We have come a long way in the short time since Donald Trump blithely announced that the 15 Covid-19 cases that had been reported thus far would start to decline to zero and that by magic the virus would disappear by April. Yesterday, the US reached a grim milestone, overtaking China to become the country with the most number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19.
The US now has more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other country with at least 82,404 positive tests.
According to the latest figures collated by Johns Hopkins University, the US overtook China (81,782 cases) and Italy (80,589).
The grim milestone came as President Donald Trump predicted the nation would get back to work “pretty quickly”, after 3.3 million layoffs.
More than 1,100 people with Covid-19 have died in the US.
All together now: “We’re #1! USA! USA!”
Err, eh, yes, congradulations.
The USA could not have done it without the outstanding team that has worked so hard.
The Chinese reply (this guy is the head of one of the biggest state owned newspapers so means it has been most likely approved by the government):
https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/1243458622819975168
Forget it, MS. The USA has a death rate of 5,4%, The Netherlands 6,3%.
https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/actuele-informatie-over-coronavirus
Of course the government of my native country is even slower and more lacklustre than yours. At the other hand it’s superior regarding that important recommendation of Macchiavelli: “everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are”.
@mnbo(#3): Death rates as percentage is meaningless for either country. The Netherlands only counts cases in the hospital because that is the point where they are testing. The US is so far behind in testing that the number of identified new cases jumped 50% yesterday (but at least some of the states/cities are ramping up to a test everyone mentality)
The rule of thumb (based on the results from the cruise ship Princess) is that for every case that requires hospitalization there are 4 cases that don’t.
Also you are looking at history here. Incubation is between one and two weeks. So the next week should show if the Dutch government has been taken enough measures (personally I doubt it and we’ll see the curve move towards we are going to run out of beds).
I have heard that a good rule of thumb is that there are 100 cases of Covid 19 for every positive test result and about 100 for every reported death. The numbers seem to hold for Colorado, as far as I can tell.
At this stage, the truth is that we have very little idea of how the published numbers relate to true incidence.
What we can be fairly certain of is that it takes quite dramatic measures to slow the spread, and even then, it takes quite a while to turn things around. We can therefore expect the numbers to continue getting quite a lot worse, particularly in the US, where the curves currently seem to be going in the wrong direction (although some of that is undoubtedly down to improved testing and reporting). Remember, the Chinese imposed their lockdown after only 30 deaths (officially). Even if transmission were somehow magically stopped tomorrow, I’d still expect to see another couple of weeks of growth, and it’s doubling roughly every 3 days.
We have a long way to go.
So one more Trump prediction comes true -- And he did also predict we were going to get tired of all the winning.
And it’s all due to our Fearless Leader.
Well, OK. But we in the UK are the first to have our head of government infected! And the heir to the throne -- while both Trump and Ivanka remain uninfected -- officially at least.
@4 Who cares: and “more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other country” is meaningful ….. how exactly?