Except for high-risk activities such as nightclubs, life has mostly returned to normal. In the US, however, retail sales (as just one indicator) are stagnant at 50% of previous levels. Economic activity will be far from normal until people feel safe again.
As to hospitalisations and deaths: hospitals in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and Texas are quickly filling up and/or full already.
On a per capita basis the only large European country with a lower death rate than the US is Germany. Italy, France, Spain and the UK are all higher. Comparing US and Europe, all of whom messed up badly, to the competent governments that ignored the WHO is absurd. Asia did much, much better than the USA and Europe, which are basically comparable.
https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-...
I was just reading, about Houston I think, that hospitals were continuing to have elective surgeries to avoid sending a message that people should panic. And to make money, because they may not be able to keep the lights on with only COVID-19 patients.
There are quite a few countries with minimal reported cases, and it makes me think about the study that found "the state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records."
South Africa has by far the most reported cases in Africa; is it possible that has some relation to how well they track them compared to other countries, and not just the underlying numbers?
But, I've spent the last 4 years living there (came back to the US for work at the end of January). I'm in tons of Vietnam related facebook groups and I have friends there.
Whole country is open internally, nobody is wearing a mask, plane flights are full. If there was a single infection, it would be all over the news and my friends would be notifying me.
I'm pretty confident, that at this point, the govt isn't lying. They admit when they import new cases (repatriation flights) and they quarantine everyone with multiple rounds of testing. If anyone 'escapes' quarantine... it is a full on manhunt. They aren't playing games.
Hands down, Vietnam won this war.
One reason I'm more confident of statistics in some countries is not just general prejudice, but that these countries have various levels of government, and statistics are reported by the lower level divisions independently, and third parties who are not the central government can and do compile them.
So, for instance, when you read about US statistics, they may have distortions or issues, but you're not (at least my sources are not) getting them filtered through the very top of the hierarchy.
This could in principle apply to Vietnam as well, but I notice you didn't make this sort of argument, that information flows out independently from centralized control.
I also notice you say you came back in January, and yet living there for four years means you know what the situation is. That sounds odd. I used to live in Virginia, and have a relative there but that doesn't mean I have particular insight into the epidemic there.
So if there was somebody independent doing that in Vietnam, or wherever, then I would take claims of no cases more seriously.
One thing about Vietnam culture is that they gossip like no other. Everything is in the open. As soon as one 'bad' thing happens, everyone knows about it. When one girl came back from Europe and infected a bunch of people, the govt got right on it and quarantined everyone who could have potentially came in contact. Someone turned in a UK friend of mine because they heard him coughing.
After 80+ days, I haven't heard a peep from anyone to suggest that the news isn't exactly what they say it is. My friends are flying around the country like nothing is happening. People are going out and socializing. Look in the news... you see parties and clubs going off. Look at restaurants and night club facebook pages... everyone is out.
If covid was affecting Vietnam, we'd all know, immediately.
I can't speak for Asian countries, but as far as Central Europe, e.g. in Slovenia, cases are spiking again (most positives since April - the point about low deaths from GP still stands but deaths used to follow positives with a delay)... probably precipitated by tourism & economy-driven reopening of borders and relaxation of most counter-measures (opening restaurants, etc. as well as unofficial parties & gatherings).
I strongly encourage everyone everywhere to evaluate our response when we are done with this. It was deeply suboptimal. However, in the current position we are in, there is no chance the virus is going to be eliminated in the US. With that, the best possible news is that everyone's already gotten it.
Please remember that we still know little about this virus, about long term effects, about how long immunity lasts, about the risk of auto-immune responses etc.
It's never, ever a good idea to let a new disease spread along the population of you can help it at all.
If the long term effects put a lot of people in the hospital, than that would not be the ideal outcome. You can't just drop clauses out of my definition of "ideal" then turn around and tell me about how that's not ideal. I agree, actually! Something other than the ideal I described would in fact be less than ideal!
The point remains; on its own merits, the ideal would be that it turns out everybody's already had it, because that would prove that the currently-known negative impact is also the total final negative impact. Since the total known negative impact is basically a given and can't go down and is thus a minimum, finding out that's also a maximum would be good news. On the whole, more people having been exposed without hospitalization or even awareness is good news. Maybe earlier in the cycle that wouldn't be the case, but with where we are now, it is.
At least, for this pandemic, for a disease that happens to affect a small set of people badly but, to all evidence, most people not at all. In terms of weathering a pandemic in which it was actually bad news for a majority of people, this has been a rather disheartening experience. That's a problem for another day, though.
(Which is not a synonym for "not a problem at all". But it's a problem for another day. Trying to solve COVID-19 with measures appropriate for EvenMoreBubonic-2022 is not a win.)
Sort of, but the fact that "deaths are lower" is likely a cohort problem.
Let's say I am looking at the bread in my cupboard and trying to figure out what percent goes moldy. I've got one moldy loaf, and I buy 9 fresh new ones. Boom, current moldy-rate is 10% what a relief, looks like mold is less of a problem than I thought--only 10% of bread goes moldy! Looks like the previous estimates of mold-rate were misleading.
If a vaccine is forthcoming, it is not at all inevitable that we will all be exposed to it.
It’s harder to fudge death numbers compared to case numbers.
The cohort I'm talking about is the number of days since a positive test result. When you have many new cases (loaves of fresh bread) and you use simple math, bread/moldy you get the wrong idea about death rate. Click-baity articles, and those with motivated reasoning for "it's just a flu" get breathlessly excited about this as if it were some sort of useful data. See ops assertion that the level of crisis "is independent of the number of people who test positive" for an example of what I mean.
People testing positive is a leading indicator for the size of the crisis.
In NYC, there were 358 hospitalizations and rising on 3/17, and 8 deaths. On 3/31, there were 383 daily deaths and rising. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
Deaths in Texas have been trending upwards since June. https://www.us-covid-tracker.com/?field=newDeaths&state=Texa...
Of course, there's no guarantee that the course of the epidemic in Texas will look like New York City's. But a sharp rise in hospitalizations does seem to presage a lot of deaths.
That's literally the worst case endgame, where everyone vulnerable has received the full brunt of the disease lessened only by medical care.
The ideal outcome is that the spread is minimized by a mix of general and targeted social distancing and containment measures until a vaccine, effective treatment, or both are deployed widely enough to eradicate the disease.
Approval of quarantine until vaccine was released =/= approval of social distancing in any form.
The poster claimed that most people are not in support of quarantine until vaccine, not that they oppose any quarantine.
The poll you linked did not ask about quarantining until the vaccine was available. In fact, 50% of the poll respondents expected social distancing to last no longer than 2 months. Note the poll was taken in March.
Remember "flatten the curve"? It's not "eliminate the curve". We're pretty much all going to be exposed to it at some point. Lots of people testing positive without ever having had to go to the hospital or even having been aware they had it is a good thing, not a reason to go shutting everything down again. It means the crisis is nearly over, not the worst it's ever been.
After all, consider what that would imply; for all infectious diseases, the level of crisis starts low, then monotonically goes up and never goes back down? Clearly that does not describe the real world we see, which is not still in crisis over the Spanish Flu, Black Death, and every other plague ever. The level of crisis can't be solely a function of the number of people testing as positive.
Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not number of positives.