- average age 28 SA vs 40 UK
- a lot of immunocompromised people in SA (AIDS)
- UK has most of it immunity from vaccination which was mainly targeting AC2 receptor. It's possible that natural immunity or Sinovac (attenuated virus) has better protection than mRNA vaccines - not confirmed.
- SA is doing fewer tests.
I think this is definitely part of the explanation.
> A lot of immunocompromised people in SA (AIDS)
Wouldn't this mean more deaths or am I missing something? Are COVID deaths in AIDS patients attributed to AIDS not COVID?
> UK has most of it immunity from vaccination which was mainly targeting AC2 receptor. It's possible that natural immunity or Sinovac (attenuated virus) has better protection than mRNA vaccines - not confirmed.
Okay, so should we perhaps not be pushing vaccination on healthy individuals? I had a COVID infection early on in the pandemic and I've interacted with infected people since and not caught it. My sister who's younger than me (in her 20s), but was vaccinated before being infected has tested positive for it 5 times. Perhaps just a coincidence but odd that she's so much more susceptible to it.
> SA is doing fewer tests.
Sure, but deaths are much lower too.
I don't know about SA but many countries count any dead person who was infected with COVID as a COVID death, which is a convenient way of padding the numbers.
That's the thing, it's really hard to compare. There is no standardisation. You can have a person dying from AIDS counted as a COVID death. The other extreme is that someone with AIDS, in theory, could have a COVID infection for decades and be tested n times.