In season one Tuvok said there were no Federation starships listed as missing when Voyager got drop kicked in the DQ. Do we know how long before a ship is declared overdue from a mission? The Equinox must've only been "missing" for couple of weeks before Voyager was abducted. My personal opinion is the Caretaker tried to send the Equinox back but only sent them part way, like 10,000 light years or so. It was too far to travel back for the Caretaker to try again so they carried on.
Moscow actually - although it was partly because of Hitler's obsession with a southward attack in 1942 that they didn't do much better then. The Germans certainly had too many luxurious uniforms, but that did not decide the war, the reason there was not winter clothing in Russia was because no-one thought the campaign would last that long, amazingly. The lack of winter clothing was an example of piss poor logistical planning and lousy strategy (as soon as "go in full throttle and see what we can get away with" stopped working the tide turned). Ironically, throughout the war the Germans were generally tactically better than the allies but strategically terrible. Whereas allied strategic mistakes often turned into advantages (African campaign lasted so long that in the end the Germans sent 150,000 troops from Southern Europe just to be captured etc.) German strategic successes led to hubris and poor strategic planning going forwards.
"not decimated by the elements" = Wearing coats. If the coats were cheaper, every one would have had a coat. Because the coats were expensive, coats were only given as needed. I was being silly about something very serious, but I said exactly what you said, and you still felt the need to correct me because you failed to understand what I had said, which makes me quite sad. I'm going to have a good cry.
I think they had a good opportunity to have Equinox join with Voyager. Chakotay could have his own ship and a portion of Voyager's crew (while the Equinox's crew could have been put into lower servicing positions for their 'rehabilitation' on Voyager). The Nova class, while relatively slow still had decent defensive/offensive systems (according to non-canon sources, it had Type X pahser arrays like Voyager and the Galaxy class... though in tactical terms, Voyager probably was superior because it might have had more coverage in terms of phasers and higher photon torpedo count - shield strength possibly as well, but we don't know that for certain - because there is 0 guarantee that a small ship couldn't have equally powerful shields like larger ships). And it probably would have been possible to modify its warp drive to keep up with Voyager (SF was able to get ships older than that to achieve and hold above Warp 9 - plus, regardless of how gruesome the experiments on those creatures were, the crew did learn something about keeping the ship's hull together at Warp 9.999 or faster - even if they did shorter jumps - Warp 9 would likely be doable indefinitely). Why the Equinox crew didn't find refuge in a lone solar system and used transporters to convert raw materials into what's needed in combo with solar power or other energy sources is beyond me. Making a week or two weeks long pit stop to get the ship in peak shape would be top priority.
First I was like "what's King Daniel talking about?"... and then I saw it! I had honestly never noticed that before, but I suspect that as you said, it will be impossible to unsee....