[throwaway894345]

I haven’t kept in touch recently, but for a long time NY alone was responsible for 50% of the total cases and deaths, presumably overwhelmingly driven by the NYC metro. If you ignore that outlier, is the US in dramatically worse shape than other countries? How bad is the spread in rural America?

[danesparza]

I can appreciate your logic. But think about total number of cases in the US. If you divide that in half (according to your logic) there would still be 800,000 cases in the rest of the U.S. That's still roughly the same amount of cases in the next 3 countries COMBINED.

Now think about the percentage of world population that the U.S. accounts for. Our infection rate is inexcusable. And getting worse.

There is a significant portion of the country that has politicized a viral infection -- and that line of thinking is just making this a worse situation.

[throwaway894345]

> If you divide that in half (according to your logic) there would still be 800,000 cases in the rest of the U.S. That's still roughly the same amount of cases in the next 3 countries COMBINED.

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but don't you need to adjust for population in order to make a meaningful comparison?

[morelisp]

Since at least a few weeks ago when it hit meat processing plants in the plains, extremely bad.

[throwaway894345]

I’m from a town that was profiled by CNN and others for having an outbreak in a meat plant. Things seem quite a lot better there than in the larger city where I now live. The impact outside of the meat plant seems minimal. Not sure how it is elsewhere, but my feeling is that the meat packing plant issue overblown.

[dragonwriter]

> The impact outside of the meat plant seems minimal.

COVID-19 has a significant incubation period and a large number of infections are asymptomatic and even with moderate symptoms people often won't qualify for the limited testing being done. The upshot being that unless there is a nexus with another highly-tested subcommunity in the same community, an outbreak that occurs rapidly and is detected in one subcommunity (in which impacts might be visible sooner through testing) that is disproportionately tested will take several weeks before it has significant visible impacts in the broader community. And by the time it does, it will be impossible to contain.

But those broader impacts are pretty much inevitable unless the those exposed to the outbreak were strictly quarantined from the broader community.

[morelisp]

Rural communities with minimal testing also tend to lack their own hospital / ICU resources, so outbreaks in those communities also tend to unexpectedly deplete resources in nearby cities. Sometimes these are also counted as deaths in the city rather than the rural area the case originated.