Thread by @AstorAaron

This chart has me thinking about how to judge nations or US states that have handled covid best. I'm talking specifically about covid infections, not the social or economic fallout of mitigation measures. The criteria are lowest case-per-population and vaccination rates.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1396489278046175235

I'm keeping fatality rates aside for now because they tend to skew worst among the earliest hard-hit states/nations when many operated out of panic. Basically, the question is: which states/nations will come out of this pandemic with the fewest people being infected?

For the US, the top ten states (+DC) with fewest cases per population are:
1) Hawaii
2) Vermont
3) Oregon
4) Maine
5) Washington state
6) Washington, DC
7) New Hampshire
8) Maryland
9) Virginia
10) West Virginia

The top 10 states right now re: fully vaccinated are:
1) Maine
2) Connecticut
3) Vermont
4) Massachusetts
5) Rhode Island
6) New Jersey
7) Hawaii
8) New Mexico
9) Maryland
10) New York

Combining these lists, the only states to appear on the Top 10 in both are:
1) Vermont
2) Maine
3) Hawaii
4) Maryland

The first three are very small, so Maryland is probably the best among the mid-population and up states. How about other mid-pop states just outside the Top 10?

Here are states #11-20 in the case-per-pop list, beginning with Alaska. And #11-20 in full vax rates, beginning with Minnesota and ending with Pennsylvania (not counting Guam).

The other mid-population (or higher) states to make the Top 20 in both lists are:
Colorado
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Connecticut (smallish)
Oregon

So that leaves us with:
Maryland
Colorado
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Oregon
Connecticut
New Hampshire is on the edge and is small, along with top performing small states Hawaii, Vermont and Maine.

How about internationally? I'm going to leave out the smallest nations here, especially island nations, because they had other other advantages in travel restriction and often in vax distribution. I'm also leaving off some nations that I have zero trust in reported numbers.

Several of the lowest official case count-per-pop nations are in Africa, including Niger, Tanzania, Chad, DRC, Liberia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Angola, Madagascar and Ivory Coast. Vax rates are extremely low in all, however.

Outside Africa, the lowest case counts per pop in non-tiny nations are Vietnam, Laos, New Zealand, Australia, China, Taiwan, Haiti, Tajikistan, Cambodia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Nicaragua, Yemen and Syria.

Some of these have obvious problems with reporting accurate numbers. So, what about higher vaccinated non-tiny countries that also have low case rates? There are very few that appear on top of both lists. In fact, the lists are almost perfectly inverted.

And that may be the final lesson here: If low-case-per-pop countries like NZ, Australia and Vietnam can fully vaccinate their countries before a real case wave appears, they will come out on top. But most countries will have gotten pummeled with covid-19 by the end.