321–330 of 339 posts
When China announced they had a mystery virus, travel from China should have been stopped. When China locked down their country, travel from China should have been stopped. When community spread was detected in Washington state, the U.S. should have been locked down. Testing wasn't the problem.
> When community spread was detected in Washington state ... Testing wasn't the problem. If you detect community spread without testing you are too late anyway.
How many deaths per capita for US versus other industrialized countries?
Deaths per capita will be most important at the end of the pandemic. Right now you're better off looking at case-fatality-rate, day over day rate of new cases, and the current number of cases. Right now the US is at 52K cases and ~650 deaths. That is ~1% fatal, but that can decrease by more testing or increase because it takes time to die. Currently 0.01% of the US has tested positive and 0.0002% of the US has died.…
(And falling.)
In a thread criticizing the US, it is odd that this simple fact isn't mentioned. Or, alternatively, the importance of the fact is minimized.
(Even more odd that the US per capita death from covid is less than U.K., Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark and many other countries whose health-care systems are routinely praised on this site.)
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My favorite game. Are you aware that the test can be improved by training medical personnel on sampling technique? Are you aware that tests will, as a general rule, improve? Are you aware that the majority of people understand the difference between 70% and 100% accurate? Are you aware that public policy was affected by poor data on the spread? Are you aware that it's far easier to successfully test [nearly] everyone…
So after you try to belittle me about not understanding 4^x vs 1^x, you are now talking about future efforts, hopes how an entire medical community can be retrained, etc. Let's stay focused on the real world and not some hypothetical past where we were like South Korea. None of your comments apply to a 1^x spread in the current system since we aren't testing many people, and in hot spots, we aren't testing hardly any…
But even in the current environment, testing is important. It guides public policy, and it helps doctors triage patients in serious condition. It still helps to limit the spread, and will do so even more when testing overtakes the infection rate (aided by lockdowns). If testing improves, then it could cut weeks off a global lockdown, because the long tail will die that much faster.
Not everyone is a neckbeard with a programming job who can live in a basement for two weeks without a single human contact, so anything that helps extinguish this disease helps. Now if you'll excuse me, I should go shave.
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So after you try to belittle me about not understanding 4^x vs 1^x, you are now talking about future efforts, hopes how an entire medical community can be retrained, etc. Let's stay focused on the real world and not some hypothetical past where we were like South Korea. None of your comments apply to a 1^x spread in the current system since we aren't testing many people, and in hot spots, we aren't testing hardly any…
It's like talking to a brick wall. Medical technology is approximately monotonically increasing, so it's absurd to think the test we cobble together in the first month won't be improved upon. The CDC FUCKED UP. I expect careers to be finished. I want a criminal investigation, just in case of corruption, and I hope some people lose their license. But even in the current environment, testing is important. It guides pub…
Yes, it certainly is. Did I ever say we shouldn't test? Did I ever argue testing couldn't be improved? Suggest you argue points that were actually put forth instead of using straw men arguments. Re-read the last line of my original post. I'm all in favor of trying to find positive cases.
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This so much. The system is absolutely corrupt and broken to the core. Poor leadership exacerbates the problem but it is not the fault of poor leadership. We've merely been coping with the horrible brokenness of our system for decades.
I see posts like this quite a bit, seemingly as a defense of the administration which is known for pushing deep cuts in various institutions, bungling messaging and/or outright lying about the state of affairs, among a litany of other issues which are exceedingly well documented. If we were to treat the US as a business (as the President would want, apparently), poor leadership is the reason why we're going bankrupt…
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It was 1/23/20. Wuhan was under lockdown but there was no clear evidence of human to human transfer? Cmon
That tweet was from ten days before the lockdown, based on evidence gathered prior to that. The first death from the disease was 3 days prior to the WHO tweet and Chinese researchers had only identified the specific virus 6 days prior: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou... That very same day the WHO was recommending handwashing / avoiding close contact with anyone with flu-like symptoms / an…
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It's like talking to a brick wall. Medical technology is approximately monotonically increasing, so it's absurd to think the test we cobble together in the first month won't be improved upon. The CDC FUCKED UP. I expect careers to be finished. I want a criminal investigation, just in case of corruption, and I hope some people lose their license. But even in the current environment, testing is important. It guides pub…
> It's like talking to a brick wall. Yes, it certainly is. Did I ever say we shouldn't test? Did I ever argue testing couldn't be improved? Suggest you argue points that were actually put forth instead of using straw men arguments. Re-read the last line of my original post. I'm all in favor of trying to find positive cases.
>Re-read the last line of my original post.
Still wrong. Reread the second to last line of your original post.
>There's a reason why screening tests need to be highly accurate.
They don't. That's the point. It doesn't need to be 99.9% accurate unless the disease is so aggressive that you're all dead anyway.
There's the contention. The goal is exponential decay, and the only scalable method is to reduce the reproduction rate. Even if you don't drop below 1, a smaller exponential still grows exponentially slower.
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> It's like talking to a brick wall. Yes, it certainly is. Did I ever say we shouldn't test? Did I ever argue testing couldn't be improved? Suggest you argue points that were actually put forth instead of using straw men arguments. Re-read the last line of my original post. I'm all in favor of trying to find positive cases.
Brick. Wall. >Re-read the last line of my original post. Still wrong. Reread the second to last line of your original post. >There's a reason why screening tests need to be highly accurate. They don't. That's the point. It doesn't need to be 99.9% accurate unless the disease is so aggressive that you're all dead anyway. There's the contention. The goal is exponential decay, and the only scalable method is to reduce t…
Second and less talked about, there are consequences of a false negative population which is NOT handled appropriately -- like not letting people know if they test negative they STILL should stay away from high-risk population or take precautions like you still could be infected. That directive has been circulated a little but most people I've seen don't know that. The news reporters don't ask Pence about serial tests. They seem satisfied he had one negative test.
Once again, and I don't know how many times I have to say this, I'm not against widespread testing of the current RT-PCR swab, particularly if we had lots of tests, didn't have PPE shortages in the area, and guidance was given to all those receiving results. Your contention that accuracy doesn't matter is incorrect. It matters because false negatives matter and it's great to do testing to decrease the spread, which is pretty obvious, but you absolutely need additional management depending on accuracy. Like not setting the standard of working with high-risk patients as a single negative test. They need to be tested serially and hopefully get a more accurate test for nursing home workers in future. Like not assuming Pence isn't spreading disease because of a single negative test. He could be one of the many asymptomatic infected. This has been my point for this entire thread. I'll leave you to argue something different.
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I don't understand this mentality when other Western Nations are going through the exact same thing. Did the administration cause every other countries problems with containing the virus too?
The US has been far behind other Western countries in testing: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/17/us/coronaviru... The per-capita chart is most notable. Other Western countries' responses haven't been stellar either, but the US's is particularly flawed.
US is 21st in per capita deaths (and falling... that is, it was 18th a couple days ago.)
Spin all you want about testing and the like.
But, the fact remains that the US's medical system is doing a better job than the other western countries.
Its striking that Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Belgium, UK, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria have more per capita covid deaths than the US. (Looks like Germany is about to be added to that list.)
I do not see how any rational and objective analysis could characterize the US's response as 'particularly flawed'.
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Engineers create systems where individual vigilance is less disastrous, or where vigilance is augmented. The real world and tech world still does rely on brute-force responsibility sometimes, to cover the gaps in a plan where the details were left out.
Exactly, the complexity of the "real world" far exceeds that of what a typical engineer deals with. This requires more darwinian, rather than cerebral, processes, simply because human brains are too small to understand all consequences.
The fact is that the public are terrible bosses. We look for people to blame, we're inattentive and have no idea, generally, how to evaluate things on actual metrics. We have no idea which metrics are being gamed and the people who do are actively gaming the metrics and flooding us with cherry-picked information as well as disinformation, though the former is probably more dangerous and more widespread.
The average person in the public will be satisfied as long as we blame some random politician instead of looking for structural reform. E.G. maybe we should adopt Japan's culture of using masks in public when sick, require employers to guarantee minimum standards of sick leave, and change various hospital/ER waiting room practices.