Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

Ok, fair enough. But their death rate isn't markedly better (honestly 10-12/million is a rounding error) and according to the chart the US had is first dx case a week before them, also their serious case numbers are worse per capita and per dx persons than the US.
US 4500/189,000 cases
Germany 2600/75000 cases.
Really don't see how the current numbers show that Germany is doing better than the US

 

Glad you made it back okay.

Just curious what do they do for food and water there?

 

I think those serious case numbers are the least reliable on that site. Hell, the only one that you can really trust (outside of China, Russia, & Iran) is the number of dead.

 

STO is the government run business that was established before the country actually had tourism. It's intent was to bring goods and services at somewhat reasonable cost when food etc was limited. Now there is a very expansive commercial sector and one can buy American Standard faucets, eat at Pizza Hut, Pringles and Mountain Dew among others crave able items. But now everything is shut down and STO has become the only source of imports for food and so far they are doing a good job. Drinking water is strictly bottled water and is purified on a few local islands and distributed as normal. Food needs are much less than in the US and they are very creative in meal preparation. One day I could probably give a class on how to feed 10 on 5 dollars of food. My wife is extremely bored but the kids are being kids and being imaginative. It was a really good call full of optimism.

 

That's not what he meant by hoax.

 

We haven't reported for the most part today. They have at least partially reported. If we have 900 or so deaths, we will be at around 15 deaths per million.

Serious cases (and recoveries, which are extending that denominator) is a statistic that the US is not consistently reporting.

 

You can’t compare mortality rates when they’ve had 21% of people recover and we’ve had about 4% recover. There are a lot of Americans that haven’t been resolved one way or another yet.

I’ve noticed countries start flattening their growth rates when they get close to having 25-30% recovered. Right now 94% of all Americans exposed still have it.

 

For those of us who thought China's numbers were bogus, here is some confirmation:

China hid extent of coronavirus outbreak, US intelligence reportedly says

 

Fair enough which is a BIG reason why I hate the stats that compare US healthcare to the rest of the world. infant mortality is a huge issue as some countries don't report children that die until they reach one year of age or if they are born pre term in their mortality stats.

No way to tell if ANYONE is using the same standard for "serious" or "recovered" or not either. I have a friend who JUST yesterday got his result, he was tested over 2 weeks ago and is fine now. So he should be added to new dx and recovered at the same time.... Some places aren't considering "resolved" until 2 negative tests hell we aren't even getting a first test on people. The sickest here are getting tested, highest chance of dying, when we test the not very sick our mortality rate will drop dramatically.

10deaths per million or 15 deaths per million is pretty much the same...no where near France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland that are 50-70/million..... Universal Healthcare isn't helping them so much.

 

Really happy you got through this Limey.

 

Germany had 100+ deaths today, largest jump by far. Again, I think they're just a couple weeks behind the rest of Europe and their ratio has been good only because they started widespread testing early. I think the early start will result in an overall lower case fatality ratio than say Italy, but unless they go all-in like the Asians (compulsory mask wearing, mandatory electronic tracking and quarantines) they won't be able to avoid much of the worst.

 

You can't really use the # deaths/# cases to come up with an accurate death rate. The problem with that is the cases are still active. The best one to use is the one worldinfo uses but doesn't highlight it - # deaths / (recovered + deaths). So the US at the moment, has a 36.5% mortality rate, 5,102 deaths/13,980 closed cases.

 

Germany's numbers are really good but they have something going for them - luck. Having more females than males and a younger population than Italy. It remains to be seen if their numbers continue to hold up. But there was an article that said they started development of a test in December - full of crap. Unless this virus originated in Germany as a biological agent, no way Germany developed a test before China even knew about it.

 

We have a few offices in India. It's not good.

 

Agree for the most part, no sympathy for the cruise lines. Used to work for a company that did biz with them. Cruise lines manage to avoid most US taxes and personnel laws, while giving only lip service to environmental laws, yet they want a US bailout.

Feel bad for anyone stuck on one of those boats however. Can't just let people die. Need a solution.

Personal experience - while on a RCCL cruise in the Caribbean several years ago, one of our party had a land accident requiring a few stitches. The on board infirmary would not see him and he was forced back to the local hospital for care before allowing to board. The cruise line was totally indifferent to the situation. He and I came within minutes of missing the boat's departure. It's all about reducing their liability, ie, $$$.

 

Not only do they avoid taxes and some regulations, but my father was Master of the SS Brasil. It and her sister ship, the SS Argentina, were the last two luxury liners constructed in the United States and that was in 1957 and only then with heavy government subsidies.

 

We often don't agree @RealGatorFan , but I appreciate your take here. I might be wrong but this is how I think about; if we only base it on deaths vs closed cases, we would probably overstate the death rate where a majority of cases have yet to be confirmed one way or the other. Yet based on what has happened elsewhere, it's likely that many of those not confirmed as closed will survive or have survived but due to reporting lag, confirmation hasn't caught up. The one exception here that would drive up the numbers is that there are likely a significant number of deaths that have not been attributed to Covid-19 but where it is related (eventually there will be estimates with an upper and lower 95% CI to capture this).

OTOH, using deaths vs total positive cases, will likely end up closer to the true rate when all is said and done. The true rate might end up being higher than the current rate due to the factors mentioned above, but I can't imagine that it would reach anywhere near 36%. Not impossible, just highly unlikely. If it did, it would be worse than the Black Death.