Coronavirus

[Stockmann]

Interestingly to me, if you measure anti-Covid performance by confirmed deaths per million, a very striking pattern emerges globally: The basket cases are all places with heavy Western influence, but not the West itself - namely, Latin America and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, basically everywhere between India and the Pacific has done well.
The basket-case regions are not uniform, of course - Serbia actually has done fairly well (a world-class vaccination scheme sure helped), Bosnia has shown yet again its four levels of government are good only for creating jobs for politicians. Cuba has done pretty well, Mexico and Brazil have fared catastrophically.
Wealth has made pretty much no difference, neither has geography (Taiwan is an island, Britain is an island) or population density (Hong Kong and Macao have been successes). Authoritarian governments have been largely successful, but so have democratic Taiwan and S. Korea - Taiwan even managed negative excess deaths. In Latin America, both Costa Rica, the region's oldest democracy, and totalitarian Cuba did relatively well. It's way too simplistic to say that culture is the answer, because some culturally similar places performed very differently, like Sweden vs. Norway, but there are some clear patterns nevertheless - Confucianist cultures performed well, Latin cultures mostly performed badly.

[Kron3007]

Interestingly to me, if you measure anti-Covid performance by confirmed deaths per million, a very striking pattern emerges globally: The basket cases are all places with heavy Western influence, but not the West itself - namely, Latin America and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, basically everywhere between India and the Pacific has done well.
The basket-case regions are not uniform, of course - Serbia actually has done fairly well (a world-class vaccination scheme sure helped), Bosnia has shown yet again its four levels of government are good only for creating jobs for politicians. Cuba has done pretty well, Mexico and Brazil have fared catastrophically.
Wealth has made pretty much no difference, neither has geography (Taiwan is an island, Britain is an island) or population density (Hong Kong and Macao have been successes). Authoritarian governments have been largely successful, but so have democratic Taiwan and S. Korea - Taiwan even managed negative excess deaths. In Latin America, both Costa Rica, the region's oldest democracy, and totalitarian Cuba did relatively well. It's way too simplistic to say that culture is the answer, because some culturally similar places performed very differently, like Sweden vs. Norway, but there are some clear patterns nevertheless - Confucianist cultures performed well, Latin cultures mostly performed badly.

Not the west itself?  The USA, Belgium, the UK, and Italy are all in the basket case category IMO.  I mean Brazil is at about 2800/million, and the US is around 2200/million.  That is not an extreme difference...especially given the resources they had at their disposal.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Everyone on our campus is tested once a week (faculty and staff) or twice a week (students), in addition to a vaccine requirement (we are at 97%). Vaccinate-test-trace + mask when conditions warrant and you can have very low cases on a campus (only 2 in the past 2 weeks here).

God, I wish we had half of your requirements.

[Puget]

New data interactive from the CDC, infections and deaths by vaccine status: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
No surprise but striking visuals-- this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

[Stockmann]

Interestingly to me, if you measure anti-Covid performance by confirmed deaths per million, a very striking pattern emerges globally: The basket cases are all places with heavy Western influence, but not the West itself - namely, Latin America and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, basically everywhere between India and the Pacific has done well.
The basket-case regions are not uniform, of course - Serbia actually has done fairly well (a world-class vaccination scheme sure helped), Bosnia has shown yet again its four levels of government are good only for creating jobs for politicians. Cuba has done pretty well, Mexico and Brazil have fared catastrophically.
Wealth has made pretty much no difference, neither has geography (Taiwan is an island, Britain is an island) or population density (Hong Kong and Macao have been successes). Authoritarian governments have been largely successful, but so have democratic Taiwan and S. Korea - Taiwan even managed negative excess deaths. In Latin America, both Costa Rica, the region's oldest democracy, and totalitarian Cuba did relatively well. It's way too simplistic to say that culture is the answer, because some culturally similar places performed very differently, like Sweden vs. Norway, but there are some clear patterns nevertheless - Confucianist cultures performed well, Latin cultures mostly performed badly.

Not the west itself?  The USA, Belgium, the UK, and Italy are all in the basket case category IMO.  I mean Brazil is at about 2800/million, and the US is around 2200/million.  That is not an extreme difference...especially given the resources they had at their disposal.

It depends where you set the cutoff - unless you count San Marino and Gibraltar, everywhere doing worse than the US (by official deaths per million) right now is either in Eastern Europe (esp. the former Yugoslavia) or Latin America (Peru has the worst official numbers on the planet). Also, there's the issue that these are confirmed deaths, and therefore affected by testing rates - Mexico has done very little testing for example. At least anecdotally, things were far more dire in parts of Latin America than in the US at some points - corpses rotting in the streets in Guayaquil, Mexico City running out of hospital beds, etc. If you consider it relative to wealth then, yes the US, Belgium and Italy (esp. Lombardy) have done spectacularly badly, as have Switzerland and Sweden, while subsaharan Africa, Cuba and Vietnam have done spectacularly well.

...this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Yep.

[apl68]

We've lost 48 lives to COVID in our county thus far.  A pretty terrible toll for a county with circa 20,000 people.  But by no means proportionately the most severe in the state.  A neighboring county with about 60% of our population has close to the same death toll, and a much higher ratio of fatalities per cases.  Looks like the much better level of treatment available in our local hospital has had a meaningful effect.

[Kron3007]

Interestingly to me, if you measure anti-Covid performance by confirmed deaths per million, a very striking pattern emerges globally: The basket cases are all places with heavy Western influence, but not the West itself - namely, Latin America and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, basically everywhere between India and the Pacific has done well.
The basket-case regions are not uniform, of course - Serbia actually has done fairly well (a world-class vaccination scheme sure helped), Bosnia has shown yet again its four levels of government are good only for creating jobs for politicians. Cuba has done pretty well, Mexico and Brazil have fared catastrophically.
Wealth has made pretty much no difference, neither has geography (Taiwan is an island, Britain is an island) or population density (Hong Kong and Macao have been successes). Authoritarian governments have been largely successful, but so have democratic Taiwan and S. Korea - Taiwan even managed negative excess deaths. In Latin America, both Costa Rica, the region's oldest democracy, and totalitarian Cuba did relatively well. It's way too simplistic to say that culture is the answer, because some culturally similar places performed very differently, like Sweden vs. Norway, but there are some clear patterns nevertheless - Confucianist cultures performed well, Latin cultures mostly performed badly.

Not the west itself?  The USA, Belgium, the UK, and Italy are all in the basket case category IMO.  I mean Brazil is at about 2800/million, and the US is around 2200/million.  That is not an extreme difference...especially given the resources they had at their disposal.

It depends where you set the cutoff - unless you count San Marino and Gibraltar, everywhere doing worse than the US (by official deaths per million) right now is either in Eastern Europe (esp. the former Yugoslavia) or Latin America (Peru has the worst official numbers on the planet). Also, there's the issue that these are confirmed deaths, and therefore affected by testing rates - Mexico has done very little testing for example. At least anecdotally, things were far more dire in parts of Latin America than in the US at some points - corpses rotting in the streets in Guayaquil, Mexico City running out of hospital beds, etc. If you consider it relative to wealth then, yes the US, Belgium and Italy (esp. Lombardy) have done spectacularly badly, as have Switzerland and Sweden, while subsaharan Africa, Cuba and Vietnam have done spectacularly well.

...this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Yep.

Still, the USA is in the top 10 percentile, meaning they have fared worse than over 90% of the world.  You are right that the ones that have done worse than the US are primarily from the regions you mention, but there are many other countries from those same regions doing better than the USA.   

IMO, the USA is very much in the basket-case section of the room.  I am in Canada.  You guys are about 3X higher than us per capita and we are not doing particularly well, just kind of average.  The difference between us (average) and the US is much greater than the US and Brazil... 

[pgher]

We've lost 48 lives to COVID in our county thus far.  A pretty terrible toll for a county with circa 20,000 people.  But by no means proportionately the most severe in the state.  A neighboring county with about 60% of our population has close to the same death toll, and a much higher ratio of fatalities per cases.  Looks like the much better level of treatment available in our local hospital has had a meaningful effect.

Our county is similar in population (maybe 30k, not sure) with 160+ deaths. Not good. A friend's husband has long hauler syndrome, so the pain and suffering will just continue for who knows how long.

[spork]

Found out that one of the largest hospitals in the state is no longer intubating Covid patients who are in their 80s, because no Covid patient in that age bracket who was intubated has survived. Since the data show that it's useless, it's been crossed off the list of options.

I wonder if this is the situation nationally.

[Stockmann]

Everyone on our campus is tested once a week (faculty and staff) or twice a week (students), in addition to a vaccine requirement (we are at 97%). Vaccinate-test-trace + mask when conditions warrant and you can have very low cases on a campus (only 2 in the past 2 weeks here).

God, I wish we had half of your requirements.

If it makes you feel better, I wish we had requirements. We're gearing up to do hybrid teaching with no vaccine mandate, no testing requirements and no free (to the testee) testing. There will probably be a mask mandate, but I doubt it will be strictly enforced. You see, anything stricter could hurt someone's feelings.

Still, the USA is in the top 10 percentile, meaning they have fared worse than over 90% of the world.  You are right that the ones that have done worse than the US are primarily from the regions you mention, but there are many other countries from those same regions doing better than the USA.   

IMO, the USA is very much in the basket-case section of the room... 

I admit when I think "basket case" in this context I think "doing even worse than the US." The US' relative position is definitely getting worse, not coincidentally just as US vaccination rates begin to lag behind more and more places.

Interestingly, the US and Russia have a lot in common in this context:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58998366

It's not mentioned in the link, but I know Russia tried bribery with little success (like the US) and then mandates  (big fines for the unvaccinated elderly and folks in certain jobs in some regions). What I've heard through the grapevine is that many unvaxxed Russians (unlike Americans) say they would take a Western vaccine like Pfizer but don't trust Russian vaccines and (like Americans) some are refusing to vax in opposition to the incumbent government.
The graph of percentage of people vaccinated is particularly interesting - Australia, with one of the slowest starts in the developed world, has now overtaken the US; Israel, with the fastest start in the entire world, now lags behind much of the West, Spain leads the West, China has much higher vaccination rates than the US (and than much of the West), and the UAE is first of all the countries shown. I'm not sure if the UAE have a higher rate than Cuba (not included), which probably has the highest vaccination rate in the Americas.

[Kron3007]

I guess it is all about perspective. 

According to my source, Cuba is around 85% first dose (still well below the UAE), but only 60.6 with their second.  Weird that your source dosn't show it, is this a US thing? 

[Aster]

My campus had an outbreak last week. At least one student became seriously ill and has been in the hospital for days now.

[Stockmann]

I guess it is all about perspective. 

According to my source, Cuba is around 85% first dose (still well below the UAE), but only 60.6 with their second.  Weird that your source dosn't show it, is this a US thing?

Sorry, the Cuba info is also from the BBC but it's a different article - the one I'm thinking of showed doses per 100 inhabitants. Something I forgot while writing my previous post (my bad) was that one Cuban vaccination scheme is a three-dose scheme - two doses of Soberana 02 and one if Soberana Plus.

[Stockmann]

Here´s some more info from a week ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105

As measured by doses per 100 inhabitants, Cuba is second only to Gibraltar (with the clarification that one of the Cuban schemes is a three-dose scheme), no Western country or territory other than Gibraltar makes the top 8, Cambodia beats almost the entire Western world, the US is below Argentina and Panama, Russia is below hyper-corrupt Paraguay and not much better than narco-state Honduras, and North Korea and Eritrea have officially applied zero doses per hundred inhabitants, below even Haiti at 0.8.

[Caracal]

Here´s some more info from a week ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105

As measured by doses per 100 inhabitants, Cuba is second only to Gibraltar (with the clarification that one of the Cuban schemes is a three-dose scheme), no Western country or territory other than Gibraltar makes the top 8, Cambodia beats almost the entire Western world, the US is below Argentina and Panama, Russia is below hyper-corrupt Paraguay and not much better than narco-state Honduras, and North Korea and Eritrea have officially applied zero doses per hundred inhabitants, below even Haiti at 0.8.

I'd suggest that the term "western world" doesn't have much meaning, nor do discussions about what countries are more or less "corrupt." In the 19th century US, essentially all government jobs (Federal, State, Municipal) were distributed according to patronage and the reason you wanted one of these jobs was mostly for personal gain. We would consider this rank and illegal corruption, but it had some merits as a political system.

Oddly, the system now is basically that the lower level jobs are occupied by career civil servants, but the higher you get the more jobs are filled by allies of the person in charge. Ambassadors are a particularly weird example. The ambassador to Mongolia is usually a career diplomat, but ambassadors to fancy places that are also us allies tend to be people with no particular qualifications at all, other than than that they were big donors to the president's campaign. If you're the ambassador to France, usually that means you're an important donor who also happens to speak pretty good French. There are things you can defend about the system. The UK government might actually prefer having an ambassador who has a relationship with the president outside of State Department channels and can get them on the phone. But that's the point. describing a state as corrupt doesn't actually tell us that much.