What ? density of what ?...

Bangladesh also has very few deaths per capita, despite being the most densely populated nation on earth. Japan probably has a few advantages in this pandemic. I'm guessing immense organizational skills, a homogenous and obedient population, and top-notch healthcare help a lot. Not to mention that it's an island, most islands that aren't called the UK seem to have done a bit better, for natural reasons.

If anything, Sweden has unusually high death rates per capita all things considered, but this is probably simply down to handling it poorly from the beginning. The point I've been making all along in this thread is that Sweden is comparable in death toll only to nations that handled the pandemic really poorly, have poorly organized societies, or is incredibly densely populated highly inter-connected with neighboring states.

In other words, several would-be mitigating factors on Sweden's side seem to have simply evaporated and I can only see that it is so due to the incredibly lackluster handling of the pandemic from the beginning.

I can cherry pick too

Italy


Japan

What's with these bullshit comparisons of yours?

You have to accept that every nation has MULTIPLE factors that come into play - both negative and positive.

Japan is an island country and therefore has a HUGE advantage over continental nations. Also the people there are used to wearing masks so they are far more effective at keeping the spread low.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32674696/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1

A lot of Japan was swept the fuck over by SARS-Cov-2 months ago already, it just didn't happen to be as deadly there as in the Western World despite its similar demographic profile.

The same thing happened in parts of South Korea, apparently:

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/07/119_293207.html

That was to be expected since the R₀ of the H1N1 pandemic back in 2009 wasn't actually that different between Japan and the US, despite all the yadda-yadda about different societal norms in the East and so forth.

Moderna has submitted its COVID vaccine for regulatory approval in both the US and Europe:

https://apnews.com/article/moderna-asks-regulators-ok-virus-shots-a65a00cdf9725c9104886ded9052a85d

Last night my wife read that they've been testing samples from the blood banks here in Canada and have found Covid-19 as far back as December 2019. She is now more convinced than ever that she had it in Februari (with still lingering symptoms) It must have come back from the military games in Wuhan in late October.

Yeah, I am also doubtful about the timeline of events. We have to look at the fact, that initially Wuhan doctors mention 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown origin at December 31st. But once there was declared that they have something, a lot of new cases got reported. And I see why. Doctors don't always try to see the actual reason for a pneumonia. A lot of infectious diseases cause pneumonia. So if a doctor sees pneumonia it gets treated without always asking for the cause. But if they know a new disease is spreading, all the strange cases suddenly can fit in a box.

So if there was early spread outside of China, would doctors have noticed a cluster of pneumonia cases? Maybe not. Each hospital may have one or two unexplained case, only in communication it gets a picture. So I don't think it is completely outlandish to think that the disease spread outside of Wuhan or China as early as late last year and was undetected as a new disease.

Yep it was also confirmed in sewage samples from December 2019 in Italy, but not yet that early in Canada. Before that stories circulated from military athletes tht got sick during and after the Wuhan military games. It's very possible that's how it initially seeded itself across the world.

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could be approved for the US and Europe by the end of the month:

https://www.9news.com.au/world/coronavirus-vaccine-european-regulator-could-okay-first-covid19-shot-december-29/f6dba78d-1223-4787-8b2b-438a7de74c4f