The World Just Hit 1 Million Coronavirus Infections (bloomberg.com) 305
The new coronavirus has now infected 1 million people across the world, a milestone reached just four months after it first surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan. More than 51,000 have died and 208,000 recovered in what has become the biggest global public health crisis of our time. Bloomberg reports: When the virus was first discovered, doctors likened it to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, the illness that sickened 8,000 people mostly in Asia in 2003. Highly contagious, and appearing with little or no symptoms in some cases, Covid-19 has rapidly eclipsed all recent outbreaks in scale and size. Fewer than 20 countries in the world remain free of infection. With some virus carriers presenting few outward signs of illness, and many countries unable or unwilling to conduct wider testing, the true number of global infections is likely higher -- some say far higher -- than 1 million.
The U.S. now has the most cases officially recorded globally with more than 234,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, which draws on a combination of data sources -- from governments to the World Health Organization and local media -- to feed its tallies. Next is Italy, with 115,000, the JHU data show. Italy has the highest death toll with almost 14,000 virus fatalities, followed by Spain. With world travel paralyzed and millions of people under some form of lockdown as a result of government efforts to contain the spread, the health crisis has also become an economic one: The global economy is expected to shrink 2% in the first half of 2020. Business activity has ground to a halt in many sectors, with predictions the U.S. jobless rate could reach 30% in the second quarter.
The U.S. now has the most cases officially recorded globally with more than 234,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, which draws on a combination of data sources -- from governments to the World Health Organization and local media -- to feed its tallies. Next is Italy, with 115,000, the JHU data show. Italy has the highest death toll with almost 14,000 virus fatalities, followed by Spain. With world travel paralyzed and millions of people under some form of lockdown as a result of government efforts to contain the spread, the health crisis has also become an economic one: The global economy is expected to shrink 2% in the first half of 2020. Business activity has ground to a halt in many sectors, with predictions the U.S. jobless rate could reach 30% in the second quarter.
HOAX (Score:5, Funny)
I liked it better as a hoax. Please, can we go back there, like when we were GREAT?
Re: (Score:2)
Please, can we go back there, like when we were GREAT?
What are you complaining about? America is number one in terms of cases, you are now leading the world! Isn't that great enough for you?
Personally I am wishing that all of us would be far, far less great, at least when measured by this metric.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That is if you believe the WHO. Independent reporters peg China at 500k with at least 50k dead in Wuhan province alone. WHO has also refused the independent tally from Taiwan and other regions the PRC claims.
Re: (Score:2)
Independent reporters
do you have any serious and credible source? or are you just referring to the speculations about urns and cell phones? because those aren't serious at all ...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why would someone mod something "insightful" when it has no source and is basically an assertion equivalent to a random rumor.
The fact is the death rate in China has fallen in line with the case rate (with the 24 day lag consistent.)
Cases
https://aatishb.com/covidtrend... [aatishb.com]
395 cases reported on 3/12.
Deaths
https://aatishb.com/covidtrend... [aatishb.com]
34 deaths reported on 3/30.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
They have 82443 cases.
Of these 76,576 are resolved
And 3,322 cases dead.
2545 cases unresolved.
All this data is consi
Re:HOAX (Score:5, Informative)
The speed of Chinese response:
dec 22 - Four patients treated for pneumonia of unknown cause
dec 27 - Three more, all 7 related to the market
dec 30 - First nurse infected. Human to human transmission still not deemed confirmed until jan 15
dec 30 - First media reports, China CDC notified
dec 31 - China notifies WHO, first reports on CCTV, Wuhan suggests wearing masks in public
jan 1 - Wuhan market closed
jan 3 - New virus identified
jan 3 - SARS expert in Honk Kong claims no proof of human to human transmission
jan 9 - Report says no medical staff infected, not as deadly as SARS, NYT reports no evidence of human to human transmission
jan 10 - First death
jan 12 - First tests available in Wuhan, genome sequence given to WHO
jan 15 - Wuhan HC says human to human is possible
jan 15-20 Wuhan rolls out infrared thermometers to airports, train and bus stations
jan 21 - Wuhan requires masks in public
jan 22 - Wuhan transportation shut down, Wuhan Quarantined, most of Huber quarantined
jan 23 - First hospital construction stars
jan 24 - Second hospital construction starts, 1700 medical staff sent to Wuhan
jan 26 - Schools in all China close
jan 30 - WHO declares "public health emergency of international concern"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo... [medium.com]
Re: (Score:3)
https://www.npr.org/sections/g... [npr.org]
Apparently, the 4 weeks that China suppressed the information are from dec-8 to dec-31. Beside the fact that this is only 23 days, this is some more context.
You have some new pneumonia, one patient, later 4 and 7. What alarms could China sound? About a new non-deadly disease, that doesn't spread from human to human. I'm sure the world would have taken that alarm with top priority.
"Blame the Chinese" game for not stopping this is just bullshit. Straight from narcissist
Re: (Score:2)
The U.S. now has the most cases officially recorded globally
And once again Trump lives up to his promise:
We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick, and tired of winning
How can anyone still doubt that he sticks to what he promises people?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The impeachment nonsense? Do you mean using the U.S. Government to get a foreign government to help him whack a Democrat presidential nominee? That misuse of the U.S. Government?
Ask yourself whether Washington or Lincoln would have ever stooped that low.
Re: (Score:2)
Ask yourself whether Washington or Lincoln would have ever stooped that low.
That would very much depend on who you asked at the time, wouldn't it?
While in my mind Washington was a great man. But to the British he would have been committing espionage, sedition and treason along with a litany of other high crimes.
Lincoln's decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus remains one of the most questionable decision of his presidency. If the civil war had turned out differently, he likely would have been put to death.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeh. The response is pretty simple. All he had to do was activate the plan for the situation that has been in place and continually maintained for decades - unless, of course, he's gotten rid of everybody that knew about it.
The Executive Branch is not a person. It is a massive team with tremendous resources. Saying "go" doesn't take much except not letting fear of what it means to your legacy paralyze you.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You've nailed it and me without mod points - thank you for laying it out so clearly. I missed the latest press rally and his comment about the exchanges, how does this man live with himself? We are so badly fucked and his sycophants haven't even realized it yet. This virus isn't going to check their party before infecting them and this man's legacy is going to be pretty terrible - for all of us. Be safe my friend...
Re: (Score:2)
Are you arguing that if North Korea was to try some shit that he wouldn't be able to respond because the Congress was being mean?
Are you saying that this President isn't capable of managing two things at once? Doesn't that kind of disqualify him for the job, as world events usually don't politely wait for previous events to resolve before happening?
Re: (Score:3)
Full attention?! The man was out holding rallies and playing GOLF! You know, that thing he claimed he wouldn't have time for if elected. He was being told declare a health emergency as far back as January but preferred to ignore the situation and cry hoax. Can this man not do two things at once? You've admitted he blew the response to this and the public officials who were dedicated to this task were all disbanded to boot. He'd gotten lucky to this point bullying any problem that came along but it turns out
Re: (Score:3)
Except the Government *DIDN'T* investigate him. Rudy Giuliani, with the aid of a couple of dubious Eastern European operators went sniffing around and stirring up trouble in Ukraine. The US Government had not one fucking thing to do with it.
Impeachment (Score:4, Insightful)
impeachment nonsense
Trump's impeachment was perhaps the most justifiable impeachment in the history of our country - clear abuse of power, it wasn't nonsense. It would have been malpractice for the Democrats NOT to impeach.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Trump's impeachment was perhaps the most justifiable impeachment in the history of our country - clear abuse of power,
There have been much worse and clearer abuses of power in US history. Frankly every president we've ever had could be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of congress to varying degrees. Here's a few examples:
Washington was almost impeached for abuse of power by the House over the Jay Treaty for his refusal to turn over documents regarding the the treaty with England. In fact this is the first instance of executive privilege. It also lead to the a 2 year naval war with France.
Prior to John Tyler th
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the 4chan incel army is out in force. That's Trump's big supporters, guys who couldn't get a woman to piss on them if they were on fire.
Re:HOAX (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there were some way to go back in time and see what democrats actually were saying about coronavirus while the impeachment was going on...
Oh, wait, there is [google.com].
Re:HOAX (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Aye! And on the flip side... if there was only some way to see what republicans were *actually* saying and how they are lying now about what they said? Like say.. video evidence side by side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And if there was only a way to show republican senators were not only insider trading but also telling their constituents that covid19 was not a threat while they told wealthy supporters a pandemic was coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sena... [duckduckgo.com]
But ... y
Re:HOAX (Score:5, Insightful)
So there were multiple people that were wrong. That doesn't make Trump less wrong. And he was in charge, so his being wrong is arguably worse. And he has continued to be wrong through this whole thing, while showing a shocking disdain for fact and science.
He decided early in this thing that watching the Dow go up was more important than saving the lives of citizens by being prepared for the inevitable. It's inexcusable, especially with apologist whataboutism horse shit.
Re:HOAX (Score:5, Insightful)
Is FEMA still a part of the Executive branch? Is the CDC? How about the NIH? Isn't he kind of in charge of those?
Why wasn't there adequate stockpiles of protective gear for health workers? There was even an extra month bought with the controversial travel ban.
Why are there still not enough test kits? Why were test kits from other countries turned away weeks ago? We could have been following the pattern of South Korea instead of the pattern of Italy.
Why was he calling it a hoax, and saying that it would go away on it's own? Why does he continue to contradict scientists and his own administrations specialists even in the same press conferences? Why is he more concerned if governors are being nice, than if they are getting supplies to keep citizens alive? Why is he telling them to bid against each other and go find shit themselves rather than aggregating orders together and using the power of the Federal government to help?
Why, after all these fuck-ups, is he rating his response a perfect 10 when asked? Why does he feel the need to berate reporters in the middle of press conferences when they ask perfectly legitimate questions that may not perfectly play with his narratives?
He is overseeing the most sudden-onset shit-show in the history of the Republic, and he's making it worse with his bungling.
How will the economy be doing if far more people die because he gets impatient? The whole "opening by Easter" debacle shows that he still has the compunction to say stupid random shit into live microphones that is completely off-message and contradictory to what every expert says. Thank goodness he saw the light at the last minute and extended the distancing guidelines.
But for how long? Can he hold back his impulses to say stupid shit, which cause stupid sheeple to do stupid shit he says?
Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignore the supposed infection numbers. No country has tested even 5% of the population yet. The real number of people who have, or have had, Covid19 is vastly higher than any number of infections you will read for several months, maybe ever.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:5, Informative)
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01... [cnn.com]
Not really (Score:3)
In most places the number of confirmed cases double about every 3-4 days. It took about 3-5 days after infection for most people to start to show symptoms.
It came as no surprise to find around 50% cases that has no symptoms *yet*, those are the newly infected*.
If they then tracked these people and a significant number of them still did not show symptoms after 14 days (ie truly asymptomatic) THEN we should be concerned.
* - that’s why contact tracing and extensive testing is important, it lets you catch
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
From what I've read the actual numbers could be anywhere from 3 to 10 times higher, depending on the country. 5x seems like a very rough estimate to me, so maybe say there are 5 million cases worldwide? But 10 million doesn't sound crazy at all.
delays mean it's 10x higher (Score:2)
given there's an average 10 day delay before the stats go up, and were soubling every 3 days, that's about 10x worse.
7 days = average delay between onset and people seeking medical attention (Wuhan survey)
3 days = diagnosis and testing and then testing results back.
Re: (Score:3)
The rate at which this thing spreads pretty much guarantees that confirmed cases are just the tip of the iceberg.
It's also been 12-14 days since the first stay-at-home and non-essential-services closures, and with the exception of Washington those states are only seeing the tiniest bend in the upward curve.
The closures ought to have a dramatic effect on transmission, and I think it's even conceivable that they *are* having such an effect, but what we're measuring is the growth of our testing capability.
Re: (Score:2)
8000 infected in China.
According to China.
Re: Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:3)
U.S. at 100k infections and counting.
According to the U.S.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"I mean, the seasonal flu has killed almost as many people in the U.S. in 2020 as this disease has killed worldwide."
As of now. Are you really on /. and yet don't understand exponential curves?
Re: (Score:2)
Deaths are exponential, too. Might be a different curve, due to different levels of medical treatment of victims. Might vary more due to lower numbers, also.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/
Death rate not exponential. (Score:2)
Look at the page you linked to, look at growth factor. Deaths are dipping in and out of exponential territory, but only just.. it cannot be exponential sometimes, and still be considered truly exponential..
Use the same site to look at daily new deaths [worldometers.info] for the U.S. The past three days, about the same. Not exponential. (really wish you could break out that chart by state)
Once you factor out hot regions like Italy or NYC, you can see the death rate is nothing like exponential for most areas.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Compare apples to Apples.
The number of actual flu cases each year is also probably significantly underreported, the only indication that one may have it at all being that they stayed home for a few days, which they just as easily may have done for any number of non-terminal illnesses.
Re: (Score:2)
You've been saying that for 3-4 weeks now. It's not being realized.
Remember far back in history when America had less cases than Spain or Italy?
Why does it now have more than both of them added together...
We've been in lockdown for 3 weeks, how would we catch it?
Your ignorance is truly amazing. Have you not noticed the new US cases every single day... [worldometers.info]
Re: Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:3)
Re: Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Wrong, real number is vastly higher (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That's super comforting to all the health care workers that are up to their necks in new cases every day, and struggling to find places to put the corpses.
Re: (Score:2)
for starters those numbers are not reliable. infections are underestimated apparently by a huge margin. deaths can also be under reported, though likely less so. also, reporting criteria and practices are not at all consistent, often not even in the same area over time.
but even if those numbers were accurate, mortality rate is never a discrete value, not for any disease, but a range. any mortality rate is at best an average of very different scenarios where lots of factors are at play: underlying health con
You ain't seen nothing yet (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
id bet there is a million cases in the usa alone right now
Re:You ain't seen nothing yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, next week it will be 2 million. Because that's how exponential math works.
I wish someone would explain this to broadcasters; I'm getting a bit fed up of hearing about "the biggest increase yet" every day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Here's the thing though... diseases don't spread exponentially forever. They can't, because the number of victims is finite.
So saying it's the biggest increase yet just means that we aren't out of the woods... or, mathematically, that the 2nd derivative of the number of cases has not dropped below zero. But it will eventually. It must.
Re: (Score:2)
Next week it will be still another number that is based only on TESTED people, that we KNOW of. We don't know how many Chinese people had it or even died. It very well could have been 2 Million infected in Wuhan alone. We just don't know.
And that is the real point that I keep reminding people of. One Million isn't even a statistic, it is just a number. Statistics have controls built in, and that number 1 Million isn't controlled for anything. It is tested and maybe "suspected" cases. The actual data is a
Re: (Score:2)
>"Don't worry, next week it will be 2 million. Because that's how exponential math works."
That entirely depends on how many people are TESTED. Which entirely depends on how much testing capacity is available. Because that is all this number is. Run out of testing capacity and, bam, artificial plateau. Gain additional testing and start testing more people per X than before and, bam, artificial spike.
We all know there are an order of magnitude or more people infected than are testing positive because s
Re: (Score:2)
That's almost exactly right. Seven days ago there were 529,000 reported cases, 14 days ago it was 244,000, 21 days ago it was 129,000. Cases have been doubling almost exactly every seven days.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Trump accelerated the propagation of the coronavirus in the US and to the rest of the world. You just need to listen what he said and don't need any analysis to see.
January20: "I know more about viruses than anyone."
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
America is #1! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd give you the funny mod if I could.
However, the basis of your joke is the accuracy of the numbers, and you're right and it isn't funny that the real numbers are probably much much higher.
Meanwhile Trump is desperately lowering the bar. Now he's claiming that "Great job" is only 100,000 Covid-19 deaths. My guess would be that an actually near-perfect pants-on-fire American response that had begun back in January might have kept it under 100,000, but that is NOT what happened under the so-called "leadershi
Data mining Covid-19 ... (Score:5, Informative)
The Our World In Data web site has a special page on Covid-19 [ourworldindata.org].
Apart from the total figures that all sites report, there are more meaningful ones in there, relative to the total numbers (e.g. population, cases, ...etc.).
For example, here are the figures for Canada and the USA, as they stand today:
- Daily new confirmed cases per million people: Canada 28, USA 82.
- Total confirmed cases per million people: Canada 226, USA 573.
- Case fatality rate (percentage of deaths vs. tested positive): Canada 1.14% (and mostly level), USA 2.37 (and rising).
- Total confirmed deaths doubling time in days: Canada 5 days, USA, 3 days.
Re: (Score:2)
Another good site is Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) [arcgis.com] and World-o-meters [worldometers.info].
I made some estimates using [slashdot.org] Australia [worldometers.info] as an example to check the progress of the virus.
Today it's the 3rd of April and cases are 5,314 which is about 1200 more cases than estimated which gives some measure of how successful the efforts are to control the virus.
The death rate hit one person per minute on Monday.
Re:Data mining Covid-19 ... (Score:4)
Yeah, report on this: LAST years stats from WHO: Seasonal flu: 113,000. deaths Malaria: 228,000. deaths Traffic fatalities, almost 314,000 deaths. HIV/AIDS, 391,000 deaths. Alcohol related deaths, 581,000. Smoking-related deaths, 1,162,000. Cancer deaths, 1,909,000 deaths. Deaths attributed to starvation, 2,382,000 deaths. Covid-19: ~53,000 deaths.... And this is a PANDEMIC....and you need to be AFRAID.... No, you need to pay attention to FACTS and stop the knee-jerk panic
Okay, I hear you. But there's another two things to think about:
1} If only one percent of humanity gets this, that's 75 million people. If only one percent of those die, that's 750,000 people. That's best case scenario.
2} That's three quarters of a million people, best-case. Those are the unavoidable deaths.
The real number of deaths is almost guaranteed to be more than that. Likely an order of magnitude or two higher. The avoidable number of deaths.
Point is... while I accept your numbers, the economic pain we're suffering is to avoid potentially huge number of optional deaths. Like... say... 75 million. That's a number that's currently realistic. And it blows your numbers away.
Put the fear culture angle on hold for a bit. Let's take the pain for a while to gather more statistics. We can relax when - and if - it turns out the rate of spread and fatality rate is lower than it looks like it is.
Unlike the security theater situation in the never-ending War on Terror, if we ever significantly underestimate a pandemic, we're talking end-of-society. Let's look both ways before we cross the street, even if it makes crossing the street take longer, yes?
Re:Data mining Covid-19 ... (Score:5, Informative)
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Covid-19 is dangerous, and it is not because 1% or 4% of those infect die from it.
It is because it is:
Do you see the problem yet? It is that this disease is a medical resource hog: that means it ties up everything: hospital emergency rooms, intensive care units, beds, doctors, nurses, ventilators, masks, gloves, and so on ...
That is why when your local health system gets overwhelmed, you won't be able to see a doctor, get needed treatment (for Covid-19 or other serious conditions, e.g. cancer, heart disease, ...etc), get a hospital bed, get on a ventilator, and so on.
Suppose you were commuting for an hour each way to work. Not bad, right. Now imaging that the commute to and from work goes up to 9 hours one way: there are not enough hours in the day to commute and back! That is what is happening.
That is when you see people on beds in make shift hospitals, in hospital hallways, and then they start dying quickly, and bodies placed in mass graves (Iran), ice rinks (Spain), or cooler trucks (New York), or get the army to transport the bodies (Italy).
Another metric: how much does the flu kill in senior homes per year, vs. how much does Covid-19. See the problem?
Yeah, that is exactly like the flu, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
I am replying so I can come back next month and point to this as example of people still not understanding how serious this it. You are no different from posts a month ago saying the COVID-19 “is just like the flu”.
You have no idea how exponential function worked, do you? Left to spread, the COVID death count will blow past every one of your other *yearly* death tolls in the next two months.
In a way it doesn't matter how many test positive (Score:3)
Only 2% economic contraction? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks China! (Score:5, Insightful)
If China didn't ignore the problem, suppress the whistle-blowers, lied to the world (with the active help of the WHO), this virus could have been contained in Wuhan. Or at least we could have prepared earlier. But then only China would have suffered, and only the Chinese economy would have taken the hit. No bueno.
I hope we learn this time and follow Taiwan's example - they have the only government in the world who seem to know that the Chinese Communist government is evil. Well not exactly - Japan has been critical of the Chinese handling of the virus recently, some American politicians also. But overall the World is applauding China - good job! Not the Taiwanese though - they deal with it every day - their freedom depends on being vigilant. So they reacted in the best possible way, assumed the official information from China was bullshit (they have enough sources of real information from the ground), so they suffered the least from the pandemic. That's who we should be applauding.
If the entire rest of the world (Score:3)
I mean, if you see your neighbor using gasoline to kill weeds on his driveway and ignore it for weeks on end then don't be surprised when your houses burn down.
Everybody knew the wet markets were bad juju, but they looked the other way because they were profitable and they kept the rural communities busy with work.
Oh, and China isn't the only country [wikipedia.org] with wet markets.
Re:Thanks China! (Score:5, Insightful)
China is to blame for the initial delay in the information getting out. Once the information did get out, other countries (esp the US) are to blame for STILL not acting on it.
The US only acted once the virus was widely established here, so there is no reason to think they would have acted differently or earlier if they knew about the outbreak in China earlier.
The only excuse for the US govt is that they were simply too ignorant to understand how diseases spread.
Extra credit stupidity for starting to lock down the borders AFTER the virus was already spreading in the US.
Re: Thanks China! (Score:2)
My favorite is "US intelligence says that Chinese intelligence suppressed information about the virus"
US intelligence's job is to find out shit without adversarial intelligence agencies telling them and let our damned leaders know what's happening.
Our intelligence agencies can't say SHIT if they failed to convince our leaders of what was really happening.
Re: (Score:3)
I think that even if a million people up and went zombie in Wuhan you'd still have 2/3s of the governors in the US letting us know it's no big deal, and that even if it was, we could cure it with prayer and a bottle of Jim Bakker's Patent Tonic (yours free with a donation of $49.99).
Re: Thanks China! (Score:3)
ok, the whistle blowers literally came and went, died from the disease, and were reported on long before everyone even started to take it seriously, so bull shit.
Re: (Score:2)
<sarcasm>It's unfortunate that there was no possible way China could have foreseen wet markets leading to a global pandemic</sarcasm>
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176051/?fbclid=IwAR1pfPCiVA5Pkt91rGuz0d3A21sYmVFtcbFkFfjnGzl_yetJPF-J2nL4_nE [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
"the only government that responded was the US with a limit on movement from China until those allegations could be verified."
And what a swift and decisive response it was. Totally stopped spread in the US.
Just Getting Warmed Up! (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
4. US Healthcare will...with a straight face...still continue to pretend its somehow the best in the world as bodies pile up and employees are fired for speaking out of line.
Sure it will remain the best money can buy. I bet they will just treat whoever that can pay most and ignore the rest, that way they will not be overwhelmed like other countries. Free market, right?
We have already seen that in action in the past months, when the whole country didn't have enough test kits but somehow the rich and famous people who were merely "worried" can be tested positive even though they felt fine and didn't have any symptoms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:bleak predictions for the coming months. (Score:4, Informative)
How are YOUR predictions coming along binary man?
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
3+ months? Things will be back to normal on April 1st. China and SK already have a declining number of cases. Sorry kids, your dreams of Fallout won't happen. Back to ordinary life.
So? (Score:2, Funny)
The new coronavirus has now infected 1 million people across the world, a milestone reached just four months after it first surfaced
Wow, so .01% of the world has a virus (in four months, no less!), of which around 95-99% will live. Did you put your pinky finger up to the corner of your mouth as you wrote this?
Re: So? (Score:4, Informative)
Your perspetive number: 60 Million (Score:2)
Every year, about 60 million Americans get the flu. Just 'cause it's flu season.
Every year, 50-80,000 people die of the flu. Just 'cause it's the flu.
Please try to have some perspective. The Spanish flu killed 500,000, the equivalent of 2.5 Million today. Even with zero social distancing, we're at half that number, assuming any of these models turn out to be remotely correct.
NEW?? (Score:2)
If it's infected a million people, should it really be considered new?
Hmm (Score:2)
With some virus carriers presenting few outward signs of illness, and many countries unable or unwilling to conduct wider testing, the true number of global infections is likely higher -- some say far higher -- than 1 million.
If the true number of infections is higher, then the death rate is lower.
(Forgive me for speaking heresy ... if I refuse to buy toilet paper or something, can I earn back my virtue?)
we're all gonna die (Score:2)
the kids down the block are still in the street.
Title missing the word "Known" (Score:3)
1 Million Known infections.
Surely there are many Unknown ones, and those are the most dangerous.
Blithely infecting people as they go around in total ignorance of their condition, spreading the virus to friends and strangers alike.
Yep. One Missing word. Big difference.
Re: (Score:2)
You'll notice that the countries that don't report (not have, report) infections (yes) are usually the same that consider a few thousands dead from some infection a slow week...
Re: (Score:2)
Why any public transit planes are still in the air is a very good question. They should have joined the 737max a month ago.
20/20 hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when someone tried to take pre-emptive steps to contain this before it could grow out of control, they were excoriated by the public and the press. e.g. Trump blocked off all air travel from the EU to the U.S., and numerous news agencies here and in the EU roundly criticized it as unnecessary ad unhelpful. Within a week, all the EU countries had done the same and closed their own borders as well, followed shortly by Canada closing off its border with the U.S.
You can't take what you know now, and use that to judge decisions made 2, 3, or 4 months ago. That's called hindsight [wikipedia.org]. You have to judge decisions made back then, based on what people knew back then. And back then this was just another annual outbreak of yet another flu-like virus, as happens numerous times every year all over the world. It took about a month for enough data to be amassed to confirm that this was significantly deadlier than your typical flu strain. And even then, most people were expecting this would be like SARS, where it died off because people weren't contagious until they were symptomatic. That it would be safely contained to just a part of China (and people who had recently traveled to that area). Exponential growth scales are scary things - the only time to head them off is before they become big enough to seem to be a problem (there were numerous posts here cracking jokes about if this thing would become a pandemic like SARS). And by the time it becomes big enough to be perceived as a problem, it's too late to do anything about them.
Anyway, to quote Apollo 13, don't do this. Getting into a heated debate about should haves, could haves won't accomplish anything. We'll just bounce around for 10 minutes, and be right back where we started - with this virus spreading and killing more people daily. Leave that for the historians to debate. Right now, concentrate on how best to improve your chances of survival, and how you can help your community to improve other people's chances of survival. (FWIW, I actually thought that town with the nursing home in Washington, and all of NYC should've been sealed off and quarantined the moment those cases were detected. I did stock up on supplies at the onset. So I actually have grounds for criticizing. But I'm not going to because it's water under the bridge. What happen happened (or rather didn't), and criticizing it won't change things. We are committed to the course we are on now. Spend your time and energy doing things which improve the future, not on throwing slings and arrows at the immutable past.)
Re:20/20 hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
> You can't take what you know now, and use that to judge decisions made 2, 3, or 4 months ago.Â
yes we can.
it's how we evaluate the decision-making process.
otherwise we would never learn.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
he was NOT criticized for doing the EU block (Score:3)
Oh the second critic UK (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
all these numbers reflect is the number of people who presented symptoms severe enough to warrant emergency treatment
And all those actors who say they "feel fine" but somehow felt the need to go get tested - despite "feeling fine".
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they're not quite meaningless; in advanced countries, in a particular not-too-early, not-too-late phase of the epidemic, they tell you about the number of cases that get medical attention. That's probably at least proportional to total infections.
But you're right -- this thing is big enough that random sampling is certainly worth doing. In the US the reported cases are running about 1/10 of 1%; I think it's probably safe to assume we're looking at at least 5-10x as many actual cases.
This presents an u