@172driver… you don’t need to go to “countries”, just look at the US. The confirmed and death rates in California are a fraction (<0.1) of New York, or the UK. Santa Clara County (where I live, the southern end of SF Bay) is publishing daily statistics broken down by the town. My town, Mountain View, with a population of 83,000, has had just 37 confirmed cases, i.e. about 500/million. In fact 65% of all the cases are in San Jose, which has less than 50% of the population.
I think the dense-urban/urban/suburban/rural thing has a lot do with it. In NY or London, people are packed into public transport, crowded restaurants etc. Here in the suburbs there’s rarely any reason to be very close to anyone else (apart from family). It’s also true that we did shelter-in-place here ahead of anywhere else, but I suspect that wasn’t really the deciding factor. Oklahoma (doesn’t get much more rural than that) left it late, yet still has numbers similar to California.
hmng wrote:
high population density, public transport —> faster spread (NY, London, etc.) – how about Tokyo?
Having worked and lived in all three places, I am pretty sure that the ‘general hygiene, mask wearing’ factor is a major contributor to the difference.
hmng wrote:
Portugal locked down later than Spain, deaths and admissions are way lower.
Quite the opposite.
Portugal locked down on 19th of March, at which point there had been 4 reported deaths and around 450 diagnosed cases (with all the caveats that go with the diagnostic count)
Spain went into lockdown on the 14th of March, with well over 100 deaths and a few thousand cases, so later in the development of the disease.
Does California have a dense public transport system? Perhaps, combined with less than stellar cleanliness those places with well used public transport systems up the transmission.
hmng wrote:
I wanted to ask about the paper @Ibra shared about infection risk from dead bodies. Is that something new? Is it different from other corona viruses of the same family??
Almost zero risk on a “new flu virus”, it could have been the case on MERS/SARS1 but it never went that far
Obviously, this is something high likely on bloodborne viruses (e.g. Ebola/Hepatitis)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S165836121730121X
The_Infectious_Hazards_of_Dead_Bodies_pdf
172driver wrote:
IMHO these disparities point to one or more underlying factor(s) we so far either don’t know or ignore.
Well it depends when they are on the cycle doing the lockdown and when you compare data you have to look on similar testing clusters levels
Some countries are clearly outliers on their reported deaths to get anything meaningful as insight for other countries (e.g. Italy & Japan)
Airborne_Again wrote:
The motivation given in Sweden for not closing daycare and primary schools
Even so, for childrens at school, the link to parents & school is far more easier to trace and isolate, the situation is far more volatile if they end up with grand parents to care for them or randomly mixing outside (and they will 
)
Off_Field wrote:
Does California have a dense public transport system?
No, except in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, etc) which also has the highest rates of infections and death per capita in the state. That said, this part of the country (Silicon Valley) also has very close relations with China.
In general, it would appear that dense public transport is a main – perhaps THE main – driver here.
Mid-century Modern is in renewed vogue for furniture and architecture, maybe mid-century automobile based urban planning will now follow Double decked highways anyone, to relieve traffic congestion? Alternately, my wife and I are for better or worse getting quite used to highways with significantly less traffic. 30% less traffic makes more than 30% difference in ease of traffic flow. This morning we discussed whether some of the ‘work from home’ mentality might stick, making our 25 minute commutes more permanently into 15 minute commutes.
The good news is that we have now learned how much we really can work from home, and many employers will embrace more of it, as yiy say.
The less-good-news is that a lot of people will be unable to afford a car or to drive it too much because we destroyed their jobs.
So yes, traffic will be down for quite a while [only half sarcastic]
People can do as they like and I’ll appreciate reduced traffic but I resolutely refuse to work from home, including now – to do so would represent another step in the invasion of work into my non-working life, adding to iPhones etc. I also refuse to have a home office.
The purpose of my work is to supply me with a very substantial income, on my terms.
You have to be careful with organic materials, rubber etc. Ozone destroy organic material.
It is for sterilising incoming packages, including food containers.
I resolutely refuse to work from home, including now – to do so would represent another step in the invasion of work into my non-working life, adding to iPhones etc. I also refuse to have a home office.
It is lonely to work from home.
Peter wrote:
It is lonely to work from home.
Also my job involves significant conflict, by organizational design and by my assignment. Bringing that home would likely destroy my home life. I don’t buy the work-life integration idea, the main connection between my work and home life is $$$$$$$ and this will remain so.
Other than tablets, I don’t even have a computer at home. I do have a library, with books
