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In tests/capita US is 42nd. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

adventured 6y ago
> In tests/capita US is 42nd That requires that you compare the US to Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Falkland Islands, UAE, Malta, Gibraltar, Luxembourg, Bahrain, Estonia, San Marino, Cyprus, Isle of Man, Lithuania, Brunei, Qatar, Liechtenstein, Ireland, Latvia, Andorra, Channel Islands, Bermuda, Aruba. Nice try. Back on planet earth, here's the list of actual sane comparables that are in front of the US, in order: Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Russia, Canada And Russia is fake. They haven't tested much at all. The US has tested at a higher rate than South Korea (which is behind all of those tiny nations also). The US testing rate is just behind Belgium, a nation 1/29th the size of the US. And it's not very far behind Singapore at this point, either.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  This shouldn't be getting downvoted. Many of the countries testing "more per capita" have a lower population than cities that many here on hacker news wouldn't even consider "real cities". Scaling testing in the Isle of Man above the US only takes a total of 1100 tests. Of course they are testing more per-capita than we are.
  - rechristened 6y ago
    It's like saying that Saint Lucia has over 10 Nobel Prize laureates per million population but then finding out that the country has a population of 180,000 and that works out to 2 laureates in the country.
013a 6y ago
Sometimes, I feel like concepts such as these need to be translated into terms the average hackernews reader will understand. Let's say your key metric you're trying to maintain or improve is P50 request latency. Its relatively easy to exhibit an acceptable P50 to 10 users, from 1 VM. Its actually harder to deliver the same P50 to 100 users, from 10 VMs. Even harder for 1000 users and 100 VMs, snd so on. You run into previously fine bottlenecks you didn't know existed. Issues which were invisible at ten users become cascading failures at thousands. It just keeps getting harder the more users you add, even though you're adding proportionally more underlying VMs. There is no end to how difficult it gets, until eventually, it becomes impossible. Testing is a problem with difficulty that scales with population size. Of the top ten countries by population size, there are only two countries that have higher testing per capita than the US: Russia and China. Those three countries are pretty close; no one else, anywhere in the top ten, is remotely close to the US, Russia, and China. (Kind of funny how the top two testers in the top 10 countries by population are dictatorships, who have every reason to maintain a strong, powerful image. Funny how it works out like that, isn't it? Do you believe their numbers?) I run the fastest website on the planet. No one but my mom visits it, but its still the fastest. Lithuania (the world's top daily tester per capita yesterday) is that website. The US is, uh, lets say Google. Should you bemoan Google for taking longer to load?
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  > average hackernews reader > P50 request latency I for one don't even know what P50 means.
  - mkl 6y ago
    It seems to be jargon for "median". 50th percentile.
- Marsymars 6y ago
  Tests don't need to scale with population size of the country - many countries have healthcare that's not administered at the national level.

adventured 6y ago

> In tests/capita US is 42nd That requires that you compare the US to Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Falkland Islands, UAE, Malta, Gibraltar, Luxembourg, Bahrain, Estonia, San Marino, Cyprus, Isle of Man, Lithuania, Brunei, Qatar, Liechtenstein, Ireland, Latvia, Andorra, Channel Islands, Bermuda, Aruba. Nice try. Back on planet earth, here's the list of actual sane comparables that are in front of the US, in order: Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Russia, Canada And Russia is fake. They haven't tested much at all. The US has tested at a higher rate than South Korea (which is behind all of those tiny nations also). The US testing rate is just behind Belgium, a nation 1/29th the size of the US. And it's not very far behind Singapore at this point, either.

lostapathy 6y ago
This shouldn't be getting downvoted. Many of the countries testing "more per capita" have a lower population than cities that many here on hacker news wouldn't even consider "real cities". Scaling testing in the Isle of Man above the US only takes a total of 1100 tests. Of course they are testing more per-capita than we are.
- rechristened 6y ago
  It's like saying that Saint Lucia has over 10 Nobel Prize laureates per million population but then finding out that the country has a population of 180,000 and that works out to 2 laureates in the country.

013a 6y ago

Sometimes, I feel like concepts such as these need to be translated into terms the average hackernews reader will understand. Let's say your key metric you're trying to maintain or improve is P50 request latency. Its relatively easy to exhibit an acceptable P50 to 10 users, from 1 VM. Its actually harder to deliver the same P50 to 100 users, from 10 VMs. Even harder for 1000 users and 100 VMs, snd so on. You run into previously fine bottlenecks you didn't know existed. Issues which were invisible at ten users become cascading failures at thousands. It just keeps getting harder the more users you add, even though you're adding proportionally more underlying VMs. There is no end to how difficult it gets, until eventually, it becomes impossible. Testing is a problem with difficulty that scales with population size. Of the top ten countries by population size, there are only two countries that have higher testing per capita than the US: Russia and China. Those three countries are pretty close; no one else, anywhere in the top ten, is remotely close to the US, Russia, and China. (Kind of funny how the top two testers in the top 10 countries by population are dictatorships, who have every reason to maintain a strong, powerful image. Funny how it works out like that, isn't it? Do you believe their numbers?) I run the fastest website on the planet. No one but my mom visits it, but its still the fastest. Lithuania (the world's top daily tester per capita yesterday) is that website. The US is, uh, lets say Google. Should you bemoan Google for taking longer to load?

GavinMcG 6y ago
> average hackernews reader > P50 request latency I for one don't even know what P50 means.
- mkl 6y ago
  It seems to be jargon for "median". 50th percentile.
Marsymars 6y ago
Tests don't need to scale with population size of the country - many countries have healthcare that's not administered at the national level.