It seems that COVID 19 disproportionally targets wealthy places. Only one of the worlds 146 poorest countries (GCP per capita) has a COVID death rate of over 50 per million – Iran. By contrast, 20 of the remaining 44 countries (the worlds richest) have a death rate of over 50 and 12 of them have a death rate of over 100!
Many world authorities and media outlets (links below) have warned about the risks of COVID 19 reaching and spreading in developing countries, but so far this doesn’t appear to be happening. Take a look at the charts for any developing country and they all (at least the ones that I’ve seen) tell the same story: the number reported per day doesn’t rise dramatically like those in Europe, but after perhaps a quick burst, falls quickly into a steady flow. Why?
There could be a few reasons for this.
1. Wealthy places are more connected, especially by air, so it was easier for the virus to arrive there
The problem with this theory is that the disease arrived in some poorer countries a while ago and yet it doesn’t appear to have spread as dramatically as feared. In Indonesia, for example, there were over 1,500 cases in the country by the beginning of April and yet, after a short increase, the number of new cases per day appears to have already stabilised, rather than exploding. Ghana had 132 cases by March 26th – why did it take over 2 weeks for that number to triple, and not 4 days like it did in France?
2. Wealthy places are better at testing whilst poorer nations hide the real numbers
I guess it’s possible that there is a world conspiracy amongst poorer nations to hide their real figures, or indeed a tendency to do so that is so strong that every country follows suit without being prompted, but it seems a bit far fetched. Also, in many of the worlds poorest countries there is strong international presence in the health care systems (NGOs supporting health care from the top right down to the local level) so I feel that it would be difficult to pull the wool over their eyes so completely. Infection rates in developing countries might be slightly understated, but not that much.
3. The weather
Perhaps weather does plays a big role. It’s true that many of the hardest hit cities are in colder climates. New York, London, and Tehran were all fairly chilly during the outbreaks there, and Wuhan itself frequently falls below zero during the winter period when the virus emerged. We have also seen significant numbers reported in Singapore, UAE, and Indonesia, which are all unbeatably hot although a) they do all use a lot of air conditioning and b) the numbers there aren’t anything compared to Western Europe and the deaths per million are quite low (2, 5, and 2 respectively).
4. Something else Is there something else that we are missing?
Between 1891 and 1894 the French tried and failed to construct a canal through Panama to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. One of the main reasons they failed was because they kept losing workers to yellow fever and malaria – nobody could work out that these diseases were transported by mosquito. Looking back now it seems so obvious – people near the water were dying, and that’s where mosquitos live – but they could not fathom it at the time. Incidentally, working this out contributed greatly to the success of the canal’s construction by the US just a few years later. Is there something super obvious that we are missing?
Will we all look back in 100 years time and wonder how silly we were for not realising that…..
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