January 27, 2022
NATIONALISM DOESN'T WORK:
U.S., Britain and Other 'Populist' Nations Mishandled Pandemic, Study Says: Excess mortality more than twice as high in those countries (ByIain Rogers, January 27, 2022, Bloomberg)
The U.S., Britain, Brazil and other nations with "populist" governments mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and caused unnecessary deaths with relatively lenient policies, according to an academic research paper.Excess mortality -- the number of deaths beyond those that could be expected without the pandemic -- was more than twice as high on average in populist-governed countries, Michael Bayerlein, a researcher at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and one of the authors of the paper, said Thursday in a press release.The main reason for the difference was that "citizen mobility" -- measured using Google data on the number of people in places like grocery stores or parks -- was higher in populist countries at similar infection rates, the study showed. Excess mortality was 18% in populist-led countries and 8% in non-populist nations.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2022 12:00 AM