Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 915 posts

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

#801

Post by greedo »

hef19898 wrote: post #639
krisoft wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you don’t understand exponential growth and you look at China’s example you might think (mistakenly): “they had this illness and over reacted. Look how much it hurt their economy, and it wasn’t even anything big as it turns out!” This is obviously wrong, but you can’t recognise the precipice they pulled themselves back from without understanding exponential growth itself.

Or you could look at it, say "it looks like exponential, but I am no expert on diseases, so I don't know what I am looking at."

Or you could listen to the experts on disease, and not let your innate optimism to blind you to the reality:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

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

#802

Post by tomp »

pishpash wrote: post #529
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Exponential growth" in itself isn't really the issue. If every week you have 10,000% as many cases as last week, you're screwed. If every week you have 105% as many cases as last week (i.e. 5% more), that's exponential, but after a year there would be less than a 13X increase, by which point there could be a vaccine or other measures that cause the weekly number to go from 105% to 95%. You can also have non-exponent…

Problem with exponential growth is that you can be a little off in the exponent and be totally off in the result. Such is the fragility of any assumption about exponents being "small".

Not really, only if you don't recalibrate every so often... but this can happen in any kind of growth. Even linear growth with unequal coefficients diverges after some amount of time, exponential growth just gets there faster.

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

#803

Post by rthomas6 »

hef19898 wrote: post #639
krisoft wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you don’t understand exponential growth and you look at China’s example you might think (mistakenly): “they had this illness and over reacted. Look how much it hurt their economy, and it wasn’t even anything big as it turns out!” This is obviously wrong, but you can’t recognise the precipice they pulled themselves back from without understanding exponential growth itself.

Or you could look at it, say "it looks like exponential, but I am no expert on diseases, so I don't know what I am looking at."

It's a virus. The infection grew exponentially like virus infections do. We could be wrong, but we're probably not.

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

#804

Post by chinathrow »

hurrdurr2 wrote: post #430
sciinfo wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people don't have an intuitive understanding of exponential growth. People not trained well in math and science don't even have/know the tools to help them understand it analytically. We need (much) better math education for people studying all majors .

One of our older neighbors are inviting everyone on the nextdoor app to go to their house for movie night to prove that this is just a flu. The entire thread is people making fun of covid19 and how they are angry their retirement accounts are getting hit. I wish I was making this up.

It might help telling him that in some regions of northern Italy, patients over 65 with arrests are not assessed any longer and are not treated in an ICU, they are left to die.

I wish I was making this up.

Edit: Source added.

https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...

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

#805

Post by bxparks »

littlestymaar wrote: post #604
TeMPOraL wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, growth narrative is always about adding/subtracting percent points - which makes most people think this is a linear phenomenon, because they don't make the connection that the quantity discussed is a multiplier, and charts they see are on log scale.

As long as you stay with low percentages, the linear approximation works pretty well: two times 1% lead to a 2.01% increase. But it starts breaking down as soon as you reach 10%. Little trick to know (with some good approximation) the doubling time of some low-percentage growing system: count it linearly up to 10% and then multiply by 7 (which is roughly the doubling time for 10% growth). Example: 2% => 5*7=35 years…

This is identical to the Rule of 72, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72. Except that you are using 70. The amazing thing about the rule of 72 is that it works pretty well even for rates greater than 10%.

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

#806

Post by koliber »

majewsky wrote: post #626
voqv wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany a friend of mine refused to go to a meeting at a client's office where someone tested positive and HR threatened him because he was violating his employment contract.

Counter-datapoint: My employer (SAP) has had one case of COVID-19 among their German workforce. The entire office building has been closed down for disinfection and the employees there are asked to work from home for the quarantine period. All other employees (worldwide afaik) can work from home without informing their manager beforehand (as is the usual policy). All non-essential business travel is prohibited, with…

The German ratio of infections to deaths is very low compared to other countries. It may be too early to judge, but given how it's unfolding, this speaks positively about how Germany is responding to the epidemic.

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

#807

Post by BurningFrog »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #437
BurningFrog wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Politicians have no understanding of exponential growth To be fair, that is true of 95% of humanity. These politicians are representative of their voters, as democracy should be.

> These politicians are representative of their voters, as democracy should be. Isn't it that they make decisions on behalf of the voters and should take the best professional advice on their behalf?

That's up to the voters. They often have other priorities.

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

#808

Post by chalst »

majewsky wrote: post #626
voqv wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany a friend of mine refused to go to a meeting at a client's office where someone tested positive and HR threatened him because he was violating his employment contract.

Counter-datapoint: My employer (SAP) has had one case of COVID-19 among their German workforce. The entire office building has been closed down for disinfection and the employees there are asked to work from home for the quarantine period. All other employees (worldwide afaik) can work from home without informing their manager beforehand (as is the usual policy). All non-essential business travel is prohibited, with…

I can report the same behaviour of an office of a pharmaceutical firm here in Berlin.

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

#809

Post by nradov »

kaiabwpdjqn wrote: post #760
nradov wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aspirin isn't an effective treatment.

what is the treatment then?

Same treatments as usual for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and sepsis.

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

#810

Post by bonzini »

rvp-x wrote: post #181
cleandreams wrote: post #34

The fatality rate of Italy is scary high. I read the reason is that they have such a high percentage of elderly.

There are reports that they have a shortage of ventilators, so a lot of patients that could be saved are dying.

We're not yet at that phase, but it's why the lockdown was needed.
Post reply on HN