@Pat Looks like that article is from 2020. It's far from succesful nowadays. Kinda funny how that turns out.
What's the current infection rate and death rate in China? What's the death rate in the US and Europe? How many people have died in total in China versus other countries? Who is more free to go where they want, a Chinese citizen living in a relatively virus-free country, or someone in the US who can't walk across the room without losing their breath?
How do you measure success?
As a pro statistician I can say this is a very common failing people apply to tons of subjects... You can **not** compare absolute rates between countries and presume it is the result of a policy, thats considered invalid analysis.
When we analyze policy we look at the rate of change in the background incident rate immediately following a change in policy. You must compare the country to itself at an earlier period before the policy was adopted. It is the only way to reasonably hold most other factors constant.
@Pat @freemo @trinsec Not easy to take a stance here - it would take quite some time to get enough information.
I know nothing about the relevant factors.
What disappoints me, really, is that our gouvernment in germany does not even try.
They took the bad part of china at times, with curfews (that i still have not heard any reasonable explanation about in how that would be helpful), but now just... give up.
A bit of masking indoors, maybe invest in some tech for hotspots like schools for distance learning (haha, as if they would invest in schools ever). Testing is not perfect, but can help some.
They do none of that anymore. 100% populism, no regard for scientific recommendations.
Weather, genetics, access to water, food, nutrition, physical fitness of the population, age distributions, insularity, there are hundreds if not thousands of factors.
More over it is the factors we dont know.. there is a raeson experts in tthe field do it the way they do and reject the analysis approach you did.. just because you cant think of the hidden confounding variables doesnt mean they arent there.
The quality studies on the effectiveness of respirators show that they are more effective than the vaccine. And unless you have evidence for transmission via some quantum nonlocality mechinism, isolation prevents spread of the disease. Those techniques are proven effective. China used them, we didn't. And the results show it.
@Pat I never made any claim in this thread that respirators **arent** effective... or even that japan didnt make good choices... all im saying is the evidence you presented to back this up is invalid.. perhaps good evidence would support your conclusion though.
You're right, I'm not a statistician. What set me off on all this is an interview that Dr. Jha did on ABC's This Week (he's the guy currently heading the US response to the pandemic). So, in this interview, the guy running the group that is responsible for more than a million dead Americans, says that China (who's death rate <1% of the US rate) is doing it wrong. These people are evil, absolute evil.
There may be some validity to that depending on how you look at it. But I'd have to do more research to say.
Generally when you use masks excessively for any disease the number of cases go down but the mortality rate goes up, particularly over the long term. In fact if you wear respirators too much or are excessive about wiping germs you have a much higher chance of autoimmune disorders too.
So it is reasonable to think china may have fewer overall cases, but more people are dying either directly of COVID or of developed auto immune diseases.
I know off hand the morality rate of covid in China is twice that of the USA, without a proper study I cant say what the real death toll is, but there is enough to suggest there may be some validity here, MAYBE... need to see a proper study.
And you have a valid point about demographics having a significant impact on death rate. For example, in many African countries, they had a huge AIDS epidemic recently that took out a lot of people and therefore have a much younger demographic, and therefore did much better with COVID-19.
@freemo @Pat Wondering if this is what we should discuss.
I know, annoyingly inserting myself again, but here goes:
There have been scientists doing a lot of work throughout this. They made recommondations and were often ignored, in germany, usa, a lot of places. I have no idea if what chinese politicians did was with or against the recommendations they had.
If we discuss what to take serious here, we might miss the real point: Those that gouvern what happens do not listen. As much of an extrovert as i may be, i would shut up and listen when someone with actual proficiency in the topic would speak. Only speak to ask questions.
We should demand this from politicians. Not antagonize each other.