A friend emails to ask why I don't include, say, Japan, in my daily roundup of COVID-19 mortality. The answer is pretty simple:
This is not every European country or every Asian country, but it gives a pretty good representation of what's going on. Basically, nearly all European countries (plus the US) have very high COVID-19 death rates and nearly all Asian countries have very low rates. Taken as a whole, the mortality rate in Europe is 14x the mortality rate in Asia. This is the result of both a higher case rate (8x higher) and a higher case mortality rate (70% higher).
This makes it pointless to keep comparing Europe and Asia on a daily basis. There is, obviously, something very, very different going on in Asia, and I doubt that better quarantine and masking rules can truly account for a 14x difference.
I've written about this before, and nothing much has changed since then. We still don't have a good explanation for what's going on.
One thing that these Asian countries did which I believe accounts for much of the difference is that they took the pandemic more seriously. And, in general, took care of business early and reaped the benefits down the line. Same with New Zealand, Tahiti, Australia, Hawaii among others. The Europeans either elected to take it on the chin and let the virus move though their countries or they reopened way too soon (and created a cycle of halfhearted shutdowns followed by premature reopening).
I think if Americans had been exposed to the reality that other countries were doing so much better that maybe, in a rare moment of doubt and reflection, we might have demanded better of ourselves. I think this new chart should actually be a permanent one.
Alas, it's "fake news" along with the "fake virus". True patriots want constructive criticism to improve the country, false patriots broke no disagreements.
Now that Ted Nugent had it bad... had it bad... had it bad (he was barely breathing) from COVID, he claims he never called it a hoax.
But I think, generally, as time passes, the GQP will lean ever heavier on the idea this was a Chinese PLA biowarfare attack on the world, in an early show of dominance in what Beijing claims is the Chinese Century.
At least Ted didn't come down with cat scratch fever!
I knew the song was Van Halen, but among practitioners of horny hard rock, Van Halen is infinitely better than The Nuge.
Isn't a likely explanation that the novel covid-19 variant isn't _completely_ novel. It originated from regionally local strains present in wildlife that mutated enough to jump the interspecie barriers to humans. But perhaps periodic exposure of the Asian human population to non-virulemt wildlife-hosted COVID variants over time developed a baseline level of immunity and/or tolerance to COVID-19 as well? If so, then the next big question is why hasn't that helped India and the sub-continent? Perhaps the combination of political and geographical barriers (Himalayas) insulates these human populations to the degree to prevent both shared diseases and immune responses? I'm a physicist and atmospheric scientist, not a biologist or epidemiologist, so what do I really know...
My guess is, no. I would identify social, political, and cultural factors as likely being more significant. Some of these countries that have enjoyed good results are geographically distant from the part of China where the virus appears to have originated and there’s not a huge amount of traffic between them and China.
New Zealand and Australia are separated from, basically, everything by vast oceans. Tahiti and Hawaii are even more distant.
And there’s a huge amount of people moving back and forth from these Asian countries and the USA so if your suggestion is correct, California and New York (which have largeish Asian populations and a lot of interchanges of population) should have done better than other states by virtue of that acquired immunity but the correlation is to the suppression effort; when California and New York took the virus seriously, cases and deaths dropped. When they didn’t, the system nearly collapsed.
That might explain why Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have been largely spared during the pandemic. One hypothesis is that there is a similar coronavirus that is endemic to the region. It is spread by bats, causes only mild symptoms, most of the people who live there have been exposed to it, and that exposure results in antibodies that help to ward off Covid-19.
That doesn't explain why Japan, South Korea, and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand) have also fared much better than Europe and the US.
There is much about this virus we still don't understand.
No, that's not a likely explanation at all. As you point out there are several contra-points, including India (which had quite low deaths till fairly recently), and the original outbreak in Wuhan which had a quite heavy Fatality Rate.
This data actually raises big questions about Wuhan! How much of an outlier is it for an Asian city to be as heavily affected as this? When a random city is seeded with COVID-19, how likely is it for it to be such an emergency? Was this just bad luck, or was there a reason?
Could be accounting methods. I literally heard a report of a Covid death in my county 'which was accompanied by a drug overdose'
Or it could be -- indeed was reported -- that the virus mutated in Italy into a more deadly form. That would make it hard to explain Germany and the Netherlands however.
Or it could that it really is an escaped bio-weapon, engineered to kill white people more than Asians.
Except that, as New Zealand, Australia, and other countries with predominantly non-Asian populations have demonstrated, the COVID-19 virus can be very easily suppressed with a couple months of collective effort and sacrifice.
China would needed to have had amazingly powerful insights into, for example, contemporary American culture to understand that the virus could be effective. Most of the death and misery in this country related to COVID-19 is directly attributable to DonaldTrump and the Republican Party.
+1
That's strange, since the top three states in deaths per capita (NJ, NY, MA) are all solid blue, and since public health is by and large a state and county responsiblity.
They also had huge amounts initial contacts with the masses of infected people that Trump cleverly brought back from Europe. But also, while public health is generally a state responsibility, there’s always been a tremendous federal involvement and leadership role in national crises like pandemics. Dealing with a pandemic on their own was well beyond the resources of the states.
There does not seem to be any difference in the rates between white Amiericans and Asian-Americans.
No? Got some data to look at?
You could go here. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/covid-19-deaths-by-race-ethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
It helps to be a relatively isolated Island that can be closed down. Borders work!
Except for ships and planes. None of these countries used the virus as an excuse for nativist barbarity. Everyone who entered these countries underwent quarantine, unlike the Americans who evidently believed that it would be safe to admit people from Europe and returning Americans without testing or quarantine while forbidding entry to dangerous Asians.
You are contradicting your own post above. And New Zealand did shut borders to foreigners.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-newzealand-ban-idUSKBN2160KX
Great Britain is an island nation and that didn't save them.
An island with trainloads of air coming in from Europe every day.
Don't forget Ireland. Didn't help them either.
Did Ireland get it as bad as the UK? I may misremember but I had thought that while they had one alarming spike mostly their percentage of infection and death has been quite a bit lower.
Yeah, but Vietnam and Thailand are not islands. Plus they are poor (by comparison with Western nations).
Right. There were roughly six weeks between the time Hubei province reached crisis stage and the same happened to parts of Europe and the US. The latter wasted this valuable time by failing to take adequate steps to prepare (and hopefully prevent) the onslaught. The sundry Pacific Rim star performers didn't.
I should add: my sense is these star performers have succeeded as much as they have because their preparations and subsequent actions enabled them to forestall covid19 endemicity: they squelched it hard, in the early going. And that has meant that the periodic flareups since then have been small scale, and extinguishable. They basically beat covid in the spring of 2020.
I'd love to think it's possible to rally back from the covid tsunami that was plaguing the US, Italy, Britain etc in April of 2020 all the way to the point of squelching the virus. But I doubt that's the case, at least pre-vaccine. As far as I know no country has succumbed to covid endemicity, and managed to extricate itself without mass inoculations.
In short, my belief is Europe and the Americas (and now, tragically, India) have lost so many people to covid because that's what happens when you let it reach takeoff point.
Yes, not only did the USA and Europe squander that precious time, our country actually implemented a system which was essentially designed to effectively and efficiently enhance the spread of the virus from Europe and China.
Equally, we know what works and what doesn’t. Spain was hit extremely hard early on but then did all the right things (closed indoors dining, shut indoors activities, mask mandated, etc). Reopened way too soon and got clobbered.
I can think of one rather obvious characteristic, a little more salient than greater seriousness, which unites Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Taiwan, and Hawaii. So I really doubt that explanation. Correlatively, I don't know what policy measures, exactly, were taken in China, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea, but were neglected in the West and now, suddenly, India. So I'm as puzzled as Kevin.
I’m assuming you’re saying that the countries you mentioned are essentially islands and therefore inherently safer. But this seems wrong. An island, like a ship, is both the safest place and the most vulnerable. If the virus had been allowed to take hold, all of those places would be screwed in much the same way that the people on cruise ships ended up being totally screwed. So the seriousness of purpose and notions of civic responsibility probably were the essential characteristics that staved off disaster.
Similarly, the policy measures taken by all of the successful countries or American states were roughly variations on the same theme. Mask requirements, shutting down indoors activities or the extent possible, lockdowns, testing and tracing, quarantine, etc.
These measures were initially successful in many places such as California, New York, Spain, but were abandoned far too soon.
My friends in Thailand aren't locked down. And New York, which is, hasn't been more successful than other states. I don't think anyone has any very good explanation of the variations between countries.
Thailand is actually an excellent example of reopening too soon and not remaining vigilant. There was a three-month, nationwide lockdown and masking, etc. which allowed life to return nearly to normal but they were not ready for return of the virus as the country reopened.
They met the second wave with significant restrictions but not another complete shutdown.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-16/how-thailand-got-caught-out-by-covid-19-second-wave/13017336
The explanation is very clear. Countries which take the virus seriously do significantly better than those that don’t. And much better than those which embrace the virus as Trump’s death cult has done (to my country’s grave detriment ).
There are some diseases which apparently are more deadly or less deadly to certain genetic groups. I'm curious whether Asians living in Europe or North America have different rates of catching or dying of COVID than the general population.
Oops, I thought the chart was of mortality given infection. It's just raw Covid mortality. I thought it was what they call 'case-fatality' ratio.
There are?
This site says that Asian-Americans have the lowest COVID death rate of any ethnic group in America. But the disparity is nothing like as great as the disparity between East Asia and Europe. And the disparity might be less if you controlled for income--you will note that COVID death rates vary inversely with the income of the ethnic group in question. So I don't know. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
I'm not sure why you discount masking as a possible reason. Ever since SARS Many Asians have worn masks.
If limited masking worked to prevent an initial outbreak, then limited masking also stopped bigger outbreaks.
The statistics of pandemics are puzzling. Initially I thought India would be a disaster zone. It wasn't. But it is now.
Bingo.
Masks.
Just look at flu rates in the US from Oct 2020 to Mar 2021.
Asians have worn masks for decades, typically to prevent a sick individual from infecting everyone else. Masked individuals on the Tokyo metro are common sites during a regular flu season.
India has been similar to other Asian countries until recently. The reported rate even now is still far below peak US and Europe rates.
Maybe mobility is an important factor. Who has more cars and roads?
The countries that have done really well are those with fewer aggressively motivated nuts who are freaked out by the idea of wearing masks.
That flu has disappeared everywhere this year demonstrates that masks and social distancing works but the more virulent covid still gets around in just those regions with the most mask objections.
Also I'd like to mention green tea again,
Green tea and some fruit juices inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro,
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201105/Green-tea-and-some-fruit-juices-inhibit-SARS-CoV-2-in-vitro.aspx
In vitro study suggesting green tea inactivates up to 80% of the virus.
A potential explanation for the differences is if Asian countries are relying on far more testing & tracing than US&Europe. More testing would result in identifying more mild-to-asymptomatic cases, which would increase the denominator for case fatality rate, explaining why the West has a higher CFR.
My belief is that Asian countries are relying on a much more vigilant testing & contact tracing regime, but I must admit that I don't really know whether that's true of Asian countries or European countries.
Not really "Asia", Kevin, unless you expect the Himalayas to win their battle with the sub-continent and eject it out to sea tomorrow. No, not "Asia", EAST Asia, the place where the immigrant kids whip them some Euro-American ass on the SAT's. That place.
It is much simpler than that: The answer is the power exponential growth. If you succeed in suppressing exponential growth early on you can easily achieve 14fold differences. That is all.
We have to remember that the star performers all were affected by SATRS--which never moved to the West. Unlike Western capitalists they maintained the disease prevention infrastructure from that "dress-rehearsal" pandemic. So they were ready on day one and were able to suppress exponential growth essentially from the get go.
If we were wise in the West--big question mark!--we would now install the necessary infrastructure such that it can be activated at short notice: Testing capacities, contact tracing infrastructure, quarantine infrastructure (self quarantine does not work). Plus emergency supplies of PPE and other stuff.
1) Could it be a racial thing?
2) could it be that being vaccinated against TB helps?
I have a vested interest since my wife was born in Japan.
She gets her second Pfizer shot next weekend but ....