I am not sure that is true. Nearly half their population is concentrated into one city, and two-thirds of their country’s population live in the capital region. They have a low average population density because of vast areas with little human habitation.
They are low-density in a similar way to New York State.
Color me a little bit skeptical. Vietnam could be doing a good job controlling the virus, but that seems like an absurdly low number given their location and that they do a lot of trade within Asia. The first two weeks of April is awfully late in the game, too.
Vietnam is evolving into something beyond its formerly communist self, but it is by no means a liberal democracy. Last I checked, it’s still a fairly authoritarian government with an interest in controlling public perception - similar to China in that regard.
But this “concentration” is still very small, on the order of a couple hundred thousand. Still nothing I would describe as a “major city”. I’ve visited Iceland three or four times, in both summer and winter, both as a tourist and on business. I can attest that it is more than possible to go about daily life there, including using public transport and going shopping, without encountering large numbers of people in enclosed spaces. That’s something I haven’t been able to do in Vienna (which isn’t even in the top 20 cities by population in the EU), even now that all the tourists are gone. (We get about 15 million tourist overnight stays per year.)
Their largest city, Reykjavik, has a population of about 131,000 people. By the standards of many continents that’s a small city. The greater “metropolitan” region around it is about 223,000 people - which by many standards is still a small city.
Reykjavik’s population density is 472/km2. Compared to, say, New York City at 27,750/km2.
Iceland’s largest city is, on a global scale, not very large and not very densely populated. That may be a factor in their pandemic experience.
I still think part of it is how strong the immunity system gets to be by living in the 3rd world.
I think you are quite wrong
There’s zero evidence for this. Why doesn’t that work for Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, which all have relatively high death rates (and for the latter two, getting worse)? And things are likely to get much worse in much of the less developed world.
Icelands population is 360 000 people. More than 1/3 live in a single city, and 2/3s live in the capital city area. That makes themthe 11th most urbanized population in the world(and about 5 of the ones ahead of them are city-states) and the5th most urbanized nation in Europe, with two city-states ahead of them on the list.
Which is the most urbanized nation in Europe, excluding microstates? Belgium actually. Which tends to dominate lists of deaths per million.
Yes, I do think it is quite likely that Iceland’s population density has been a factor in their pandemic experience.
Its just not been a positive one.
Only bad news today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] Another outbreak in a postal distribution centre has occurred, this time in Vienna. 70 workers have been infected, and once again the Army has been called in to help with mail distribution.[/li][li] New infections in a shelter for asylum seekers in Vienna have led to the entire facility being locked down, with 400 now in quarantine.[/li][li] The national reproduction number has risen back up to 1.07. In Lower Austria it is as high as 1.3; in Vienna it is 1.15.[/li][li] Slovenia has reinstituted border controls at the Austria–Slovenia border, after having dropped them on 15 May.[/li][li] In perhaps the first major showing of intergovernmental strife in Austria, the federal government and the city-state government of Vienna are now publically blaming each other for deficiencies in their handling of the pandemic.[/li][li] Current statistics: 16,201 confirmed infections, 629 deaths, 14,614 recovered.[/li][/ul]
Except… that their “dense” is not very dense by the standards of most nations. Or did you completely ignore the point I made about that? And being an island is somewhat an advantage IF you close the borders soon enough. The downside being getting supplies from elsewhere - I’m assuming Iceland is not independently able to feed itself without imports because that’s the case with most islands these days, but I could be wrong on that.
Iceland has had epidemics before, this one is not nearly as devastating to their population as past outbreaks of things like smallpox or measles.
I’ll also point out that one reason so many people in Iceland live in/near Reykjavik is because so much of the rest of the place is either ice or volcanoes. Quite a bit of the island is not really suitable to human habitation. But that doesn’t mean their densest city is very dense by global standards. As I said, both by population and density on most continents Reykjavik would be a small city, and not that densely populated even if the greater “urban” area contains 2/3 of the island’s population.
To put some numbers to it.
Reykjavik’s population density and that of the capital area.
Bolding mine.
In context the densest city is Mumbai at 29,650 per square kilometer but they are the outlier. London 5100. NYC 2050 (surprised me not more). Las Vegas 1750. Chicago 1500. Akron 700. You got to get down to Huntsville Alabama to get to 500 and Winston/Salem to get to the 450 of the city itself.
Broomstick’s point is well made. One of my sons lives in Huntsville. “Rocket City.” A dense urban environment it aint. But more than Reykjavik is!
"To Slovenia,
Rumors of my death may have been exaggerated.
Love,
SARS-CoV-2"
Seriously Slovenia may be in GW Bush “Mission accomplished.” range. It is a bit premature for that sort of declaration.
I am sorry for the bad days in Austria. It would be wonderful if they can demonstrate a model of getting rates down and keeping them down while finding some level of new normal that can be maintained. Thank you for the updates.
Not precisely Corona news … but a huge fucking cyclone is currently bearing down on India and Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to need evacuation, including people in preventative quarantine due to India’s lockdown.
Because ordinary old disasters don’t stop for medical disasters
There was that article in the NYTimes a few weeks ago that gave some speculations as to why certain countries weren’t as hard hit. One of the points it made was that in many African countries, the average age is much younger than in Europe and North America, and age seems to be a factor in infection. That, rather than “tougher immune systems”, may be a contributing factor to why the disease hasn’t been so serious so far in African countries.
4,894,098 total cases
320,180 dead
1,908,064 recovered
In the US:
1,550,294 total cases
91,981 dead
356,383 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Could well be something to that. (And as for good, hard evidence, there’s not just a whole lot about anything to do with this pandemic.) Another way of saying this is that in countries like those, a lot of their dead people were already dead.
Yeah, I was surprised by all the sudden bad news. Everything was going so well up until a couple days ago. I’m hopeful that it’s just a blip. Today’s report (which I’m about to post) is back to all good (or at least not bad) news again.
Today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] Via a multilateral agreement, the borders with Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are slated to be opened on 15 June.[/li][li] The Federal Criminal Police Office reports that since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, crime has gone down by 46.4%.[/li][li] The finance minister has announced that the pool of financial aid covering the salaries of furloughed employees has been restocked with an additional €2 billion, bringing the total amount of aid to €12 billion.[/li][li] Meanwhile, unemployment figures have improved slightly—there are currently 524,000 people out of work, compared with the high point of 588,000 in mid-April. The greatest gains in jobs are from the construction and retail sectors.[/li][li] Vienna International Airport is reporting that passenger figures went down by 100% in April. No surprise there.[/li][li] Current statistics: 16,261 confirmed infections, 632 deaths, 14,678 recovered.[/li][/ul]