Weekly Wonder: How prepared were different countries for COVID-19?

By Katherine Swindells
BU News Service

BOSTON — A recent investigation by the New York Times found that experts within the White House repeatedly alerted President Donald Trump to the scale of the coronavirus pandemic as early as January, and he repeatedly ignored those warnings, focusing instead on controlling the message and protecting gains in the economy.

However much the extra month might have affected the current situation, much was decided far before the pandemic broke out — namely in healthcare infrastructure.

A country’s preparedness doesn’t necessarily correspond to its wealth, as data from the United Nations Statistics Division suggests.

The chart below shows the number of physicians per 1,000 people each country had between 2014 and 2018, mapped against their 2017 GDP per capita. Click on the points to compare how the United States stacked up against other developed countries before COVID-19.