Asian cultures have take the virus much more seriously than European cultures and regardless of government policy that is going to be a major determinant of how much the virus spreads.
Put in another way, two countries can apply the exact same policy against the virus but have diverging outcomes because of public opinion of the government, of the virus, and of their fellow citizens.
It's just wrong to say they are being "lax" here. If any other country would have tried the same means, it would hve failed utterly. Just as you say -- two countries doing the same policy could get very different outcomes.
And echoing the comment about behaviour, the difference between the culture of say, Norway and Britain, is vast in some respects.
Or even the likes of Germany and Italy, which are neighbours.
I think Austria and Switzerland would like to have a word with you.
But if you travel to North Italy in the summer, you see so many cars with German license plates, you wonder about the geography!
I stand, corrected.
One explanation could be different cultures, or just geographical proxomit to Italy and France that were harder hit than Germany and Austria. This would also explain that Germany has higher rates in states that are close to the French border.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Switzerla...
Compared to both Sweden and Britain, Norway reacted quicker and harder, with way more testing than most other countries. As it got out of hand, even more restrictions like shutting down a lot of business types, public transportation, schools and travel was added. Working from home was also recommended and used by basically everyone who could. Long after this happened in Norway, things where mostly as usual in both Sweden and Britain, despite the number of infections climbing fast.
This is new to me :)
Your point stands of course..
System 1 thinking in action.
They already had masks on when others questioned their effectiveness and to this day, 95% people wear masks outside.
They have hand sanitizers on pretty much every shop entrance and chairs are placed with certain distances apart.
They don't wear shoes at home and public spaces don't have litters all over.
They don't hug and kiss frequently like some countries do.
Some stop visiting restaurants when they read news that daily infection count goes over 100. (Not 10,000.)
Apparently they don't riot shouting in the middle of the outbreak.
How about that they have been acting clean before covid happened and government not exactly handling the situation strictly wasn't really the cause of the difference in death rates?
Also interesting is that they have a train system with packs of people squashed in a cabin but the infection rate is still low and someone needs to prove/disprove the BCG vaccine theory.
I might be missing something, but what does this have to do with COVID?
Who wears shoes at home? Especially their normal, outdoors, day-to-day shoes?
Japan had a strong preexisting culture of wearing a mask when going out in public if you're the slightest bit sick.
> countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States).
The early EU countries (Italy, France, Spain) and the US didn't lock down until far too late when their local epidemics had already spiraled out of control.
The US in particular locked down far too late, too little, and has now re-opened despite still having a huge number of active cases and community transmission. On top of that, it sounds like a large number of people there are still refusing to wear masks.
> Why is it that [...] nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths
I'm less sure here but I'd guess it's a combination of age demographics (fewer very old people who are most likely to die of the virus), lack of testing/reporting, and higher overall death rates due to disease which masks the effect somewhat.
The stereotypes of some cultures being more cold and wanting to keep their distances is grounded in reality. In e.g. france or italy having very close contact for example when greeting is the norm. I can imagine that it helps to spread the virus.
Others don't have to adjust too much.
According to this [0], Sweden is 5th in Europe but given that you have Italy (first outbreak in europe), closely followed by the second, Spain and the incompetent response of the UK Government, this only leaves Belgium, which seems to count pretty much all deaths.
In other words, not a great showing at all
Lockdown is a last resort measure, not the first response.
All things considered, Sweden is doing remarkably well but if you compare it with its scandinavian neighbours rather than with Italy or the UK then things look appalling.
In Sweden the wast majority occurred in elderly care homes located mostly within strong mass transportation distance. (The image in the article is almost ironically capturing the wrong demographic in the wrong location in the wrong part of Sweden, in a time period after the one for which they base the article, but it is eye catching so for nytimes I guess that is the editorial guidelines that they will use).
Japan with a large portion of the population being elderly, and with a strong mass transportation system, I do wonder why they have so few deaths. Maybe they imposed very strict testing and restriction for all workers getting anywhere near such places? Maybe they use a lot of automation in elderly care resulting in significant less human contact and exposure? Cultural difference?
Finland did one thing that Sweden did not. They closed the capital. No one in, no one out. I am not sure how the elderly care homes outside that zone managed in regard to finding replacement for employees, but it seems to have been an effective measure. They also seem to have implemented rules for zero visitors.
For instance, in Denmark, each and every dead person that is tested positive for Corona virus, count towards the death toll, even if they died from something obviously different. Even dead people is sometimes tested. It's not the same in all contries.
We will not have the full picture until we analyze the excess mortality rate on the other side of the pandemic. Then we can start to see what did the countries lowest excess death rate per capita do different.
The only solid metric for COVID-19 deaths is excess mortality, that is, the actual number of deaths - the statistically expected number of deaths (e.g. extrapolating from the last 2-5 years).
This metric is independent of testing capacity and malicious actors like politicians just outright lying to the public to try to save face. You can "hide" dead people, but doing so is much harder than hiding COVID-19 related deaths.
You can't conclude from this metric what the source of all these extra deaths are, but if they are not caused by COVID-19, every alternative explanation I can think of is even worse than a global pandemic.
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...
One interesting thing is that COVID-19 lowers the mortality rate in the mid-to-long term. It disproportionately targets the weakest, so in the next couple of months and years, less people than the expected average will die, because the weakest are already dead, and that will lower the mortality rate per capita for one generation at least. At some point, it will hopefully raise again, and that too will be due to COVID-19, because the reason for that will be that we wouldn't have a recent-enough COVID-19-like event.
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Point being, one should be careful when comparing mortality rates and absolute death counts. One needs to factor in both to get the full picture, and for rate, the period over which the rate is computed is very relevant.
One possible explanation for this is the kind of strain carried by the index case(s).
There are dormant strains and there are virulent strains of the virus, so the kind each country gets determines the kind of symptoms and this in turn shapes the initial reaction of their health care system.
If that is the case, how much can the lockdowns really help? I'm on board with slowing the disease down and giving the medical community 6 months to get their bearings. But it has now been 6 months and the question is "what is going to change going forward?".
We know we can't make vaccines on demand - we still don't have one for herpes afaik.
Sweden is somewhere in the middle -- they are being criticized, yet other countries in Europe which locked down have ended up with a higher per capita death rate.
Why is it that Cambodia and other nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths despite doing very little to combat the virus, while countries in the EU which locked down have way more deaths per capita?
Somehow the models about the spread and death rate of this virus seem to differ on a geographical basis, and that needs to be explained.
At this point, any analysis of the pandemic that does not attempt to tackle this problem is selectively ignorant.