Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

virologydownunder.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 394 posts

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

#171

Post by RandomBacon »

dx87 wrote: post #150
thewebcount wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, that depends on the med. Your monthly allergy prescription? Sure! Your oxy Rx? No way. My spouse and I are on some meds (not oxy) that they absolutely would not refill for 3 months at a time. My other meds do come in 3 month prescriptions from a mail order pharmacy.

Yep, I'm on a medication that is commonly abused so they only allow 30 day prescriptions, and you can't pay with cash, it has to go through insurance.

I imagine such medications must be very important to take as prescribed, but the only other option I can think of is one day out of every two/three/four weeks, take less of it so that you can save it and slowly stockpile it.

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

#172

Post by scythe »

The biggest question to me is: do you really believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense?

Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.

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

#173

Post by carapace »

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…

CDC says:

> The potential public health threat posed by COVID-19 is high, both globally and to the United States. The fact that this disease has caused illness, including illness resulting in death, and sustained person-to-person spread is concerning. These factors meet two of the criteria of a pandemic. It’s unclear how the situation will unfold, but risk is dependent on exposure. At this time, some people will have an increased risk of infection, for example healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19 and other close contacts of persons with COVID-19. For the general American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus, the immediate health risk from COVID-19 is considered low at this time.

From "Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Summary"

> This is an emerging, rapidly evolving situation and CDC will provide updated information as it becomes available, in addition to updated guidance.

> Updated February 22, 2020

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html

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

#174

Post by mytailorisrich »

dbcurtis wrote: post #162
mytailorisrich wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My plan A is to keep calm and be rational.

In the (very unlikely) event I am quarantined at home it will mean that my whole town is quarantined at home (if it's only me then there is no supply issue). In such case the authorities will have to enforce this and control the situation. Look what happened in Wuhan, for example.

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

#175

Post by el_cujo »

hu3 wrote: post #97

This might sound tasteless but... What's the probable impact of such pandemy on the stock market? Any low hanging fruit to invest on? Any category of assets to stay away from?

When things are uncertain, $VIX volatility index is a good bet. Maybe look into the most popular sellers/manufacturers of those surgical face masks, I'm sure those guys are making a killing right now.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

jpm_sd wrote: post #72

There is a lot of panicky misinformation out there, the WHO is calling it an "infodemic"! This Wikipedia article is doing a respectable job tracking some of the conspiracy theories and falsehoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_... Wikipedia also has a good summary of the overall state of things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by jacquesm »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #157
DevX101 wrote: post #134

This is one case where it's worth overreacting to. Biological epidemics are the only thing that has had the capacity to kill >50 million people in a year. In my risk classification hierarchy I put pandemics above nuclear war and wayyyy above terrorism. Yet we've spent trillions on the war on terror the past 20 years while there's no coordinated plan in the U.S. for this yet. If there's even a 2% chance of this going…

The plans the US already has for a flu pandemic should mostly carry over, no? COVID is probably worse than the seasonal flu, but it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do.

> it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do.

By about 3-4 orders of magnitude, it is. The flu tends to kill about 60K people annually and most of those are old or very young or already had a compromised immune system. This is with the figures known so far and before there is a vaccine around 2-3%. If left unchecked it would overwhelm available health care capacity pretty quickly.

The Chinese mis-handled this. But it would be a mistake to think that the west is super prepared for something like this compared to China. ICU capacity is limited, test capacity is limited. Our advantages are mostly in more transparent messaging and wealth. Those two will have a big impact on the economic and health care aspects but it may not be enough to drop this down to the level of yet another flu.

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

#178

Post by dom96 »

jopsen wrote: post #155
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.

To be fair the common flu has a fatality rate around 0.01%, sars-cov-2 is around 2%. (Not sure there is much we can do in the long run though)

Does it though? COVID-19 may actually have a much lower fatality rate as we are only getting reports of people that get symptoms, maybe that's only 10% of infections, maybe even less.

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

#179

Post by zuckluni »

scythe wrote: post #172

The biggest question to me is: do you really believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense? Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.

it is weird. but anecdotally it seems like tropical climes less hard hit. India?

low numbers could just be measuring detection ability instead of actual rates.

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

#180

Post by klagermkii »

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 seems to just be a set of general steps for the dominant culture to downplay dissenters or individuals for whom the system isn't working. It doesn't tell you anything about if the system is actually working or not, or if those individuals are right or wrong. Anyone who disagrees with the system will probably go through similar feelings (maybe not point 4).

You could put yourself in the position of someone who grew up poor and disillusioned as part of a visible minority in a US city, or a Hong Kong protestor, or almost any other anti-hedgemony protestor and they'd check the first three boxes. Are they wrong or is the system wrong? Nothing in this list helps determine that.

Post reply on HN