Thread by @dwallacewells

There have been, practically, three distinct global pandemics. In Europe and the Americas, disaster. In the global South, high caseloads and low death rates. In East Asia and Oceania, inarguable success containing the disease. A thread (1/x): nymag.com/intelligencer/…

"You can compare countries within these clusters, and wonder why Canada has outperformed the U.S. or why Uruguay has outshone Argentina, why Iran suffered so much or how Japan, which never locked down and never tested all that widely, succeeded so brilliantly."

"But the differences in outcomes between the groups of nations are far greater than those within them, so much so that they appear almost as the burn scars of entirely different diseases."

"By damage, the coronavirus has not been a 'Chinese flu' but a western malady, and if you were making guesses about how a particular nation has fared, by far the most significant piece of data would be where on the planet it was located."

Take Germany. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Angela Merkel has been celebrated as a beacon of rational leadership. To judge by death, Germany has indeed outperformed the U.S., with fewer than 900 per million citizens, compared to our more than 1,600."

"But New Zealand, to pick one counterexample, has registered just over five per million. That is, for every Kiwi per million who died, so did 162 Germans. And 298 Americans."

"New Zealand has natural advantages — it’s small, it’s an island, it’s got national health care; when the disease arrived and containment mattered most, it happened to be summer; there’s an inspiring prime minister, and social trust is high."

"Nearby Australia is a much larger nation, with a divisive media powered by Rupert Murdoch, and a Trump- or at least Boris-like leader. It has bigger airports and plenty of A/C."

"You might expect Australia to look a lot more like the U.S. or U.K.—another island, for what it's worth. But Australia's death rate is under 36 per million — less than one-50th the American rate."

"In East Asia, though, nobody envies New Zealand or Australia. In Taiwan, the death rate is a minuscule 0.42 per million. The European Union performed, on average, 3,000 times worse."

"Cambodia hasn’t reported a single COVID death all year, and while it is probably fair to assume that the official data don’t tell the full story, what is most startling across East and Southeast Asia — an incredibly heterogeneous region, with wealthy nations and poor ones..."

"...democracies and authoritarian regimes, national health-care systems and patchwork networks — is just how consistent the story is. In Vietnam, there have been 0.36 deaths per million, in China 3.36. In Singapore, the number is around five; in South Korea, it is close to 32."

"In Japan, in many ways the best contrast for the aging and wealthy nations of Europe and North America, it’s about 67. Again, you can doubt some of these numbers, the Chinese figures especially. But in the U.K., remember, the level is north of 1,800." (x/x)