Where Covid-19 Has Already Killed More Than One Person Per Thousand

23/11/2020

By Eric Zuesse
originally posted at Strategic Culture
Nov. 16,2020

As-of November 15th, more than one person per thousand had already died from the Covid-19 virus (coronavirus-19) in the nations of

San Marino (1.2 per thousand)
Belgium (1.2 per thousand)
Peru (1.1 per thousand)
and in the U.S. states of
New Jersey (1.9 per thousand)
New York (1.7 per thousand)
Massachusetts (1.5 per thousand)
Connecticut (1.3 per thousand)
Louisiana (1.3 per thousand)
Mississippi (1.2 per thousand)
Rhode Island (1.2 per thousand)
(Nationwide, the U.S. death-rate is 759 per million or .759 per thousand.)

Here are the nations with over 5 million population that have the lowest death-rates from the disease:
Cambodia (0)
Laos (0)
Burundi (1 per 12,015,509)
Taiwan (1 per 3,404,638)
Vietnam (1 per 2,790,141)
Papua (1 per 1,286,790)
Thailand (1 per 1,164,395)
Sri Lanka (1 per 487,406)
Niger (1 per 355,300)
Uganda (1 per 347,734)
Rwanda (1 per 326,650)
Mozambique (1 per 318,834)
Burkina Faso (1 per 315,011)
China (1 per 310,869)
DRC (1 per 286,454)
Benin (1 per 284548)
Singapore (1 per 209,535)
Ivory Coast (1 per 211,189)
South Sudan (1 per 190,525)
New Zealand (1 per 200,084)

Here are the U.S. states with the lowest death-rates from the disease:

Vermont (1 per 10,576; or .95 per ten thousand, or .095 per thousand)
Maine (1 per 8,617)
Alaska (1 per 7,951 — the explosion of the disease started only recently there)
Hawaii (1 per 6,378)
Oregon (1 per 5,723)

In order properly to understand these numbers (such as the low death-rates in some African countries), an important underlying variable is the median age of the land’s population, because, for example, the median age for Burundi is only 17, and, therefore, San Marino, where the median age is 44.4, is naturally likely to have a vastly higher death-rate from this disease. Apples should be compared with apples, not with oranges. However, the median age in Vermont is 42.8 (America’s third-highest), and in Maine is 44.9 (America’s highest), and yet both states have America’s lowest two death-rates from this disease; so, governmental policies and their public acceptance and enforcement can be even more important than is the physical population. Nature isn’t everything; nurture can be an even bigger determinant of success or failure.

Furthermore, all three of the highest death-rate countries have incredibly polarized and therefore dysfunctional ‘democratic’ governments, and this means that they are especially likely to fail to have unity — and therefore effectiveness — in responding to an emergency, which this evolving event is. Slow response and adjustment to it is then like no response, because it comes too late, in an emergency situation. Moreover, San Marino’s economy is at least 50% tourism-based, which is the sector that is the hardest hit by the pandemic, as a consequence of which, the pressures to underestimate the pandemic’s danger are especially large there.

As that same website which I’ve cited for the coronavirus death-rates also shows, worldwide the daily death rate from the disease, which was 67 on 2 March 2020, soared to 8,534 by the time of 17 April 2020, and didn’t exceed that number until 4 November 2020 at 9,152, despite the world’s having been taking increasing measures to reduce the spread of the disease. However, since the global death-rate from the virus has finally broken through the initial peak of 8,534, we can now expect either greatly increased measures to be taken against the disease’s spread, or else the daily death-rate from it to be soaring, in at least the near-term future.

If the daily death-rate from it will be soaring in the near-term future, then the public will become increasingly afraid to be anywhere with strangers; and, consequently, all modes of employment that require employees to be physically near strangers will need to pay higher and higher wages in order to be able to remain in business, and the local economy will therefore be in a downward spiral unless and until that situation becomes reversed.

Consequently, the economy will likely be hit hard now, either way. During an epidemic, harm to the economy is inevitable in the short term, regardless of whether the government acts or not. But during the long term, carefully calibrated scientifically calculated measures to reduce the spread of the epidemic are optimal (for the long term benefits), and anything that impedes this is therefore a threat against the entire public. Whereas a threat against the general public is acceptable to a psychopath (or “sociopath”) and is consistent with pure capitalism (“libertarianism” or “neoliberalism”), it is not acceptable to a democratic socialist (“social democratic”) person, or to a patriot in a country that asserts the general welfare to be among its fundamental priorities (such as the U.S. Constitution does in its General Welfare Clause and especially in its most-fundamental passage, the Preamble, which asserts the ultimate objectives which that Constitution is directed at serving). Therefore, in the latter type of country, pure capitalism is actually unpatriotic, and democratic socialism is obligatory for the Government to adhere to, regardless of whether or not that country’s existing leaders adhere to it, or publicly acknowledge the fact that their Constitution is actually social-democratic, and not (and certainly not purely) capitalistic.

(For examples: Abraham Lincoln said: “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” So, he certainly was a social democrat. And Lincoln’s hero, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, on 12 November 1816, to his long-time friend, Dr. George Logan of Philadelphia, about the “profligacy” of England’s government, wasting resources to prop up its international corporations, which Jefferson said had brought about “the ruin of its people” in order to benefit those aristocrats. He said, “This ruin [in England] will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall, on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe [meaning creating the catastrophe (by corrupting the government), not meaning to prepare for the catastrophe]. I hope we shall take warning from the [English] example [e.g., the British East India Company] and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” So, he too was hostile toward capitalism and favorable toward democratic socialism. America’s Founders — including even its last Founder, Lincoln — supported democracy, and opposed aristocracy, or rule by the controlling owners of corporations. But today’s America — in regard to both its Democratic Party and its Republican Party — is controlled by its billionaires; and, so, this nation is now definitely an aristocracy, instead of a democracy.)

One argument that is being put forth for pure capitalism regarding this virus is “herd immunity,” the idea (which has been endorsed in the neoliberal Council on Foreign Relations’s prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, and also by U.S. President Donald Trump), which is that if a sufficiently high percentage of the population become infected with it and survive, then they will automatically be immune from catching the disease in the future, and so anyone else (the never-infected) will become less likely to catch the disease from others. Like other libertarian (or “neoliberal) thinking, it trusts to nature as being optimal, and accepts unlimited “survival of the fittest,” and rejects social democracy or any general-welfare constitution (such as America has and which is being routinely violated by America’s own Government). However, the assumption that everyone who survives an infection from this virus is immune against becoming infected with it again, has not been established, and there are also many other falsehoods in applying the “natural herd immunity” concept to this particular virus — a virus whose epidemiological characteristics are still not yet understood. As National Geographic recently explained, “Banking on natural infection to control the outbreak would lead to months, if not years, of a dismaying cycle in which cases subside and then surge.” Furthermore, even if the idea that a natural herd immunity might become able to protect a nation’s population, would not a synthetic herd immunity from an effective vaccine be preferable — and much faster? It will prevent the millions of deaths, and even more millions of cases, that would be suffered until a natural herd-immunity exists — if such a natural herd immunity ever will exist. This is the purpose of the policies in the lands that have thus far been the most effective at keeping down the amounts of disease and death from Covid-19. This is a holding action, so as to save the health and the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be unnecessarily wasted while the world waits for a vaccine. The “natural herd immunity” approach isn’t only psychopathic, it is grossly inefficient.