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Comment by marcell | Hacker News Reader

It's not really clear they are having better results. I don't know what the numbers are out of China, but certainly in Europe they had really big outbreaks in Italy, France, the UK, Spain, and other places as well. Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States.

I think most media outlets are over-emphasizing the impact of government interventions, and under-emphasizing the impact of other factors that affect the severity of the virus. These could be factors like the health of the population--do they have a lot of smokers? obesity?, the age of the population, or other factors like the use of public transit.

It's appealing to assume that the most important factor in deciding outcomes is government policy. This is reassuring because we (society) can control government policy. But I haven't seen any good data to suggest that government policy is the most impactful factor compared to other hypotheses.

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> Their outcomes are pretty similar, in terms of deaths per capita, to the United States.

Except that they are all now on downward trajectories while being more open (as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory). Travel is allowed in Europe. Schools are open. Bars are open. And they are still on a downward trajectory.

And furthermore, there are locations in the United States that have handled the virus pretty well and are powerless to stop people from coming up there and messing it all up.

“Mike, from Old Town, who did not want to share his last name, ordered a vodka Red Bull before getting back in line with friends at Old Crow Smokehouse’s curbside bar. He had just gotten back from a vacation in Dallas, Texas, with a friend, where he left a day early due to the spike in cases and the state’s rolling back on its openings.

“[It feels] like I’m the problem,” he said with a nervous laugh as he talked about being out and about amid the pandemic. Looking around at the throngs of people drinking and walking around Wrigleyville, he said it is concerning.”

What the hell are we supposed to do about that with zero national plan? All the local shutdowns in the world are useless unless we can put the interstate commerce clause on hold for a bit.

> What the hell are we supposed to do about that with zero national plan?

Looking at California, a state where borders are mostly in remote areas that aren't especially porous (compared to NYC/NJ), there's still be a huge surge, and nothing points to borders being the reason. It's mostly state and county-level policy. States around NYC seem to have stomped it down relatively well, despite there being three states involved.

The US is huge and diverse, so you're not going to get a "national plan." The best you can hope for is guidance.

The one national level thing Trump could and should have done, but didn’t, is ban international and interstate travel.

> as opposed to the US, which is on an upward trajectory

You have the wrong scale in mind. The US is closer to the EU than a single country here - individual states have totally different trajectories. For example, Illinois, where I am, looks like those European countries that were hit hard early and is also opening up.

Except that big outbreaks were used as learning experience by other places who managed to contain issue before it became big and are opening now. While having enough testing capacitiy and experimenting with exact rules that allow them to open up.

No place in the world is handling this as poorly as we have. Well.. maybe Brazil?

What about Iran?

The US has higher case and death counts than Iran, both in absolute terms as well as per-capita. The US also looks to be on a worse trajectory.

Yeah, based on the self reported numbers out of Iran, which you can trust about as much as you can their state news agency on any number of topics. Let’s not forget they were simultaneously denying the virus’ prevalence while their political leaders were dropping like flies and they were digging mass graves that could be seen from space.

With the White House issuing orders for hospitals to report directly to them instead of the CDC, I'm not sure how long we'll be able to trust the US numbers.

Iran managed to get over a first wave, but they had to re-open prematurely because their economy is in the toilet partially due to economic sanctions.

The same thing is experienced in Turkey without economic sanctions...

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