Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I keep getting texts and emails from my Canadian relatives with text like “I can’t believe it’s that bad down there”, or “hope you guys get better soon”.
Basically all polite Canadian ways of saying “what the he’ll is wrong with youR country?”.
While they know it isn’t the family that’s the problem, it’s freaking embarrassing to keep getting asked about it. They are in Nova Scotia and the province hasn’t had a case in 3 weeks.

 

My cuz is an anesthesiologist in Mississippi, and I came across this...

Several individuals test positive for Covid-19 in Mississippi school district barely a week after classes resumed - CNN

 

And I have Canadian friends who still go across to ND to get MRIs at our veterinarians. Takes forever to get MRIs and other diagnostic tests in Canada. They also say don't buy the Canadian counts. People have Covid but aren't getting tested out of fear. Also US politics are getting in the way of our own counts - hugely inflated. Case in point, if you die from cancer and was tested positive for Covid, you are lumped in with Covid counts and not from cancer. A guy here in Alabama died in a car accident and because he tested positive for Covid, they counted him dying from Covid. There might be as many as 50,000 cases in Florida alone that might be invalid. We'll see what happens later once Covid is no longer an issue. Major lawsuits will be brought forth not just by families but also by the insurance industry and other entities like the American Cancer Society, who will see cancer rates fall in 2020 to levels not seen in decades which impacts their donations.

 

I’d be an embarrassed Canadian if I couldn’t figure out why it’s much harder to contain Covid in places like Florida and California than in Nova Scotia.

 

lol, compare it to Maine then. NS has had 11 cases since June 1 and none transmitted within the province in three weeks.
Maine has had 1600 cases and 35 deaths in that timeframe. They also have a third of the total cases overall.

people can rationalize our utter failure as a country on this any way they want, but it doesn’t change reality.

 

You make a lot of claims there, can you provide any evidence to show that any of that is true?
Keep in mind, on the healthcare thread, you claimed that Trump has proposed healthcare plans but they've always stalled in the House. A couple of posters asked you to show a few of those plans, and you declined.
Can you offer evidence of these claims?

 

There are a number of completely false claims in this relatively short post. But I will focus on one in particular: that our case counts are "hugely inflated." It should be noted that the reason that individual level testing is not used to monitor disease spread for many diseases like flu is that, as a method, it is infamous for undercounting not overcounting true cases. The CDC estimated that early cases were about 10x the estimated cases and while that number is falling, the official case counts are still a pretty substantial undercount due to early lack of testing, individual failure to get testing due to asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic presentation, and the fact that some people were labeled as "presumed" because they fit symptoms and the healthcare professionals didn't want to endanger people by pulling them out of isolation to test them.

BTW, you conflate death counts and case counts in this post. It should be noted that we are also likely undercounting death.

Actual number of COVID-19 cases is 12 times higher than reported, with 50 percent more deaths, says MIT study - The Boston Globe

 

The US has a population and population density overall 10x Canada. Canada is also homogeneous country. No one can argue the diversity of the US works against it in a pandemic situation. Send this to your family and ask them their suggestions on suppressing the covid spread for each diverse segment of our nation.

COVID-19 deaths analyzed by race and ethnicity — APM Research Lab

Comparing Canada to Us in a pandemic is like when people point to Sweden Norway and Denmark as successful healthcare systems we should emulate. Just a joke. As if we’d be on par with Canadian covid numbers with Obama, Biden, or George Washington as president.

 

First, while Canada has a low density, it would be wrong to assume that is because it is not similar to the US in terms of where people live. Canada has massive amounts of land with no people. The rural population in Canada is just less than 20%, just like in the US. Huge land with no people has no impact on a pandemic. It passes just as easily in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, etc. as it does in cities in the US.

Second, he utilized Nova Scotia and Maine as comparisons.

Nova Scotia: 45 people per square mile; 91% white
Maine: 41.3 people per square mile; 94.48% white

So that doesn't really answer the point he made. You could do similar analyses on other similar comparisons, like Seattle/Vancouver. It will not be flattering to the US.

 

Found the guy who hasn't been to Canada

 

Maine has 65 more deaths and 2,000 more cases. Each has a population of around a million. I think 5 new cases today in the state of Maine.

While not as impressive as N.S., I think that supports my hypothesis.

 

Double the death and more than double the cases? Again, can you find a single comparison between Canada and the US where the US would not come up way short in terms of the pandemic?

 

Of course not. I said that in my post. Canada will always fare much better in a pandemic. Under any President. Only an idiot would ever argue otherwise.

 

Yes, you said due to "diversity" and population density. And yet, we still performed worse even controlling for those factors in the comparison he used. I suggested other such comparisons and we are far worse in those as well (i.e., Seattle vs. Vancouver). So those don't work as complete explanations for why we are doing worse.

 

I think diversity both genetically and politically plays a major part. I think the American “free” spirit plays a major part. (Like it or not) International travel early on played a part. I honestly can’t think of 1 single advantage the US would have over Canada in controlling a pandemic.

Italy was hit so hard because they had so many multigenerational families living together. Something they were probably proud of pre-covid.

Liberals are all about diversity in our county and crave more of it but then constantly turn around and put much less populated homogenous caucasian countries on pedastals and display them as what we need to be. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.

 

Canada has plenty of international travel as well. Toronto is a major international hub and flights to Vancouver from China are quite common.

The differences in culture between places like Maine and Nova Scotia or Seattle and Vancouver are very minor.

Again, we can control for these issues for the most part. And the US still performs far worse.

 

North Paulding High School: Two Georgia Students Claim Suspension

 

So I guess we should not really look to Sweden either as a what if.

 

I don't know about the rest of Canada, I'm sure their flyover provinces are about as white as ours, but British Columbia (I spent a few years in the lower mainland) only just barely white. Vancouver itself is minority white, the province as a whole is about 60% white.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that Canada is a homogeneous country.