Takes more time to get sick enough to get diagnosed, then get traced, then reported. Right?
Not sure about the tracing side, but the suggested isolation period if you think you were exposed is 2 weeks. That’s about 1 week to develop symptoms and another week to notice if you’re going to get really sick and need a hospital where you would get a timely test. There’s some variation for incubation periods, but typical I think is 5 days.
If you’re waiting to see if you are positive from when some contact tracer calls you, at least where I was when I tried to get a test, they told me 10-14 days for results so I didn’t bother… I’ll stay away from everyone and will know before then if I’m going to get sick or not. I’m doing fine with that two weeks behind me.
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CDC recently removed this recommendation (last few days). Only people with symptoms again. Because there’s no pretending anymore that we’re trying to get to containment.
I thought it was overblown fake news that we still don’t have useful testing capacity like other rich countries do? (With rapid results, and useful contact tracing?)
No masks and no social distancing when Trump had conversations with the invited guests for the convention program.
On what level could we possibly be trying to contain it?
Besides, the only point of containing it is to make the virus disappear. And you’ve already dismissed and ridiculed the notion that the virus will disappear.
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That’s the only value of contact tracing… And the main value of testing. The route basically all rich countries (sans the USA…) have been taking.
Containment is not elimination. It’s just initially getting it to a low (preferably undetectable) level and then surgically addressing any new outbreaks (while they’re small). Getting it to disappear requires eliminating it completely across the globe which is unlikely anytime soon.
Which is to say there is no value… 
Claiming we could contain, and contact trace, this virus is no different than claiming we should contain and use contact tracing to eliminate the flu each year. Such responses are more applicable to viruses with limited means of transmission like HIV. In this case, it would do nothing to relieve the burdensome “precautions” and restrictions we’re currently under. When we’re told that merely walking within 6 feet of someone at the supermarket (and even, according to some claims, being in the same room within 3 hours of someone) can transmit the virus, there’s no value in contact tracing unless you continue to artificially and drastically suppress those potential contacts.
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Yes, that’s the defeatist attitude of the incompetent admin. And of weak Trumpers. Not of everyone else. The defeatist attitude has not taken hold in most other rich countries. That’s why we are a laughable disgrace with the worst outbreaks when we had been set-up to be able to handle this situation the best. Opposite of the ‘cupboards were bare’ nonsense of blaming everyone before.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/these-are-the-countries-best-prepared-for-health-emergencies/
Defeatist, or realist? Some of us don’t want to waste time and effort harping on a utopian result that’s never going to happen no matter how hard you try. We want to get through this, and past this. Not prolong it in the hopeless pursuit of perfection.
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Additionally, now they don’t want them to be tested either. Following through on “I told my people: Slow the testing down, please.”
Of course experts want tests. Testing is their laboratory. Without test results, they have nothing to interpret as “experts”.
In the real world, testing results are most useful for Monday morning quarterbacking.
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“CCP = Chinese Communist Party”
Thanks for clearing that up. I was thinking Russia for some reason.
Would you say the US has been doing a better or worse job than Europe? Here is some quantitative data on cases vs death rates.
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Y axis is deaths per 100k cases or per 100k population? If it’s per population, the case fatality rate doesn’t tell the whole picture. It depends on testing protocol, infection rates, quality of care, baseline health of populations.
IMO fatality rate (deaths per 100k population) is the metric that primes just about all other in balance sheet of how countries have been doing. Testing rate, positivity rate, number of cases, case fatality rate, all nice but bottom line is how well you limited the death toll on your population. You could argue that some countries had inherently older or younger population which may affect fatality rate regardless of effectiveness of measures taken but still, at the end of the day, how many people died is what’ll make the stronger case for how well you’ve handled the whole pandemic. And we won’t know until COVID-19 is over btw. Maybe some countries with high infection rate will get to herd immunity faster. If we don’t get a working vaccine soon, the picture may change over time.
But fatality rate is a bit like profitability for a company. On annual report, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what combination of lowered expenses, investment levels, and increased revenues you ended up using to generate net profits. It may inform future growth or losses of course. But in terms of that year’s performance, it all comes down to net profits.
I think it’s splitting it out both shown separately per population. But the small states with less population and less testing (and less chance of actually determining covid deaths were covid, so undercount by a higher amount) show up as “equal weight” (same size dots). So it implies US deaths are lower on average when they are not.
We’re at over 50 confirmed per 100k and among the highest positivity rates from tests in the world (which means we’re likely missing count of the same or higher proportion of deaths).
There’s only a handful of countries on that chart over 50 deaths per 100k, and all the countries that have done the best are conveniently left off the chart.
Almost all (or all) those countries have current infection rates MUCH lower, so the death numbers are not continuing to grow in a similar manner to the USA’s, either.
USA was #1 prepared, with #1 capabilities to best control a pandemic out of the entire world. We should be #1 best. Not compared with countries at the bottom of the barrel or even those in the middle as evidence of “success”.
Positivity rate is a function of testing protocol though. If you only tested people who reported to the hospital, you’d have high positivity rate no matter how many or how few cases you actually had.
That’d also happen if testing availability was scarce. For a while, we just did not have enough testing to test everyone who felt a little under the weather or who got contact traced. We just quarantined those and waited to see if they recovered or got worse but had no idea about their infection status.
IMO all those other metrics are useful in following the progress of the pandemic but it’ll still come down to how many Americans die as a function of population. That’s the most impartial benchmark as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t consider our current fatality rate to be on par with expectations considering the relative position of strength we started from as the wealthiest nation on earth (currently).
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We technically aren’t the wealthiest anymore (at least by the common metrics like per capita GDP – which we’re 7th. Caveat is more of the higher spots on the list have open borders… Which is much more challenging for controlling a pandemic. Norway, Denmark and Ireland are the only wealthier countries included in the chart). We are among the most wealthy countries.
Same thing that Bend3r posted earlier, but with some updates
Fauci said he was NOT in the meeting when they came up with the new testing guidelines.
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