
Seattle-area officials report new coronavirus deaths, bringing US total to 6 - Leary
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/seattle-area-officials-report-3-new-coronavirus-deaths-bringing-us-total-to-5.html
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Leary
US death rate so far:

6/96= 6.25%

Iran death rate so far:

66/1501= 4.44%

Is the US undercounting to a greater extent than Iran?!

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nwallin
Yes, the US is severely undercounting.

There are a few reasons for this, none of which are acceptable.

1\. The initial guidelines for test kit requirements were needlessly strict.
They sought to create tests which would not test positive for related
pathogens like SARS or MERS, neither of which seem to be circulating in the
wild right now.

2\. The first batch of test kits issued by the CDC were faulty.

3\. The CDC disallowed tests for people that did not have a link to China.

The CDC has displayed staggering incompetence at handling this. I don't know
whether this is due to inexperience (the administration fired the CDC's entire
pandemic response team in order to cut costs) or trying to downplay the
situation in order to mitigate damage to the stock market. Or something else
equally inexcusable.

It's anyone's guess how many people are actually infected by coronavirus in
the US right now. But I don't think estimates less than 500 or so have any
chance of being accurate.

