Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come."
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The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.
The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S.
“We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” she said in an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”
“This is really the beginning,” Schuchat said of the U.S.’s recent surge in new cases. “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.”
The sheer size of the U.S. and the fact that the virus is hitting different parts of the country at different times complicates the public response here compared with other countries, Schuchat said. South Korea, for example, was able to concentrate their response on the southern city of Daegu, for a time, and contact tracers were quickly deployed when new cases were later found in the capital Seoul.
“What we have in the United States, it’s hard to describe because it’s so many different outbreaks,” Schuchat said. “There was a wave of incredible acceleration, intense interventions and control measures that have brought things down to a much lower level of circulation in the New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey area. But in much of the rest of the country, there’s still a lot of virus. And in lots of places, there’s more virus circulating than there was.”
The coronavirus has proven to be the kind of virus that Schuchat and her colleagues always feared would emerge, she said. She added that it spreads easily, no one appears to have immunity to it and it’s in fact “stealthier than we were expecting.”
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Who could have predicted this????
Yeah, I know, pretty much anybody. It's been obvious for weeks what was going to happen.
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my point was, what was accomplished, not how it was accomplished. I know the curves were flattened for a time, so that's something.
@Horace People got impatient. Somebody Was Supposed To Do Something And They Didn't! So they said to hell with it, like the virus would be defeated by their god-given right to go places.
Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. – Mike Ditka
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I prefer my solutions to take into consideration practicalities such as the fact that the virus wasn't going to be entirely defeated by a shelter in place. Somehow it seems that that magical thinking was always somewhere under the surface of all the discussions though. I hope we spent the time preparing for the second wave. As much fun as it is making fun of all hte idiots who are totally to blame for the fact that we have a problem with COVID, I don't think anybody should have ever been doing any planning under the assumption that such people would not exist.
Education is extremely important.
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@Horace People got impatient. Somebody Was Supposed To Do Something And They Didn't! So they said to hell with it, like the virus would be defeated by their god-given right to go places.
@Catseye3 said in Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come.":
@Horace People got impatient. Somebody Was Supposed To Do Something! So they said to hell with it, like the virus would be defeated by their god-given right to go places.
Definitely something like that, yeah. My own theory is that this is the decision-making: "I'd rather go out, I hate the idea of being at home. So let's find some evidence that that's okay and I'll use that to justify myself."
And then there's the old "I've never been able to prove to society I'm as smart as I think I am, so instead of extending my potential I'm going to not wear masks like all the sheeple do."
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I prefer my solutions to take into consideration practicalities such as the fact that the virus wasn't going to be entirely defeated by a shelter in place. Somehow it seems that that magical thinking was always somewhere under the surface of all the discussions though. I hope we spent the time preparing for the second wave. As much fun as it is making fun of all hte idiots who are totally to blame for the fact that we have a problem with COVID, I don't think anybody should have ever been doing any planning under the assumption that such people would not exist.
@Horace said in Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come.":
I prefer my solutions to take into consideration practicalities such as the fact that the virus wasn't going to be entirely defeated by a shelter in place. Somehow it seems that that magical thinking was always somewhere under the surface of all the discussions though. I hope we spent the time preparing for the second wave. As much fun as it is making fun of all hte idiots who are totally to blame for the fact that we have a problem with COVID, I don't think anybody should have ever been doing any planning under the assumption that such people would not exist.
I'm doing what I can on my end precisely because I figured it was a possibility. But I honestly didn't think the stupid would be this widespread. Whole counties, sometimes close to whole states, are being stupid about this. I really am surprised.
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The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating around the world as many countries that reopened their economies see a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said Monday.
“Although many countries have made some progress, globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up,” he said during a virtual news conference from the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives, but the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over.”
The virus has infected more than 10.1 million people around the world and killed more than 502,000 people so far, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 60% of daily new cases came from countries in the Americas on Sunday, according to data published by the WHO.
More than 23% of the 189,077 new cases reported globally on Sunday came from the U.S., according to the WHO’s data. Brazil was the only country in the world to report more new cases on Sunday than the U.S., according to the WHO.
“Some countries have now experienced a resurgence of cases as they start to reopen their economies and societies,” Tedros said. “Most people remain susceptible. The virus still has a lot of room to move.”
The U.S. is among the countries experiencing a resurgence of infection after reopening businesses and easing restrictions across large swaths of the country. New cases have surged in several states across the nation, setting new records almost daily, driven mostly by expanding outbreaks in the American South and West. Florida, Texas, California and Arizona are just some of the states that reported record-high counts of daily new cases last week…
Japan has done a particularly good job of preserving life and protecting the most vulnerable members of society, Tedros said. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, he said, but has maintained one of the lowest Covid-19 death rates. The virus has infected more than 18,476 people in Japan, according to Hopkins’ data, and killed at least 972 people.
South Korea is another example of a successful response, Tedros said, adding that “South Korea has shown to the world that without even vaccines or therapeutics that it can take the number of cases down and suppress the outbreak.”
South Korea was among the first countries outside China to be hit by the virus. Government officials quickly ramped up testing and targeted it toward people who might have been exposed to known clusters of infection. Government officials used credit card transaction data and cell phone tracking information to identify who might have been exposed to the virus.
Tedros said some governments should consider replicating South Korea’s strategy for testing, contact tracing and isolating infected people. He added that governments should involve the community in any efforts to ramp up testing, tracing and isolating.
Countries need to come together to learn from one another’s experiences in combating the virus, Tedros said, emphasizing that the “lack of global solidarity” has hampered the global response.
“The worst is yet to come” as many nations and world leaders remain divided on how to combat the virus, Tedros said. “I’m sorry to say that, but with this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst. And that’s why we have to bring our acts together and fight this dangerous virus together.”
@George-K said in Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come.":
The virus has infected more than 10.1 million people around the world and killed more than 502,000 people so far, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Is that 10.1 million a typo? Seems low.
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I prefer my solutions to take into consideration practicalities such as the fact that the virus wasn't going to be entirely defeated by a shelter in place. Somehow it seems that that magical thinking was always somewhere under the surface of all the discussions though. I hope we spent the time preparing for the second wave. As much fun as it is making fun of all hte idiots who are totally to blame for the fact that we have a problem with COVID, I don't think anybody should have ever been doing any planning under the assumption that such people would not exist.
@Horace said in Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come.":
I prefer my solutions to take into consideration practicalities such as the fact that the virus wasn't going to be entirely defeated by a shelter in place. Somehow it seems that that magical thinking was always somewhere under the surface of all the discussions though.
See Hammer and Dance. Lockdown measures were supposed to be used to get new case #s down to a number that would be manageable with test and trace. Numerous countries have done this successfully, at least so far. NY is giving it a real try.
I hope we spent the time preparing for the second wave. As much fun as it is making fun of all hte idiots who are totally to blame for the fact that we have a problem with COVID, I don't think anybody should have ever been doing any planning under the assumption that such people would not exist.
I don't know how much was done. I don't get the feeling much was done at the national supply chain level. Like, did we create a meaningful PPE manufacturing capacity? Or are we going to be competing with the rest of the world for Chinese supplies still?
Most levels of government began acting as if this was behind us by May 1 or so.
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More social cohesion. Less distrust of the scientific community. More competent leadership. Greater state capacity.
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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More social cohesion. Less distrust of the scientific community. More competent leadership. Greater state capacity.
@jon-nyc said in Oh good! WHO: "The worst is yet to come.":
More social cohesion. Less distrust of the scientific community. More competent leadership. Greater state capacity.
Yeah, every now and then autocracy, monoculture and socialism has a leg up. Maybe we should have been that way all long.
