Lokasenna
Posts: 9297
Joined: 3/3/2012
From: Iowan in MD/DC
Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
Third most populace? China and India are one and two, and isn't Russia number three?
Not even close, Comrade.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
I am beginning to wonder about the provenance of Worldometer figures. There were questions here about the COVID-19 figures and graphs. On Russia, I remember seeing a population figure of around 350 million - that was after the Soviet Union broke up too.
Worldometer also shows a larger land area for US than Canada when other references I have seen for many years say Canada is larger in area.
So the question is - who sponsors Worldometer, what is its expertise and sources of information and what fact-checking is done before they put stuff up? This could be a couple of guys publishing any old thing to get the advertising revenue rather than provide a solid source.
Why use anything but Wikipedia for these sorts of things?
Right, I already added the Wikipedia screenshot to my post.
Ah ha - it's because the number for Canada which is most frequently cited includes its landlocked lakes. For "land only", the US is bigger but only just barely.
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
Third most populace? China and India are one and two, and isn't Russia number three?
Not even close, Comrade.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
I am beginning to wonder about the provenance of Worldometer figures. There were questions here about the COVID-19 figures and graphs. On Russia, I remember seeing a population figure of around 350 million - that was after the Soviet Union broke up too.
Worldometer also shows a larger land area for US than Canada when other references I have seen for many years say Canada is larger in area.
So the question is - who sponsors Worldometer, what is its expertise and sources of information and what fact-checking is done before they put stuff up? This could be a couple of guys publishing any old thing to get the advertising revenue rather than provide a solid source.
Why use anything but Wikipedia for these sorts of things?
OK. Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population
Russia still in 9th place.
Well yeah, Russia isn't that populous.
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
so, unsure if this was posted last week and I'm not digging through the thread for it, but worth reposting even if it was: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals
Interesting. Decades of managed health and squeezing out 'excess capacity' from expensive hospitals hard at work. My dad was CFO of a number of managed health operations in California in the 1980s and 1990s. His tales of 'cost cutting' (read: hospital surge capacity cutting / 'cutting beds') back then have continued. I wonder if this episode will rekindle a national interest in developing standing capacity for the long run or if we'll just keep on the same path...
I'm going with: I really doubt it. Because that would be expensive and we don't pay for expensive things here unless they're sexy, shiny, or (insert more cynicism here).
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ORIGINAL: Zorch
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
so, unsure if this was posted last week and I'm not digging through the thread for it, but worth reposting even if it was: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals
Interesting. Decades of managed health and squeezing out 'excess capacity' from expensive hospitals hard at work. My dad was CFO of a number of managed health operations in California in the 1980s and 1990s. His tales of 'cost cutting' (read: hospital surge capacity cutting / 'cutting beds') back then have continued. I wonder if this episode will rekindle a national interest in developing standing capacity for the long run or if we'll just keep on the same path...
Never underestimate the mendacity of bureaucrats, and their inability to learn. 
It's not bureaucrats, it's management consultants, politicians obsessed with (often short-sighted) "cost savings", and so on. Bureaucrats are, by and large, overworked and underpaid public servants who are doing laudable jobs with nowhere near enough in the way of resources.
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Oh, I don't blame the managed health groups for the inescapable trends towards efficiency over time. That's their mandate. If they don't do it, they go bankrupt. Period. Lots of them did in the managed care / hospital group bloodletting of the 80s and 90s. It's just that managed health groups' mandates-entirely legitimate-are not the same as a viable public health service run by the Federal or State government for the general public good.
If the Feds or individual states want to spend lots of money and manhours on keeping a viable public health surge capacity going that's up to them. It hasn't really been done in decades. Or they can buy/rent/force majeure parking garages, dilapidated malls and motels and the like when it's too late.
Yep - it's a problem of political will more than anything else. The "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" (first time I've heard that term) is IMO, at its root, a political problem as well.
Lots of people were making fun of the Chinese rapidly building hospitals, with an obvious photo op at the start of their groundbreaking, but at least they were literally building temporary hospital capacity instead of dilly-dallying.
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RE: OT: Corona virus - 
) and other lakes and coastal waterways from 'land mass' and separate out land mass alone, Canada is slightly smaller the United States. Seems pretty straightforward.
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