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WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

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Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#431

Post by fctorial »

mirimir wrote: post #310
fctorial wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scary part is that of the official 8,200 or so people that have been confirmed to have the virus there's been 171 deaths, and 143 recoveries. It isn't that bad. It means that this virus won't kill more than 50% of population even if we were to shut down all research right now.

Sarcasm doesn't do well on HN. Maybe for good reason.

There was no sarcasm here. The comment just states that the virus' 0 day fatality rate is at most 50%. Why are you offended by this fact? Obviously we might see some twists like the virus becoming more resiliant, and obviously we won't shut down all research. The actual death count of this disease will be much lower.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I've played plague inc.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#432

Post by fctorial »

Brave-Steak wrote: post #368
rurp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, in what world is wiping out half a population not that bad??

One could argue that thinning the population of the older demographic with pre-existing (and expensive) conditions could be a net benefit to governments with socialized healthcare. See Taiwan which has repeatedly had to refund their system because of an aging population and the related growing costs.

That's not what I meant. I was saying that there's at least 50% chance that you might be immune to this virus. Who knows, there might be 1000 people who were infected but never went to hospital because they got better without medical care.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#433

Post by rank0 »

malka wrote: post #358
rurp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, in what world is wiping out half a population not that bad??

It would be good for the environment

Christ. I can't imagine wanting half the population to die "for the greater good"...

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#434

Post by aneesh297 »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #396
DarthGhandi wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love nothing more than to wager on that claim with anyone keen. This thread is full of cringeworthy doomsdayers and armchair epidemiologists throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense. When your only knowledge of this comes from the media people should be a bit more selfaware. The fact that qAnon folks are all over this and one day old accounts turning up saying millions will die speaks volumes for the level of…

Is there any platform where this could be done, or any proxy that one could trade in order to place this bet? I would also gladly put US$1000 on this.

Long Bets (longbets.org) would be one. Unfortunately, the minimum period there seems to be 2 years.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#435

Post by vikramkr »

brigandish wrote: post #379

We all seem to be talking about guesstimates and data we can't be sure of, but I see little talk of what we can do . If this were a tech problem - a big problem that seemed insurmountable - I would break it down into chunks as best I could, look at all the parts of the chain, and ask myself which I could be most effective in tackling first. Treat it like a sprint. Which part of the chain would that be? With the cavea…

I don't think testing for this is actually that hard or that hard to scale - we had the full virus sequenced and its genome up on the internet within a couple weeks. Initially we do pcr based tests (easiest to "develop" - you just find the right primers which takes a couple more nites and then maybe a week or two to make sure it works). And there's already talk of people using new tools like SHERLOCK (CRISPR based diagnostics tool, and other tools like LAMP could be used as well (it's a special type of very fast, very sensitive pcr) since I recall some work done with LAMP in previous coronavirus outbreaks. One thing potentially making it hard is just getting equipment/kits into shut down cities (see article discussing Roche's diagnostics effort linked below). There are definitely challenges, but in diagnostics, the technology has come a long way to allow cheap, rapid, scalable testing.

Roche: https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-01-30/roche...

LAMP: https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-42...

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#436

Post by pier25 »

abj wrote: post #339
pier25 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally off topic but... Chinese seems like a very efficient language. The guy doesn't seem to be speaking so fast but the subtitles are conveying a lot of information really fast.

Here's [1] a paper on information density vs speed of speech, done by the University of Lyon. I am not sure how accurate their methods are, but they seem to believe that some languages convey more information per syllable and for 5 out of 7 languages, that ones with lower information density are spoken faster. Note that the sample size was only 59 and only compared how fast 20 different texts were read out, all silen…

Interesting. In that paper Mandarin has the lowest syllable rate and the highest information density.

https://imgur.com/4zwH1Ml

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#438

Post by n0rbwah »

brigandish wrote: post #371
malka wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be good for the environment

I've noticed it's never people in a vulnerable group that talk this way.

If they really believed in it, they could start by giving the example and hope others follow.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#439

Post by sushid »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #313
koheripbal wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and for Cononavirus, it will be even more.

I would love nothing more than to wager on that claim with anyone keen. This thread is full of cringeworthy doomsdayers and armchair epidemiologists throwing around unsubstantiated nonsense. When your only knowledge of this comes from the media people should be a bit more selfaware. The fact that qAnon folks are all over this and one day old accounts turning up saying millions will die speaks volumes for the level of…

How are you any different than the other “armchair epidemiologists” in this thread? If anything, I’d say you’re worse than others as you want to profit over a potential pandemic where thousands may die.

The stock market has taken a hit over this outbreak fear. Go place your contrarian bets there if you’d like.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#440

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

unethical_ban wrote: post #95
Rooster61 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just politics. This is matter of trying to placate China so that they don't hide numbers from international/outside health organizations to save face. My understanding is that China was less than forthcoming about actual infection/death rates when SARS was making it's rounds. Disclaimer: I do not have a source for this. This is heresay from the hubub around the current crisis so take it with a grain of salt.

I was surprised by an NPR blurb yesterday talking about how China may have to put off its annual Communist party planning meeting, and how that would be an embarrassing concession by the Chinese. I was so disappointed in them. How should it be embarrassing to take a deadly and contagious pneumonia outbreak seriously? Do you want them to feel they should hide it? (You being NPR). I know you don't mean anything bad by…

I think you’re reading that incorrectly. NPR is likely not saying they should be embarrassed, they’re saying they would be embarrassed. That’s just a fact.
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