Thread by @VincentRK

The COVID Strategies

1) China: COVID started there but they have successfully made it a foreign virus. How? Basically walling off Hubei, then aggressive testing and contact tracing, quarantine, & masks. At the same time they sealed borders to stop reentry of virus.
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2) New Zealand: They knew COVID was a foreign invader. They acted early with aggressive border control. They kept virus out of the country at all costs. Now life is normal. Their game plan is to sustain this till there’s a vaccine. @ASlavitt
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3) Sweden: They didn’t think they could seal borders in time or afford a lockdown. Strategy: Allow near normal life and get to herd immunity. They lost more people than they should have. Economical no better off than neighbors. But close to herd immunity by paying a high price
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4) Eastern Europe: They couldnt implement border control like China or New Zealand. But followed precautionary principle and proceeded to implement #Masks4All — not just for sick people in contrast to western experts. Have flattened curve & limited deaths. @jeremyphoward @zeynep

Western Europe: Got caught without adequate warning. Many big cities became hotspots. Playing catch up. Now with the help of testing, masks, closures, leadership, and relatively high seroprevalence in populated areas they are slowly limping back to normalcy. Waiting for vaccine.

USA: No national strategy. National infection control agency sidelined. Withdrawal from WHO. Shortage of masks, PPEs, testing. Geographically vast country. Net result: uncontrolled pandemic with over 4 million cases, and 150,000 deaths— despite being the richest nation on earth

*Economically

I could write about many places like this: Singapore, Vietnam, Iceland, S. Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan. Most everyone had some national strategy to control the virus. Right or wrong they had a strategy. We don’t. That’s something I find hard to swallow considering the loss of life.