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EnricoPallazzo on 05 June 2020
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Mnementh said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

There was nothing really big US could do. even if 100% of people stayed home, still you would get a huge number of infections and people dying.

Of course several governors and the president not supporting lockdown just made things worse, but based on what we can read from other countries, there is not much you can do except prepare to have the least number of deaths. Still death per 1M in US is half of several other european countries affected. Could this be less? Definitely, but I cant imagine it being less than 50% of what it is right now, if the number of deaths in US is correct.

The protests now though will impact people a lot in US specially poor people.

A lot of east asian countries (both democracies and authoritarian systems) had a lot of success in keeping the numbers down. If you compare that, the US has 333 deaths per 1 million people. Japan has 7, South Korea has 5, Taiwan has 0.3, Vietnam has 0. All four countries have really high population density too, which usually makes an infectious disease spread faster. So these countries were able to do something successful about it, I think the US and european countries should've been able to do similarly.

I think its not a fair comparison. VERY different cultures and behaviors. Not fair at all. Also they already have experience from previous infections so basically everybody there is prepared for that. They use masks all the time. People dont hug and kiss each others all the time. They have a different approach of individual liberties vs society. Also they are very aware of information that comes from china. When rumors of a problem in china started to appear back in January they already knew what to do.

So a comparison vs European countries would be fair in my opinion. We can learn what Germany did well for example, mortality rate there is very very low compared to other european countries. I just hope the west can learn from this experience.

In the end, i believe it will take years of discussion to understand the difference and why's of mortality rates in each countries, what they did right, what they did wrong etc.