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Post by n00b on Jan 26, 2021 16:57:05 GMT -5
Well yes. But if you took the worst cities/states/regions/whatever those countries have, the worst ones are obviously going to also be worse than national averages. (When looking at per capita figures) Lomardy, Italy is at 266 deaths/100k. Liguria and Emilia-Romagna are also above 200. The smaller the region you look at, the more extreme numbers you'll get. Hawaii, Vermont and Alaska are all be below 35 deaths/100k. Those would be GREAT numbers for a country. But it doesn't mean much. What do you think about the US leading the world in infections and deaths while being less than 5% of the world's population? A few things. 1) We don't have the highest death rate per capita. We're about average when compared to many of our western peers. Lower rates than the UK and Italy, higher than Spain, Germany and France. The numbers that Mexico are reporting seem dubious at best. They just aren't testing for it. 2) I think our Constitution makes us uniquely poor at being able to handle a pandemic. This is probably one of the very few situations where an authoritarian government could be beneficial (as long as the person at the top wants people to live). No president - Trump, Clinton, or Biden - would've been authorized to implement national lockdowns or mandates. There simply aren't mechanisms for the federal government to wield that kind of power. I worry that the result of this will be a Patriot Act style infringement on our freedoms for the illusion of more safety. We'll see. But mostly, I think pre-existing structures and cultural norms made this a tougher thing to fight here than in other countries. (Our obesity problem is definitely included in that) 3) I think there is reason to believe that we ARE testing more aggressively than many other countries and that is driving our case numbers up. For example, Brazil, Germany, UK, Italy all have observed case-fatality rates above 2.5% while we're at 1.7% in the US. Is the virus really 50% more deadly in those countries? I think the more likely answer is that we're finding more mild/asymptomatic cases. But I really don't know enough about what other massive countries are doing to know how we're different. How is India, whose big cities are incredibly densely populated, keeping numbers much lower than the US? Brazil? Russia?
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Post by n00b on Jan 26, 2021 17:01:05 GMT -5
Well yes. But if you took the worst cities/states/regions/whatever those countries have, the worst ones are obviously going to also be worse than national averages. (When looking at per capita figures) Lomardy, Italy is at 266 deaths/100k. Liguria and Emilia-Romagna are also above 200. The smaller the region you look at, the more extreme numbers you'll get. Hawaii, Vermont and Alaska are all be below 35 deaths/100k. Those would be GREAT numbers for a country. But it doesn't mean much. Yep, but I didn't do this arbitrarily. In terms of size, which is more similar to Belgium? New York, or the entire United States? The United States benefits from low density that other countries near the top of the fatality list don't benefit from. There are several good reasons for comparing states to European countries (specifically). Side note: "The smaller the region you look at, the more extreme numbers you'll get" is proven wrong within your own post. Extreme high and extreme low. My point is that Alaska's per capita COVID rates are not a good indicator of how the US is doing.
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Post by donut on Jan 26, 2021 17:19:59 GMT -5
Yep, but I didn't do this arbitrarily. In terms of size, which is more similar to Belgium? New York, or the entire United States? The United States benefits from low density that other countries near the top of the fatality list don't benefit from. There are several good reasons for comparing states to European countries (specifically). Side note: "The smaller the region you look at, the more extreme numbers you'll get" is proven wrong within your own post. Extreme high and extreme low. My point is that Alaska's per capita COVID rates are not a good indicator of how the US is doing. Good thing I never tried to make that point.
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moody
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Post by moody on Jan 26, 2021 17:24:00 GMT -5
What do you think about the US leading the world in infections and deaths while being less than 5% of the world's population? A few things. 1) We don't have the highest death rate per capita. We're about average when compared to many of our western peers. Lower rates than the UK and Italy, higher than Spain, Germany and France. The numbers that Mexico are reporting seem dubious at best. They just aren't testing for it. 2) I think our Constitution makes us uniquely poor at being able to handle a pandemic. This is probably one of the very few situations where an authoritarian government could be beneficial (as long as the person at the top wants people to live). No president - Trump, Clinton, or Biden - would've been authorized to implement national lockdowns or mandates. There simply aren't mechanisms for the federal government to wield that kind of power. I worry that the result of this will be a Patriot Act style infringement on our freedoms for the illusion of more safety. We'll see. But mostly, I think pre-existing structures and cultural norms made this a tougher thing to fight here than in other countries. (Our obesity problem is definitely included in that) 3) I think there is reason to believe that we ARE testing more aggressively than many other countries and that is driving our case numbers up. For example, Brazil, Germany, UK, Italy all have observed case-fatality rates above 2.5% while we're at 1.7% in the US. Is the virus really 50% more deadly in those countries? I think the more likely answer is that we're finding more mild/asymptomatic cases. But I really don't know enough about what other massive countries are doing to know how we're different. How is India, whose big cities are incredibly densely populated, keeping numbers much lower than the US? Brazil? Russia? The US has over 25% of the world’ infections and less than 5% of the world’s population. There is no way to spin that in a positive direction. We are where we are because of Trump’s incompetence and inability to allow our science to fight this pandemic.
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Post by n00b on Jan 26, 2021 17:24:13 GMT -5
Extreme high and extreme low. My point is that Alaska's per capita COVID rates are not a good indicator of how the US is doing. Good thing I never tried to make that point. Apologies. I must've misunderstood your side note then.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Jan 27, 2021 11:51:41 GMT -5
A few things. 1) We don't have the highest death rate per capita. We're about average when compared to many of our western peers. Lower rates than the UK and Italy, higher than Spain, Germany and France. The numbers that Mexico are reporting seem dubious at best. They just aren't testing for it. 2) I think our Constitution makes us uniquely poor at being able to handle a pandemic. This is probably one of the very few situations where an authoritarian government could be beneficial (as long as the person at the top wants people to live). No president - Trump, Clinton, or Biden - would've been authorized to implement national lockdowns or mandates. There simply aren't mechanisms for the federal government to wield that kind of power. I worry that the result of this will be a Patriot Act style infringement on our freedoms for the illusion of more safety. We'll see. But mostly, I think pre-existing structures and cultural norms made this a tougher thing to fight here than in other countries. (Our obesity problem is definitely included in that) 3) I think there is reason to believe that we ARE testing more aggressively than many other countries and that is driving our case numbers up. For example, Brazil, Germany, UK, Italy all have observed case-fatality rates above 2.5% while we're at 1.7% in the US. Is the virus really 50% more deadly in those countries? I think the more likely answer is that we're finding more mild/asymptomatic cases. But I really don't know enough about what other massive countries are doing to know how we're different. How is India, whose big cities are incredibly densely populated, keeping numbers much lower than the US? Brazil? Russia? The US has over 25% of the world’ infections and less than 5% of the world’s population. There is no way to spin that in a positive direction. We are where we are because of Trump’s incompetence and inability to allow our science to fight this pandemic. You should probably look at deaths and not infections - since places that does more testing will have more cases. Also have to be careful on the accuracy of data from other countries and whether they are using the same criteria in determining death by COVID. There are also many other variables. That said - the US hasn't been 'good' in this. The only way that it would have been materially different for the US was if they had closed the borders early (February at the latest), tested and quarantined everyone that entered the country, and did this all before there was any community spread. This would have meant closing the borders before there was a single death, before we really knew we had a problem in the US - and before Trump banned all travel to and from China when he was broadly called a racist for trying to do this.
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Post by c4ndlelight on Jan 27, 2021 12:01:30 GMT -5
There were many things that could have been done besides closing the border.
We could have done better contact tracing. While the lack of tests is a distant memory, it was a hugely significant issue early on, due to the mismanagement of developing a test, infighting between the CDC and FDA to curry Trump's favor. When the virus was its deadliest, we lagged far behind the rest of the world in tracing.
We could have better adhered to social distancing. This does not necessarily mean a long-term nationwide lockdown. A nationwide lockdown framework, that localities could have applied to local conditions, could have brought clarity and consistency to what was needed.
And most importantly, we could have had leadership. Instead of claiming it was a hoax and drawing on culture wars over "freedom" for political appeal, the Republican Party could have marginalized the minority that didn't take the virus seriously and kept community spread continuous. The Fall spike makes us forget that we didn't actually have cases drop off over the Summer as much as they should... and that's part of why the spike has been so severe.
Just because the UK also mismanaged this horribly, doesn't mean we didn't as well.
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Post by mervinswerved on Jan 27, 2021 12:04:31 GMT -5
The US has over 25% of the world’ infections and less than 5% of the world’s population. There is no way to spin that in a positive direction. We are where we are because of Trump’s incompetence and inability to allow our science to fight this pandemic. You should probably look at deaths and not infections - since places that does more testing will have more cases. Also have to be careful on the accuracy of data from other countries and whether they are using the same criteria in determining death by COVID. There are also many other variables. That said - the US hasn't been 'good' in this. The only way that it would have been materially different for the US was if they had closed the borders early (February at the latest), tested and quarantined everyone that entered the country, and did this all before there was any community spread. This would have meant closing the borders before there was a single death, before we really knew we had a problem in the US - and before Trump banned all travel to and from China when he was broadly called a racist for trying to do this. Other countries instituted lockdowns after they had community spread. Real lockdowns. We could have paid people to stay home. Paid businesses to stay closed. Nationalized the test and trace system. Activated the national guard and FEMA to run test sites/contact trace. We could have at least tried these things but we didn't.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Jan 27, 2021 12:08:08 GMT -5
You should probably look at deaths and not infections - since places that does more testing will have more cases. Also have to be careful on the accuracy of data from other countries and whether they are using the same criteria in determining death by COVID. There are also many other variables. That said - the US hasn't been 'good' in this. The only way that it would have been materially different for the US was if they had closed the borders early (February at the latest), tested and quarantined everyone that entered the country, and did this all before there was any community spread. This would have meant closing the borders before there was a single death, before we really knew we had a problem in the US - and before Trump banned all travel to and from China when he was broadly called a racist for trying to do this. Other countries instituted lockdowns after they had community spread. Real lockdowns. Were any of them successful? Maybe China - but their lockdown was crazy oppressive. South Korea and Australia closed their borders in time and the most successful. Pretty much all of Europe did various forms of lockdowns - mostly after community spread, and pretty much each of those counties is a dumpster fire.
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bluepenquin
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Post by bluepenquin on Jan 27, 2021 12:10:26 GMT -5
Meanwhile - most schools in the country are not in person despite the overwhelming science that shows they should be open.
I am sure this has nothing to do with teacher unions and the Democratic Party that is beholden to them...
It certainly has nothing to do with science.
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Post by mervinswerved on Jan 27, 2021 12:15:20 GMT -5
Other countries instituted lockdowns after they had community spread. Real lockdowns. Were any of them successful? Maybe China - but their lockdown was crazy oppressive. South Korea and Australia closed their borders in time and the most successful. Pretty much all of Europe did various forms of lockdowns - mostly after community spread, and pretty much each of those counties is a dumpster fire. Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway all have fared better than the United States. Australia locked down multiple states for just a handful of community cases. People went along with it and they're living relatively normal lives while waiting on a vaccine. The thing is, we never tried. When our society looked at the hard things we'd have to do to save lives and hopefully mitigate the pandemic's impact, we collectively said "that's just too hard."
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Post by n00b on Jan 27, 2021 12:15:50 GMT -5
There were many things that could have been done besides closing the border. I don’t buy that any of these things are making significant differences. We had more than enough testing and tracing capacity from November through January and that spike was bigger than the one in April. Testing wasn’t going to stop this. If the numbers are low, maybe it could, but that would mean pre-New York explosion. Back when Cuomo was saying there’s no way NYC would be shutting down schools. Did California’s lock down prevent their massive spike in December? We DID essentially have a nationwide lock down for 6 weeks. From mid-March until Georgia started opening up. I think that was late April/early May? Republicans might’ve been the ones vocally opposing lockdowns. But people under the age of 25 were the ones actually ignoring social distancing in huge numbers. That group votes overwhelming Democratic.
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Post by n00b on Jan 27, 2021 12:16:46 GMT -5
You should probably look at deaths and not infections - since places that does more testing will have more cases. Also have to be careful on the accuracy of data from other countries and whether they are using the same criteria in determining death by COVID. There are also many other variables. That said - the US hasn't been 'good' in this. The only way that it would have been materially different for the US was if they had closed the borders early (February at the latest), tested and quarantined everyone that entered the country, and did this all before there was any community spread. This would have meant closing the borders before there was a single death, before we really knew we had a problem in the US - and before Trump banned all travel to and from China when he was broadly called a racist for trying to do this. Other countries instituted lockdowns after they had community spread. Real lockdowns. We could have paid people to stay home. Paid businesses to stay closed. Nationalized the test and trace system. Activated the national guard and FEMA to run test sites/contact trace. We could have at least tried these things but we didn't. You would’ve had to arrest people for violating. Except we let people out of prisons. So I’m not really sure how that would work.
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Post by mervinswerved on Jan 27, 2021 12:21:29 GMT -5
Other countries instituted lockdowns after they had community spread. Real lockdowns. We could have paid people to stay home. Paid businesses to stay closed. Nationalized the test and trace system. Activated the national guard and FEMA to run test sites/contact trace. We could have at least tried these things but we didn't. You would’ve had to arrest people for violating. Except we let people out of prisons. So I’m not really sure how that would work. I'm not surprised you're not sure how that'd work. We might need to arrest people like the guys who had the 50 person orgy in Belgium. Otherwise, if the bars, restaurants, and businesses are closed, there's nowhere for people to go. Grocery stores and medical facilities could still operate as truly essential businesses.
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Post by n00b on Jan 27, 2021 12:24:49 GMT -5
You would’ve had to arrest people for violating. Except we let people out of prisons. So I’m not really sure how that would work. I'm not surprised you're not sure how that'd work. We might need to arrest people like the guys who had the 50 person orgy in Belgium. Otherwise, if the bars, restaurants, and businesses are closed, there's nowhere for people to go. Grocery stores and medical facilities could still operate as truly essential businesses. You don’t think college students and young adults are finding ways to party in New York and California?
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