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Medicine United States

The US Now Leads the World In Confirmed Coronavirus Cases (nytimes.com) 440

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Scientists warned that the United States someday would become the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. That moment arrived on Thursday. In the United States, at least 81,321 people are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1,000 deaths -- more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen, according to data gathered by The New York Times.

With 330 million residents, the United States is the world's third most populous nation, meaning it provides a vast pool of people who can potentially get Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. And it is a sprawling, cacophonous democracy, where states set their own policies and President Trump has sent mixed messages about the scale of the danger and how to fight it, ensuring there was no coherent, unified response to a grave public health threat. A series of missteps and lost opportunities dogged the nation's response. Among them: a failure to take the pandemic seriously even as it engulfed China, a deeply flawed effort to provide broad testing for the virus that left the country blind to the extent of the crisis, and a dire shortage of masks and protective gear to protect doctors and nurses on the front lines, as well as ventilators to keep the critically ill alive.
"The world will be a different place when the pandemic is over," the report concludes. It suggests India may become the next global hotspot for virus cases as "it, too, is a vast democracy with deep internal divisions. But its population, 1.3 billion, is far larger, and its people are crowded even more tightly into megacities."
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The US Now Leads the World In Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

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  • by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:07PM (#59875438)
    The sooner everyone gets it, the sooner the rich pricks in our country can resume making money!
    • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:09PM (#59875442) Homepage

      Winning so hard right now. America! Fuck yeah!

      • Re: USA! USA! USA! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:12PM (#59875448)

        well we're not leading in deaths yet, but give us a couple more weeks and we'll show those poseurs how it's done.

        USA, land of the Trumped! booya!

        • Re: USA! USA! USA! (Score:5, Informative)

          by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:32PM (#59875538)
          fully expect the US to be first too 1000 deaths a day.
        • well we're not leading in deaths yet, but give us a couple more weeks and we'll show those poseurs how it's done.

          USA, land of the Trumped! booya!

          I think that comment needs to be quoted into higher visibility before the tolls try to censor it.

          However mostly I want to focus on the only proven solution so far. What China did was assume guilt before innocence. Everyone in Wuhan and the neighboring areas was arrested. They were assumed to be guilty of carrying the coronavirus until proven innocent.

          Of course there was more to it than that. Xi restructured the entire economy. Food in, sick people out, everyone else locked up and no touching. AT ALL. After

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            Too late for the joke. I should have written was "What Xi did was assume guilt. Like my wife!"

        • The sad thing is, in 6 moth all this will be forgotten.
          It is super unlikely that the US realize that they have to change how their society works ...
          I guess Trump will even be reelected, because:
          a) democrates have no better option
          a-2) neither have the republiciants
          b) he is doing something ... so people think he is a doer ...
          c) when ever has a president lost his second election?

          • Probably LBJ in addition. And Nixon in reverse? Lost his first but won the next two? Three in a row is not infinity.

            What sort of mindless delusional troll are you?

          • Presidents have lost their second election when the economy has tanked. Why do you think Trump started to do something only when the stock market dropped. Mind you the start that was more due to the price of oil going down and then reactions to COVID-19 had an impact on the market.

        • by znrt ( 2424692 )

          well we're not leading in deaths yet, but give us a couple more weeks and we'll show those poseurs how it's done.

          days.

      • by magusxxx ( 751600 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {0002_xxxsugam}> on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:23PM (#59875490)

        Trump: "We never would have gotten to #1 if Hilary was in office."

        • Trump: "I beat those dirty Chinese at their own game. Look no one else in the history of the world I think, right? the world was ever willing to do anything about it, but I did. I told China, I told them, I said Xi, and Xi's a great guy, great man, I love him, but I said, Xi, I'm going to beat your dirty virus covered Chinese ass."

          Trump: "And I did."

      • Re: USA! USA! USA! (Score:5, Informative)

        by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @09:30PM (#59876192)
        Well, Trump's delivered exactly what he promised:

        We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick, and tired of winning

        Note the extra comma in there.

    • Damn Americans! Always gotta be #1 in everything!?!?!??!?
    • with vaccines 6 month to a year away heard immunity isn't going to slow this down.
      So it's likely we all get it (or say 70% does).

      But since there are 3 to 5 times as many latent asymptomatic carriers, we are buiding up that immunity. And conversely only 1/3 to 1/5 of the people with it will know it. So the apparent infection rate will be perhaps 10 to 20% before this thing stops or a vaccine becomes available.

      The good news is then that the death rate is smaller than the apparent death rate just on people d

      • by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:58PM (#59875674) Homepage Journal

        Sigh. The problem is not mortality rate. The problem is the huge demand on resources to treat the heavy sufferers, even if they should recover. And on that front Covid-19 has already been proven magnitudes worse than the flu. That's what 'flattening the curve' is all about, after all.

    • The real killer is lack of productive consensus. This problem can be controlled and stamped out. Instead, you have those who are all for isolation, those who are against--for 'the good of the economy', and those who hedge. America's being is largely based on apathy; not caring that products are manufactured by those not paid a living wage, resources consumed through invasion and pillage, using products that harm, and lifestyles maintained at the expense of the environment. This sociopathic economic model ha
  • by NotSoHeavyD3 ( 1400425 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:09PM (#59875440) Journal
    https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] Of course I'm in the group that thinks China's numbers are complete bullshit.
    • by Mitreya ( 579078 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [ayertim]> on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:13PM (#59875454)

      I'm in the group that thinks China's numbers are complete bullshit.

      There are also doubts about the impressively low numbers being reported by Russia.

      • by Njovich ( 553857 )

        We know there was some number fudging initially in Wuhan (and by the time they had accurate tests they already had a full scale outbreak), but there is very little reason to doubt the numbers outside of Hubei province. I think there are a lot of countries where you can doubt the numbers, especially due to lack of testing. Comparing death counts is probably starting to become the most accurate metric. There will still be errors, but not to the same extent.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:14PM (#59875462)
      West Virginia was actively blocking people from getting tested to keep number low. And we have 30 million uninsured and 60 million under insured. You can bet your rootie-patotie our numbers are bunk too.

      So if I compare one obviously understated set of numbers to another, likely equally understated set of numbers then that's not a bad comparison.
      • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        West Virginia was actively blocking people from getting tested to keep number low.

        Are you at least on a lockdown to slow the spread of un-detected virus?

        • West Virginia was actively blocking people from getting tested to keep number low.

          Are you at least on a lockdown to slow the spread of un-detected virus?

          Looks like they started on Tuesday [wv.gov].

          (Aside: Why ask the question? It takes longer to post the question than it does to google the answer.)

      • There's going to be a fundamental mathematical relationship between number of people who get this and the number who die from it. Reported cases can be kept artificially low by not testing or suppressing news of test results. But historically, it is extremely difficult in a liberal democracy with a free press to undercount the number of deaths. So in democracies, the fatality rate gives you a clue if numbers are being suppressed. If you deliberately undercount the number of cases, that actually causes y
    • by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Of course I'm in the group that thinks China's numbers are complete bullshit.

      Which numbers do you believe are bullshit?

      It seems unlikely that China could manage to hide significant numbers of new Coronavirus deaths. Infections are another matter, but those numbers are mostly useless as the methodology is country-specific.

      • number of infections. Seems way too low compared to not only the US but Italy, France, Germany, Spain, well pretty much anybody else. (Especially since it started there so I'd expect the biggest delay before figuring out holy shit how bad this is.)
        • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:50PM (#59875628)
          no other country has implemented anything like the draconian lockdown (and I say that as a positive thing as we should have done the same) that china has done. They basically ended travel, shut business down and locked everyone in their homes, with no way for the virus to spread they were able to stop it.
          • by madbrain ( 11432 )

            They even separated family members within one household if one was infected. Which is draconian from a civil liberty point of view, but right from an epidemiology point of view. I think we have very tough times ahead in the US.

      • It seems unlikely that China could manage to hide significant numbers of new Coronavirus deaths.

        Yes, the Chinese government isn't really setup to suppress information..

    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:29PM (#59875532)

      Seems nobody told Italy and Spain to fudge the numbers. Everyone else seems inpressively immune.

      • That's what happened with the "Spanish flu", as well. Everyone else was on war-censorship footing and heavily restricting news about the virus, hence..."Spanish flu," despite it likely originating in the US.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's mostly New York and New Jersey.
    • Considering that the US has only testing been testing patients, and for the most part patients that have travelled or come into contact with someone who has, it is fair to say that the reported US numbers of infected are complete BS too.

  • America first! MAGA!
  • Absolute or per capita?

  • by passionplay ( 607862 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @06:56PM (#59875660)
    Let's keep things real. Gross numbers without context mean absolutely nothing. Fear-mongering is no better than war-mongering. Let's stick to the facts. We are at 1,181 deaths and 82,025 cases = 1.4% (Bloomberg Source Article [bloomberg.com] - NYT is sharing bad data without context). Italy had 63,927 cases and 6077 deaths = 9.5% (WIkipedia Source Article [wikipedia.org]). Do you think we might be doing something right seeing as our mortality rate is lower than China and Italy?
  • Low death rate (Score:2, Insightful)

    by turbotalon ( 592486 )
    So by those numbers the strain spreading in the U.S. ha a MAXIMUM of 1.2% death rate, way lower than the WHO estimates. With influenza greater than 60% of flu cases are undiagnosed with official viral testing. It is safe to say an even higher rate of COVID-19 cases are undiagnosed because of the restricted availability of test kits, but, for the sake of argument, let's just keep the 60%. That means there is actually more like 200,000 people infected in the U.S. currently. 1,000 deaths in 200,000 is a .5% de
    • by mvdwege ( 243851 )

      Because the infected, when they do not recover quickly, require a massive amount of physical equipment to keep alive, orders of a magnitude more than the flu, that's why you should be upset.

      It's not about mortality rate. For that Covid-19 is probably worse than the flu, but that is not the point. The point is hospitals running out of capacity for treatment. Which has a knock-on effect, because all those Covid-19 cases clogging up the system take up capacity that could be used for other ailments.

    • Re:Low death rate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by burningcpu ( 1234256 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @08:51PM (#59876084)
      Because those numbers don't scale? First, you're using (people already dead from infection) and (people sick and will die from infection) interchangeably, and that's especially dumb considering the early stage of nearly every case in the US. That's the danger of uncontrolled exponential growth. Second, you're assuming a constant mortality rate where a constant mortality rate is obviously not going to occur. We have a finite number of supplies, care centers, nurses, doctors, ventilators, fucking etc, and once those are overwhelmed - mortality rate is going to jump to 'third world' levels. The data I've seen indicates that 10% of cases end up requiring ventilators to survive, with permanent lung damage mind you, and 40% of those cases dying despite care. By next week, we'll run out of capacity and things will get much worse from there. It'll be a real bad time to have any other sort of health emergency.

      I mean fuck, think of it as a variable pricing model if you need to.
  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Thursday March 26, 2020 @07:35PM (#59875850)

    The con artist's campaign has sent a cease and desist notice to MSNBC to try and force them to stop airing an ad [imgur.com] which uses the con artist's own words, overlaid on a graph showing the ballooning number of cases in this country. The con artist has even said he is looking into pulling MSNBC's license if they don't stop airing the ad.

    This was after the morning crew did a Streisand Effect [imgur.com].

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