Contrasting "old" predictions with reality is always a learning experience.
This ranking was made a year before an actual pandemic and they had more misses than hits, and understanding why may help with other predictions about the future. At least the ones involving human actions.
Human action is the key. The US was very well prepared, but when the federal government and many state governments weren't interested in stopping the virus of course being prepared doesn't help.
Same with the UK: the response from their scientific community has been absolutely fantastic. But when Boris Johnson simply didn't want to lock down and couldn't make up his mind until too late that didn't count for much. Also he fucked up the test-trace-isolate system for ideological reasons.
Sweden + Denmark were rated as more prepared than Norway, which could well be true, but Sweden chose the UK approach (for no sane reason) and has paid the price.
In all of these cases the problem is not lack of ability to handle the pandemic, but a political lack of will to do it.
All policies being equal, I can see this accurate. What it does not (and realistically cannot) include is the willingness of the population to do anything about the pandemic. Western health systems probably held up better under similar caseloads. Western delivery of vaccines was probably close to the top. Certainly won on vaccine production and logistics and research.
The death tolls in the USA and to a lesser extent Canada, the UK, Italy, and Spain were an unwillingness on the part of some of the population to act on the pandemic. They wouldn't social distance. They wouldn't put on masks. They wouldn't stop travelling. And the governments were unwilling or unable to force them to do so.
What the hell kind of bullshit is this? Everyone knows they did not let it explode and had things under control until the last few weeks. Compared to most of the world China has seen almost no covid. That's what the official numbers say and it's been borne out by independent western journalists over and over again.
It’s out of date at this point, but I plotted the Global Health Security Index against covid death rates back in November if you’d like to get a sense of the relationship: https://twitter.com/kforeman/status/1331035362676785152
This is somewhat hilarious. They ranked the U.S. #1 and we promptly had ~650,000 COVID-19 deaths (so far). China ranks #51 and has less than 5,000 deaths.
I’m still completely baffled as to how China handled the pandemic.
On the one hand, I entirely believe that their state has the reach and support to quarantine entire regions and crush the pandemic by force.
On the other hand, nominally Marxist countries with massive bureaucracies and being honest about death tolls go together like shit and strawberry shortcake.
I’m still probably erring on the side of China getting it right though. The Soviets barely managed to cover up Chernobyl for a few days and this is a much more visible event.
What the US did is nothing short of amazing. They lead the early race on the science and continued to lead .
China is complex. We underestimated their totalitarianism but they also had solid science which we ignored, reporters on CNN were happy to contradict China's head of health. China got the genome online when the death toll was one. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.1 That seems fast to me.
The report is missing the media. They seem to have been the most destructive force during the pandemic.
Only recently Europe has overtaken the USA on vaccines uptake -
But they did go full authoritarian on their own people... I remember reading in the very early days there were accounts of the state police WELDING people into their apartments in Wuhan to stop them going out for food etc.
Scary stuff. I wonder how those people feel about those actions now, over a year later and 600k+ deaths in the US.
[+] [-] gmuslera|4 years ago|reply
This ranking was made a year before an actual pandemic and they had more misses than hits, and understanding why may help with other predictions about the future. At least the ones involving human actions.
[+] [-] larsga|4 years ago|reply
Same with the UK: the response from their scientific community has been absolutely fantastic. But when Boris Johnson simply didn't want to lock down and couldn't make up his mind until too late that didn't count for much. Also he fucked up the test-trace-isolate system for ideological reasons.
Sweden + Denmark were rated as more prepared than Norway, which could well be true, but Sweden chose the UK approach (for no sane reason) and has paid the price.
In all of these cases the problem is not lack of ability to handle the pandemic, but a political lack of will to do it.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
The death tolls in the USA and to a lesser extent Canada, the UK, Italy, and Spain were an unwillingness on the part of some of the population to act on the pandemic. They wouldn't social distance. They wouldn't put on masks. They wouldn't stop travelling. And the governments were unwilling or unable to force them to do so.
[+] [-] system2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larsga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droptablemain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gunfighthacksaw|4 years ago|reply
On the one hand, I entirely believe that their state has the reach and support to quarantine entire regions and crush the pandemic by force.
On the other hand, nominally Marxist countries with massive bureaucracies and being honest about death tolls go together like shit and strawberry shortcake.
I’m still probably erring on the side of China getting it right though. The Soviets barely managed to cover up Chernobyl for a few days and this is a much more visible event.
[+] [-] aaron695|4 years ago|reply
China is complex. We underestimated their totalitarianism but they also had solid science which we ignored, reporters on CNN were happy to contradict China's head of health. China got the genome online when the death toll was one. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.1 That seems fast to me.
The report is missing the media. They seem to have been the most destructive force during the pandemic.
Only recently Europe has overtaken the USA on vaccines uptake -
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
All the vaccines in the world are useless if the people won't take them. Stockpiles of masks are useless if people won't use them.
[+] [-] senectus1|4 years ago|reply
But they did go full authoritarian on their own people... I remember reading in the very early days there were accounts of the state police WELDING people into their apartments in Wuhan to stop them going out for food etc.
Scary stuff. I wonder how those people feel about those actions now, over a year later and 600k+ deaths in the US.
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
I mean Laos seemed to be doing really well last year but they weren’t testing much so not many cases! Success!
[+] [-] senectus1|4 years ago|reply
be interesting to run the numbers again given the last year and a half...