ManUArfa
Full Member
The virus is having its way regardless of what measures many countries seem to put in place - look at many of the so-called early good performers now.I think that’s harsh, Portugal did a “great job” of locking down, absolutely every bit as good as say Denmark. But Portugal had a different starting point.
Belgium also in that respect, and they have absolutely suffered the worst.
Denmark, Norway, Finland weren’t super harsh in their temp covid laws, but so far have have done great.
I think it’s more nuanced than some tend to think.
Sweden basically eradicated the Italy/Austria strain, and it was the UK and US strains that remained, that gives us some implication that UK was getting BIG early numbers even if they’d done a Belgium and shut up shop as soon as them.
France are also quite high on the effected list and they were full on man, they policed the shit out of it.
You have a very good point about the starting point in each country being important; and this has to be considered alongside the speed at which different countries have been able to implement testing. Some countries with more labs and flexible, market driven healthcare systems seem to have done better on testing. The other big factors in rates of spread and death rates are things like:
-population density, hub airports, and over-crowded housing such as in many of Europe's major cities and more widely in the very densely populated UK
-cultural factors such as how tactile a nation is and/or where their elderly reside such as in Italy or Spain
-widespread use of illegal labour in poor working conditions where such practices are considered too difficult/sensitive a topic to discuss e.g. in the UK.
We have to learn to live with this for the foreseeable but we cannot destroy our economies in the process. If we do the aftermath of the pandemic will have much more severe consequences.