Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #801

hef19898 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I haven't heard any expert (doctor, epidemiologist, virologist,...) making the claim that epidemics can be extrapolated until the number of infected people equals the total number of people. Pandemics burn out eventually by their own way before that.

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

#832

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #803

hef19898 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Epidemics don't follow exponential functions. You are aware of that?

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

#833

Post by greedo » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #705

grey-area wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are undertaken so that the health service is not overwhelmed with cases. When that happens (as in Italy), you need to triage infected and let some number of people die, who otherwise would not have died. So it is best avoided. They're lifted after most of the population has already been infected and the disease has run its course (as in China).

Presumably as soon as the number of patients requiring ICU goes above the number of available ICU beds then those kind of measures must be taken - even though its clearly a pretty terrible choice for someone to have to make.

And at that point it's too late.

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

#834

Post by greedo » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #827

tomp wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find it weirdly reassuring--he's not an expert and isn't even trying to look like one. The people that scare the hell out of me are the gaggles of PhDs and other "very smart people" who seem to think that we shouldn't be closing schools and working from home because reasons . Our organization doesn't even have paper towels in the bathrooms ( It's bad for the environment! ). Actual sanitation is not a priority.

He's said he's smart and understands this because his grandfather went to MIT; said grandfather who died of the Spanish Flu. There's irony in almost everything he tweets or utters...

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

#835

Post by ferdbold » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #821

dd36 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump isn’t looking like a hero.

He is to his base. For now. His base is, however, going to be disproportionately impacted by this virus.

Why would you think that? The virus is going to hit way harder in dense cities than in rural areas, and cities heavily lean towards the left

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

#836

Post by dboreham » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

fruffy wrote: post #251

dboreham wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This experiment has already been run.

Where? Or how?

In the beginning, in Wuhan.

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

#837

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #422

bdamm wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course in the US there are not as many testing kits as in other countries, so the numbers are basically 3 months behind.

The US is probably a much larger vector than we realize. The testing rate is the lowest in the world and Americans travel like mad. Who knows how many undiagnosed Americans have been globe trotting over the last couple weeks?

Wait, I thought the standard refrain is American's never travel - we don't even have a passport to get aboard.

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

#838

Post by greedo » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #382

allovernow wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seriously don't think that modern news outlets don't have a consistent, left-leaning, anti-Trump agenda? Perhaps you've been drinking too much of their coolaid. "Mainstream media" was a term long before people on the right started complaining about it.

Mainstream media has a blinkered center-right bias that on CNN and MSNBC rewards the center-right democratic party and punches left. They don't care about the well being of the population, only about selling ads and preventing reform. On Fox, it's borderline fascist, actually fascist if you think about immigration and the concentration camps. I don't actually know why the ruling class in the US is taking this so easy…

People don't realize that FoxNews IS mainstream media. They're the #1 news channel...

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

#839

Post by Scarblac » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #797

Scarblac wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping TV crews get into Lombardy hospitals and show the West what is happening there, it might get people to take this seriously. But then someone needs to also give them clear instructions or it will just be panic.

We know what is happening there, no TV crew needed. Report by an italien doctor from Bergamo: https://www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/bergamo-citta/con-le-nos... Translated to english: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html

I know that. But a TV documentary would reach far more people, especially in the demographic most at risk.

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

#840

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #815

pjc50 wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

How do you start testing with 100x the number of tests? You have to figure out how to make a test this takes time in itself. The disease is only a few months old so it isn't like there was time to prepare. This is a very hard supply management problem. Don't forget to account for tests that fail quality control, something that happens but can't be predicted.