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> Rational, educated populace doesnt explain away the difference between Italy vs Austria, Belgium & Netherlands vs Germany, the US vs Canada

In the case of US vs Canada, perhaps it does. Canadians have a high level of trust in expert civil servants, including public health officials. There is also a general Canadian pragmatism that kicks in: politicians from across the country and across the political spectrum have handled the pandemic fairly consistently. The public remains mostly supportive of the federal, provincial and local initiatives. It has not been perfect, but we have not seen local officials warring with the Premier or the Premier warring with the PM on the issue of pandemic response.

In terms of education, Canada leads the world in working-age adults with post-secondary education[0]. Though primary and secondary education is a provincial and local matter, it tends to be consistently good in most of the country.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40708421

Canada has little population density outside it’s local hubs. The virus isn’t going to spread so easily there outside of localities. The USA has more metro areas that are drivable to each other. It’s easier to spread in the USA. Look at the massive EU numbers and consider their density.

Rural places in the US are doing a dandy job of spreading it right now.

In this rural county, daily new infections are at something like 400/million. That rate is arrived at with a big enough multiplier, but it is a reasonable basis for comparison. Our cumulative case / million is ~23000.

At a country-level, I'm not sure any conclusion can be drawn for density versus (per capita) infection rates:

* https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-po...

See also:

> We also find that after controlling for metropolitan population, county density is not significantly related to the infection rate, possibly due to more adherence to social distancing guidelines. However, counties with higher densities have significantly lower virus-related mortality rates than do counties with lower densities, possibly due to superior health care systems.

* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2020.1...

* https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2020.1777891

I think that’s because population density is notoriously hard to measure. The problem is that most countries have a mixture of big cities, rural areas, and uninhabited wilderness. Taking the total population and dividing by the total land area does not tell you anything useful about the actual proximity in which most people live in a country.

On that scatterplot you linked, Canada is way down there in terms of population density. Yet the vast majority of Canada’s land area is uninhabited wilderness to the north. Most Canadians live within a narrow band of cities running parallel to the U.S. border. In addition, a significant minority live in many scattered rural areas outside of that band.

So the question is: how do you measure Canada’s true population density? Do you only look at the high density band? Or do you include the rural areas? Where do you draw the line between rural and wilderness? There’s no easy answer.

Diseases mostly don't spread between strangers. They spread between family members, close relatives and friends. Everybody has those, even in rural areas.

Look at past pandemics for reference, everybody was hit. The Spanish Flu spread in isolated arctic populations just as well as NYC.

> In the case of US vs Canada

remember that in the US, we're still barely in the beginning of this thing. trying to claim correctness of action is largely meaningless as we neither have herd immunity nor have felt the economic impacts of our policies. 9/10 NYC business can't pay full rent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574314

personally, it seems the economic dangers are far larger than the health effects at this point. with that lens, id prefer a republican next term, even if its trump. well, id prefer a libertarian (and the first female president at that!) but thats a nonstarter for some reason.

You’d prefer someone who lies to the population and downplays science and experts in the field of epidemiology? Do you really think this is going to lead to economic recovery?

> but that's a nonstarter for some reason

Yes, welcome to the nash equilibrium of polarized first past the post politics.

Isn’t Ontario and Quebec going through a massive 2nd wave right now?

And there have been protests against the restrictions including one on Parliament Hill.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-19-rally-ottawa-1.570...

Canada has been going through a second wave. (Well, Ontario and Quebec are, with Winnipeg as a bubbling hot spot. But given most of the country lives in Ontario and Quebec…)

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/canada?countr...

The protests have been very, very small. The population, based on polls, supports masks.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/civic-duty-or-infr...

What’s going on in Canada is, I think, what’s going on in Europe: pandemic fatigue. It sucks to be socially distanced for this long, and people’s guards go down. I don’t think we are seeing the almost nihilistic denial that you see in parts of the States here; we’re just tired.

The protests have been very small, despite the media doing their best to promote them.

If you look at someone like Doug Ford, the extremely conservative, pro-business premier of Ontario, he has consistently advocated for masking and lockdowns as needed. He was tight-fisted with funds for testing, and overly eager to reopen businesses before fall/winter when outdoor dining would be untenable. That set the stage for our current outbreak, but he hasn't done anything on the level of Trump or Rick Scott.

Had several boat parades involving many thousands of boats, crowds of tens of thousands.

Media had a brief report that a boat flipped over. No other mention of the rally.

Seeing daily rallies and parades Driving around now. Zero mention on local news channels.

Drove threw 3 states. We saw one Biden bumper sticker. No signs. Thousands of Trump signs.

Media is extremely biased in its reporting.

> Drove threw 3 states. We saw one Biden bumper sticker. No signs. Thousands of Trump signs.

Is it at all possible that those three states were “red” states?

2 out of 3

> were the US, Italy, and other more severely affected countries already major travel hubs for people coming from early affected regions?

That only played a role very early on, at the beginning of the pandemic, when imported cases drove spread of the virus.

As the pandemic goes on, community spread becomes the dominant factor, so policies that affect transmission can have a huge effect.

The most dramatic example of this is China. The virus began there, so they had zero time to prepare. They were more "in the path of the storm" than anyone. There was a major outbreak in Hubei province, and the virus gained a foothold in every major city in the country. But then, beginning in late January, China had an extremely strict lockdown that lasted several weeks. Transmission chains ended, and the prevalence of the virus was brought down to a minimal level. Since then, extensive testing and symptom checks in public have kept the epidemic from resurging, and the government has reacted with immediate lockdowns wherever the virus has resurfaced. Compare that to the US (and many countries, though the US is one of the most extreme examples), where the epidemic has been allowed to continue for months.

China was also communicating about the virus to the public in a reasoned way early on. No such thing occurred in the US, it seemed.

I haven’t really understood the certain praise the EU has received by the USA media. The EU as a whole is similar to the USA and has done just as good/bad as the USA. Similar number of deaths. The USA has more cases but I suspect the EU has just not tested as much previously. There’s no reason to suspect the EU would have a higher death rate (USA has more confirmed cases but fewer deaths$. But today EU case totals are higher (much higher recently but I suspect the USA is just lagging a bit) or about the same as the USA which makes sense since both places are doing massive amounts of testing.

I'm pro-lockdown, but I don't know why you're so heavily downvoted. Much of Europe, other than Germany, pretty much utterly botched it.

By excess deaths, the US is doing way better per capita than somewhere like France.

This utopian view of the EU predates COVID. I’m not sure where it comes from.

It's mostly because Germany dominates the discourse, and the impression of outsiders towards the EU. Sure, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Netherlands and Belgium are miles ahead of the rest of the EU, but the rot begins once you go south. France, Italy, Spain, etc. are so much worse places with the rest of the EU following in the slow decline. Meanwhile, other places such as Poland and Hungary with rising living standards are turning into ultra-conservative shit holes (to speak broadly. Of course, the story in the cities is usually different).

To a thirsty man in the desert, a muddy puddle is an oasis.

For many of the things that the EU is looked up to in (for instance, racism), the EU seems more like an oil spill.

The idea that Europe is somehow much less racist than the US, for instance, is laughable.

Got to agree with this. You see European football fans make dehumanizing monkey sounds and gestures at black and brown players. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in American sports.

Why do you think EU is testing less then USA?

I don’t think right now. But earlier in the year. I explained in my comment the EU has fewer confirmed cases but more deaths. This implies that either EU citizens are more likely to die from COVID or that they didn’t test as much earlier. Today their confirmed numbers are massive and I suspect it’s because they are testing more than ever.

> EU citizens are more likely to die from COVID or that they didn’t test as much earlier

Both are true -> EU citizens are much older.

The null hypothesis is that the differences between countries so far are more due to luck and timing than rationality and education. If that's correct then over the long run infection rates will roughly even out between most countries.

It’s unlike for all countries to have equivalent transmission rates by default. Further, countries with younger populations (specifically vs 75+) would have fewer death even if their adage adjusted mortality rates are identical.

Italy has a much larger percentage of population over 80 than the rest of Europe due to climate, migration patterns, and WWII.

Compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media... vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#/media/F...

Did you intentional link to "Population pyramid of Germany in 1933"? This is the most recent chart and it doesn't look that much better than Italy's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media...

Yes, because it gave scale to just how big the WWI and WWII population impacts where. Click the right arrow shows the 1946 version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media... and one more shows the 2019 version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media... (It sadly groups the oldest population only really showing the male vs female ratio despite WWII having killed so many women in that generation.)

Both countries have a similar percentage of 65+ year olds, but COVID gets rapidly more deadly as you get older and Germany‘s very oldest generation is devastated. For comparison 31.30% of US covid deaths are from 85+ year olds.

Now take a look back at the male and female 90-94 and 95-99 year old slices of both of those charts you said looked similar.

There’s another difference. The US healthcare system has strong incentives to find COVID where there is none, or where it’s irrelevant. They get substantially more money from a COVID death than from a normal death. A guy I know lost his friend to a motorcycle accident, but his friend’s death was officially a COVID death.

When you see really strong outliers, you need to at least consider the explanatory power of incentives.

I think the US has mismanaged the crisis, but I also think there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the numbers.