Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has seen massive decline in the number of new cases in Hubei. It’s no surprise the response is being praised.
Can they be believed?
Give this a read. Supposedly verified by on the ground outside sources
Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
261–270 of 915 posts
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lockdown in Italy is a concept that is difficult to enforce. And it's probably very different to what it means in China or even just South Korea or any other more organised and centrally governed country in Europe like France. But in essence: Schools are closed until next month. People can still move around freely for work reasons, and in general people still work in offices. Bars and restaurants close after 18pm. Sh…
Completely random and off-topic. I'm in the US and used to 12-hour time. I personally prefer 24-hour time, and am comfortable with 18:00 or similar for a time indicator. I don't know that I've ever seen a 24-hour time with am/pm attached to it. Is this common?
How else would you distinguish e.g. 18 in the morning or 18 in the evening if you can't say 18am and 18pm.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#263Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.
You would be right; Italy's private savings are in the ballpark of $10T+, which means a "patrimoniale" (tax on wealth) would be the last resort to avoid bankrupcy.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, depends on the number of cases and the effected area. If Milan is affected in Italy, you are guaranteed the virus will spread anywhere, it's a key place after all. There is also a psychological factor to count in of course... Social and ALL other media have been flooded with the virus 24/7 since the first confirmed case. It generates good views, everyone wants a piece of that, and now we have this nation-wide p…
I wouldn't call it a psychosis, because in this case people are right. If you look at the numbers [1] it went 10x in 10 days in Italy. Despite the counter measures. Now it's only 7.3k if the efficiency of the counter measures don't increase, it will be 73k in 10 days, 730k in 20 and probably 7M in a month. With 20% requiring hospitalization. Which simply cannot be managed at this scale. (Probably not even at the 730k…
The hospitalisation part really is key here. At this point stopping it really isn't on the cards. We need to slow it enough that hospitals can keep up.
7M people catching it next month, vs 7M people catching it over the span of a year, are two very different 7M's. The rate is far more problematic than the actual number.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
One upvote? Are we supposed to feel sorry for your karma craving personality?
I've been on this site for more than 10 years, I do not care about karma, I was using the karma number as proof that that news/story was being neglected/ignored.
Doesn't actually mean much. A submission that eventually gets 600 upvotes can be posted a dozen times only receiving 1 upvote. It's mostly a lottery.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
My gut feeling from Italy: May, difficult. June, maybe. But expect that this disease expands to almost everywhere so what's going to be the status of your country by then, regardless where you are from? I'm not expecting to be able to travel much this summer, not because I'm from Italy but because every country is going to have its own share of problems.
> May, difficult I have an interest in this (I booked a business trip to Italy end of May / beginning of June), but my gut feeling is that the country will not stand for two months of complete lockdown. Two weeks, sure; a month, probably; two months is a very long time to keep so many things on hold. Italy is not China. I expect some measures will stay in place (particularly about large gatherings), but not all.
I have been thinking about this for a week while monitoring travel alerts. I have two business trips scheduled—-one in May and the other in June. My employer just canceled my May trip today and I feel that the same is going to happen for June. While I can always reschedule, I fear that my colleagues and friends in Italy, whose families depend on visitors during the months of May and June, will not recover from this.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#267I was not very surprised that Italy turned out to be the (first?) major hit in Europe. Considering the strong business connections, it had to be either us or Germany. We are, as much of the world, importers from China, but many enterprises here are also, somewhat, strong exporters to China (I can see it from my dayjob as industrial automation SI), and if you factor in the small average size of Italian companies requi…
There is good evidence the initial cases in Italy were tourism related.
As for praising the Chinese response - I think the reasons will be very clear soon to most people - without a very decisive and heavy handed response the health care systems in most developed countries will face very severe consequences or collapse.
We are at the denial stage still with people finding excuses why Italy is different, etc, etc
The US is 8 days behind Italy is 8 days behind Korea.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
People in the UK have already been panic buying, mostly pasta and toilet roll AFAICT
The toilet roll thing seems to be everywhere (Germany is full of "why toilet paper!" outrage as well), but do people really panic buy so much? Toilet paper is an item you buy once every few weeks or months, depending on household size, it's very high volume per unit of money so shops stock just enough to satisfy an even random distribution of individual buying times. Now if all of a sudden, triggered by news, a consi…
A reason to buy a little extra would be simply to avoid going into populated areas (i.e. shopping). I think shopping is a very likely place to contract a virus given the number of times people handle the same items without washing them (think trollies, baskets, food on shelves, checkout machines, etc).
That said, toilet paper in general has been driven by media hype 100%. I think I remember some early stories where idiots purchased tonnes of it and emptied the shelves. I think the reason for toilet paper being purchased so much is because of it being randomly reported on in the beginning and that it's so cheap. A person on a modest income could easily purchase an entire shelf of toilet roll, whereas you're unlikely to see such things with higher cost items that have to be consumed within a certain time.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
My gut feeling from Italy: May, difficult. June, maybe. But expect that this disease expands to almost everywhere so what's going to be the status of your country by then, regardless where you are from? I'm not expecting to be able to travel much this summer, not because I'm from Italy but because every country is going to have its own share of problems.
Thoughts on the UK? I'm supposed to go on a vacation to England for a week starting April 1st
Even if the flight isn't canceled, that's going to be a pretty unpleasant vacation. Make contingency plans and expect that there will be a change fee waiver for you to rebook your trip to later.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Flybe airline just defaulted Although they tried to blame this on Coronavirus that's a small part of it most likely. They nearly folded a few months ago and the government promised them massive tax subsidies which it appears they never followed through on. Regardless my point is that Flybe collapsing his little to nothing to do with Coronavirus. It just accelerated things ever so slightly.
I agree - Flybe is the British Alitalia, they would have cracked at the first crisis anyway. Still, I'm happy to bet that, by June, they will not be the only airline to have folded.
Most national flagship carriers will get bailed out, you can bet on that.