(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Final lessons from COVID-19: Government folly led to millions of needless deaths worldwide [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-03 Government actions matter. Following medical advice saves lives. Millions of people died unnecessarily by refusing simple precautions after the Covid pandemic hit the world with devastating impact in early 2020. For the last five and a half years, medicos, researchers, governments and others have watched with dismay the mounting toll from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The central Covid database has been Worldometers, which has updated all statistics daily for 229 nations. Now it has suspended its tallies we can review the data and draw conclusions. Government responses cost lives Norway and Sweden are neighbouring Scandinavian countries far from Europe’s Covid epicentre in Italy and even further from its source in China. We would expect both advanced nations to have been safe from disaster. In fact, Norway lost 6,638 citizens to the infection, which was 1,204 per million population. Sweden, in contrast, lost 27,407 citizens to the infection, which was 2,682 per million – more than double Norway’s rate. Subsequent studies have shown that Sweden tried to avoid societal shutdown by seeking natural herd-immunity. Sweden’s health agency dismissed advice from scientists and international authorities as extreme and permitted media and political bodies to advance their own preferred responses. The Swedish people were not given basic facts such as transmission being airborne, that asymptomatic individuals can be contagious and face masks work. The people of Norway can be thankful their government, in contrast, heeded the science and provided both information and masks. Vast death rate differences Wealth, education and advanced medical facilities were no guarantee of safety. Many countries kept the death rate below 100 per million. These included most poor African nations, the islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans and several wealthy Middle Eastern states. In contrast, France, Spain, Britain, Sweden and the USA – the world leaders in medical science – all lost lives at rates higher than 2,500 per million. Eastern Europe was impacted most severely, with the Czech Republic, Georgia and Croatia losing more than 4,000 per million, while Hungary and Bulgaria lost more than 5,000. The green chart, above, shows the extraordinary variance in impact across the developed world, ranging from 232 deaths per million in Qatar to 5,661 in Bulgaria. The deadly incompetence of Donald Trump Canada and the United States adopted contrasting approaches to the pandemic and experienced divergent outcomes. In Canada, 59,034 citizens died, at the rate of 1,538 per million. The US, led by President Donald Trump when the virus appeared, copped a staggering 1,219,487 fatalities, at 3,642 per million. Mismanagement by the Trump administration included waiting far too long to suspend incoming flights from China and Italy, failing to test and quarantine returning travellers, diminishing the severity of the risks in speeches, refusing to recommend social distancing and masks, spreading racist conspiracy theories and advocating whacky fixes. Trump’s destructive influence can be seen in the disparity in deaths between the states which did and didn’t vote for him in 2020. Of the 17 states with the lowest death rates, only four were majority Trump voters. See grey and blue chart, below: Covid death rates for the 17 least-impacted US states. Source: Worldometers. States with Democratic governors Washington, District of Colombia and Hawaii all had death rates below 2,300 per million. Republican-run states Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia had death rates above 4,500 per million – almost double. That is statistically significant. Critical messages from the data Lessons learned include that travel bans were effective but frequently imposed too late. Quarantining returning travellers reduced the spread. Masks worked well. Authorities recommend countries better co-ordinate their responses next time, particularly on vaccination and travel restrictions. A report by McKinsey and Company found that government policy matters but individual behavior matters more. It concluded that the effectiveness of lockdowns and mask mandates depended on compliance. Hopes soared in late 2020 that the rapidly-produced vaccines could achieve herd immunity quickly. They were dashed by the reality of vaccine hesitancy which enabled the virus to mutate and spread. Economic stimulus was effective when matched with strong public health measures. Stimulus quantum did not matter. Controlling the virus did. The World Health Organisation met last month to discuss plans for “Disease X” – the next pandemic, as yet unidentified. Everyone engaged in public health policy hopes that when it arrives – as it will – recent learnings will minimise its toll. * This is an edited version of an article published today in Independent Australia, available in full here for free: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/lessons-from-covid-19-government-inaction-led-to-needless-deaths,18649 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/3/2244419/-Final-lessons-from-COVID-19-Government-folly-led-to-millions-of-needless-deaths-worldwide?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/