My worst nightmare hasn't quite come true yet; Trump hasn't started a nuclear war. But I know that he can, and to enhance his position and reputation, he wouldn't hesitate to. And his supporters would cheer for him - until they get hit, or they get drafted into Trump's little tin soldier army. That is, filled with people who believe in him thoroughly but don't want to actually take action until literally forced to. The ones who will get in the way of the REAL military.

If you do not include the federal response (Trump) as a major part of the problem, then you're not seeing the entire picture.

Granted, the virus would had infected people in NYC, but it could have been slowed to the point where the medical community may not have been taxed as it is now.

The US has tested more than any other country, where that data is available, so confirmed cases will be greater. Ratio still heavy with the deaths though.

I don't want to put on my tin foil hat but I have a hard time believing India, with their population and living conditions in certain areas, has 2,341 confirmed cases. If you see 1 cockroach...

Unless the Democrats we're talking about have been supporting socialized medicine, which even Bernie hasn't been pushing, they're just as responsible as Republicans.

The US is the only major industrialized nation with a for-profit healthcare system.  When something is run on a for-profit basis, it promotes certain virtues.  Chief among them is efficiency.  When you're trying to maximize profits, you're going to cut out all the waste you can.  Most of the time that's a good thing.

Until there's a pandemic.  Then, your hospitals haven't maintained excess beds, because that's wasteful and cuts into profits.  Your hospitals haven't acquired and maintained extra ventilators because that would cut into profits.  Your hospitals haven't acquired stockpiles of personal protective gear "just in case" because that would cut into profits.

Now I'm not saying that having a national health service automatically makes you better prepared for a pandemic.  It doesn't.  But it does make you able to prepare for a pandemic because the government, who is running that healthcare system, can require hospitals to maintain extra capacity for events such as this.  The government can run health facilities at a loss both in major cities and rural areas.  A for-profit system literally cannot do that.

Hopefully, the current collapse of our healthcare system will cause what the collapse at the end of WW2 in Britain did and we'll rebuild our system as a public one, including policies to be prepared for the next pandemic before it happens.

The UK seems to be lagging behind in testing. For the day of 4/1 they had 4,244 new cases and 569 new deaths for a staggering 13.4%.

In comparison, for the same day Canada was at 1.5% and the US was 2.5%.