Someone on Twitter just pointed out that the US has 4% of the world's population and 20% of Covid

[Maraya1969]

cases. I actually checked because it sounded hard to believe but it is true.

And it can't be the under testing of other countries only because the US has not been testing either.

[enid602]

1. different

The Chinese Government announced yesterday that its figures include only people who are actually sick with the virus. Ours include anyone who has been tested positive.

[Aussie105]

3. Don't test too many people

and you will keep that number down.

[Aussie105]

2. America is paying the price

of procrastinating.

What is being done now, should have been done three or more weeks ago.

No prize for guessing whose words encouraged most of the country not to take action when it would have been of most benefit.

True figures of the number of infected spreading the virus right now will never be known. Not until a simple and cheap self testing kit is available from your local pharmacy.
Right now, no one knows before they go out if they are an asymptomatic spreader, or if they are in the early stages of infection when medical treatment would be most beneficial.
Going to hospital struggling for breath with no respirators available is just way too late.

[customerserviceguy]

4. This will change

once the virus makes its way to developing nations. We may not have enough ventilators, but my bet is that Africa envies us on this score.

[abqtommy]

5. Thanks to tRUMP we're winning! snark off

[Igel]

6. No, we don't.

We have 20% of a number.

What that number consists of is basically like spam--if it's all you have, you use it, but you really don't want to know what's in it.

For the US numbers, it's the number of test kits that returned positive results. There are false positives and false negatives, but not all the people with positive results even showed symptoms. Most did, because of how we set up testing protocols, but some didn't.

If you look at China, if you tested positive and had no symptoms there was nothing to report.

But there's always some connection to a positive test.

The number of cases ... there are no false positives or negatives with those, and no testing is required. If you actually are infected with the virus, you're infected. That's reality.

As soon as you realize that the reality is what it is, but the numbers on the websites are just what's reported, you remember, "Oh, Trump didn't let testing happen because he wanted to keep the numbers low." We blame Trump for the unique situation the US in, but dozens of other countries are in the same situation and Trump's not to blame. Nonetheless, the insight that little testing = low numbers and more testing = higher numbers is true. We knew to discount low numbers for the US. But now that the numbers are high for the US, we forget that they might be low in other countries because of testing limitations. Or flat-out reporting limits, like in Russia (and even in China, not reporting all positives gives them an artificially low case count).