joedirt wrote:
New Zealand had environmental conditions that were not conducive to community spread when the virus first hit (similar to Australia). They were able to contain it by shutting borders because they are an island nation and it is easy to contain when the primary transmission vector is cases from abroad. This is much harder to contain (as southern Australia is learning) when environmental conditions are favorable for community spread. Now that they are in heating season, their counter measures may not be as successful.
Everyone keeps claiming that NZ was able to control the virus because they are an island and have a favorable environmental situation. Ok, so let’s compare the USA to 2 countries in SE Asia: Vietnam and Thailand (you can throw in Malaysia if you want). Neither of these countries are islands and were among the earliest to have cases.
Country/total deaths/deaths per million
USA/166,295/502
Vietnam/16/0.2
Thailand/58/0.8
Malaysia/125/4
Both Vietnam and Thailand have large populations and are more densely populated than the US. In addition, both have massive cities, with many international visitors (Bangkok was the world’s most visited city in 2019, with the largest number of those visitors coming from China).
So maybe you can explain a US death rate that is thousands of times higher in the case of Vietnam. And as far as the weather, yes those countries are hot and humid year-around. But the spikes in FL, TX and AZ occurred in the middle of July. Imagine what would have happened if it had been winter.