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Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

Japan and Canada seem to have done relatively well, as have the Nordic countries (perhaps with the exception of Sweden which is TBD). The Baltic nations have done reasonably well too. Looking outside of Europe and the OECD, African democracies like Rawanda have kept the virus in check without draconian measures.

Having good or at least recently tested public health infrastructure and lucking into a good head of state/governing coalition seems to be key.

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> Canada seem to have done relatively well

Strangely, although Canada was much better prepared (from SARS-1 in 2003) than the USA (CDC fiasco) and their politicians listened to "science", they haven't done as well as expected.

Their death rate is half that of the USA so far, but that's still almost 10,000 dead for a population of 37 million, vs. 200,000 dead for US population of 320 million.

Some of the spread and deaths were from farm labor continuing to cross the border from Mexico to Ontario during the lockdown.

> they haven't done as well as expected

I think there are some elements of luck, demographics, and geography here.

Japan/Korea are not as liberal as US/western europe though. And danemark/norway/sweden/finland or the baltic countries in general are more socialist that enven France, really.

The Nordics are social democracies. Free market, liberal with a strong emphasis on social care. I'm not quite sure what your point is.

Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Estonia all rank higher in economic freedom than the US and have more direct democracies. The US literally wrote Japan's constitution. France stands out as having the most powerful executive branch of any of these countries.

That the US 'wrote' Japanese constitution is a technical artifact.

99% of their culture is not based on the cultural vestiges as we articulate then 'in law'.

They technically have some institutions which mirror 'Western Liberal Democracy' but they are not remotely like Western nations in that sense.

Taiwan, Singapore are also technically a lot like 'Western Liberal Democracies' but we can see they absolutely are not, right there in their COVID responses.

They are indeed noteworthily 'different'.

I think that's misses my point a bit. What I'm trying to say is that Japan has strong protection for freedom of speech, assembly, and general civil liberties especially as compared to Singapore. I don't know very much about Taiwan. While culturally quite different, Japan has a fairly familiar government from a western perspective, and civic life that seem roughly comparable(IMHO).

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