
South Korea has tested 140k people for the coronavirus. The US: 1,500 people. - starpilot
https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-tested-140-000-031000719.html
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treyfitty
> This suggests that, as many health experts have predicted, the virus'
> fatality rate seems to decrease as more cases are reported.

A part of me wants to say “no shit. Fatality rate = death/known cases.” Of
course the rate goes down when the denominator increases. Am I missing
something here?

~~~
NotSammyHagar
What you are missing is the underlying point, the us has massively failed to
organize and execute a good testing program. The country that spends by far
more than other countries per capita on medical care (already well know as a
big waster of money because of lesser outcomes), that has an advanced and
extensive public health network, it failed to create and provide testing kits
for the virus, and with much less resources South Korea (and Taiwan and Italy
and almost every other country that tried) did more than 100 times more
testing.

~~~
tomohawk
Specifically, the CDC bungled the response.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-
cd...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/after-missteps-cdc-says-its-
coronavirus-test-kit-ready-primetime-n1145206)

There are over 100 labs in the US that are able to develop these sorts of
tests, but the CDC told them not to, and to wait for the CDC kit, which turned
out to not work. The CDC also required such narrow criteria to get a test that
few qualified. This meant many went untested.

How would this have been different than with a nationalized health system? It
wouldn't.

