Why do Covid fatalities remain low when infection numbers are rising?

I don't buy the article's hypothesis of social distancing being a factor. Social distancing has been ongoing for a long time, and if anything it's happening less now as people fear the virus less with dropping fatalities. So why would social distancing suddenly now begin to have a greater effect?

Mask usage could play a role. If you're infected while wearing a mask your initial viral load is likely significantly reduced. And at least here in England masks were not mandatory until recently.

When they mention the large drop in ventilator usage - isn't that because after a month or two, medical experts said it probably does nothing or even could harm the patient if you put them on ventilators?

We keep going through this. COVID rates spike, people see death rates don’t immediately spike and make all sorts of claims about policy (we should open schools! In person dining!) then death rates do spike because they always lag tests by a month for a variety of reasons. In the U.S. there’s also the impact of the states (Texas, Florida, Georgia) that have chosen to stop reporting accurate data at all. Out of sight out of mind.

And don’t forget many of the (even young) people who aren’t dying are going through weeks or months of hell and may have debilitating symptoms for an indeterminate length of time.

The only sane policy is to shut everything nonessential down until every case can be thoroughly traced and testing capacity is such that anyone can get a test at any time for any reason. If the U.S. had done that in March this would be over already and going out in public wouldn’t be paying Russian roulette with your future.

Belgium and Spain had the most prominent policy errors in their care homes, which led to it's exorbitant high percentages. In Belgium they didn't have enough N95 face masks, so caretakers started sharing them. In Spain it was a similar care home fuckup (Fascist government cuts, they only kept the hospitals in excellent shape). My guess is that the UK with its privatized care homes had similar issues. No idea yet about the high rates in France. They didn't had fascist government lately I thought (Forgot about Sarcozy apparently). Italy had its high flu IFR's of over 1% for decades. (Privatized homes plus high air pollution plus Berlusconi, leading to be the world flu leader). The US has its sugar crisis and healthcare crisis known for decades, besides it's political inefficiency.

Treatment protocol improvements are another theory, but as far as I see it they still use oxygen ventilators, which is known to be of not much help. So unlikely. They also refused to use known therapeutical prevention methods which did work (politics were apparently more important than saving life's of elders), instead promoted fringe methods like 5% face masks and school closings.