It amazes me is how differently the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted countries in 2020. Globally, COVID-19 ended up being slightly less deadly than Alzheimers & Dementia in 2020: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/selected-deaths-vs-covid-19-world (Thread 1/12)

In China, where the pandemic started, however, it was not a significant cause of death in 2020. The same holds for many countries in the close vicinity of China (Viet Nam, Laos, Bhutan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mongolia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.) (2/12)

In countries on the other side of the globe, however, it quickly became the main cause of death in 2020. This is true for Brazil, as well as several other countries in Latin America (Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, ...) (3/12)

In a paper about the outcomes during the first 6 months of the pandemic, we explored some potential explanatory factors for these extremely diverse impacts (4/12): https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/advwpaper/202007.htm

It was clearly premature to judge countries on their performance during the first 6 months (March 11 – September 11, 2020), as some of the countries that did very well during the first semester got hammered during the second. This is especially true for Eastern Europe (5/12)

By the end of 2020, cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary and Croatia all passed Sweden, and the slopes are still steep (6/12).

Some countries got lucky during the first wave. Others have remained resilient throughout 2020, either because they managed to contain the virus, or because the immune systems of the population just shrug it off. Most of Asia and Africa has managed the virus well (7/12)

The young pop of Africa may have protected it against dying from COVID, but across all countries, the age distribution did not significantly correlate with COVID deaths during the first 6 months. Japan is an extreme contrarian outlier with oldest pop and very few deaths (8/12)

The health of the pop is also a potential explanatory factor, and it seems to have been key in protecting Japan against excess death, despite widespread COVID. However, Spain and Italy ranked even higher on the Healthiest Countries Index, and that didn’t protect them (9/12)

By far the strongest cross-country correlation we found with excess deaths during the first 6 m was with the harshness of the lockdown, esp. reduction in visits to workplaces. Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador all had extremely hard lock downs and extremely high death rates (10/12).

Being locked inside an apartment with kids and spouse, but without money or food, is extremely stressful, and stress has a well-known negative impact on the immune system and has also been shown to adversely affect COVID-19 outcomes: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30216-3/fulltext (11/12).

Those most likely to be stressed by quarantine are those who are already poor/vulnerable. They can't stay at home letting their children starve, so they have to go out, exposing themselves to a virus that is deadly for stressed, malnourished and sun-deprived individuals (12/12).

Click here to read the full study and please try to avoid repeating the mistakes we made in some of the worst-hit countries like Bolivia and Peru: https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/advwpaper/202007.htm