NYT Investigates America's 'Lost Month' for Coronavirus Testing (msn.com) 412
The New York Times interviewed over 50 current and former U.S. health officials, senior scientists, company executives, and administration officials to investigate America's "lost month" without widespread coronavirus testing, "when the world's richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus's spread."
With capacity so limited, the Center for Disease Control's criteria for who was tested remained extremely narrow for weeks to come: only people who had recently traveled to China or had been in contact with someone who had the virus. The lack of tests in the states also meant local public health officials could not use another essential epidemiological tool: surveillance testing. To see where the virus might be hiding, nasal swab samples from people screened for the common flu would also be checked for the coronavirus...
Even though researchers around the country quickly began creating tests that could diagnose Covid-19, many said they were hindered by the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. The new tests sat unused at labs around the country. Stanford was one of them. Researchers at the world-renowned university had a working test by February, based on protocols published by the World Health Organization.... By early March, after federal officials finally announced changes to expand testing, it was too late. With the early lapses, containment was no longer an option. The tool kit of epidemiology would shift — lockdowns, social disruption, intensive medical treatment — in hopes of mitigating the harm.
Now, the United States has more than 100,000 coronavirus cases, the most of any country in the world... And still, many Americans sickened by the virus cannot get tested... In tacit acknowledgment of the shortage, Mr. Trump asked South Korea's president on Monday to send as many test kits as possible from the 100,000 produced there daily, more than the country needs. Public health experts reacted positively to the increased capacity. But having the ability to diagnose the disease three months after it was first disclosed by China does little to address why the United States was unable to do so sooner, when it might have helped reduce the toll of the pandemic.
Even though researchers around the country quickly began creating tests that could diagnose Covid-19, many said they were hindered by the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. The new tests sat unused at labs around the country. Stanford was one of them. Researchers at the world-renowned university had a working test by February, based on protocols published by the World Health Organization.... By early March, after federal officials finally announced changes to expand testing, it was too late. With the early lapses, containment was no longer an option. The tool kit of epidemiology would shift — lockdowns, social disruption, intensive medical treatment — in hopes of mitigating the harm.
Now, the United States has more than 100,000 coronavirus cases, the most of any country in the world... And still, many Americans sickened by the virus cannot get tested... In tacit acknowledgment of the shortage, Mr. Trump asked South Korea's president on Monday to send as many test kits as possible from the 100,000 produced there daily, more than the country needs. Public health experts reacted positively to the increased capacity. But having the ability to diagnose the disease three months after it was first disclosed by China does little to address why the United States was unable to do so sooner, when it might have helped reduce the toll of the pandemic.
"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that more like lost three months? It was already clear in January that sars-cov-2 is going to be a 'uge problem, and yet it was talked down until it is so widespread that no other measure but the availability of a working mass vaccine and a cheap and easy to produce treatment will make a difference.
We got ourselves into the current situation because of complacency, submission to myopic pressure from the "business" to do nothing and the desire of the political elite to not disturb the inflated stock market.
And we ignored the basic truth that preparation and prevention is much cheaper than a panic search for a "cure".
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Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
but our healthcare defenses are on par with third world countries.
I don't know the US system well, so I cannot say much about that, but it isn't only the US that screwed up. The European Union got itself into the same mess as well.
It is a political failure because of messed up priorities.
If you don't have healthcare coverage and are sick, coronavirus will mean almost certain death.
I sincerely hope US can do better than that in emergency.
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https://nypost.com/2020/03/28/... [nypost.com]
Thoughts and prayers only go so far.
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The United States had the resources, but we didn't take responsibility. Instead we kept slashing taxes and benefits and dropping bombs on Middle East countries while plowing more money into defense contracting.
You can file that under "a "beautiful" theory rubbished by cruel facts"
California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them [latimes.com]
They were ready to roll whenever disaster struck California: three 200-bed mobile hospitals that could be deployed to the scene of a crisis on flatbed trucks and provide advanced medical care to the injured and sick within 72 hours.
Each hospital would be the size of a football field, with a surgery ward, intensive care unit and X-ray equipment. Medical response teams would also have access to a massive stockpile of emergency supplies: 50 million N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) created the stockpile, Governor Jerry Brown (D) destroyed it
New York's Ventilator Rationing Plan [realclearpolitics.com] (courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D))
After learning that the state's stockpile of medical equipment had 16,000 fewer ventilators than New Yorkers would need in a severe pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to a fork in the road in 2015. He could have chosen to buy more ventilators. Instead, he asked his health commissioner, Howard Zucker to assemble a task force and draft rules for rationing the ventilators they already had.
That task force came up with rules that will be imposed when ventilators run short. Patients assigned a red code will have the highest access, and other patients will be assigned green, yellow or blue (the worst) depending on a "triage officer's" decision. . . . .
Cuomo could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece or a total of $576 million in 2015. It's a lot of money but less than the $750 million he threw away on a boondoggle "Buffalo Billion" solar panel factory. . . .
Now the pandemic is actually here. Cuomo's grim reaper rules will be applied.
It’s Barack Obama's Fault There’s a Shortage of N95 Respirator Masks [pjmedia.com]
. . . “After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks [...] be replenished by the stockpile.” The problem is that didn’t happen. According to Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, about 100 million N95 respirator masks were used up during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, but, he said was unaware of any “major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown.”
In short, even though the Obama administration was advised to replenish the national stockpile of the N95 respirator masks, they didn’t. Despite the fact the media traced the cause of the shortage back to 2009, they accuse Trump of poor planning and trying to deflect responsibility. It doesn't take a genius to know that in 2009 Barack Obama was president, but not once in either story did Bloomberg or the Los Angeles Times link the failure to replenish the N95 respirator masks with Obama or his administration, after they apparently ignored recommendations to do so.
Re: "Lost month"? (Score:3)
Or maybe you are crazy and meta moderation works. When you leave your echo chamber you might be surprised on the results.
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I don't know the US system well, so I cannot say much about that, but it isn't only the US that screwed up. The European Union got itself into the same mess as well.
I'll stay out of the US politics part of this, but if we should learn one thing is that Europe can no longer take it's cues from the US. The European leaders acted like teenagers looking at each other to see who will first dare to really act. In the past we could rely on the US to act first. Europe has to grow up.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe is, but it tries not to show it.
The US is a bit like the schoolyard bully of international politics. Strong, but not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Everyone knows it, but nobody really wants to say it because the bully isn't just strong and dumb but also quite sensitive about being told that he's not only dumb but actually universally hated. So the other kids suck up to him because every time he beats someone up for his lunch money, some of the pennies drop to the ground and whoever pretends to be his buddy gets to pick those up himself.
And if you declare that you think he's a dimwit and and asshole, you might be the next being beaten up and out of your lunch money.
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The US has been bullying Canada, we're now a security risk and tariffs are needed on us and discussions are ongoing about putting troops on the border.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Informative)
The EU is doing well at coordinating responses and running the joint procurement programme for ventilators.
But you have to remember that the EU is not a government, it can't order member states to do things and has limited power.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Key EU manufacturing states like Germany blocked export of vital protective equipment like masks to workers in other EU countries like Italy that desperately needed them, and basically had to be shamed into giving by the fact that China was selling Italy the equipment their fellow EU countries wouldn't. This frankly seems like it could be an existential threat to the EU - one of its most fundamental purposes is to end protectionism and ensure free trade amongst its members, and a bunch of countries just discovered that not only did this cause financial and economic problems, after hollowing out their local industries and leaving their governments unable to protect it, that free trade disappeared and left their healthcare workers without protection in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century.
Re: "Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing how some people have been so completely brainwashed. The information is all available easily on the internet, and yet you maintain this delusion.
The EU is run by elected MEPs and heads of state. It can't make laws, and member states have vetoes over directives, and in practice there isn't much the EU can do to enforce any of it anyway.
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Okay, you must be the one brainwashed.
- Why does Dutch and other state copyright law no longer allow for home-copy then?
Article 291(1) TFEU 'Member States shall adopt all measures of national law necessary to implement legally binding Union acts'
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The European Union got itself into the same mess as well.
Yes true, but for different reasons. In the free market you screw yourself through your own incompetence. In socialised medicine you screw yourself through government policy.
The defense of both systems hasn't born out the positives. In the free market testing is supposed to be better because anyone can just go and get it done. In socialised healthcare it's supposed to be better because testing is free and not just reserved to those who can pay. In reality the free market had no test kits regardless if you had money or not, and the social system didn't care because of government policy not to care. /Disclosure: I ran a 38.5 fever, bad cough, headache, you know all the symptoms about a week after returning from a massive Spanish festival and the doctor said get some bed rest, I'll get tested for Covid-19 only if I develop pneumonia and end up in hospital. Did I have it? I'll never know.
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Bella Italia?
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. is on track to be worse off than Italy.
Re: "Lost month"? (Score:3, Informative)
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The difference is the curve we're looking at. If you look at the curves, the European one is flatter with a far less dramatically rising slope. Europe is about a week (or two, depending on what area you look at) longer into the course of the disease than the US and currently on the highest infection point, a point the US is still heading towards. That alone makes the development in the US really worrying.
Re:Lets compare the different messes (Score:4, Insightful)
While an interesting graph, it doesn't take into account how many people are in total in the respective countries. Of course the US look like heading for disaster because their total population is already heaps higher than Italy or Spain. That doesn't mean that they are not heading for disaster, given that China has about as many times the population of the US as the US has that of Italy, but It makes a comparison between the US and Italy, Spain or Germany hard because even if the US had only a very well moderated progression, it would look more intimidating on this course.
Yes but China, population 1386 million, already has a 1/3rd lower absolute case count than the US population, 327 million. The reason the US had a slow moderately progression was because nobody was doing any testing. If you do not test you get good numbers, but the virus does not care. The virus keeps spreading and population size does not matter all that much to the rate of spread. The virus will spread at the same rate through a population in mostly the same way in two densely populated countries until it runs out of people. So if you do nothing to stop it in both countries the rate of spread is the same until the supply of hosts has been exhausted in one country. The only difference in infection rates are caused by human reactions to the pandemic. The US infection rate is now the highest in the industrialised world and the pandemic there is currently unrestricted. Also, the thing to observe is that all these countries are flattening the curve to some extent except the US whose case count relative to new infections is a ruler straight line indicating unrestricted spread. In the absence of a vaccine or anti viral drugs the key to beating this pandemic is simply to lock everything down right off the bat, test a lot, track contacts, have a team already in place to do epidemiological analysis, socially distance, lock down and thus slow the spread down to where the spread/new case curve starts to bend. The US is not doing that ... yet. In theory, if everybody just staid at home for three weeks and only left the house if they are a serious case on the way to the hospital this epidemic would be over. Of course we can't implement that ideal but we can pull out all the stops to get as close as possible.
Re:Lets compare the different messes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lets compare the different messes (Score:4, Insightful)
Same for the US, even if they wanted to be truthful they couldn't be because of a lack of testing equipment.
Re:Lets compare the different messes (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who believes any number coming out of China is accurate is a fool.
Look at this chart https://aatishb.com/covidtrend... [aatishb.com]
Select all countries and plot it on logarithmic scale. This is the plot of the number of new cases vs the number of reported cases. With unrestricted spread, the exponential will give a straight line on this plot, the slope determined by how contagious the virus was.
See how every country basically shoots up along the top edge of the *same line* and then bend down at different degrees depending on how successful they are at containing the spread?
Now notice that China's line ALSO go along the same top edge before it fell of a cliff starting mid-Feb, about 3 weeks after they locked down.
Don't forget that China is the first country to reach 500, 1000, 10000, 50000, 80000 cases.
If China had been making up numbers, then they have the mythical ability to predict EXACTLY how fast a never seen before virus would spread, and able to increase the made up case number at just the right rate. And then, miraculously or by conspiracy, every other country in the world subsequently grew at just the rate China made up to look good, and that's the max rate the virus was observed to spread.
Does that sound even remotely plausible to you?
Or, was it more likely that, after the Hubei local officials tries to cover up, the CCP stepped in chose to publish the actual figures since then?
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It's not "muh freedom" (Score:3)
In order to do long term lock downs we'd have to accept about 20-30% of the population going on a 3-6 month paid vacation. There's just no other way around it.
No way in hell are Americans going to tolerate that. We've been hearing about welfare queens eating steak and lobster since the late 70s. That image resonates something fierce.
Moreover, the ruling class do not want to let the cat out of the bag that we could, in fact, all work a hell of a lot less if we w
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In this day and age, it's really hard to tell whether you actually think this or whether it was supposed to demonstrate what the main problem is.
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Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, nobody prepares adequately for events...
That is not a fact. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore showed preparedness. Also, a flu-like pandemic is hardly something that happens "once in a century", we've had 5 or 6 in this century alone.
Iceland's sample of 12% of their population indicates that half of all carriers get no symptoms at all.
Which means they are not "sick" - as in requiring hospital care, which is how I understood OP's comment. Now, I don't know if their conclusion is correct, I believe that in the face of a crisis US will manage her public and private resources adequately to provide for all who need help, but your counterpoint is not really valid.
Right now it looks like 80% won't need hospitals (Score:3)
If we all just go back to normal then it looks like 70% of the country gets it.
That means 35% get sick. 115 million
Of that 20% need hospitalization. 23 million.
We don't have enough beds let alone ventilators. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see 15 million dead and 7 or 8 with severe permanent lung damage.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't have healthcare coverage and are sick, coronavirus will mean almost certain death.
You realize this isn’t Ebola or Marburg... right?
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No, Ebola Zaire is worse. It's easy to spread. It can be up to 90% fatal. The only reason why it hasn't made it very far is that it kills so quickly that its spread is usually curtailed by mass fatality.
If one of the nastier variants of Ebola Zaire were seeded someplace like China or India, It would be devastating.
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COVID-19 only kills 1% to 10% of those infected, so now we've got tons of Covidiots running around thinking:
"It's just the flu, bro. No big deal."
Not that I don't agree with this point, but you do realize it undermines your entire argument, don't you?
Thesis statement: "If you don't have health insurance and get COVID, you are almost certain to die."
Counter-statement: "this is stupid, what the heck do you think this is, Ebola?"
Your statement: "You have a 1%-10% chance to die."
A =/= C
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That's gross exaggeration. Most COVID-19 cases are quite mild. The figures are wildly uncertain, but I think it's safe to assert that fewer than 10% of the cases are serious and require more than minimal treatment (i.e., can be treated by keeping warm and hydrated).
Of course, there's a large fraction of the US population that *can't* keep themselves warm and hydrated.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the US healthcare system is the only one with under 1% death rate for this thing. You want to live in Italy or Spain or China during this thing?
This is so short sighted it isn't even funny, and the comparisons of US healthcare of European healthcare here are inane at best, and dangerous at worst.
The death rate in the US is almost certain to rise. Once hospitals are overrun (and that is coming quite soon in some areas, if not already happening) things will get significantly worse. In New York City, the death rate is already twice your 1% number, and that WILL go up.
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You act as if people talking was the reason why things took so long to happen here in the States. The New York Times discovered otherwise.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:5, Informative)
USA had it's first COVID case January 10th 2020 I think. This is stupidity from the top down.
Re:"Lost month"? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, there's been a pattern of doing things too late in the US, but we're talking specifically about testing. It makes sense to compare our response to South Korea; the first detected cases were reported there at almost the same time as the US.
Based on that, I think you can argue that we're at least three weeks behind Korea in testing, more probably four. We were three weeks later in approving a working test. After that our complicated federal/state/local government system introduced at least two of weeks of delay as 50 independent state governments scrambled to find test kits and supplies.
This showed up in the numbers states reported. By the middle of this month New York and Washington were the first states to hit 1000 tests/day, and were also the first states to report over a thousand cases. Texas, on the other hand, was struggling to process 250 test per day and was reporting 1/8 the number of cases that Washington State had.
Even today Texas, with roughly half the population of South Korea, is still struggling to reach that 1000 tests per day *processed* benchmark, although it's *administering* more tests than that, generating a backlog. The state is turning to local public health agencies to do testing, and as those programs come on line we're seeing dramatic spikes in numbers. Houston went from 69 to 232 when it started testing, and would probably find more if there weren't a shortage of protective gear.
If you lose three weeks it's no longer meaningful to compare the situation at four weeks. Korea was fast enough to *contain* the virus. In the US we're doing mitigation. We're both flattening the curve, but Korea is minimizing the area under that curve.
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Link i mis-pasted: : https://www.gq.com/story/donal... [gq.com]
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At least somebody gets it. For once, let's stop making everything all about Trump! Both his supporters and detractors do this, and it's infuriating.
Trump is irrelevant.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, what a fucking shock. According to Liberals, everything is the fault of people that Liberals hate. Never mind that a month ago NYC's Democrat health chief was encouraging the public to go outside and hug a Chinese guy or else you're racist [twitter.com], it's all Trump's fault.
Your link doesn't show that at all (Score:3)
Inventing attacks on Democrats doesn't make Trump look any less catastrophic.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, Trump has been blamed. for. every. single. thing. relentlessly from the day he was elected. This is a problem because peoples' brains shut off to it at some point. And the reason that people shut it off is because it does not represent a valid criticism, but rather blind, rabid, hate. So people disqualify your criticism because it comes from a place of hate because Trump does not represent your (likely) liberal agenda. I can say that because conservatives have been nearly universally favorable of Trump. Many conservatives who originally disliked Trump aka never-Trumpers have been won over by him.
So I "get it" that Trump might deserve valid criticism. The testing has been a shitshow. But because you froth at the mouth with hate, you're simply not bringing people over to your side with it.
So much as the testing has been horrible, note that Trump has, in fact, literally gone to the ends of the earth to battle the virus. The fact that he wants to get tests directly from South Korea proves that. He wanted to buy a vaccine research company lock stock and barrel in Germany last Febuary. He was roundly hated on for that when I was thinking thank you for the hell trying for Americans, Mr. President. Something that I'm pretty sure another President (like Obama) would not attempt. You can bet your bottom dollar that when he asked GM to make ventilators, he reminded them how the taxpayer saved their sorry ass of a company back in 2008.
Those are the kind of things I need this president to do at a time like this, and why I continue to support him.
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:2, Insightful)
I continue to challenge people to explain what their exact issue is with Trump. People have fallen victim to media bias and they donâ(TM)t want to admit it.
In the beginning his covid statements were very timid, but really if he said the world was going to end everyone would have panicked.
TDS is real and I have an open challenge to a friend to articulate where he thinks the president failed other then the democrats taking the exact opposite stance.
Really Trump just needs to say killing your self is a ba
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
I continue to challenge people to explain what their exact issue is with Trump.
He failed to take the threat seriously and provide necessary leadership. There was no immediate national coordination with all stakeholders having capability to develop tests and prepare for the inevitable. Instead time was wasted by individual stakeholders who taking personal initiative to develop capability only to be hampered by national red tape. In some instances people were told by administration officials not to do tests. This would never have happened in the presence of effective leadership.
All of this CDC bad test bullshit is irrelevant. The CDC does not have the facilities for high throughput testing. They were never a solution to anything and relevant stakeholders with useful capabilities were engaged too late. Window on relevance of CDC capability relative to need closed before they shipped any tests.
In the beginning his covid statements were very timid, but really if he said the world was going to end everyone would have panicked.
If I had a penny for every time this particular device is invoked I'd be rich beyond imagination. Claim a ridiculous extreme position that nobody is talking about "world was going to end" to contrast against so that the actual position appears reasonable in comparison.
The reality is spread of the virus in this country is directly attributable to a "very timid" national response. Both in terms of testing and public messaging. Belated reaction while better than nothing costs lives for very little in return.
People have fallen victim to media bias and they donÃ(TM)t want to admit it.
Trump is a bumbling idiot who can't communicate a self-consistent message to the public.
My opinions of Trump is informed by his own words not the ramblings of talking heads. I watched the hour long CDC shit show where he said "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship." He went back to that on two separate occasions. It was quite explicit his thinking was driven by perception of himself rather than what is best for the country. This tells me all I need to know about who Trump really is. Toward the end a reporter asked about South Korean drive thru testing and status of that in the US. His bizarre nonsensical "sampling" response demonstrated a staggering level of idiocy and incompetence.
And he is *STILL* at it. Just recently he said about April 12 2020: "You'll have packed churches all over our country. I think it would be a beautiful time. And it's just about the timeline that I think is right." WTF??? When people hear shit like this what do you expect them to take away from it?
TDS is real and I have an open challenge to a friend to articulate where he thinks the president failed other then the democrats taking the exact opposite stance.
"TDS" is nothing more than a derisive insult. When you invoke it all you are doing is attacking the person rather than the underlying argument.
Really Trump just needs to say killing your self is a bad idea and the democrats will immediately start preaching the benefits or suicide....
Stick to the facts.
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stick to the facts
What is this? The first line is the top 6 European countries by Covid cases: Italy, Spain, Germany, France, UK, and Switzerland. The 2nd line is their populations, rounded down to the nearest million.
The population figure for those six countries combined is roughly equal to the population of the USA, and yet their current caseload is almost 3 times ours. You could counterpoint that they test more--but if you run *death* statistics, it might look even worse for them.
These countries have a variety of political attitudes currently, with UK under Bexit, but France and Germany AFAIK haven't gone particularly far right. All of them have the kind of universal health care systems for which the Democrats advocate and I wager that most of their administrations don't project any kind of "anti science" attitudes generally attributed to Trump supporters.
And yet, they're failing hard. This is not to say that I think Trump's administration is doing a particularly good job. The USA should have been more easily defended--just two major international land borders, vast ocean protection, etc. The same geography that tends to make isolation from conflict possible should have provided a natural defense against the virus. Maybe, just maybe, a more competent administration could have leveraged that; but maybe it couldn't.
And before you jump down my throat, no I didn't vote for Trump and I don't particularly like him... but these are the awkward facts.
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The epidemic in the USA started later so the American numbers today are the European numbers about ten days ago.
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing these numbers will only make sense after all the dead are counted. By all appearances, the USA is just behind the curve and is set to be hit by a pretty big wave of cases.
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? He called the virus a hoax, cooked up by the Democrats and the Chinese to harm his re-election.
He encouraged people to go out and ignore the virus. He called it "just like the flu". He is threatening to withhold help from states whose governors criticize him personally.
Now, he is saying the country will be open again by Easter. In other words, he is signalling to people not to take this seriously ALL THE TIME. Many deaths will result.
Enough for you?
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Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:4, Informative)
He called the virus a hoax
That is not true. He called the Democrat's attempt at weaponizing the outbreak their new hoax: https://thehill.com/homenews/c... [thehill.com]
The way Politico and others spun their fake news ironically proves him right.
Re: Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the beginning his covid statements were very timid, but really if he said the world was going to end everyone would have panicked.
Really? I've seen leaders come out and say that many people will die and 80% of the population will get the virus, and no one panicked except the handful of idiots already hording toilet paper.
Trump's statements weren't timid. He wasn't telling people to not be worried. His statements were criminally negligent. While the entire world was telling people to be cautious he's out there telling people to go about their daily lives as if nothing is happening because it's and I quote "getting less not more", "In a week it'll be gone".
On behalf of the sick people in America, fuck you for defending the person who contributed to their current predicament.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are deflecting criticism of Trump by calling it "frothing at the mouth with hate".
IMHO Trump is a uniquely bad president who is clearly in it for himself, and himself only. Also, he is not very smart, so he gets caught lying and stealing a lot. So yes, there is a non-stop stream of criticism, but that is not blind hatred, it is, mostly, valid criticism.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Trump has been blamed. for. every. single. thing. relentlessly from the day he was elected"
Boo. Fucking. Hoo. Trump has taken credit for every. single. thing. that has been positive, relentlessly from the day he was elected, whether it had anything to do with him or not. He's also acted a total shitheel not just over that time period, but since forever.
If he wants to take all the credit, he can take all the blame as well. That's how it works.
"And the reason that people shut it off is because it does not represent a valid criticism,"
Horse shit. Everything Trump has done since becoming president has been neutral at best, and most of it has been harmful. The constant criticism is due to his constantly harmful actions.
"So much as the testing has been horrible, note that Trump has, in fact, literally gone to the ends of the earth to battle the virus."
Which ends? The Earth literally doesn't have ends, and Trump has literally been focused on other things until recently. And much of the time he has been focused on Covid he's been downplaying its severity.
Trump is an incompetent douche canoe and deserves all the criticism and more. President pussy-grabber will go down in history as America's most petulant and incompetent president, always whining about people's valid complaints about his poor performance, and his supporters will be remembered as enablers and sycophants incapable of critical thought.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, Trump has been blamed. for. every. single. thing. relentlessly from the day he was elected.
Well when you elect someone so woefully incompetent who runs his own cheer-leading TV network that endlessly reminds us he's a lord and savior what did you think was going to happen? People would just be quiet and hope for the best 3 years later?
But because you froth at the mouth with hate, you're simply not bringing people over to your side with it.
I'm genuinely confused if you're American or an outsider. American's don't change sides. Frothing with hate, valid criticism, subtle messages, nothing sways a republican or a democrat away from their current support like belief in some deity itself. Look at Trump's historical approval ratings. It doesn't matter what he does, good or bad they haven't moved up or down by more than a couple of percent. Not when he fucked up the COVID-19 response, not when he manged to force funding to build his wall. Not when he started an economic trade war, not when he ended it.
note that Trump has, in fact, literally gone to the ends of the earth to battle the virus.
Yeah for the past two days. In other news Hitler was a swell guy because he literally killed Hitler. So let's forgive all of his past sins right? Sorry the world doesn't work like that. You don't get to enjoy praise for a desperate panic reaction when you yourself are the cause of the panic.
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Oh good grief. People blaming stupid politicians again? Look at the FDA and CDC. PEOPLE TALKING AT A PODIUM DON'T MATTER. Get it through your heads, folks! Read the damn NYT story if you don't believe me.
You think Trump went behind the scenes and had the FDA and CDC muck up everything? No! He's too busy posturing.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly the issue. He is the head of the executive branch. It's his damned job to make sure the FDA and CDC don't muck things up. The U.S. form of government doesn't have an office of posturing figurehead.
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No. The president appoints and the Senate confirms. The Senate that is currently stuffed full of GOP yes men.
Over the years, Trump made it amply clear that he knows how to say "you're fired", so he has plenty of power over those agencies.
Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also entrenched bureaucracy that does what it's been doing for decades, such as the FDA nits that made it so hard to approve Covid-19 tests.
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Re:Politicians? Led by Trump. (Score:5, Informative)
Parliamentary systems are generally different - they don't elect their president / prime minister separately. The leader of whichever party has control of parliament is typically named prime minister.
The US can (and has, at times) have congress in control of one party while the president is of another party.
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The President has limited power. Governors were in position to be first-actors when Covid-19 finally reached the United States. The only direct authority Trump had initially was to bar travel from countries with infections and to maybe goad the FDA and CDC into getting off their asses. The only thing you can really blame on him was in trusting his own people.
Just in Time business models (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is to have the bare minimum amount of capacity on hand to meet demand at any given time. This saves billions because you have fewer employees, few resources (in this case hospital beds, ventilators and testing gear) and less space devoted to them. All of that costs money, and the savings from not having them is real.
It has been repeatedly shown the savings are greater than the lost sales due to occasionally not meeting demand.
Problems arise here because "not meeting demand" for a hospital doesn't mean "has to settle for the store brand snack cake" it means death. Lots and lots of death.
I'd like to say that, after the dust settles, that we'll fix out healthcare system. But I don't see that happening. The last serious attempt to fix the system, the Affordable Care Act, was thoroughly gutted thanks to a half trillion dollar ad campaign from the healthcare industry (and that just what we knew they spent, it doesn't include dark money).
Again, the savings are real. So are the death panels.
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I don't want to disagree with you, but it's impossible to "meet demand" for a once-every-10-years event. If it was possible, there'd be no flood.
At best, we can build reserve space and fill it with elective cases. And have protocols to efficiently ramp up as needed.
Re:Just in Time business models (Score:5, Insightful)
This one is much bigger, than once-in-10-years. It is about once per generation. Which makes it hard to memorize for the next one on the level of general knowledge or preparedness. Still, scholars do have these cases in their books, and get basic techniques of handling.
Now, would building and maintaining reserve for a scale like this make sense at all? Perhaps not. Because the current state of urgent agile mobilization is what can focus all resource available on particular genome, particular response. Just in Time is proper once again.
Quite many countries, nearly all, have internal doubts of "where have we been wrong before", "why now is too late", I would however attribute that to the overwhelming nature of the core issue. It is out of momentary control, can be addressed by restless practicing of the countermeasures:
- control at the perimeter of spots
- early lockdown, when entering issue
- hardest lockdown possible, social distancing at its ultimate
- protective gear
- investigation of each case, contacts
- tracking moves of the carrier, sick
- quarantine for anybody suspect or entering perimeter
- care for those in need of
- isolation of the sick
At the moment, there are still quite some developed countries, which do not flip the switch to complete workout, yours is not the last one, don't feel like that. It is dangerous flirting for the sake of not disrupting business-as-usual, while expected costs for such take can be extremely dear, too.
Re:Just in Time business models (Score:4, Informative)
Here's an interesting research paper on the number of ICU beds available in various European countries: https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
Note that Germany is far and away the leader, which is how Germany is now able to offer ICU beds to patients from other European countries. I have to say, whenever there is a crisis in Europe Germany always steps up. Thanks Germany, I wish we could be more like you.
Anyway, if you scroll down a bit the paper goes into detail as to why Germany has so many ICU beds. Compare with France. Germany actually spends a little less of its GDP on health than France does, and has a larger proportion of the population over the age of 65.
Ultimately the paper concludes that it's not GDP or spending or the nature of the population that matters, it's the nature of the healthcare system. Germany's system delivers a lot of ICU beds.
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"Just in Time" business models pioneered by Walmart in the 90s.
No, that would be Toyota in the 1960s.
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And one of the reasons for the spread of "Just in Time" business models is price gouging laws. If a supplier stockpiles bunch of N95 masks for a pandemic and the pandemic never comes, he has to throw out expired masks and lose money. If the pandemic does come, due to price gouging laws he can't raise the price of each mask to compensate him for the risk that he took to store them. So the supplier never stockpiles, and here we are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's obvious to the rest of the world (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? You don't know why? The rest of the planet already knows the answer: it's Trump's fault. That guy is a bad businessman at best, he should never have been elected and now you reap the rewards of electing an ignorant pompous asshole to lead your country.
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Lest people forgets, emphasis mine.
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that's a pr
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Possibly. But do you really believe the president of the USA should not be held to a higher standard than the rest of us? He’s compared with his peers, not the entirety of the planet.
For the record, I was amongst those who downplayed the seriousness of this. Even so, I prepared my company (a large European bank) for a possible crisis nonetheless. If only Trump had done the same.
Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
By Jan. 20, just two weeks after Chinese scientists shared the genetic sequence of the virus, the C.D.C. had developed its own test, as usual, and deployed it to detect the country’s first coronavirus case.
But there were problems and they had to debug it.
soon after the F.D.A. cleared the C.D.C. to share its test kits with state health department labs, some discovered a problem....While the C.D.C. explored the cause — contamination or a design issue — it told those state labs to stop testing.
There was a test designed in Germany, but
the German-designed W.H.O. test had not been through the American regulatory approval process, which would take time.
They figured out a way to hack the 'broken' tests to work well enough
[~Feb 26 the CDC] provided a workaround, telling state and local health department labs that they could finally begin testing.
Stanford built their own test, based on the German design, but FDA rules didn't allow it to be used until they changed the rules:
Researchers at the world-renowned university had a working test by February...but the Stanford clinical lab would not begin testing coronavirus samples until early March, when [the FDA] finally relaxed the rules.
The article implies that Pence helped testing get done faster, but doesn't outright say it (I'll just quote it here so you can read it, because I'm not exactly sure what it's saying)
until Mr. Pence took charge, the task force lacked a single White House official with the power to compel action. Since then, testing has ramped up quickly, with nearly 100 labs at hospitals and elsewhere performing it.
In short, tests were available by the beginning of February, but didn't get put into use until March.
Wash. DC is dysfunctional (Score:3)
Their central govt's are better organized. The US is a federalist system. Perhaps individual states need to step up next time because the US central gov't is stuck in culture-war gridlock. States can form coalitions to share resources.
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Should be pointed out that individual states DID step up...and got slapped down by the career (ass/job-covering) bureaucrats at the FDA/CDC. Because in the U.S., those two agencies have been allowed to supersede the Constitutional authority of the states on health testing. There had been reports from Washington state (where a flu researcher was doing preliminary testing in January, covered by Politico and others) where the FDA/CDC came in and forcefully shut down a local testing program that had been in pro
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Thailand did an absolutely miserable job, and they had an immediate need in early January to be testing heavily.
Fix problem first then review what went wrong (Score:2)
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It wouldn't be surprising if in the next century one spreads as quickly, but also is as deadly as smallpox.
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Well, suppose that US trails China and India in the number of cases, which is probably the case just because the US population is so much smaller than the latter two.
How does being #3 change the reality of more than 100k confirmed cases, 2k deaths and being on an exponential trajectory of increase in those two numbers?
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Re:Statistics and lies (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't necessarily harmless. Efforts to analyze the errors and problems in the response so far, especially if such analyses would put forward practical recommendations that will help solve the crisis should be welcomed.
I see little value in shifting energy into a blame game.
Calling China to release real data, checking them independently and pointing out mistakes or falsifications in a way that will actually result in better information has value.
Confrontation, attempts at pointless "we're better" rankings and insults - not so much.
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It's harmless to let OP believe that Chinese people are still getting sick and it seems to make him happy.
well, it's exactly that sort of denial at several levels which has greatly aggravated the situation as described in op, and any happiness it could provide is getting ever more short-lived as the situation unfolds. i'm mildly curious to see how far it can be held. if so many people weren't having such a hard time and even dying it would be a really fun time to read /.
Meaningless number anyway. Per capita could be (Score:3)
As you said, whether the US has the most new cases or the it was ranked #100 doesn't matter for the people directly affected.
It also meaningless in terms of trying to understand which measures work best to avoid spreading it. Mostly because all that comparing "number of cases" tells you is which countries are big. The infection *rate*, or cases per capita, is worth comparing to figure out which strategies work best. The US isn't in the top 10 or fifteen countries for infection rate - what the US is doing
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The US isn't in the top 10 or fifteen countries for infection rate
How do you get this number? The US growth rate appears to be one of the highest compared to the countries that test more or less comprehensively and release believable data.
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Re:Meaningless number anyway. Per capita could be (Score:4, Interesting)
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However, please note that there is a huge difference between California and New York [worldometers.info].
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Re:Statistics and lies (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet THE most populous nation in the world has stopped the spread and has fewer cases than the US despite having a couple months head start in getting the disease
So, China, which is in many ways still a developing nation, did a MUCH better job of it than the US is doing
SHAME on the US
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And yet THE most populous nation in the world has stopped the spread
You keep believing that, and next week or month when its undeniable even to you that China is lying its ass off, you will act like you never fucking took this stand right here.
And thats the fucking problem with discussing shit like this on slashdot. Some shitbags trumpet obvious propaganda and never end up paying the social price of being a destructive member of society. Yes. Destructive. You fucks ruin discourse. You make everything worse.
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Re:Statistics and lies (Score:5, Informative)
At this point there's no reason whatsoever to think that the US numbers are nearly as accurate as the Chinese. Even in the few states that have started testing for the disease in any meaningful way, we flat-out refuse to test people even if they have obvious symptoms, unless they're at immediate risk of death, or rich. In China if you get a fever you can go to a dedicated clinic and get tested immediately, without money changing hands. Denying reality because of xenophobic ideology is not doing you any good.
Re:Statistics and lies (Score:4, Informative)
China suppressed information for months and now you want to trust their numbers?
The USA is without question dropping the ball, but trusting Chinese propaganda is ridiculous.
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It's skewed because you selected specific search terms that produce results showing what you want to show. I'm saying that if you just search for "coronavirus", a neutral search term that doesn't invite comparisons with the flu, you get a different picture.
Re:Why would we trust ANY data from outside the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump was doing his best [youtube.com] to downplay it to avoid panic. The delayed response means it's a far bigger crisis for the US than it needed to be.
Sorry, facts disagree with you. Australia is making most of the world, including the US, look bad in terms of percentage of population tested: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid19-tests-per-million-people [ourworldindata.org]
Keep telling yourselves you're number one - your complacency will let the rest of the world surpass you all the more easily.