Deaths are also much lower in the US.
And just like Italy went from "contained" to a country-wide lockdown in the space of a week, so will we at this point. Those tens of thousands of cases are incubating right now and will emerge in the coming days.
This travel ban does nothing.
What are you on about? We have fewer deaths than far more countries than that (France and Spain for instance) and per capita we are doing even better.
The US has fewer deaths than the following countries per capita:
Italy, Iran, China, S. Korea, Spain, France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Albania, Lebanon, Netherlands, Belgium, Panama, Ireland, Iraq, Bulgaria, Japan, Australia, UK
Country Population and coronavirus numbers can be pulled here:
> What are you on about? We have fewer deaths than far more countries than that
You edited out the second sentence. The full quote is:
Only vs. China, Iran and Italy. We're within a factor of two (that is, about 5-6 days) of everyone else.
which is accurate.
The statement is inaccurate any way you slice it. Why use incomplete information when more is available?
The statement was accurate. It may not be a useful metric, but it was an accurate one.
But it's also not the case when looking only at absolute numbers either. I would also argue that per capita is implied because it's the only way you can really make that comparison.
In order to not significantly undercount the number of coronavirus deaths attributed to other causes in the US, there would need to be wide-spread testing here... which there isn't.
Imaging (by the way, you're referencing tests on live patients not dead ones) could be used as another kind of coronavirus test, though an extremely inefficient one, so probably is essentially un-used. Anyway, for pneumonia I believe we're talking about x-rays which is poor at distinguishing coronavirus (see link). Not to mention all of this is brand new. So approximately zero Radiologists are trained and using radiology in a clinical setting to diagnose coronavirus in people who have apparently died of pneumonia.