America Is Now #1!

The numbers mean we're testing better which is about damn time. But population wise, we're still far behind the EU which s running 360,000+ with a population of 512 million. US numbers are 123,744 for a population of 327 million. But I hope the US numbers soar as testing improves.

And as for what China's true numbers are ...add a 0 or 000 to what they say the numbers are to get anywhere near the truth.
 
fmdog44 said:
Simply we are the richest nation with the highest rated medical facilities and yet out medical staff are sent to fight with empty guns. We watched it grow and grow and sat there and whistled a happy tune.
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Yes - agree totally. So much more to say, but not on this platform.
 
fmdog44 said:
Simply we are the richest nation with the highest rated medical facilities and yet out medical staff are sent to fight with empty guns. We watched it grow and grow and sat there and whistled a happy tune.
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Our CDC has been too busy cooking the books to inflate flu death stats in order to fear-monger to push usually ineffective flu vaccines. So when a serious outbreak came along, they got caught with their pants down and flubbed testing in a display of spectacular incompetence.

But if you look at the US and all EU countries, all kept their heads in the sand out of 'normalcy bias' and/or an attempt to keep people working and spending way too close to the danger window.

I've been following this from the first quarantine of Wuhan in January. Really only Singapore and South Korea have handled the outbreak with an A+ grade.
 
WhatInThe said:
330 million people it's not that shocking but it is disappointing. And as bad as it is the numbers coming out of Europe per capita are much more alarming. And those statistical trends could come to North America just as easily.
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Yes, I agree. I often think that the larger cities are at risk more. L.A., New Orleans, Chicago, etc. if those and/or other larger cities numbers start ticking up, then we could see an explosion.
 
The largest number? Really? After adding the number of cases all other countries together have, the US still has more than that? WOW! I guess we are the greatest nation in the world.
 
AnnieA said:
Our CDC has been too busy cooking the books to inflate flu death stats in order to fear-monger to push usually ineffective flu vaccines. So when a serious outbreak came along, they got caught with their pants down and flubbed testing in a display of spectacular incompetence.

But if you look at the US and all EU countries, all kept their heads in the sand out of 'normalcy bias' and/or an attempt to keep people working and spending way too close to the danger window.

I've been following this from the first quarantine of Wuhan in January. Really only Singapore and South Korea have handled the outbreak with an A+ grade.
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South Korea = 9583 Confirmed. 152 Dead. Singapore evidently has done a good job, but they are a very small country with 5600 people living there.
 
AnnieA said:
The CDC needs a house c;leaning once this pandemic is over. How they managed to flub testing when there were effective tests in use around the world is unacceptable.
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Apparently it is NOT unusual for countries to decline to use other country's medical equipment.

What is being criticized is the slowness to respond by authorities who were warned at least 3 times about a lack of US pandemic readiness since 2017. Not the CDC (which has been crippled by current administration's budget cuts and dismissal of the epidemiologist team who had been set up by the Obama administration after the swine flu pandemic (see Global Health Infrastructure team timeline).

China scientists published three identifying RNA factors of COVID-19 on January 11, 2020. South Korea immediately began working on a test; in less than three weeks a company had a viable "quick test" ready for production. Within two weeks a production line ran off 100K test kits in less than a week. Production was ramped up to 100K kits per day in short order.

This is because you have to test and keep testing. First responders are tested numerous times a day.

In the US, first responders are lucky to get tested at all. Once.

Some of you might find the links of this NY Times article worth reading:
" There have been a number of warnings about both a generic worldwide pandemic and the coronavirus specifically. A 2019 NSC government report said that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease.” A simulation conducted last year by the Department of Health and Human Services modeled an outbreak of a rapidly spreading virus. And top government officials began sounding the alarms about the coronavirus in early January. "

BTW, if you don't feel like reading the links (access is free during this time), it is interesting to note that the DH&HS test parameters were almost exactly what we have seen with the COVID-19 (now properly called SARS-2). If distancing/lockdowns were not instituted, estimates were around 586,000 dead.
 
Lethe200 said:
Apparently it is NOT unusual for countries to decline to use other country's medical equipment.
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It's not equipment. It's a procedure for producing a lab test. So far you're the only person I've seen in all the weeks of reading about the US Covid-19 response who is minimizing the CDC's testing f-up.

And what they were trying to after rejecting the WHO procedures was itself a tried and true method, but they were sloppy, contaminated the reagent and f'd it up. We lost critical weeks because of that.


From March 5 MIT Technology Review:

Excerpt:
Few health institutions around the world are as renowned as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which makes it all the more baffling that the CDC could have fumbled the rollout of coronavirus diagnostic tests throughout the country so badly. While other countries have been able to run millions of tests, the CDC has tested only 1,235 patients. Speed is of the essence when dealing with an epidemic early, and the CDC’s mistakes are already proving costly to tracking the outbreak in the US.​
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On February 5 the CDC began to send out coronavirus test kits, but many of the kits were soon found to have faulty negative controls (what shows up when coronavirus is absent), caused by contaminated reagents.​
​
The CDC’s kits are based on PCR testing, which makes millions or billions of copies of a DNA sample so that clinicians can easily identify and study it. PCR is a well established technology that’s been around for 35 years.​
​
So how exactly does the CDC, of all places, goof up something so tried and true?​
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The first thing to know is that PCR is a very sensitive test. You need extremely clean reagents, and the smallest contaminants can ruin it completely (as happened in this instance).​

Then after screwing it up, the CDC tried to block access to the FDA

Excerpt:
Timothy Stenzel, who is the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, was made to wait overnight on the weekend of Feb. 22 — as senior health department officials negotiated his access in a series of calls — before Centers for Disease Control granted him permission to be on campus. Stenzel's visit had been expected, the individuals said.​
​
The FDA had dispatched Stenzel to the CDC in an effort to expedite the development of lab tests for the novel coronavirus outbreak. Problems with the CDC-developed test delayed the Trump administration's plan to expand screening for weeks, POLITICO first reported on Feb. 20. A senior HHS official confirmed the episode.​

So then guess what happened...

Excerpt:
Stenzel was alarmed by the procedures he witnessed in the Atlanta laboratory and raised concerns with multiple CDC officials, per a source familiar with the situation in Atlanta. Stenzel is a highly-regarded scientist and diagnostics expert. He was on the ground in Atlanta to deal with technical issues and happened to stumble upon the inappropriate procedures and possible contaminants.​
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People right here on this forum, like so many others across the country, (including you know who), dismissed the seriousness of this. I knew from what was happening in China that this would wind up being an epidemic...still can't believe how quickly it escalated to a pandemic, however. Life as we knew it won't get back to normal for a long time. Now Mr. Fauci is suggesting that this very well may be cyclical. Oh joy! 😖😫
 

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