Final Score on Who Handled COVID-19 Best

 

There is no perfect way to measure which government did best in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.  But with 48 full months of data from January 20, 2020 to January 27, it is now possible to score which area did best across the whole marathon.  For example, Hong Kong was an early sprinter getting an A+ and then faltering in vaccinating seniors and withstanding Omicron variant.  Other jurisdictions fumbled the exit ramp from Zero Covid-type policies to opening their economies. 

 

Because testing rates varied, a measure like COVID cases, hospitalizations, or deaths could cover up a lot of hidden illness and deaths in places that could not or did not test as much as others.  This post uses Cumulative Excess Mortality numbers drawn from Our World In Data  (OWID) which were drawn from The Economist.  OWID published data for all jurisdictions regardless of how good the estimates were. I advise against making distinctions based on fuzzy data. The Table here filtered out all places where the SD was >0.33 times as big as the excess deaths statistic. Then the reports are sorted into quintiles. If a country is not listed here, it is because their vital statistics data are too imprecise to allow a good estimate of excess deaths—that leaves out China and India, sorry. 

 

Cumulative Excess Mortality from January 2020-January 2024 

for Jurisdictions where Mort/SD >3 in Five Quintiles

 


 The score sheet confirms A’s for three of the Asian Tigers-- Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan—and a B for Hong Kong at 236 cumulative excess deaths per 100,000.  Gulf states did well with Qatar at 69 coming in second overall. Surprises among the A’s include Mongolia, Costa Rica, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.  United States is in the D category at 406 and Russia is the worst of the F’s at 1,125.    My hope is to get countries who have not started post-COVID commissions to recover from reflection deficit disorder and ask why they did well or how they could get better.  Please leave a comment if you notice something interesting. 


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