31–40 of 137 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the curve is almost not rising, even in linear form ( I thought it was logarithmic even before yesterday). The amount of casualties seem to be in control. Okay, Iran is acting stupid. But we don't even do business with them. Tourism is minimal. Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)
Healthy doctors your age have already died from it.
To paraphrase: "We don't want to take aggressive action until we're certain that it is actually bad.".
In many situations, that is a fine approach, but when the adversary scales exponentially, it is a dangerous road to travel.
Mass hysteria ? I don't think that's the case, people are carefull, but don't seem to be scared. ( Belgium)
To be honest, I am due for a skying trip in three weeks and the most fear I have is that they just shut down the location and don't let me in (bad) or don't let me out again (not that bad).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The outbreak in China is indeed somewhat (maybe even largely) under control. But if you look at the trend in cases outside China, the growth is still clearly exponential [0]. [0]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/...
Are you sure you looked correctly? Newly Infected vs. Newly Recovered is the one you want. Ps. I'm using the same site, you should check how much influence Iran has in your quick-check. Also South Korea and I wouldn't be suprised with North-Korea to popup either. It seems to be that the WHO had the correct actions for pandemics ( I was positively suprised when looking at the actual numbers). The cases in Europe are s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the curve is almost not rising, even in linear form ( I thought it was logarithmic even before yesterday). The amount of casualties seem to be in control. Okay, Iran is acting stupid. But we don't even do business with them. Tourism is minimal. Hell, I'd even prefer to get it, so I'm over it ( 32 years old)
This isn't like the common cold. There have been cases of reinfection reported already.
I'd disagree. My impression is that the authorities in Seattle, in order to minimize short-term disruption, are choosing to increase the potential difficulty on long timescales. To paraphrase: "We don't want to take aggressive action until we're certain that it is actually bad.". In many situations, that is a fine approach, but when the adversary scales exponentially, it is a dangerous road to travel.
Like the Y2K bug, focusing a large amount of society's resources on the problem is the only think that may prevent it from becoming catastrophic.
I also don't see much hysteria - some real concern, starting to slowly take action, a long-overdue stock market correction that's already moderating, but not hysteria.
Moreover, this author seems to have little knowledge of the dynamics of exponential growth. They also miss the fact that the USA has essentially zero testing capability, restrict the tests to absurdly tight criteria (returned from a known hotspot, or contact w/+tested person), so new cases are now popping up across the nation.
Mostly there is completely insufficient data, especially in the USA, where the administration has gutted the science-based agencies including the CDC, is trying to protect the stock market for it's re-election before protecting the people, and so is basically flying the in the fog saying "it's fine, we don't see any mountains".
Sitting the the same dataless fog and saying "it's fine we don't see any mountains either" is not helpful.
consider that the preliminary WHO incident report regarding the chinese response to the outbreak in wuhan essentially said that the radical and severe measures taken by the chinese government were the only thing which allowed for some semblance of control over the course of weeks. if we assume that the chinese are not fabricating their numbers, it's not much of a relief for us because they still had thousands of deaths despite their colossal efforts. if we assume that the chinese have been faking their numbers, the picture is much more grim.
a lot of the hysteria in the US is stemming from the fact that the CDC is asleep at the wheel as a result of political pressure or potentially severe incompetence. after seeing how seriously the chinese took the outbreak and how badly iran is getting hit by it right now, it is extremely disconcerting to see our own government doing absolutely nothing as cases continue to mount.
we're barely even testing people. daily life is continuing as normal when perhaps it shouldn't be.
i know that this isn't the end of the world, but i'm starting to expect that this epidemic might make life a bit less comfortable for a while.
if the US gets hit very hard and some of the preventable/fixable weaknesses in american society end up being exposed and exacerbated by the epidemic, i think we'll be in a severe crisis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure you looked correctly? Newly Infected vs. Newly Recovered is the one you want. Ps. I'm using the same site, you should check how much influence Iran has in your quick-check. Also South Korea and I wouldn't be suprised with North-Korea to popup either. It seems to be that the WHO had the correct actions for pandemics ( I was positively suprised when looking at the actual numbers). The cases in Europe are s…
The "Newly Infected vs. Newly Recovered" chart on the site I linked above includes cases in China. The virus does in fact look to be somewhat under control in China, but not elsewhere.
Buying stuff you don't normally use can also be sensible. Consider putting together an earthquake kit in California. Unfortunately, having a pandemic kit ready isn't something most people do, but maybe it should be?
There probably are some kinds of preparation that are sensible and others that aren't, and we should try to figure out the difference.
I'm also wondering if there might be an untapped market to help people be prepared without keeping a lot of inventory themselves? Usually there is advance notice for a pandemic so you just want some assurance that someone can ship you something when it's time. This would avoid shortages by making it profitable to keep inventory.