casual outdoor gatherings (e.g. casual soccer games in a public park) were scrutinized by police in Canada; whereas basically nothing of the sort happened in the US. And it's also worth noting that policy compliance is much easier in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area alone accounts for 15% of the entire Canadian population, and this is a largely metropolitan-city-dwelling more-or-less-progressive segment of the population. There are only a handful of such hubs in Canada, and most canadians live in one of them. Yes, universal healthcare does mean that the population largely doesn't distrust the medical establishment and I think the vaccination stats speak for themselves, but clearly there are a whole slew of other factors that can contribute to the discrepancy.
- nojokes 5y ago
  Very often the narrative is that X does not work because there was no meaningful difference between multiple places. But it is forgotten that there are so many confounding factors in play. When it works then it is not because of X, it is because of X, Y, Z, W, ... applied at the right moment of time.

2 points by belltaco 5y ago

That article is factually incorrect about obesity. Rates aren't similar in Canada and the US. In 2020 the rates were 28% in Canada versus 42% in the US. We know that obesity is a serious risk factor for COVID-19 death so that must account for part of the difference.

chiefalchemist 5y ago
I'd also like to see a comparison of smoking rates, alcoholism, substance abuse, and so on. This tbings compromise health, and Covid does better against the compromised. It feels like it's been largely a pandemic of the compromised. Unfortunately, the media and the politicians don't have to capital to deliver such facts.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

> The availability of universal health insurance is the "simplest" explanation for Canada's lower infections and deaths, said Ross Upshur, a professor of public health at the University of Toronto. I can see how care can mitigate deaths, but not lower infections. Anyone have insights?

nradov 5y ago
No one in either country really has accurate numbers on actual infections because most patients never get tested or officially counted. There hasn't been any widespread, ongoing random population sampling so we're left to guess based on a few isolated seroprevalence studies. The US CDC estimated that the actual number of infections is about 4 times the number of "cases", but there's a wide error bar on that number.

tgflynn 5y ago

The only Covid related statistics I somewhat trust for country to country comparisons are the excess mortality statistics. Here' a site that compiles them: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-per-million-covid?tab=chart&country=USA~FRA~CAN~GBR~ESP~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-... There's quite a bit of variation between Western countries. Among large countries in Western Europe France and Germany are near the low end while the UK, Spain and Italy are higher by roughly a factor of 2. The US is above everybody and Canada is well below everyone else. If you're trying to tell some kind of story about why some country is better or worse than another, it may be quite difficult to make it fit this data.

lhorie 5y ago

The article seems to be trying to make a case that the explanation is simple (vaccination and universal healthcare), but I think in doing so, it dances too close to just saying what people want to hear. As someone who's gone back and forth between the US and Canada, it was clear to me that there's a stark contrast in numerous aspects of pandemic handling between the two countries. Canada travel policies imposed quarantines since very early in the pandemic vs virtually non-existent restrictions on the US side until fairly late in the game. And while the US was mostly ok with telling people to mask up to go to stores (and in some places, barely even that), Canada effectively shut down in-store shopping for a large number of product categories for extended periods of time. Even casual outdoor gatherings (e.g. casual soccer games in a public park) were scrutinized by police in Canada; whereas basically nothing of the sort happened in the US. And it's also worth noting that policy compliance is much easier in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area alone accounts for 15% of the entire Canadian population, and this is a largely metropolitan-city-dwelling more-or-less-progressive segment of the population. There are only a handful of such hubs in Canada, and most canadians live in one of them. Yes, universal healthcare does mean that the population largely doesn't distrust the medical establishment and I think the vaccination stats speak for themselves, but clearly there are a whole slew of other factors that can contribute to the discrepancy.

nojokes 5y ago
Very often the narrative is that X does not work because there was no meaningful difference between multiple places. But it is forgotten that there are so many confounding factors in play. When it works then it is not because of X, it is because of X, Y, Z, W, ... applied at the right moment of time.