To wonder why Covid19 is mainly hitting the largest European / American economies

[littlerock7]

I’m not into conspiracy theories, neither am I particularly interested / educated in politics or economics BUT I’m finding it very hard to wrap my head around the fact that the hardest hit countries are all in Europe and are also the heart of the European economy. Then the USA being hit the hardest In their largest economic states but Beijing, South Korea and China itself has hardly been effected?!

Many counties close to Europe and surrounding are hardly effected.

It doesn’t seem to make sense. And call me crazy but I’m starting to wonder if this is some type of attack from China. Does anyone else have an opinion on this or understand it a little better?

We're the 36th most obese country in the world even though we are the most obese in Europe. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html

Yes but Australia, Canada, South Africa and NZ are all higher on that list than we are and they are doing much better with Covid . You can't just blame obesity, though it does appear to be one of many factors.

Thé advantage New Zealand has in particular is that they were able to limit community spread in February.

The best estimate is that around 200,000 people in the UK went skiing in Italy for February half term. We know with hindsight that community spread was set alight that week so by the lockdown it was totally out of control.

Truth is any developing economies with fledgling manufacturing sectors are being absolutely trashed, but a lack of institutions (bank of England etc.) makes measuring the damage much harder to do. Retailers such as primark have already cancelled orders from Indian suppliers, who have then laid off most of their workforce, add in to the fact that 90%of the Indian economy is informal, and governments are going to have a very difficult time of providing assistance, if any.

Also the virus is mutating and indications are Europe and America appears to have a different strain to Asia and other countries

China’s economy has been badly affected (even by their own figures which are likely to be inaccurate): www.google.co.uk/amp/s/time.com/5824599/china-coronavirus-covid19-economy/%3famp=true

Yes but Australia, Canada, South Africa and NZ are all higher on that list than we are and they are doing much better with Covid . You can't just blame obesity, though it does appear to be one of many factors
Sorry I wasn't clear. I was wanting to make the same point that you made, as obesity had been cited by a number of posters as being why Europe and US had been particularly hard hit. As you say a lot of more obese countries haven't been hard hit yet and a lot of the worst hit countries aren't that high up in the tables.

I hate to say it but think that many Mumsnetters jetting off on their skiing hols during half-term were part of the problem.

Thing is, China isn't the "sweatshop of the world" anymore. They have a massive consumer base domestically, plus raw materials, plus their projects overseas in developing countries like Africa. They will be fine.

*countries, such as those in Africa.

It’s really related to

1. how quickly the governments reacted to COVID with lockdown measures and how strict those measures were. The slower to react and/or the more lax the measures, the worse COVID has been.
2. how good and accessible the healthcare system is. Countries with underfunded or nonuniversal systems have suffered more.

There are not many reports about other countries but that doesn't mean they don't suffer economicly.
UAE and Kuwait have very strict lockdowns and their economies are hit hugely. UAE depends heavily on tourism.
Many Russia's small and medium businesses have already gone bust because if lockdown.

A quick google would give you the answer OP.

Take South Korea for example:

‘The backbone of Korea’s success has been mass, indiscriminate testing, followed by rigorous contact tracing and the quarantine of anyone the carrier has come into contact with. As of March 19, the country has conducted more than 307,000 tests, the highest per capita in the world. The UK has conducted 64,600; The US even less that.’

www.wired.co.uk/article/south-korea-coronavirus

I suspect you do want the conspiracy theories though rather than facts.

Are you using silver foil or just a standard steel colander to channel your thoughts?

Greater reliance on stock markets and sentiment perhaps?

Obesity, weather, seasons, lock down rate, population density, ironically a good nhs which keeps poorly people alive longer, etc etc. We don't know yet. And, this isn't over; other countries are at different points on their journey.

Japan and South Korea are extraordinarily clean places - cleanliness is of huge cultural importance. That combined with the fact that people don’t hug or touch each other much outside of sexual or family relationships and the fact that it is taboo not to wear a face mask when you are ill make it unsurprising to me that the disease would spread more slowly there.

With regard to developing nations, a big factor is the young population.

Also sadly we may just be in early days for some places and the epidemic has not yet taken hold.

S. korea is actually comparable in terms of population with the UK. Population density and population of old citizens is comparable. I don’t know why people keep saying we can’t compare. Most people live in huge apartment blocks so transmission is easier (elevators etc)

S. Korea never had to enforce a national lockdown. They locked down one City, the city of Daegu, where the infections were rife. People were encouraged to work from home but really, only the schools closed. They take a long winter vacation from January through March and are now only just having students return in May. prior to this teaching was done online.

Korea has a wonderful healthcare system and they were completely rigorous about testing not just symptomatic people, but pre-symptomatic and those who had been unwell. They monitor all known cases and those who come into contact with them so they are prepared and can quickly isolate areas that need to be. Everyone wears a mask. Everyone.

I see a lot of ignorance about China and the east’.

People say the west has more of a culture of travel. Well, it’s bollocks. The outbreak occurred during the lunar new year which is a huge holiday for Chinese and Korean people, millions of people from both countries travel during this time.

Time to face the fact that we needed to learn from other countries a long time ago.

I also wouldn’t agree that S Korea is an extraordinarily clean place. It is not third world, but it’s no cleaner than London. Japan maybe is, but not Korea. That’s not a criticism, but the fact is there is trash piled in the streets and people still gob in public with frequency.

They’ve handled it better than us. It’s not a magic formula.