Big C said:
dimitrig said:
Cal88 said:
wifeisafurd said:
6. Many folks may have immunity because they have had viruses similar to COVID-19.
Item (6) is a key item, and perhaps the main reason the covid death toll turned out to be a lot smaller than expected. According to Dr.Didier Raoult, that percentage of people with immunity due to prior exposure to corona class of viruses is between 40% and 70% of the population.
I wonder if this is why China and nearby countries like Vietnam fared better than most - they had already been exposed through SARS and similar diseases.
The conventional wisdom is that SARS awakened these countries to the threat of pandemics and that they were more willing to follow strong government directives (because of SARS and also just their culture).
Vietnam, the Philippines,Thailand have borders or close ties and extensive travel with China, far more so than Italy, and third world dense cities and people in close quarters. They should have been heavily infected all the way back in December/January.
As well, most western European countries have had very draconian confinement directives, and the population has been extremely compliant. In France you literally had to sign a form every time you stepped out of your house to buy groceries and weren't allowed to do anything else, go to a park or travel inside the country. If your job was officially deemed essential, you had to have a written authorization on you to commute to work, and heavily fined if you strayed outside the commute path. Similar laws in place in the UK, Spain etc.
As to Dr Raoult, his HCQ/Azythro treatment protocol has been implemented in at least two dozen countries, including Turkey, Israel, Russia, Morocco, Algeria and most west African countries. Turkey has the same number of covid19 cases as France, about 180k, but less than 1/6th the number of deaths. I don't think the health system in countries like Algeria and Turkey is anywhere near as good as in France or Italy.
There are about 20 times more Maghrebans in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia than in Spain, France, Belgium and Holland, yet nearly 10 times more Maghrebans in Europe died than in their home countries. In other words, an Algerian or Moroccan living in N. Africa, where HCQ is dispensed early and free of charge to anyone showing symptoms, is nearly 50 times less likely to die from covid19 than their counterparts in France, Spain or Belgium.
Iran, which had the worst outbreak outside China all the way back in February, stabilized its situation once they implemented HCQ as a treatment. their death rate per capita is now 1/5 that of Italy. Russia, which also administers HCQ/Azythro to patients testing positive, has over 500,000 covid cases so far, more than the UK and France combined, but 1/10th the covid deaths. Within France proper, regions where Raoult's regimen was widely implemented ended up with 1/7th the death rate of the national average.
Eventually, the shear numbers and differentials from all these countries will be too hard to ignore.