3 ms·

Italy has managed to do an order of magnitude more tests than the US, which may be part of the reason there are so many cases recorded there. A number of non-p

• makomk 7y ago
  One big reason there are so many recorded cases in Italy is that they managed to screw up and not only failed to test someone until 36 hours after the third time they sought medical care, they also failed to practice proper infection control when handling that case. So it's been spreading through their medical system like wildfire and seeding infections to other countries.
  • pmoriarty 7y ago
    It seems that nearly all countries have screwed up their handling of this outbreak in the early stages. But at least now they're testing, and doing so way more than the US has been doing. They deserve praise for that, and the US needs to ramp up their testing a hundred-fold!
    • davidw 7y ago
      Yeah, the first person to die in Italy was from a tiny little town that's kind of out of the way. It's not the kind of busy, international spot where you'd expect to find an initial outbreak of this kind of thing. I used to ride my bike through it pretty much every weekend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B2
• notabee 7y ago
  To give the benefit of the doubt to the CDC, it appears that the RT-PCR test has been only about 70% sensitive in China. CT scans actually exceeded the RT-PCR tests in sensitivity. Here's the latest in an informative series of videos.[1] So, it makes sense that shotgun testing would miss a lot of cases and might not be considered worth it. However, I agree that the CDC still seems to be slow to act, especially given how people like to laud the U.S. for being so advanced. Truth is, we've let institutional decay, neglect, and politics drag us behind relative to other first world countries. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQwfuJgJ9lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQwfuJgJ9lo