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Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing the same thing happen across different cultures over very different kinds of crises I came to the conclusion that this has to be a Freudian slip of the fact that people subconsciously care more about being able to keep their rear end tidy than eating.

well the other reason is that if you bulk buy things like milk and bread it will be gone off within a week

The box milk you buy in Europe can keep about a year when unopened. That stems from a combination of aseptic packaging and UHT pasteurization. I just peeked at a few containers in my house and they have expiration dates around early July.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#692
post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of yesterday, Berlin is no way a risk zone as of now. So why should they? Doesnt mean you can't change your behaviour, so.

Because it's only a matter of time before the virus will be in Berlin (if it's not already). Nobody is suggesting people should quarantine themselves in Berlin, but avoiding crowded spaces, not touching your face and frequently washing your hands doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

40 confirmed cases here.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#693
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is cause for optimism in the numbers out of South Korea and China. Even assuming China has lied about their numbers (population ratios with Italy and South Korea vs China make that plainly clear, they lied to a large degree on the numbers), if China has managed to bring it under control through their extreme quarantine measures, then we can prevent it from killing tens of millions. South Korea seems to have con…

I think this is far too optimistic. 1. We don't know the actual reality of what's happening on the ground in China. Hubei and Italy have approximately the same population, yet Italy is suffering more proportionally. I think the obvious explanation is drastic underreporting of cases and fatalities in China. When all is said and done I think China probably has underreported by at least a magnitude if not double that. 2…

And I think your assessment is too pessimistic.

To address (1.) You and others are going to have to provide sources for why you think that China "probably has under-reported by at least a magnitude if not double that". I've seen the ill feeling and distrust towards China increase on HN and elsewhere in the last 5 years and this fits the bill.

You can explain the differences between Hubei and Italy by the differences in responses. As has been pointed out, China built two make-shift hospitals in ~ 10 days and quarantined 100s of millions in cities. Have you not seen the pictures coming out of China. Now that Italy is taking drastic steps we'll see the outcome in a few weeks and it will tell us if it is an effective strategy. If any of the reported numbers is suspect it is the total number of cases that the USA is reporting: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ It's completely out of whack with every other country. This implies the US has been under-testing, something which we have lots of evidence for. On the other hand we have no evidence China is under-reporting.

To address (2.) "Most Western countries won't impose the type of strategies that China undertook; they simply can't." Why not? Why can't they?

To address (3.) "Most of the world doesn't have good healthcare." But most of the world has soap, most of the world understands what it means to self-isolate, most of the world can implement quarantining. "If the pandemic keeps growing exponentially with a doubling period of 4 days," Looks like mitigation strategies slow the doubling period to three weeks, why pick the worst case scenario?

To address (4.) "Simple math." Yes! Times an unknown mitigation factor of ? This outbreak is scary because it's exponential (highly lethal and highly infectious), but the total fatalities is also highly susceptible to interventions exactly for the same reason.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#694
The voting system on HN is being used to punish those that try to stay calm and put things into perspective. Frankly, this actually surprises me. Either I always have had a distored view of the hacker culture, or some large scale manipulation is going on. Since I am not inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I guess I was always wrong about the hacker culture and its people.

And now, let the donwvotes come. I am pretty done with this site anyway. BTW, why doesn't HN allow me to delete my account? This seems worse then FaceBook. Even Twitter lets you delete your account and your posts. I smell bigotry, and that is why I want to run away.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#695
post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Italy and every single friend of mine working in healthcare as a doctor has confirmed me that the situation is like the one described here. A friend of mine who is an orthopedist outside lomdardia has also confirmed that they have already asked him to work extra hours and they are already at full capacity, so he's preparing to assist covid patients. Personally I know a girl whose soon-to-be husband from zer…

So doctors work overtime during situations like this. Surprise. My problem with these reports is that they have a tendency to spread fear, especially the way the are presented. They also undermine trust in public information which only makes it harder to implement measures, in turn making it harder to contain the virus.

Orthopedists being reallocated to treating pneumonias goes a little beyond "working overtime".

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of death is so high because they count person who had other illness (cancer, heart disease, etc) and because we have lot of elder persons (the probability of dying is higher for over 75). I don't know how the count is made, but since the pressure will affect the care for the other patients as well, it makes sense to at least take them in consideration in the stats.

Yes, it make sense. The strange value is the one from Germany with more than 1000 cases and only 2 died. I suspect that the criteria for counting the death is not the same across different EU countries.

and information hiding (to preserve Economy or to avoid Panic) plays a role here

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has demonstrated that it is in fact possible to contain the spread. Please use the links I provided to review the data. Do remember that the Chinese built two make-shift hospitals in something like 10 days. Once a couple of weeks pass we'll see if Italy is able to replicate what China did. Here are my calculations based on current data[1]: Country tot. deaths pop. (1m) tot. deaths/1m pop. Italy 463 62 7.46 Iran…

China’s current status is impressive but it’s come at enormous cost which is unsustainable in the long run. And it’s unclear what’s going to happen in the long run as China opens up workplaces and public gatherings, and as international travel and commerce resumes. It may very well explode again. Some countries will get a handle on this for now, but many won’t, and it will continue to spread globally. It might take m…

People can do great things when needed. Who says it is unsustainable? Can we not change our habits? Can we not provide the equipment and supplies (respirators, medicines, masks, disinfectant and sanitizers) that need providing?

With any luck we'll have a vaccine in 18 to 24 months. The flu season is halted by warmer weather. We can change our behaviour for a few years until we get it under control.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is the incubation period is around 5 days. So really the numbers are at least 5 days behind.

In my opinion, this is really the main reason why this virus is spreading globally. In fact, the average incubation period seems to be 5 days, which is already a lot. But apparently, some subjects had an incubation period up to 24 days, if correct, this is huge and the main reason why it suddenly raised in Italy. Imagine only one relatively social person in Italy, in 24 days he/she can probably meet at least 50 perso…

It's still unclear whether you are spreading the virus for the entirety of the symptom-less period though.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#699
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need an understanding of exponential growth, they only need to look at examples: China, extreme measures and barely contained it; Italy delayed measures, turning fast into a disaster. How many examples do we need?

In Denmark yesterday a couple of kids in the same class in a school were tested positive, they closed the classroom - not even the school. I would certainly like to see the example of a country able to learn from the mistakes of others.

State of Georgia closed a school and quarantined the firemen who were sent to the school all on the account of a teacher being diagnosed.

Quarantines of mass amounts of the population are not going to help, what needs to be done is isolate those most at risk from the general population

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#700
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in n. italy. Went shopping today to large supermarket. On way, few people in cars, many people out walking though, especially with kids. Supermarket nose-wipe section hit fairly hard, but that was it. Stockers were tending to other areas (either no nose wipes left, or not bothered?). Nobody was panicking buying. There was a pa with 'keep a meter away from everybody' announce, which made my kid laugh as we'd been…

Are you concerned about the news out of Bergamo?

No, not worried. To me it's 50/50 (im about 1.5hr drive from bergamo)chance that can be tilted in my favor by cleanliness, but more luck… but airborne is airbone. I was out again today - people are a bit 'aware'… but i went to 2 different stores - both fine, asked the cashiers how they are... they're fine. I got the impression shoppers are buying what they need. A middle-aged lady coughed without covering her mouth, that was annoying. Today looks like all kids are 100% at home, not even being out with their friends - that might last two days max, but it's no worse than having measles.
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