Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #178

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.…

Exactly this! I kind of understand the WHO, the broad public, including media, doesn't care about models and such things. Providing to much details can have the opposite effect, instead of calming things down it could spark more fear.

On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential curves fit so nicely early on.

What could, and should, be done by large tech companies is preventing this. Google could make sure that every Corona related search ends up showing the WHO on top, followed by local sources like the CDC, Robert Koch, John Hopkins and so on. They could support these parties in getting them up in the search results. Facebook could do the same, as does Twitter. In Germany, you have to explicitly include Robert Koch or RKI in your search for the link to show. Even by doing so, earlier today it still wasn't the tip link. The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere.

And yet, nothing like that happens.

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

#252

Post by uk_programmer » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #174

uk_programmer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you believe them, they don't have any gay people either.

I don’t think Russia has ever claimed to have no homosexuals. I think you are confusing it with maybe Brunei.

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

#253

Post by Certhas » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #178

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.…

I think that this spreadsheet is communicating several things well but I share it as a "reasonable bad case back of the envelope calculation". And if we mean the same article, it actually does a reasonable job at outlining the uncertainties around testing and national differences, and focuses on what is probably the most robustly comparable data point we have: Number of confirmed deaths.

The problem with models used by experts is that they are diverse hard to parameterize and that the scientific conclusions drawn are based on many different models not on one.

It's a very fluid situation.

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

#254

Post by koonsolo » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #233

koonsolo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So please stop your bullshit about game theory. Your comment is fine except for that attack. Please don't stoop to that here, regardless of how strongly emotions are running. It helps no one and only makes this place worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You are right, fixed this in an edit.

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

#255

Post by licebmi__at__ » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76

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…

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…

This comment is a perfect example why we won't have the same containment as Japan or South Korea; we in the west, "know" that our government is evil/incompetent/selfish so even if they act, we will not heed their advice.

It's not like they don't have the same incentives in the other countries, the main difference is that we do not trust the government. Might be selection bias, but I do think we have been hammered with a stereotype on modern culture about the incompetent/evil bureaucrat getting in the way of the hero's solution.

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

#256

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #178

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.…

It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day, forming the very foundation of the discussion and policy around the virus.

I know of a certain company whose entire purpose is building and selling a product that lets you plug in equations of complex, dynamic systems and play with the models to understand and predict things. Like serious, industrial-grade stuff that's used to design chemical plants. They could easily get a virologist on call and model the spread more sensibly, or even individual countries in detail, and release that - which would give a basis for people to discuss what to do and when in a much better way that's happening now. They'd probably also save themselves a year's worth of marketing expenses. But I don't see them, or any of their competitors doing anything like this.

I'm thoroughly disappointed. Is the ArcGIS dashboard from John Hopkins University really the best our civilization has to offer in terms of informing people and evidence-based discussions? Because while I want to believe that our politicians have more sophisticated tools available, I'm pretty sure they're just looking at the same dashboards and same news stories as we do.

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

#257

Post by fiatjaf » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

It's ridiculous to imagine governments are doing the best thing possible and then try to decode their actions from our inferior standpoint, like if they were full of wisdom we just don't understand -- more likely doing the worst thing possible and we are the victims.

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

#258

Post by Roritharr » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #247

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 tre…

Thank you for putting it so succinctly!

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

#259

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

Certhas wrote: post #253

ThePhysicist wrote: post #178

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.…

I think that this spreadsheet is communicating several things well but I share it as a "reasonable bad case back of the envelope calculation". And if we mean the same article, it actually does a reasonable job at outlining the uncertainties around testing and national differences, and focuses on what is probably the most robustly comparable data point we have: Number of confirmed deaths. The problem with models used…

Exactly why replacing by something simplistic doesn't fly. I'll go on a limb and say if I tried something similar in this guy's field, I would be destroyed for publishing it. And rightly so.

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

#260

Post by Certhas » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #251

ThePhysicist wrote: post #178

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.…

Exactly this! I kind of understand the WHO, the broad public, including media, doesn't care about models and such things. Providing to much details can have the opposite effect, instead of calming things down it could spark more fear. On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential cur…

But the early stages of disease spread _are_ exponential. And I find that people really fail to understand the meaning of that, and how scary numbers like "new confirmed cases doubling every two days, 500 new cases in France yesterday" truly are.