Something very strange is going on with the coronavirus epidemiology picture. I watch Drs. Fauci and Birx every day and, although they certainly have great expertise and integrity, I'm starting to think that their almost exclusive emphasis on mitigation is missing something. It's not that I necessarily think their recommendations are wrong, although it must be admitted that they are causing great economic havoc and suffering. They appear to be necessary, less to save lives than to prevent an overwhelming of the health care system. But it looks to me like there's got to be more to the story of this epidemic.
What started me thinking was my happening to come upon the article by Victor Davis Hanson that I posted recently. Written in late March, it deals the question of the great disparity in the effects of the virus between California, as well as other west coast states, and New York, which has 40% of the country's cases. VDH points out that by any measure, California should be the largest hot spot in the country. The good doctors Fauci and Birx attribute the good results in California to their efforts at mitigation, but I don't believe it. Governor Newsome in California announced a state lockdown on March 23. Governor Cuomo in New York started theirs on March 20 and by March 23 NYC was a "ghost town" with the remarkable photos of empty streets.
Then I happened to see a post by one of my more liberal friends where it was pointed out that New Zealand had only a single death (at this point it is up to 4) implying a deficiency in the U.S. efforts. The commenter attributed New Zealand's good fortune to aggressive mitigation efforts and widespread testing. But when I checked it out it wasn't true. New Zealand in fact was rather late to the game, starting aggressive mitigation on March 25, and with limited viral testing early on due to a deficiency of testing kits. Drive through testing started on 3/21, is limited to those with symptoms and with considerable variability in different parts of the country.
I talked to my cousin who lives in Sydney Australia last night, and their situation, on a larger scale, is similar to New Zealand. Out of a population of 24 million they have at this point 53 coronavirus deaths, many of them coming from a single infected cruise ship, even though they did not start mitigation efforts until March 25 and testing was delayed due to lack of test kits and limited to those only with respiratory symptoms accompanied by fever.
China is much closer to these countries than to the U.S. Both have large Chinese populations, especially Australia, with a tremendous amount of travel between the countries, especially between 12/19 and 2/20 for the Chinese New Year. One would expect a high infection and death rate.
So I thought to look at other East Asian countries, closer still to China. Japan is interesting. It's a country with 126 million population of particularly high density. In the densest areas of Tokyo population is 22 thousand/sq km while the densest areas of NYC is 28 thousand/sq km. Although the Japanese people were being cautious and wearing masks, etc. fairly early on, and schools were closed in late February, Prime Minister Abe was concerned about the economy and did not impose general mitigation measures until April 7, long after it started in the U.S. Viral testing is now being ramped up, but until very recently was very limited, being done only for vulnerable persons.
Other East Asian countries are similar. Taiwan did take the illness seriously, started screening of travelers and follow up of contacts, but did not ban flights from China until about the same time as the U.S. did. Their screening was pretty much just extensive temperature taking, rather than actual viral testing, leaving the large loads of asymptomatic carriers undetected. In Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea the situation has been the same, even allowing entertainment venues like bars and mahjong parlors to continue operation until the past few days. And how can you account for the fact that millions of Chinese left Wuhan before it was shut down, before China reported the virus, many of them one would presume were showing no signs of any illness.
So then, what is the death toll in these countries. In Japan 93, Taiwan 6, S. Korea 211, Singapore 8, and Hong Kong, which is contiguous with mainland China with a population of 7.5 million and one of the highest population densities in the world, 5.
So, to my mind the reason for these gross incongruities in the impact of this virus in different geographic areas is mysterious. From what I could find, a difference in the carrying out of public health measures is not a satisfactory explanation. Somebody help me!
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
No comments:
Post a Comment