That’s a very misinformed comment. Healthcare is free in France, and only some edge cases are not covered. Even when not covered you have doctors that offer you the consultation for free (happened to me a few times).
The problem lies in the public hospital system which is underfunded, and on the other hand in the numerus clausus that limits the number of new doctors that can graduate every year.
Sorry for being nitpicky, but there is no free healthcare in France or anywhere else. French citizens pay for their healthcare with their taxes. That's cool. No criticism of that choice intended. Just please don't call it free.
US: 610K cases, population 328 million: 19% infected
France: 104K, population 70 million: 15% infected
... France is doing slightly better which may reflect how well they've handled the pandemic. Of course many factors come into play here, not just the healthcare system. A better metric is probably ICU load and we'll be able to analyse this stuff in detail once we have enough data...
I don't think that's a good metric either. We're in an unprecedented economic and social situation, so why should we expect death rates from previous years to serve as a reasonable baseline today?
True. Examples: Less driving means less vehicular death. We probably have slightly more death due to domestic violence. More or less death from drug overdose. Less contact means less death from the normal flu.
I agree, it's not exactly a metric, but a heuristic to put official numbers in perspective. Most of the variations you say are in the direction of lowering normal numbers (not domestic violence, but crimes will be registeres as such) so we have a minimum. If official numbers are much less, it's a clear sign that they're altered.
There are several ways deaths are being covered: people dying at home or retirement homes, people with previous diseases, putting immediate cause (like stroke or heart attack) in the report.
To be fair, nationwide deaths might be the only correct metric, since it's the only thing that countries care to measure properly and don't attempt to manipulate.
narag said it is a better metric. It isn’t a perfect metric by any means, but it is one of the only fair metrics you or I could have access to when trying to compare between countries. Most other metrics are deeply flawed for that purpose.
France has done 1/2 as many tests per million than the US. That alone can explain the lower infection rate in France. Deaths in France are 3x that of the US per million. By all the metrics I see, the US is doing much better than France.
The relevant graphic is the curve "Total Coronavirus Deaths in..." the United States and France, it's the fourth curve in each page. Compare both and you'll see that gradient for France is decreasing, not so for the USA.
The US isn't doing better, it's just at a previous stage. Wish you the best anyway, of course.
Edit: in Spain death curve only started to lose gradient three weeks after confinement.
I suspect lot of states in the Eurozone have failed to act soon enough because they cannot print their own money to handle the economic shutdown fiscally, so they waited till the last moment to some signal from the ECB, which never came. In the U.S., there was a similar deal but on the state vs federal level.
