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"Justen Noakes: So when did we start looking at the coronavirus? Probably the second week in January, when it started popping up in China as an issue. We’ve got

"Justen Noakes: So when did we start looking at the coronavirus? Probably the second week in January, when it started popping up in China as an issue. We’ve got interests in the global sourcing world, and we started getting reports on how it was impacting things in China, so we started watching it closely at that point. We decided to take a harder look at how to implement the plan we developed in 2009 into a tabletop exercise. On February 2, we dusted it off and compared the plan we had versus what we were seeing in China, and started working on step one pretty heavily." Read the article. It is rage-inducing how much better a single grocer did than the federal government with all of its resources. January. Talking with counterparts in China. Executing on existing disaster plans (federal response had one, but ignored it https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n...).

mc32 7y ago
If it’s any comfort few governments have shown the same amount of forethought and attention to detail. Singapore has done well, but besides them there have been lots of missteps all over.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  The US has what is generally considered the worst COVID-19 response among developed nations.
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    Generally considered among who? Epidemiologists? Public health officials? Anonymous commenters on message boards?
    - res0nat0r 7y ago
      I'm going with "everyone" now that the USA is #1 at something as of today: The most diagnosed cases of any country in the world, even China.
  - something539953 7y ago
    Italy and Spain are not developed countries?
    - kube-system 7y ago
      The US is going to blow past Italy and Spain in a couple of days.
      - Tempest1981 7y ago
        The US passed Italy (and China) today. And Spain previously. Although only for cases, not deaths. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
        yibg 7y ago
        Number of deaths are delayed I assume. We'll see in a week or 2 if it catches up to Italy and Spain.
        adventured 7y ago
        Italy has a per capita figure six times higher than the US. Spain is five times higher. Switzerland is four to five times higher. France and Germany have per capita rates about twice as high (the French figure is much higher in reality, they're not testing anywhere near as well as Germany). Let me know when the US has six times the per capita cases of Italy, then we'll talk. Italy currently has a death figure roughly 40 times higher per capita than the US. If you scaled it to the US population, it'd be around 50,000 dead. Let me know when the US has a per capita death figure 40 times higher than Italy. Of course nobody wants to look at the disaster going on in the EU. The way the EU has entirely let Italy and Spain down. How Spain is having to beg NATO for supplies because their EU friends are leaving them to fend for themselves. The way China has helped Italy more than the EU. Some more things nobody wants to talk about: the extremely high mortality rates in Italy, Spain, France; the lack of testing in Britain; the lack of basic medical supplies across Western Europe, leaving doctors in Spain and Italy to work with bare hands and without masks; the hyper infection rates among healthcare workers in Western Europe due to poor practices and lack of medical gear; the shift to leaving patients over 60 to die because they can't help them any longer, producing the terrifying death rates in Italy and Spain. "Spanish army finds care home residents 'dead and abandoned'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52014023 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52014023 Bloomberg: "Spanish Doctors Are Forced to Choose Who to Let Die" http://archive.is/Caj7r http://archive.is/Caj7r "‘We are collapsing’: Virus pummels medics in Spain and Italy" https://apnews.com/7ec91dc45d8d7c2ea86b0a97446a303a https://apnews.com/7ec91dc45d8d7c2ea86b0a97446a303a "Israeli doctor in Italy: We no longer help those over 60. Dr. Gai Peleg told Israeli television that in northern Italy, the orders are not to allow those over 60 access to respiratory machines." https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-We-no-longer-help-those-over-60-621856 https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-... Bloomberg: "Europe’s Desperate Doctors Are Shielded by Trash Bags" http://archive.is/IRwpy http://archive.is/IRwpy Foreign Policy: "The EU Is Abandoning Italy in Its Hour of Need" http://archive.is/LXzxB http://archive.is/LXzxB “Old people [in Spain] have been abandoned in an astonishing way,” said Carmen Flores, head of patient rights group Defensor del Paciente. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-emergency/two-more-weeks-of-lockdown-as-spains-coronavirus-crisis-worsens-idUSKBN21D0RH https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
  - malandrew 7y ago
    On a per capita basis, the US is at 20% of where Italy is.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      Italy is also A. Doing far more testing B. Further along the pandemic curve Give it another week or two and you'll see how bad things are really going to be.
    - malandrew 7y ago
      Great visualization and one is a population normalized graph: http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
    - jbay808 7y ago
      That's a few more doubling periods away.
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      So like a week or two behind. Exponential growth is fast and idk how well we're doing at stopping it
  - CraigJPerry 7y ago
    I don’t think the US as a whole, NY seems to have its finger out. Testing really well too.
    - _delirium 7y ago
      NY has done more widespread testing than most states, but lost a lot of time ramping up its hospital capacity (beds, staffing, and equipment). Cuomo issued an order to do that only on Feburary 26. I could imagine not wanting to preemptively take stronger measures like turning convention centers into makeshift hospitals, but not clear why they weren't at least increasing stocks of PPE and generally getting better prepared for a possible influx of cases.
      - vikramkr 7y ago
        The rate of infectivity here is also reported to be far higher than elsewhere with really fast doubling rates, and early on we had no idea how much it had already spread because of the underdiagnosis and lack of tests. I think Cuomo just had no idea it was actually that bad.
    - heliodor 7y ago
      Good response now but slow to pull the trigger on the lockdown. People seem to have forgotten that already! Precious days were wasted before Cuomo finally called a lockdown.
      - halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
        Try winding down a city of 8 million in one day without instilling fear, panic, a run on groceries, etc. Taking three days to slowly get everyone working from home is sound especially when you're just starting to get a grip on the situation. I'm biased though, living in Queens.
      - throwaway32120 7y ago
        Yep. Just a week ago Cuomo was shut down the idea of shelter in place when de Blasio (who had been dragging his feet as well) was suggesting it[1]. This was a day after the Bay Area health officers announced a shelter in place order. He only relented when things really spun out of control. The fact that people like Cuomo are now being praised for the way they handled this suggests that we aren't going to learn the lessons we need to. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-blasio-andrew-cuomo-new-york-shelter-in-place-coronavirus-cnntv/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-blasio-andre...
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Even compared to China Communist Party who tried to suppress their own doctor's evidence of it and let it spread to the whole world And Italy, where 1 in 10K have already died?
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      China let it spread to the whole world? In some respects, China's initial response was poor. The government in Wuhan forced the doctor who was warning about the virus on social media to shut up, and it did not ban large public events quickly enough. In other respects, China's initial response was excellent. Immediately after the first suspicious cases of pneumonia were reported by local doctors in Wuhan, the Chinese CDC sent a team to Wuhan to investigate. China alerted the WHO just two days later. It then announced the discovery of a new coronavirus about a week after alerting the WHO. It published the genetic sequence of the virus two days after that. Two weeks later, it quarantined Wuhan, a city of over 10 million people. Two weeks may seem like a long time, but compare that to how long it's taken for governments in Western countries to take similarly drastic actions.
  - adventured 7y ago
    Italy and Spain have had far worse responses. Italy's mortality rate is over 10% right now, Spain's is at 7.5% and France's is at 5.7%. These are atrocious outcomes. Several Western European nations are seeing far higher per capita case loads and death rates. Several prominent healthcare systems across Europe have proven wildly incompetent so far, including Spain, Italy and Britain (which is barely doing any testing). The famed French healthcare system is proving barely able to handle what's going on there, thus their very high mortality rate.
- wahern 7y ago
  The U.S. Federal government's response is better characterized as willful incompetence bordering on maliciousness, than a misstep. NY Governor Cuomo and NYC Mayor De Blasio deserve special mention for cynically playing a game of chicken with each other, together with Trump, and the three of them with COVID-19; the losers are the poor people of NYC. I think the San Francisco Bay Area counties did a pretty decent job (not S. Korea or Singapore, but that's a high bar) and I'm optimistic that they've significantly bent the curve (that's what I see plotting the data), but can't be very confident until after this weekend.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    Cuomo's doing fine. He didn't have the data to know how bad it was because the CDC test crapped out, but once it became clear his leadership has been pretty good. No clue what deblasio is smoking though, going to the gym the day before quarantine etc. Never thought the governor would be more popular than the mayor in this state, especially governor Cuomo, but he's stepped up to the challenge
- azepoi 7y ago
  South Korea, Germany and Taiwan have done well. Most other countries really mishandled it. Denial until the last minute with no preparedness even when neighbour countries were already in dire situations.
  - screye 7y ago
    Must mention India in some sense too. Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved swiftly. It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But, even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi made good decisions.
    - satya71 7y ago
      Na, they're reacting too late. Given India's size and lack of healthcare infrastructure, they should have shutdown international travel and tested exhaustively early on. They let it get out of control and now are imposing a haphazard shutdown. The shutdown is needed, but there are too many reports of poor people going hungry for days.
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    South Korea, Taiwan and ... uh, China have done relatively well. They each have the virus under relative control. I don't see Germany doing anything well except testing. IE, they haven't controlled infecting, which is increasing exponentially[1]. Germany originally had an ideal seeming death rate of only 0.2%. But that was a rather illusory achievement that could be explained by finding all the infection but not stopping them (they're at 0.6% now, a significant increase and this will naturally continue increasing). By Tomas Pueyo's important calculation, one death implies up to 800 infections (1% death rate plus three weeks of doubling from when the patient contradicted the disease)[2]. So if you did find all those infections, you can see a very low apparent death rate but you wouldn't have reduced the actual death rate or the infection rate and you'd still be hurdling towards the situation of having so many cases your health system is overwhelmed and your death rate shoots up. Angel Merkel said 30-70% of the country might catch the virus, which is pretty much poisonous "herd immunity" Koolaid that Boris Johnson spouted (now that fatalities have spiked in the UK, he's singing a different tune and I hope Merkel will also). [1] https://cv19info.live/germany/ https://cv19info.live/germany/ [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
- malandrew 7y ago
  Singapore is tiny. It's an area 6 times the size of San Francisco with a border with passport control.
  - artificial 7y ago
    It's like praising Iceland for being able to turn on a dime.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    Sure, Singapore is small, but that’s not the main reason they’ve done so well. Singapore experienced SARS, which also took the lives of doctors and nurses in addition to their patients. That country’s healthcare system has been stress-tested in a way that most haven’t.
chrisco255 7y ago
The competence of private companies in the U.S. shouldn't enrage you, that's one of the U.S.'s strengths.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  I'm obviously enraged by the incompetence of the federal response, not the strength of H-E-B's.
  - jonfw 7y ago
    That's government work for you
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      Not everywhere though. Governments in Singapore, Japan, South Korea amongst other places have had an excellent response.
      - jonfw 7y ago
        I feel that the successes in those countries result more from their cultures than their governments. One of the common criticisms of those countries is the singular culture that creates social pressure. Social pressure can go a long way in these sorts of events. Taking these tiny, mono-cultural, rich countries and comparing them to the world's leading superpower does not make a strong argument.
        nicoburns 7y ago
        How do you explain the early government-enforced shutdowns, and expansive testing programs? I think the response from the general population has also been better in some of these countries, but there is a marked difference in the government responses.
        jonfw 7y ago
Reedx 7y ago
The failure goes well beyond just the federal government too. One example being NYC leaders and even health officials encouraging New Yorkers go participate in parades and other large gatherings through Feb and even into March, with messages of defiance against Coronavirus concerns: https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/1243033118044499975 https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/124303311804449997... Edit: Removed ventilator comment as that specific claim seems to be misleading, and it's not something particular to NY. Many governments weren't prepared for a surge. The U.S. as a whole had plenty of advanced warning about ventilator[1] and pandemic preparedness[2]. 1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/assessing-the-capacity-of-the-us-health-care-system-to-use-additional-mechanical-ventilators-during-a-largescale-public-health-emergency/024470506D2240869FA1AD94E8499438/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-an... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI
- ardy42 7y ago
  > New York was warned years ago that they didn't have enough ventilators and had the opportunity to stock up, but chose not to. That's misleading. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-trump/donald-trump-misses-key-facts-claim-new-york-gover/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-tru...: > A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a “severe” pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000 ventilators during the peak week. But the report did not recommend buying 16,000 ventilators [emphasis mine], and did not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to purchase them. > The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis, there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile. > The report said the state had to balance the likely ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses. And even if New York had bought them, they'd still be significantly short. Apparently current projections say they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-needs-ventilators-now-help-from-gm-ford-does-us-no-good.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-need...).
  - 7y ago
macjohnmcc 7y ago
I'm glad they took this seriously. I live in San Antonio and there are few options other that H-E-B for groceries so if they hadn't prepared this city would be in a world of hurt.
ubu7737 7y ago
To be fair, H-E-B is the best grocery chain in the whole country. Their produce is top quality, they don't use shopper loyalty cards at checkout, their prices are fair, and their selection of cheese and wine is simply wonderful. I've been to epicurean groceries and Whole Foods and Wegmans and all of them, H-E-B is simply the consistent winner every time.
hyperpallium 7y ago
A grocer is a dictatorship. I make sense of inexplicable government slowness as: avoiding panic (worse than a pandemic), yet OTOH most people needing tangible evidence before they'll take it seriously.
- systemvoltage 7y ago
  Yeah, people don't get this fundamental aspect of governments vs. companies. China is a company who's CEO is Xi Jingpin and it has 1.4 billion employees. US Government (and all other democratic governments) have to show and to convince the rest of the Congress that we need to shut America down. Not saying that US gov did stellar in this pandemic, but its harder than it seems. It is also unfair to compare governments to private companies with 5-10 magnitude of order difference in every aspect from finances to number of people.

mc32 7y ago

If it’s any comfort few governments have shown the same amount of forethought and attention to detail. Singapore has done well, but besides them there have been lots of missteps all over.

throwaway5752 7y ago
The US has what is generally considered the worst COVID-19 response among developed nations.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Generally considered among who? Epidemiologists? Public health officials? Anonymous commenters on message boards?
  - res0nat0r 7y ago
    I'm going with "everyone" now that the USA is #1 at something as of today: The most diagnosed cases of any country in the world, even China.
- something539953 7y ago
  Italy and Spain are not developed countries?
  - kube-system 7y ago
    The US is going to blow past Italy and Spain in a couple of days.
    - Tempest1981 7y ago
      The US passed Italy (and China) today. And Spain previously. Although only for cases, not deaths. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
      - yibg 7y ago
        Number of deaths are delayed I assume. We'll see in a week or 2 if it catches up to Italy and Spain.
      - adventured 7y ago
        Italy has a per capita figure six times higher than the US. Spain is five times higher. Switzerland is four to five times higher. France and Germany have per capita rates about twice as high (the French figure is much higher in reality, they're not testing anywhere near as well as Germany). Let me know when the US has six times the per capita cases of Italy, then we'll talk. Italy currently has a death figure roughly 40 times higher per capita than the US. If you scaled it to the US population, it'd be around 50,000 dead. Let me know when the US has a per capita death figure 40 times higher than Italy. Of course nobody wants to look at the disaster going on in the EU. The way the EU has entirely let Italy and Spain down. How Spain is having to beg NATO for supplies because their EU friends are leaving them to fend for themselves. The way China has helped Italy more than the EU. Some more things nobody wants to talk about: the extremely high mortality rates in Italy, Spain, France; the lack of testing in Britain; the lack of basic medical supplies across Western Europe, leaving doctors in Spain and Italy to work with bare hands and without masks; the hyper infection rates among healthcare workers in Western Europe due to poor practices and lack of medical gear; the shift to leaving patients over 60 to die because they can't help them any longer, producing the terrifying death rates in Italy and Spain. "Spanish army finds care home residents 'dead and abandoned'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52014023 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52014023 Bloomberg: "Spanish Doctors Are Forced to Choose Who to Let Die" http://archive.is/Caj7r http://archive.is/Caj7r "‘We are collapsing’: Virus pummels medics in Spain and Italy" https://apnews.com/7ec91dc45d8d7c2ea86b0a97446a303a https://apnews.com/7ec91dc45d8d7c2ea86b0a97446a303a "Israeli doctor in Italy: We no longer help those over 60. Dr. Gai Peleg told Israeli television that in northern Italy, the orders are not to allow those over 60 access to respiratory machines." https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-We-no-longer-help-those-over-60-621856 https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-... Bloomberg: "Europe’s Desperate Doctors Are Shielded by Trash Bags" http://archive.is/IRwpy http://archive.is/IRwpy Foreign Policy: "The EU Is Abandoning Italy in Its Hour of Need" http://archive.is/LXzxB http://archive.is/LXzxB “Old people [in Spain] have been abandoned in an astonishing way,” said Carmen Flores, head of patient rights group Defensor del Paciente. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-emergency/two-more-weeks-of-lockdown-as-spains-coronavirus-crisis-worsens-idUSKBN21D0RH https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-...
- malandrew 7y ago
  On a per capita basis, the US is at 20% of where Italy is.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    Italy is also A. Doing far more testing B. Further along the pandemic curve Give it another week or two and you'll see how bad things are really going to be.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    Great visualization and one is a population normalized graph: http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
  - jbay808 7y ago
    That's a few more doubling periods away.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    So like a week or two behind. Exponential growth is fast and idk how well we're doing at stopping it
- CraigJPerry 7y ago
  I don’t think the US as a whole, NY seems to have its finger out. Testing really well too.
  - _delirium 7y ago
    NY has done more widespread testing than most states, but lost a lot of time ramping up its hospital capacity (beds, staffing, and equipment). Cuomo issued an order to do that only on Feburary 26. I could imagine not wanting to preemptively take stronger measures like turning convention centers into makeshift hospitals, but not clear why they weren't at least increasing stocks of PPE and generally getting better prepared for a possible influx of cases.
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      The rate of infectivity here is also reported to be far higher than elsewhere with really fast doubling rates, and early on we had no idea how much it had already spread because of the underdiagnosis and lack of tests. I think Cuomo just had no idea it was actually that bad.
  - heliodor 7y ago
    Good response now but slow to pull the trigger on the lockdown. People seem to have forgotten that already! Precious days were wasted before Cuomo finally called a lockdown.
    - halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
      Try winding down a city of 8 million in one day without instilling fear, panic, a run on groceries, etc. Taking three days to slowly get everyone working from home is sound especially when you're just starting to get a grip on the situation. I'm biased though, living in Queens.
    - throwaway32120 7y ago
      Yep. Just a week ago Cuomo was shut down the idea of shelter in place when de Blasio (who had been dragging his feet as well) was suggesting it[1]. This was a day after the Bay Area health officers announced a shelter in place order. He only relented when things really spun out of control. The fact that people like Cuomo are now being praised for the way they handled this suggests that we aren't going to learn the lessons we need to. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-blasio-andrew-cuomo-new-york-shelter-in-place-coronavirus-cnntv/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-blasio-andre...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Even compared to China Communist Party who tried to suppress their own doctor's evidence of it and let it spread to the whole world And Italy, where 1 in 10K have already died?
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    China let it spread to the whole world? In some respects, China's initial response was poor. The government in Wuhan forced the doctor who was warning about the virus on social media to shut up, and it did not ban large public events quickly enough. In other respects, China's initial response was excellent. Immediately after the first suspicious cases of pneumonia were reported by local doctors in Wuhan, the Chinese CDC sent a team to Wuhan to investigate. China alerted the WHO just two days later. It then announced the discovery of a new coronavirus about a week after alerting the WHO. It published the genetic sequence of the virus two days after that. Two weeks later, it quarantined Wuhan, a city of over 10 million people. Two weeks may seem like a long time, but compare that to how long it's taken for governments in Western countries to take similarly drastic actions.
- adventured 7y ago
  Italy and Spain have had far worse responses. Italy's mortality rate is over 10% right now, Spain's is at 7.5% and France's is at 5.7%. These are atrocious outcomes. Several Western European nations are seeing far higher per capita case loads and death rates. Several prominent healthcare systems across Europe have proven wildly incompetent so far, including Spain, Italy and Britain (which is barely doing any testing). The famed French healthcare system is proving barely able to handle what's going on there, thus their very high mortality rate.
wahern 7y ago
The U.S. Federal government's response is better characterized as willful incompetence bordering on maliciousness, than a misstep. NY Governor Cuomo and NYC Mayor De Blasio deserve special mention for cynically playing a game of chicken with each other, together with Trump, and the three of them with COVID-19; the losers are the poor people of NYC. I think the San Francisco Bay Area counties did a pretty decent job (not S. Korea or Singapore, but that's a high bar) and I'm optimistic that they've significantly bent the curve (that's what I see plotting the data), but can't be very confident until after this weekend.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  Cuomo's doing fine. He didn't have the data to know how bad it was because the CDC test crapped out, but once it became clear his leadership has been pretty good. No clue what deblasio is smoking though, going to the gym the day before quarantine etc. Never thought the governor would be more popular than the mayor in this state, especially governor Cuomo, but he's stepped up to the challenge
azepoi 7y ago
South Korea, Germany and Taiwan have done well. Most other countries really mishandled it. Denial until the last minute with no preparedness even when neighbour countries were already in dire situations.
- screye 7y ago
  Must mention India in some sense too. Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved swiftly. It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But, even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi made good decisions.
  - satya71 7y ago
    Na, they're reacting too late. Given India's size and lack of healthcare infrastructure, they should have shutdown international travel and tested exhaustively early on. They let it get out of control and now are imposing a haphazard shutdown. The shutdown is needed, but there are too many reports of poor people going hungry for days.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  South Korea, Taiwan and ... uh, China have done relatively well. They each have the virus under relative control. I don't see Germany doing anything well except testing. IE, they haven't controlled infecting, which is increasing exponentially[1]. Germany originally had an ideal seeming death rate of only 0.2%. But that was a rather illusory achievement that could be explained by finding all the infection but not stopping them (they're at 0.6% now, a significant increase and this will naturally continue increasing). By Tomas Pueyo's important calculation, one death implies up to 800 infections (1% death rate plus three weeks of doubling from when the patient contradicted the disease)[2]. So if you did find all those infections, you can see a very low apparent death rate but you wouldn't have reduced the actual death rate or the infection rate and you'd still be hurdling towards the situation of having so many cases your health system is overwhelmed and your death rate shoots up. Angel Merkel said 30-70% of the country might catch the virus, which is pretty much poisonous "herd immunity" Koolaid that Boris Johnson spouted (now that fatalities have spiked in the UK, he's singing a different tune and I hope Merkel will also). [1] https://cv19info.live/germany/ https://cv19info.live/germany/ [2] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
malandrew 7y ago
Singapore is tiny. It's an area 6 times the size of San Francisco with a border with passport control.
- artificial 7y ago
  It's like praising Iceland for being able to turn on a dime.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  Sure, Singapore is small, but that’s not the main reason they’ve done so well. Singapore experienced SARS, which also took the lives of doctors and nurses in addition to their patients. That country’s healthcare system has been stress-tested in a way that most haven’t.

chrisco255 7y ago

The competence of private companies in the U.S. shouldn't enrage you, that's one of the U.S.'s strengths.

throwaway5752 7y ago
I'm obviously enraged by the incompetence of the federal response, not the strength of H-E-B's.
- jonfw 7y ago
  That's government work for you
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Not everywhere though. Governments in Singapore, Japan, South Korea amongst other places have had an excellent response.
    - jonfw 7y ago
      I feel that the successes in those countries result more from their cultures than their governments. One of the common criticisms of those countries is the singular culture that creates social pressure. Social pressure can go a long way in these sorts of events. Taking these tiny, mono-cultural, rich countries and comparing them to the world's leading superpower does not make a strong argument.
      - nicoburns 7y ago
        How do you explain the early government-enforced shutdowns, and expansive testing programs? I think the response from the general population has also been better in some of these countries, but there is a marked difference in the government responses.
        jonfw 7y ago

Reedx 7y ago

The failure goes well beyond just the federal government too. One example being NYC leaders and even health officials encouraging New Yorkers go participate in parades and other large gatherings through Feb and even into March, with messages of defiance against Coronavirus concerns: https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/1243033118044499975 https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/124303311804449997... Edit: Removed ventilator comment as that specific claim seems to be misleading, and it's not something particular to NY. Many governments weren't prepared for a surge. The U.S. as a whole had plenty of advanced warning about ventilator[1] and pandemic preparedness[2]. 1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/assessing-the-capacity-of-the-us-health-care-system-to-use-additional-mechanical-ventilators-during-a-largescale-public-health-emergency/024470506D2240869FA1AD94E8499438/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-an... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI

ardy42 7y ago
> New York was warned years ago that they didn't have enough ventilators and had the opportunity to stock up, but chose not to. That's misleading. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-trump/donald-trump-misses-key-facts-claim-new-york-gover/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-tru...: > A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a “severe” pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000 ventilators during the peak week. But the report did not recommend buying 16,000 ventilators [emphasis mine], and did not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to purchase them. > The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis, there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile. > The report said the state had to balance the likely ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for current and ongoing health care expenses. And even if New York had bought them, they'd still be significantly short. Apparently current projections say they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-needs-ventilators-now-help-from-gm-ford-does-us-no-good.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-need...).
- 7y ago

macjohnmcc 7y ago

I'm glad they took this seriously. I live in San Antonio and there are few options other that H-E-B for groceries so if they hadn't prepared this city would be in a world of hurt.

ubu7737 7y ago

To be fair, H-E-B is the best grocery chain in the whole country. Their produce is top quality, they don't use shopper loyalty cards at checkout, their prices are fair, and their selection of cheese and wine is simply wonderful. I've been to epicurean groceries and Whole Foods and Wegmans and all of them, H-E-B is simply the consistent winner every time.

hyperpallium 7y ago

A grocer is a dictatorship. I make sense of inexplicable government slowness as: avoiding panic (worse than a pandemic), yet OTOH most people needing tangible evidence before they'll take it seriously.

systemvoltage 7y ago
Yeah, people don't get this fundamental aspect of governments vs. companies. China is a company who's CEO is Xi Jingpin and it has 1.4 billion employees. US Government (and all other democratic governments) have to show and to convince the rest of the Congress that we need to shut America down. Not saying that US gov did stellar in this pandemic, but its harder than it seems. It is also unfair to compare governments to private companies with 5-10 magnitude of order difference in every aspect from finances to number of people.