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The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside this is a hard problem to solve. Some states are over reporting

The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside this is a hard problem to solve. Some states are over reporting some are under reporting, there just isn’t much consistency. And of course there is tons of political bias so who actually knows.

swiley 6y ago
Maybe Americans are just way less social than everyone thought? So there’s less viral load and less deaths.
adventured 6y ago
> The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside The US was fortunate to have considerable ICU capacity. That has kept the mortality rate far lower than it otherwise would have been had the US been overloaded to the extent that some other nations were. Immense ICU capacity is one of the reasons Germany faired so well compared to most other nations in Europe. By the time Italy and Spain were reporting a mere 20,000 cases, their healthcare systems were already crashing and they were forced to let older patients die because they didn't have the capacity to treat everyone. The same thing quickly happened in France and Britain as well, producing high mortality rates. Also, most European nations are dominated in terms of population by one or two cities, as a percentage share of the overall population. You can see this in the list of primate cities [1]. So if your national population is 50 million and you have a primate city the size of NYC, and it gets hit hard by the virus, it's going to produce an extreme mortality rate nationally. With the US, you see a far more spread out context because NYC as one example doesn't represent nearly so large a share of the national population, with the US having few hyper dense cities vs its 330m population and few major cities in the climate zone that was ideal for SARS-CoV-2 to spread. If Los Angeles had NYC's climate, it would have produced a horrific outcome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  I think we should set Italian stats aside. It turns out that they used nursing homes to bed corona patients, so the residents were wiped out. I'm curious why NY had such a bad time compared to SF. Was it because in a cold climate central heating circulated the corona virus droplets?
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    NY was afraid their hospitals would be overrun, so it sent their elderly covid patients back to the nursing homes. And then the nursing homes got wiped out. I'm not aware of this policy happening in SF.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      Interesting, first I heard that NY copied Italy. I thought it was winter HVAC and overzealous ventilator use, but yeah, that would do it. SF didn't really do anything, including testing, until very late, so we never needed more patient space, ironically. (We actually gave away 500 ventilators early on.) I believe that's due to many Bay Area residents shuttling between SF and China, essentially starting a very early herd immunity in Dec. The Santa Clara dashboard makes corona look like a seasonal flu - there's numbers, but nothing of concern yet. It was reported that at the end of NAMM on Jan. 24, planeloads of Chinese travellers disembarked at LAX, all wearing masks, so they knew what was up. (That was also the day Disney closed their Shanghai property due to corona.) https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/shanghai-disney-shuts-to-prevent-spread-of-virus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/shanghai-disney-shuts-to-pre... You would think closing a Disney theme park would catch the attention of the CDC or somebody in our government, yet here we are.
      - Consultant32452 6y ago
        Don't believe the hype. The CDC and government were taking steps all through January. Hindsight is always 20/20, so one might suggest certain things could've been done earlier, but it's not as if coronavirus was being ignored. Jan 3: CDC Director Redfield formally requests permission to send experts to China to investigate the new virus Jan 5: CDC Director Redfield repeats formal request Jan 6: CDC issued level 1 travel notice for Wuhan Jan 7: CDC established coronavirus incident management system Jan 11: CDC updated a Level 1 health notice for Wuhan Jan 17: CDC began public health entry screening at 3 US airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan Jan 20: Fauci announces NIH is working on vaccine Jan 21: CDC activates emergency operations center to provide support for coronavirus response Jan 23: CDC sought "special emergency authorization" from the FDA to allow states to use newly developed coronavirus test Jan 27: Trump tweeted he made an offer to Xi Jinping to send experts to China Jan 27: CDC issues level 3 travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China Jan 27: White House Coronavirus Task Force had its first meeting. Jan 31: Trump declared coronavirus a public health emergency, announced Chinese travel restrictions ... the actions just get more aggressive from here
- Aloha 6y ago
  In most large cities, hospital infrastructure is overbuilt by a factor of like two.
- cameronh90 6y ago
  The UK’s ICUs did not get overwhelmed, even in London. A few individual hospitals came close for a few days, but on the whole the hospitals coped fine and actually spent most of the crisis well below their usual occupancy levels. Why exactly (or even if) our mortality rate is high is still an open question.

swiley 6y ago

Maybe Americans are just way less social than everyone thought? So there’s less viral load and less deaths.

adventured 6y ago

> The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside The US was fortunate to have considerable ICU capacity. That has kept the mortality rate far lower than it otherwise would have been had the US been overloaded to the extent that some other nations were. Immense ICU capacity is one of the reasons Germany faired so well compared to most other nations in Europe. By the time Italy and Spain were reporting a mere 20,000 cases, their healthcare systems were already crashing and they were forced to let older patients die because they didn't have the capacity to treat everyone. The same thing quickly happened in France and Britain as well, producing high mortality rates. Also, most European nations are dominated in terms of population by one or two cities, as a percentage share of the overall population. You can see this in the list of primate cities [1]. So if your national population is 50 million and you have a primate city the size of NYC, and it gets hit hard by the virus, it's going to produce an extreme mortality rate nationally. With the US, you see a far more spread out context because NYC as one example doesn't represent nearly so large a share of the national population, with the US having few hyper dense cities vs its 330m population and few major cities in the climate zone that was ideal for SARS-CoV-2 to spread. If Los Angeles had NYC's climate, it would have produced a horrific outcome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city

redis_mlc 6y ago
I think we should set Italian stats aside. It turns out that they used nursing homes to bed corona patients, so the residents were wiped out. I'm curious why NY had such a bad time compared to SF. Was it because in a cold climate central heating circulated the corona virus droplets?
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  NY was afraid their hospitals would be overrun, so it sent their elderly covid patients back to the nursing homes. And then the nursing homes got wiped out. I'm not aware of this policy happening in SF.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Interesting, first I heard that NY copied Italy. I thought it was winter HVAC and overzealous ventilator use, but yeah, that would do it. SF didn't really do anything, including testing, until very late, so we never needed more patient space, ironically. (We actually gave away 500 ventilators early on.) I believe that's due to many Bay Area residents shuttling between SF and China, essentially starting a very early herd immunity in Dec. The Santa Clara dashboard makes corona look like a seasonal flu - there's numbers, but nothing of concern yet. It was reported that at the end of NAMM on Jan. 24, planeloads of Chinese travellers disembarked at LAX, all wearing masks, so they knew what was up. (That was also the day Disney closed their Shanghai property due to corona.) https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/shanghai-disney-shuts-to-prevent-spread-of-virus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/shanghai-disney-shuts-to-pre... You would think closing a Disney theme park would catch the attention of the CDC or somebody in our government, yet here we are.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      Don't believe the hype. The CDC and government were taking steps all through January. Hindsight is always 20/20, so one might suggest certain things could've been done earlier, but it's not as if coronavirus was being ignored. Jan 3: CDC Director Redfield formally requests permission to send experts to China to investigate the new virus Jan 5: CDC Director Redfield repeats formal request Jan 6: CDC issued level 1 travel notice for Wuhan Jan 7: CDC established coronavirus incident management system Jan 11: CDC updated a Level 1 health notice for Wuhan Jan 17: CDC began public health entry screening at 3 US airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan Jan 20: Fauci announces NIH is working on vaccine Jan 21: CDC activates emergency operations center to provide support for coronavirus response Jan 23: CDC sought "special emergency authorization" from the FDA to allow states to use newly developed coronavirus test Jan 27: Trump tweeted he made an offer to Xi Jinping to send experts to China Jan 27: CDC issues level 3 travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China Jan 27: White House Coronavirus Task Force had its first meeting. Jan 31: Trump declared coronavirus a public health emergency, announced Chinese travel restrictions ... the actions just get more aggressive from here
Aloha 6y ago
In most large cities, hospital infrastructure is overbuilt by a factor of like two.
cameronh90 6y ago
The UK’s ICUs did not get overwhelmed, even in London. A few individual hospitals came close for a few days, but on the whole the hospitals coped fine and actually spent most of the crisis well below their usual occupancy levels. Why exactly (or even if) our mortality rate is high is still an open question.