Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now • Hacker News Board

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#161

Post by isoskeles » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

toofy wrote: post #117

etangent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the other three points, it is generally rational to mistrust authority because many authorities have repeatedly failed in the past to protect lives during emergency scenarios.

This could easily be an issue of colloquial interpretation barriers, but there is a significant difference between healthy skepticism and a mistrust driven by assuming the other party is always acting in bad faith. Like I said, this could be a simple misunderstanding of concepts, but there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith peopl…

> there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith people/humanity are out to get them

And how big is that percentage? I’m starting to believe, sincerely, that views like the one you expressed are more paranoid and driven by fear-mongering than the views described in your comment. I call these people flat eartherers, e.g. those who believe there are many flat earthers all over the place who are a problem.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#162

Post by dbcurtis » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #110

patagonicus wrote: post #7

As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: What should I personally do to prepare? I'm living alone and have the ability to work remotely once the virus starts spreading here. My guess is mostly stocking up on food, which I've planned to do for a long time - sounds like a good motivation to finally prepare a list and get shopping. Should I bother with a N95 mask? I already have surgical ma…

Do not tell people to stock up on food. There is no need and this is how you create runs on supermarkets and panic. If the situation becomes severe enough for this to become a problem, this will be organised by authorities. Keep calm, follow basic hygiene, and be ready to work from home at short notice. Maybe don't travel unless you have to. This is not the end of the world and the risk is low. Change course only if…

> If the situation becomes severe enough for this to become a problem, this will be organised by authorities.

Ummm... FEMA’s track record handling extremely localized emergencies doesn’t fill me with confidence at their ability to handle a nation-wide incident.

Maybe it has something to do with growing up on a farm, but I can recall snowstorms that left us without power for 5 days and the roads totally plugged for 3 or 4 days. The government didn’t help milk the cows then, and I don’t expect they will today, either.

If your Plan A for emergency situations is to sit on your ass waiting for someone to save you, then I fear to see what you are thinking you can improvise as a Plan B.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#163

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

anonsivalley652 wrote: post #80

PSA: spreading FUD and panic isn't helping anyone. The common flu is a "pandemic" every year, so should we freak out and buy 1000 kg of wheat while inconsistently not having any means of food production? Don't act out of fear; act out of reason, honesty and proportionality.

The common flu has a total case fatality rate of ~A key point of actions to date has been an attempt to prevent 2019-nCoV from achieving pandemic status, so that it doesn't recur on an annual basis.

If sufficiently widespread, and affecting a quarter to half the globe's population, we're looking at tens of millions of deaths. Contrast 12,000 - 61,000 deaths in the US from influenza (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html), and 291,000 - 641,000 worldwide (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/cdc-global-ann...). That's with effective vaccines and antivirual treatments, neither of which exist presently for 2019-nCoV.

Preventing this coronavirus from becoming "just another flu" would be a Very Good Thing.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#164

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

throwlaplace wrote: post #156

jacquesm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the chances are that I haven't heard about that? What do you think makes this an exception? There is a lot of politics happening around this theme. Can you trust the numbers put out by the authorities? Yes, within a margin of error due to unreported cases. The article is not at all in the fearmongering category. It appears to me quite level headed and simply acknowledges that we are past the point o…

>What do you think makes this an exception? Do you realize it's completely irrational to debate unknown unknowns? Any certainty comes from bias. So you think the doctor is the tip of the iceberg but you absolutely can't know how big the iceberg is. I think the doctor isn't and honestly I can't know that either. What I do have going for me is the biased perspective that on balance the world is being run adequately and…

My point is, in case that isn't clear: the people on the front lines of this outbreak are telling a different story than the one that you seem to favor and that up to some point (right up until it became untenable) was still held by the Chinese authorities. So I'm a little skeptical about numbers and stories coming in from Chinese official channels taking them as a baseline with the mental note that things might be much worse.

The data points that we have from outside of China: Iran, the cruise ships, South Korea and several other regions where the virus has established a relatively strong foothold should give anybody pause at this point, any comparisons with the flu are pointless and noise.

Whether or not we are calling a pandemic is semantics, in all but name it is here today.

The doctor was the tip of the iceberg, he is no longer. But there are other people in charge of the messaging for other countries and it seems as though the dreaded pandemic word is now also used by the CDC and similar organizations, internally and with qualifiers ('preparing for a pandemic') it is more a matter of time when they will feel comfortable in using it publicly.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#165

Post by nemild » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

rriepe wrote: post #99

johnwheeler wrote: post #49

Before you propagate this information and take action, read this post about the psychology of fear mongering, and ask yourself if you identify with it. 1. Do you tend to mistrust authority? 2. Do you feel powerless to control the course of your life? 3. Do you feel like you have special information and insight the rest of us do not? 4. Do you feel comfort when thinking about the end of the world because once it happe…

This is hilarious. Isn't 2012 the underlying model they use for everything today? Fearmongering is the go-to default for absolutely every issue the media covers. Then during an actual literal pandemic they take a short break from every other the-world-is-ending story to give us the "don't fearmonger" lecture. If you ever find yourself split in doubt between your own sanity and that of the media's, please for the love…

Two observations:

1. There isn't a single media (often, when your tribe is against another, you view the opposition as monolithic rather than a spectrum composed of different viewpoints)

2. And they're not insane, editors and social media algorithms are rational and reacting to reader incentives (but it is "insane" to mistake media sources for a rational human, because most media is about covering extreme events[1])

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#166

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

arkades wrote: post #64

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

The premise of this article is that we should essentially press the “panic button” now, to get people through the shock of preparing for a pandemic while we know it’s safe to do so. > Suggesting things people can do to prepare for a possible hard time to come doesn’t just get them better prepared logistically. It also helps get them better prepared emotionally. It helps get them through the Oh My God (OMG) moment eve…

> - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong. Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well,…

[deleted]

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#167

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

johnwheeler wrote: post #130

jjallen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t all of these agencies come about after some incident happened that was disastrous? The SEC came about after/during the Great Depression. Building codes stiffened after terrible hurricanes.

Sure, but what’s your point? Decisions _should_ be based on past information. You don’t expect politicians to be clairvoyant do you? There’s no doubt that politics, especially US politics and government, are pretty screwed up, but it doesn’t automatically follow that anarchy is better. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

I think you have a point because this fear also creates incentives for scammers to profit from it.

There is a difference in how people "act" on the collective level (administrative bodies and bureaucracies, even companies) and how we respond on the individual level (employees, bread-winners, family members).

There is no serious / open conversation about this inside companies right now - some places I know even discourage you and slap you with the fear-monger label, while hoping it will just blow over. Especially in Tech where we could just send people home right away and work remotely hardly anyone does this (if it hasn't already been policy).

> Decisions _should_ be based on past information.

Making decisions only on past information is what makes Black Swans a scary reality. Maybe good time for us all to re-read Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_...

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#168

Post by dom96 » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #36

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

The premise of this article is that we should essentially press the “panic button” now, to get people through the shock of preparing for a pandemic while we know it’s safe to do so. > Suggesting things people can do to prepare for a possible hard time to come doesn’t just get them better prepared logistically. It also helps get them better prepared emotionally. It helps get them through the Oh My God (OMG) moment eve…

I think there is a real need to understand how much of a vector our phone screens are. People touch their phones, wash their hands, and then touch their phones again.

There is also a need to look at it the other way around, what problems are we causing by being overly obsessed with disinfecting everything?

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#169

Post by jcranmer » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #93

ttul wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet 99% of the time, the authorities do a great job of running everything here in the west. The 1% of the time they fail, it proves the conspiracy theorists and fear mongers’ point.

Of all the national emergencies in the US since 2000, Katrina, Sandy, Puerto Rico, etc., does anyone know offhand how many were handled properly? Seems like ~20-40% are handled improperly if not more.

Since you're mostly counting hurricanes, here's a list of all category 4+ hurricanes that hit the US, although most were not that strength when they actually made landfall:

* Hurricane Isabel (5, 2003)

* Hurricane Charley (4, 2004)

* Hurricane Ivan (5, 2004)

* Hurricane Dennis (4, 2005)

* Hurricane Katrina (5, 2005)

* Hurricane Rita (5, 2005)

* Hurricane Wilma (5, 2005)

* Hurricane Ike (4, 2008)

* Hurricane Matthew (5, 2014)

* Hurricane Harvey (4, 2017)

* Hurricane Irma (5, 2017)

* Hurricane Maria (5, 2017)

* Hurricane Florence (4, 2018)

* Hurricane Michael (5, 2018)

* Hurricane Dorian (5, 2019)

That's 15 hurricanes. Of these, Katrina and Maria were the only ones where the response was considered botched. That's only 13%.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#170

Post by Ninjak8051 » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you're a virus researcher, every outbreak looks like a pandemic. The facts on the ground don't match the pandemic conclusion. There were two cases in all of Santa Clara County a few weeks ago, now there is one case.