Covid19 Part XIX-25,802 in ROI (1,753 deaths) 5,859 in NI (556 deaths) (21/07)Read OP

I really like this view of the daily cases. Its the daily cases from worldometer.

• It clearly shows how well we are doing relative to other countries (currently).
• We are much more like the nordics.
• Sweden much worse than neighbours
• Even accounting for population you can see the big euro countries are not doing nearly as well.

source: https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1281013412366090241?s=20

The big problem with this in a situation like we are looking at in the USA is that the virus spread is exponential and they’re treating it as an issue of dogma, belief and politics, rather than looking at the reality and the practical problem and just dealing with it.

The more cases in the community the faster it spreads and the more difficult it is to control with low burden measures like contact tracing and isolating minor outbreaks.

It looks to me like it could end up under wraps in Europe but could be endemic in the USA before long as they’re just not getting to grips with it at all.

If there’s no herd immunity response, which is looking likely based on the Spanish and other studies, then you’re looking at a lot of people losing their lives until there’s a reliable treatment. A vaccine might arrive but then again it might not or may be less effective than people are hoping.

European and Asian countries were badly impacted initially were broadsided by the virus and did not appreciate the seriousness of it, but very quickly moved to contain it and massive reduce community spread. They haven’t turned it into political mess.

Unfortunately, the USA has a perfect storm of politics and culture that’s making this extremely hard to deal with. You’ve a large cohort who simply don’t want to accept facts and it’s a country where, for a couple of decades at least, there’s been a significant anti science movement and denial of facts around a range of issues. Take something like climate science. They don’t like the facts, so they chose not to believe them. That kind of stuff seems to be widespread in the USA where as here it’s a handful of people most of us would consider to be a tad unhinged (to put it mildly). We are certainly not electing them to office or taking their ranting seriously.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 isn’t a matter or personal opinion or belief. It’s a virus. It’s there and it needs to be managed so we can get on with life. Success in dealing with it isn’t about having the scariest military, most impressive stock markets or even biggest economies.

It’s about being relatively well resourced and having good social health systems, cohesive societies and pragmatic approaches. That’s an area the where US isn’t particularly great right now.

I don’t think the United States is capable of dealing dealing with it because it currently lacks the political capital and grasp of reality to do that.

Perhaps the virus crisis will snap them back to reality, but who knows. It could also just result in floundering and ruin, perhaps more so on some states than others, but it isn’t looking good.

The other aspect is that the US medical systems, as expensive as they are, are entirely focused on the most expensive procedures and treatments the resources follow the profitability, and not into public health, which has been hollowed out and defunded again due to politics.

All western medical systems are more focused on things like cancer care, cardiac care and life prolonging treatments but the US has tended to be very extreme, with money flowing into ever more expensive stuff in niches at the top, while ignoring and politicising against public health. They’re spending ludicrous amounts of money on healthcare and it has risen from being in line with much of the wealthiest parts of Western Europe in the early 80s to being an outlier and off the scale. The value for money they are getting is really poor and the costs are heading towards unsustainable levels when you look at spend vs household income.

Sadly, I just don’t see the USA getting this under control easily. It’s a political and societal issue and COVID-19 has exposed all their weak points.

Solving this is more likely to happen in big public health systems and cohesive societies that aren’t laced with conspiracy theories and that’s exactly what what you’re seeing. Well resourced European and Asian public healthcare and pragmatic politics has generally produced good results once it got to grips with it.

The U.K., more so because of political chaos at the top than a broken society made a mess of it too, although seems to be fighting back again as, despite the government, it has good systems and the population isn’t’ (beyond Brexit) vexed by the same lack of pragmatic responses and certainly aren’t anti science.

Places without public health resources are struggling and that’s probably going to get worse. I don’t see how developing world countries are going to manage this. Poor housing, inability to socially distance and lack of resources is the issue there.

Where we’ll be in a few months time could be very strange with perhaps Europe and Asia having exited the worst of the pandemic, moving back to semi normality while the US could be stuck in this phase until it cops on (assuming it can).

Very strange times ahead I suspect.