(09-11-2020, 08:36 PM)copycat Wrote:

(09-11-2020, 08:19 PM)mikesez Wrote: But would the US still have the most confirmed deaths, or would Brazil have more?
We are doing so poorly compared to Canada and Mexico, it's hard to escape the conclusion that anything we might have done differently would have improved matters.

I don’t know the answer and in fact none of us do.  Look at New Zealand for instance.  They completely locked down the country after a post St. Patrick's Day celebration outbreak.  They were praised for being a shining example of how to do it  Right.  They had it totally under control and reopened their country.  They are currently shut down again due to another massive outbreak.  If an island country the size of New Zealand cannot get it under control how does a country the size of America get it under control when we have boarders that a certain political party do not want closed?

unfortunately, there is no "under control" for an upper respiratory virus like COVID.  The data shows that it does what it does within your population.  The best you can hope is to delay the infection and death with non pharmaceutical intervention, but it doesn't actually prevent it.  That's a misnomer born from the unconstrained world view bias of modern progressivism.  Hong Kong, Phillipines, Hawaii etc. they have all had some of the most ardent mask participation, all have had massive outbreaks.  You mentioned New Zeland.  New York is the highest deaths per million on the face of the planet, and they still have a Governor arbitrarily determining whether chicken wings makes you and essential or non-essential eating establishment.  

MASS TESTING they say.  6 months later and low and behold the test that was never meant to be used as a diagnostic tool could have false positive ratios of 40 to 90%  think of that.  

These people really believe that if you just virtue signal long and hard enough that we will magically arrive at some far off utopia.

---