Are the USA really doing that bad?

[Forgone90]

Now this is compared to the uk, not in general. People are going crazy currently with 60-70k new cases a day in the states.

However (and I'm happy for people to tell me my maths is shit etc) when we look back to June the 20th in the uk there was said to be an antibody positivity rate of about 6.8% with a 95% certainty of this.

That's 4.6 million of the population that have caught the disease between January 29th and June 20th (142 days). That is a crazy average of over 35,000 cases a day.

With that being the average, during our peak infection its likely our cases were anywhere between 60-100k cases a day. That's with our population of 66million. I wouldn't want to imagine how many cases and deaths we would have had if our population was 5x bigger like the USA. The simple maths says that our average cases would be 175k cases a day which is terrifying.

My point being tho that it doesn't really seem they are doing any worse than we were and most likely slightly better in terms of cases and much better in terms of death rates.

The most alarming thing out of this is that our reported highest daily cases was under 10,000 when it seems the average daily number of actual cases based on antibody figures was more than triple that number.

I don’t think we handled it brilliantly, I don’t think the USA are doing any better but nor do I believe that every other country is telling the full story. Unless every country is disclosing exactly the same information about testing, infection and deaths caused by or simply assumed how can we possibly compare countries accurately.

Well, deaths in the UK peaked on April 8th, and have been on a downward projection since then.
The shit is currently hitting the fan in several US states, especially Florida, Texas and California.
I would say that currently the future looks much better in the UK.

You would expect there to be far more transmission of cases in a country as densely populated at the UK. Just how it is transmitting at such levels in the US is pretty astonishing. NYC I could understand, but Texas? (Though I'm guessing mainly in Houston, Dallas, etc ?) So many "cities" in the US are tiny- I know "villages" in the UK of almost 20,000, but there are US cities under 10,000 population. Many places really are just small towns.

The figures for Florida are absolutely insane. If it was a country it would be fourth in the whole world for the number of new cases.

It's not a comparison of like with like. You're comparing an extrapolated position of the whole UK population with antibody testing to the reported number of absolute cases in the USA. Also, there is no doubt the UK did terribly but it is largely under control (for now), the US is in a lot of trouble.

Estimates are that for every one case testing positive there are another 9 cases that are not found in the US. Antibody treating helps find these cases. Although even that is unclear as mild/asymptotic cases may not get antibodies and may rely on t-cell immunity. US is in a mess, from a purely academic perspective it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

We are a long way from a vaccine still- we are still nearer the start than the end of this pandemic so there is plenty of time for everything to change.

You are comparing apples with oranges, @Forgone90

Either:

• compare UK reported cases with US reported cases

Or

• compare UK antibody rate with US antibody rate.

You are comparing UK antibody rate with US reported cases which is useless information. If the UK severely underreported cases, what is to say the US is accurately reporting?

@worstwitch18 I was only using that as in the uk you can only get a Test if you have symptoms, whereas in the US anybody can go and get a Test if they want one. So would guess the US would have picked up many more non symptomatic cases than we have.

They may have picked up more with those testing criteria but you have no real evidence for how many more.

You need to compare like with like.

Forgone you don't have to have symptoms to be tested in the UK.

But even with the wider criteria some states have an insane % of tests coming back positive.

Mind you we’ve got over 2 million tests we haven’t tested so fuck knows what’s happening here.

@Inforthelonghaul

I don’t think we handled it brilliantly, I don’t think the USA are doing any better but nor do I believe that every other country is telling the full story. Unless every country is disclosing exactly the same information about testing, infection and deaths caused by or simply assumed how can we possibly compare countries accurately.

Most public health experts and governments - including the UK - agree that the best comparison is of "excess deaths" i.e. the increase in total deaths from all causes compared to the historical average over the same period in previous years

The Financial Times and other organisations have produced charts for each country, see attached:

The UK has had about 65,000 excess deaths, one of the highest in the world,
but has been down to about the historical average for several weeks now,
hence it's time to reopen the economy.

(S. America has been hit hard, for both political and medical reasons:
e.g. Peru is having a bad epidemic of Dengue fever and 2 simultaneous epidemics have overwhelmed their health services;
Brazil has an irresponsible idiot as leader who refuses to take COVID seriously)

Looking at Covid deaths / million:

the USA has about 420
the UK about 660
Germany has 109

People / km2

280 UK
34 USA
233 Germany

. USA is imo performing poorly wrt the UK, because the UK has 8 x the population density

. USA has about 4 x the deaths / million as Germany, despite Germany having nearly 7 x the population density

@feelingverylazytoday

The figures for Florida are absolutely insane. If it was a country it would be fourth in the whole world for the number of new cases.

And how did Florida react? It opened Disney World 🤦

I recently got back to my home from Texas. It’s a shit show. Half of the counties and police refuse to enforce the mask rule because it’s against their beliefs. So many people still believe it’s a hoax by the Democrats and the Chinese, others think it’s just a common cold.

I was visiting a detention facility, and a third of the guards were out with coronavirus and it’s rampant in the facility itself. There were no tests offered as they had no facilities to quarantine people left, and they aren’t including jail populations in statistics anyway. Despite being there as a guest of the government and being exposed to three people with severe symptoms, they couldn’t get me a test before flying home as they had none available and results took 9 days anyway. Pathologists are rare, medical examiners often have no medical qualifications and deaths are simply being declared pending inquest or of natural causes despite symptoms. The numbers are under inflated, both in terms of cases and deaths.

I have informed my employer I will not be returning until after the pandemic, I cannot risk my family like that again. The whole state is a complete mess, and it’s not even doing the worst. I usually travel to war zones, and I never decline to attend, this is the first time I’ve ever done this.

news.sky.com/story/masks-push-the-fake-news-agenda-this-is-why-us-covid-predictions-are-so-dire-12021635

God bless....

Deaths will definitely pick up in the US if they carry on as they are. They are staring to trend upwards again after falling for a while (despite massive rises in Infections)

I think they will d worse than the UK in the long run. - assuming we don't forget all SD and hygiene measures,( which is admittedly looking more likely every day )

I have like most been absolutely devastated as to hear of the ever worsening USA Covid statistics. The worst Covid impact outside of PR China (nobody knows the real statistics in mainland China!) The UK is also possibly the worst European Covid nation!

I was previously based years ago in Santa Monica California but widely travelled throughout north and central America but now based in UK and so have a little insight into some superficial observations regarding healthcare in both nations. The main fundamental difference (apart from the obvious of geographical size, population size and densities etc) is that healthcare is essentially "free" paid for all inclusive NHS in the UK for the whole life cycle (bar a few exceptions). The US is opposite in that each citizen pays as you use the medical facilities and it is expensive for any care, diagnosis, treatment and medication. All this normally covered by US health insurance as part of a personal corporate package. In the UK it's all covered and "free" at point of use although many will have additional private health insurance as part of a corporate remuneration package (for employee and covering family members). A US emergency ambulance would cost possibly 500-1000 US$ in shock additional bill! So moral of the story is it is prohibitively expensive to have ongoing health issues in USA while it's all technically paid for by the tax payer in the UK. I believe this healthcare arrangement has some bearing on the general health of both populations. Of course in the US the lifestyle on the whole is pretty different in that convenience and eating super size portions of ultra processed fast foods and those with less nutritional but more junk content tends to be more common place. Home of the original fast food dinners and high calorie sugar chemical drinks (soda) and super size coffee to go culture also does not help as morbid obesity is alarmingly commonplace throughout America and less so in the UK.

On the Covid score both USA and UK is shockingly devastating but I suppose the UK has overall political leadership while it's polarised Wild Wild West stateside with seemingly the once in 100 year unique type of "president" who is not particularly fit for purpose arguably and hence the antagonistic state approach and resulting Covid outcomes. Dare I say the demographics speak for themselves but more obvious correlations in USA as just highlighted in Texas etc.

Good luck America and come on Boris!

That sounds just horrific Sergei
I sincerely hope you stay well

From what I’ve seen, heard and read in TX people are so stubborn and can’t see anything except their personal rights. They don’t care much for the good of the community. They and I include the police force, categorically stated when the county judge tried to mandate masks more than a month ago that they wouldn’t wear them and the police would not enforce fines etc... the governor backed them. He’s now done a 180 and mandated them. Texas has called in military medical teams to help prop up communities incl houston. The Houston mayor has proposed another 2 week lockdown to try and get a handle on it, yet to be approved by the governor. They want our kids back in school in 5 weeks time. While many businesses remain wfh, they’re happy sending our kids, teachers and support staff into crowded schools where it will be almost impossible to SD.

We have absolutely no idea what is happening in the uk at the moment it’s almost as if the government has decided to just bury their heads in the sand and hope it goes away.

If trump had mass produced make America great again face masks he would have saved thousands of lives.

@Pixxie7

We have absolutely no idea what is happening in the uk at the moment it’s almost as if the government has decided to just bury their heads in the sand and hope it goes away.

You maybe have no idea, there's plenty of information on the government website. Test results and deaths are reported daily.

@Pixxie7 we do know what is happening in the uk the figures are still released every day for ever country in the uk and we have updates for changes etc , like the announcement today for face masks