about 10-15 new cases today. overall really low numbers.

They will also start Rugby on May 28th...Sydney is their California and will have strict rules, but it will still go on.

That's a fair point. I think my gripe has more to do with the initial response. I think we had time to better prepare once it was clear the virus was swirling out of control in China. Initially, our testing was limited by the number of available tests. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wish we would've seen this coming and started ramping up production of testing supplies so you could get a better pictures of the scope of this thing in our country. To that end, I still don't believe we have a grasp on how prevalent this virus is.

anyone wondering why Mexico's numbers don't seem very high?

https://news.sky.com/story/mexico-city-underreporting-covid-19-deaths-sky-news-analysis-finds-11987235?fbclid=IwAR0AFq6vP_-xdX6nvbiIuIKZEDIesVnF0zrzi-NzBijNJudoJz9lgxuKn0w

do they have a million people per day use subway transit and a NYC metro area in Australia?

JP_Losman said:

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do they have a million people per day use subway transit and a NYC metro area in Australia?

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I'm not going to say the density and congestion in Sydney or Melbourne is anywhere near NYC, but to only have 10 new cases in the entire country since yesterday? That's incredible.

I was only raising the tourist question when you bring up tourists coming to US as the excuse. Aussies have a ton of tourists daily too.

I do question if a bigger country of 329 million with more international travel (couldn't find 2019, but 79.6+ million in 2018) is a fair comparison to 25 million with less(8.5 million visitors in 2018). It's tough to say we should have just copied what they did and we'd be okay now. I have a hard time believing that.

Either way, this went from not overwhelming hospitals to comparing deaths/cases from all around the country to see who "won". When the fight is no where near over, no one has any idea how long it will last here, Australia, China, etc., and no one knows how quickly another spread could happen in Australia if you open up international travel any time in the next 2 years. How long are they going to lock their borders? As long as other countries have cases?

I think the thought is at least some level, flu mutates rapidly and colds are caused by 100s of individual viruses

oh no said:

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JP_Losman said:

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do they have a million people per day use subway transit and a NYC metro area in Australia?

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I'm not going to say the density and congestion in Sydney or Melbourne is anywhere near NYC, but to only have 10 new cases in the entire country since yesterday? That's incredible.

I was only raising the tourist question when you bring up tourists coming to US as the excuse. Aussies have a ton of tourists daily too.

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79 million versus 8 million in 2018. Can't find 2019 numbers.

https://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Fast_Facts_2019.pdf

Just found some. 79.3 million again in 2019 for the US. This is roughly 6.8 million per months. First known case was January, but it's entirely possible this came in December. If this was coming in December, January, February, and mid March, that's roughly 22-26 million before strict lockdowns of international travel.

In Australia, they had about 9 million in 2019. They also closed international borders March 19th. And China restricted in February. This means likely only 2-3 million visitors during this time and minimal from China.

I do wish we'd have locked down international travel quicker.

ElephantRider said:

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Honest question: do we even know if herd immunity is a thing with Covid? Flu comes back every year, and the common cold is always around. Are we just assuming this will be different. I hope it is, but I haven't really seen anything definitive

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The best thing we have going for us is that Coronavirus' tend to mutate much slower than the flu. In theory, if it works like all others, we should be able to build immunity to this particular strand.

If it does mutate in 3, 5, 7 years, hopefully it doesn't come back as strong or stronger, and it's more similar to other coronaviruses and is just another damn cold. No idea how that works, though.

And yes, like others say, common colds are caused by hundreds of different things which is why they are always around.

The country is very similar to Texas, low-density, not a lot of public transportation. They are also a very fit culture. I think I saw more attractive women there than fat people. Everyone should visit Australia.

Didn't trump try to shut down travel early on, but the media and Dems went off the deep end of how racist that was? Trump or hell even Pelosi could have come up with the perfect plan but each side of the aisle would have and still are *****ing and moaning about the other. A house divided cannot stand. Let's put all this pettiness aside and work together for once and stop worrying about November. Because whoever is the next president is going to be is going to have a hell of a mess to clean up, and our country cannot continue being divided.

I know this is wishful thinking but let's get back to what made this country what it was - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Government, just get the hell outta the way.

A few things:

This isn't a battle about who "won", as the war is very much ongoing. If you want to bring that into these conversations if is your own doing and your own slant on your own talking points and biased views you are trying to lay down on others.

Observing the success / failure of other countries provides a few on how we must continue to adapt and reshape our own response.

It is very clear a subset of countries have completely mitigated the threat of SARS-COV-2. A common link is that these countries have understood, for quite some time, the threat of an emergent viral pandemic from China and had plans in place on how to act and where prepared. The western world, including Europe, was caught with their pants down. In a post-9/11 world and post-SARS 2003 we should have been ready for this threat. Instead, we are reactionary to what is occurring with no clear plan or leadership that has left thousands dead and the economy crumbled.

https://www.virology.ws/2020/04/30/the-sars-cov-2-pandemic-could-have-been-prevented/

One mitigation strategy was the hard lockdown imposed by these countries and other European countries after their infection rates and hospitalizations spiked. They endured short term pain for a long term pay off as they are getting "back to normal" much quicker while effectively reducing new cases. Our middling efforts has left us with a drop in cases over the past week and hospitalizations which is very encouraging, but the threat of new infections is still here, even after 6-8 weeks of "lock down".

So what can we do now? The lock down phase is over. We've chosen our path. However, we can still learn from and implement what these countries are doing. They have adapted to social distancing practices and universal mask wearing. Testing and tracing everywhere so that when a new outbreak occurs, it doesn't shut down their economy again and they can continue without living in fear. A South Korean outbreak at bars over the weekend will probably not harm their future efforts because they had strong measures already in place:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/10/853468647/south-korea-records-spike-in-new-coronavirus-cases-after-nightclub-outbreak

Would that happen here? How would we handle a similar outbreak?

Everyone wants to get past this. However we continue to overlook strategies that will allow us to get back out there safely and putting confidence back into the people and consumer. Its going to take compromise from all involved and we each will have to give something up to get the result we all want. That is what these countries have done and something we can all learn from.