Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom • Hacker News Board

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#151

Post by Retric » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

jumbopapa wrote: post #136

taurath wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

It is my understand that it is highly unlikely an uninsured person would ever pay anything close to the billed "price." Same is true for insurance companies. Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.

Bankruptcy results in them getting as much money from you as possible as well as funds from the government. Further, as most hospitals are local monopolies they have little incentive to change. It’s a win win for them as long as they can receive significant amounts of money.

Actual poor people are a slightly different story and often left alone fairly easily.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#152

Post by watertom » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #95

afthonos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know in what way it isn’t treated as a big deal. There are daily updates from every country; the news covers the epidemic in detail; China quarantined tens of millions of people; major trade shows are being cancelled. Unless you literally mean bubonic-plague levels of panic, I’m not sure what else remains to be done in places where the disease has not yet fully spread.

I personally know experts in virology who are not working on a vaccine for this virus. Until all labs, equipment and experts are reassigned from whatever they are doing to finding a vaccine or cure, humanity is far from 'maximum response'. Assuming that world leaders are working in the best interests of their populations, that leads me to believe that whatever these experts and labs are currently studying is consider…

What are your experts telling you about this virus?

Surely they are reading all the available literature that has been published, they would be poor experts if they weren’t keeping up with the hottest topic in their field in like forever.

You should get them to come here and do an informational, break down some of the more specialized technical information, about how the virus behaves, attacks, etc. clearing up any confusion the technically minded, lay virologists among us.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#153

Post by tomp » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #82

simonh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What exactly worries you about mass hysteria and panic? Why would that be worse than what is likely to happen as Covid-19 spreads outside of China? Because then in addition to the damage caused by the outbreak, we will also have the additional often useless and counterproductive damage caused by hysteria and panic.

Right, but stressing the importance of avoiding "hysteria and panic" is also extremely popular with authoritarian regimes justifying censorship and trying to cover up their own incompetence. There was a window of opportunity during which this virus could have been contained. The Chinese dictatorship has squandered it in the name of "avoiding panic and hysteria". Panic and hysteria should be avoided by being transpare…

[flagged]

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#154

Post by surge » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #32

Around 99% of the patients developed a high temperature, while more than half experienced fatigue and a dry cough. About a third also experienced muscle pain and difficulty breathing. Research from the Chinese Center for Disease Control suggests that around 80% of coronavirus cases are mild. Around 15% of patients have gotten severe cases, and 5% have become critically ill. Here's how symptoms progress among typical…

Of closed cases (people that have recovered or died) the fatality rate is more like 10%. It's only 2% of total that have it, meaning a lot of people have neither recovered or died as it spreads and they're waiting to find out if they fall in the 10% or the other 90%.

Edit: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Looks like its now only 9%, it was 10% a day or two ago.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#155

Post by gen220 » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

jumbopapa wrote: post #136

taurath wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

It is my understand that it is highly unlikely an uninsured person would ever pay anything close to the billed "price." Same is true for insurance companies. Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.

There are many complicated reasons that a hospital would charge more than people can afford. One factor is that it looks better on their balance sheet to have uncompensated medical costs. This is exactly why insurance companies never pay the full price, and why nobody pays the difference. It’s accounting magic to make hospitals etc look like nonprofits and claim subsidies.

That being said, there’s been a trend in the US recently, where hospitals have very aggressively gone after unpaid bills of the uninsured, because some administrators see it as money they’re leaving on the table. It’s more prevalent in rural areas, where there’s often only one hospital to go to, and consumers have no choice but to go to the hospital with a terrible reputation.

In some cases, they’ve convinced the judicial system to garnish the uninsured person’s wages, to get “their money back”. IMO it’s clearly illegal and it won’t last much longer, but yeah the system is crazy. :/

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#156

Post by oefrha » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #107

oefrha wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same thing happened everywhere else with a suddenly-noticed largeish outbreak. I’ve been paying pretty close attention since early on and nowhere else with a suddenly-noticed largish outbreak had a temporary death rate remotely close to 20%. Not even in Wuhan. In fact 12 deaths currently ranks #3 on the global death count chart when each Chinese province is counted as a separate entity, and any comparable entity ha…

See upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22403326

I’ve seen that terrible argument with “closed figures” a couple of times now but don’t really have the time or patience to write a long rebuttal.

That, and the fact that the post you responded to is comparing apples to apples and does not rely on the validity of any one fatality rate estimation methodology.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#157

Post by Retric » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #131

usrusr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding an uncontrolled outbreak (we can't just quarantine everyone, everywhere without secondary effects from economic collapse getting more deadly than the disease itself), the number I find myself speculating about most is how many would be dead or permanently harmed in absence of intensive care? Because no health system in the world would have the capacity to put more than about one in thousand people in intens…

> Because no health system in the world would have the capacity to put more than about one in thousand people in intensive care. Try one in ten thousand. And that's in the most developed countries with the best healthcare.

On the other hand diseases don’t reach 100% of the population on the same day. Quarantine has been surprisingly effective in China, though at significant economic cost. That seems to be a much larger concern than the capacity of heathcare systems.

If this becomes a true epidemic it’s going to be bad, but societies have been dealing with epidemics for a long time.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#158

Post by gnud » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

hurricanetc wrote: post #147

jarmitage wrote: post #41

Reminder that WHO publishes a daily situation report about COVID-19, which is calmer and more informative than most headlines/media stories: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

The WHO has come across as pretty incompetent in my opinion. We could have stopped this disease from spreading outside of China but the WHO consistently downplayed the severity and claimed travel bans were overkill and would be too damaging economically. Now they’re saying it’s likely too late to contain the virus. Well I wonder what will be more damaging to the economy? The proposed travel bans or the catastrophic e…

Do you remember the uproar and all the anti-vaccine sentiment after WHO was seen to "cry wolf" during the last H1N1 outbreak in 2014 or so?

That's probably the reason they were more careful this time. It's hard to know early on exactly how a disease will spread, and how dangerous it will turn out to be.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#159

Post by zeveb » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #117

jlokier wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's an option. I lot of people cannot call in sick. Being sick means being unpaid, and many people cannot afford to go unpaid.

Not working while ill is a fundamental human right, and as such is implemented in all European jurisdictions. There are very, very few cases when you can't exercise this right. Not wanting to is another issue though, but it's often irrational.

> Not working while ill is a fundamental human right, and as such is implemented in all European jurisdictions.

It's also implemented in all U.S. jurisdictions, for everyone except for prisoners: per the 13th Amendment, no-one not convicted of a crime can be forced to perform any work.

Re: Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom

#160

Post by leesec » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

turk73 wrote: post #137

taurath wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not…

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscat…

Please remove this nonsense ^^