Quote Originally Posted by Dave_Mole View Post
Someone had a go recently at the mention of Peru, but there's a detailed timeline here.
"Experts say Peru's healthcare system was underprepared, leading to more deaths, but several other social and economic factors can help explain why Peru is struggling to contain the outbreak."
A lot of households can't store foodstuffs (no fridges), use of markets and the "informal economy" and overcrowded housing all contributed.
That timeline does confirm that Peru went into lockdown early, before the country had seen its first death in fact.

I would agree that there are social and economic factors in Peru that would make it comparisons with say Europe difficult. So let's compare with its next door neighbour Brazil, a country that has similar issues but has attracted a lot of criticism for its response to the pandemic. Indeed, last month you said "If you want to see what an unchecked virus looks like, have a look at Brazil."

According to Worldometer Brazil has to date suffered a death rate from Covid of 708 per million of the population. But Peru has done even worse at 1,008 per million of the population. So accepting the caveat that in developing countries it is difficult to social distance what's still interesting is that a country that had a real go at enforcing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world (and did so early) has fared worse than it's neighbour that has left the virus unchecked.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that we should do away with all restrictions, I'm merely making the point that lockdowns are not all that some people crack them up to be. As I said earlier there are many other factors that influence how different countries fare. Like Japan for example that has had very light restrictions and hardly any testing but has still got away with a very low number of deaths so far.