Coronavirus: Ten Things to Think About

From April 2020....

Gosh, this aged like milk. Which is not a criticism of any of you: none of us knew then what we know now, and we couldn't have predicted it.

As far as I'm aware, the only largeish country that's done worse than the US by some metrics is the UK. India did pretty badly too.

I'm not going to say that the key thing these countries had in common was the political positions of their leaders. Because that would be too political.

 

reporting is suspect in some large countries as well. we'll never have all the correct data

 

True.

That's especially the case for the US. In other rich countries, a combination of free testing, free healthcare, and paid sick leave meant that reporting levels were pretty accurate, but I've heard estimates from epidemiologists in Australia and elsewhere that actual infection rates in the US may have been up to ten times what was reported. Which, if you think about it, means that mortality rates from the disease weren't as bad as they sound. So that's something positive.

 

We had excess deaths here in the second half of 2021, after quarantine mismanagement led to the Delta outbreak. But before that, our death rate actually fell, because lockdowns meant there were fewer car crashes, fewer sports injuries, less drunkenness outside the home, and less transmission of other diseases. Between the lower death rate and the restrictions on crowds limiting attendance at funerals, some undertakers actually went out of business.

 

we're still having that problem. the government now gives away free home test kits, which just encourages less reporting

 

We had excess deaths from the start. While vehicle traffic dropped sharply, any drop in crash fatalities was very brief, quickly surging as law enforcement "de-policed' from both covid fears and the George Floyd protests, encouraging increased misbehavior.

Our excess deaths dropped after the first round of vaccinations, which were adopted quite well by the older, most vulnerable portion of the population. But then surged again with the Delta outbreak, which reached farther down into the younger population with lower vaccination rates.

 

I know what country folks mainly think of in terms of COVID deaths under reporting. Really. However, I had the lowest-income tier in mind when anticipating worst country outcomes. It may be that reporting in much of the 'global south' has been incomplete.

 

I have a friend who's a diplomat in Ethiopia who says that there was significant under-reporting there, just because there weren't the resources for monitoring and treatment. That would be consistent with your 'global south' speculation. Even so, epidemiologists I've spoken to reckon that under-reporting in the US was very much among the worst.

As far as the country you may be thinking of is concerned, though, I know people around the world think that this is the case, but I've looked into this a lot in the course of work, and I'm inclined to think reporting there is actually pretty accurate. There was so much paranoia in government that officials were terrified of getting things wrong. I suspect there was under-reporting in a town beginning with X, and that that led to the outbreak getting out of control there - which in turn led to some pretty severe punishments - but I think officials around the country learned from that.

 

That's a very informative graph. Thank you.

It's interesting how small the current (Omicron?) bump is. And also interesting how big the winter peaks are.

Our vaccination rates don't really vary by age. Among the adult (16+) population, 97.1% of people have had one shot and 95.8% have had two shots. Booster rates are lower, though - only 72% have had three shots, and 41.4% have had four. I had my fourth quite recently - I timed it for two weeks before a series of international flights.

 

It has been incomplete. Compare this map to the one I posted back at Post #43:

 

problems we're having:

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