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.