Benchmarking
2021-03-29
Some scientific experts, politicians and journalists criticise the Swedish “COVID-policies” and sometimes opine that Sweden should learn from “other countries”. Looking at the internationally accepted statistics from Johns Hopkins we can gather the following: (In addition to total deaths per country Johns Hopkins also shows death in relation to the size of the population.)
| Country | Deaths per 100 000 from COVID-19 | |
|---|---|---|
| UK | 190.73 | |
| USA | 167.75 | |
| Sweden | 130.23 | |
| India | 11.94 | |
| China | 0.35 | |
So, who should we learn from? It may feel absurd, and in any case unaccustomed, to most swedes, but the choice must be India and China and not the US and UK.
Books will be written about these differences in death rates. As a preliminary assay these are some of the possible causes to these huge differences.
- The statistics may be wrong.
- The two Asian countries may have a lifestyle that makes them more immune towards viruses.
- They may also differ in age distribution in the population and differ in the care of the elderly.
- In the Western world, there was an early widespread perception that there is no cure for COVID-19. It may have made Western doctors lose heart.
- The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic medicine, respectively, that are practised in these countries may have better cures than what is available in the western world.
- Kina and India are using international pharmaceuticals that have been barred for use for COVID patient in the west because there is not sufficient evidence from long term studies – for instance dexamethasone and other cortisones, remdesivir, baricitinib and other antiviral medicines, ivermectin and chloroquines.
This far, these are just some informed guesses. There might many other reasons. But it is surely worth investigating. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality