The first thirty days: comparative lessons from the covid pandemic | terra nova

This paper aims to compare the effectiveness of national responses to the covid-19 epidemic in 24 countries, mostly in Western Europe, but also covering North America and Central Europe;

Russia, Turkey, and South Africa ; and the Middle East and Asia. The question is whether we can say anything about the effectiveness of responses to the pandemic, including : 1) “reactive”

measures immediately taken by public authorities, and the population’s behavior in response to them; 2) “proactive” measures, consisting of regular health spending and the state of health

infrastructures. To this end, the study focuses on available mortality data. First, it recalculates national mortality rates by controlling for national demographic parameters that might

prevent any direct comparison between them. Second, it compares these corrected and now comparable mortality rates with some major public health parameters. The goal is to observe the extent

to which the combination of structural (proactive) health efforts and immediate (reactive) measures tempered the severity of the scourge. Written by Paul-André Rosental, population

historian, for Terra Nova put those countries in perspective.