Here’s a fairly good summary of what the WHO did & did not do from a slight left perspective. I’m puzzled that you’re content with how they acted at any stage from the early identification through the risk assessment leading to the rapid the spread of the disease worldwide. I’m interested in your perspective.
The latest on Italy, who is about 10-14 days ahead of us.
Since you are really big (and good) on statistics, I was going to ask you about something I heard tonight that was said by a professor at USC. He said that although Sweden never shut down anything, the death rate there is about the same as that in the US. And he also said that neighboring Norway did shut down everything, and their death rate was higher than Sweden. Do you have any stats that confirm or refute that?
The USC professor, definitely on Sweden's side, said their death curve is essentially the same as ours. I misstated something he said in my earlier post. He said that the death rate in Norway IS lower than Sweden's, but their total case rate is actually slightly higher than Sweden's (0.13 for Norway; 0.12 for Sweden), where the case rate is the % of cases in the population. Although Sweden's case rate and death rate may increase in the days ahead, the point he was making was that Sweden has carried on the daily lives of its people much the same as it existed before the virus, and it is not substantially different, and perhaps at least marginally better than that of Norway who shut down everything.
As I said, we will learn a lot more in the days to come. I have no dog in that fight, but I do think the current stats are interesting. We shall also learn from South Dakota, one of few states that have not shut down during this crisis.
Take a look at Taiwan. They never implemented a lockdown and only went with social distancing on April 1st.
