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This can all be true and it's still worth nothing to talk about this problem as if it we can wash our hands of blame and assign it all to China. The US governm

This can all be true and it's still worth nothing to talk about this problem as if it we can wash our hands of blame and assign it all to China. The US government is not responsible for the emergence of the epidemic. The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here. And we can see that several governments that are not China have handled a threat that emerged outside their borders and about which they presumably had no better access to information about... much better than we have. Maybe there's blame to cast on China, but it's a lot more productive for citizens of each country to hold their own governments to account.

leereeves 7y ago
The NY Times has some great charts showing the number of new cases each day for many nations. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronavirus-flatten-the-curve-countries.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronav... The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan. If I mixed up the charts for the US and other nations except those and Italy (which is much worse), you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. So when you say: > The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here. I wonder what you mean. The shape of its emergence here is exactly like the shape of its emergence in a dozen other countries.
- agurk 7y ago
  From that NY Times article Denmark has an interesting shaped curve that might cause the casual observer to think it's been brought under control. Denmark were very good at testing widely initially and have subsequently changed the criteria for who gets tested to only be for those presenting with acute symptoms. I haven't been able to find out why they changed but my assumption is limited testing capacity and they're preparing for an increase in the number of cases so want to prioritise. I will be very interested at the end of this to see how Denmark's response is rated, but it does feel like they have been among the better performers globally.
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    https://politi.dk/en/coronavirus-in-denmark/frequently-asked-questions https://politi.dk/en/coronavirus-in-denmark/frequently-asked... That page has the official advice for Denmark, but not necessarily the underlying reasons. I assume there's a limited supply of tests, and they need to keep enough in stock for predicted future serious cases.
  - Magnap 7y ago
    Dane here. Yes, it's because of limited testing capacity (new machines arrived recently and they are ramping up to 1000 tests per day, additional capacity will among other things go to surveillance of cases with mild symptoms, modeled on our existing system for influenza-like illness surveillance where samples are, well, sampled among a specific subset of GPs), but it's not only those with severe symptoms who are tested, it's anyone who is hospitalized (which also includes members of vulnerable populations with only moderate symptoms) and health care workers, with the goal being to prevent hospital-acquired infections. In a single sentence, the strategy could be summed up as "people who aren't in the hospital should assume it's COVID-19 if they have symptoms and act accordingly, but once they get to the hospital we can't afford to assume".
- wwweston 7y ago
  > The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan. How many better examples would it take before one concludes that it's possible to have done better and there is a responsibility to do so? I'd say one is adequate. > If I mixed up the charts for the US and other nations except those and Italy (which is much worse), you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. Take off the labels and I'd absolutely be able to tell that the countries are divided among: * those that have a simple exponential curve that tells a story of no effective intervention * those that have a noisier exponential curve, which suggests a story of either partially effective interventions or some confounding factor * those that have peaks and valleys, suggesting a story of moving towards containment and then hitting setbacks * those that have apparently peaked, suggesting a story of effective containment efforts And we already know which category the US belongs in.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    This is daily data. The effectiveness of interventions doesn't change every day. You're just assigning meaning to random noise. I agree it's possible to do better and we should learn from other nations, but I think it's unrealistic to expect that USA be #1 in everything. Sometimes other nations will do better.
    - wwweston 7y ago
      > This is daily data. The effectiveness of interventions doesn't change every day. There's many endeavors in which the effectiveness of interventions can change daily, either with the conscientiousness of application, or in changing conditions that need response. On top of that, there's all kinds of systems where an intervention can introduce an oscillating contribution to the output. I can't see any reason why viral containment responses wouldn't have potential interventions in any of those categories, and there are several good reasons why it's likely, perhaps chief among them that effectiveness of control in any system relies heavily on good data feedback. > You're just assigning meaning to random noise. First and foremost I'm describing distinctions between characteristics that show up in the plots you brought to the discussion. Those distinctions aren't speculation, they're there. Your attribution of them to "random noise" is at best just as much speculation as my attribution to intervention differences is. And considering how smooth some of those exponentials are there is almost certainly something functional rather than noisy going on behind them, whether it's something I've already mentioned related to containment efforts, or something else like differences in how continuity of social contact works in parts of the world represented by noisier graphs.

leereeves 7y ago

The NY Times has some great charts showing the number of new cases each day for many nations. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronavirus-flatten-the-curve-countries.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/world/coronav... The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan. If I mixed up the charts for the US and other nations except those and Italy (which is much worse), you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. So when you say: > The US government is definitely responsible for the policy responses in the US that have shaped the course of its emergence here. I wonder what you mean. The shape of its emergence here is exactly like the shape of its emergence in a dozen other countries.

agurk 7y ago
From that NY Times article Denmark has an interesting shaped curve that might cause the casual observer to think it's been brought under control. Denmark were very good at testing widely initially and have subsequently changed the criteria for who gets tested to only be for those presenting with acute symptoms. I haven't been able to find out why they changed but my assumption is limited testing capacity and they're preparing for an increase in the number of cases so want to prioritise. I will be very interested at the end of this to see how Denmark's response is rated, but it does feel like they have been among the better performers globally.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  https://politi.dk/en/coronavirus-in-denmark/frequently-asked-questions https://politi.dk/en/coronavirus-in-denmark/frequently-asked... That page has the official advice for Denmark, but not necessarily the underlying reasons. I assume there's a limited supply of tests, and they need to keep enough in stock for predicted future serious cases.
- Magnap 7y ago
  Dane here. Yes, it's because of limited testing capacity (new machines arrived recently and they are ramping up to 1000 tests per day, additional capacity will among other things go to surveillance of cases with mild symptoms, modeled on our existing system for influenza-like illness surveillance where samples are, well, sampled among a specific subset of GPs), but it's not only those with severe symptoms who are tested, it's anyone who is hospitalized (which also includes members of vulnerable populations with only moderate symptoms) and health care workers, with the goal being to prevent hospital-acquired infections. In a single sentence, the strategy could be summed up as "people who aren't in the hospital should assume it's COVID-19 if they have symptoms and act accordingly, but once they get to the hospital we can't afford to assume".
wwweston 7y ago
> The only countries that appear to have handled it better are South Korea and Japan. How many better examples would it take before one concludes that it's possible to have done better and there is a responsibility to do so? I'd say one is adequate. > If I mixed up the charts for the US and other nations except those and Italy (which is much worse), you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. Take off the labels and I'd absolutely be able to tell that the countries are divided among: * those that have a simple exponential curve that tells a story of no effective intervention * those that have a noisier exponential curve, which suggests a story of either partially effective interventions or some confounding factor * those that have peaks and valleys, suggesting a story of moving towards containment and then hitting setbacks * those that have apparently peaked, suggesting a story of effective containment efforts And we already know which category the US belongs in.
- leereeves 7y ago
  This is daily data. The effectiveness of interventions doesn't change every day. You're just assigning meaning to random noise. I agree it's possible to do better and we should learn from other nations, but I think it's unrealistic to expect that USA be #1 in everything. Sometimes other nations will do better.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    > This is daily data. The effectiveness of interventions doesn't change every day. There's many endeavors in which the effectiveness of interventions can change daily, either with the conscientiousness of application, or in changing conditions that need response. On top of that, there's all kinds of systems where an intervention can introduce an oscillating contribution to the output. I can't see any reason why viral containment responses wouldn't have potential interventions in any of those categories, and there are several good reasons why it's likely, perhaps chief among them that effectiveness of control in any system relies heavily on good data feedback. > You're just assigning meaning to random noise. First and foremost I'm describing distinctions between characteristics that show up in the plots you brought to the discussion. Those distinctions aren't speculation, they're there. Your attribution of them to "random noise" is at best just as much speculation as my attribution to intervention differences is. And considering how smooth some of those exponentials are there is almost certainly something functional rather than noisy going on behind them, whether it's something I've already mentioned related to containment efforts, or something else like differences in how continuity of social contact works in parts of the world represented by noisier graphs.