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

Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

ma.ttias.be

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 436 posts

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#241

Post by Symbiote »

koonsolo wrote: post #216
tomp wrote: post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted ou…

> So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario. I'm from Belgium myself, so I can chime in. Our minister of health is a docter herself, and is advised by a panel of experts including a professor of virology. They know very well what they are doing with the current 400 known infections. Closing schools makes no sense currently because of following factors: - kids are not the main factor i…

What have Belgium and Denmark done differently, up to ~10 March?

I don't see much (if any) difference in their responses, so there must be some other factor for Denmark -- e.g. increased travel to Italy, more tourism from China, poorer personal hygiene, ... I don't really know, but

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#242

Post by Veedrac »

a_diplomat wrote: post #139

This is just not correct. Governments are acting on this throughout the world. Don't conflate governments with politicians. For well-functioning states, state agencies are dealing with this through well-established protocols that don't need political clearence. This means that the countries where politicians are the most visible and calling for action could very well be the ones that have prepared the least.

This is even more obvious when you consider what the economically-optimal thing to do would be: Shut down nonessential travel to other countries and enact quarantine protocols for essential travel between countries, before you have community transmission. Then test heavily, for cheap.

Trump shut down travel just as doing so became pointless, the USA is barely testing people, and the CDC is resisting drive-through test centres because they are (actual quote) “trying to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers.”

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#243

Post by kaiabwpdjqn »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #114
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway. If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action. If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting. Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting. In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money a…

At the risk of being down-voted, I'm not trying to start a political debate. I'd just like to know, as someone outside the USA, how this is affecting the election campaigns there. Are personal costs of the pandemic encouraging people to support subsidised healthcare, and therefore a left-wing party? Or is the xenophobic rhetoric of "blame China/Europe/travellers/etc" causing people to support a right-wing party? I al…

There’s not much right vs left yet. It’s just the Democrats figuring out who their candidate will be. The pandemic has a very small effect on the US right now. Things are closing but mostly in anticipation of the near future. Almost none of it is in the middle where the right lives.

There’s been some yelling at trump over his poor handling but it’s mostly just virtue signaling at this point. When the elections come around for real we will probably see something of this if/when it has evolved into something more serious here.

I say this in Boston, just a few degrees of separation from some of the COVID confirmed individuals.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#244

Post by xvilka »

Ethics aside, more fatalities will cause the bigger economical impact as well due to the lower amount of consumers, the lower consumption rate of the survivors (they will lose their close people, relatives, friends), will increase the long-term burden to the public health due to increased depression levels, lower immunity levels, and so on. Moreover, the political damage of the governance system, including healthcare. It's sick that people look just to the first-order effects but completely forget about second-order ones.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#245

Post by creaghpatr »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #208
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #195

I think Hanlon's razor applies here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I'm in Spain, one of the countries that is doing way too little, way too late. When I see the measures and statements from our politicians, I don't see a machiavellian plan, I see stupidity. In fact, a prominent member of the government has been infected after attending feminist demonstrations on March 8…

Except there's not necessarily any malice exposed by this explanation. To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. For example, in the UK austerity is blamed for tens of thousands of deaths (some people say 130,000, others 30,000). The unpalatable fact is that trade-offs need to be made when deciding how to tackle this. In the case of covid-19 I don't envy anyone who has to make these decisions, due to the ex…

>To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly.

This is also the main argument against taking dramatic action to combat climate change.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#246

Post by samastur »

koonsolo wrote: post #216
tomp wrote: post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted ou…

> So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario. I'm from Belgium myself, so I can chime in. Our minister of health is a docter herself, and is advised by a panel of experts including a professor of virology. They know very well what they are doing with the current 400 known infections. Closing schools makes no sense currently because of following factors: - kids are not the main factor i…

Maybe, but this is not linear growth. It's still exponential, albeit not as steep as ours (Slovenia), but you are still on course to double number of cases every 5 days.

Linear growth would have a declining rate for daily percentage change (adding 10 cases when you have 100 is 10% change, adding 10 when you have 400 is 2.5%).

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#247

Post by XorNot »

The graph this blog draws doesn't work that way. The whole point of not overloading the medical system - and definitely not getting it at 100% capacity, is that once you're at capacity, it's not just COVID-19 treatment which stops (which means, all those people who would otherwise survive die) - it's all treatment.

Get appendicitis? Routine surgery, can be done in a few hours. And will definitely kill you without treatment. Break a bone? Car crash? Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support.

The cost of overburdening the healthcare system is not some calculation of a nuisance amount of citizen death over a time period - it's a whole bunch of people who otherwise live full and productive lives, instead stop existing.

What happens when you go above that dotted line is not the continuation of a predictable trend, it is a chaotic bifurcation in behavior which does not have predictable secondary effects. The COVID-19 case load follows that shape. The deaths and long-term health problems do not.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#248

Post by mhandley »

silvestrov wrote: post #152

Denmark did act yesterday evening & today: - events with more than 100 people forbidden. - all schools will close - all non-critical employees must stay home. - all private employees off-job as much as possible. - stay in your home. - don't travel to [many] countries, more restricts will come. - All indoor cultural institutions, libraries, leisure facilities, etc. are closed. And today they made a temporary law which…

Denmark's situation is very unusual. This graph gives an idea of where Denmark lies relative to Italy:

http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu-norm2.png

This is actual case data, plotted with the time offsets shown in the key.

No other country had a ramp-up like that. Right now, Denmark is 5-6 days behind Italy in terms of cases per million inhabitants, and the incubation period is about that time. Really pleased to see some quick decision making on the part of the Danish government.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#249

Post by uk_programmer »

taw16092019 wrote: post #210
uk_programmer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia shutdown its borders pretty much straight away and IIRC they have hardly any cases.

Except this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/17/blast-sparks-f...

That not not really that relevant.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#250

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Pigo wrote: post #188
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway. If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action. If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting. Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting. In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money a…

>the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money We have become very cynical people.

I don't think we have become that. We have always being that.

History books tell me we have done that for centuries: slavery, wars, ecology...

Post reply on HN