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How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

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Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#71

Post by yodsanklai »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #30
moultano wrote: post #13

For those of you reading this from the bay area, we already have suspected community transmission 50 miles away, in a town with a lot of people who commute to the Bay. If it's easy for you to work from home, consider doing so, giving explicit permission to your reports to do so, and asking your manager to give permission to their reports to do so. We're fortunate to be in an industry where WFH has relatively little c…

I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel. It's probably a bit late for this stuff from a containment perspective. But it would help reduce the r0. Speaking personally, I have to decide by mid March if we should take our trip to Legoland in San Diego. Right now I'm leaning towards "no". And I don't imagine the outlook will be much better in just 2 weeks…

> I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel.

Maybe because it's not needed yet? We are talking about a few cases in a country of 300+ millions inhabitants. Even if we assume that there are many unreported cases, we can still assume that the risk is extremely low.

It's notoriously hard to assess probabilities of low events, so I would simply follow recommendations from experts, and so far my government hasn't emitted any specific restrictions (besides avoiding traveling to China and a few other places).

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#72

Post by mushysyntax »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #12
dragontamer wrote: post #3

> In 1918, medicine had barely become modern; some scientists still believed “miasma” accounted for influenza’s spread. Does anyone know where I can learn more about the "miasma" model of disease? Whenever I'm looking up old plagues / diseases / etc. etc., they bring up the "miasma" model. But what is the miasma theory (or pseudo-science?) that people used to believe in? And how does it differ from our modern germ th…

I dislike this idea of calling theories that ended up being wrong as "pseudo-science". Not all wrong ideas were just random ramblings. Miasma Theory came from imperfect knowledge and not understanding the mechanisms of some of their observations. If you read the debates on how miasma works, you can totally see reasonable rational arguments if you strip away a few generations of scientific knowledge.

You clearly lack an understanding of the scientific method and what makes "science" science.

It was pseudo science because using those suits was not based on any proof from empirical observations. Plague suits did nothing to decrease mortality rates.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#73

Post by Leader2light »

nostromo wrote: post #40
jtdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

Panic is unwarranted. On the cruise ship, which is known for being full of old people, there were 3 deaths out of ~750 known cases. Almost everyone dying so far has had another medical issue or been very old. Reports now say that many people testing positive have no symptoms at all and aren't getting sick. There have been zero deaths of children so far, which is unlike the flu. The youngest death was in his mid 30s.…

This is dead wrong. Please check your facts. 6 deaths. Many in bad shape. Most still sick. Honestly, people should be scared. Leadership is doing everything they can to prevent that.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#74

Post by erikerikson »

Loughla wrote: post #65
morelisp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Emasculated" is a bizarre word to use, but I assume it's in reference to Trump putting Pence, rather than anyone at the CDC or HHS, in charge of official messaging around COVID-19.

Ah, I've been on a politics fast for a few days, so I missed that. Without devolving into an inevitable political shouting match, what would the purpose of that move be?

Signaling that it's being taken seriously at the "highest levels" to support confidence?

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#75

Post by Loughla »

js2 wrote: post #36

While doing ancestry research years ago, I learned I had a 2nd great uncle who immigrated to America from Romania aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1904. (Eight years later in 1912, this would be the first ship to come to the Titanic’s rescue, and six years after that would itself be sunk by a U-Boat.) He had left Romania likely to escape anti-semitism. He’d eventually find his way out to Denver. Sadly, he’d die in 1918 (t…

That's neat (even if it's a sad way to go). This is the kind of thing about the internet that makes all the rest of the noise and nonsense worth it.

Just think, 30 years ago, all of that information would've taken years to put together, if you even could've put it together! Just fascinating.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#77

Post by dmix »

cmiles74 wrote: post #60
moultano wrote: post #13

For those of you reading this from the bay area, we already have suspected community transmission 50 miles away, in a town with a lot of people who commute to the Bay. If it's easy for you to work from home, consider doing so, giving explicit permission to your reports to do so, and asking your manager to give permission to their reports to do so. We're fortunate to be in an industry where WFH has relatively little c…

A friend of mine flew back from Japan yesterday. They were involved with providing food to the passengers quarantined on the Diamond Princess. He worked about an hour away from the cruise ship. This friend called the Center for Disease Control before flying back and asked them if he should do anything, like maybe quarantine himself in his home; they said no. No one questioned him when be boarded the plane to the stat…

The CDC is (allegedly) already working on expanding the criteria for who gets tested and who doesn't. Making the conditions less strict. They are also working hard on getting the testing kits available broadly in every region of the country which is no easy task (apparently a bit part of the supply chain for the actual testing kits is coming from China, which is ironic in a way).

Previously only people who were in contact with infected people showing symptoms or were in China (previously Wuhan) would be allowed to get tested. This may be missing a ton of aystompatic people walking around who don't know they have it, and may be spreading it to other people [1]. Your friend most certainly should have been tested and possibly self-quarinited.

Fun story, an area in northern Italy, Lombary decided to test more broad, not just the people showing symptoms and they found 600 people (only roughly 200 showing symptoms). It seems that no one really cares about the other 400 infected people walking around because "they aren't coughing and spreading it like a symptomatic person".

The funny part is a bunch of other Italian areas got mad at Lombardy for testing broadly and spiking the total number of infected in Italy. It's like shooting the messenger. The Lomary official had a great quote (this comes from [2]):

> Lombardy officials said they preferred to know who had the virus.

> “Either you hide problems under a carpet, or you lift the carpet and you clean the floor,” Attilio Fontana, the region’s president, said in an interview in his office, with views over a foggy and eerily quiet Milan, 29 floors above the virus hunters.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-asympt...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/europe/italy-corona...

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#78

Post by tkahnoski »

nostromo wrote: post #55
bcrosby95 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel. It's probably a bit late for this stuff from a containment perspective. But it would help reduce the r0. Speaking personally, I have to decide by mid March if we should take our trip to Legoland in San Diego. Right now I'm leaning towards "no". And I don't imagine the outlook will be much better in just 2 weeks…

Because they're balancing being extra-cautious with the serious risks of overreacting. The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early -- which is obviously incredibly sad, but also not something worth crashing the world economy over.

Ouch. I have this opinion of my dog. An extra year or two... not a big deal.

I do not have this opinion of my parents or any other immuno-compromised individual. Your worst-case-scenario is absolutely the worst-case scenario in many individual's minds.

If the greater good is not the extension of the life of those around us what exactly are we trying to do here?

There are many things worth crashing the world-economy over. Slavery was one. Climate change probably another.

Asking for a 90 day slow-down to prevent real-world deaths is probably one of the more concrete and predictable things we could do compared to most other altruistic choices facing us today.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#79

Post by throwaway55554 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #30
moultano wrote: post #13

For those of you reading this from the bay area, we already have suspected community transmission 50 miles away, in a town with a lot of people who commute to the Bay. If it's easy for you to work from home, consider doing so, giving explicit permission to your reports to do so, and asking your manager to give permission to their reports to do so. We're fortunate to be in an industry where WFH has relatively little c…

I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel. It's probably a bit late for this stuff from a containment perspective. But it would help reduce the r0. Speaking personally, I have to decide by mid March if we should take our trip to Legoland in San Diego. Right now I'm leaning towards "no". And I don't imagine the outlook will be much better in just 2 weeks…

> I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this.

Because they're being told it is "contained in the U.S."

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#80

Post by bitbuilder »

nostromo wrote: post #40
jtdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

Panic is unwarranted. On the cruise ship, which is known for being full of old people, there were 3 deaths out of ~750 known cases. Almost everyone dying so far has had another medical issue or been very old. Reports now say that many people testing positive have no symptoms at all and aren't getting sick. There have been zero deaths of children so far, which is unlike the flu. The youngest death was in his mid 30s.…

>3 deaths out of ~750 known cases

Actually it's 6 out of 705. [0][1] May seem like a small difference, but a 0.8% chance of dying is 8x more than the flu.

Never mind the fact that the data out of China, Italy, Japan and Iran is all trending around the 2-3% CFR calculated and published in multiple peer reviewed journals. [2][3]

(However, South Korea might be reason for hope.)

>or been very old

It bothers me immensely when people mention it's "just old people". I'm not sure why I should "chill" about my parents having an 8% chance of dying if they contract this. [3]

[0] https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus...

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130

[3] http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

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