The World’s Best and Worst countries at dealing with Covid-19.
Things do not happen by chance.
Some countries were prepared, reacted quickly and were effective at dealing with the pandemic. Others were appalling.
The Best Countries
| Country | Total number who contracted the disease | Number of deaths |
| Taiwan | 675 | 7 |
| New Zealand | 2059 | 25 |
| Iceland | 5392 | 26 |
| Singapore | 58218 | 29 |
| Vietnam | 1347 | 35 |
A set of countries that, before this all took off, you would not necessarily imagine doing that well. But they were prepared. They shut their borders, tracked and traced and got completely on top of it.
The Worst Countries
| Country | Total number who contracted the disease | Number of deaths |
| USA | 19,800,000 | 343,000 |
| Brazil | 7,620,000 | 195,000 |
| India | 10,300,000 | 149,000 |
| Mexico | 1,140,000 | 125,000 |
| UK | 2,430,000 | 73,000 |
It looks like a list of countries run by populist narcissists! This bunch were unprepared, complacent, did not prepare, dithered, denied and were utterly ineffective.
How does it feel to be in the top five most incompetent and useless? Nearly a million unnecessary deaths between the five of them!
Opher's World 
Why oh why doesn’t it surprise anyone that we are one of the worst countries to deal with this pandemic? Could it be the dry run we had when Cameron was PM? That failed and he was sent a list of everything that needed fixing so the NHS could work effectively in the event of a pandemic, and did, absolutely, nothing.
Or maybe it was May, who was told this virus was coming before handing the reins to Johnson. Or perhaps it was Johnson who said the populace should take it on the chin and let it pass through unchecked. When it was announced in the press that this would result in between 500k and 1m deaths he decided he had better lockdown the country, but not before allowing race meets to go ahead for his wealthy pals.
That about sums it up Dave. Incompetence, arrogance and ineptitude.
I know, shame people have a short memory because they are going to start blaming the NHS, Labour, SNP, Plaid Cwymru and everyone else for their mistakes so that come election time the lies will be out there and they will win again.
And they’ll likely get away with it!!
Opher, you need to look at cases and deaths per million population, not just at the raw numbers. On that measure, as of today the UK comes 10th in the list of deaths per million among countries with populations over half a million. Behind Belgium, Slovenia, Italy, Bosnia, Macedonia, Peru, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Spain. It’s an awful record, indeed. But if you’re trying to correlate death rates with what you call “populism,” sorry Opher, you don’t get the cigar.
And, while Johnson is indeed a narcissist (like virtually all politicians), he’s no populist. He’s exactly the opposite – a Bullingdon Club elitist!
Neil – I do agree that looking at it from the perspective of deaths per million is a valid way of looking at it – I don’t think that invalidates other ways of looking at the stats. Our performance has been shockingly woeful and caused tens of thousands of deaths.
No – Johnson is an opportunistic populist who happens to come from the Bullingdon boy elitism. He cynically weighed up which side to back in the Brexit debate and sided with the populists in order to get the premiership. His policies are always looking towards popularism.