Lokasenna
Posts: 9297
Joined: 3/3/2012 From: Iowan in MD/DC Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Canoerebel Those are good points, BBfanboy, but perceptions will be hard to quantify. "We could have done better" is always the case, and finger pointing will be at a premium given our current environment. Analysis and self analysis will be done but it'll be a messy, imprecise exercise. Deaths/M offers one way to measure impact. And, reading back through this thread, you'll see that there have many predictions that various US cities and states and regions were destined to suffer severe outbreaks. Those predictions were made despite distances and densities in population. But that didn't happen. I understand your point and agree that dispersity may have been our biggest advantage. In that case, though, its hard to compare NYC against Arkansas or Tucumcari, New Mexico. Or Germany to the US. quote:
ORIGINAL: BBfanboy quote:
ORIGINAL: Canoerebel Encircled, I don't follow. The only way to measure country to country is by deaths/M. That measure puts things into perspective. I disagree with the country to country comparison as the best standard - the US and Canada have huge territorial dispersion of the population that is not the norm for the world. We will be judged on whether we could have done better by recognizing the danger sooner, acting sooner and coordinating effectively both within our country and in cooperation with the rest of the world. We share knowledge with other countries, I don't understand why we cannot coordinate/cooperate at the policy and equipment levels, and maybe staffing levels to some extent too. We share forest fire/wildfire equipment and personnel with countries as far away as Australia, why not work to suppress this beast worldwide? Yeah, I understand that politics drives a lot of the local decisions, often for the worse because politicians want to assure people that the problem can be handled locally and they (the politicians) are the ones who can fix it for them. But I think it will not go away long-term until it is handled worldwide. With all the communication tools we have these days it should be easy to coordinate a response if there was a will to do so. It is. I think the geographics of the US (and Canada) are a big advantage in checking the spread. The sheer distance between a lot of the population already is an inherent boon, but there will still be localized outbreaks even in those places unless social distancing measures are kept in effect until we're able to test, isolate, and trace everyone who comes down with it.
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