How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by stevenwoo » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

technotony wrote: post #136

gradschool wrote: post #102

A BBC documentary called "The Flu That Killed 50 Million" is informative. As of time 130 million were infected and 200 thousand dead, Sir Arthur Newsholme, senior medical officer at Whitehall, sent a message to his European counterparts proposing a cease fire because an existential threat to humanity transcends national rivalries. (Just kidding!) He actually decided against even warning the public to take any precaut…

To be fair, those in authority were doing a pretty good job decimating the male working age population before flu came along. They could probably model the daily death rate from flu in it's early days to be less than that on the Western front... especially if they weren't very good at modelling exponential growth.

The SIR model for infectious disease growth was proposed in 1927, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infe.... We got taught this in our undergrad calculus class and wrote programs to play with the different parameters - it's kind of eye opening if one has never thought too much about it - pretty much everyone gets infected within some constraints.

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

#152

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

wincy wrote: post #15

jtdev wrote: post #7

“ Philadelphia had scheduled a big Liberty Loan parade for September 28. Doctors urged Krusen to cancel it, fearful that hundreds of thousands jamming the route, crushing against each other for a better view, would spread disease. They convinced reporters to write stories about the danger. But editors refused to run them, and refused to print letters from doctors. The largest parade in Philadelphia’s history proceede…

For the USA at least, wouldn't imposing a ban rather than a recommendation be a violation of the Constitutional right to freedom of assembly?

I believe the current legal interpretation of freedom of assembly in the US is that it only applies if your assembly is ‘to petition the Government for a redress of grievances’.

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

#153

Post by stevenwoo » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #22

I fear we are going to regret not taking draconian measures right now. Mandatory social distancing right now likely could buy additional time for the healthcare system to advance preparations for a wide scale outbreak, including stockpiling additional PPE and advancing triage procedures. It provides valuable time for drug & medical device manufacturers to ramp up production of needed supplies and drugs that should be…

The outbreak started in one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world and it still spread (could not have more effective quarantine except in North Korea and the former Soviet republics) and there is no drug treatment (besides trying different current/experimental antivirals), only waiting out the infection. That cruise ship quarantine showed there is something else wrong as well since it appears either the test is faulty or people can be infected without triggering a positive test based on the people who got sick again after leaving quarantine.

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

#154

Post by albroland » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #149

albroland wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what I've said that would contradict anything you've suggested. I agree with your question, obviously we should do everything reasonable to contain and curtail a lethal disease. The best way to do that is to address it in a sober, realistic manner and drive intervention and response on evidence - not the conjecture of journalists who demonstrate little to no understanding of the situation and disseminate…

I think your comment is doing the opposite. It is using conjecture and false comparisons to downplay the seriousness. And using those false comparisons as a heuristic for justifying a continuation of common practice. You may well be right. But you are not providing any evidence to justify that.

Could you detail what comparisons you think are unfair?

As for sources, if you look in the thread I respond citing WHO, NEJM, KCDC, etc as evidence for my assertions/assumptions.

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

#155

Post by pvaldes » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

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.

> The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early

"Colleagues mourned the death of Peng Yinhua, a 29 Yo doctor who postponed his wedding to fight the COVID-19 outbreak"

"Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuhan Wuchang hospital, died at 51 Years old"

"Dr. Li Wenliang died at 33 Yo.

"Xia Sisi, 29, was a digestive physician working at Hospital in Wuhan. She died Sunday morning"

"Huang Wenjun, 42, deputy chief physician at the department of respiratory medicine at Xiaogan Central Hospital also died Sunday".