Recent trends in Covid-19 fatalities in Western countries are quite unusual, with a wide range of outcomes. We know that these highly divergent results can be explained with a model where long run outcomes are highly sensitive to whether the replication rate “R0” is above or below 1.0 (after social distancing.) I will argue that a country’s complexity plays an important role in determining that replication rate. Obviously the term ‘complexity’ will require some unpacking, but first let’s look at the number of Covid deaths thus far in November:
EU: 34,276 deaths (76.56 per million)
USA: 14,637 deaths (44.12 per million)
Canada: 658 deaths (17.38 per million)
Australia: Zero deaths (0 per million)
New Zealand: Zero deaths (0 per million)
I will argue that in the list above, countries with higher recent death rates are places with higher levels of complexity. And I’ll also argue that a slight difference in complexity can make a huge different in long run outcomes. And finally, I’ll argue that these results can be affected to some degree by policy choices, but mostly for countries near the “tipping point” (i.e. places like Canada and Australia.)
Before going further, let me address the concern that these results only show recent rends, and thus for instance the US has been hit harder than Europe if you look at the entire pandemic, not just November. Or that Australia and New Zealand had some deaths before November. That’s all true, but I’m interested in current trends because I feel they better illustrate the direction to which countries tend to migrate in the long run.
There are many possible reasons why Australia and New Zealand might have done better than other Western nations. For instance, Australia does not have particularly cold weather. But you could say the same about Texas, which had over 200 deaths yesterday. Or perhaps Australia was just lucky; the virus missed this remote continent.
But the Melbourne area was hit by a huge surge in cases a few months ago, with hundreds of new cases every single day during July and August. Perhaps they avoided “superspreaders”, but how likely does that seem when total cases are in the tens of thousands? There’s the “law of large numbers” to consider. How was Australia able to get things under complete control in a short period of time, and why weren’t other Western nations able to replicate that success?
Consider a model where Covid is easiest to control in an isolated village of 100 people, where everyone knows each other. As societies become more “complex”, Covid becomes progressively more difficult to control. But what exactly does the term ‘complexity’ mean in this context?
I’m open to suggestions, but I’d start with density. Next I’d add the total population of a country. Then I’d add the ease of movement between population centers. Highly populated and dense countries with lots of movement between regions are highly complex.
Then I’d add cultural heterogeneity. That factor may be negatively correlated with civic cohesion, or willingness to cooperate for the public good. You might want to add administrative complexity; are the governmental lines of authority clearly demarcated?
Here’s another way to make the distinction. Travel in New Zealand is both much more convenient and much less interesting than travel in Italy. Italy is complex, while New Zealand is “simple” (no pejorative intended.) I’ve lived in both the UK and Australia, and Britain seemed like a much more complicated and confusing country. Less “legible” if that term has any meaning when applied to countries. I suspect that the UK’s greater density plays a big part in that difference. And notice that while hard hit Belgium is a small country, it’s also quite densely populated and culturally diverse, with a confusing governmental structure.
Although Australia has a population roughly comparable to Texas, and also has some metro areas that are only a bit smaller than Dallas and Houston, it differs in one important respect. The Australian population centers are more isolated than in Texas. In a sense, Australia is sort of like five New Zealands cobbled together—with population centers that are pretty isolated from one another by vast distances. People don’t typically just get in the car and drive from Adelaide to Perth. So when commenters tell me what Australia did differently, such as interstate travel bans, I want you to also reflect on the extent to which these policy differences are partly endogenous, reflecting geography and culture.
You might argue that Canada is kind of similar to Australia, both being continental size English-speaking countries with modest populations. But Canada is more diverse, with a French area that was hit far harder than the rest of Canada, including more than 60% of Canada’s Covid deaths. Right now, the four Maritime Provinces have a grand total of 43 active Covid cases, while Quebec has 13,463. Canada may also have more links to the US, despite recent travel bans.
In this model, even a slight difference in complexity can have big long run consequences if it puts two countries on the opposite side of R0 = 1.0. Canada had the misfortune of having a bit too much complexity to control Covid (or perhaps a bit less effective government policies). Over time, the two countries diverged more and more, with Australia going to zero deaths and Canada to a position somewhere between Australia and the much more complex US/EU regions.
The big policy question going forward is whether in a future global pandemic there is a set of policies that if pursued early and aggressively could get us to the Australian equilibrium. I don’t believe that any one policy could do that for the US or the EU, but I wouldn’t rule out a set of policies in combination. These would include a much earlier travel ban from the country where the virus originates. And a much more aggressive test-trace-isolate regime for the few cases that sneak though the travel ban.
It’s much easier to control an epidemic if you don’t first allow it to get out of control, but (and this is important) Melbourne showed that it’s possible to eliminate a pandemic even after it’s out of control. That’s very good news.
My suggestions might lead to an overreaction to less serious threats, such as the earlier SARS virus from 2003. But in a sense what I think doesn’t really matter. The reality is that future SARS-type outbreaks will be accompanied by some pretty draconian travel bans, at least until scientists can figure out the exact risk associated with the new virus. That’s the new world we live in, for better or worse. And for the few cases that do sneak through, expect countries to try very hard to replicate what Melbourne did.
PS. I hope it goes without saying that I am not recommending that countries become less complex. Complexity also confers huge advantages. It helps explain why industries like Hollywood and Silicon Valley locate in the US rather than New Zealand.
PPS. When examining the following graph, pay attention to the log scale:
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 14 2020 at 3:30pm
Australia locked down Melbourne very tightly when they had the outbreak there. The population of the area according to Wikipedia is just short of 5 million. It’s almost 2 million more than where you live in Orange County. Can you imagine the same thing happening in your area? Countries that succeed require strong participation from the populace to achieve this type of goal.
I would argue that you cannot achieve this in the US without a very strong Federal presence. They got this back in March for the original lockdown but took none of the steps to create the institutions in place to manage subsequent outbreaks. I don’t think Australian citizens are any less independent minded than US. I’m not sure that complexity is the answer to the non-linearity question. Stupidity is a far better explanation for me.
Mark Z
Nov 14 2020 at 7:22pm
Other countries had responses that were at least as stringent and intense as Australia’s but without nearly as good of results. Italy was quite extreme in its response within a few weeks of the initial outbreak in Lombardy, and it was mostly to no avail. Granted they didn’t have as much forewarning as Australia, but even if they’d responded a little sooner I’m doubtful it would’ve made too much difference. I think controlling a pandemic in Italy is just a lot harder than controlling one in Australia.
Luis Pedro Coelho
Nov 16 2020 at 8:36am
Italy’s lockdown was not particularly strict. It included a lot of lockdown theatre (mayors screaming at joggers for YouTube), but also a lot of exceptions and many people were still working in close proximity.
Benoit Essiambre
Nov 14 2020 at 3:50pm
It’s nice to be in the Canadian maritimes. Though, it does feel a bit like we’re the last bastion right now, surrounded by the enemy.
Mark Z
Nov 14 2020 at 7:34pm
I think a more formal way of putting it is that the increased hazard posed by inter-regional (or inter-population) movement is rapidly diminishing (a logarithmic function). Going from 10 people moving between two cities a day to 1,000 makes things worse than going from 1,000 to 100,000. That means the marginal benefit of reducing movement is smaller for more ‘complex’ (or interconnected) societies. A country where inter-city movement is ~100 a day can cut that down by 90% and dramatically reduce spread, while a country where it’s 100,000 per day can take similarly stringent actions and reduce the parameter by 90% without having much effect at all, because 10,000 people moving between cities a day is still more than enough to constantly re-seed the virus.
Tyler Cowen
Nov 14 2020 at 7:45pm
The experience in Africa is very consistent with your basic story.
Cartesian Theatrics
Nov 16 2020 at 4:48pm
It’s also highly consistent with pre-existing cross immunity with other bat CVs. Much more likely to be a dominant factor imo.
Rajat
Nov 14 2020 at 8:39pm
As a Melbournian, I think you’re onto something here, although ‘complexity’ is frustratingly difficult to pin down. But it must incorporate at least two of the factors you mentioned:
* Density – apparently 90% of the Victorian ‘second wave’ could be traced to a single family of four. And most cases in New South Wales’s well-contained second wave could be traced to a single person attending a single hotel. Larger and more densely-populated countries could expect to have far more of these spreading events and while they can obviously have more resources than a state of 7 million, the larger countries will have to rely more on data and systems and less on the knowledge of a small group of individual contact tracers. But data and systems take a while to assemble if they haven’t already been put in place. Even now, it’s unclear how well systematised and automated Victoria’s contact tracing is.
* Culture – I also agree cultural heterogeneity is an important element. The Melbourne second wave spread from mostly-ethnic hotel quarantine workers to their families and communities before spreading wider. There have been some reports about a lack of appropriate language information to those communities, and there’s also the likelihood that they don’t share quite the same norms as multi-generational Australians who – despite their self-perpetuated reputation – are actually highly conformist to authority. Melbourne had a few small anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests, but police quickly and unhesitatingly arrested the offenders and would have imposed steep fines. Meanwhile, members of ethnic communities that tested positive but fessed up to breaching lockdown rules were given a fine amnesties to encourage revelation of their recent contacts. While there was some community grumbling about double-standards, Victoria is the politically progressive state in a relatively utilitarian country, and so the fuss didn’t last too long.
I fully agree that other countries shouldn’t strive for Australia’s lack of complexity, as it makes things pretty boring (if hassle-free) most of the time, but it does have some advantages.
Rajat
Nov 14 2020 at 10:24pm
Realised I’ve disgraced myself by misspelling ‘Melburnian’.
Just by way of example, you won’t find too many people like this in Victoria. It’s not only that it wouldn’t be legally permitted, but they’d also be publicly scolded by government politicians and the media: https://apnews.com/article/iowa-south-dakota-coronavirus-pandemic-nebraska-north-dakota-bf7197b284401dea8b779cfa764dfab2?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
Mark Brophy
Nov 15 2020 at 11:04am
That article on Midwesterners was great, they’re sensible and polite. I live in Colorado with the rude people.
robc
Nov 16 2020 at 9:00am
That is pretty much my attitude from the beginning.
And its pretty much the attitude of the college age people everywhere, who realize it isnt that big of a deal, risk wise, so want to live their life, not give up a year or two of it.
Gertrude
Nov 15 2020 at 5:31pm
Rajah has identified a big issue. The reason the Australian outbreaks were bought under control is that they were narrowly sourced, in the case of Melbourne from a quarantine hotel, and then initially onwards to a few smallish western suburbs ethnic groups. Had there been multiple sources that allowed the disease to get broadly embedded in the community then Australia might well have looked more like the rest of the Western world. Indeed, the situation in Melbourne nearly got out of control, when at one point the daily new cases reached 700. For rough calculation purposes, each new cases generates about 20 close contacts who need to be traced and tested, i.e. 14,000 persons every day have to be located and contacted, tested and followed-up. At this point the tracing system was completely broken because it had become overwhelmed ( although the government did not fess up at the time). Melbourne was put under a very strict lockdown that lasted 10 weeks, and that was enough to bring the outbreak under control. A lot of medical people here are high-fiving themselves and offering gratuitous advice to other countries. The fact is that the lockdown was not cost-free, and it did enormous economic and social damage. But the damage was mostly limited to Melbourne, and the rest of the country was able to finance the lockdown by subsidising the Victorian economy, and it will have to continue to subsidise Victoria for several years as the economy recovers. Had the covid outbreak been nation-wide, there would have been no one left to subsidise the damaged Victorian economy during a strict 10 week lockdown. A strict 10 week nation-wide lockdown is probably economically and politically unsustainable even in a moderately disciplined society such as Australia. The main lesson from the Australian experience is that, although some mistakes were made in managing covid, the country was mostly plain lucky – it could easily have been much worse , and uncontainable.
For anywhere experiencing a broad- based outbreak of covid, Australia provides no lessons other than the caution that strict lockdowns are not “free”; lockdowns are enormously economically and socially damaging. The challenge is to somehow orchestrate a sensible discussion about the trade-offs involved in managing covid
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:38pm
Good comment. I would add that there was a time when the US also had just a handful of cases, but we opted to go in a different direction.
Scott Sumner
Nov 14 2020 at 11:55pm
Everyone, Good comments. Thanks for the information.
Thomas Hutcheson
Nov 15 2020 at 6:59am
Even travel restrictions would not be necessary, except in the first weeks, if we had enough screening tests to allow most infectious people to self isolate until they test negative. Tracing is necessary only while testing has to be rationed.
Robert A Gressis
Nov 15 2020 at 1:57pm
Really nice post, Scott! But could you comment on how your story fits with the Asian responses (Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan)?
Scott Sumner
Nov 15 2020 at 5:30pm
I suppose the ethnic homogeneity helps. Note that Singapore’s big outbreak was in the guest worker population, which I believe is mostly south Asian. There are also cultural differences—a greater willingness to cooperate on things like mask wearing and testing (and isolating if infected.) Some people claim they are less immune due to previous vaccines or previous exposure to coronaviruses.
robc
Nov 16 2020 at 9:05am
I think you meant “more immune.”
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:38pm
Sorry, more immune.
Chris H
Nov 16 2020 at 3:07pm
This is almost entirely intuition, which I don’t trust. But here it is: I think it makes a big difference that countries in the area — especially China itself, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — went through something like this recently, with the SARS epidemic. I think that is a special case, not connected to complexity, cultural heterogeneity, etc.
Hong Kong and Taiwan did things very well at their central, government level, but I think there’s something that happens on an individual level when people have the sense “OK, I know the drill”. I don’t think that is being studied little if at all.
Scott Sumner
Nov 17 2020 at 2:30pm
I believe that was a factor, yes. But Canada also went through the first SARS.
Matthew Light
Nov 15 2020 at 2:21pm
This is almost entirely because Melbourne winter isn’t much cooler than summer in Maine and Melbourne summers are hot.
Scott Sumner
Nov 15 2020 at 5:31pm
So why do parts of the US with similar climate to Melbourne have vastly more Covid-19? I’m not buying that explanation. Not at all.
Gertrude
Nov 15 2020 at 7:38pm
Scott, refer to my reply on Rajah’s comment to better understand Melbourne.
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:39pm
I find your explanation to be much more plausible.
Rajat
Nov 16 2020 at 6:11pm
Just for the record, Melbourne summer averages are a fraction warmer than Portland, Maine summers – about 70F. It’s just that Melbourne in summer occasionally hits highs of 110F (as well as highs of only 60F!). Melbourne winter averages are like the northern Californian coast, without the sunshine.
E. Harding
Nov 15 2020 at 4:13pm
Is Peru complex? Are Thailand, China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, etc. simple?
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:41pm
I’d say that in many ways the US is much more complex than those East Asian nations. At least the ways that matter for Covid—they may be more complex in others ways. For example, we are more ethnically diverse.
E. Harding
Nov 16 2020 at 5:38pm
But is Peru more complex? It’s the hardest hit country in the world.
Scott Sumner
Nov 17 2020 at 2:32pm
I suppose density is a factor in Peru.
Bryan Willman
Nov 15 2020 at 5:11pm
I suspect that “complexity” could be described with some kind of metric on personal connections as represented by say graph theory.
A superspreader would be a person whose node in the graph of human interaction has many many links.
Another way to think about it, is what is the typical “fan out” from someone who gets infected? If A regularly spends more than 30 minutes indoors with B and C, but B and C only do that with A, the three of them are an “isolated cell”.
But if A links with B, and B with D, E, F. And E with G, H, I….
So, we might ask – is it the case that graphs of regular human contact long enough to spread the disease are much sparser, or more full of isolate sub-graphs, in such places as Africa? While on the inverse, the graph fanout in someplace like NY might be huge, especially if subways, skyscraper lobbies, or the like turn out to be effective transmission zones.
robc
Nov 16 2020 at 9:11am
I think this is important.
R (not R0, as that is long passed, that was the initial condition) is an average across the personal Rs of all who have the disease. One person may isolate themselves quickly and spread to zero other people, while a superspreader may spread the disease to 30.
So R is the average of all of those numbers. Limiting the number of superspreaders is probably a bigger deal than quarantining everyone. Knocking one superspreader down from 30 to 6 is equivalent to getting 12 people from 2 to 0.
Don Vandegrift
Nov 15 2020 at 6:28pm
Scott, This makes sense for the set of countries you examine. However, looking at some other countries with high per-capital cases, I have to wonder whether places like Aruba, Montenegro, or French Polynesia are all that complex.
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:43pm
Fair point. I presume that other factors like state capacity and the level of “civic virtue” also play a role.
Ryan Reynolds
Nov 15 2020 at 6:33pm
First up, I feel like the story of COVID is best told as a collection of micro stories, rather than a large macro “variable x is slightly different, so case count is slightly different” type of story. And the explosive nature of the virus and the way that it seeds has a large part in that: the second wave in Melbourne happened with two individual cases coming out of hotel quarantine. If not for them, then there may have never been a second wave. That’s a very discrete set of outcomes that is hard to explain through continuous variables. (I think modelling this becomes more like a highly complex random forest rather than a multivariate regression.) Also, when cases are exploding at a high rate factors like population density, temperature, or ‘civil obedience’ might be meaningful factors, but when cases are close to zero I think the more important factors are contact tracing, policy, testing, and quarantine strategies.
There is though a lot of truth in the descriptive narrative here about Australia and its geography. Yes, Australia is like a collection of islands separated by deserts. Perth (in Western Australia) and Adelaide (in South Australia) are five days drive apart, and in the middle is thousands of kilometres/miles of nothing but dirt and blue skies as far as the eye can see (google the Nullarbor and you’ll get the drift). There are very few border communities in between who can transmit the virus between each other, and the logistics of enforcing a border there is virtually as simple as setting up maybe half a dozen roadblocks and cutting air services. That’s also true of most other state boundaries in Australia, but less so of Queensland/New South Wales and New South Wales/Victoria, but those communities were lucky enough to not have cases to spawn a major second wave. I can’t emphasise enough the amount of isolation in regional Australia though. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world which has as much space and as few people as we have in some places.
The other part I’d say here goes to Australia’s politics and what we call ‘competitive federalism’. The different states in Australia notionally compete for population and businesses, but also by comparison in the services they can offer. For instance, each state had its own contact tracing and testing teams and health governance structures. In June when cases started rising in Victoria, several policy settings helped out tremendously. Firstly, those state borders were largely shut before cases started rising badly, which contained the outbreak to Victoria and Melbourne. Secondly, because those borders were shut we knew they’d only reopen if cases went down. If Victorians ever wanted to be able to visit anywhere else in the country they needed to get their cases under control. (The Victorian Chief Health Officer reportedly said at the time that they had no other option. Victoria just can’t be known as the ‘plague state’.) Thirdly, the experience of contact tracing teams elsewhere in the country provided clear examples of how to get cases under control fast, whereas for whatever reason Victoria’s team were very bad at this and weren’t fast enough at containing outbreaks in June. The comparison between the Victorian contact tracers and the NSW contact tracers (which had successfully dealt with six clusters fed largely by Victorians around June/July) was very embarrassing for Victoria, and led to a review by Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, which resulted in nationwide benchmarks for contact tracing teams to reach before reopening borders. The Victorians spent some time comparing notes with their NSW counterparts to fix their approach. If you like, this policy combination provided both the incentive and the tools to get on top of the outbreak.
The last part I’d say is that I suspect that the experiences of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand and China were felt more keenly here than they are in the North Atlantic. We visit many of these places for holidays or to do business – they’re not fictional places on the other side of the world. And they were able to get on top of their outbreaks and we didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t do that too, whereas it seems in the North Atlantic the debate often seems to say “well surely we couldn’t do that here” because “[insert random justification]”. Don’t forget too that the top medical expert in Singapore is an Australian as well; so presumably there’s a network of people sharing notes around the region.
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:47pm
All good points. I did not mean to suggest that complexity was the only factor. Obviously policy also matters (compare Sweden and Norway) and elsewhere I’ve criticized US and European policies.
Good point about how Australia and NZ are more aware of Asian issues and perspectives
Rajat
Nov 17 2020 at 2:36pm
I strongly agree that the shutting of state borders due to the lack of cases elsewhere was a key determinant of the optimal policy choice for Victoria. Victoria never had the option of a “let ‘er rip” approach, or even modest suppression – we had to go for complete suppression. The story may have been different if Covid was rampant elsewhere in Australia and Victoria had been a beacon of purity. This is a consideration that was never acknowledged by the ‘lockdown sceptics’.
We are now experiencing a modest outbreak in South Australia due to another breach of hotel quarantine (when will they learn?). As a Victorian, I am wondering why we haven’t closed our border completely to SA, having sacrificed so much to bring our cases to zero. This would be a natural feeling for anyone living in a largely Covid-free state.
Jim Birch
Nov 15 2020 at 7:06pm
Australia did actually execute it’s lockdowns. COVID is wildly unstable so effective contact tracing and near-zero leakage is required. It’s like reality-testing your country. As I see it, the US is “mythologically incapable” of the required response. I’m not sure about Europe but I remember hearing Belgian officials talking about their approach which emphasised respect for individual rights early on. It seemed doctrinaire; I see what happened.
I’d rate compliance much higher than complexity. Asian countries like China, Korea and Japan do have a high level of homogeneity but they also have a long culture of social identity over individuality. This has costs and benefits. In this situation they are laid bare.
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 2:47pm
Yes, but compliance is much harder to get in a complex society.
Michael Sandifer
Nov 16 2020 at 2:58am
Interesting, and seemingly a plausible hypothesis.
Luis Pedro Coelho
Nov 16 2020 at 8:34am
SARS is mentioned often, but Canada actually had a large SARS outbreak, while Australia/New Zealand/Japan/Korea had almost no cases (and no deaths at all between all of them) and are doing very well wrt covid
David Hanig
Nov 16 2020 at 12:26pm
SARS in Canada was largely confined to hospitals, mostly in the Toronto area, and did not spread to the general public, as COVID has. Out of 438 probable cases, 44 people died. The first case was that of an elderly woman who had traveled from Hong Kong to her home in Toronto, where she died; her son caught it from her and died in hospital after he had infected health care workers and other patients.
BK
Nov 16 2020 at 3:33pm
Hi Scott, originally sent this to T Cowen but I can’t find your email! Hopefully the spam filter doesn’t hit this one due to links:
Reading some of the reactions to your link to S Sumner’s piece on Covid and Complexity it worried me to see comments along the lines of “it was all just seasonality” which undercut just how much the folks in Melbourne were restricted (curfews, 5km movement restriction, many businesses shut down, etc.), and felt worth sharing some of the experience from the inside.
As a Victorian who spent every day visiting the Australian coronavirus subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/) I thought the following few links would give some good insights looking back on the lockdowns:
This plot nicely shows the effects of the different “lockdown” stages we went through and their effects on R(eff):
https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_VIC.html
Also, animated version showing different projections (the author posted these every day on the reddit):
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/jlxsuz/animated_r_eff_and_14d_average_plots_up_to_nov/
Here’s another popular projection that was updated throughout the lockdown, we largely stuck to the “peak 56” projection all the way through to November (the model slipped at some point around early September to be out by 4 days, and stayed there):
Early projection:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/i8rz3d/graph_of_vic_daily_cases_decline_with_dates/
Updated projection:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/j4r037/blast_from_the_past_honey_i_shrunk_the_kids/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/ji4ttr/victoria_endgame_donut_day/
The resolution of some of the discussions between those skeptical of lockdown’s effects and those who were forecasting getting things under control (there are some very smug moments in here, but the authors do quote the sources which gives some insight into the discussions which were quite common, just remember there were 2 sides to these bets):
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/ji3zj9/resolution_of_some_bets/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/jt3mbc/i_told_you_so/
There were also some great reflections on why the lockdowns were effective in this thread where someone from Toronto dropped in to get some perspective; general theme was the the measures put in place were good (but very hard) but also the populace was fairly compliant so policing never became an unachievable task:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusDownunder/comments/ju6u3o/lockdown_questions_from_up_north/
Also I’d just like to point out that the lockdowns were in place for a long time; which really was the part that was both most effective and hardest to live through. I live on the border of Victoria and NSW and attended a funeral of a close friend the day before the “stage 4” lockdowns went into place for Melbourne and the interstate borders had a hard close put in place. The friend’s husband’s entire support network was pretty much reduced to just me as all his other family and friends lived interstate. I had coworkers and family who were previously strong Labor (left wing party currently leading Victoria) supporters who turned hard on the premier (we are all a lot more forgiving now after 2+ weeks of zero cases though). I never read anything from the r/Melbourne reddit, but heard it was pretty toxic there in it’s reaction to the government and lockdowns.
So I guess I just want to make it clear that getting things under control is hard. Achievable, but not without political fortitude to follow through even when it seems all the media is against the government, and the general population struggle with the feasibility of the goal. It’s not a coincidence of weather, or distance, or humidity; it is hard work, follow through, compliance and discipline. Victoria’s contact tracing was nowhere near where it needed to be at the start of the outbreak and only converted to a digital system from faxes and pen+paper in late September/early October: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/08/salesforce-to-digitise-victorias-covid-contact-tracing-after-federal-criticism . I hope we’re better now, we’ll see what happens if this recent flare up in Adelaide spills over into Vic.
Cartesian Theatrics
Nov 16 2020 at 5:43pm
The elephant in the room is pre-existing cross immunity with other bat CVs. For countries that regularly consume bats, deaths per million is about 5. Adjacent countries about 12. For other countries, it’s several hundred. Not sure why no one discusses this theory, I must be missing something.
Scott Sumner
Nov 16 2020 at 7:28pm
Cartesian, I think people have speculated on that issue, especially with regard to SE Asia. I find it plausible. That’s one reason why I focused on Western countries.
Gertrude
Nov 18 2020 at 5:28pm
These people are looking seriously at the issue. Obviously this type of paper needs to be treated cautiously but, that said, this is a very impressive piece of research.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.16.385401v1.full.pdf
Perhaps you could write a more general blog post on the issue?
Comments are closed.