>In Australia almost no one with some or most of the symptoms is being tested. General Practitioners are basically telling people to fuck off, self isolate and call the hospital if symptoms worsen.

This is simply false:

>Here, testing is free and widely available, thanks to early and coordinated planning for a pandemic. On Thursday, Mr. Hanks said he and his wife had seen the efforts firsthand, as they tested positive for the virus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/australia/tom-hanks...

It’s not false because I went through this myself yesterday. Was told over the phone “don’t come in, its probably a common cold, stay at home and if symptoms worsen called the health hotline”

Community forums are full others reporting similar stories

https://apple.news/ASvoRONOWS9ijWX4RrGmiTQ

“Currently we are not testing everyone, and whilst this may change in the future, at the moment this isn’t feasible. The pressure on labs would be mammoth and the yield is likely low,”

Sure, but many people have colds. Did you report a runny nose? Did you have a fever? If yes and no, then it's probably not COVID-19 and there's not much point testing you.

Regardless of how reasonable things seem at the moment, when it comes down to it I trust the Australian authorities and healthcare system in a way that I just don't for the US.

You don't go in to get tested if you are suspected of having coronavirus. If the management is still in the contact tracing phase, they will send someone to you to take a swab.

If you have symptomatic CV and you go to a hospital waiting room to be tested, you have done a bad thing.

if you have the symptoms for the cold, and don't have the symptoms for covid-19, then why would they test you?

There is no clear-cut distinction between the symptoms of the two - it's more an "if you hear hooves, think horse not zebra" thing. The New York Times article in the grandparent post literally points to the fact that Tom Hanks could get tested for coronavirus based on symtoms that were just like a cold as proof it's much easier to get tested in Australia than the US.

Except that if you read the ABC article, Australia only tests people who both have symptoms consistent with the disease AND either have travelled to an affected country or had contact with a confirmed case. Also, the US press has managed to convince a large (or at least vocal) chunk of the American public that if they can't get a Covid-19 test based on their cold-like symptoms it's somehow proof their healthcare system is falling behind the rest of the world in testing as part of a Trump cover-up, and it's leaking to the rest of the English speaking world. It's all over social media.

> points to the fact that Tom Hanks could get tested for coronavirus based on symtoms that were just like a cold as proof it's much easier to get tested in Australia than the US.

I think this just points to the ease of being tested if you are Tom Hanks.

Colds and flu have different symptoms.

It's not true for europe either. People are not expexted to go to GP or the hospital for tests. Testing is done in people's homes.

That’s Tom Hanks by the way. You don’t think he got preferential treatment?

In Australia? Honestly, no. The public system treats everyone pretty much the same, I'm sure he had to wait in the same lines as anyone else.

That's funny

At what point does it become OK to point out that the "orange man" is, in fact, bad? Fox news and republican leaders spent weeks (weeks that we can't get back) trying to tell people that this wasn't a problem, that they shouldn't prepare, and that this was all a partisan argument against the president. And that was all wrong. It's real, it's happening, and we've lost critical time.

That's bad, right? And it's bad in a distinctly partisan way, because the "other side" didn't say or do that stuff, and was broadly correct in its pronouncements. Can we say that? When can we say that? Or is any amount of wrongdoing or incompetence allowed as long as you get a whole political party to do it at once?

Especially since the article isn't about him. It mentions him twice, once citing the travel ban, another time quoting him as saying that we have good testing infrastructure (but noting that he did not elaborate). It does not describe him as "bad" or say anything directly negative. The article is about a high-level bureaucrat who says only "we".

The OP's comment is, unfortunately, indicative. The OP reads it as negative, and the reality is negative, but his primary concern is about the assignment of blame. In particular, assuring that it does not fall on him, and trying to shift it anywhere else. Meantime, the person actually cited in the article is trying to get something done -- which starts by admitting the there is a thing that needs to be done.

The idea is that anything that any article that does not go out of its way to praise him must be negative by definition, because that's how his mind works. The US's response to this current situation is a direct response by Trump to how he is being perceived.

Orange man is bad, but a stopped clock is right twice a day, and falling over themselves to deny whenever that happens has led the media to say all manner of braindead things.

> a stopped clock is right twice a day

Without another working clock, that's still not super useful, as you can't figure out when it's right.

Or maybe... (to strain the metaphor a bit) the clock has been working the whole time, but you didn't care because you didn't need to know the time?

I mean... the topic at hand in this subthread is the executive branch's ability to coordinate a single message, to tell the truth, and to ensure that public policy matches official pronouncements. And this has been a serious problem for the Trump administration since inauguration. The president will say things that are wrong, he'll mistate positions of others, he'll promise things that aren't borne out by policy, he'll contradict existing white house messaging, and the rest of the executive branch is constantly running around writing up explainers for how all of this is supposed to fit together.

And the media reported on that. But to you, maybe it just seemed like the president was speaking extemporaneously and that the media coverage was being excessively "nitpicky". What other people would call "lies" or "mistruths" seemed to you like just mistakes or irrelevancies. So to you, the media wasn't being fair.

Well, now the world is falling apart and the president's words matter. And the lies seem more like lies to most people. That's not because the media is treating them any different.

I don't think trump has said a single sensible thing about the pandemic, I'm not on his side. Im talking in general.

Guess what? They're all bad! Incompetence, perverse incentives, misinformation, exploitation: we're surrounded by it.

On Hacker News I expect a technical discussion and shared files how to build PCR kits at home to test for the virus. I want to see people sharing biohacks. Not this meaningless useless byllshit.