15 ms·

Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals

146 points by ericdanielski 7y ago

noads 7y ago
All the emergency managers did a great job posting videos and FAQs, which are completely useless now. We should have been building massive free clinics in every city starting two weeks ago. This is a failure of imagination.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
  More like two months ago.
  - VikingCoder 7y ago
    More like shortly after 9/11. Or after the 1918 flu. Or...
- saltcured 7y ago
  I would say it is a failure of communication, or coordination. There were plenty of observers recognizing the threat by the new year, but not enough to crystallize into a shared awareness and coherent re-prioritization of resources. In light of that, I think it is misguided to trash-talk any attempts at communication and outreach by people tasked to protect the public and who lacked the power to actually commit the nation to drastic course changes. As a layperson in academia, I certainly recognized the potential threat just from the news trickling out of China in late 2019. Meanwhile, I had colleagues who went ahead with business travel to Italy towards the end of February! There is mind-boggling inertia in the capacity for the public at large to internalize disruptive facts and ideas, and this inertia connects back through the body politic into representative leadership, who can be pinned down like Gulliver even if they are aware that action is required. A relative of mine works in security and risk mitigation for a large school district in CA. They were being briefed on the COVID-19 risk by their federal contacts in late January. They were scrambling to revise and organize appropriate disaster plans. Even with that, they struggled to steer the whole ship around to school closures in mid-March. Now, imagine that every large organization had to do similarly in the same timeframe, drawing mostly on extant resources. They could not all hire new staff, bring in specialists, or procure large supplies that were not already part of their general war-chest for unknown emergencies.
brenden2 7y ago
While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit off that day, how many require hospitalization, how these cases are affecting other patients, and a whole lot of other things. I'm still kind of on the fence about this whole situation. The panic is undoubtedly real and serious, but the seriousness of the virus itself seems questionable. I don't think we'll really know what's actually going on for a few more weeks or months.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I agree with your main point. That said, if we're okay with subjecting ourselves to propaganda that reduces the spread of covid19, these anecdotes might serve a useful role.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    They are useful to know, but they have one fundamental problem: they erode trust. Though it is up for debate on how much trust in the political system and mass media there is left in the US.
    - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
      Can you elaborate on how they (the anecdotes, I assume) erode trust?
      - rimliu 7y ago
qubex 7y ago
As an Italian (albeit one living abroad) I was expecting this, and hoping to be wrong. So much advantage, squandered.
beepboopbeep 7y ago
The American people are at the mercy of a rudderless death cult, and have increasingly been so over the past decade. It's coming to a head now. Oh, it seems I've been flagged.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  You will be down voted to oblivion for even suggesting this is a deep cultural and political problem with America. Because suggesting such a thing is uncivil here on HN.
  - pythonaut_16 7y ago
    No, because that suggestion is a strawman and doesn't contribute to the discussion.
  - claar 7y ago
    I doubt such sentiment is considered uncivil or rare. Everyone seems to agree that America has deep problems, but the nation is divided - and not just along party lines - about what those problems and solutions are. It's the useless complaining, labeling, and content-free comments that are uncivil.
- joshlemer 7y ago
  Is "death cult" just a fancy way of insulting people nowadays? Or is the US administration literally associated with a religious movement that worships death or the dead?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    The US Administration is now closely associated with the dominionist movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christ... > Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God. The Rapture, as interpreted by American evangelicals, includes a whole lot of death in an apocalyptic end to Earth.
js2 7y ago
The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their flu shot, right?
- Lewton 7y ago
  I agree, this event has also opened my eyes to how important the flu shot is
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    What about this event makes the flu shot more important than otherwise?
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      It has always been important.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      If you have taken your flu shot and get flu like symptoms there is now a larger chance that you are experiencing a mild Coronavirus. For you it's not that important a statistic, but if everyone had flu shots it would be beneficial.
    - lordnacho 7y ago
      Flu is so common that people don't realise simple things like washing your hands and getting the shot would reduce the cost massively. With Covid19 we can all see the cost, upfront and at the same time. I'm wondering if we could actually kill the flu by sitting still for a bit. Say we stopped the world, which apparently is a possibility now. Would that get rid of it? And if it would, would it be worth it?
dreen 7y ago
Judging by the history of most pandemics, I am currently more worried about the capacity of morgues than hospitals. Maybe this one will be different though.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  That's probably a little more easily solved. When things get ugly enough, humans have a tendency to skip all the polite rituals and start using mass graves.
  - ssully 7y ago
    In the case of morgue's they are already solving this by having air conditioned semi trailers parked by the hospital where store bodies until they can be moved.
    - cronix 7y ago
      And ice skating rinks
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Madrid already has already converted it's largest ice skating rink into a morgue... https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-24/madrid-starts-using-ice-rink-as-morgue-for-coronavirus-victims.html https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-24/madrid-starts-...
- simonh 7y ago
  There are potential options. Spain recently converted an ice rink into a temporary morgue. Decent cooling.
- robocat 7y ago
  Coolstores and refrigerated containers make ok morgues - first world countries don’t have troubles keeping sanitation standards.
- slazaro 7y ago
vnchr 7y ago
Well, that’s some fear mongering. The article is all anecdotes. Most of the nurses and doctors they talked to are anonymous sources. According to the AHA[1], there are 6,146 hospitals in the US. There are 68,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in the US, and 33,000 of those cases are all in New York—almost 10x more than the next states (4.4k NJ, 3.2k CA)[2]. I don’t know the rate of hospitalization for the infected, but symptoms are mild enough for home recovery for at least 80%. So this is bad in NY. But even the next most affected state, NJ, we’re looking at a worst case of ~880 covid-19 patients across 70+ hospitals[3]. Bad situation in NY. No need to say it’s like that across the whole US. - [1] https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-map-of-the-us-latest-cases-state-by-state https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/mar/26... [3] http://www.njha.com/media/316774/2014EconomicImpactReportFINALwtabsupdated.pdf http://www.njha.com/media/316774/2014EconomicImpactReportFIN...
- Luc 7y ago
  Doubling every 3 days.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- enchiridion 7y ago
  Remember the US is short on tests, so I would assume a greater than 20% hospitalization rate because only the most severe cases are being reported.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Mild cases aren't being reported either because none of them qualify for testing and couldn't get one anyway due to low availability.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    According to data from the COVID Tracking project, the hospitalization rate nationwide is a bit under 10%[1], with NY at about 13%[2]. No doubt they are missing some cases, since theirs is an exercise in piecing together multiple, manually-curated sources. It seems to be a good ballpark estimate, though. [1] https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ [2] https://covidtracking.com/data/#NY https://covidtracking.com/data/#NY
0x38B 7y ago
Pages with links to reliable sources, fact-checking: - "COVID-19 Resources for Reporters": https://www.sciline.org/covid https://www.sciline.org/covid - "More COVID-19 Resources for Journalists": https://www.sciline.org/covid/resources https://www.sciline.org/covid/resources On Twitter have been following: - @AdamJKucharski - Mathematician/epidemiologist at @LSHTM https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski - Kai Kupferschmidt - science journalist & molecular biologist reporting on COVID-19 for Science Magazine https://twitter.com/kakape https://twitter.com/kakape
Allower 7y ago
Its not mindblowing, if you listened to experts 3 fucking months ago. If you paid attention to abysmal quality of medical care in the US, you would have KNOWN this was INEVITABLE. This is NOT surprising! This is what anyone with half a brain and one eye open should have expected many months ago. Even years ago it was obvious we were not prepared for a sufficiently contagious viral outbreak.
falcolas 7y ago
Like most other for-profit enterprises, there is little incentive to maintain capacity greater than what is needed needed to handle the "average" demand. So when something exceptional happens, of course the capacity is inadequate. You can also (likely successfully) argue that this will also happen in a government run healthcare system, but the situation has certainly not been improved by capitalism as implemented in the US.
- makomk 7y ago
  Oh, it definitely happens in government-run healthcare systems. Remember how proponents of single-payer government healthcare in the US used to point to the amount of money that the UK spends on the NHS and argue that the US would save money by switching? One of the ways the NHS keeps costs down is by not maintaining excess capacity, meaning that even a moderately bad flu season is a major struggle.
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    Doesn't that apply to for-profit hospitals as well? In both cases, there is an incentive to avoid paying for excess capacity. The cost advantage of a single-payer system is in larger negotiation. A single person has no leverage at all in negotiating with a hospital. An insurance network has some leverage when negotiating with hospitals, but results in user-complexity trying to navigate the in-network and out-of-network agreements. A single-payer has a large amount of leverage when negotiating with hospitals, and can avoid price gouging from manufacturers.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  What data we have indicates that the US is going to have by far the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in the world, larger even than in China, a country with something like four times our population. So the unique way we do healthcare here is not looking particularly good.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
"To think that we're in New York City and this is happening," he added. "It's like a third-world country type of scenario. It's mind-blowing." Historically, when sexually transmitted disease outbreaks occurred in the US, social workers would ask for the names of everyone you had slept with if you were infected and they would contact them and screen them and treat them. This was effective in stopping outbreaks. We largely abandoned this approach after AIDS became a thing. In the US, AIDS was mostly a disease of IV drug users and gay men, both of whom were highly stigmatized populations. They understandably did not wish to give up the names of people they had slept with (or shared needles with). Although I think we got a lot of human rights gains out of the battle to protect those populations, the downside is that we largely abandoned a proven method for putting a stop to disease outbreaks. Instead, we now default to trying to find drugs and vaccines rather than trying to stop the spread via "social" means (for lack of a better word). There is a book called The Hot Zone that similarly describes non-medical/social interventions that helped stop the spread of Ebola. Among other things, tribal elders in Africa blockaded the roads so outsiders couldn't come in, they told their people "Don't go to the white man's hospital" because you go with a broken leg and die of Ebola and they began quarantining the sick. You were forbidden from leaving your hut. They would leave food on your front doorstep for you to provide for you. If it sat there for three days in a row untouched, they burned the hut down without going in to check if you were still alive. We are currently focusing a lot on ventilators. I've seen numerous articles on ventilators on HN and there are numerous projects trying to develop open source ventilators. Meanwhile, we are apparently largely overlooking noninvasive lung clearance techniques that can help with less extreme cases and may help prevent them from becoming such. In human history, epidemics tend to mostly get stopped with non-medical interventions. Yes, I know, there are states under lock down. I'm in one of them. But I feel I am seeing inadequate emphasis on prevention, changes in lifestyle, promotion of remote work as a solution, non-medical home care options so fewer people end up at the overwhelmed hospitals where care is getting rationed etc. I have been saying for some days now that high use of ventilators will promote a rash of antibiotic resistant secondary infections. There has been at least one article posted to HN that suggested that antibiotic resistant infections may be a factor in the high death rate in Italy. I think we can do better. I think that's not going to happen as long as we continue to worship medical intervention as the answer here. I think lifestyle and procedural changes are needed. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and prevention doesn't require you to see a medical professional or get prescribed anything, yet everyone acts like either that's not going to be effective or it is too objectionable to embrace or making suggestions of that sort amounts to practicing medicine without a license. ----- Previous comment about the history of AIDS in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658583 PDF version of The Hot Zone: http://projectavalon.net/THE_HOT_ZONE_Richard_Preston.pdf http://projectavalon.net/THE_HOT_ZONE_Richard_Preston.pdf Previous comments by me about about air clearance techniques and ventilators: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651884 To the people inclined to harass me and threaten to sic the mods on me for commenting here, the mods appear to be well aware of my comments and have already asked someone to please cease and desist harassing me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22660362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22660362
dt3ft 7y ago
Is there any data on how many people died which had no pre-existing medical conditions?
- dboreham 7y ago
  You probably need a "socialist" country to find someone collecting that data. e.g. : https://www.icnarc.org/ https://www.icnarc.org/
- gpderetta 7y ago
  Note that preexisting conditions include high blood pressure and diabetes. Turns out quite a lot of people have them.
- Redoubts 7y ago
  This twitter thread had some good info from NYC: https://twitter.com/ArmstrongDrew/status/1242648015959187456 https://twitter.com/ArmstrongDrew/status/1242648015959187456 > Another common trend -- 95% of people who have died so far had an underlying health condition ... BUT > Keep in mind those underlying health conditions include things like diabetes -- which affects about 10% of the U.S. population. Oh, and hypertension -- 29% of adults. And cancer, heart disease, kidney diseae, etc. That's a LOT of people. Not some tiny, sick fragment. -e- Direct Source ("Daily Syndromic and Case Data Update"): https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-main.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-main.page
VikingCoder 7y ago
It's weird, it's almost like this is following the exponential growth that literally everyone said it would.
- simonh 7y ago
  Not literally everyone. There were a few people writing it off as a 'scare' and a 'hoax'.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    For example, the president of the United States.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE "we lost nobody"
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  Our current political process follows a simple loop: 1. Experts describe the likely outcome of a course of action. 2. Those experts are declared to be frauds, their views labeled a hoax or fake news. 3. We implement the policy the experts were trying to warn us about. 4. The experts' warnings come to pass. 5. We learn nothing, and repeat the whole cycle with the next issue.
  - summerdown2 7y ago
    From 'Yes, Prime Minister,' a comedy show in the UK in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
de_watcher 7y ago
It was easy to see the future: you just look up on the wiki the evolution of numbers of confirmed cases in the EU countries.
- baron_harkonnen 7y ago
  Given that the US is now neck and neck with Italy to be the first country to have more cases than China, we have been wildly exceeding any estimates based on EU countries.
  - simonh 7y ago
    To be fair the US has a population more similar in scale to that of Europe than to that of any single European country.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Wouldn’t cases per capita be more important than cases total? And don’t cases recognized under back to testing? As in does anyone really believe Russia has zeros cases?
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    Bigger population means more movement and more points of entry so the absolute numbers are proportionally bigger. Growth percentages looked scary for several days. So probably there were indeed some differences in the ramping up of testing.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    The US's rate per capita is still only about 20% Italy's. For now.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  If America was willing to learn lessons based on data from Europe, we'd all have universal health care by now.
- fiftyfifty 7y ago
  Actually the EU is a great preview of where the US is headed in the next weeks: As of today so far (March 26th) the EU has about 237,000 positives and about 14,200 deaths with over 1,000 deaths in the last 24 hours so far. The numbers for France and Italy haven't been reported yet for the 26th of March so it's likely the totals by the end of the day will be somewhere around 250,000 positive cases and roughly 15,000 total deaths with close to 2,000 deaths in a single 24 hour period. It is not hard at all to see the US having similar numbers in the coming weeks.
williesleg 7y ago
Not really. Just NYC. Cuomo and Deblasio are assholes, didn't do enough when they had the chance. Heck, Deblasio had a Chinese parade a month ago. When EVERY state, including California, has it under control except NY, you gotta wonder.
TomMckenny 7y ago
Judging from the comments, explaining the severity of the epidemic is now politically charged. Epidemiologists and the medical field have made it clear we are _under_ reacting. But apparently some politicians want to down play the problem and their obfuscation is echoed in every corner of the web with great zeal and again drowning out reality. It's like the climate change denial phenomenon but at high speed.
- faitswulff 7y ago
  It's exactly like high speed climate change, from lacking the infrastructure and political will to do anything about it to missing our grace periods to act.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  The fact that we're more likely to listen to a politician (or a media figure) rather than someone who has spent the better portion of four decades studying a topic is one of the most existential threats we face. We need to figure out a way to get through the tribal mentality. Right now, a significant plurality (if not an actual majority) of people are more concerned about their side winning points than about effectively dealing with a crisis.
  - seph-reed 7y ago
    Seriously, what is the analogous computer science problem to this? Why is it that a lifetime of experiences, and I still draw blanks every time I try to figure out what to do about this stuff. I mean... everything minus scenarios which include massive amounts of death. Surely there's a better way though.
    - thomascgalvin 7y ago
      I don't think there is an analogy in computer science; that deals with data, and this deals with emotion. This is driven, as far as I understand it, by evolutionary psychology. It was an advantage to be "right enough, and unified" as opposed to "completely right, but divided", and an advantage to take care of "us" before taking care of "them." As a result, we are hard-wired toward tribalism. Smart people are able to set this aside and deal with the facts as they are, but we still have to overcome the initial, emotional surge that takes offense whenever something we hold true is challenged. One of the big issues is that people don't see immediate fallout from this sort of behavior on the national level. They vote for people who cut taxes for the rich and gut worker protections, but never connect that to their own financial ruin. The effect follows too far after, and too far from, the cause. Politics, as a result, is treated like football: root for your team, because the other team sucks. We might see some of that change as the bodies start piling up from COVID-19, but I doubt that there will be a larger societal change.
yters 7y ago
How often do our hospitals get overwhelmed by endemics?
mapgrep 7y ago
I am seeing a lot of comments on this story complaining that it is anecdotal or that New York is extraordinary and thus this is implicitly less important to people outside New York. I live in the city of New York and I think it's important that everyone nationally absorb what is happening right now and the "anecdotes" are important. By anecdotes, I mean, in particular the New York Times story and video published last night about Elmhurst Hospital in Queens (a very hard hit borough)(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-...). People are dying of Covid at this hospital in chairs or on floors ("Some have died inside the emergency room while waiting for a bed"). People are dying without their loved ones allowed or able to be present (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/opinion/coronavirus-hospital-visits.html?searchResultPosition=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/opinion/coronavirus-hospi...) (<--link is about Boston but Elmurst story above makes clear this is happening in NYC too, very much so). In his briefing yesterday the governor of New York discussed people sharing venilators (already happening per the Elmurst story) and bringing back retired doctors (horrifying given the risk to the old -- in China older working doctors were often kept off Covid wards). The morgues are filling up and they are building outfoor refrigerators to hold the bodies (this is in the Elmhurst story). People with babies due are giving birth alone without their partners (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/parenting/coronavirus-labor-birth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/parenting/coronavirus-lab...). People (including one in Elmhurst story with fever) are waiting multiple days outdoors (including rain) for a test and being turned away day after day after waiting all day. Why talk about this? Is it for clickbait? To be dramatic? Because we're certain the NYC scale problems will spread to less dense areas? No. It is because many many people in this country are continuing to not take this situation seriously. Many people (including relatives of mine on Facebook) think this is completely overblow, like the flu, not worth keeping people at home for given economic cost. Many of these people have already ignored the hard evidence, the numbers, the consequences. Talking about terrible things that are starting to happen -- "anecdotes" -- may help shake some of these people out of their denial. And if they are prepared, and IF anything approaching NYC scale problems happens in their area, there is a better chance they will help rather than hinder efforts to flatten the curve. Please don't dismiss what is happening here as anecdote or irrelevant. Believe me, I'm no better than you, I did this too, when this was "just" in Wuhan, or "just" in China, or "just" in Italy. I took a trip at the end of February in the U.S. on an airplane. I look back -- what was I thinking?! Now I'm locked in my apartment going on three weeks. My wife had a fever for 6 hours a little over a week ago, she's been coughing. Probably we're ok. But it's in the back of your head: What if I get sick, and she gets worse, who will take care of our kids? What if they close the stores and we can't get groceries? I wish some of the anecdotes had reached me earlier. I hope some of these anecdotes reach others.
yters 7y ago
another question i have is are positive tests being sent to icu even if the symptoms are not bad?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Not here in Rochester, NY. Our ICUs aren't full yet, and the county is giving "number hospitalized" and "number in ICU" distinct numbers. Ours are about 50% ICU right now. https://twitter.com/CountyExecBello/status/1243183484509786113 https://twitter.com/CountyExecBello/status/12431834845097861...
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  no.
Someone 7y ago
”The state is home to more than 6% of the world's confirmed cases so far” World population: 7½ billion. 6% of that: 450 million. Population of New York State: 20 million. ⇒ overrepresentation factor: 22½. Open question: how much of that is due to more testing being done in New York State, compared to, say, India or Pakistan (large, less wealthy countries that may skew the statistics)
- codetwelve 7y ago
  Uhmm confirmed cases.. I don't know why you're calculating population.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    They're trying to calculate overrepresentation of US patients.
- jai_ 7y ago
  They claim 6% of confirmed cases not 6% of the world's population.
  - viklove 7y ago
    Yes, so 6%/22.5 is the percentage of cases NY should have, given a uniform distribution. They're overrepresented by 22.5x.
JohnTHaller 7y ago
It's bad here in NYC. I have multiple friends symptomatic after contact with confirmed infected. One knows he was in contact with confirmed infected because the one of their group that went back to Canada was tested there and came back positive. Of all of sick friends with confirmed exposure, only a single one has been tested and it's because he's currently in the hospital under quarantine on oxygen with a tentative pneumonia diagnosis. We just don't have test kits. My partner and I are both sick and self isolating. My friends who are nurses are saying it's bad where they are and they're running out of supplies. And we're not due to hit the height of hospitalizations for another 3 weeks. 911 in NYC is already at Sept 11th levels. Stay home, stay safe. Only call 911 in an emergency. Ignore the president, listen to epidemiologists and medical professionals. "anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful" - Trump, March 6
tim333 7y ago
What kind of amazes me about this is it was obvious this would happen if the US didn't test as many people as possible early on to catch the virus. Yet the CDC banned most labs from testing and when a researcher in Seattle tested against permission and found the virus spreading tried to cover it up. Why? Wasn't it obvious that that would result in the present mess? Why couldn't they have just said yeah, test whatever?
- smegger001 7y ago
  Because apparently even non evasive medial test are bound in ridiculous amounts of regulatory red tape and pointless bureaucracy by the FDA.

146 points by ericdanielski 7y ago

All the emergency managers did a great job posting videos and FAQs, which are completely useless now. We should have been building massive free clinics in every city starting two weeks ago. This is a failure of imagination.

jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
More like two months ago.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  More like shortly after 9/11. Or after the 1918 flu. Or...
saltcured 7y ago
I would say it is a failure of communication, or coordination. There were plenty of observers recognizing the threat by the new year, but not enough to crystallize into a shared awareness and coherent re-prioritization of resources. In light of that, I think it is misguided to trash-talk any attempts at communication and outreach by people tasked to protect the public and who lacked the power to actually commit the nation to drastic course changes. As a layperson in academia, I certainly recognized the potential threat just from the news trickling out of China in late 2019. Meanwhile, I had colleagues who went ahead with business travel to Italy towards the end of February! There is mind-boggling inertia in the capacity for the public at large to internalize disruptive facts and ideas, and this inertia connects back through the body politic into representative leadership, who can be pinned down like Gulliver even if they are aware that action is required. A relative of mine works in security and risk mitigation for a large school district in CA. They were being briefed on the COVID-19 risk by their federal contacts in late January. They were scrambling to revise and organize appropriate disaster plans. Even with that, they struggled to steer the whole ship around to school closures in mid-March. Now, imagine that every large organization had to do similarly in the same timeframe, drawing mostly on extant resources. They could not all hire new staff, bring in specialists, or procure large supplies that were not already part of their general war-chest for unknown emergencies.

brenden2 7y ago

While I'm not questioning the truth of these accounts, what annoys me about all these reports is that they seem to be anecdotes rather than hard data. It's really difficult to understand what's actually going on because the data sucks. It's hard to assess just how full hospitals are, which hospitals are at capacity, how many patients are actually testing positive vs. showing up at the hospital because they feel a bit off that day, how many require hospitalization, how these cases are affecting other patients, and a whole lot of other things. I'm still kind of on the fence about this whole situation. The panic is undoubtedly real and serious, but the seriousness of the virus itself seems questionable. I don't think we'll really know what's actually going on for a few more weeks or months.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
I agree with your main point. That said, if we're okay with subjecting ourselves to propaganda that reduces the spread of covid19, these anecdotes might serve a useful role.
- rimliu 7y ago
  They are useful to know, but they have one fundamental problem: they erode trust. Though it is up for debate on how much trust in the political system and mass media there is left in the US.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on how they (the anecdotes, I assume) erode trust?
    - rimliu 7y ago

qubex 7y ago

As an Italian (albeit one living abroad) I was expecting this, and hoping to be wrong. So much advantage, squandered.

beepboopbeep 7y ago

The American people are at the mercy of a rudderless death cult, and have increasingly been so over the past decade. It's coming to a head now. Oh, it seems I've been flagged.

throwaway2048 7y ago
You will be down voted to oblivion for even suggesting this is a deep cultural and political problem with America. Because suggesting such a thing is uncivil here on HN.
- pythonaut_16 7y ago
  No, because that suggestion is a strawman and doesn't contribute to the discussion.
- claar 7y ago
  I doubt such sentiment is considered uncivil or rare. Everyone seems to agree that America has deep problems, but the nation is divided - and not just along party lines - about what those problems and solutions are. It's the useless complaining, labeling, and content-free comments that are uncivil.
joshlemer 7y ago
Is "death cult" just a fancy way of insulting people nowadays? Or is the US administration literally associated with a religious movement that worships death or the dead?
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  The US Administration is now closely associated with the dominionist movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christ... > Studies show that white evangelicals are much more likely than other Americans to believe that Israel fulfills a biblical prophecy. Known as Christian Zionists, they believe God promised the land to the Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in Israel is foretold in the prophecy of the rapture — the ascent of Christians into the kingdom of God. The Rapture, as interpreted by American evangelicals, includes a whole lot of death in an apocalyptic end to Earth.

js2 7y ago

The 2017-2018 flu season also overwhelmed US hospitals: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2017-2018.ht... My point isn't that we should take Coronavirus any less seriously this year. Healthcare workers have no vaccine for it. It's on top of the flu. Etc. My point is that we should take the flu more seriously every year. Everyone gets their flu shot, right?

Lewton 7y ago
I agree, this event has also opened my eyes to how important the flu shot is
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  What about this event makes the flu shot more important than otherwise?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    It has always been important.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    If you have taken your flu shot and get flu like symptoms there is now a larger chance that you are experiencing a mild Coronavirus. For you it's not that important a statistic, but if everyone had flu shots it would be beneficial.
  - lordnacho 7y ago
    Flu is so common that people don't realise simple things like washing your hands and getting the shot would reduce the cost massively. With Covid19 we can all see the cost, upfront and at the same time. I'm wondering if we could actually kill the flu by sitting still for a bit. Say we stopped the world, which apparently is a possibility now. Would that get rid of it? And if it would, would it be worth it?

dreen 7y ago

Judging by the history of most pandemics, I am currently more worried about the capacity of morgues than hospitals. Maybe this one will be different though.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
That's probably a little more easily solved. When things get ugly enough, humans have a tendency to skip all the polite rituals and start using mass graves.
- ssully 7y ago
  In the case of morgue's they are already solving this by having air conditioned semi trailers parked by the hospital where store bodies until they can be moved.
  - cronix 7y ago
    And ice skating rinks
CaptArmchair 7y ago
Madrid already has already converted it's largest ice skating rink into a morgue... https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-24/madrid-starts-using-ice-rink-as-morgue-for-coronavirus-victims.html https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-03-24/madrid-starts-...
simonh 7y ago
There are potential options. Spain recently converted an ice rink into a temporary morgue. Decent cooling.
robocat 7y ago
Coolstores and refrigerated containers make ok morgues - first world countries don’t have troubles keeping sanitation standards.
slazaro 7y ago

vnchr 7y ago

Well, that’s some fear mongering. The article is all anecdotes. Most of the nurses and doctors they talked to are anonymous sources. According to the AHA[1], there are 6,146 hospitals in the US. There are 68,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in the US, and 33,000 of those cases are all in New York—almost 10x more than the next states (4.4k NJ, 3.2k CA)[2]. I don’t know the rate of hospitalization for the infected, but symptoms are mild enough for home recovery for at least 80%. So this is bad in NY. But even the next most affected state, NJ, we’re looking at a worst case of ~880 covid-19 patients across 70+ hospitals[3]. Bad situation in NY. No need to say it’s like that across the whole US. - [1] https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-map-of-the-us-latest-cases-state-by-state https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/mar/26... [3] http://www.njha.com/media/316774/2014EconomicImpactReportFINALwtabsupdated.pdf http://www.njha.com/media/316774/2014EconomicImpactReportFIN...

Luc 7y ago
Doubling every 3 days.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
enchiridion 7y ago
Remember the US is short on tests, so I would assume a greater than 20% hospitalization rate because only the most severe cases are being reported.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Mild cases aren't being reported either because none of them qualify for testing and couldn't get one anyway due to low availability.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  According to data from the COVID Tracking project, the hospitalization rate nationwide is a bit under 10%[1], with NY at about 13%[2]. No doubt they are missing some cases, since theirs is an exercise in piecing together multiple, manually-curated sources. It seems to be a good ballpark estimate, though. [1] https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ [2] https://covidtracking.com/data/#NY https://covidtracking.com/data/#NY

0x38B 7y ago

Pages with links to reliable sources, fact-checking: - "COVID-19 Resources for Reporters": https://www.sciline.org/covid https://www.sciline.org/covid - "More COVID-19 Resources for Journalists": https://www.sciline.org/covid/resources https://www.sciline.org/covid/resources On Twitter have been following: - @AdamJKucharski - Mathematician/epidemiologist at @LSHTM https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski - Kai Kupferschmidt - science journalist & molecular biologist reporting on COVID-19 for Science Magazine https://twitter.com/kakape https://twitter.com/kakape

Allower 7y ago

Its not mindblowing, if you listened to experts 3 fucking months ago. If you paid attention to abysmal quality of medical care in the US, you would have KNOWN this was INEVITABLE. This is NOT surprising! This is what anyone with half a brain and one eye open should have expected many months ago. Even years ago it was obvious we were not prepared for a sufficiently contagious viral outbreak.

falcolas 7y ago

Like most other for-profit enterprises, there is little incentive to maintain capacity greater than what is needed needed to handle the "average" demand. So when something exceptional happens, of course the capacity is inadequate. You can also (likely successfully) argue that this will also happen in a government run healthcare system, but the situation has certainly not been improved by capitalism as implemented in the US.

makomk 7y ago
Oh, it definitely happens in government-run healthcare systems. Remember how proponents of single-payer government healthcare in the US used to point to the amount of money that the UK spends on the NHS and argue that the US would save money by switching? One of the ways the NHS keeps costs down is by not maintaining excess capacity, meaning that even a moderately bad flu season is a major struggle.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Doesn't that apply to for-profit hospitals as well? In both cases, there is an incentive to avoid paying for excess capacity. The cost advantage of a single-payer system is in larger negotiation. A single person has no leverage at all in negotiating with a hospital. An insurance network has some leverage when negotiating with hospitals, but results in user-complexity trying to navigate the in-network and out-of-network agreements. A single-payer has a large amount of leverage when negotiating with hospitals, and can avoid price gouging from manufacturers.
smacktoward 7y ago
What data we have indicates that the US is going to have by far the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in the world, larger even than in China, a country with something like four times our population. So the unique way we do healthcare here is not looking particularly good.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

"To think that we're in New York City and this is happening," he added. "It's like a third-world country type of scenario. It's mind-blowing." Historically, when sexually transmitted disease outbreaks occurred in the US, social workers would ask for the names of everyone you had slept with if you were infected and they would contact them and screen them and treat them. This was effective in stopping outbreaks. We largely abandoned this approach after AIDS became a thing. In the US, AIDS was mostly a disease of IV drug users and gay men, both of whom were highly stigmatized populations. They understandably did not wish to give up the names of people they had slept with (or shared needles with). Although I think we got a lot of human rights gains out of the battle to protect those populations, the downside is that we largely abandoned a proven method for putting a stop to disease outbreaks. Instead, we now default to trying to find drugs and vaccines rather than trying to stop the spread via "social" means (for lack of a better word). There is a book called The Hot Zone that similarly describes non-medical/social interventions that helped stop the spread of Ebola. Among other things, tribal elders in Africa blockaded the roads so outsiders couldn't come in, they told their people "Don't go to the white man's hospital" because you go with a broken leg and die of Ebola and they began quarantining the sick. You were forbidden from leaving your hut. They would leave food on your front doorstep for you to provide for you. If it sat there for three days in a row untouched, they burned the hut down without going in to check if you were still alive. We are currently focusing a lot on ventilators. I've seen numerous articles on ventilators on HN and there are numerous projects trying to develop open source ventilators. Meanwhile, we are apparently largely overlooking noninvasive lung clearance techniques that can help with less extreme cases and may help prevent them from becoming such. In human history, epidemics tend to mostly get stopped with non-medical interventions. Yes, I know, there are states under lock down. I'm in one of them. But I feel I am seeing inadequate emphasis on prevention, changes in lifestyle, promotion of remote work as a solution, non-medical home care options so fewer people end up at the overwhelmed hospitals where care is getting rationed etc. I have been saying for some days now that high use of ventilators will promote a rash of antibiotic resistant secondary infections. There has been at least one article posted to HN that suggested that antibiotic resistant infections may be a factor in the high death rate in Italy. I think we can do better. I think that's not going to happen as long as we continue to worship medical intervention as the answer here. I think lifestyle and procedural changes are needed. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and prevention doesn't require you to see a medical professional or get prescribed anything, yet everyone acts like either that's not going to be effective or it is too objectionable to embrace or making suggestions of that sort amounts to practicing medicine without a license. ----- Previous comment about the history of AIDS in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22658583 PDF version of The Hot Zone: http://projectavalon.net/THE_HOT_ZONE_Richard_Preston.pdf http://projectavalon.net/THE_HOT_ZONE_Richard_Preston.pdf Previous comments by me about about air clearance techniques and ventilators: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22651884 To the people inclined to harass me and threaten to sic the mods on me for commenting here, the mods appear to be well aware of my comments and have already asked someone to please cease and desist harassing me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22660362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22660362

dt3ft 7y ago

Is there any data on how many people died which had no pre-existing medical conditions?

dboreham 7y ago
You probably need a "socialist" country to find someone collecting that data. e.g. : https://www.icnarc.org/ https://www.icnarc.org/
gpderetta 7y ago
Note that preexisting conditions include high blood pressure and diabetes. Turns out quite a lot of people have them.
Redoubts 7y ago
This twitter thread had some good info from NYC: https://twitter.com/ArmstrongDrew/status/1242648015959187456 https://twitter.com/ArmstrongDrew/status/1242648015959187456 > Another common trend -- 95% of people who have died so far had an underlying health condition ... BUT > Keep in mind those underlying health conditions include things like diabetes -- which affects about 10% of the U.S. population. Oh, and hypertension -- 29% of adults. And cancer, heart disease, kidney diseae, etc. That's a LOT of people. Not some tiny, sick fragment. -e- Direct Source ("Daily Syndromic and Case Data Update"): https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-main.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-main.page

VikingCoder 7y ago

It's weird, it's almost like this is following the exponential growth that literally everyone said it would.

simonh 7y ago
Not literally everyone. There were a few people writing it off as a 'scare' and a 'hoax'.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  For example, the president of the United States.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TZ6fTYrsE "we lost nobody"
thomascgalvin 7y ago
Our current political process follows a simple loop: 1. Experts describe the likely outcome of a course of action. 2. Those experts are declared to be frauds, their views labeled a hoax or fake news. 3. We implement the policy the experts were trying to warn us about. 4. The experts' warnings come to pass. 5. We learn nothing, and repeat the whole cycle with the next issue.
- summerdown2 7y ago
  From 'Yes, Prime Minister,' a comedy show in the UK in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

de_watcher 7y ago

It was easy to see the future: you just look up on the wiki the evolution of numbers of confirmed cases in the EU countries.

baron_harkonnen 7y ago
Given that the US is now neck and neck with Italy to be the first country to have more cases than China, we have been wildly exceeding any estimates based on EU countries.
- simonh 7y ago
  To be fair the US has a population more similar in scale to that of Europe than to that of any single European country.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Wouldn’t cases per capita be more important than cases total? And don’t cases recognized under back to testing? As in does anyone really believe Russia has zeros cases?
- de_watcher 7y ago
  Bigger population means more movement and more points of entry so the absolute numbers are proportionally bigger. Growth percentages looked scary for several days. So probably there were indeed some differences in the ramping up of testing.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  The US's rate per capita is still only about 20% Italy's. For now.
thomascgalvin 7y ago
If America was willing to learn lessons based on data from Europe, we'd all have universal health care by now.
fiftyfifty 7y ago
Actually the EU is a great preview of where the US is headed in the next weeks: As of today so far (March 26th) the EU has about 237,000 positives and about 14,200 deaths with over 1,000 deaths in the last 24 hours so far. The numbers for France and Italy haven't been reported yet for the 26th of March so it's likely the totals by the end of the day will be somewhere around 250,000 positive cases and roughly 15,000 total deaths with close to 2,000 deaths in a single 24 hour period. It is not hard at all to see the US having similar numbers in the coming weeks.

williesleg 7y ago

Not really. Just NYC. Cuomo and Deblasio are assholes, didn't do enough when they had the chance. Heck, Deblasio had a Chinese parade a month ago. When EVERY state, including California, has it under control except NY, you gotta wonder.

TomMckenny 7y ago

Judging from the comments, explaining the severity of the epidemic is now politically charged. Epidemiologists and the medical field have made it clear we are _under_ reacting. But apparently some politicians want to down play the problem and their obfuscation is echoed in every corner of the web with great zeal and again drowning out reality. It's like the climate change denial phenomenon but at high speed.

faitswulff 7y ago
It's exactly like high speed climate change, from lacking the infrastructure and political will to do anything about it to missing our grace periods to act.
thomascgalvin 7y ago
The fact that we're more likely to listen to a politician (or a media figure) rather than someone who has spent the better portion of four decades studying a topic is one of the most existential threats we face. We need to figure out a way to get through the tribal mentality. Right now, a significant plurality (if not an actual majority) of people are more concerned about their side winning points than about effectively dealing with a crisis.
- seph-reed 7y ago
  Seriously, what is the analogous computer science problem to this? Why is it that a lifetime of experiences, and I still draw blanks every time I try to figure out what to do about this stuff. I mean... everything minus scenarios which include massive amounts of death. Surely there's a better way though.
  - thomascgalvin 7y ago
    I don't think there is an analogy in computer science; that deals with data, and this deals with emotion. This is driven, as far as I understand it, by evolutionary psychology. It was an advantage to be "right enough, and unified" as opposed to "completely right, but divided", and an advantage to take care of "us" before taking care of "them." As a result, we are hard-wired toward tribalism. Smart people are able to set this aside and deal with the facts as they are, but we still have to overcome the initial, emotional surge that takes offense whenever something we hold true is challenged. One of the big issues is that people don't see immediate fallout from this sort of behavior on the national level. They vote for people who cut taxes for the rich and gut worker protections, but never connect that to their own financial ruin. The effect follows too far after, and too far from, the cause. Politics, as a result, is treated like football: root for your team, because the other team sucks. We might see some of that change as the bodies start piling up from COVID-19, but I doubt that there will be a larger societal change.

yters 7y ago

How often do our hospitals get overwhelmed by endemics?

mapgrep 7y ago

I am seeing a lot of comments on this story complaining that it is anecdotal or that New York is extraordinary and thus this is implicitly less important to people outside New York. I live in the city of New York and I think it's important that everyone nationally absorb what is happening right now and the "anecdotes" are important. By anecdotes, I mean, in particular the New York Times story and video published last night about Elmhurst Hospital in Queens (a very hard hit borough)(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-...). People are dying of Covid at this hospital in chairs or on floors ("Some have died inside the emergency room while waiting for a bed"). People are dying without their loved ones allowed or able to be present (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/opinion/coronavirus-hospital-visits.html?searchResultPosition=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/opinion/coronavirus-hospi...) (<--link is about Boston but Elmurst story above makes clear this is happening in NYC too, very much so). In his briefing yesterday the governor of New York discussed people sharing venilators (already happening per the Elmurst story) and bringing back retired doctors (horrifying given the risk to the old -- in China older working doctors were often kept off Covid wards). The morgues are filling up and they are building outfoor refrigerators to hold the bodies (this is in the Elmhurst story). People with babies due are giving birth alone without their partners (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/parenting/coronavirus-labor-birth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/parenting/coronavirus-lab...). People (including one in Elmhurst story with fever) are waiting multiple days outdoors (including rain) for a test and being turned away day after day after waiting all day. Why talk about this? Is it for clickbait? To be dramatic? Because we're certain the NYC scale problems will spread to less dense areas? No. It is because many many people in this country are continuing to not take this situation seriously. Many people (including relatives of mine on Facebook) think this is completely overblow, like the flu, not worth keeping people at home for given economic cost. Many of these people have already ignored the hard evidence, the numbers, the consequences. Talking about terrible things that are starting to happen -- "anecdotes" -- may help shake some of these people out of their denial. And if they are prepared, and IF anything approaching NYC scale problems happens in their area, there is a better chance they will help rather than hinder efforts to flatten the curve. Please don't dismiss what is happening here as anecdote or irrelevant. Believe me, I'm no better than you, I did this too, when this was "just" in Wuhan, or "just" in China, or "just" in Italy. I took a trip at the end of February in the U.S. on an airplane. I look back -- what was I thinking?! Now I'm locked in my apartment going on three weeks. My wife had a fever for 6 hours a little over a week ago, she's been coughing. Probably we're ok. But it's in the back of your head: What if I get sick, and she gets worse, who will take care of our kids? What if they close the stores and we can't get groceries? I wish some of the anecdotes had reached me earlier. I hope some of these anecdotes reach others.

yters 7y ago

another question i have is are positive tests being sent to icu even if the symptoms are not bad?

ceejayoz 7y ago
Not here in Rochester, NY. Our ICUs aren't full yet, and the county is giving "number hospitalized" and "number in ICU" distinct numbers. Ours are about 50% ICU right now. https://twitter.com/CountyExecBello/status/1243183484509786113 https://twitter.com/CountyExecBello/status/12431834845097861...
alasdair_ 7y ago
no.

Someone 7y ago

”The state is home to more than 6% of the world's confirmed cases so far” World population: 7½ billion. 6% of that: 450 million. Population of New York State: 20 million. ⇒ overrepresentation factor: 22½. Open question: how much of that is due to more testing being done in New York State, compared to, say, India or Pakistan (large, less wealthy countries that may skew the statistics)

codetwelve 7y ago
Uhmm confirmed cases.. I don't know why you're calculating population.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  They're trying to calculate overrepresentation of US patients.
jai_ 7y ago
They claim 6% of confirmed cases not 6% of the world's population.
- viklove 7y ago
  Yes, so 6%/22.5 is the percentage of cases NY should have, given a uniform distribution. They're overrepresented by 22.5x.

JohnTHaller 7y ago

It's bad here in NYC. I have multiple friends symptomatic after contact with confirmed infected. One knows he was in contact with confirmed infected because the one of their group that went back to Canada was tested there and came back positive. Of all of sick friends with confirmed exposure, only a single one has been tested and it's because he's currently in the hospital under quarantine on oxygen with a tentative pneumonia diagnosis. We just don't have test kits. My partner and I are both sick and self isolating. My friends who are nurses are saying it's bad where they are and they're running out of supplies. And we're not due to hit the height of hospitalizations for another 3 weeks. 911 in NYC is already at Sept 11th levels. Stay home, stay safe. Only call 911 in an emergency. Ignore the president, listen to epidemiologists and medical professionals. "anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful" - Trump, March 6

tim333 7y ago

What kind of amazes me about this is it was obvious this would happen if the US didn't test as many people as possible early on to catch the virus. Yet the CDC banned most labs from testing and when a researcher in Seattle tested against permission and found the virus spreading tried to cover it up. Why? Wasn't it obvious that that would result in the present mess? Why couldn't they have just said yeah, test whatever?

smegger001 7y ago
Because apparently even non evasive medial test are bound in ridiculous amounts of regulatory red tape and pointless bureaucracy by the FDA.