Introduction
In June 2020 TIME magazine published a report ":Which countries handled COVID-19 best". The countries included were: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Greece, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates, with an honorable mention to Germany. We are interested in seeing how well the TIME June 2020 countries are doing today (Feb 2021)
Status June 2020
Below is a table of the cumulative cases and deaths from the TIME report, to which we have added the cumulative cases/million population and the ratio of cumulative deaths/cases for June 22, 2020 from the Johns Hopkins data.
| Country | cases from TIME | deaths from TIME | cases/million population 6/22/2020 | ratio deaths/cases 6/22/2020 |
| Argentina | 20,197 | 608 | 994 | 2.32% |
| Australia | 7251 | 102 | 294 | 1.36% |
| Canada | 98,289 | 7,717 | 2,740 | 8.36% |
| Greece | 2952 | 180 | 316 | 5.78% |
| Iceland | 1,806 | 10 | 5,318 | 0.55% |
| New Zealand | 1,504 | 22 | 314 | 1.45% |
| Singapore | 37,183 | 24 | 7,232 | 0.06% |
| South Korea | 11,668 | 273 | 245 | 2.25% |
| Taiwan | 443 | 7 | 19 | 1.57% |
| United Arab Emirates | 37,018 | 273 | 4,580 | 0.67% |
| Germany | 186,522 | 8,752 | 2,280 | 4.64% |
Status February 2021
Here we use the data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) (see https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_global.csv and
Confirmed cases
Charts of cumulative cases per million population and daily cases per million population below indicate:
- Although Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Canada, Iceland and Greece according to the TIME magzaine magazine were among the best countries in June 2020 they have all ran into continued increases in confirmed cases since.
- Singapore after a poor start managed to dramatically limit increases in confirmed cases starting in August 2020.
- South Korea has been doing well though it is currently seeing a third surge in cases.
- After a couple of surges, the island nations of New Zealand and Australia have successfully limited confirmed cases.
- Right from the beginning, the island nation of Taiwan has managed to do an amazing job of limiting confirmed cases.
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| Cumulative cases per million population (auto y-scale) | Cumulative cases per million population(fixed y-scale to emphasize best countries) |
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| Daily confirmed cases per million population (auto y-scale) | Daily confirmed cases per million population (fixed y-scale to emphasize best countries) |
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Deaths
| Cumulative deaths per million population (auto y-scale) | Cumulative deaths per million population(fixed y-scale to emphasize best countries) Taiwan had 0.38 deaths per million population by Feb 12, 2021. |
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- Taiwan, Singapore, and New Zealand followed by South Korea and Australia are the best performers.
- The worst off are Argentina, Germany, Greece and Canada followed by the United Arab Emirates and Iceland.
Comparison of TIME's best countries in Jun 2020 with JHU's overall worst countries in Feb 2021
Looking at TIME magazine's best countries in June 2020, and choosing those with the highest cumulative confirmed cases / million population in August 2020 and Feb 2021 yields Argentina, Germany and Canada. Comparing these three with countries from the 26 leading countries with cumulative confirmed cases / million population and selecting those countries with >= 3.9 million population representing, Central Europe (the Czech Republic), West Asia (Israel), Central Asia (Georgia), South America (Brazil), West Europe (Portugal), Central America (Panama) and North America (US) we see the following:
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