Many of the countries outside china are reporting very high numbers of new infections in a short time, relative to population. Some may not be exactly truthful and the infection rate may be higher than reported
That tells me the world is just starting to see some high rates of increased infections which will probably continue for some time
However, two countries with relatively high populations don't seem to report increased infections as fast as one would expect, given what is happening else where, and in proportion to popultion
Those countries are Africa and the USA
Are we supposed to believe these countries will be different than other countries
I am going to guess that Africa has many more infections than reported simply because the country as a whole has no idea how serious their situation may be, and we will simply see deaths reported, if they even report deaths. The reason they have a higher infection rate than reported or they know is because sick people do not have access to medical hospitals and if they do, they are turned away because they can not afford the medical help they need. So: the end result is people simply die because of the sickness, with no medical system to care for people with little to no money. Plus transportation is rural area may be an issue. by the time they arrive for help they are already at an advanced stage of sickness. Many reasons for low reported infections and I am just guessing at the reason why
Now in the USA the same situation may apply. N.Y mayor, I don't know which one [state or city] said anybody on Medicaid would have the expense part not covered, would be paid by the city or state. [Not sure who made that statment]
So: The fact it costs money to be tested means you have to be reasonably sick to go and get tested as it costs money and you may have wasted your money on the common flue, not the virus. I think if Trump were to announce that all testing would be free, if your doctor thinks you need a test, then we would find many more infections, but as it is now, we have many people in the USA with a mild system, and recover quickly. Thus no test but these people were carriers to infect other people. We say America does not eat healthy but I think most people are healthy enough to simply have a mild infection and don't report the systems, as they recover quickly. We could see many more infections at a later date as the carriers infect many people. on the other flip side, if America is healthy enough to fight off the virus then we have escaped a big problem
Then we have smaller countries like Canada, many European countries with smaller populations that relative to populations may follow the same things as might happen in the USA. People are simply healthy enough to avoid serious disease and recover with out any medical help
We will likely need at least a month to know how serious the virus is to the population of most countries in the world, assuming those who recover do not become re-infected {china may have the greatest risk of re-infection as they try to get factories back up and producing stuff].
"People are healthy enough to avoid" you hit the nail on the head there Wayne...also if you notice of the people who have died {an amazingly small number, thanks Trump, Pence and co} several of those already had severe respiratory problems
Aggressive Quarantine in the US has slowed the spread. IMHO
gee and how did all these aggressive measures happen? seems the libs, the regular dems and all the msm have done not one thing to help but blame and hinder all efforts. And of course proclaim that all Mike Pence would do would be to pray for a cure. And just when did praying become such an ugly thing to dems?
I started the day by looking at the latest top news stories .
CNN attributes the stock market recovery to Joe Biden winning vs Bernie Sanders..........so the democrats caused it in a sense. For sure this had a positive affect overnight.
But 2 days ago, we had the biggest increase in history BEFORE Biden did well.
Messages today as viewed by my survey of the top news sources and attempt to be objective are that its really bad and getting worse and Trump is making it much worse............with almost no counter messages of any good news.
Mostly the information is based on facts..........the ones that they choose to show us. (the Post article, however is a big hit piece on Trump who is doing a great job regardless of saying his usual dumb things-yesterday, they had made up stories that he called the Cornavirus a hoax after he said the democrats BLAMING HIM was a hoax).
For sure the numbers are going to get worse and probably much worse during March. It seems clear that one side will continue to blame it on Trump and give him no credit for any actions that have helped tremendously.
I tried to view everything independent of politics but the articles often insert the politics........it's not me looking for them.
I've provided the headlines and sources below as evidence.
From the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/world/coronavirus-news.html
From the Washington Post:
 | Trump coronavirus effort undermined by mixed messages and falsehoods - The Washington Post One week after Trump returned home from India to confront an unfolding health crisis and tasked Pence with managing the government-wide response, the effort has been undermined by mixed messages ... www.washingtonpost.com |
https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-03-04-20-intl-hnk/index.html
 | Coronavirus news and live updates: Iran cases soar past 2,300 - CNN The latest numbers: The novel coronavirus has killed 3,200 people, the vast majority in mainland China. There are now over 92,000 global cases, with infections in more than 70 countries and ... www.cnn.com |
We are being told that the reason we are going to have an epidemic for sure in the US is that we did not have enough test kits a month ago.
I don't get that.
If we only had the capability of getting 10,000 test kits a week and the CDC does all the testing, if the number of cases to test was waaay less than how many kits we had or needed, what difference would it have made? We could have had 1 billion test kits but 10,000 is much greater than the number of cases that were diagnosed as needing to be tested.
Ramping up to 100,000 as we have will test for the increasing number as 10,000 kits is not going to be enough as the numbers inevitably increase.
The numbers of infected are not increasing because of lack of kits to test people but they are increasing from carriers that WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN tested, whether there was a test of not. People infected without many symptoms or that don't go to the doctor, then sneeze or cough and spread the virus. Having more test kits than you need is not going to have any affect on this most important path to spreading the virus.
But the relevant point is that the initial criteria for testing is what was flawed, not the number of tests available. When there was no Coronavirus around, the first people to have it were not tested because it was thought initially, for some people that there needed to be a history.
Probably some of them avoided detection because of local doctors.
Doctors were not thinking, "I think this person might have Coronavirus, too bad there aren't enough test kits, otherwise, we could have them tested"
If doctors suspected Coronavirus, they reported it and the person got tested.
Also, the process starts(started) at the local level. Every case started with a local doctor, whether a family doctor or emergency room doctor.........the patient had to be seen by local doctors...............tens of thousands of them at least.
When there was virtually no Coronavirus here, the retraining process of these doctors started but how many of them overlooked symptoms initially because of human error.............since they had 0 patients with Coronavirus and many hundreds with the flu this season?
I would have assumed the flu if I was a doctor, with very high confidence since chances seemed to be 1,000 to 1 against Coronavirus a month ago. How would we have forced these local doctors, who are diagnosing and testing based on their observations and information to NOT think this way when there was no Coronavirus in their area?