Since some covid stuff popped up in the election thread ~ i figured I'd post covid related stuff in here instead ~
So i get that we like to rag on trump about not doing enough or his response to covid was bad for whatever and any number of reasons. to each their own ~ and biden saying he would mandate wearing masks etc.
according to this:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/countries-wearing-face-masks-compulsory-200423094510867.html
There's a number of countries that have mask orders either mandatory, compulsory or obligatory (w/e the order) ~ there's nuances with each country in terms of how they are ordering the mask wearing. (i went to
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ and pulled the data to make the chart)
(the color highlights is just to sort the countries by region).
For the most part (someone can debate otherwise) ~ population density, culture, climate and accessibility are pretty huge factors. Kinda like why we see low numbers for countries like Vietnam, Ethiopia, Rwanda, south korea, lebanon, new zealand etc.
Since a lot of these countries in the aljazeera article put mandates for mask wearing semi early on (march-may) ~ that kinda falls inline with the Trump's US response considering a lot of the conflicting info that was gathered by the WHO and misinformation from China.
For example WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged for no travel bans when Trump did it Feb 2nd. (We can have lengthy discussions about Trump's reaction overall. Lets just call it ignorantly hopeful optimism) Dr. Fauci at a congressional hearing did say that travel bans save lives. So That's a thing we can give trump credit for.
Now for the mask wearing. It seems overall that countries that have mandated masks (for the most part) have had lower deaths per million. However we see that some countries have high death's per million even though they had mask orders. For example: Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil and trump's murica (I included the US even tho there isn't a mandatory mask order). These countries have crazy different climates, cultures are different, population density is very diverse. However What's kinda common among them is accessibility (They can be traveled to pretty easily by road, plane, ship) but also these countries had wide spread protests during march - august.
France had the yellow vest protests and anti mask protests
Argentina had/ongoing anti govt / anti mask protests
Chile had anti lock down protests
Italy had orange vests protests
Spain had/ongoing anti lockdown protests
USA had/ongoing george floyd/blm protests
If we look at the interaction between Dr. Fauci and Rep. Jordan
YouTube Video Placeholder
"
crowds can increase the acquisition and transmission of the virus" - Dr. Fauci
I'm not concluding that protests is the sole reason that the virus death toll is higher ~ cuz other countries with low death rates have had protests too. It may be a significant contributing factor though.
So imo ~ masks are good, but the society has to cooperate with it for it to work. Any forced mask mandate doesn't work.
I can share the full table if anyone wants ~
inb4 someone says this is all known stuff.