Comparisons, comparisons, comparisons
Nowadays, if we're not reading scientific news about the virus, or reading individual anecdotes about people and their various brushes with the virus, or about lockdown measures and what's open and what's not, we spend our time comparing countries. Look at New Zealand! Great efforts. Look at USA! Terrible efforts. Oh dear, South Korea has its second wave! Oh dear, Wuhan has its second wave! And then - oh wow, Australia is paying its essential workers so well. Oh wow, Canada is increasing spending on essential workers. Why is our country so lousy IN COMPARISON?!?! Well, that's the whole issue. You can't compare countries and their efforts against the virus in such a basic way. Let's just take Singapore vs Canada, my favourite form of comparison. Singapore has a crazy number of cases right now, and in comparison to Canada, one might think wow Singapore has it out of control. But then again, Singapore's testing rate is a lot higher than Canada's, so ...