21 cases in our county and 1 hospitalization.

Hospital workers complaining that they get backlash for trying to share the truth of what's going on in hospitals: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927541#vp_1

Rumors of complaints of cases/deaths being under-reported: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronavirus-update-dead-covid19-doctors-hospitals?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

I want to be clear that I am not saying that I consider these articles to be legitimate sources. But think about it logically. We already know that China is under reporting their deaths by a massive amount. It's harder for developed countries to get away with it, but there is no doubt that reporting lower numbers would suit their agenda. And it would be easy for them to shave some numbers off, especially in a time where journalists don't necessarily have the mobility to get around and check things.

Under reporting can happen in a few ways. If someone dies before ever getting tested, they can simply write it off as unconfirmed case and not covid. Even if someone was confirmed to be infected with covid, they can list cause of death as something else so it doesn't count (Mexico seems to be doing that). Then there's the simple approach of straight up lying about the numbers and keeping people in the dark. That's way easier to get away with in China/Russia then here, but it's still reasonable to think that they could take 800 deaths and shave them down to 500 without anyone catching on. Especially if the people are prevented from communicating with each other.

Right now, China's official death count is at 3.3k and the rest of the world combined at 34k. I'd wager you could easily add 40k to China's total. And then for the rest of world, ballpark the real number at double the reported number. Russia and Pakistan are suspiciously quiet.

Honestly, I dont think that the issue was Trump's idea of American exceptionalism. It imho was textbook denial. Things were going well for him, and he just didnt want it to be true that a black swan event came around and shredded the strong economy which was supposed to be the cornerstone of his reelection campaign. And he of course knows that a pandemic would put the topic of healthcare to the forefront of the public debate, which happens to be the one topic where Democrats have an overwhelming lead over Republicans.

Trump buried his head in the sand for a couple of weeks before he finally came to terms with the fact that this virus is here to stay and that it'll really be on him to do something about it. Essentially, all the shuffling we're seeing now around the nation is just the country playing catch up to those 2-3 weeks that were lost at the most crucial time.

To be fair, the leaders of most other big countries were also in denial and hesitated too long until they initiated the shutdowns. Trump's example is particularly egregious, but he's not nearly the only world leader who dropped the ball on coronavirus.

Irony.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/sns-nyt-us-failed-to-build-ventilators-coronavirus-20200330-tvrot5uh3vbszo6vw2ymxh6g64-story.html

Long, interesting story about how a decade-long plan to stockpile ventilators fell through

While China was busy NOT telling the rest of the world about the virus, they WERE buying up the supplies that would be needed to fight the infection so that the supply would be depleted elsewhere: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/second-company-sent-90-tonnes-of-australian-medical-supplies-to-china/news-story/be74b7679d7c8cb910d0f34713b2f008


And even though we understand the situation, we are still letting manufacturers sell their N95 masks to the highest bidder, even if that means sending them overseas: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2020/03/30/i-spent-a-day-in-the-coronavirus-driven-feeding-frenzy-of-n95-mask-sellers-and-buyers-and-this-is-what-i-learned/#3f0a0de656d4

In-migrant workers in India queueing up for busses to travel back to their home villages:



India is soooooooooooo fucked...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 31 2020 03:36am

corona delivery service

perfectly packaged for the journey

destination: everywhere

Wow.

280 million masks sold in one day. Most leaving the country.

This post was edited by Santara on Mar 31 2020 04:05am