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The article while making some valid points is full of insinuations. This is disingenuous.

The main reason for the low death rates is the lock-down/quarantine in place. India did this very quickly and very comprehensively. I would never have believed that such a lock-down would be followed and enforced in India if i were not living through it. It would be interesting to see how quickly the slope changes once the lock-down is lifted.

Other maybe contributing factors are; Sunlight & UV exposure, High Humidity, a healthy younger population, a better immune system (hygiene hypothesis) etc.

Simply said, the "Developed Western Nations" dropped the ball on recognizing the threat and putting in counter-measures and are now paying the price.

1 comments

Most Western nations are doing fine. There's really just a dozen or so countries that have been hit hard, and even then the impact has been uneven within the hardest hit countries.

Sorry, for 330 Million people, USA has had 60k deaths from C19 so far, whereas India has had about 1000 deaths in about 1300 Million people.

The western Nations are doing abysmally.

You ignored my comment to say what you wanted to say. Many Western nations are doing great. They are handling the pandemic very well and have less strict lockdowns than India.

A stringent lockdown in India is not an option but a necessity considering the population. In fact, as others have pointed out, areas with confirmed cases are sealed with all movement in and out of it tightly restricted.

I fail to follow from:

> USA has had [...]

to:

> The western Nations are doing [...]

Erasing the plural makes it better, though I have to wonder why wouldn't you just write "USA is doing" however you think it is.

Who counts as a 'Western Nation'? [0] I think most people would assume Western Europe and the Anglophones (USA, CAN, AUS, NZ).

If we assume that the US counts in the "hit hard" category, then we can partition western nations by per-capita deaths[1] like so:

Hit Hard: Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, UK, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, US

Not: Portugal, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand

So I'm guessing that you either a) have a different definition of "hit hard" or b) have an expanded definition of "Western Nation". Eastern Europe and Latin America as regions haven't been hit hard yet.

The impact of covid-19 depends a lot on when it started spreading in a region. Most of the differences between European nations are probably due to when it started. A nation's response mostly affects how it compares to other nations which had outbreaks at the same time. I would guess that India is benefiting most from reacting early in the disease progression relative to other nations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

You excluded a dozen or more nations that are part of the Western world and have not been "hit hard" by your metric. The "hard hit" nations list is an exclusive club, even when you add in the rest of Europe.

The US and the UK are seeing a massive number of deaths.

It varies significantly within the US. In Oregon we have had 92 deaths for 4.2M people. Not massive at all.

That is in spite of what is pretty weak compliance with the shelter-in-place directives.

> Most Western nations are doing fine.

I think except the US, the UK, France, Spain and Italy; all other Western nations are doing fine.