The Bosch seem to be holding up rather well...

[Burney]

Actually not true but if it makes you happy

Here's the article, which doesn't say what Neil says it does, but does correctly point out that the idea that there can be wildly differing death rates in otherwise comparable countries is patently nonsensical.

This is the key quote:

The data on Covid-19 differs wildly from country to country. Look at the figures for Italy and Germany. At the time of writing, Italy has 69,176 recorded cases and 6,820 deaths, a rate of 9.9 per cent. Germany has 32,986 cases and 157 deaths, a rate of 0.5 per cent. Do we think that the strain of virus is so different in these nearby countries as to virtually represent different diseases? Or that the populations are so different in their susceptibility to the virus that the death rate can vary more than twentyfold? If not, we ought to suspect systematic error, that the Covid-19 data we are seeing from different countries is not directly comparable.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...ar-as-we-think

[Luis Anaconda]

Here's the article, which doesn't say what Neil says it does, but does correctly point out that the idea that there can be wildly differing death rates in otherwise comparable countries is patently nonsensical.

This is the key quote:



https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...ar-as-we-think

I would actually say that Italy is proving to be a quite spectacularly different case though - and the more thorough testing in Germany is contributing the difference in rates. That is an excellent article and much more nuanced read, as you say, than Neil made it out to be

[Burney]

I would actually say that Italy is proving to be a quite spectacularly different case though - and the more thorough testing in Germany is contributing the difference in rates. That is an excellent article and much more nuanced read, as you say, than Neil made it out to be

Oh, there are certainly regional differences that may be as much to do with cultural factors as anything. There's not much doubt that southern Europe is having a worse go of it that northern Europe, which is very probably due to simple things like levels of tactility, the number of multi-generational households, greater proximity, etc. Equally, countries with high elderly muslim populations are seeing disproportionate death rates among them because of (again) multi-generational households, cultural and communal factors.

There are huge numbers of factors, but the points stands that direct comparisons are pretty meaningless.