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I'm not sure why you're singling out the US. The overwhelming majority of the countries didn't avoid it. And the ones that did, got lucky, either due to the low

I'm not sure why you're singling out the US. The overwhelming majority of the countries didn't avoid it. And the ones that did, got lucky, either due to the low population density, or due to the travel patterns. For the US to avoid it, they would have to shut down all travel at the beginning of January, when it was a small local infection. Once the infected Chinese people traveled to the US and Europe, it was game over. The numbers were small at first and mostly unknown, but that particular virus spreads so fast, within a month it became a problem, and within another month it became a huge problem. To avoid it in Europe and the US, the countries would have to severely overreact based on some (seemingly) small stats. Do you really want to do mass-testing every time there's a random outbreak in some other part of the world? Do you want to manufacture tens of millions of new tests because a few thousand got infected in Timbuktu? Is that a realistic approach? What we really need to concentrate on is the solution, which is biotech. We need to find an efficient way to stop viruses.

bacon_waffle 6y ago
New Zealand didn't "avoid it" either. We closed down our border, went in to physical isolation for a long enough period to get things under control, and implemented both a testing regime and contact tracing. None of these have been cheap or easy.
pmiller2 6y ago
Shutting down travel from China is exactly what the US should have done in January, as well as shutting down travel from anywhere that has a significant outbreak. Had we done that, we might have been able to contain the disease, or, at least limited the damage significantly. But, Trump was too busy painting it as a Democratic hoax to be bothered to do anything.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  Trump did shut down travel from China in January. He did it before many other countries.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Restrictions did not take effect until Feb 2.
  - sg47 6y ago
    That was not the only thing he shut down. The pandemic task force in 2018 for that matter.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  No. You don't understand. By the end of January the disease already spread to the US. It was in multiple random places. We knew of 7 cases, but by now we know there were tons more asymptomatic and barely symptomatic. And stop spreading fake news, Trump has never claimed the virus was a democratic hoax. He said the politicization of it was. Why would he close travel from China if he thought it was a hoax? You don't even think your fake news through.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    The disease was known to have pandemic potential for weeks before Trump did anything. He could have shut down travel in the beginning of January. But, he was too busy politicizing things himself, by calling Democratic criticism of his so called "response" a hoax. So, he waited until literally the last day of January to do anything. That's not fake news. That's reality. Here are his actual words: > Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. > One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. The antecedent of "this" is "the virus." This is what he said, buddy. Why don't you think that through while the death toll keeps going up?
  - sg47 6y ago
    You know that not everyone here is an idiot and can understand what Trump said right. Don't interpret Trump's words for us.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    Why would he have spent the month of February doing nothing except holding rallies and golfing if he didn't think it was a hoax?
roca 6y ago
The US could have a) shut borders generally to every country reporting COVID19 outbreaks, not just to China b) had an early, coordinated nationwide hard lockdown for a few weeks at least to stop the spread and buy time to identify outbreaks so they could be snuffed out c) not ignored the CDC's testing failures d) gone big early to pay/coerce companies to massively scale up production of tests/PPE/ventilators (the latter not needed as it turns out, but we didn't know that). Not very different from what NZ did. Probably would have worked, but even if not, at least it should have been tried. Undetected spread and even quite large outbreaks can be contained and eliminated. NZ did it. Other countries did it. Trump didn't even try.
mafm 6y ago
Here's a chart that pretty clearly shows how well the US is doing in comparison to the rest of the world: https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1256769252369072134 https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1256769252369072134 Live version of essentially the same chart here: https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries

bacon_waffle 6y ago

New Zealand didn't "avoid it" either. We closed down our border, went in to physical isolation for a long enough period to get things under control, and implemented both a testing regime and contact tracing. None of these have been cheap or easy.

pmiller2 6y ago

Shutting down travel from China is exactly what the US should have done in January, as well as shutting down travel from anywhere that has a significant outbreak. Had we done that, we might have been able to contain the disease, or, at least limited the damage significantly. But, Trump was too busy painting it as a Democratic hoax to be bothered to do anything.

_-david-_ 6y ago
Trump did shut down travel from China in January. He did it before many other countries.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Restrictions did not take effect until Feb 2.
- sg47 6y ago
  That was not the only thing he shut down. The pandemic task force in 2018 for that matter.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
No. You don't understand. By the end of January the disease already spread to the US. It was in multiple random places. We knew of 7 cases, but by now we know there were tons more asymptomatic and barely symptomatic. And stop spreading fake news, Trump has never claimed the virus was a democratic hoax. He said the politicization of it was. Why would he close travel from China if he thought it was a hoax? You don't even think your fake news through.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  The disease was known to have pandemic potential for weeks before Trump did anything. He could have shut down travel in the beginning of January. But, he was too busy politicizing things himself, by calling Democratic criticism of his so called "response" a hoax. So, he waited until literally the last day of January to do anything. That's not fake news. That's reality. Here are his actual words: > Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. > One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.” That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. The antecedent of "this" is "the virus." This is what he said, buddy. Why don't you think that through while the death toll keeps going up?
- sg47 6y ago
  You know that not everyone here is an idiot and can understand what Trump said right. Don't interpret Trump's words for us.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Why would he have spent the month of February doing nothing except holding rallies and golfing if he didn't think it was a hoax?

roca 6y ago

The US could have a) shut borders generally to every country reporting COVID19 outbreaks, not just to China b) had an early, coordinated nationwide hard lockdown for a few weeks at least to stop the spread and buy time to identify outbreaks so they could be snuffed out c) not ignored the CDC's testing failures d) gone big early to pay/coerce companies to massively scale up production of tests/PPE/ventilators (the latter not needed as it turns out, but we didn't know that). Not very different from what NZ did. Probably would have worked, but even if not, at least it should have been tried. Undetected spread and even quite large outbreaks can be contained and eliminated. NZ did it. Other countries did it. Trump didn't even try.

mafm 6y ago

Here's a chart that pretty clearly shows how well the US is doing in comparison to the rest of the world: https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1256769252369072134 https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1256769252369072134 Live version of essentially the same chart here: https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries