On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 13:02:46 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 11 Aug 2020 12:54:36 +0100, Bod wrote:

Some countries have been devastated by the novel coronavirus, and others
have escaped lightly.

Why the extreme differences? The main one is that countries that quickly
resorted to widespread mask-wearing had far lower death rates and
shorter outbreaks, a new study argues.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7075024/m...avirus-deaths/

I suspect if you look a little deeper, masks were not the only thing
they did to interrupt the infections. They also imposed quarantines,
border security, and actively prevented new cases from coming in.



Even within a given country - the statistics can be
staggeringly different : eg in Canada :
Ontario pop. 14 m. cases 40 k. deaths 2800 200 deaths/million
Quebec pop. 8.5 m. cases 60 k. deaths 5700 670 deaths/million
even worse than Sweden's 570 deaths/million !

Quebec had a 2-week earlier March Break which would account
for some of that difference - but I suspect that the seriousness
of the early restrictions and messaging has a lot to do with it.
John T.
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