
United States has more total Covid-19 cases than China - billyhoffman
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
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LordHog
No sane person believes the numbers coming out of China. As countries start
testing more for the virus the numbers will continue to grow. Very easy for a
countries line to flat line if you don't test for it.

~~~
lmilcin
But I know people in the region I work with on a daily basis and by their
account there are no masses of people dying everywhere and some of
restrictions on movement were lifted.

If the infected population grew exponentially China would be flooded with
bodies long ago but that does not seem to be what is happening.

China might not be believable in many things but it is difficult to hide
millions of people sick or dying.

~~~
LordHog
Points taken. The CCP controls all media, the story, and the narrative. I
personally don't see the infected nor the deaths in the US, but this
information is disseminated through via media who gets there data from the CDC
and other government agencies. The CCP hide the details about the outbreak for
some time and only got out via individuals who broke the news at severe fear
of being punished by the CCP.

I do work with people in China, who doesn't these days, right? They report the
same thing I see which is I don't see the infected or deaths directly, unless
working in health care. My industry is tech so the individuals that I work
with will not have first hand accounts. They only know what the CCP informs
the public and we all know it is a well formulated narrative.

I believe we will never know the true depths until the CCP is finally
overthrown and details are released after that time.

~~~
lmilcin
I find this focus on CCP not healthy for the learning process. Certainly
something to take into account but your preoccupation with it seems to be
excessive.

There seems to be no reason currently to disbelieve Chinese numbers. They are
encumbered by unknown, possibly very significant measurement errors, for sure,
but so are european or american ones.

Due to nature of exponential growth I think it is unrealistic to believe that
the virus grows rampant. All signals point to Chinese economy coming back from
the nap and I find it difficult to believe that would be happening if
internally Chinese state was still struggling to get the virus under control.

Just use Occam's razor. The simplest explanation, given no facts to point
otherwise, is that Chinese state used its power and control over population to
actually successfully push back the spread of the virus.

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NiekvdMaas
This is extremely worrying. No other country has seen such a sharp increase in
COVID-19 infections like the USA. On top of that, the death rate is also very
high. And this is just getting started...

~~~
lmilcin
From where I sit USA is doing not nearly enough to prevent the spread.

Here in Poland the actions started very early when there was less than half a
dozen cases when all schools were closed and now with about a thousand cases
we have full curfew with stiff fines (about $10k) for people moving or meeting
without sufficient reason.

Even though reaction was quite fast there was no sufficient testing of all
suspected cases as it was done in South Korea and it is expected we will have
at least tens of thousands of cases.

If you look at the graphs of cases on
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)
you will see the logarithmic graphs for Poland very slowly flattening which
means the growth is slowing down while the one for US is still growing strong
completely unchecked.

It took from March 14th to March 25th (11 days) to get last 10x increase in
Poland, the previous 10x increase from March 8 to March 14th (6 days).

In US, the numbers are March 17th to March 25th (8 days) while the previous
10x increase was from March 9th to March 17th (also 8 days).

So it seems while Poland started faster it now has slower doubling rate while
also having much less portion of population infected.

Now compare this to current situation in Italy where the last 10x increase
took from March 8th to March 25th which is 17 days and you will see that US
situation is way worse than in Italy as the doubling rate is not only not
slowing down but the exponent is over two times higher. During the time it
took Italy to increase cases 10x the same number increased over 100 times in
US.

I don't have a way to connect the government actions to results but I also
understand without the actions the virus would spread unconstrained.

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9wzYQbTYsAIc
Seems like that flattened curve is still going to be pretty tall.

~~~
thepangolino
The US healthcare system, although expensive, is the most developed in the
world. They can accommodate it.

~~~
dvdgsng
Maybe I am missing the sarcasm, but what makes you say that? Most research on
the topic seams to indicate that this is not the case.

> The OECD has compiled data on dozens of outcomes and process measures.
> Across a number of these measures, the U.S. lags behind similarly wealthy
> OECD countries (those that are similarly large and wealthy based on GDP and
> GDP per capita). In some cases, such as the rates of all-cause mortality,
> premature death, death amenable to healthcare, and disease burden, the U.S.
> is also not improving as quickly as other countries, which means the gap is
> growing.

[https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-
collection/quality...](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-
collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/#item-start)

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Der_Einzige
How can markets rally continuously on news like this???

~~~
cloudartisans
No idea! It’s like everyone is looking at this as a “money problem” and
throwing a bunch of stimulus at it, instead of taking it for what it actually
is—an unprecedented health issue in a completely unprepared country.

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Razengan
Does China report accurately and honesty?

~~~
LordHog
No, of course not. The CCP is very well versed on tactically releasing
information to benefit themselves.

