America’s first, I guess.
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There are some stats here, although how current or accurate they are I have no idea:
Some quick takeaways:
- New York, which accounts for nearly half of the US cases, has done about the same amount of testing per capita as Italy and Spain.
- Most of the rest of the U.S. has done about 1/3 to 1/4 as much testing per capita as New York.
- Ontario is doing only slightly better than the States (and lagging far behind BC and Alberta)
(ETA: that preview is pretty useless, but I don’t know what I can do about it…)
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Thank you! It is only tests that give us figures like this. Say next week God shows up angels suddenly everywhere testing ever human on the planet… I for one am delighted we are finally testing!
“There are lies. Then dirty rotten lies. Then you have statistics.”
-Somebody
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Because the Chinese government’s figures are totes trustworthy, because communist authoritarian regimes are known for their statistical honesty.
Hey, I heard they didn’t have a single new case of covid the other day!
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If only the numbers from China have any meanings…
China Mobile: 8.116 millons.
China Telecomunications: 5.6 millons.
China Unicom: 1.186 millions.
14.902 millon lines/users deactivated.
.
Now, after putting all the numbers of three major cell phone carriers in #China together, in Jan & Feb, their net loss is15M users. China Unicom has not released its Feb data yet. Unless its net gain in Feb is bigger than 15M(it lost 1.1 M in Jan), we'll still wonder... pic.twitter.com/MtrwyPTIzD
— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) March 20, 2020
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The surprising thing is that I think the numbers for the US pretty accurately reflect the testing that has actually been done, although they have to fall far short of actual infection rates. Some other countries I’m not so sure of. Russia reports fewer cases than Luxembourg, for instance.
I was thinking maybe we could use mortality rates to get at actual infection rates, but so many variables affect that. Quality of healthcare, government response to the epidemic, testing rates, length of time since the virus took root in a country, etc. By all accounts Italy has a good healthcare system, yet their mortaility rate is around 10% of confirmed cases. That’s terrifyingly high, but simply indicates how thoroughly overwhelmed their healthcare system is. The rate of testing and reporting of test results has probably taken a back seat to actually treating patients. In China, on the other hand, the dust has settled somewhat, and so their numbers may be more complete. But I also suspect China had far more cases, and probably far more deaths, than they have reported.
What’s sad for us is that the number of deaths is taking off like a rocket in the US. A few days ago I feel like deaths were just around 400 in the US, and now they’ve flown past 1000. I’m so scared for all these people, and to know there are so many more sick people than these numbers show.
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This is really interesting. What do the numbers look like in a normal month? And what percentage of total subscribers are represented by these three carriers?
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Yes, the numbers are actually trustworthy. The nature of exponential growth being what it is, you can only have either massive numbers of cases or very few. If China didn’t have its infection numbers under control Beijing would look the same as Wuhan, and you would have tons of imported cases in the countries that still fly with China. But no, you see more cases from America now.
There isn’t actually a reason for the Chinese to lie. Authoritarian it may be, but some things actually cannot be effectively covered up, and establishing confidence in the long term in the leader’s handling is relevant even without elections. China isn’t the only country to bring the virus under control.
This is all a rather academic question. In the coming weeks under Trump’s incompetence the US will have orders of magnitude more cases and then you will see how that really looks like.
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Which Republican, ⊥rump-Kool-aide-drinking morons will dismiss as “fake news” so, basically…
We’re fucked!
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Please check my past link and follow…
here is a bit more about this.
China is not even releasing their road fatalities, so it's quite unlikely numbers for Corona Virus have any meaning eitherLatest figures released by China Mobile show that they have lost 8.116 million users in Jan and Feb. Where are these users now? Switched to other carriers? Or, they couldn't carry their phone to the nether world?
— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferatntd) March 20, 2020
Chinese report at: https://t.co/lxw5FFYzoP#CCPVirus #COVID2019 pic.twitter.com/8sRV4lmDCv
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They suspended their contracts because they had a landline and were stuck at home.
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Correlation ≠ Causation. It could be millions who lost their job and thus can’t pay for the phone bill. Then again, it could be the virus, or death squads, or people fleeing to North Korea to escape the virus…
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People have land lines?
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There’s no reason for China to lie?? They’re been lying about it since day one! They’re engaged in a disinformation campaign about the virus origin right now. Are you firefighting for a brutal communist regime?
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They were lying (well, covering up) initially because they thought the whole thing would go away ahead of the new year’s festival. Thus no one would hear about it. That was a good reason to lie because there was a direct economic benefit. It is pointless to lie now.
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Well do you think people dying of coronavirus or being death squadded are taking the time to call their providers to end their mobile contracts.
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So they lied then, which caused the virus to spread to the rest of the world, but are telling the truth now??
Do you know anything about communist dictatorships?
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A lot more than you apparently.
And no, China is not a hive mind. It’s a different they then to now. Even the initial coverup failed to conceal the truth. You are expanding the network of conspiracy out to literally millions of e.g. medical personnel whose patients lives are at stake. It’s ridiculous.
And no, the coverup did not “cause the virus to spread to the rest of the world”. It didn’t help, sure, but the basic fact of the matter was that they had only a small number of cases of an unknown virus. Hence why the idea of covering it up looked attractive.
Consider the Western situation where you see widespread failure of action to decisively act with thousands of cases of a virus with known infectiousness and lethality. Considering the Wuhan situation where you always have a novel virus each year, only a few dozen cases all of them from the same food market, so you don’t know if there’s even human transmission, and no, you don’t need “brutal communist regime” to see the attractiveness of a coverup, at least until after the tourists have come and left.
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With the incredibly strict measures they’ve been taking, it makes sense for things to be getting under control, though.
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