Here is a paper outlining why they believe that the general population stayed at home during the protests in greater numbers, limiting the spread of covid during that time. It’s a dry 60 page PDF, but there you go.
What does the FSM say about pesto sauces? I can’t believe in anything that doesn’t support pesto.
It’s nice to give the virus a little head start.
Well you need a least a week to teach people how to put a little piece of cloth over their mouth and nose. It’s haaarrrrd.
Florida flattened the curve. They made it vertical.
I had the same thought originally, but you do need to give people time to source masks if they don’t have them already.
Thank you, Tangerine Turd. </tears in my eyes>
Article in The Hill today:
“Why the US is falling behind in COVID-19 fight”
Where they talk about the lack of lock-downs and aggressive testing/tracing and mask requirements. All of which is true.
What doesn’t get a mention is the elephant in the USA room: lack of socialized medicine. All of the countries that have done reasonably well in dealing with Covid-19 have socialized healthcare. In other words, if you get sick, or show symptoms you can get treatment regardless of how much money you have.
An article from early March
Most Coronavirus Tests Cost About $100…
Even $100 can easily be out of reach for poor people. And if you can’t afford to get tested, you won’t be traced (if that even happens) and you certainly can’t afford to get treatment. And when you die odds are pretty good you won’t be counted since you were never tested and likely not treated. Keeps those numbers down, eh?
Back in February when Covid-19 first showed up on the public radar I said (to my husband and friends) this is going to be a shitshow in the US. Even if all best practices are followed (they weren’t) and the leadership actually leads (it didn’t) the fact that healthcare is only for those with funds is going to create a perfect storm.
I’m rarely right when I make a prediction. Sadly, this is one of the times I was.
This seems to be a useless stat, since almost every country has socialized medicine. So, saying that countries that have it have done well is fairly meaningless. Some countries that have it have done poorly – Brazil for example.
There’s a fallacy there that I can’t quite pin down. It’s something like “all racists are idiots” not being the same as “all idiots are racists”, I think.
I’m a supporter of universal health insurance, but this claim is problematic and unproven.
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There are NO other first world countries without some form of UHI or UHC, so we’ve no real data samples to compare.
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The health care system has very little, if any, apparent effect on transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The problem in the USA isn’t treatment, it’s infection, and there’s nothing doctors and nurses can do about morons going to bars and parties and getting infected. As a Canadian I’m delighted we have the pandemic currently under control, but it has almost nothing to do with our health care system, and the pattern of infections in Canada is not consistent despite the fact everyone has health care. You cannot explain why Quebec got hammered but Alberta did not based on health care; both provinces have the same basic system.
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There’s no cure for COVID-19 and it’s not as if the USA doesn’t have health care (and the highest risk Americans - old people - have Medicare) so it’s dubious that even the relative death rate has an impact.
Even a cursory examination of the numbers shows that the issue in the USA is infections. Again, I will compare them to Canada; the USA has 3.05 million cases and 130,000 deaths. Canada has 106,000 confirmed infections and 8,711 deaths. Canada is reporting a HIGHER death rate than the USA, and while its testing levels are slightly lower per capita, it’s not nearly enough to explain away that difference. But despite a higher death to infection rate, Canada has fewer deaths per capita. That’s simply because not nearly as many people have gotten the virus, and that is not attributable to the health care system. Infection happens before our UHI intervenes.
Is is difficult in getting tested, then? Again - Canada has tested FEWER people than the USA per capita. American testing levels are not all that low.
Why did this happen? In Canada, the vast majority of people support the lockdown, and support a gradual opening, and still support wearing masks; I make a point of counting mask wearers when I’m out and I’d guess it’s around 75-85 percent, which is a point at which it has a significant effect.
And I respectfully disagree with you both.
Rittersport, you claim a false analogy due to nearly every other country having UHC including Brazil which is also a shitshow. But my claim was that lack of UHC in addition to failure to follow best practices is what guaranteed the USA’s failure with Covid-19. Perhaps I didn’t make that clear.
RickJay, You make the assumption that the numbers coming out of the USA are accurate. I maintain they are not precisely because of the difficulty in accessing healthcare in the US. No money>no test>no treatment>no stats.
From 30, April
# How accurate is the US coronavirus death count? Some experts say it’s off by ‘tens of thousands’
16, April
# A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat
from the Atlantic:
According to the Tracking Project’s figures, nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it. In other words, the country has what is called a “test-positivity rate” of nearly 20 percent.
And here’s a nice explanation of testing statistics: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing
We see enormous differences across countries.
- Some countries, like Australia, South Korea and Uruguay have a positive rate of less than 1% – it takes hundreds, or even thousands of tests to find one case in these countries.
- Others, such as Mexico and Nigeria, have positive rates of 20%–50% or even more. In these countries a case is found for every few tests conducted.
Countries with a very high positive rate are unlikely to be testing widely enough to find all cases. The WHO has suggested a positive rate of around 3–12% as a general benchmark of adequate testing.2
Bottom line - the combination of poor leadership, bad practices and the lack of UHC made the Covid-19 shitshow in the USA inevitable.
Trump is threatening to cut funding from public schools that don’t reopen in the fall for in-person teaching. His own deep state CDC is recommending otherwise. Is anti-mitigated a word? Because that seems to be what he’s trying to do. Oh, and now the CDC is changing their guidance to match what Dr. Trump, esteemed epidemiologist, is recommending:
What a fucking disaster.
Headline: " Coronavirus pandemic could cause wave of brain damage, scientists warn"
Trump: “Yay! More voters for me!”**
** not a real quote
Florida is Cape Canaveral – for pandemic curves.
What’s the US response? No, really, what is it?
Short answer: there is no response at all. It was one thing to be caught flat-footed by the initial wave of the outbreak. I don’t think many presidents would have prevented what happened in New York. Sure, some other nations would have done a better job mitigating the initial wave, but a lot of countries were hit badly by the initial outbreak.
What puts the US in a class of its own (along with a few other nations, such as Brazil) is that it has failed to learn a single solitary fucking thing about adapting to the pandemic once its potential impact became obvious. That’s not the sign of a country that merely needs to improve public health; that’s the sign of deeper, more systemic failures collectively as a society. Over the long term, such failures are simply incompatible with successful self-governance and autonomy.
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Politicize the response at the federal level. Make it “us versus them” and have a leader who promotes ideas that contradict experts.
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Have a balkanized response at the state level 50 independent regions, all doing different things, with no coordination and free travel among them.
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A strong believe that individual “freedom” includes the freedom to infect others with disease.
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A significant population that loves to believe in conspiracy theories, some of which are spread by the country’s enemies.
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A horrifying trend to disbelieve science in any capacity and replace it with religious beliefs.
“Good plan! Let’s do this!” - said by no sane American.
James Fallows might disagree (from The Atlantic):
The ban (on travel from Europe) might even have worsened the situation, by impelling Americans (who might have been exposed) to get back while they still could. The president’s advance notice of the partial European ban almost certainly played an important part in bringing the infection to greater New York City. Because of the two-day “warning” Trump gave in his speech, every seat on every airplane from Europe to the U.S. over the next two days was filled. Airport and customs offices at the arrival airports in the U.S. were unprepared and overwhelmed. News footage showed travelers queued for hours, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to be admitted to the U.S. Some of those travelers already were suffering from the disease; they spread it to others. On March 11, New York had slightly more than 220 diagnosed cases. Two weeks later, it had more than 25,000.
Bolding mine.
Trump absolutely made monumental errors in judgment - no doubt about it. Far be it from me to defend him. But it’s like wondering whether Al Gore would have kept us out of a war with Iraq. Certainly possible, but I’m not totally convinced.
Wouldn’t it be “It’s like wondering whether Al Gore would have started an unnecessary war in Iraq”?