U.S. Response to COVID-19 is Worse than China ’s. 100 Times Worse.

COVID-19 remains an ongoing threat and the U.S. has just reached a tragic milestone in the pandemic that may not get much attention. The COVID-19 death rate in the U.S. has now passed 340 per million residents, just over 100 times the rate in China. Let that sink in: The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is 100 times greater than it is in China, where the virus first emerged in humans and where the Trump Administration claims the blame should lie for letting the pandemic get out of hand. And it’s not just China that kept its death rate low. Austria, Germany, and Greece have significantly lower per-capita mortality rates than the U.S. In the East Asia and Pacific region, Australia, Hong Kong, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand were all able to keep their COVID-19 fatalities below 7 deaths per million residents. Vietnam, with a population of 96 million, has suffered no reported deaths at all. Countries that acted early and effectively on the available information were able to avoid the worst of the pandemic. The stark disparity in COVID-19 death rates between the U.S. and other countries illustrates the enormous difference between the effectiveness of the U.S. and successful countries’ responses to the pandemic. Let’s start with China, where the first suspected case of COVID-19 emerged on Dec. 8, 2019. By Dec. 31, Chinese authorities had informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the threat. By Jan. 12, Chinese sci...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news