It’s not just New Zealand that has low numbers, literally every Asia Pacific country has low numbers. In terms of deaths per million, South Korea 5, New Zealand 4, Philippines 6, Indonesia 3, Australia 4, Japan 4, Singapore 3, China 3. Compare those numbers to Europe and the US, Belgium 720, Spain 553, Italy 485, France 391, US 218.
Now there’s obviously lots of factors at play, but there’s one possible explanation for why the death rate in western Europe and the US is 100X the rate of Asia-Pacific. The virus mutated and the version that spread in Italy and from there to the rest of Europe and the eastern seaboard of the US is a different strain. Andrew Cuomo is right, the virus came from Italy.
I’m consistent in my views about the Munster gene pool and inbreeding. You don’t consistently get the likes of Lowry, the Healy Raes, Willie O’Dea, Timmy Dooley etc etc returned without some unprecedented levels of backwardness.
There definitely seems to be a strong case that there is different strains of the virus out there. Luckily viruses usually mutate into less deadly versions of themselves over time as the deadlier strains are too successful in killing their hosts so the less deadly versions become much more prevalent. That’s pretty much what happened to the Spanish flu. Over the course of 12 months or so it mutated into a version of the common flu.
Italy handled this pandemic by far the worst in Europe. With the large Chinese population in northern Italy it was obvious this was the country where the outbreak would hit hardest. Italy had it’s first confirmed case on January 31st, two visitors from China. Italy didn’t lockdown until March 9th, 5 weeks after their first case.
The first cases in Ireland and the UK wasn’t until the end of February, both shut down two weeks later.
Italy fucked this up royally mate, and by not shutting down travel to other locations, facilitated the spread to the rest of western Europe and the US.
We were talking about how the government failed to act accordingly and you started ranting on about what a forklift driver in Aughnacloy would have done.
Apparently in your mind, governments defer to forklift drivers for national emergency decisions.
This study, led by scientists at Los Alamos, concludes that a new strain which started in Europe (most likely Lombardy where the original virus first spread quickly in Europe) in early February has quickly become the dominant strain in Europe and the eastern US.
When questions were put about government decisions, you felt the most pertinent thing to talk about about were people who didn’t have the powers to make those decisions.
When questions were asked, I asked you if you were saying this at the time, as its always good to see if people actually believed this at the time or if they’re being a captain hindsight, which you are.
You are claiming that there are not many asymptomatic carriers. Can you outline your evidence for this again, given it contradicts all studies done to date (actual studies, not models that people pull out of their ass).
Why Gov didn’t close the airports 6/7 weeks earlier than they did. Ireland had all the advantages to suppress its spread as a small island on the west coast of Europe.
You started questioning what a forklift driver in Aughnacloy with no powers would have done in response. Absolutely bizarre.
Why didn’t Italy shut down in early February given they had their first cases January 31st? Why did they not shut down air travel to other countries given the place was riddled by mid February?