Europe is also fortunate to be sitting on an enormous stockpile of vaccines (while many other less weathly countries are still waiting patiently).
Given all the above, why did Europe suffer so greatly from the pandemic given its plentiful resources? Even the collection of statistics vary wildly from country to country and even within countries. (From under-reporting to over-estimates, to calculating excess deaths - will we ever know the true death toll directly and indirectly through COVID?)
One again, Europe is the epicentre of COVID as omicron spreads like wildfire around the continent.
Scientists and health workers have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic. So is it the political response to the pandemic where most blame rests? Or it that simplifying an enormously complex topic?
Vaccination rates are very high across the United Kingdom, so you'd be surprised to find they're almost half in London. Why? London has a population comprised of many different cultures and backgrounds, each with their own perspectives on the role of government and trust in healthcare. London is very diverse and dense and the more regional parts of the UK are likely more homogeneous and sparse.
So I think the answer is that, Europe is big and singularly categorising every country into one "Europe" obscures this complexity.
Also, European healthcare systems are good at keeping people with chronic diseases alive, but multiple comorbidities tend to correlate with Covid severity.
Also, European homes tend to be a bit smaller than American ones, with many countries having multiple generations living together in the same house. (Extra typical for Italy, Spain...). This means that if someone in the house gets it, everyone else will.
But poorer countries are definitely suffering, too. Massively, in fact. You’re just not seeing the same testing numbers and media coverage because their infrastructure doesn’t support it.
COVID is everywhere right now.
Not many authoritarian regimes would submit the actual numbers ( undercounting), while eg. Belgium prefers overcounting.
Ps. This is not saying non-western = bad. I'm saying some prefer to lie or don't have the resources to do that much testing.
I perfectly believe that eg. South African stats was spot on and could be better than some European countries. Since that's a country i was following the last months.
(UK here). I politely and strongly disagree. Accessing healthcare is extremely challenging, made 3 times as more difficult because of COVID. There is a myriad of systems/policies designed to put you off, dissuade you and stop you accessing healthcare - it's adversarial.
Every single facet of healthcare in the UK is crumbling or has failed with the possible exception of A&E. We face the following issues:
- A doctor and nurse shortage
- A GP shortage (importantly: GPs are the gatekeepers to almost all non-emergency healthcare)
- Extreme difficulties getting GP appointments (we have a system where you have to phone up as soon as the lines open in the morning, to get a same-day appointment...along with 100 other people all trying at the same time. Yes, this is as stressful as it sounds)
- Overloaded A&E departments (in part because of the GP shortage - people skip their GPs and go to A&E)
- Lengthy wait times for ambulances (up to 12 hours)
- Near impossibility to register with an NHS dentist (particularly bad in England & Wales)
- Lengthy wait times for consultants/treatment (plus all kinds of tricks to kick your treatment down the road)
- Hospital bed shortages due to delays discharging people because they've nowhere to go, due to a broken social care system
Frankly, I think the public health leaders in all the major countries are doing more or less the best that they can.
If you're not qualified to work with public health stats, don't try to read them and interpret them. They are made for experts and it's irresponsible to push all these weird stats that require a phd to understand properly to individuals.
Maybe China can keep it out with brief but total lockdowns but we can’t do that in the free world not least because of the right-wing special snowflakes who are so offended because somebody (me!) flagged their post about dog pills for COVID-19.
The things we did in the core slowed down the other variants a great deal but are less effective against Omicron. We had a student outbreak at the end of the semester at Cornell in which maybe 5-10% of students got it but there was almost no transmission to faculty and staff because we have all kinds of countermeasures. Throughout most of the semester we had maybe 1/10 the positive rate of the surrounding community so I think our strict controls were working then.
The students left but the case count in Tompkins county has exploded in the month since then, this is in New York with lots of masks, high vaccination rates, etc. the ratio of cases to hospitalizations is roughly 1/7 of what it was last year so it seems less severe.
Less developed (periphery) countries have younger populations, often more sunlight and less reporting.