Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/05/uk-coronavirus-death-toll-now.html
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Seems I can’t say anything “nice” about the UK’s leadership, and since I can’t and don’t particularly want to be given a BBS timeout…
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21 posts were split to a new topic: Definition of “continent” challenged
Per capita deaths are the only real way to quantify this. As much as China bungled their response, they ended up with fewer than 5000 deaths in a population of 1.4 billion. US and UK are just leaving those numbers in the dust.
Actually, just for fun:
China = 0.00000333 deaths per capita
UK = 0.00044 deaths per capita
USA = 0.00022 deaths per capita
That’s horrifying.
ETA a few zeros I was missing.
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I don’t think you’d get a timeout for that. For pointing out that 10 solid years of austerity, combined with their darwinist approach to this virus is killing the elderly, infirm and poor. The cruelty is the point with tories and i suspect it’d be worse now if the PM hadn’t recently had a brush with death.
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If they manage to convince the public that each worsening comparative milestone isn’t significant, then breaking past that last milestone means…no more milestones! Whoopee!
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So? What use is an absolute number here? How many per capita, and how many per infection, that’s what can be compared across countries. Anything else is just sensationalist bullshit.
That is true but who cares. We need some news here. /s
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Per capita is just a different way of calculating the international death competition, i.e. more fairly determined sensationalist bullshit. The “correct” way to look at it in this respect is in terms of clusters and available resources and so on. The sensationalist bullshit is interesting, all the same, because it is more obviously coterminous with the state-level policymaking that determines how bad things get in a given country.
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Your point, my maculated Eu-eylashed friend, was? 
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It’s almost like having an arrogant buffoon with a stupid haircut in charge of a country results in its leading the pack amongst its peers in pandemic deaths. Whodathunkit?
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It troubles me that the US has 1/3 of the cases and 1/4 of the fatalities of CV. Even considering the bungling idiocy and mendacity of the toddler in chief, that seems like a huge percentage. It doesn’t make sense to me.
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FTFY. Republican governors and Dolt 45’s people are hiding the true figures. If you look at excess deaths you’ll see a much different picture.
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Both individualistic societies who praise themselves in defining humans by race or class or genes and thinking that the Others are disposable. Sorry, I had to go there.
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A (relatively) slowly-evolving crisis that requires empathy, foresight, strong managerial skills, consistent messaging, and a strong, Federal, well-coordinated response? Yeah, methinks this is exactly the kind of situation where if you were going to dream up the perfect group to get it wrong on absolutely every count, you would still not have come up with something as totally inept as the Trump Crime Syndicate.
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A friendly correction if I may: “more efficiently killing the elderly, infirm and poor.”
Removing the social safety net from millions was already on its way, but it was going to take years before those retirees/disabled people/unemployed folks were truly removed from the scene.
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Population density, that’s why.
Clearly the UK has been hard hit by coronavirus, regardless of what comparisons and what numbers are used. It’s fascinating to try and look at actual reasons why, though. The govt was slow to impose a lockdown, clearly, but there are also other problems.
Interesting how France has nearly (but not quite) as many deaths as the UK, but half the population density. The close per-capita correspondence suggests that population density isn’t broadly speaking a problem (cf. South Korea). Perhaps France really messed it up but the lack of population density has kept the toll down.
I wonder if filtering to “big cities with poorly-served concentrations of vulnerable people” is a way of making western covid19 trouble spots correspond to one another in size, density and death toll. London and New York City are massive disasters, Paris not quite as dense/bad, and Germany has no really big cities at all. But neither does Italy, especially the worst-hit parts?
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Air pollution? Urban Northern Italy is, I believe, particularly bad for this, despite its lack of London-scale cities.
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Mortality rates (excess deaths over the historical norm) certainly appear to be far higher in urban areas with higher density populations and notably linked to poverty levels, than rural areas.
