"Global health security" is a measure of how well a country's public health system is prepared to deal with pandemics and infectious diseases generally. Can you guess which country is ranked #1?
The US is first by a comfortable margin. In the subcategory dedicated to having a strong public health sector to treat the sick, the US is also #1.
In one sense, this is of course good news. At the same time, it makes our generally mediocre response to COVID-19 under Donald Trump look even worse. We had the systems in place to do better than any country on the globe, but among the countries with the best health systems our excess death rate from COVID was the second worst.
Thailand fifth in the world in " prepared to deal with pandemics and infectious diseases generally"? Slovenia sixth?
I don't think we take this seriously.
I haven’t gone to the full report, but thinking in general, I don’t see why “lesser” countries couldn’t be comparatively well-prepared. I don’t see where it requires a large/wealthy economy as much as having procedures in place and a willingness for the populace to adhere to them.
It is not only about money, it is also the quality of the governement. Thailand certainly not good government, Slovenia maybe.
In addition, good prepeareness also require good equipment, which rich countries tend to have more than less rich ones.
Thailand might not be a great democracy or whatever, but they are a reasonably wealthy country in a region with tropical diseases.
I flew into Bangkok at the start of the COVID epidemic and was shocked to see them checking temperatures of everyone entering the country. They were also checking temperatures at the major shopping malls in Bangkok and wiping down the handrails of escalators with alcohol. I flew back to Bangkok after traveling around SE Asia a few weeks later and the person taking temperatures was in much heavier shielding. After flying back to Minneapolis a few weeks later and seeing nothing at all about COVID in the airport, I knew we were in big trouble. The big issue here, of course, was that taking temperatures was useless so there was nothing at all we could do.
Reading this article, and having paid careful attenion to the numbers over the pandemic (in New Zealand), I ssert it's, remarkable, differentiation between Australia and New Zealand in the last graph is exaggerated nonsense.
The difference was nothing like as extreme as reported. These charts are not credible.
Yeah, here, here fentex ! I wonder where they get these numbers from.
I read a while back that Cuba ranked quite high on disaster preparedness and recovery. It also provides medical assistance to other Caribbean islands. For their own local preparedness they rely on careful planning and placement of protected emergency supplies and early deployment of trained emergency responders. For medical treatment they have people well trained at old fashioned but effective techniques that were probably familiar to my mother back in the late 30s.
Among other things, a healthcare system is only as good as its patients.
If "how well a country's public health system is prepared to deal with pandemics and infectious diseases generally" isn't judged on the basis of how well it actually deals with pandemics (for example), on what basis is it judged? Maybe it's judged on how much money it spends on the health system. The US is certainly the leader in that aspect.
I do wonder about the criteria because it doesn't seem to correspond to results.
Having the best system doesn’t mean the best results if you have a “leader” who not only refuses to fully deploy the system but actively fights against it. (Bleach injections anyone?)
I would regard the source with suspicion. Johns Hopkins is one of the major players in the US free enterprise health care "system". It seems unlikely that their evaluation of global health security would admit that there are advantages to a universal health care system.
The only reason US is number 1 is because the Johns Hopkins people refused to look at Taiwan.
Taiwan had 23 million people and barely any deaths. They also have universal healthcare.
Covid made a fool of preparedness for pandemics. Other things were blatantly more important. Ukraine? Inverted age pyramid. USA? Extreme politicization of vaccines and masks. Netherlands? Dense population. Australia? Sparse population. Scandinavia? Consensus societies. With laxist Sweden having just 60/100,000 more excess deaths than Denmark, a low price I'd say to keep the lives of the other 999,940 people normal and the kids at school.
Maybe the lesson to be learned is that our fear of germs has gotten out of hand. This wasn't the Spanish Inquisi... sorry, flu.
Correction: maybe the excess deaths in the USA are less due to vaccine and mask hesitancy than to superspreader events.
And bad/conflicting advice coming out of the WH and some State Houses.
BTW, TFG started doing serious damage to the CDC and NSC pandemic preparedness starting shortly after getting into office. By the time COVID-19 started spreading, TFG had cut funding for CDC remote outposts by 80%, shuttering 40 of their 50 offices.
Sweden's excess death rate is fully 50% higher than Denmark's. The latter probably saved several thousand lives relative to what they'd have experienced under Sweden's policies. I've seen little to no evidence Denmark has paid a higher price, either, in terms of non-health outcomes. Their economy has been somewhat stronger, too.
Reasonable people can disagree about just how far we should go, but social distancing works.
Australia "sparse population"? Like Australia's 26.5 million is spread evenly throughout the land ?
Well just for consideration, the total population of Australia's 5 biggest cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth) is about 16.4 million making Australia one of the most concentrated - ie not sparse - countries in the world. And note that Taiwan has now a total of 9,970,937 'documented cases and 17,672 Covid deaths compared to Australia's 11,770,136 cases and 23,910 deaths for populations of 23 million (Taiwan) and 26.5 million (Australia).
So not much difference there.
After a quick read, the purpose of this 'index' appears to be a marketing tool to advocate for certain policy changes. It does not appear to be too concerned with actual results.
Given the actual results, this 'index' should be thrown in the trash.
Horse. Water. You know?
The U.S. Covid response was compromised by all the anti-vaxxers who gladly gave their lives to prove vaccines don’t work. Here in Washington State we had a state trooper who quit and died of Covid rather than take the shot. Also a right wing state legislator who traveled over seas unvaccinated and died when he caught Covid and was initially unable to return to the U.S.
The government is not a solo responsible actor/representative for the country than can be measured like this, as you also have all the individual actors and subcultures that make up the country, and the US unfortunately has a sizable contingent of folks with almost zero critical thinking skills prone to conspiracy-thinking, and another smaller contingent that cynically plays to this larger yahoo contingent.
By way of example, throughout pandemic I debated with one fellow I "know" from a sports board, who would repeat all the lamest lies about the pandemic and vaccine, and yet who freely admitted he got vaccinated and boosted in the 1st week available, and somehow didn't show any cognitive dissonance from it.
I'm going to view the index very much like the way BMI is obtained where very muscular persons are considered morbidly obese.
There are about twice as many deaths from COVID under Biden as under Trump. TBF, it is three years under Biden, but Biden also had a vaccine available. He has screwed up COVID policy just as badly by assuming that the vax would fix everything.
but Biden also had a vaccine available. He has screwed up COVID policy just as badly by assuming that the vax would fix everything.
This is remarkably stupid. Covid deaths in the United States literally peaked during Donald Trump's last week in office at nearly 4,000 per day. Last time I checked, covid deaths had declined by more than 99% under Joe's watch.
Nearly all of any supposed "failure" on the part of the Biden administration when it comes to Covid flows from the fact that, not being a dictatorship, the government cannot force people to cooperate in keeping themselves safe. This is especially true in light of the deliberate pushing of pro-death philosophy by the previous administration, and its powerful, lasting effects on the psychology and (erroneous) beliefs of millions of Americans.
That survey was published in 2021 - and was based on the systems in place in 2019
Which is before the Orange Cockwomble gutted the US preparedness
They were saying the same thing about the US in 2019. WHO ran a study that had the US and the UK number 1 and 2, respectively. It didn't mean shit when a pandemic actually arrived. You can have all the fancy public health infrastructure in the world, and it doesn't get you very far if your politics and culture get in the way.
Ukraine's cumulative excess deaths 2020-23 figure is presumably so high because of the war, not Covid. Pre-war, it was comparable to its neighbors. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-33113-2
Oh and out of interest: COVID or Covid? The comfort of pedantry at a time of national crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/19/covid-pedantry-national-crisis-spelling-grammar
The name is short for "Corona Virus Disease 2019", so I guess it should be "CoViD". On the other hand, it's become a common name like "measles" or "influenza", so maybe it should be "covid".
Ukraine's cumulative excess death number was already high before the Russian invasion in February 2022. The war didn't cause those deaths. It is worth observing that excess mortality numbers in eastern Europe were generally very high, with Russia itself having the highest tally per capita (at 1036). Most of Ukraine's neighbors had excess mortality about as bad as Ukraine.
I’m highly skeptical of any health care data that shows the US as being number 1. (except cost, of course)
Okay this isn't about public health response per se when it comes to handling a pandemic and I apologize.
But going to the ER is insane nowadays. Should it take 5 1/2 hrs or more to be seen by an OR nurse other than for a blood draw? Another 3 hrs to find out that you're going to be admitted and assigned a room? And then another 4 hrs before being seen by anyone with an M.D. next to their name?
Should you have to ask a wound specialist to do a tissue culture if you're already getting pumped full of antibiotics for an infection? Should you have to ask a nurse to raise your feet above the level of your heart to help reduce the obvious edema in your feet? Shouldn't these be almost intuitive behaviors? Or at least part of the protocol?
I'm not impressed with the quality of health care in this country. Even good hospitals are horribly understaffed and I'm beginning to wonder about IQ levels.
"We have a really great system but our outcomes are terrible" requires a degree of cognitive dissonance that "this research is deeply flawed" does not.
+10
Among other things, a healthcare system is only as good as its patients.
Or for a more jaundiced view: "There was nothing wrong with the plan. No, the plan was alright; the plan would've worked!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZNnDiDSUiI https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/characters/nm0000602
"The operation was a success but the patient died."
A "measure of how well a country's public health system is prepared to deal with pandemics and infectious diseases generally" is a measure of which country has the best public health system in the world in the same way that total assets is a measure of which company has the best management system in the world, aka the truth, NOT the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Early in the pandemic, the lowest rates of infection and death were mainly in countries that had been threatened by SARS, and applied the lessons learned. Mandatory (and typically government-paid) quarantine was a major reason, I believe. Hard to imagine that being carried out in a country where people were assaulted for asking someone to wear a mask.