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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

Japan simply isn't testing enough patients, so I would wait a few weeks before judging how well they did.

That said, inconceivably they don't have many serious cases. (If the virus was really spreading exponentially, we'd certainly see a lot more patients, tests or no tests.) So they must be doing something right. It's just hard to tell if they could keep it this way.

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Italy is not admitting anyone over 65 or with comorbitidities to the ICU due to lack of space. That's not something you can hide in any open society. Nor is senior politicians dying like happened in Iran.

For whatever reason Italy and Iran are doing much much worse than any other country. My WAG is the wide spread use of masks in Asia is the biggest differentiating factor.

If you look at the ratio of test/positive people, and assuming that lower the ratio more wide spread testing is, Japan isn't doing bad. I don't remember exact numbers but when I looked at the numbers recently it was something like 3.5% for South Korea, 17% for Italy and 5% for Japan.

I said it up thread, but curious to get more responses.

My hypothesis is this had already spread like crazy everywhere. Now we just are seeing the exponential discovery of it.

What marks the places hardest hit with severe cases is the bad air quality. Which acts as a further agitator on lung related complications.

Norway has very good air quality and still relatively hard hit.

Do you have the numbers handy?

And note, I mean hit hard with high severity cases. Not just cases. My hypothesis is that it is already everywhere. Most of this exponential growth is just how fast we can deploy testing.

I don't know about severity, but Norway is the European country with the highest infection ratio, after Italy and tiny Iceland. As of today:

- Italy: 1 case per 3.996 inhabitants - Iceland: 1/4.285 - Norway: 1/6.710 - Denmark: 1/9.081 - Switzerland: 1/10.035 - Spain: 1/14.831 - France: 1/23.292 - Germany: 1/30.160

From my searches, they are currently at zero deaths? Low, at any rate.

Feels like this supports my hypothesis. If anyone starts looking, they will find cases. Only if you have a baseline lung damage rate that is elevated will you see severe cases.

The first death in Norway was yesterday, an elderly person.

I tried looking up some numbers on severe cases, but the Norwegian Institute of Public Health webpages are currently experiencing some DNS issues.

Late responding, but if you find anything, I am still interested!

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