[chiefalchemist]

While data from China is difficult to find (and transparency always questionable), a key issues in comparing the two populations is:

- General health. Covid-19 rarely acts alone, at least in The West. Preexisting conditions play a key role. For example, obesity and its "side effect" diseases pair well with C19.

- How it cares for its elderly. People in nursing homes in the US have been significant contributors to the death count. Is that true in China?

It helps to get into the details a bit. While the proof has vet to be studied, anecdotally, cultural differences appear to contribute to the success (or failure) of a given government's decisions.

[Taniwha]

And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly.

I live in NZ - we've had no new cases nationwide for 2 weeks, we have (AFAWK) 1 active case in the whole country. Our borders are largely closed, anyone coming in is subject to mandatory quarantine. When we went into lockdown it was fast and deep, and people honored it, we started quarantining visitors from China early, as a result many of our cases came from the US. Now we're coming out, carefully step by step, I went for a drink at the pub on Friday night, then went out to dinner - there's still mandatory social distancing and collection of contact tracing data - that may all go away next week.

My hardware hacker friends in Shenzhen describe similar careful steps - apparently street markets may be back this week. But when they arrive they have similar mandatory quarantines as we have in NZ - does the US do any?

As far as nursing homes I think it's traditional for older people to live with their kids they don't get warehoused as much as we do in the West. As I understand it one of the big worries in China was that it was CNY, the whole country was on the move visiting family (those grandparents) they locked everyone down before they could return and then moved people back, directly into lockdown

[chiefalchemist]

I think what you might have is correlation. On the other hand, cause does exist for preexisting conditions. I'll go out on a limb a bit and theorize that elderly parents at home is safer than a bunch of them together in (under funded?) nursing homes.

Acting quicker might help but the fwct remains that underlying cultural issue have a significant impact on outcomes.

Side note: In NY state - and perhaps elsewhere - a nursing home patient with C19 that transfered to hospital and died is _not_ a nursing home death. The percentage of nursing home deaths is high, and - at least in NY - undercounted.

Would we have locked down the whole country is NY and NJ (and Philadelphia) done better with nursing homes?

[throwaway_pdp09]

> And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly.

Shocking stuff indeed. You've set the world of epidemiology on fire. What's your point? That in managing a dangerous epidemic communism/authoritarianism does better, or relatively liberal western government styles do better, or that governmental styles are not relevant? Because that was the original question.

[s1artibartfast]

I think the point is that the attribute most closely aligned with Covid outcome is not liberal-authoritarian, but functional - crippled by political division.

[Taniwha]

No, my point was that decisive governments willing to move quickly who are also able to motivate their populations to move with them (be they capitalist or communist) are doing far better here than governments whose leaders just put their fingers in their ears and tried to ignore the problem.

I lived in the US for 20 years, half my adult life, people there pride themselves in having a national government that is structurally deadlocked and unable to make sudden changes ... while this may be a useful attribute much of the time there are times, and a pandemic is one of them, when the government has to move really quickly - if you've fired all the experts and are more worried that your party's investors will lose money than you are that your voters will die then you get just the wrong sorts of results

[throwaway_pdp09]

> decisive governments

Original question asked if the cap or com governments were intrinsically better at this. You're saying governments that don't screw up are better at it. Yes, but it doesn't answer the original question.

[Taniwha]

It's not so much governments that screw up, it's governments who trust the science, who are decisive and move quickly, and who's populations are willing to follow them - my argument is that it doesn't seem to matter whether they are capitalist of communist - some communist countries have done well (Vietnam, China), as have some capitalist ones (NZ, South Korea, Taiwan, etc).