Hello everyone, I'm Nathan Rich, AKA Hotpot King.
You know, for seven months I've been working on a timeline...
I'll probably make this timeline available to my Patreon, SubscribeStar and
PayPal subscribers, so if you're one of them and you want access to this
timeline to check the sources or recommend some changes or add things, that
type of stuff, please let me know.
In the meantime, let's get started.
On the 20th, only seven states have limited mask requirements.
Florida beaches open after a death spike.
Massive under-reporting, rampant mismatched reporting methods.
USA Today says "antibody tests could be the key to reopening the country."
Remember this report.
Atlantic - masks give a better chance of avoiding infection and a better
chance of contracting only a mild illness.
A survey shows that ninety two percent of frontline nurses say the federal
government is not doing enough to protect the health care staff.
Eighty two percent say there's not enough protective equipment and eighty
five percent say they cannot get COVID testing quickly and effectively at
their hospital. The Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement
Act is enacted.
More Americans scamming people, peddling millions of non-existent masks.
Coronavirus death toll is far higher than reported.
Over a million cumulative cases.
A study suggests that the deaths are 1.5 - 3x higher.
April 30th, the end of federal social distancing.
But some airlines are requiring masks.
Deaths are off by perhaps 50 percent.
NIH cuts coronavirus research funding.
The White House bans Fauci from testifying about US response.
The White House is now predicting that deaths will stop in September.
And remember when USA Today suggested that antibody tests could be key to
reopening the country?
Well now they're saying don't get antibody testing.
Over one million active cases.
The US blocks a UN request to end hostilities during COVID-19.
And states begin loosening restrictions, May 11th.
Well, they're losing their lives everywhere in the world.
And maybe that's a question you should ask China.
Don't ask me. Ask China that question.
Armed militia-style protesters have helped businesses across Texas defy
coronavirus lockdowns and reopen.
FDA halts Bill Gates' coronavirus testing program.
CDC and state metrics don't match.
And May 18th begins widespread re-opening.
Thousands of people gathering.
All 50 states have eased coronavirus restrictions.
CDC says they're being "muzzled." And it's reported that the CDC is
distorting metrics, and other mistakes, and they're overstating their ability
to test. One hundred thousand people are dead.
And right around here is where we reach about double the deaths of the
seasonal flu for the same amount of time.
This is also the beginning of a lot of unrelated protests.
So now we have sort of two waves of protests happening at the same time.
Thousands are disregarding health advice.
Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine.
And many businesses ban masks.
The US, which has fallen deep into debt to the WHO, ends the relationship.
As you can see, things are just kind of slowing down.
By the time June rolls around, there's really not that much happening anymore.
Which is kind of interesting because here in China in June, this is the
first time that I noticed some people here in Beijing weren't really wearing
masks and they were kind of letting people in more easily and not really
checking you that much. And the defenses were going down.
There were almost no cases at all.
If we look at the graph in China, we can see that, as I said before, February
was the peak active cases.
And by June, there's ...
I mean ... It's barely even triple digit cases in the entire country.
"Despite warnings, the US wasn't prepared with masks for coronavirus.
Now it's too late. "
And this is absolutely correct.
By June, it's just way too late.
There's really nothing that you can do anymore.
It's going to be a full blown, fully-hitting pandemic inside of America
because there really hasn't been any action other than confusing everybody
and telling them not to wear masks, and telling them all gather and
everything's going to be fine, and then eventually shutting things down, but
then quickly opening them back up.
So USA Today is absolutely correct.
It's way too late as of June.
Most states are under-reporting cases.
More enormous parties and protests.
CNN says the best way to reduce coronavirus transmission is by wearing a face
mask. The CDC clarifies the mask guidance.
"They're not regulations.
They're not commands.
But they are recommendations or even suggestions." And in what is for some
reason not the number one item on every news forever from this day forward,
Fauci admits intentionally misleading about the masks.
A Seattle man is billed 1.1 million dollars for his treatment.
He probably won't have to pay most of that, but gives you an idea of who may
be profiting from this type of thing.
Reuters says the US is divided over masks.
Yes, the media is telling us that we're divided over masks, but why?
And this is just one little interesting piece of insight into the American
mindset with some people.
Aubrey Huff, who's a former athlete, says, "I'd rather die from Coronavirus
than live the rest of my life in fear and wear a mask." It just sounds so
good, doesn't it? I mean, yeah, freedom!
I don't want to live the rest of my life in fear and wear a mask.
I'd rather just die from the virus.
The problem there, Aubrey, is that those aren't the options.
The options are wear a mask and live with or without fear for some months and
have a much less chance to die or kill other people around you from this
virus, or ignore that and have a much higher chance to kill people around
you. That's really the actual choice, because the mask is mostly for you to
not infect other people.
It does reduce your chance of getting infected, but it much more reduces
other people's chance of getting infected.
It's not really about the government trying to control you and make you live
in fear and all this stuff.
It's about do you really want to kill your parents accidentally?
No? I mean, why risk it?
Wearing a mask is not that big of a deal.
And you don't have to live in "fear," just live in "precaution." More huge
gatherings. And then almost daily record case counts.
Here, the CDC - not some crazy conspiracy theory website or whoever you think
is a not valid source of information - the CDC says there are approximately
twenty four million cases in the United States as of June 25th, 2020.
That's not me saying it.
That's the CDC saying that.
"Culturally, the US wasn't prepared to wear masks." Washington State's face
mask requirement starts.
This is just one example.
So some places did locally have some requirements.
CNBC - "coronavirus mask mandates differ across the country as hotspots
multiply and states play politics." CDC says over 90 percent of cases are
unreported. Only a fraction of cases being reported.
Vice President urges masks - June 29th!
Yale says that the cases are substantially under-counted.
Officials are caught hiding meat factory cases, presumably to try to avoid a
panic surrounding meat purchases.
Trump says "we're headed back in a very strong fashion." People are
reportedly getting COVID on purpose.
More large gatherings and parties.
One of the men who threw this party says he's not too worried about spreading
the coronavirus. He says he'll wait to see if there's a spike in cases.
80 percent of states‘ cases are rising.
Meanwhile, Trump says we have the lowest mortality rate in the world, which
is completely not true at all.
July 9th, eighty five percent of nurses are made to reuse their masks.
Washington Post says supplies are desperately needed.
And July 11th, the president finally wears a mask.
Cases are surging because the nation, "didn't totally shut down. "
Deaths continue to be under-reported in every state.
A new report from the CDC revealing the number of infections here in the US is
likely 10 times higher than reported.
The president says COVID, "will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it
gets better," which is absolutely correct.
CDC reduces isolation from 14 to 10 days in most cases.
Many, many more gatherings.
"Cases are probably 10 times higher than the official numbers." Cases are
being under-reported.
Enormous, huge gatherings of people.
Sturgis, prayers, concerts, protests...
Texas, as just another example, is under-reporting cases.
Iowa, another example, improperly backdating test results.
FOX reports that Facebook misinformation has reached 3.8 billion views.
I wonder if they even considered "don't wear a mask" as misinformation.
CDC also says "it's up to each individual to take the responsibility to
embrace the importance of wearing a mask, social distancing, washing your
hands and being smart about crowds." CDC says we know wearing masks works.
CDC - "schools shouldn't close if someone gets COVID-19." Lack of COVID-19
safety protocols in the White House.
Several states are not adhering to CDC guidelines.
And obesity is linked to the death rate.
High amounts of health care professional infections are going undetected.
There's a shortage of masks, other PPE and 50 percent more medical personnel
infections are due to the shortage.
Ex-health officials urge states to abandon CDC for, "promoting policies that
will prolong the pandemic." Trump interfering with CDC reporting.
Many states are under-reporting testing.
More than two hundred thousand people in the United States have now died after
contracting the coronavirus.
It is the highest number for any country in the world, even though the US
accounts for only about four percent of the global population.
More under-reporting of cases.
New York Times says Trump is the "single largest driver of coronavirus
misinformation," although it may be a close race between him and all the
media who repeatedly told people not to wear masks, which apparently was
coming from the CDC. So I don't know if it's the CDC or Trump, but definitely
he's up there. A nurse union accuses CDC of under-reporting cases.
And this is around the time that the amount of deaths from COVID, were about
triple that of the seasonal flu.
October 1st, Trump becomes infected.
And October 5th is when the CDC admits that it's airborne, after much going
back and forth and several months of scientists trying to pressure them into
doing so, based on strong evidence.
The WHO says ninety five percent of worldwide cases are unreported.
Ninety five percent!
October 12, 12 states are reporting record coronavirus case counts.
And it's found that the virus can survive up to twenty eight days on surfaces.
And you'll notice that kind of towards the end here, there's not really much
going on. It's just huge gatherings of people, reporting issues, mistakes,
problems. There's not really many solutions.
So looking at this entire thing, I think that there was about one or two
periods of some activity.
There are a few good things that were done.
The travel bans were OK.
They weren't great. The stay at home orders were OK, but they really didn't
last long at all. Overall, I'd say that this handling of the virus was
slightly better than the H1N1, because if you remember from that video, the
H1N1 outbreak was handled by America, basically by just ignoring it,
pretending it didn't exist, letting it spread and spread and spread and
spread, just saying things like, "oh, it's too late, it's just gonna spread,
there's nothing we can do about it," and then eventually saying, "oh, that
was actually way more rampant than we told you at the time. "
They under-reported by massive amounts the entire time, lied to the American
people again and again and again and again, and eventually just sort of
quietly said, "oh, yeah, we were lying the whole time." And they escaped any
sort of punishment for that.
This time is a little bit different.
They're not ignoring it like they did with H1N1.
What they did with this outbreak is they bombarded everyone with a bunch of
conflicting information.
If you were an American during this time, most of the information that you
get would be very confusing - contradictory.
You get information from one news outlet that contradicts another one or even
contradicts something that they just told you a few days before.
So the biggest problem with this that I can see is it was very, very, very,
very slow, way slower than China.
And the second problem is there's no actual power from the central government.
And so it's just left up to the states.
But the problem is the virus doesn't care what state you're in, so it just
spreads around, spreads around.
So that basically reduces all the states to the safety of the lowest common
denominator. So whichever state has the worst regulations will be the general
safety level of all the rest of them, unless you actually block your state
off from other states, which would be totally unprecedented.
This really highlights a weakness in the model of the American government,
which is that while it's in some ways nice to have a federal government that
doesn't have much power in some cases, this is clearly a case where you
actually want them to be able to lock things down and control the outbreak.
If the government wanted to do nothing about it and treat it like the H1N1,
it would have been nice to have a uniform direction to do that and just say,
"well, screw it, we're just going to let people die so the economy lives." Or
if they are going to really lock things down for a few months and then be
fine like China is, then they should have done that more deliberately.
The real issue with the way that America dealt with this is that it's just
this chaotic, confusing message where things are being locked down and then
opened up. And then some places aren't opening up and some are staying locked
down.. It's very, very disorganized, chaotic and confusing, which in times of
a pandemic or like a war or any real big tragedy, catastrophe, this type of
thing, that's the last thing that you want, because everyone just gets sick
and dies. Here in China,
by the way, for quite some time now, you don't really even need to wear a mask
in most places. A lot of people still do out of respect, out of precaution,
but it's nothing like it used to be.
We don't really have any cases.
So to see my home country go through this is really sad.
It's really sad to see so many people die because they haven't chosen a
strategy. You kind of get the worst of both sides.
You don't really lock everything down, but you still get the economic hits.
You lock some things down, but you don't really mitigate the damage.
It's not really a matter of me telling you that they should have locked down
or shouldn't lock down.
It's just more of like there should be some uniformity in how to deal with
this. Anyway, that's just my opinion.
If there's anything you think I missed, please let me know.
I didn't include every single large gathering and every single everything,
but I did try to make this a pretty balanced way to look at the United States
' reaction. All in all, it was a big disappointment.
It was slightly better than H1N1, but I think it could have been done so much
better. And I know we're all hoping that this thing clears up and everything
can return to normal like it has here in China.
So until next time.
Thanks, everybody. Xiexie.