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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

#871

Post by allovernow »

greedo wrote: post #838
tehjoker wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah, the only major conservative cable outlet. Against CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CBS, NPR...Not to mention almost every major web source.

People know full well that Fox is part of the MSM, but regardless of which way you lean, there's no question that the deck is stacked against conservative viewpoints.

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

#872

Post by pishpash »

tomp wrote: post #802
pishpash wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is so wrong. The ratio between exp(x+ϵ) and exp(x) for even ϵ arbitrarily close to zero is infinity in the limit of large x. There is nothing like it with any polynomial growth for any exponent. The ratio between (x+ϵ)^p and x^p for arbitrarily large p is 1 in the limit of large x, for any ϵ.

Another sign that people don't get exponential growth, even if they think they do.

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

#873

Post by tomp »

pishpash wrote: post #872
tomp wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is so wrong. The ratio between exp(x+ϵ) and exp(x) for even ϵ arbitrarily close to zero is infinity in the limit of large x. There is nothing like it with any polynomial growth for any exponent. The ratio between (x+ϵ)^p and x^p for arbitrarily large p is 1 in the limit of large x, for any ϵ. Another sign that people don't get exponential growth, even if they think they do.

The ratio is, but the absolute value difference (which is what actually matters for humans) grows beyond bounds for both.

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

#874

Post by jonplackett »

tomnj wrote: post #824
jonplackett wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are much less likely to get it after having the flu shot.

Absolutely, but to say medical staff can’t get or spread flu is false

By making that point though, you deliberately making an argument to support the 'it's just like flu' theory of not worrying. Which is a flawed viewpoint.

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

#875

Post by Gibbon1 »

cm2187 wrote: post #552
moultano wrote: post #271

This is an account from one of the doctors in Italy. https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753... Read the whole thing, but this passage in particular is just chilling. "5/ Patients above 65 or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU, I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are start…

I am struggling to reconcile this story with the numbers of deaths so far vs the number of deaths in any given year. A french infectious disease specialist mentioned that 2017 had been a bad year for infectious respiratory diseases in France, with over 60,000 additional deaths in winter, to the point that it affected life expectancy tables [1]. I don’t remember any mention of hospitals being overwhelmed and doing war…

> I don’t remember any mention of hospitals being overwhelmed and doing war-time triage then.

I remember my nurse friends freaking out in 2017 because they were having trouble dealing with the extra flu cases.

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

#876

Post by camillomiller »

koliber wrote: post #806
majewsky wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s a point of discussion in Europe. They might be skewing the data because they are willfully not testing dead patients with comorbidities. e.g. a late stage cancer patient dies with a respiratory syndrome? Italy tests the body and that person counts against the total coronavirus death toll if the result is positive. Germany doesn’t make the test.

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

#877

Post by camillomiller »

rorykoehler wrote: post #608
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.

Am in Germany. Everyone is acting like nothing is happening. It's infuriating.

Italian living in Berlin here. Same same.

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

#878

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #766
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. Every modern country ends up working the same in practice, whatever the bureaucracy is and whatever the president/prime minister/king/queen legally wields more or less power.

> Every modern country ends up working the same in practice, That's not even true of just stable democracies, much less every country. In fact, the differences in practice have been satisfied quite a bit.

[deleted]

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

#879

Post by fruffy »

dboreham wrote: post #836
fruffy wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? Or how?

In the beginning, in Wuhan.

I rather consider Wuhan to be the textbook case of a mass-panic in the face of an unknown virus. What I am primarily concerned about is the people's reaction and the economic effects which seem unprecedented (at least in recent decades). This has a much larger impact than the virus itself. Why is the effect so big compared to other pandemics? Is it because of the way infections and deaths are tracked (which might have some influence on the initial perception)? Is it social media and its newly-gained influence on policy? Or because it primarily affects aged population, which makes up a large share of the influential electorate and policy makers?

We will see how this entire issue will be treated in a year. I presume that even if it still prevalent, it will normalize in the eyes of the public and everyone will move on with their lives. And that point we will also have corrected and more accurate numbers and statistics, just like with every other outbreak.

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

#880

Post by rorykoehler »

hef19898 wrote: post #857
rorykoehler wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's futile arguing that the risk is low because the officials classified it as such when I stated that I disagree with their risk assessment and management strategy. If I look at a risk matrix I would classify the risk impact of not quarantining as significant to disastrous and the likelihood as very likely. That puts the current situation in all of the world at the highest risk. Risk matrix example: https://www.res…

One last comment because you clearly seem to prefer to live in your own world. Assessing risk the way you do has one big issue (it actually has multiple but let's stick with one). When you put Corona in the disastrous category you habe to provide reasons for doing so, otherwise it is just a gut feeling. And by classifying it as disastrous, you run into issues when classifying stuff like Ebola for example. Over-classi…

Ebola is certainly disastrous but the likelihood is unlikely.

Also you are being disingenuous. I said

>the risk impact of not quarantining as significant to disastrous and the likelihood as very likely.

which means I would classify it as very significant.

Regardless it doesn't change the risk rating.

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