Global Warming regulars; how happy are you with your government's response to the Coronavirus pandemic?

I'll answer this back to front. 

Although I don't work in the US now, I have done in the past, and my opinion is that their healthcare system has certain characteristics that actually disadvantage it in this sort of situation. Firstly, unlike the public healthcare systems of Europe, the US system does not have the same sort of centralization which means trying to get everything coordinated takes a bit more time. My American colleagues saw this already ... it wasn't federal government but mayors and state governors who moved first. What was happening in one state wasn't what was happening in another in terms of the response, and there was a lot of confusion and mixed messages in the early days as regions took action on a local level.

Secondly, the US system is based on a market approach to healthcare - hospitals survive by generating cash. This means that the distribution of healthcare is very uneven. To oversimplify but make the point - regions with wealthy old folks with good insurance covers will have better hospitals with more cash. We already have situations in the US where there are shortages of some supplies and providers with more cash are outbidding those with less resources. Unfortunately, this wealth distribution across the health service bears no relationship to the resource distribution required to deal with a pandemic.

The last thing I'd say about the US system is that there are probably lots of people out there who are sick with Covid-19 but worried about the bill if they present themselves (after testing) to ER. That potential means lots of opportunities to spread it and underestimation of the problem. The one plus the US has going for it is geographical scale and relatively low population densities. The sheer size of the US means the rate at which Covid-19 spreads across the nation should be less rapid than for Europe. It's clear though that the US reacted too slowly to stop transport systems and confine the virus to a handful of cities.

Every healthcare system in the world has it pros and cons, and I'm not debating US vs European, private vs public systems. What I'm saying is that the way the system works in the US means that there are a number of issues in terms of how it responds to this sort of pandemic.

In my own nation, Ireland, I think we've dealt as well with it as could reasonably be expected although I do think every nation was a little slow to get things moving. To be honest, looking at what's happening around the globe, I feel immense pride in how we are dealing with it and how everyone is pulling together. I think the world will feel a smaller place once we get out the other side of this.

What would I do differently? Let me give an example for the US - empty an aircraft carrier of its planes, convert the hanger to a field hospital, and power it up to New York. What we really should have done is get the military involved a lot sooner since they are the only organisations in a nation capable of shifting large numbers of people and equipment around. It's only in the last two weeks that people suddenly seem to have remembered that their navy has things like hospital ships, that we have army medics, doctors, and surgeons, that they have things like generators and lighting systems and sanitation systems and a veritable corp of engineers to put the stuff together.

We've suspected Covid-19 could result in this global pandemic since January ...

Pretty happy overall, but they were slow off the mark.  They should have locked down earlier and saved thousands of lives, also, they would have been able to ease restrictions much sooner.

Most of America is pretty concerned. Most of America had confidence in our government untill Newt Gingrich taught republicans that slander of competent people is profitable.

I think the worlds military should have got involved right at the outset once it was known that this was an incoming threat to the nations. 

 A military threat is anything that will kill large numbers of people or cripple an economy in such a way to make trade difficult - so this was an active threat.

Full lockdown and quarantine on any imports and personnel.

Full tracing of personnel from outwith the country.

Full control of passage into or out of the country.

This would have limited the threat, and had it contained relatively quickly.

And even at this stage all countries have implemented these control measures, only by now the threat is loose within the country and it is a harder job.

One of the major jobs of a military force is to identify threats - AND THEY FAILED!

It's really difficult to answer your question. I live in Dhaka, my city has been locked down on 25th March will continue to 4th April. Lock down is not a solution, government is doing lot but it's not enough for our people. We need testing kit, PPE, hospitals facilities and many more. I think you know we are over populated country that's why little bit worries what will happen. 

This thread has all kinds of funny.  The funniest thing is Dirac posting under both his own account and his Koshka (Koshkuck) account. 

Dirac suddenly whipped out this dormant sock account because he is trying to fool people into thinking that Koskkuck isn't his sock.

The proof however, is in the reading.  Just read the reply of Koshkuck.  The Koshkuck personna poses as a woman, but the text is obviously written by a male. 

Pure Comedy Gold!

At this point nobody wants to boast about low numbers of infected or dead, Trump did that at the start of this, when he talked of the US having only a handful of cases, he’s less talkative now, with infected numbers at 140,000 and growing.

As for my country (Australia) benefited (slightly) simply by our remoteness, we also went very early with blocking incoming tourists, we had a block in place back on feb 1.

What effect this had is hard to say, but so far Australia has just 4000, infected and 17 dead.

One measure many experts talk about is how many have been tested, again Trump boasted the US had done the most, this is simply not true.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing

As the graph in the link shows the US is ~5th, Australia has performed slightly more tests at around 105,000, but our population is less than 10% of America’s.

We also moved to close internal state borders about a week ago, you can still cross but if you do you have to go into a 14 day lockdown.

Besides for "should have's", I don't see much more they could have done, other than listening to experts more.

I believe that the U.S. is doing a very good job.  The relatively small countries of Europe are struggling with a few exceptions, but will manage to get thru it as we all will.  I suspect that the situation in China and Russia is a lot worse than they're letting on, though.

Mixed bag. Trump disbanded the group set up to deal with pandemics, probably just to tarnish Obama's legacy. He also waited way to long to do anything positive about testing, treatment, and stemming the flow. Instead, we got fed a steady diet of BS, self-congratulations, platitudes, but no action. Once even he could see that the problem was bad, he allowed VP Pence to do everything (except take the credit). What he should do now is STFU and let us get our medical advice and news from people who actually know something about medicine.