What in the world? The USA and EU aren’t that different in population. But while there are still around 4,000 new COVID cases per day in the EU, the USA is now seeing more than 10 times that number daily. 38 states are resurging. The USA and EU are testing roughly the same number million people. What’s YOUR take on the differences? We’ve just come off of 3 days: over 48K, 49K, and 55K new cases: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
10) The Last Bit: Comparing New Confirmed Covid Tests in USA vs. EU
COMMENTHonestly, I think it has everything to do with how the data is being collected and interpreted.
You will notice that the news is ONLY mentioning a serge in “cases” (people who are testing positive) and NOT telling if there’s been a serge at all in deaths or even people being hospitalized because of Covid.
Increased cases does not mean that the virus is surging. This article explains it very well . . .
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-new-panic-lie-increased-coronavirus-hospitalizations-cases-southwest
Also, I’ve talked with several people who work in covid wards at hospitals and they have seen for themselves or heard from medical staff at other facilities that there’s a lot of discrepancy in how Covid “casis” are being counted.
For example, lots of medical staff (doctors, nurses, lab workers) have mentioned that it is not just people who die OF Covid that are being counted among the Covid deaths. A person can die of a completely unrelated issue, but if they tested positive for Covid at the time of death then their death is included in the count.
A while back the governor of Colorado admitted as much, saying that they even had a case of someone clearly dying from Alcohol abuse, but he was included in the Covid death count simply because he tested positive for Covid at the time of death.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/colorado-lowers-coronavirus-death-count
These 2 doctors in California have also testified to the same, saying that lots of doctors in California have been pressured to write “Covid” as the cause of death even if it was clear that the patient died of other causes.
https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/watch-controversial-press-conference-held-by-two-bakersfield-doctors-that-was-pulled-down-by-youtube
That’s all regarding the death rate, but pertaining to the actual increase of cases there is similar stuff going on that fabricates the facts.
Perhaps one of the biggest factors is the fact that there hasn’t been any proceedure set in place to distinguish between a “positive test result” and a “new covid case”. What this means is that a LOT of the “cases” we have here in the US are NOT new cases, a lot of them are just the same peopl e being tested multiple times, and every time their test comes back positive it is counted as a “Covid case”.
This REALLY adds to the numbers when you realize that people in the hospitals (even those who are there for OTHER reasons and not there specifically because of Covid) can not be discharged from the hospitals until they have tested negative for 2 consecutive days. Hospital patients are tested for Covid EVERY day (and sometimes multiple times a day), and everytime the test result come back positive it is added to the “case count”. The first article I shared touches on this point, but even just talking to staff at the hospitals they will say as much.
So that’s pretty much been my observations as I’ve been looking into this “new surge”.
The CDC also changed its reporting standard in April so that a positive COVID test is NOT required to count a COVID case or death.
Instead of just counting CONFIRMED cases, as the CDC has with past diseases, the CDC is now counting TOTAL cases including confirmed AND presumed cases. See the points under “Understanding the Data” at https://CDC.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html
A relative died recently from a long battle with cancer. Her niece told me that because she ended life on a ventilator in a hospital she was counted as a COVID death even though she did NOT test positive for COVID. I cannot confirm my niece’s story, but this is consistent with the CDC’s new standards and the financial incentives.
The New York times is not the place to get accurate news! Take a look at this statistic website on the daily confirmed cases of the Coronavirus in Europe! Quite a bit different. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102209/coronavirus-cases-development-europe/
There are 15, 663 new cases per day in the EU, not 3, 800! Sorry! The USA is still twice as much but certainly not 10 times as much!
There are many countries in Europe which are not in the EU. That accounts for a lot of the difference.
An inability to coordinate efforts to combat Covid-19 on a natl basis; not enough testing and a belief by some that the whole issue is a hoax. No one opposes mandatory seat belt and other safety measures, but somehow seem bothered by wearing of masks. I’ve seen pandemics in Africa first hand. America needs to sober up and face this crisis head on
Masks.
The US tried to reopen far too early.
The US hasn’t taken it seriously.
The more important question that needs to be asked is: How can we turn this tragedy into a Gospel opportunity. Here is one way:
https://christianityexplained.net/to/prepare-for-next-covid_19-wave/
Numerous countries were forced to bring back localised Corona Virus quarantines or widespread shutdowns. Scientists believe another pandemic of a different kind will happen during our lifetime. Whatever you think about the measures the world has taken to fight the virus, you could still be the next victim. Are you prepared?
A doctor said:
“. . . I long that these patients, whose respiratory systems are being decimated, have spent some time asking themselves spiritual questions before they’re wheeled through the doors of an ITU. As at this stage, it’s often too late.”
Get prepared by taking a spiritual health check: ………
I live in France. The US closed borders a few days before France shut down. My kids were back in full classrooms of students these past two weeks at school, so the timing of closing down and opening up is not the reason for these numbers, because it’s really mirrored many parts of the US.
Here are my observations. First off, for the most part, tests are only available here for people who are symptomatic, so I believe that the US is testing more broadly (I’m open to being corrected on this). This will inflate US numbers, obviously, especially when some places have counted positive antibody tests as new cases.
There is no kind of pushback here against masks. That doesn’t mean everyone wears them, but nobody is spreading hoaxes about masks or asserting that masks are an infringement of freedom. (Anybody using this logic for seatbelts?)
Also, we have enough info on COVID-19 now to see that it, in and of itself, is not a fun disease, but it gets really ugly when a person has any kind of underlying condition. This has seemingly included obesity. If you’re trying to find a meaningful difference between the States and Europe, the population here is much less obese and generally more active.
In the end, the biggest thing has to be the nature of, not when, but how things were shut down. When we shut down here, it was hard and uncompromising. Since we are non-essential workers, we could only leave the house for medical reasons, grocery trips, or for light exercise. For exercise, we could only be out an hour and could not go further than a kilometer from our home. Every time we left the house we had to fill out a paper with the reason and time we left, and you could be stopped and asked to show the paper and there was a fine for not having it or for not being out for a proper reason.
Did this get to the point where we thought our rights were being infringed upon? Yes.
Is France opening back up more swiftly with better numbers than the US? Yes.
So it’s a matter of how you prioritize those issues.
We have suffered pandemics before. The Hong Kong flu (68 – 70) took 1 million+ lives, as did the Asian flu (57-58). Going back, the Spanish flu killed 40 to 50 million and there are more pandemics to look at. What I find interesting is the global response to COVID-19. Never before have we seen the sort of government reactions as we are seeing today. Is the science informing this? I don’t think so. Our understanding of viral transmission hasn’t changed that much over the century. We as people have changed. This is something for missiologists to consider. Societies are behaving differently today in response to COVID-19. Pandemics have not changed but the way we have responded has changed significantly. What are the factors for this change? How does this affect how we communicate the Gospel? So much to learn here.