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.
That’s changing as the pandemic spreads.
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I was just reading a similar article. Access to top-of-the-line healthcare, as well as so many other factors including vulnerability are all going to be significant to statisticians* and most particularly those catching the virus.
*I am not one, so my conclusions are drawn on somebody else’s interpretation
It’s almost as if allowing a Murdoch-owned right wing gutter press (or TV network) to manufacture the election of reactionary incompetents leads to bad outcomes for the country.
Who could have known?
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That’s one factor of many, but doesn’t look like the deciding one:
| data point | Germany | UK | ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| population density | 232/km2 | 270.7/km2 | 0.857 |
| confirmed cases | 170,588 | 212,629 | 0.802 |
| deaths | 7,510 | 31,316 | 0.240 |
(Data pulled from Jimbopedia and JHU’s COVID-19 dashboard.)
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Early and widespread testing, early diagnosis and disrupting onward infection.
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Being this PM is a proven serial liar with a history of running away and hiding from problems, I doubt that was true.
If he had the virus at all (which i highly doubt), then he must have had it extremely mild then milked it for all it was worth, for his apparent unheard of miraculous recovery speed…
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He is a compulsive liar but by all accounts it was 50/50 whether he was going to pull through. Also the fact they gave the baby a middle name of Nicholas after the two doctors who treated him suggests to me it was pretty serious and i want it to be true because maybe now they’ll stop stripping the NHS and social care of resources that’s been ongoing for a decade and more.
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By all UK media accounts, that are as untrustworthy as Johnson.
Massive PR stunt IMHO.
I’d love more than anything for that to be true, but i no longer have any trust whatsoever in this government. They’ve lied so greatly and so consistently that they’ve finally broken my natural tendency to believe people by default. When it comes to Tories (or UK media), i assume 100% lies until proven otherwise these days.
I miss trusting, at least broadly, what people say by default… 
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Oh, no, the deciding factor is idiots.
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