We had some kind of computer problem in a lab that were doing testing. I'm not sure exactly what but it created a backlog they just discovered for date june 3. It was testing we doing to hospital personal randomly, so not sick people. But we might have a slight increase in overall cases as our testing is increasing fast, we were doing 20k tests a week in beginning of April we now up to 36k tests last week.

Here's a chart, orange color is that backlog computer caused, light purple is we testing random hospital personal and dark purple is testing sick people with symptons.

We seeing a increase in dark purple which might be bad, we are not sure if it's bad as we doing more tests.

Yeah. Here it became a ritual for some to applaud at a given time the work of the "essential workforce". And I think this is so wrong. If we appreciate the work of all the people doing everyday shit that keeps society rolling, we should pay fairly. But all thta happens is a bit of clapping their hands.

I am sure the CEOs will get a pay raise, because "they brought the company through the crisis". But all these workers will be getting the short end of the stick again and again.

I think our society has a very twisted view on which jobs are how important. At least if we look at the payment. The most essential jobs are usually the ones paid the least and having the worst working conditions. And that is true with or without a pandemic.

Logarithmic scale is commonly used among scientists.

And some places like the US didnt even get through the first wave.... before giveing up.
Meanwhile 1,000+ deaths pr day, and that number will only climb upwards.

A month or two from now, the US will be at 200k+ deaths, from this "flu".

These protests, will prolong the suffering due to covid19.

Ultimately the US only has itself to blame for the loss of life and the current situation.

As they say... You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

There was nothing really big US could do. even if 100% of people stayed home, still you would get a huge number of infections and people dying.

Of course several governors and the president not supporting lockdown just made things worse, but based on what we can read from other countries, there is not much you can do except prepare to have the least number of deaths. Still death per 1M in US is half of several other european countries affected. Could this be less? Definitely, but I cant imagine it being less than 50% of what it is right now, if the number of deaths in US is correct.

The protests now though will impact people a lot in US specially poor people.

A lot of east asian countries (both democracies and authoritarian systems) had a lot of success in keeping the numbers down. If you compare that, the US has 333 deaths per 1 million people. Japan has 7, South Korea has 5, Taiwan has 0.3, Vietnam has 0. All four countries have really high population density too, which usually makes an infectious disease spread faster. So these countries were able to do something successful about it, I think the US and european countries should've been able to do similarly.

I think its not a fair comparison. VERY different cultures and behaviors. Not fair at all. Also they already have experience from previous infections so basically everybody there is prepared for that. They use masks all the time. People dont hug and kiss each others all the time. They have a different approach of individual liberties vs society. Also they are very aware of information that comes from china. When rumors of a problem in china started to appear back in January they already knew what to do.

So a comparison vs European countries would be fair in my opinion. We can learn what Germany did well for example, mortality rate there is very very low compared to other european countries. I just hope the west can learn from this experience.

In the end, i believe it will take years of discussion to understand the difference and why's of mortality rates in each countries, what they did right, what they did wrong etc.

I disagree. And just because Europe might have shit numbers, doesn't equate to the US numbers being good either, the USA is still leading the planet on the most COVID deaths.

You should have closed your borders to the world sooner.

You should have implemented social distancing rules sooner and to a greater extent.

More extensive COVID testing needed to be done.

All levels of Government needed to cohesively work together... Not have Trump blame states and states blame Trump.

Cross-border travel between states needed to be restricted to essentials only and the economy put into hibernation.

Better contact tracing needed to occur.

But then people get upset their "rights" are being taken away and throw all that hard work out the window by protesting. Which is exactly what they did... That is in stark contrast to Australia and New Zealand where Federal, State and Local governments worked together and the citizens of the respective countries complied with Government directives which benefited the greater good.

See what happens in a few weeks with the current political climate in the USA putting social distancing and hygiene on the backburner, might be a substantial uptick in deaths going forth... Where-as Australia has defeated the virus and is returning to normal.

In this case I agree with you 100%. Actually I believe a HUGE % of he contagion could have been avoided using just social distancing, working from home, closing internal and external borders, masks and avoiding public transport and etc. Of course we would still have deaths, a huge impact on the economy and unemployment, but it would be much lower than what we had and much less traumatic.

But then we have the cultural factor I mentioned to you and you exposed very well. The western world is very attached to "muh liberties" even when it is bad for us and the others. That is different in Asia for several reasons that wont go into.

Also there is the problem of backlash of media and social media. I definitely dont like trump but I like his style of having balls to make some decisions even if the media is going to hate. I remembered when he decided to close the borders for certain regions how he got destroyed everywhere. It was one of the first 1st world countries to close the borders. I said to my wife "now he had the balls to do it, others will follow". Which happened. And now the same media agrees it was the best decision.

In UK (where I live) I was baffled to see that even during the worst moments, we had daily planes arriving from all over europe and Asia every day with no checks whatsoever, absolutely nothing.

But I agree with you, the approach should have been the same from all front, president, governors, hospitals, companies, media and etc. Yet we kept fighting among ourselves. Asian countries have a much different approach. Maybe we will learn. Probably not.