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by commonturtle 2054 days ago
Yeah, I'm just not sure what's happening in Asia, South America, and Africa. There were stories about lots of cases in a few countries but the number of deaths was quite low. Europe and North America seem to be the brutally hit but other places seem to have got through the pandemic without much trouble.

Is it the vitamin D? We should really try to figure out why these regions have done so well and try to replicate that in Europe and NA.
2 comments
e9 2054 days ago
In all those countries they extensively use Hydroxychloroquine which is anti malaria drug and super important especially in Africa. Indian government is very open in using it for covid-19: https://www.newsweek.com/india-promotes-hydroxychloroquine-d... As well as many African countries: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/djibouti-treating-... https://www.theafricareport.com/26726/coronavirus-recovery-r...

can provide more sources if requested (or just google it)...

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dragonwriter 2054 days ago
> I'm just not sure what's happening in Asia, South America, and Africa.

Latin America seems to be all over the list of top deaths/capita for the whole pandemic, but currently the worst places (per capita deaths in the last 7 days) seems to be mostly central/eastern europe, though Argentina is pretty high in both all time and recent deaths/capita.

Where Africa is doing well or just doesn't have good surveillance to even identify cases, I couldn't say. But if a place doesn't have much inbound tourism, doesn't have lots of people able to afford international travel, and doesn't have the kind of internal mobility common in the developed world, it would make sense that they might not get hit very hard without taking much in the way of special precautions.

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commonturtle 2053 days ago
The inbound tourism idea is something I didn't think about. Transmission may depend a lot of people transporting it from one geographical region to another, and that might be less common in the developing world simply due to worse transport networks and people living and working more locally in general. E.g., more people from the UK go to Spain on holiday than people from Gambia.
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