I see a lot of vague or implied speculation on why there are such large differences in COVID-19 death rates (et al.) among various countries and regions. But many of these have internal tensions once we think a little deeply about the arguments being hinted at. Biases are leading to a lot of lies of omission if not just outright bad reasoning.
Why is Sweden different than Finland? What explains Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea versus France, Italy, and Spain? Germany versus Belgium? USA NE versus Texas versus Florida versus USA Midwest?
Here is a partial list of the usual and some unusual suspects:
- General health in the population
- Partial immunity including from prior coronavirus exposures
- Climate including ability to comfortably be outdoors and in open-air environments (definitely relative to when the virus struck)
- Prior and continued use of various drugs and treatments
- Proportion of at-risk people especially elderly
- Quality of procedures for protecting the vulnerable
- Quality of testing
- Quality of tracing
- Population density (within cities and otherwise relative to where people actually live; e.g., excluding most of Canada when measuring for Canada)
- Government NPIs including lockdowns and other policies but not test and/or trace
- Degree of movement within and among various communities (city to city, within a city, cross sociodemographic, in and out of country, et al.)
- Strain(s) of C-19 virus affecting country and timing of the infection
I suspect that the error term in any formal analysis might prove to contain all the variation. Remember, "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist."
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