APJPH Editor’s Blog: The COVID19 disaster and the benefit of public health

The COVID19 pandemic has been the greatest epidemic facing humanity for 100 years.  Modern societies have come to rely on the rapid development of therapeutics to cure their ills.  There seems to be a reluctance in many societies to apply public health measures that are needed in situations like this.

To date (12 October) there have been 38million reported cases and 1.1million deaths.  Despite having the world’s most expensive health system, the USA has the most cases and most deaths.  Countries that apply public health rules have had far more success than the US President who seems to want to wave a magic wand and pretend it doesn’t really exist. The table below shows the death rates for three Asia Pacific nations and the calculated number of lives that cold have been saved if Trump had learned basic public health. For example, if the USA had been as successful as Korea it would have saved 196000 deaths. By September 19, 2020, the US reported a total of 198 589 COVID-19 deaths

Excess death rates (Data to 20 Sept 2020)

In this paper Bilinski has compared the population death rates in the USA with Republic of Korea, Japan and Australia.  These three countries have instituted strict public health measures, centred on diagnosis, contact tracing, quarantine and preventive measures.  The third column shows the number of deaths that could have been prevented if the USA had implemented the same level of public health measures.

Colin Binns, MBBS, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health
School of Public Health, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

Wah Yun Low, PhD
Managing Editor, Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health
President, Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health
Deputy Executive Director, Asia Europe Institute
University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Victor Hoe Chee Wai, MBBS, PhD
Webmaster, Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health
Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia