Just-so storytelling about places that avoid coronavirus is proving to be an irresistible journalistic form. Here's a fawning profile of Kerala's "rock star" health minister, who sounds awesome. Kerala has had only four deaths for 35 million people.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19 …
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But the state of Bihar, whose level of misgovernment would be comical if it weren't so damaging to people's lives, the death toll out of 99 million people stands at seven. https://thewire.in/politics/bihar-lockdown-migrant-workers ….
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Here's a victory lap for Slovakia(!), the new model state in Europe for fighting coronavirus, with 24 deaths out of 5.4M people. I've seen articles that talk straight-faced about Eastern Europe's history of suffering making the population more resilient.https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/06/slovakia-coronavirus-pandemic-public-trust-media/ …
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Meanwhile, the dictator in Belarus has all but pointed the plane at the ground, figuratively speaking, adopting policies that seem insane in the context of a pandemic. Yet the country has 121 dead out of 9 million. (Compare Belgium, 8.9k dead out of 11M)https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/08/belarus-lukashenko-coronavirus-pandemic-lockdown-containment-economy-russia/ …
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In Somalia, not the best-governed country in the world, there have been 53 covid deaths. The pattern in Sub-Saharan Africa is the same. The general journalistic response is to insist that there are thousands of dead who don't make it into the statistics.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/02/somali-medics-report-rapid-rise-in-deaths-as-covid-19-fears-grow …
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Maybe that's so—I leave it to more expert opinion than mine. But I think the current journalistic mode of singling out countries that have done well, and then finding justifications in their policy decisions to explain that success, speaks to a lack of imagination and curiosity
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I will say that if you argue that there are thousands, or tens of thousands, of unreported deaths in a place because to say otherwise doesn't fit your model of this disease, the burden is on *you* to prove it. The virus has not been very good about spreading like it's supposed to
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Replying to @Pinboard
But isn't it equally fair to say that given what we know about Covid-19, if a country is at x% (or xx%!) above expected all-cause mortality despite fewer miles driven and fewer work deaths, etc., that Covid-19 should be seen as a reasonable source for the extra death?
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It certainly sounds reasonable to me.
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