Each has a population of about 10 million. LA Co. and Michigan have been shut down for over a month. Sweden only employed light mitigation strategies. I don't have any strong conclusions to draw from this, since all three are different places. However . . .
LA Co.
first case: Jan 26
cases: 16,449
deaths: 732
Sweden
first case: Jan 31
cases: 16,004
deaths: 1,937
Michigan
first case: March 10
cases: 33,966
deaths: 2,813
If Michigan has so many more deaths than Sweden, is severe mitigation really effective? If it were effective, you'd have to argue that there's some difference between Michigan and Sweden such that, if Michigan did not employ those severe mitigation efforts, its total deaths would be even dramatically higher at this time. What on earth would that difference be? An old, sick unhealthy black population in Detroit? Dunno.
I'd have expected LA to be affected much less than Sweden, even if all other things were equal, just because of LA's much lower latitude. Let's put it this way. If LA were in Europe, it would actually be on the north coast of Africa. It's that low. Also, evidence is emerging that SARS2 may have been circulating on the West Coast for a good while now, which would make sense, as Chinese travel to places all up and down the West Coast.
But how about this head scratcher. Orange County has a population of 3 million, but has had only 34 deaths. What? Most of LA County is like most of Orange County. Single-family suburban homes, strip malls, parks, schools, wide boulevards. East LA County blurs into West Orange County. A new comer wouldn't know when they crossed from LA into Orange County. And downtown LA is not like NYC. There are not a lot of people living densely in high rise buildings. Most of the new high rise residential buildings in downtown LA are luxury condos, inhabited by a lot of rich people who probably took off. And Orange Co also has some density, in Santa Ana, for example.
LA County is reporting that 40% of its deaths are occurring in convalescent homes. It's possible LA Co. has far more of them, and they're full of less healthy oldsters than Orange Co. Orange Co. probably has a healthier population. (But Orange Co. has its poor neighborhoods as well.)
The paranoid globalist conspiracy hunter that I am says LA Co. is padding its numbers, especially LA city, and Orange County has tighter death stats. LA city ordered its coroner to go back to December to look for COVID-1984 deaths. What? You can't test them. They're buried or cremated. They're fucking trying to jack up their death rate again. You're probably going to see this in Dem controlled areas all over the country.
But, after doing this, the difference between LA numbers and the numbers of surrounding counties are going to look even more surprising. No one that I've seen is talking about this dramatic difference between LA and Orange Counties. There just aren't enough significant differences, in my view, to explain the dramatically different death count.
San Bernadino County, 3 million, 72 deaths. San Diego Co, 90 something deaths. Riverside Co, 99 deaths.
Nice, insightful analysis.
Latitude definitely seems to play a factor.
One thing you missed is Sweden took the known data about how the older where affected and protected the most vulnerable.
I've changed my mind after following Sweden and Brazil. They were infected a little later, had real data (China's data is cooked) to work with, and saw that most people under 65 get over this. Getting your citizen to build herd immunity will be done with infection in about 4 weeks and your population is protected. Would we have slammed the hospitals with sick without protecting the elderly and immunized compromised, of course. But we saw Italy loose mostly elderly. That strategy would have probably worked even in the US.
Well, isn't Michigan moving pretty quickly to stay at home orders protecting the most vulnerable? Or did Sweden do something that was even more effective to protect the elderly?
Florida put extensive resources into protecting nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The death rate in that crowded state is very liw, considering what one would expect.
No Sweden didn't. The head immunologist in Sweden said they waited to long (by a day or two) to get word out to the healthcare works of the vulnerable. He felt that would have made a big difference.
Most of Swedens deaths occurred in large retirements homes. That's because these places are like club med for retirees. Part of their reward for giving more than half you paycheck to the government.
Southern California is filled with Chinese who travel back and forth regularly to China. This provided a gradual and protective inoculation against the virus. Further support for Sweden’s approach. Time to Overthrow the liberal socialist regime and regain our freedom.
I'm not completely hip on the Chinese demographics in So Cal, but, Orange County has big Chinese areas, in Irvine and Rowland Heights, for example. Maybe OC was exposed before LA city?
post is hard to read, because at the start of it you give stats for three places, la, michigan, then sweden, but then the bulk of the long post is talking about differences between LA and surrounding counties, which you didn't give the stats for, in a nicely laid out/organized way. so i tried to understand your point on the difference between LA and surrounding counties and it's just hard to read. i have little to no idea what you're trying to say about LA vs surrounding areas because, and maybe this is just my opinion, but this very wordy post of yours is very unfocused. you bring convalescent homes into it and that goes nowhere? its confusing and hard to read. what's your point?
The point about LA Co and Orange Co should have been clear enough. I'm claiming that they are very similar, or at least, not different enough, to explain the wild discrepancy between their total death numbers. I don't know how you missed that.
Maybe you have reading issues.