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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Pinboard Retweeted Pinboard
(Sorry, messed up this thread and left out the example of Thailand)https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1261181014996422657 …
Pinboard added,
Pinboard @PinboardHere's an article chastising the west for underestimating the hardy people of Thailand, even as the author admits the unusually low case load in the Mekong region is a mystery. https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/insights/covid-in-thailand-failed-and-foolhardy-predictions …Show this thread2 replies 1 retweet 4 likesShow this thread -
Some more just-so storytelling, this time from the New Yorker. All the nations of sub-saharan Africa, where well-understood epidemics like malaria still run rampant, outdid Western governments on containing coronavirus, but we refuse to give them credit. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-african-nations-are-teaching-the-west-about-fighting-the-coronavirus …pic.twitter.com/nakrC20Hy2
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The article singles out Ethiopia for a laudable contact tracing program in Addis Ababa. But Ethiopia is also one of the last nations on earth with guinea worm—a parasite close to being eradicated. That tells you about the resources for public health there.http://outbreaknewstoday.com/guinea-worm-disease-ethiopia-reports-six-suspected-new-cases-in-recent-weeks-96592/ …
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I am fully ready to believe that any one of the poorest countries in the world did a better job on public health than, say, northern Italy. But to argue that they *all* did, for the first time ever, defies all reason. It's more of our own wishful thinking projected onto the poor
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Replying to @Pinboard
I've been reading these examples of yours with interest and I'm very curious: do you have any guesses for what might be going on here? Or are you just pointing out that we're missing something big and nobody has a good explanation?
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Replying to @vghaisas
I don't have a good guess. I'm pointing out that there's clearly something else going on, but I'm not being coy—I don't know what that factor is.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Could you share your most believable/intriguing not-so-good guesses? You've heard a ton of them by now. You must have picked out a few "better" ones.
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The best one (supported by some evidence) is that previous exposure to other coronaviruses helps the immune system better respond to COVID-19. But that just raises the question of why there's large geographic disparities in those other coronaviruses...
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Replying to @Pinboard
Aha, I see. Thanks for sharing! What geographic disparities are you referring to? Sorry, not familiar enough.
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