America Now Has Most COVID-19 Deaths in the World -- 20% of All Fatalities (usnews.com) 631
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
U.S. deaths due to the coronavirus surpassed 20,000 on Saturday, the highest reported number in the world, according to a Reuters tally, although there are signs the pandemic might be nearing a peak. Italy has the second most reported deaths at 19,468 and Spain is in third place with 16,353.
The United States has five times the population of Italy and nearly seven times the population of Spain.
The United States has seen its highest death tolls to date in the epidemic with roughly 2,000 deaths a day reported for the last four days in a row.
While America has 4.3% of the world's population, it appears to have nearly 20% of the world's 100,000 confirmed fatalities from COVID-19. [Update: This comparison might be skewed by countries underreporting their fatalities.] Long-time blogger Jason Kottke notes the virus is now causing more deaths per day in the U.S. than any other cause, including heart disease and cancer.
But earlier this week Kottke also shared graphs from six different countries visualizing positive new statistics from the Imperial College team suggesting social distancing has worked in 11 European countries they analyzed.
"We estimate that interventions across all 11 countries will have averted 59,000 deaths up to 31 March," the researchers write, adding "Many more deaths will be averted through ensuring that interventions remain in place until transmission drops to low levels."
The United States has five times the population of Italy and nearly seven times the population of Spain.
The United States has seen its highest death tolls to date in the epidemic with roughly 2,000 deaths a day reported for the last four days in a row.
While America has 4.3% of the world's population, it appears to have nearly 20% of the world's 100,000 confirmed fatalities from COVID-19. [Update: This comparison might be skewed by countries underreporting their fatalities.] Long-time blogger Jason Kottke notes the virus is now causing more deaths per day in the U.S. than any other cause, including heart disease and cancer.
But earlier this week Kottke also shared graphs from six different countries visualizing positive new statistics from the Imperial College team suggesting social distancing has worked in 11 European countries they analyzed.
"We estimate that interventions across all 11 countries will have averted 59,000 deaths up to 31 March," the researchers write, adding "Many more deaths will be averted through ensuring that interventions remain in place until transmission drops to low levels."
Ask China (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe we should ask China how they just made Covid disappear like that. /s
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Ask China (Score:5, Insightful)
It was crucial, back when they were the only country with a substantial problem. Now we have plenty of countries producing reliable data, so we can just ignore China if we don't trust the data coming out of there, and it won't really affect our body of knowledge.
Re: Ask China (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll believe you if you post that Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh. Just say it as a joke. Look how easy it is for us Americans: Donald Trump looks like an orange clown. Your turn.
https://twitchy.com/brads-3130... [twitchy.com]
Re: Ask China (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer asking them what happened on the 4th of June in 1989 in Tienanmen Square. One idiot on Github actually started screaming that "Nobody died".
Re: Ask China (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but unlike a citizen of China, you know all about the US' history of slavery, genocide and civil rights abuse and can even have an opinion on them and voice it!
As a citizen of China you would not know what happened in Tienanmen Square nor can you even discuss what happened in Tienanmen Square without potentially being imprisoned. Nor can you call Xi Winnie the Pooh NOR can you, at the moment, buy the new Animal Crossing game in China because people are using it to discuss freeing Hong Kong.
That's the point.
And THAT is what free speech is all about Charlie Brown.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you know all about the US' history of slavery, genocide and civil rights abuse and can even have an opinion on them and voice it!
While the US is far better than China for free speech, most people still believe a lot of lies used to defend the winners in wars, and justify their aggression. They believe than somehow the war of independence or civil war was a benefit to ordinary Americans. And it continues today where the average American thinks Saddam Hussein had WMDs in 2003, and was involved in 9/11. US and China are not as different as we'd like to think.
Re: Ask China (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't see why you need to bring Ruby on Rails into this!
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(densely, frantically, and poorly at times)
Apparently that's just your writing style. You should re-read your post. It's so convoluted that there's no point for a reader to try and decipher an overarching point.
Re: Ask China (Score:5, Funny)
Stopping the flow of people sick with wuflu into other nations worked.
Yes, America doesn't have any cases. New York isn't digging mass graves and Trump has done an excellent job!
Re: Ask China (Score:3)
But you're still a carrier. (Score:3)
Call me, when surprisigly, your grandparents died. --.--
Also, nature has no hard guarantees. The risk for someone young and healty are much smaller, but not zero. We still got 19 year old girls with no health problems to be found dying from it, here. :)
Which may be due to not found health problems (One guy found out he had a undiagnosed tuberculosis that way),
but so might you!
(Meaning: You *sure* you're healthy? Have you checked? Properly?
OK, I don't want to make you crazy. Some risks are too small to bothe
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The problem is that it does affect how we should treat China travelers. As long as China can't produce reliable statistics that match local independent reporter's evidence, then everyone should just shut down all travel from China.
You know you could just test all travelers coming from China.
Then you would find out if their numbers were accurate or not. Sensible countries by now would be testing all arrivals anyway.
Re: Ask China (Score:4, Informative)
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Why do you defend the ChiComs?
We know their history. This is the same nation that murdered 60 million people, that murders thousands in a public square for protesting.
China is arguably more culpable for the murder of innocents than is Hitler.
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Nah, I watched bing.com/covid and suddenly all their stats just... stop.
Weird. Also, there's the part where HK reports cases and China doesn't, which was a bit embarrassing for Beijing's propaganda. Were they saying it's not China? :)
Re: (Score:3)
>Assuming I'm an American
Then again being British isn't much better. A lot of world history can be summed up as "Knock knock! It's England!"
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That's all probably true, so I trust countries that have done the most testing per capita. I have found this pretty useful [worldometers.info] - just sort the column on the extreme right in descending order.
A hint: countries like Germany, Italy and Australia rate pretty highly on the list
Re:Ask China (Score:4, Interesting)
You aren't clear who's death rate is high, but in Italy their population is much older than anywhere else and that drives up the death rate. In Europe generally this is a problem. The age profile of the whole European population is much more towards the older.
Specific countries have other specific weirdnesses. E.g. the UK has only been counting deaths in hospitals and we don't yet know how many deaths there are in care homes where people have been told not to bother coming to hospital since nobody will be able to help them.
Re:Ask China (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK is now the worst country in Europe. Highest single day death rate, and our curve is looking like it will be the worst of all. We completely botched our response, with the mistakes starting a decade ago. Ran down our health service and all the supporting public services, didn't stockpile PPE, didn't join the EU procurement scheme when invited because of brexit extremism, declared lockdown far too late and put a bunch of known incompetents in charge of all of it.
The worst part is that when we get past the worst of it we will still have those same people in charge, and be looking at repeating the same mistakes we made last time because our failures are costing us dearly now. We already lost one decade, it's looking like it could be two now.
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I can't speak for China, but I have a hunch I know what North Korea would do. Shoot everyone who coughs. Stops transmission, and it's death by gunshot, not death by Covid.
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They completed locked down the infected areas, then tested and tracked. S. Korea tested and tracked early. Both succeeded in mostly controlling the epidemic. Nothing mysterious or surprising. Exactly what you would expect. I don't know why this confuses people, we know how infectious disease works - or at least some of us do
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The problem is that most people are unable to do fact-checking and get confused by "alternate facts".
Re:Ask China (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't check them you have no reason to believe they are "facts."
Re:Ask China (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ask China (Score:5, Informative)
I think they are probably lying but I don't think they could hide the millions of deaths that they would have had if they had not contained it. There is enough contact with people who have friends and family in those areas that they couldn't hide a large ongoing outbreak.
Its not really important if they are off a factor of 2 in deaths or cases..
S. Korea is probably not lying much and they also have it under control.
It doesn't seem surprising. If you seriously lock down a country you expect the virus to die out. I really don't know why this surprises people. Its exactly what a basic analysis of the situation would suggest . How is it we are being outsmarted by something the just exponentiates.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
China has contained it. And they are careful in re-opening things. Sure, the zero rate of new infections is not credible, but if the rate was anything but low and below the rate of people cured, we would know. This is not the completely locked-down country it used to be anymore.
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By all accounts the measures taken were draconian. Sixty million people were confined to their home under strict orders. Checkpoints were set up and people moving around their neighborhood were stopped and interrogated. The government deployed its surveillance and tracking capabilities to identify people moving around too much who got a visit from the police and publicly shamed. Door to door screeners reported people with temperatures to be carted off to quarantine centers. All travel in and out of the m
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And you live on an island with a population of less than 5mil? That might could help some, lol.
Not that I would live in NYC before or after this, but 5mil people is called a neighborhood there...
Re: Ask China (Score:3)
Viruses don't care what your population is. Once they are into a country, city, or area they spread, exponentially if uncontained, until they are either contained or have infected enough of the population for herd immunity to start having an effect. At the end when everything has settled, you can check the final numbers vs population to see how well each country handled it, but when you are in the middle of an outbreak, you need to compare other stats that are not population based, such as the rate of doubl
Re: Ask China (Score:5, Informative)
Population density certainly has something to do with virus spread, to argue otherwise seems simply obtuse.
Ask India about it in a week.
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86% of NZ lives in urban areas, vs 80% of USA. And while social distancing in high density areas seems logically to be more difficult than low density, South Korea and China (at least officially, but probably reality is not orders of magnitude worse than official figures show or we would find out) demonstrate that it is entirely possible.
Re: (Score:3)
Mostly Correct. You pretty much need 95% immune, not 90%. And that becomes an important number when about 1-3% CAN NOT take most vaccines. And a minimum 2-3% will NOT be immune from any 1 vaccine (IOW, you could be immune to all but 1 of the items that you were vaccinated for). As such, here in the states, when ppl are taking religious exceptions , then it destroys herd immunity esp in the schools. That is why all states need to require that any kid NOT taking vaccinations for non-medical reasons, to be either home schooled, or to have 1 school in the district that allows just those ppl in.
You don't seem to really understand how this works WindBourne.
The amount needed for herd immunity depends on the R0 of the virus.
You can't just pick a number and say x% is required.
It's also not like an on off switch, Herd immunity yes/no. Herd immunity slows the spread, it reduces R0 and slows the spread enough to stop it spreading further through a population. Reducing R0 below 1.
You should really know this with your 'expert background'
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The Smithsonian called bullshit.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
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Of course they are up to something, sheep bothering is a national pastime. As the old joke goes, :)
Why do kiwi racehorses run so fast?
Because they’ve seen what happens to the sheep!
Crap Data (Score:5, Informative)
- A COVID-19 Death is not reported the same way in all countries.
- Testing in the US is becoming more widespread than, say, India.
- We're transparent with our data unlike, for example, China and North Korea.
If someone isn't tested, but their death is due to COVID-19, that person never shows up. If someone simply disappears and isn't report, then that person never shows up. Highest in absolute numbers is a pretty meaningless stat compared to per-capita.
Editors, we are smarter than this. Please don't lower yourselves to these kinds of clickbait articles. It's pathetic and I expect better. Yes, even after all of these years, after all of the craptacular stories, I still do expect some standards.
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We most likely will never know the true numbers, given how many people never checked due being a "nothing" to em.
But those many people still transmit the thing
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Oh it will be discoverable. Right now a COVID-19 death can be swept under the rug as pneumonia or flu, but when all the stats are in hand months or years from now, it will be obvious where the bodies were dumped, and a proper accounting should be possible.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oddly enough, Russia's numbers are quite low because they don't count pneumonia, heart attacks etc...
Either that, or the amount of vodka they drink is enough to kill the virus.
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"Per the CDC, hand sanitizer needs to contain at least 60% alcohol. Tito's Handmade Vodka is 40% alcohol, and therefore does not meet the current recommendation of the CDC." -Tito's
No, Tito's Vodka will not protect you from coronavirus [thehill.com]
Of course not long after that they actually started making hand sanitizer [titosvodka.com]
Re:Crap Data (Score:4, Interesting)
Most Coronavirus articles are of VERY POOR QUALITY (Score:3, Informative)
Average number of deaths per day in the United States: " In 2017, an average of 7,708 deaths occurred each day. [cdc.gov]" (July 5, 2019)
Total number of deaths in the U.S. in 2017: 2,813,503 [cdc.gov].
Coronavirus deaths up to April 11, 2020: 20,562 [worldometers.info]. (Not known when they started counting.) If they started counting January 1, 2020, that is 101 days, and 204 deaths per day.
So, the Coronavirus Covid-19 has caused 2.6% of the deaths.
Most Coronavirus articles are of VERY POOR QUALITY.
News lacks overall information, underlying details (Score:2)
If someone has cancer and gets a Covid-19 infection and dies, that death is counted as caused by Covid-19, apparently almost always.
Re:News lacks overall information, underlying deta (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what? If you have stage 4 cancer and get shot in the face during a robbery, you didn't die of cancer - you were killed by a bullet ripping through your brain.
Think before posting.
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3)
I don't think it's that the articles are poor quality. They're emphasizing the amount of deaths because give what we're doing to stop them there's still a _lot_ of deaths.
Re:Most Coronavirus articles are of VERY POOR QUAL (Score:5, Informative)
Average number of deaths per day in the United States: " In 2017, an average of 7,708 deaths occurred each day. [cdc.gov]" (July 5, 2019) Total number of deaths in the U.S. in 2017: 2,813,503 [cdc.gov]. Coronavirus deaths up to April 11, 2020: 20,562 [worldometers.info]. (Not known when they started counting.) If they started counting January 1, 2020, that is 101 days, and 204 deaths per day. So, the Coronavirus Covid-19 has caused 2.6% of the deaths.
It doesn't matter when they started counting if you can see the first US death is Feb 29 from your very own link.
So January 0 deaths
February 1 death
March 4,063
First 11 days of April 16,514
That's accelerating quickly isn't it...
You couldn't possibly be naive enough to assume averaging from Jan 1 to April 11 would give you anything meaningful.
You must be just trying to downplay it.
Average deaths for April so far is 1500. check that against your 7700.
1500 / (1500+7700) comes to about 16% (just assuming the usual number of people died).
So coronavirus caused 0% in Jan
0% in Feb
1.7% in March
16% so far in April
And about 20% of the deaths every day for the last few days have been due to coronavirus...
Maybe it's a big deal after all hey.
Most Coronavirus articles are of VERY POOR QUALITY.
Most Coronavirus comments are of VERY POOR QUALITY too.
Re: (Score:3)
Guidelines for calling COVID-19 deaths are set by the CDC.
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While the data from everywhere is crap, that everywhere definitely included the US. Probably most COVID deaths are attributed to something else, as most people don't get tested, no matter how sick they are or with what symptoms.
NYC has just started guessing (not testing) deaths as being due to COVID. They're probably more or less correct, as the huge number of deaths is difficult to explain any other way, but they're guessing, not testing. And the numbers from last month didn't include those excess death
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crap Data, Crap Excuses (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not science. What is wrong with you?
I don't know about other folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the whole country is bad at math and bad at science, but here on Slashdot we don't have to be bad at those.
Re:Per Capita yeah right. (Score:5, Informative)
It felt like America did more tests so that's good enough for Trump and his bootlickers.
President Trump pushed social distancing
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 problem that’s going to go away They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Yea, sure he did...
Re:Per Capita yeah right. (Score:5, Interesting)
And in mid-March, he said he wanted churches open by Easter. There are already churches remaining open, and creating infection clusters. And he's egged them on with his irresponsible statements all along. Now he's telling people to try a drug he's invested in if they feel like it, and what have they got to lose? You know, besides their lives...
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even though India and China emit maybe 1/10th the pollution per capita you expect them to limit carbon emission further and remain poor.. why don't you fat Americans switch off your AC and stop buying large 4x4.. while the poor Indian tries to light his house for his kids to study?
Re: (Score:2)
But yeah, let's focus on statistics.
Um, you are literally trying to use numbers to score a political point. Your inability to do the math actually is directly relevant to the point you are trying to score.
Re:Crap Data, Crap Excuses (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, there were plenty of fuckwits around from both parties, but at the end of the day, there's one guy at the top of the federal response, and the federal response has been completely fucked.
Credit where it's due: the China lockdown bought us time we needed to prepare, otherwise we would be on the same schedule as Italy. Unfortunately, that time which could have been used to get much needed supplies for the inevitable breakout was squandered on making excuses, calling it a "hoax", blaming the "fake news", bleating on about how spring was going to wipe it away, how it's contained and that the number of cases was going to be zero "real soon now."
Once it became obvious to world + dog that containment was breached and that no amount of effort was getting that horseshit back into the horse, there had to be a mad scramble for needed supplies. This was also a complete failure, as the states were by-and-large hung out to dry by the feds and ended up having to compete with each other to get what they needed. Some Governors stepped up and put in place the needed measures to enforce distancing, among them being the Governors of California, Illinois, New York, Ohio. Others decide to fuck the dog and let the virus run rampant through the poplulation due to a lack of necessary testing, which STILL hasn't been solved weeks after we were told "the tests are beautiful". We're told of dubious unproven off-label usage of medicines and hopes that there would be an Easter miracle while literally hundreds of people die each day. Anyone asking legitimate questions that aren't straight out of a Goebbels-esque government propaganda narrative get berated and belittled on national TV by the President of the United States.
Yes, other people have done despicable shit during this - I personally think that Schumer and Pelosi have acted completely irresponsible in the attempts to hang partisan riders on much needed stimulus and rescue funding. At a time where partisan bullshit should be taking a back seat to just getting shit done and getting through this, they're dickering around with pandering to their pet issues and highly-partisan constituencies.
At the end of the day, no single party can claim to have a lock on doing what was right. However, that should not prevent us from holding our "leaders" accountable for their absolute fuck ups, of which this President has presided over many, and continues to do so. The whataboutism angle won't fly on this - people are in fucking body bags because of the fuck-ups both past and present. It's unjustifiable, and no "look over there! nothing to see here" shit is going to work.
Pull your head out of your ass and hold people accountable for their actions.
Re:Crap Data (Score:5, Interesting)
The US has a population over 330,000,000. We do the most testing.
The US is improving its testing, but it's nowhere near the top in per-capita testing [worldometers.info].
We have the most accurate tests. We label ANYONE who dies with COVID-19 as dying DUE TO COVID-19 (and ignoring their heart conditions and other pre-existing morbidities).
The media WANTS this to be worse than it is, and they WANT it to be worst in the US.
New York typically has around 5000 deaths a month, in the 31 days up till April 4th it had 10000, about 5,300 more than usual [nytimes.com].
But New York only counted 3,350 of those as being due to COVID-19, leaving 2000 other excess deaths unaccounted for, and the variance from other causes isn't that much.
So for that period at least NY's was attributing about 35% of additional COVID-19 deaths to some other cause.
Of course, we don't know how that compares to other countries, but it seems to be a function of severe outbreaks like the US is experiencing. There are literally too many bodies for them to properly test and assign the cause of death.
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The US is improving its testing, but it's nowhere near the top in per-capita testing.
More importantly even, the number of new cases is close to the number of tests. That's a good sign only those most likely to be infected are even tested, which means the unknown factor is considerable.
So raw numbers matter now? (Score:2, Insightful)
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FACT CHECK: The US is still early in the graph and a 2nd wave (in addition!) is a real possibility.
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I believe you're correct, but the testing is insufficient to establish that as truth.
Can there be a second wave if you never get past the first wave?
Re:So raw numbers matter now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, let's fact check. The USA are about 2 weeks behind Italy in the disease. 2 weeks ago, Italy had about 2000 deaths (or about 30 per million). The USA has now about 60 per million. Plus a skyrocketing infection rate.
Do we have to wait another 2 weeks before we call a spade a spade or can we start doing what we can to save a few lives now?
Good Data Improves analysis (Score:2)
I have a great idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Could we concentrate on fighting the disease and when we're done and have it under control, we get to the finger pointing and blame game?
Fuck, people, priorities!
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Re:I have a great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I have a great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
When there is a problem Japanese are looking at how to fix it and Americans are looking at who to blame.
Perhaps Japan, as a heavily hierarchical society, is set up in such a way that it isn't necessary to find who to blame, it's already decided: the person at the top of the hierarchy gets the blame.
Since that is decided so simply, it is easy to get past it and start solving the problem.
Re:I have a great idea (Score:4, Informative)
Since the main person pointed at is still doing damage and is still trying to do the wrong things while in a leadership position, I would argue that pointing the finger in his specific direction is an essential part of the fight.
You're right! It's time to get rid of Bill de Blasio, who's led his city into deaths left and right, easily leading the US in that count! If only he listened to others in Government - including the President - he'd have stopped telling people to go out and live their lives as normal, or to keep riding the subways, well into mid-March.
Re: (Score:3)
You spelled Trump wrong.
Re:I have a great idea (Score:4, Informative)
Trump was still underplaying the hazard into March, and claiming that the Democrats' claims that we were unprepared and that he was mismanaging our response were a hoax. Listening to Trump would not have helped.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Newsom is blowing the president in hope of not having medical supplies seized by the feds.
Here's an example of Trump downplaying Covid in mid-March: https://www.vox.com/policy-and... [vox.com]
You're not smart or well-informed enough to be calling people liar.
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It is either downplaying the situation, or fantastical thinking.
And calling it the "Wuhan virus" says a lot about you, to be honest. No respected news organization, in the US or international, calls it that.
For Two Years? (Score:3, Interesting)
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I can't wait until they release the had-covid-already ID cards. I'll be starting my had-covid-already speakeasy as soon as I get it.
Absolute numbers are meaningless (Score:2)
The U.S. has over 5 times the population of Italy, and 6 times that of Spain — comparing absolute numbers is bogus.
You know who I'm talking about (Score:2)
As I often say... (Score:2, Funny)
Good thing a conservative is in charge, or this would be a major problem!
Re:As I often say... (Score:4, Insightful)
The entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of all aliens who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China, excluding the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States is hereby suspended and limited subject to section 2 of this proclamation.
How is that racist? If you were a Belgian of Congolese descent who had been in China on January 31st, and wanted to come to the US on Feb 2nd - you weren't allowed in. Nothing racist at all - except to small-minded, hateful people.
Re:As I often say... (Score:5, Informative)
um, math? (Score:2)
The United States has five times the population of Italy and nearly seven times the population of Spain.
In other words, if you can do math, our death rate is far below theirs.
Long-time blogger Jason Kottke notes the virus is now causing more deaths per day in the U.S. than any other cause, including heart disease and cancer.
Are we sure? If someone dies of heart disease but tests positive for COVID-19, are they now magically a "COVID-19 death with an underlying condition"? I've seen articles lately about "where have all the heart attacks gone", that kind of thing.
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Not in NYC - there the death rate is by far the highest in the world. Also the USA is a week behind Italy.
Thanks (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks, DONALD.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you're going to compare percentages (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to compare percentages, then compare percentages - look at the deaths per 1 million [worldometers.info] (basically percentage of population times 10,000). The U.S. is doing much better than Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Ireland. And the hardest hit country is tiny San Marino whose 35 fatalities represents more than 1 in 1000 of its 33,500 residents. If the U.S. had a fatality rate that high, it would have 339,000 dead instead of just 21,000.
That said, New York state is doing worse than Italy and Spain (440 deaths per 1 million, vs 322 and 355 respectively). A stat that makes me question what those in the media praising Cuomo have been smoking. The state totally screwed up its virus response. This also means that if you subtract New York, the rest of the U.S. is doing about as well as Germany (34 deaths per million). California, which instituted quarantines and stay at home orders quickly, is actually doing much better than Germany (16 deaths per million).
Most of the developing world hasn't yet been fully hit by this virus. The U.S. and Europe got hit first because of their large number of travelers. Unless some drug which can treat it is found in the next few months, the total number of fatalities in those countries will grow by a *lot* as the year progresses. The OECD countries which have made it through the virus are going to have to spend even more money providing humanitarian medical assistance to developing nations to prevent the total death toll from rising into the millions.
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5% of population and 20% of deaths, no matter how you spin it, that is a disgraceful figure.
Re:If you're going to compare percentages (Score:5, Interesting)
You're also about 2 weeks behind in the infection cycle compared to Italy and Spain. 2 weeks ago, Italy had about 30 deaths per million.
Want to continue this talk in 2 weeks? Provided you're still alive, of course.
Re:If you're going to compare percentages (Score:4, Interesting)
Per capita comparisons are only meaningful when the countries are at a comparable point in the infection curve (basically, you're going to have to wait until it is all over for all countries to reach that point). While the virus is still actively spreading, perhaps more meaningful than deaths per million population would be deaths per thousand cases. This still depends on how quickly new cases are coming into the pipeline, as there is a delay between a new case contracting the disease and death, and on the detection rate (US has done 8000 tests per million population, compared with 7500 for Spain so they should be reasonably comparable, but Italy has done 16000 tests per million population, so could be expected to have found more minor cases which would have gone undetected in Spain and US).
There are too many variables really to compare figures now. Like you said, the initial start of the disease in each country is basically random, weighted by population (bigger countries have more people coming and going), wealth (richer countries have more people coming and going, hence many developing countries are yet to be hit hard), and proximity to the starting point for the disease (Asian countries were hit early). Rate of spread once the disease is established is exponential if left alone, the exact rate influenced by population density and cultural practices. And death rates are going to be affected by age distribution as well as efficiency of the health service in each country, and how well the disease is kept out of rest homes and other high risk places, which is partly down to management and partly just luck.
Lies, damn lies and statistics (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the kind of irresponsible reporting that confuses people. 20% of all the deaths - really? USA % of deaths worldwide is: 14,793 / 108,827 x 100% = 13.6%. What does the % of deaths worldwide tell us about conditions in the country - absolutely nothing. And what percentage of the cases worldwide is that? USA % of cases worldwide: 431,387 / 1,780,314 x 100%=24.2% What does this tell us?
The facts would support the assessment that we're doing a better job of containing the disease. Otherwise, we would have 24.2% of the fatalities as well. The facts don't care about your feelings or my feelings, nor do they care about the story the media wants to tell. It took me all of 15 minutes to get these numbers. They could have done the same.
Let's be real instead of succumbing to media hype and no fact checking. Just because the media throws numbers at us and tells us a story they want us to believe does not make that story true. No matter how many times they repeat it. At best, the media knows this. At worse, the media chooses to not investigate or doesn't have a clue that their numbers are wrong and that you can't randomly put things together to create a denominator.
Here the countries with higher mortality rates in ORDER: Algeria, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Indonesia, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Romania, Philippines, Greece, Denmark, China, Ireland, Switzerland, Slovenia, Argentina. We are number 27 ranked by fatalities. We have 430K+ cases and 14.8K deaths for a mortality rate of 3.43%. Italy and Spain are at 12.67% and 9.98% respectively.
When you have access to numbers, it's easy to collect any bunch of values as your denominator and then generate percentages to fit your story. There are only 2 constants in life: death and taxes - statistics is not one of them. And as the adage goes: there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
Statistics can be convoluted to tell any story you want. It's only when rigorous processes are applied as taught in statistics 101, that you get an accurate picture of the truth. The rest of the time statistics is just used as a paint-by-number to tell the story you want.
So the next time someone throws statistics at you, ask yourself, "What story are they trying to tell and what numbers did the exclude to do so?"
Move along. Nothing to see here. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates-worldwide/ [statista.com]
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ [worldometers.info]
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We're simply the only country Exceptional enough to take this head on and lead the fight for antibodies!
Joking aside, my State is isolating well without a mandatory order, our hospitals are not at capacity, and we donated hundreds of ventilators from our emergency stockpile to New York. We've flattened the curve and do not expect a shortage of emergency health care services.
We are not out of flour, but toilet paper is 50 cents per roll, 4 roll limit per customer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It probably doesn't work. The BCG vaccine used to be mandatory in France until very recently yet the coronavirus still manages to kill a lot of people. Most of the old people in Spain have been vaccinated as well.
Re: (Score:3)
Tuberculosis (caused by(bacteria(Mycobacterium tuberculosis [wikipedia.org])))
vs
COVID19 (caused by(virus(SARS-CoV-2 [wikipedia.org]))),
so I'm gonna go with:
a) You have no clue what the fuck you're talking about.
Re: (Score:3)
"firstly they are a population of over 1 billion. 20 million accounts are easily accounted for just by travellers and businesses alone"
Easily? It must be easy to provide some citations, then.
That was last weeks conspiracy theory. [slashdot.org] so yes...
21 million might sound like a lot of subscribers but China has 1.6 billion of them. [indiatimes.com]
While the drop in users is unusual, the total is small relative to total wireless subscriptions which have risen to a combined 1.6 billion for the three carriers.
Part of the drop could be caused by migrant workers -- who often have one subscription for where they work and another for their home region -- canceling their work-region account after the virus prevented them from returning to work after the Lunar New Year holidays that began in late January, said Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.