> But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities
Without the context that extract is at best misleading. The article continues,
> The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far. (Emphasis mine)
The other related conclusion from the article Is that countries like Italy needed more extreme measures because they lacked the rest of the necessary infrastructure. That lack was not a wealth issue as the example of Greece shows.
The US, with its second tier medical system and laggy response, seems likely to require an Italy response rather than that a Germany/Greece one.
There’s an additional interesting conclusion that suggests that the high level of economic integration means the economic pain will continue to be spread around even among the better responders as their markets and suppliers will be suffering no matter how well they did themselves.
AFAIK the US isn't faring particularly worse than most European countries. Especially if you remove New York, the perception of the US as having had uniquely bad outcomes seem pretty unfounded. And if you focus on individual states, states like California responded very early and have absurdly low cases per capita.
In fact there is a negative correlation. To speak as a press reporter would say: "The harsher the lockdown the more deaths"
It could be the other way round, but you can twist it both ways.
Something I find interesting, the excess mortality charts in the article only go down to zero but if you go to the euroMOMO website you will see that for France and Spain we are well into the negatives. France is almost at a score of -10 which is a lot lower than any historic data.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 30.2 ms ] thread> The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far. (Emphasis mine)
The other related conclusion from the article Is that countries like Italy needed more extreme measures because they lacked the rest of the necessary infrastructure. That lack was not a wealth issue as the example of Greece shows.
The US, with its second tier medical system and laggy response, seems likely to require an Italy response rather than that a Germany/Greece one.
There’s an additional interesting conclusion that suggests that the high level of economic integration means the economic pain will continue to be spread around even among the better responders as their markets and suppliers will be suffering no matter how well they did themselves.
US Tests Per Million is 42k.
Netherlands: 17k Sweden: 20k France: 21k Finland: 28k Switzerland: 41k Germany: 42k UK: 43k Italy: 52k
So the US isn't uniquely low, it's actually above average.
The US Deaths Per MIllion is 287
Finland: 55 Germany: 99 Switzerland: 219 Netherlands: 336 Sweden: 380 France: 431 UK: 526 Italy: 535
Below average in that regard, too.
Compare: italy, turkey with greece