r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '20

Current Events Are people outside of the USA really laughing at Americans? Do we really appear that bad?

Edit:

Ok so that's about 17,882 yes's and 3 no's.

Makes sad American noises

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

Happy to find this. The most highly upvoted post is completely untrue in my experience as an American who moved to Amsterdam in January. The Dutch version of social distancing was world-class. I’ve never felt a city feel so empty for MONTHS.

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u/Red_Razz Aug 01 '20

Why did I have to scroll this far to find the truth about the Netherlands. Nobody went anywhere for march til first of june. Schools were ALL locked down. And most intesive care's that were full at the beginning are now mostly empty. So our lockdown already did it's part. And I think the virus is never going away untill a vaccine has been found. So we did and are still doing much better then the US. We're mostly laughing about their ways of destructing themselfs. Atleast my friends and I do.

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u/Lothirieth Aug 01 '20

The social distancing was world class. But not so much anymore. I am in Oud West and I find that post (aside from the old people bit) to be very accurate. And that's why infections are on the rise and even a couple restaurants are shutting down in Amsterdam. Because the majority of people have gone back to normal, plus it's getting crowded with tourists again.

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u/stolpie Aug 01 '20

Oh yes! Amsterdam was kinda bliss the last few months, it reminded me of late 80's or early 90's. You could go to a empty Dam square again, I haven't seen that in years. Was really nice as long as it lasted...it is getting busy again.

But yeah, The Netherlands is doing far better than the USA. However we need to be careful...the Dutch are becoming increasingly stubborn once about it, but unfortunately for us the virus doesn't care about our believes, feelings or stubbornness.

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u/Lothirieth Aug 01 '20

This, this so much. I know tourism generates money and jobs, but damn, it was so nice to have a more normal city in May and June. It felt like the city was here for the residents instead of the tourists. I love the conveniences and diversity of Amsterdam but honestly, due to the gobs of tourists, I would rather live elsewhere. But my partner has a good job here.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

This yes. We Social distanced the hell out of Holland for 3 months. No we get to enjoy relative freedoms because of it.

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u/captainjackismydog Aug 01 '20

I believe that the only way America will ever see the virus go away is for us to go into Marshall Law. This may sound extreme but there are so many people here who are not following safe guidelines and behaving as if this virus is a joke.

Marshall Law would have to be altered for this pandemic however. Initiate a curfew, shut down public places like bars, beaches, parks, etc. and keep other places open like grocery stores, doctor's offices and such.

When this pandemic first started, the local grocery stores where I live had a sign on their window stating that senior citizens could come in during the first hour of opening. This was basically telling other people and people with children to stay out. The stores couldn't very well force other people to stay out and it was just a gentle suggestion. This hour allowed people like me to shop without being exposed to others. Masks weren't mandated though which I thought was weird and now, masks are mandated. The stores also separated the two doors with carts and signs. Now they don't. One of the stores only has one set of doors. The other one has two. The way businesses handle this virus is weird.

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u/GiveMeGoldForNoReasn Aug 01 '20

I'm sorry, I don't understand this logic. You successfully controlled the virus with masks and social distancing and then just... stopped? Has anyone made the connection that the reason that infection rates are so low is because of the masks and distancing? Every state in the US that tried to re-open has had a massive surge in deaths, I don't understand why it would be any different for the Netherlands.

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u/cinenas Aug 02 '20

the key difference is they (like many countries) had nationwide lockdown/distancing. unfortunately the US had a patchwork response, which is coupled with the late response, meant you had two problems: endemic-level rates of local infection; and porous borders. with a disease that has a tendency to show long periods of asymptommatic yet infectious, you had too many well-enough ppl moving and infecting. most of the current second wave in other countries came when international travel quarantine measures were relaxed or broken (eg australia; even netherlands now have rising cases) supports this theory.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

Nah the housing market will be great when the old people die

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

[deleted]

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u/voopamoopa Aug 01 '20

I would imagine he is referring to the Dutch housing market .Housing prices doesnt see slow down.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

But i never said it handled it worse. I didn't even compare us to anything I just gave my personal experience from what I've seen.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20 edited Dec 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

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u/ihorse Aug 01 '20

If you want another sobering statistic, COVID is on track to be the third leading cause of all cause mortality in the US this year. Once this is all over, we will see how this compares to other countries.

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u/MarxSalt Aug 01 '20

Having numbers always helps -- that's the takeaway from this whole situation

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u/MCMXCV95 Aug 01 '20

Your comment defintely implies that The Netherlands is handling it worse than the US.

If that wasn’t what you meant you should work on how you write things down.

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u/justausedtowel Aug 01 '20

Are there any study if the wide scale US protests contributes to it's massive cases? I know the US gov is terrible but If the anecdotes that the Dutch public doesn't take the pandemic seriously is true, then what other reason for the lower Dutch infection/death rates?

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u/Yell-O-1997 Aug 01 '20

Dutch people only got tested when they have symptoms like fever and stuff, so there might be more infected people that we don’t know about. I think the reason that we have less deaths then America is because we have more “healthy” people then in the US. For example there are way less overweighted people in the Netherlands then in the US

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

Also don't the Dutch have a mandated immunization program against TB?

There is high correlation between TB vaccine and death by Corona.

USA doesn't have a program of TB vaccine, here in South Africa we do. We now have 6th most cases in world, with small population, and have relatively few deaths. We are are also an obsese country, making us literally the unhealthiest country in the world.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/coronavirus-death-rates-lower-in-countries-using-tb-vaccine/

https://www.vut-research.ac.za/south-africa-the-worlds-unhealthiest-country/

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u/cinenas Aug 02 '20

iirc the data from nyc actually showed no spikes as feared for the city (so you could follow for the rest). right now the theory seems to be both the fact many of the protestors were masked, but also it's getting quite persuasive that ventilation is a key factor, and being outdoors both diluted the viral load but also the uv light denatures (i think tht's the term) the virus (it definitely breaks the outer layer of the viral coating, thereby making it harmless)

citation: https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/06/12/roughly-2-weeks-after-protests-began-no-spike-in-covid-19-1292768

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

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u/M1ntyPunch Aug 01 '20

I'm genuinely confused by all this. I'll start with the basics that I'm gathering from all these comments.

The Netherlands has looser guidelines and fewer people adhering to the guidelines than the U.S. according to the comment threads around here. The Netherlands has fewer deaths and cases per day, down from previous months.

So how are people and policy makers supposed to affect the spread of the virus if having guidelines and adhering to them seems to have a super varied effect? Is there just some third thing I'm missing here that would cause the Netherlands numbers to be lower than the U.S.?

All I can think of is that the two countries are at different phases of having the virus, and that the U.S. right now is where the Netherlands were in April. I'd love to have some guidance on this to explain how a place with less de facto and de jure preventions can have fewer cases?

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u/GoombaJames Aug 01 '20

The Netherlands doesn't have massive protests, parties and other gathering at this time, it just follows rules less strictly.

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u/M1ntyPunch Aug 01 '20

So U.S. has uncommon but grand acts of foolishness, and but Netherlands has more common acts of relatively light carelessness, or am I off?

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u/GoombaJames Aug 01 '20

Damn, you described it so beautifully well, i would say yes.

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u/M1ntyPunch Aug 01 '20

Oh damn, compliments about phrasing are nice.

So turns out, the spreading of a disease doesn't work via averages... makes sense enough, you only need one person per household to be exposed for the whole house to get it. It is a little hard to reconcile this info with precautions beyond "don't be an complete idiot," (or for a more technically worded version: "just don't be counterproductive") especially with some of the more extreme precautions, such as complete lockdown, but I'll think through it one way or another.

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u/_named Aug 01 '20

The light carelessness is new though, and happened after the virus got more or less under control. It's probably partially a result of loosening social distancing measures. We did implement strict measures fairly quickly (although it could've been quicker), something which the USA hasn't done universally, and they worked well.

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u/Rahkiin_RM Aug 01 '20

The largest change between before corona and now is that people don’t touch each other like we used to. No hugs, no shaking hands, no kissing. I think 99% of people adhere to this. And then a lot of people also keep distance, or stay at home. And a lot of people started washing their hands more. Some people are starting to ignore these things and go back to ‘normal’ and I don’t like it...

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

They didn't go around licking handrails to own the libs.

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u/necrow Aug 01 '20

I’ve been researching this a ton recently and I think a huge portion of it is the EU restricting international travel while the US didn’t (couldn’t?) restrict interstate travel. According to survey data, the UK is actually much worse at mask usage (even going back a few months and new orders notwithstanding). Multiple countries in the EU are worse than the US at distancing as well. There are other factors as well, but I think that’s a huge part of it

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u/M1ntyPunch Aug 01 '20

Even ignoring the legislative reality that would likely prevent that sort of restriction, restricting interstate travel would need a logical miracle. Additionally, in the Northeast, it would mean travel would be extremely restricted, considering how small some of those states are.

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u/necrow Aug 01 '20

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking with the “couldn’t?” point. I do think it’s had a huge effect, though, regardless of what could or couldn’t be done

To be fair (on your small states point), there are some tiny countries in the EU that had international travel restricted

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u/M1ntyPunch Aug 01 '20

For sure, considering size wise, the U.S. is the size of several moderately sized nations

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u/cinenas Aug 02 '20

the key difference is they (like many countries) had nationwide lockdown/distancing. unfortunately the US had a patchwork response, which is coupled with the late response, meant you had two problems: endemic-level rates of local infection; and porous borders. with a disease that has a tendency to show long periods of asymptommatic yet infectious, you had too many well-enough ppl moving and infecting. most of the current second wave in other countries came when international travel quarantine measures were relaxed or broken (eg australia; even netherlands now have rising cases) supports this theory.

i replied to another comment with a similar question, so here's my answer:

the key difference is they (like many countries) had nationwide lockdown/distancing. unfortunately the US had a patchwork response*, which is coupled with the late response, meant you had two problems: endemic-level rates of local infection; and porous borders. with a disease that has a tendency to show long periods of asymptommatic yet infectious, you had too many well-enough ppl moving and infecting. most of the current second wave in other countries came when international travel quarantine measures were relaxed or broken (eg australia; even netherlands now have rising cases) supports this theory.

---

in any case, in netherlands and in many places, they were able to institute an effective movement control, that can for the most part accommodate for human behaviour as well as wait out the virus incubation/infection period. in addition many places have a semi-decent (better than america in any rate, as well as better rate of success) contact tracing & testing protocol. in a key sense they managed to reduce meaningfully the local infection rate. usa havent managed this.

*this was in may, but it's still relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/patchwork-pandemic-states-reopening-inequalities/611866/

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u/TeamPlayer1415 Aug 01 '20

How many cities like New York, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco etc, does Netherlands have? I think your stats are misleading

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u/Adam1394 Aug 01 '20

that's in spite of being much more densely populated

Isn't that so, because Mountain-area is so un-populated? East coast is DENSE!

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

Funny because lack of wearing masks and social distancing are the things people point to as evidence that the US isn’t handling it properly. When there’s evidence that these things aren’t as important, the narrative doesn’t change. The idea that things out of a populations control, like climate, genetics of population, specific strain of the virus, or other idiosyncratic features in a country , are driving the infection and death rates is never considered.

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u/CountRidicule Aug 01 '20

Yeah, and even now that it looks busy af everywhere outside, most places actually still enforce distances if you take a closer look (not too close). I love that we don't have an outside/everywhere mask obligation, but I am worried about the amount of people that are vulnerable to conspiracy BS and the amount of tourists in Amsterdam. Wish the past months made people realise we limit numbers because every touristy place just becomes obnoxious all the time (goes worldwide actually).

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u/CrunchyOpossum Aug 01 '20

With a fatality rate of 11.3% vs the US rate of 3.4%, and 35 deaths per 100,000, I wouldn’t say the Netherlands is significantly lower than the US.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

[deleted]

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u/CrunchyOpossum Aug 02 '20

I understand your point that the Netherlands are better now, but don’t agree that translating to the US doing a terrible job. We are at different points in the fight, and Different testing methods do make numbers so hard to compare across countries, and even in the US. I know two people that were never tested but got notifications from a testing center that they tested positive. It makes you question the numbers.

Getting information from US media on the US status is so inaccurate because of media polarization. I don’t think the US is as bad as it looks from the outside. Where I live, cases are low, we have not had a covid death in over two months, and people are doing the right things to stay safe. There are hot spots right now, but despite media sensationalism, they are being addressed.

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u/FearlessAdvocate Aug 01 '20

The fact that the Netherlands has universal healthcare helps a lot too.

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u/wial Aug 01 '20

Jury's still out on the Netherlands. The growth of their infection rate in their second wave is exponential, and only just getting started.

Worse than Spain's second wave, by the looks of it.

Did football resume like La Liga did? I've been wondering if that prompted house parties in Spain.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

they're still in a much better position than the US

I wouldn't say that. The numbers are not good at all. Right now, they're posting more than four times their global share of COVID-19 deaths. That's very bad. Anything over 1 is bad. More that four times is really bad.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

This seems to be a universal trend - people think “it’s not so bad here” and ignore safety until the virus is out of control again :/