This. And maybe we shouldn't trust China's reported data, but Europe is almost doing miraculously well if you compare to the USA. Not going for eradication, but containment.
With containment, everything else is possible (healthcare system not overloaded, economy can be opened up, schools can reopen, etc.).
The US has capitulated completely, and even containment isn't really on the table nationally; on a state-by-state basis, some states may achieve a level of containment, but others are simply not even trying (or like Georgia, actively banning containment measures like local mask enforcement orders).
IMO, the US will almost certainly make up a lot of ground on the deaths per capita metric (or leapfrog entirely), given the explosion of new cases starting in June and the lagging growth in deaths that comes after cases. Scroll down to the "Deaths" section with the weekly per capita "heat spectrum" of sorts, and the US recently has reached red hot over the past few weeks, while European counterparts have been much cooler: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m...
That helps, but at least for Spain and Italy, the hypothesis seems to be that the virus was already widely spread by the time lock-down started, so a lot of transmission still happened during lock-down until it got under control. I think it's the same for UK and France. but I'm less familiar.
Other EU countries like Germany, Austria or Poland fared much better than Spain, France, UK and Italy.
Maybe different cultures (e.g. how people relate, how compliant they are, how many people willingly ignore measures, etc.) also play a role.
The main thing Europe is doing, is border lockdowns. Some borders are open, but in general only those to countries with low Covid cases. Other travelers get quarantine, policed to various degrees.
It's not really clear they are having better results. I don't know what the numbers are out of China, but certainly in Europe they had really big outbreaks in Italy, France, the UK, Spain, and other places as well. Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States.
I think most media outlets are over-emphasizing the impact of government interventions, and under-emphasizing the impact of other factors that affect the severity of the virus. These could be factors like the health of the population--do they have a lot of smokers? obesity?, the age of the population, or other factors like the use of public transit.
It's appealing to assume that the most important factor in deciding outcomes is government policy. This is reassuring because we (society) can control government policy. But I haven't seen any good data to suggest that government policy is the most impactful factor compared to other hypotheses.
> Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States.
Except that they are all now on downward trajectories while being more open (as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory). Travel is allowed in Europe. Schools are open. Bars are open. And they are still on a downward trajectory.
And furthermore, there are locations in the United States that have handled the virus pretty well and are powerless to stop people from coming up there and messing it all up.
“Mike, from Old Town, who did not want to share his last name, ordered a vodka Red Bull before getting back in line with friends at Old Crow Smokehouse’s curbside bar. He had just gotten back from a vacation in Dallas, Texas, with a friend, where he left a day early due to the spike in cases and the state’s rolling back on its openings.
“[It feels] like I’m the problem,” he said with a nervous laugh as he talked about being out and about amid the pandemic. Looking around at the throngs of people drinking and walking around Wrigleyville, he said it is concerning.”
What the hell are we supposed to do about that with zero national plan? All the local shutdowns in the world are useless unless we can put the interstate commerce clause on hold for a bit.
> What the hell are we supposed to do about that with zero national plan?
Looking at California, a state where borders are mostly in remote areas that aren't especially porous (compared to NYC/NJ), there's still be a huge surge, and nothing points to borders being the reason. It's mostly state and county-level policy. States around NYC seem to have stomped it down relatively well, despite there being three states involved.
The US is huge and diverse, so you're not going to get a "national plan." The best you can hope for is guidance.
> as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory
You have the wrong scale in mind. The US is closer to the EU than a single country here - individual states have totally different trajectories. For example, Illinois, where I am, looks like those European countries that were hit hard early and is also opening up.
Except that big outbreaks were used as learning experience by other places who managed to contain issue before it became big and are opening now. While having enough testing capacitiy and experimenting with exact rules that allow them to open up.
Yeah, based on the self reported numbers out of Iran, which you can trust about as much as you can their state news agency on any number of topics. Let’s not forget they were simultaneously denying the virus’ prevalence while their political leaders were dropping like flies and they were digging mass graves that could be seen from space.
With the White House issuing orders for hospitals to report directly to them instead of the CDC, I'm not sure how long we'll be able to trust the US numbers.
