PeterS wrote:
We don't play well with others yet it didn't happen here...to that degree that is. We were close though and though we dodged a bullet isn't to say that bullets can't kill you which makes you wonder why there are those amongst us who continue to enjoy playing with guns?
I think the virus is to blame. It seems population density makes the virus worse. Here NY city got it the worst and in India, the virus reached a level where it's completely out of control.
Of course population density is a factor that would make the virus impact worse.
Interestingly, _other_ factors also come into play (as you and others probably already know). (But _which_ factors make _how_much_ difference is harder to determine.) The most interesting country for this, to my mind, is Vietnam. It's a densely populated country. It's _right_next_to_ China which, we are convinced, is where the virus "originated". I happen to know someone in Vietnam, so I've heard a little about how things are there. There's a porous border between China and Vietnam; illegal immigrants from China often walk across the border into Vietnam. So ...
From those factors, I might have expected Vietnam to be one of the worst-hit countries in the pandemic. But it hasn't been.
(If it had been really severely hit and the government were just covering it up, my friend there would have noticed it and then I would notice it from talking with her.) (One can also check statistics online to corroborate that Vietnam has done relatively well in the pandemic. A government can only cover up so much, and then the world would start to notice the difference with the facts. (Well, and then there's North Korea which is probably successful at covering up a lot -- but Vietnam's not like North Korea -- Vietnam has a lot of contacts and mixing with other nations, so news from Vietnam would probably get out into the world, through the people and their international contacts.))
When Vietnam got ONE (1) case of Covid somewhere, the country as a whole was alarmed by it -- it was in the news all over the country. They're doing worse than that lately -- getting eleven (11) or, I suppose, maybe as many as 30 or 40 (thirty or forty) cases somewhere. My friend's city (I got the population wrong here, sorry; the city's population is about 300,000. I've been editing this post for the past several minutes but now I'll finally quit.), seems to have had very few cases; all the news about Covid cases have been coming from other parts of the country. Well, it's not over yet; we might have another year or two of this pandemic so Vietnam could still fail somewhere along the way during all that time.
Don't anyone take this the wrong way, but _some_ of the Vietnamese aren't even wearing masks and aren't practicing "social distancing". At the same time, other Vietnamese _are_ practicing all the recommended things like wearing masks and social distancing. So their population behavior is mixed, possibly somewhat like U.S. population behavior is mixed. Many of the Vietnamese do wear masks habitually. But I think that habit (pre-dating the pandemic) is mostly for when they go outside; they have to protect themselves from the polluted air (particularly during rush hour when a great many people are commuting by motorbikes or light motorcycles).
So why aren't they suffering a great many more cases of Covid? I can think of 3 or 4 reasons, although I don't really know. One thing is, the government does seem to care about the population's health, and does seem to notice every single Covid case that happens. So they're probably doing a good job of contact tracing. And I think they started early with that. Another thing is, the government there is probably more authoritarian than here, so they might have more obedience when there are lockdowns. On the other hand, most of the time there are not actual lockdowns and many (or "some"?) people are way too careless about precautions against the virus spreading.
Aside from a government that takes an interest in the population's health and in Covid cases, and contact tracing, and getting an early start in taking the pandemic seriously, and obedience from the people on the rare occasions when there are severe restrictions like a lockdown, I can think of another reason why they might be surviving the pandemic well: open windows. They don't use air conditioning as much as we do, but instead they tend to have more open windows; and I'm guessing that this helps to keep them from spreading Covid, which spreads more in enclosed spaces than in open spaces. The open windows would make more air circulation, thus helping to limit the spread of Covid.
And one more factor: remember those illegal immigrants walking from China to Vietnam? Well, China itself has probably been effective at contact tracing, getting an early start at taking the pandemic seriously, and lockdowns in some places like Wuhan (and maybe, at other times and places, getting people to wear masks and observe distancing rules). So all this together could be another reason why Covid isn't spreading much into Vietnam: because the people in China mostly don't have it either -- and this might include the illegal immigrants walking from China to Vietnam.