agip wrote:
US still, after all this,
4% of the world's population
but
20% of the COVID deaths
Although we have to assume wild undercounting in poor nations, so that number isn't completely trustworthy.
Here are a couple of articles attempting to shed some light on how/why COVID has hit some countries/continents worse than others.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-othershttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/briefing/oprah-meghan-interview-biden-stimulus-bill.htmlIs it a statistical mirage?
Almost certainly not. Some portion of the pattern probably does stem from an underreporting of deaths by less developed medical systems. But much of the pattern is real, many epidemiologists believe.
Poorer countries are younger
Covid is usually harder on older people: More than 80 percent of U.S. deaths have occurred among people who are 65 or older.
Across Africa and much of Asia, the population is younger. Birthrates are higher, and other health problems more frequently kill people before they reach old age. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 3 percent of the population is 65 or older. In Pakistan, only 4 percent is. In the U.S., the share is 16 percent, and it’s 20 percent in the European Union.
Fresh air helps
Daily life tends to better ventilated in warmer, lower-income countries. People spend more time outdoors, and windows are often open. Covid spreads less easily in these settings than it does in poorly ventilated indoor spaces.
Immunity may not be uniform
Many researchers suspect that this is an important part of the answer. If previous coronaviruses spread more widely in some countries, people’s immune systems there may be better prepared to fight Covid. “There is a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Salim Abdool Karim, a South African epidemiologist, told Reuters, “but there is no smoking gun.”
Policy matters
Rwanda quickly and aggressively enforced social distancing, mask wearing, contact tracing and mass testing. So did several Asian countries. Ghana, Vietnam and other countries restricted entry at their borders. And a consortium of African nations collaborated to distribute medical masks and rapid Covid tests.
“Africa is doing a lot of things right the rest of the world isn’t,” said Gayle Smith, a former Obama administration official.