Why is there so much disparity of COVID-19 among countries?

I think many people have not seen the map below yet. I really wonder how the great disparity could be convincingly explained.



Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic

 

Well, that's the confirmed cases map.

I spoke with an african friend and their country had only two ventilators, so how do you want that african authorities find any confirmed case ?
Apparently, a lot of money to fight the big C "disappeared" in Nigeria, which doesn't help as it's already a poor country.

Notice that globally, most countries in dark red are rich countries, when in light red it's poor countries.

 

Any counting of anything that involves bureaucrats will be wildly various depending on the amount of bureaucratic theft and graft available in whatever jurisdiction and law. If they can steal more by counting one way, they steal that way, if the other way, the other.

It is astounding that people tolerate the graft, corruption, incompetence and expense of the various bureau-states controlling the world today.

 

The statistics are only as good as those reporting them ---- which among other things requires a) testing and b) transparency.

Look at the areas claiming almost no cases..... Some of those are areas which can't even hardly provide clean drinking water; surely they're not doing much coronavirus testing.

 

I don't have data for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of cases scale with the rate of international and domestic travel.

 

Could the ability of wealthier countries citizens to travel easily account for some of that.

 

That's a very good point.

 

Maybe it's irrelevant, but both the U.S. and E.U. have decent life expectancies, even for the elderly with underlying health issues. Coincidentally that's the most at risk demographic. It's kind of hard to become elderly in a place that's violent, impoverished, has poor infrastructure... let alone to have health issues on top of that.

 

I think that map is misleading as confirmed cases is frequently a function of tests done and ofcourse we have to hope that the tests are reliable too. Furthermore, if this is just one more coronavirus, the important thing is not so much how many people are being infected, but how many people are dying from it. Wikipedia has a separate map that shows how many deaths per million there have been in various countries and I think that gives a much better idea as to who is being seriously affected, assuming that the reporting numbers are right (there has been talk that China is suppressing the true numbers in their country for some time now)...
By Our World in Data - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88311034

 

Corona Virus Deaths as of 04/15/2020 by country.

United States: 86 deaths per million population.
Spain: 402 deaths per million population.
Italy: 358 deaths per million population.
France: 263 deaths per million population.
Belgium: 383 deaths per million population.
UK: 190 deaths per million population.
Netherlands: 183 deaths per million population.
Switzerland: 143 deaths per million population.
Sweden: 119 deaths per million population.
Luxemborg: 110 deaths per million population.
Andorra: 427 deaths per million population.
San Marino: 1061 deaths per million population.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

 

Aye, those are the heavy hitters. World of Data lets one compare countries- I've put the top 13 countries in- Here's a graph of the top 15 countries deaths per capita over time, excluding the Channel Islands (Our World in Data doesn't include them as a country):


Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

 

Yeah, that's what I think too. The disease numbers depend on how open or secretive the government of that country is.

 

Puts things in perspective doesn't it.

 

Aye. I really think people should be looking into San Marino more for environmental factors. Their small population size means that it would be a -lot- easier to investigate deaths then larger countries like Italy, never mind the U.S.. Their total deaths are only 39.

 

Was taking a look at the deaths per million in the top U.S. states. If New York State was a country, only San Marino would top it in terms of deaths per million:


Even if the number of deaths isn't completely accurate, that's still a very large amount of deaths per capita.

 

In terms of total deaths, only a handful of countries would top New York State's total of 17,671 deaths:

 

As Iran relaxes its measures and gradually moves towards a new normal, I see Trump has decided to openly question Iran's data. Objective scrutiny is always a good thing -- and I invite Trump to read the results of an exclusive investigation into the subject by a propaganda outfit his own administration funds which counted pretty much every respiratory related deaths in Iran as caused by the virus. HERE. He might also look into what are supposed to be confidential hospital files of dozens of hospitals in Iran, which the Washington Post surreptitiously "obtained", to see if those files help his cause. HERE. He can even do what some western media outfits have done: comb through one of the many reports by Iran's parliamentary research center, and find a footnote to spin to make the point. I will help him out: HERE is the report by his favorite network, FOX, on that point.

But there are some things which Trump shouldn't be able to do, even if he is expert at doing these things. He shouldn't simply rely on generalized prejudices and preconceptions to strengthen already false impressions, ignoring facts. Or, relying on known fabricators and 'dissident' accounts which try to deny what even a virtual tour of the country through Google Earth-Iran could show, and engage in what he accuses others of doing, namely promoting fake news.

Here is the deal: No matter how you spin things, Iran has ended up comparatively less affected by the virus in terms of mortality, shortages, and even its economic ripples, than the US or many others in Europe. And, while not a scientific barometer itself, it is worth asking: are people in a society, knowing people who have died/fallen seriously ill from the virus, and worried about themselves and their families, acting like they are in a panic? Or is the bigger challenge in that society making sure people take the virus seriously, running non-stop infomercials to tell them to abide by social distancing and not imagine things are alright even as the government relaxes its business closures and such?

Acknowledging the facts, and trying to understand why that has been the case, instead of promoting fake news and lies, doesn't mean you have to accept the spin from the Rouhani administration - a spin that wants to claim the reason for Iran's comparatively better numbers is his government's superior management of the crisis compared to these other countries. Obviously, not. Whatever else is said about Iran, a lot of which I reject, and even admitting that Iran's public health system is actually one of the best managed parts of what is otherwise a mostly mismanaged country, 'superior management' has little to do with Iran having done better. But understanding the true reason for Iran having done better, will give you enormous insights into a lot of things: how much spread you can accept from this virus even without social distancing; what level of immunization of the general public by catching the virus, can begin to reduce the future spread of the virus; and also tell you a bit about the weather and climate issues that are already understood more broadly from the maps of places which have been more and less affected by this pandemic. The interesting thing is that many of these lessons will actually be ones that would help Trump (who favors relaxing business closures) much more than his domestic foes.

 

You are mistaking Iran as a country that the US and Trump cares what happen to. The truth is if Iran makes too big of a pest of itself, either the US, Russia or China will squash them like a bug on the bottom of a sandal.

 

You obviously didn't read my post or what I said flew over your head.

In the meantime, Iran (like China) has been around much longer, and for much of that time (in many different eras in history) as a great power, than the US or Russia. Many have tried to 'squash' Iran and some have occasionally succeeded in defeating it. But Iran is around, while most of them have had their moment in the sun only to be relegated into the 'dust-pin of history" because keeping down Iran for long, much less "squashing it", hasn't been as easily done as is in some people's dreams.

 

So, the next time the destruction should be complete?

 

I can see that a lot of work went into that post. I'm curious, what would Google Earth show? As to how Iran has done, it's certainly done a lot better than the U.S. if the numbers are accurate- 60 deaths per million as opposed to the U.S.'s 118 deaths per million. However, it's done a lot worse than the global average. Here's a chart comparing the U.S., Iran and the global average:


Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

 

I can't see how that post is anything other than trolling. Perhaps you've never actually met someone from Iran, let alone known them in any real sense. I've had an Iranian dentist for a while now, very nice woman. She calls her country Persia, which it certainly was in the past, but I understand why- with all this vilification of the country, it's understandable that they'd try to distance themselves from it, even when living in Canada. It shouldn't be that way though. Even many Iranians dislike their government- I'm not sure if Iranian Monitor is Iranian by birth, but he definitely seems to know a fair amount about it and it's clear he's not a fan of the government. It's never a good thing to conflate a people with their current government. I would never conflate the U.S. with Trump. Yes, a good chunk of people voted for him, but even more voted for Hillary. It's just that the U.S., as with many countries, has certain flaws in their voting system that allowed him to win anyway.

 

First, thanks for your sentiments and comments, even if I will be explaining my view in ways that might not necessarily fit your's.

The passing reference to Google-Earth was a jab at some of the propaganda I have seen about Iran. And Google Earth could, actually, show a lot. It depends on the propaganda point de jure. On issues regarding this virus, for instance, anyone could have taken a 'virtual tour' around the country, look at different places (including hospitals and such), and decide if the situation in Iran was as it was being presented. More generally, Iran is simply NOT the country that is portrayed in the media. And some Iranian dissidents and immigrants who left the country because of some legitimate or illegitimate gripes, don't always help in presenting an accurate picture either. Even those not necessarily motivated by perpetuating false tales, sometimes have fully absorbed the propaganda they are exposed to themselves, while imagining Iran is the country they had once left.

As an aside, my family left Iran in the wake of the revolution as part of the mass exodus of upper middle class Iranians who made the first wave of immigrants to the US. I lived in the US as a teenager, went to college and law school and practiced law in the US for a long time. For much of that time, my own image of Iran was only partially more representative and accurate compared to the picture I had been shown in the media. But various events saw me live in Iran until recently, for more than 15 years, and while by the time I moved to Iran, the internet and such had already given me some notice that the picture of Iran I used to have isn't going to be all that accurate, I was really prepared for the total disconnect between that picture and the reality I observed. Iran has huge warts and faults. Some of what is said about it presents a fair picture of some of its faults and warts. But much of it is not and some of its greatest warts and faults are, if anything, blurred or not shown by the constant propaganda that focused on falsehood or things which aren't truly representative of the larger picture of things.

IMO, global average isn't going to be telling of the underlying factors at play, no more than Iran doing comparatively better than the US (or many European countries) by itself tells you what you need to know. On the reasons for the differences, I will have more to say later, but there is still much about the virus that we still don't know enough about to form anything but somewhat tentative observations and conclusions.

 

First reason- confirmation requires testing, which requires medical infrastructure, which many countries lack. A lot of those lighter areas would be dark but they're not trying to find out.

Second reason- many countries have neither frequent visitation from outsiders nor dense population that facilitate the spread of infection.

 

Two (by my standards) quick points about what you say here, which again I appreciate for the sentiments informing them, even if my take will be different.

First, I am not a fan of any of the governments around the world per se. And I wouldn't call myself a fan of the Iranian government by any stretch of the imagination. But on many issues, I actually find the side of the Iranian government more compelling than the side of those against it.

Second, Iran used to be called "Persia" in the West. That name was derived from the name the Greeks gave to Iran and was used to refer to the country until the Iranian government, in the 1930s, asked that the practice be changed and that the country be called by its indigenous name. Otherwise, Iran has been called that name (or some variant of it) by its people throughout most of its history. In this mix, "Persia" is to Iran somewhat (but less) what England is to the UK. Persia refers to a region of Iran called "Pars" (or, since the Arab invasion saw the letter P replaced often by the letter F, "Fars"), with that region itself a rather small part of IRAN. Persians (those who speak Farsi) are a majority of the population (most of them don't even live in Fars province), but there are many Iranians who are proud of their history who aren't Persian but from some other ethnic group.

If someone from Iran, today, says I am from "Persia", they are generally trying to avoid the negative association and baggage the name "Iran" has acquired in the West. If they say they are "Persian" (as opposed to saying they are Iranian) that can (or may not be) accurate: a majority of Iranians are Persians, but not all of them are.