
The CDC has failed: Ex-health officials urge states to abandon agency - pabo
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/ignore-the-cdc-former-top-health-experts-say-some-states-already-have/
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makomk
Oh no, not this again. There's been a long-running propaganda campaign to
convince Americans that the CDC and their government has failed them because
they can't achieve a supposedly easy level of Covid-19 testing which is in
reality an order of magnitude beyond what any other major country has managed,
and that that this is a uniquely American failure. The NYT opinion piece this
is based on looks like it's in part a continuation of that.

It's gone hand in hand with a narrative that the US is behind the rest of the
world in its level of Covid-19 testing, when in fact it's ahead of almost
everyone else. (Last I looked, this trick was being pulled off by comparing
based on the number of tests per positive, even though this is really a
measure of outbreak size rather than testing levels if you're trying to test
everyone with symptoms - unless the outbreak has hit catestropic levels, the
number of tests required to do that is basically independent of the number of
cases. Clearly it has absolutely nothing to do with how close a country is to
being able to test a particular proportion of the population on a regular
basis regardless of symptoms.)

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nickthemagicman
Why is there such a force of propoganda surrounding Corona trying to make
everyone feel like things are worse than they are? I've noticed it too.

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tynpeddler
We shut down the entire world and it killed over 100,000 in the US alone in 3
months. There's no suspicious conspiracy surrounding Covid19, it really is a
very infectious and capable of killing a lot more than it already has.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Complete worldwide infections are 25 million that are known.

There's around a 40-50% asymptomatic number so the total estimated infections
so far are around 40 million.

Total deaths is around 800,000.

.02 death rate on average and it drops drastically the younger a person is.

Depending on your risk tolerance, to many people, that's not worth destroying
life as we know it.

Especially because the death rate of heart disease and cancer is higher than
this and has easily targeted reasons with mountains of scientific evidence
that could reduce the death rates.

It just seems like propaganda and we're making a bigger deal out of it than
necessary.

~~~
lefrenchy
Cancer and heart disease are not contagious like Covid-19 is, why is this
ridiculous equating done so often? It’s apples to oranges...

Also, some studies seem to suggest we’re actually undercounting the death rate
[0]. Combine that with likely under reported data in Russia, China, and other
countries, it’s clearly a significant threat.

I think it’s kind of crazy to say preventing potentially 10s of millions of
people from dying is not a big deal and propaganda. Seems like searching for a
grand narrative in something that’s rather pretty cut and dry.

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mensetmanusman
Which statistics plot are they interested in?

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1076314/covid-19-case-
fa...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1076314/covid-19-case-fatality-
rates-select-countries-worldwide/)

