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It's inaccurate because the US is not testing people with symptoms who certainly would have been tested in other countries. South Korea has performed over 100,

It's inaccurate because the US is not testing people with symptoms who certainly would have been tested in other countries. South Korea has performed over 100,000 tests. NYC has performed ~ 35. [1] I'm really curious what possible reason there could be for that. Regardless, there is no reason to believe "tested cases" is going to give a remotely accurate picture of "actual cases." 1. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/coronavirus.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/coronavir...

vonmoltke 7y ago
> I'm really curious what possible reason there could be for that. It's right in the page you linked: > If you are experiencing fever, cough or shortness of breath, and traveled to an area where COVID-19 is spreading, call or go to your health care provider. Your provider will work with the Health Department to determine if you need COVID-19 testing. Right now, the city is only testing symptomatic people that have been outside the country recently to one of the five nations with widespread cases, and people in direct contact with confirmed cases in the city. It's a (possibly too) conservative rationale, but it is a rationale.
marvin 7y ago
CDC’s lackluster response is absolutely confounding. One could suspect political involvement, but I can’t see who would stand to benefit.
- kickopotomus 7y ago
  The market and the current administration both benefit from a low count of confirmed cases. The administration has already been criticized for repeatedly attempting to slash the CDC budget[1] and terminating the epidemic response team[2]. Trump also keeps attempting to downplay the severity of the virus so it would not be a good look if the true spread of the disease was widely known. Knowledge of the spread would also probably trigger more panic selling in the markets which the current administration also tries to avoid as much as possible. [1]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-cut-cdcs-budget-democrats-claim-analysis/story?id=69233170 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-cut-cdcs-budget-democr... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
  - marvin 7y ago
    That just doesn’t make sense to me. Uncontained, this disease will grow exponentially until tens of millions are infected at once, and it eventually burns itself out. But by then, the disaster will be obvious and we will have the same result. Only with more casualties. Certainly anyone who had that sort of ulterior motive would understand this.
    - jpindar 7y ago
      Making sense is not a priority for this administration.
    - hedora 7y ago
      I predict Trump administration will underreport the numbers and use the courts to hold up transparency reports and audits until after the election. They’re already refusing to test people, and I’m guessing they’ll start to blame the flu and/or fake news at some point. They’ll probably somehow exceed my expectations, and come up with even more cynical tactics than this. For instance, I’ve seen users in other forums blame liberal china lovers for bringing the disease to the US. I wonder if they’re paid trolls or not.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Wasn't the CDC budget cut drastically by the current administration? You reap what you sow.
  - rstupek 7y ago
    Well Congress is the ones who actually pass the budget so no?
  - barney54 7y ago
    No, the budget was not cut.
  - creaghpatr 7y ago
    Nope this was misinformation sowed for political purposes: https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
    - davidw 7y ago
      The budget proposal included cuts to it, though, and some of the response teams that were in place in the government were cut. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - creaghpatr 7y ago
        And yet that's not what you insinuated. There were no cuts no matter how you characterize it-your source confirms that. Certainly no "reaping" what was "sowed".
        davidw 7y ago
        You're responding to me, not the author of the 'reaping' comment.
- lurquer 7y ago
  Why would you have any confidence with CDC? Go browse through the weekly bulletins from 2003 regarding the SARS 'epidemic' in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5218a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5218a2.htm You'll read of the hundreds of 'confirmed' and 'probsble' cases and dire warnings and the like. Then, when the dust settles and years pass, the CDC reluctantly admits the following: ------ In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of SARS-CoV infection. All of these people had traveled to other parts of the world where SARS was spreading. SARS did not spread more widely in the community in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html#outbreak https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html#outbreak ----
lhorie 7y ago
You can't realistically track "actual cases" accurately anyways. For example, people might not go to the hospital. This is a well known challenge with population estimation e.g. domestic violence numbers) What you seem to be getting at is that a) this chart doesn't display the total number of tested cases and b) external reports of number of tested cases point to very low number of tests in the US But that's not a reporting problem, it's a risk/cost analysis problem by the part of the responders. Yes, you could in theory test everyone in the country every two weeks, but it would arguably be very wasteful and impractical to do so, so CDC/hospitals/etc need to figure out what is the right balance as the epidemic unfolds. Whether they are doing a good job is indeed debatable, I agree.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  This is just a straw man. No one is suggesting that they test everyone in the US, but at the level that epidemiologists and the WHO says is absolutely necessary to understand and respond to the spread of the disease. That they’re not doing testing at anywhere near the necessary levels, while countries like South Korea are, is not “debatable,” but evidence of their failure. Also your supposition about tracking actual cases is false. Singapore has significantly curbed the spread of the disease by doing extensive contract traces, testing, and quarantines.
  - lhorie 7y ago
    It's not a straw man, the spectrum goes from no testing to testing everyone, and _measuring_ "actual cases" accurately (especially after community transmission stage) requires one to be on the latter end of the spectrum. I did say that it's unrealistic to go that far, and you're right that more aggressive testing will obviously lead to better visibility. My point merely was that the rationale for not ramping up testing to the wazoo could be attributed to risk/cost analysis. Incidentally, that might even explain why Singapore with a population half the size of Wuhan's would be able to respond more elastically than the US with a ~300M population and high levels of bureaucracy and government fragmentation. Btw, I should clarify that when I said the word "debatable", I was using an euphemism.
billfruit 7y ago
And China may have tested every one in Wuhan, which has almost the same population as New York.
makomk 7y ago
This is almost certainly getting cause and effect backwards. That is, South Korea has been testing a large number of people because there were a large number of likely cases to test, mainly due to that one cult inadvertantly spreading the coronavirus to so many people. You can see this in the number of tests that turn out positive: it's hovering somewhere around 4% in South Korea and slowly dropping now they've got through the really likely targets, but was in the high single digits earlier. Back when the CDC was only testing the most likely cases, their number was around 3%. A lot of the media reporting on this is dubious and might lead people to believe that the US had South Korea-level numbers all along and just wasn't spotting them due to not testing, but that's unlikely.

vonmoltke 7y ago

> I'm really curious what possible reason there could be for that. It's right in the page you linked: > If you are experiencing fever, cough or shortness of breath, and traveled to an area where COVID-19 is spreading, call or go to your health care provider. Your provider will work with the Health Department to determine if you need COVID-19 testing. Right now, the city is only testing symptomatic people that have been outside the country recently to one of the five nations with widespread cases, and people in direct contact with confirmed cases in the city. It's a (possibly too) conservative rationale, but it is a rationale.

marvin 7y ago

CDC’s lackluster response is absolutely confounding. One could suspect political involvement, but I can’t see who would stand to benefit.

kickopotomus 7y ago
The market and the current administration both benefit from a low count of confirmed cases. The administration has already been criticized for repeatedly attempting to slash the CDC budget[1] and terminating the epidemic response team[2]. Trump also keeps attempting to downplay the severity of the virus so it would not be a good look if the true spread of the disease was widely known. Knowledge of the spread would also probably trigger more panic selling in the markets which the current administration also tries to avoid as much as possible. [1]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-cut-cdcs-budget-democrats-claim-analysis/story?id=69233170 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-cut-cdcs-budget-democr... [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
- marvin 7y ago
  That just doesn’t make sense to me. Uncontained, this disease will grow exponentially until tens of millions are infected at once, and it eventually burns itself out. But by then, the disaster will be obvious and we will have the same result. Only with more casualties. Certainly anyone who had that sort of ulterior motive would understand this.
  - jpindar 7y ago
    Making sense is not a priority for this administration.
  - hedora 7y ago
    I predict Trump administration will underreport the numbers and use the courts to hold up transparency reports and audits until after the election. They’re already refusing to test people, and I’m guessing they’ll start to blame the flu and/or fake news at some point. They’ll probably somehow exceed my expectations, and come up with even more cynical tactics than this. For instance, I’ve seen users in other forums blame liberal china lovers for bringing the disease to the US. I wonder if they’re paid trolls or not.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Wasn't the CDC budget cut drastically by the current administration? You reap what you sow.
- rstupek 7y ago
  Well Congress is the ones who actually pass the budget so no?
- barney54 7y ago
  No, the budget was not cut.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  Nope this was misinformation sowed for political purposes: https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
  - davidw 7y ago
    The budget proposal included cuts to it, though, and some of the response teams that were in place in the government were cut. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - creaghpatr 7y ago
      And yet that's not what you insinuated. There were no cuts no matter how you characterize it-your source confirms that. Certainly no "reaping" what was "sowed".
      - davidw 7y ago
        You're responding to me, not the author of the 'reaping' comment.
lurquer 7y ago
Why would you have any confidence with CDC? Go browse through the weekly bulletins from 2003 regarding the SARS 'epidemic' in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5218a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5218a2.htm You'll read of the hundreds of 'confirmed' and 'probsble' cases and dire warnings and the like. Then, when the dust settles and years pass, the CDC reluctantly admits the following: ------ In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of SARS-CoV infection. All of these people had traveled to other parts of the world where SARS was spreading. SARS did not spread more widely in the community in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html#outbreak https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html#outbreak ----

lhorie 7y ago

You can't realistically track "actual cases" accurately anyways. For example, people might not go to the hospital. This is a well known challenge with population estimation e.g. domestic violence numbers) What you seem to be getting at is that a) this chart doesn't display the total number of tested cases and b) external reports of number of tested cases point to very low number of tests in the US But that's not a reporting problem, it's a risk/cost analysis problem by the part of the responders. Yes, you could in theory test everyone in the country every two weeks, but it would arguably be very wasteful and impractical to do so, so CDC/hospitals/etc need to figure out what is the right balance as the epidemic unfolds. Whether they are doing a good job is indeed debatable, I agree.

claudeganon 7y ago
This is just a straw man. No one is suggesting that they test everyone in the US, but at the level that epidemiologists and the WHO says is absolutely necessary to understand and respond to the spread of the disease. That they’re not doing testing at anywhere near the necessary levels, while countries like South Korea are, is not “debatable,” but evidence of their failure. Also your supposition about tracking actual cases is false. Singapore has significantly curbed the spread of the disease by doing extensive contract traces, testing, and quarantines.
- lhorie 7y ago
  It's not a straw man, the spectrum goes from no testing to testing everyone, and _measuring_ "actual cases" accurately (especially after community transmission stage) requires one to be on the latter end of the spectrum. I did say that it's unrealistic to go that far, and you're right that more aggressive testing will obviously lead to better visibility. My point merely was that the rationale for not ramping up testing to the wazoo could be attributed to risk/cost analysis. Incidentally, that might even explain why Singapore with a population half the size of Wuhan's would be able to respond more elastically than the US with a ~300M population and high levels of bureaucracy and government fragmentation. Btw, I should clarify that when I said the word "debatable", I was using an euphemism.

billfruit 7y ago

And China may have tested every one in Wuhan, which has almost the same population as New York.

makomk 7y ago

This is almost certainly getting cause and effect backwards. That is, South Korea has been testing a large number of people because there were a large number of likely cases to test, mainly due to that one cult inadvertantly spreading the coronavirus to so many people. You can see this in the number of tests that turn out positive: it's hovering somewhere around 4% in South Korea and slowly dropping now they've got through the really likely targets, but was in the high single digits earlier. Back when the CDC was only testing the most likely cases, their number was around 3%. A lot of the media reporting on this is dubious and might lead people to believe that the US had South Korea-level numbers all along and just wasn't spotting them due to not testing, but that's unlikely.