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

#281

Post by Freak_NL » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

ericol wrote: post #265

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…

> Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support. This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now. Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term.…

Wash your hands frequently, sneeze in your armpit, use disposable tissues, don't touch your face, don't shake hands, don't go to large meetings. This is the standing advice in the Netherlands.

Those are basic precautions that depend only on the availability of soap. Face masks need to be worn properly to work, and in cultures where people don't wear them normally this is an issue. Only medical staff really has a valid use for face masks now, also because of limited availability.

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

#282

Post by gdubs » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

I think there’s a simpler explanation which is that governments are comprised of people, and people are — to borrow a phrase — predictably irrational. We consistently prioritize the short term over the long term.

Take Climate Change. There’s no shortage of brilliant scientists who have warned us of the long term costs (in human toll and wealth) of inaction. Yet we wait.

Unfortunately, scientists are not the ones flying the plane, so to speak. There are brilliant epidemiologists here in the United States. What are their recommendations behind closed doors? Classified. We don’t know. We do know the opinions of the ones who are free to speak their minds, and they have been warning us to be proactive. For years, before this crisis, actually.

The rest of us are sitting in the back of the plane, uncomfortably contemplating whether the pilots have perhaps made a fatal error in their judgement. It happens. Now we wait.

To quote Carl Sagan:

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness“

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

#283

Post by robotbikes » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #196

rsynnott wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot that governments can do. Ireland just closed schools and universities, and banned large indoor gatherings, for instance, and directed companies to make work from home available where possible (though this last one is really more a suggestion). This won’t get rid of the virus, but it may help to slow it and thus reduce deaths. Closing borders, certainly at this point, seems largely futile.

>banned large indoor gatherings I've read (true, who knows?) that in the USA this isn't legally possible. Federal government doesn't have that power. This may be behind Trump's move to stop flights only to Europe, and not domestic flights. He has the power to do the former but not the latter, apparently.

It has everything to do with deflection, point out that the problem is over there, even though the virus is spreading inside already unchecked. The Governor of Ohio is putting an order to shut down all mass gatherings like sporting events and also suggesting people stay at home. Ohio State was closed before any cases where confirmed but it doesn't seem like other states are taking it as serious outside of California and Washington and testing is still only happening for cases that are in intensive care or had traveled still. So we have no idea what the true lay of the land is at this point.

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

#284

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #268

hef19898 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere. This is the problem. Not that our institutions are failing to deal with the problem, but that our media has vastly overblown the whole situation in order to scare everyone witless so they'll keep clicking on news updates and watch those ads. With the secondary effect, of course, that all searches for information end up at a media outlet t…

+1! And just to be sure, I would add social media.

But in all seriousness, I am absolutely disappointed with the reactions of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on this. Everybody made a well deserved fuzz about the 2016 US election. So these companies are absolutely aware of this. Now that the stakes are much higher. Still no response, no action.

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

#285

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

ericol wrote: post #265

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…

> Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support. This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now. Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term.…

> I know the generalized idea is no face masks if you don't have symptoms, but if we all used them it might have a good effect on curving the spread.

There was never enough for everybody. So second best option is, known infected + healthcare. Health professionals work under heavy viral load, which is positively correlated with your chance of getting sick and having a bad outcome. Which means in an overloaded healthcare system without adequate amounts of PPE (like Italy now), doctors will be dying, even if they were young and otherwise healthy. And dying doctors drops the system capacity too.

(Capacity of most healthcare systems seems to be limited by the amount of beds and ventilators available, but these you can always make - and China is indeed making them full-steam, to help the rest of the world. You can't make new doctors that quickly, and there isn't much of them either.)

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

#286

Post by JediWing » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #267

JediWing wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slope fallacy. We are nowhere near that point.

What? This has nothing to do with the slippery slope fallacy. . It's not because we're aren't there yet that saying that it could happen is a fallacy. With that logic any type of planning or forecast about the virus is just a slippery slope since we aren't there. And If you agree that forecasts about the virus are okay, I dont see why forecasts about the economy depending on what policy is enforced (full isolation th…

It is textbook slippery slope.

Because grandparent said they would sacrifice a realistic tax increase to save lives in the COVID-19 outbreak, the parent asked about a confiscatory 99% tax rate and asset seizure, which would be wholly unnecessary for paying for the current crisis.

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

#287

Post by Angostura » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

ericol wrote: post #265

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…

> Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support. This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now. Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term.…

> but if we all used them it might have a good effect on curving the spread.

They aren't very effective and people who use them tend to touch their face a lot more. Not a good idea - unless you are infected.

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

#288

Post by shadowprofile77 » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:51 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.…

Do you have a link for this article BTW? the one that's so widely shared.

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

#289

Post by ballenf » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:53 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…

Sounds like you don't disagree with his underlying argument, just that the cost is a function of both time and height of the curve.

I took his point to be simply that flattening the curve does itself have significant associated costs. That a maximally flattened curve is not necessarily the best approach.

For people who rely on public transport to get to work and who can't work remotely, I think they would argue that the cost / day of flattening efforts itself also begins to rise significantly. That is, the first week or two are less impactful than subsequent consecutive weeks. And that cost is borne widely. That increasing cost may or may not balance out the failure to have the cost axis take into account the height of the curve.

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

#290

Post by cstross » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #213

cstross wrote: post #176

This all assumes that executive level government functions rationally and in the long-term national interest. Which is normally the case, but this is an abnormal decade. Let me be extremely cynical (at risk of down-voting) about the current US administration's motives: Consider Trump's just-announced travel ban on the EU-26. It misses out the UK and Ireland, despite COVID-19 having a toe-hold in those countries ... b…

His travel ban was for schengen EUrope countries, many refer to them as Europe, when they are only part of it. Much the same way that some think the UK is leaving Europe and fail to grasp the difference of economic areas and tectonic plates.

It's being reported here (the UK) as "anyone who has visited or trsvelled through a Schengen zone country in the past 14 days".

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-ou...