I think until we can be very sure that is not true, we should take this much more seriously. Seems like they are not interested in testing people in the US if they can find any excuse. I hope the people making that decision will review this information.
So far, it seems Korea has the best data over the situation, and is likely the most applicable for countries with proper public health and medical systems.
Per Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare - http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/upload/viewer/skin/doc.html?fn=158337...
As of today, 150K people tested, 5766 infected, 35 death, 0.6% fatality rate. Their age distribution looks interesting:
0-30: ~2k infected, and no death.
30-50: ~1.5K infected, 2 death (0.1%)
50-59: 1127 infected, 5 death (0.4%)
60-69: 699 infected, 8 death (1.1%)
70-79: 288 infected, 13 death (4.5%)
80+: 127 infected, 7 death (5.6%)
Their number of infected graph is showing some sign of deceleration - the growth rate seems to be leveling off or slowing down slightly.
Everybody in the US has insurance, that was literally a major point of contention to Obamacare - the left didn't like that the solution still used private insurers and the right didn't like that they were forced to buy something. If you have a low income, you get subsidized premiums.
For sick pay, it's just a lack of budgeting and planning. If you have a job that pays you $12/hr with no paid leave time or a job that pays you $10/hr with an accumulation of leave hours, it's still the same in the end if you work X days and are sick Y days and get a monthly income of $ZZZ, just in one case your employer is holding back your leave pay and in the other case you're paid full value up front and save for your leave period yourself.
Isn't that factually wrong ?https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/number-americ...
> it's just a lack of budgeting and planning.
Which people living paycheck to paycheck can't do. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-half-american...
However:
1) This is not free
2) This is not likely to save you from enormous medical costs
3) This is about on par with filing taxes. Probably easy to do if you understand the basics of whats going on, but few people do.
Based on what? Italy is the country that ran the third highest number of tests. Only China and South Korea ran more. [0]
I hope you don't imagine that the US is doing better than Italy, because you're in for a rude awakening.
[0]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/
That's separate from the concerns of too many people getting sick quickly, overwhelming our health system, so people who otherwise would get medical attention die.
When people use the word 'flu' they are often referring to the illness and not the virus. That is, there are several viruses that can cause 'flu-like' symptoms besides the influenza virus.
Without definitive evidence that the covid-19 is 'new', it is reasonable for people to wonder if some cases of the illness commonly referred to as 'flu' for the past 1000 years may actually have been caused by covid-19. In short, are we absolutely sure that there is some statistically signicant increase in the number of flu-like illnesses in the past three months?
BTW, covid-19 is the disease (same as the flu). The virus is named SARS-Cov-2.
I know that's what most think. But, what is the evidence? If one were to test samples from 'flu' patients from the 1980s, how do we know one wouldn't find SARS-Cov-2 in some samples? Has anyone done this?
Merely finding similarities between the bat version and human version doesn't tell us anything about how long it's been in the human population. (For that matter, it doesn't tell us if the virus went from bat to human or human to bat... there are for more bats exposed to sources of human viruses than the other way around, you know...)