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Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

bbc.com

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

#811

Post by moultano »

xienze wrote: post #338
burkaman wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember much opposition to that order and I can't find any now.

You must not have been paying much attention then. > The Trump administration’s quarantine and travel ban in response to the Wuhan coronavirus could undercut international efforts to fight the outbreak by antagonizing Chinese leaders, as well as stigmatizing people of Asian descent, according to a growing chorus of public health experts and lawmakers.[0] > The Trump administration’s decision to severely restrict trav…

Every news article on any policy change will include some characterization of what the opposition to it is saying.

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

#812

Post by realusername »

chinathrow wrote: post #790
realusername wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree, it will be a disaster in Europe but the US will be even worse, absolutely nothing is prepared for that.

Now if you think about the US even worse, what are you thinking about under-developped nations? Africa?

That's a good point, I can't say anything about Africa right now. It seems the virus hasn't affected the continent too much for now, it's difficult to say why, maybe bad conditions for the virus, luck or just a lack of testing (that's what I fear).

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

#813

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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".

> Problem with exponential growth is that you can be a little off in the exponent and be totally off in the result.

Which is why the growth rate is really what matters. Which isn't immutable. It goes down if people wash their hands. It goes down if sick people stay at home.

This is also why it really matters if the rate is 150% or 130%, even if both are very bad, because the higher rate is very worse. And the rate gets lower if sick people stay home, but it gets higher if idiots panic and start hoarding masks and stealing hand sanitizer which increases the rate of infection when they aren't there for other people to use.

Panic is not just useless, it's actively harmful.

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

#814

Post by cvwright »

baddox wrote: post #449
pacala wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure who are the "mission-focused bureaucrats" and who are the "administration loyalists" in that thread. But for the love of God, can we please stop politicizing this issue? Can we please have a moratorium on blaming the other side for whatever measures should / should not be taken? Frankly, nobody knows what to do. Here we are, pondering what to do with the kids. * The school district is open for busin…

Are you saying we should stop blaming the other side because you think the other side isn’t to blame? What if there’s reasonable ways to explain how the other side is to blame? Or are you making an epistemological claim that the other side is never to blame? Or are you claiming that, even if the other side is to blame, we shouldn’t focus on that until we solve the problem?

No, the other side is most definitely to blame.

The problem is that this holds true regardless of who you consider to be “the other side.”

Here in Oregon, our governor is politically on the opposite end of the spectrum from the US president. Yet the messaging from both has been nearly identical: everything is fine, carry on, wash your hands.

Making this into a political issue in either case just creates conflict, and causes the target to dig in their heels. It does very little towards a more effective response.

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

#815

Post by ALittleLight »

pjc50 wrote: post #624
ALittleLight wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster. Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future. I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled,…

> What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled." The election season is in full swing and you should have the opportunity to vote on how well you think the crisis has been handled by November.

What I want though is a report that explains what incorrect actions the government took and the proximate and ultimate causes for those reactions. I want the causes addressed so we'll do better in the future.

Example: Why didn't we start testing with 100x or 1000x the number of tests? Maybe the reason is regulation on independent labs doing their own tests. Maybe there wasn't enough money banked up at the CDC such that, when a pandemic it's recognized, we can't immediately start mass producing tests.

The point is, I want it documented and explained what the failures were so that future people handling future disease outbreaks will perform better or at least not make the same mistakes. Further, a practice of exploring major mistakes would help motivate government bureaucrats to avoid making them. There should be a potential political cost to be dramatically wrong in vital scenarios.

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

#816

Post by hef19898 »

ulfw wrote: post #781
hef19898 wrote: post #631

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.

Wow. And you magically know that how, exactly?

May have changed, but yesterday Berlin wasn't listed in the high risk regions that was shared by Bavarian health authorities. Didn't check today, so.

EDIT: According to officials, one county in germany is considered high risk (link in German): https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

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

#817

Post by kaiabwpdjqn »

jph00 wrote: post #678
irq11 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers out of Korea are nowhere near 20%. About 0.9% of cases are considered severe, according to the most recent statements from the KCDC: https://m.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20200307046000017?fbclid=IwAR0tl... Someone is exaggerating, or something is fundamentally inadequate about the Italian response.

The SK death rate of 0.7% assumes that all 98% of the cases with outcome currently classified as "unknown" will recover. That isn't rational! You need to do proper survival analysis to account for the growth in cases. Here's a brief analysis of the current numbers from SK: https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1237324005108924417

I think the real takeaway is from all this is that death rate is a pointless metric. It is highly dependent on the local demographics, it requires precise information which is rarely available, it is biased by the level of care available, it has numerous ways to estimate it all of which are hard to explain and not actual estimates but upper or lower bounds, it tends to naturally decrease over time, etc.

The death rate is lower in China than Italy, but the death rate is lower within each age group in Italy vs China. Most people are too innumerate to understand this statement.

As an aside, I REALLY hate how this guy on twitter says “it could be 5.0%, look at this spreadsheet that assumes 5.0%!” Then refers to a paper as a good analysis which claims 1.6% and a set of facts which differ greatly from all of his assumptions.

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

#818

Post by ergothus »

Shivetya wrote: post #699
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quarantine isnt just about preventing the illness in the most vulnerable, it's about keeping the explosion if cases at a level that doesn't swamp the healthcare system.

Absolute containment is highly unlikely, but delay can help a ton.

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

#819

Post by licebmi__at__ »

tomp wrote: post #798
remus wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump providing a shining example of this! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370273563148697...

I don't get the criticism for Trump. He's just basically saying "don't panic" in his own way. That also seems to be consensus among the experts and on HN, judging by yesterday's "don't hoard" threads... (I disagree, but it seems I'm the minority.)

I think the POTUS should be held to a higher standard than this meme tier tweets. But hey, it have been almost 4 years, I guess we should be used to.

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

#820

Post by arbitrary_name »

akie wrote: post #672
hef19898 wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News is basically just about Coronavirus by now, whether it is print, online, TV, radio... People are aware, unless you are living in a bunker since last smmer, in which case you would be safe anyway. If people refuse to take it seriously, no amount of reporting will change these individuals behaviour. What it does so, is causing overreaction of others which can have kind of side effects. Ranging from funny to plain…

Did you read what was in the original Twitter thread? Hospitals at 200%, people who need intensive care that aren't even looked at , staff who get sick and are otherwise completely overworked... I'm not sure if you can overreact to that, to be honest. But people in countries that aren't at that stage yet think it won't be so bad there. Because it's all fake and second-hand information, not well sourced, and therefore…

You can absolutely overreact to that. People will get sick and die, yes, but it's also not worth sitting down make parts of the economy and falling into panic.

This will get much worse, but it's still worth maintaining some perspective.

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