[amscanne]

The map in [4] suggests that every adult in France would have received the BCG vaccine, as they only stopped in 2017 (and receive it as an infant). There are so many confounding variables here, I don't think anyone should be deriving any evidence by looking at the case charts like that.

[_euac]

I agree. I'm not arguing this is 'fact', just an interesting correlation - until proven anything stronger than that - that would explain why some countries got hit worse than others.

As someone else pointed out, the BCG needs a booster. While growing up I was given the initial one and two boosters. Most countries stopped doing that, which could also explain the effect. There's also the matter of which strain was used to create the vaccine: apparently some strains were better at fighting tuberculosis than others, so the same might apply (if the BCG vaccine actually made a difference) to COVID-19.

Anyway, my objective wasn't to start a conspiracy theory. We already have enough of those going around.