U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#821

Post by ebrenes » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

theferalrobot wrote: post #561

toyg wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more precise to say you don’t know whether you have 1000 deaths yet, as you are not testing even dead people at the same rate as elsewhere. Washington state got “lucky” by having a pretty obvious cluster that could not be brushed under the carpet, but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19.

> but there are likely hundreds of other pneumonia-related deaths going on right now who might well be undiagnosed covid19. Let's just throw around blatant speculation, that will help. Speculation aside that is extremely unlikely to be the case for a variety of clinical reasons https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22553193

The estimate of how many deaths might be undiagnosed might be speculation, but it has already happened in Seattle that COVID deaths were misattributed to seasonal flu. In both cases, the death and symptoms will look identical the difference being in the underlying virus causing the issues.

"In fact, officials would later discover through testing, the virus had already contributed to the deaths of two people, and it would go on to kill 20 more in the Seattle region over the following days."

The US has failed to do any significant level of testing given its population, so it's understandable why many people are not confident in the official figures, especially when it becomes apparent infections have been running unchecked for weeks before testing started.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#822

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #575

logicchains wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. All travel is essential to somebody. All restrictions on movement also have a cost, and any analysis that only looks at the benefits of something without looking at the costs cannot hope to be correct.

> All travel is essential to somebody I travelled to starbucks today. I’d hardly consider that essential.

Aye, just got back from walking there. Pretty essential to doing IT for several hours, though, IMO.

But OPs point stands -- unless you're working from home and never going out to eat / get groceries / not go crazy from cabin fever you have to travel somewhere

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#823

Post by thebigspacefuck » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #359

tunesmith wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe the 40-70% number. Looking it up, this underscores just how horribly the internet is set up to have these kinds of conversations. If you backsource it, you discover he said "there's a chance" it will hit 40-70%, and then only if no countermeasures are taken. That's very different than what is represented in the cbs transcript. I saw another seemingly reputable estimate today - some disease person on J…

Why can't you believe it? It will spread until so many are immune that it stops spreading. That requires it infect a good fraction of the population.

We don’t know whether you get immunity after recovery because the antibodies can be too weak. There are also already multiple strains and immunity to one strain wouldn’t guarantee immunity to the other strain.

Source: https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-warn-coronavirus-mo...

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#824

Post by bart_spoon » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #466

peter303 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect improvement when the weather warms. There is little community spreading in the summer countries of Africa and southern hemisphere.

Tom hanks caught it in Australia. It's summer there now. Most of the southern hemisphere isn't developed, I don't think they're testing

Improvement due to the seasons isn't simply due to the physiology of the virus itself. People spend less inside and in confined spaces where its easier to contaminate each other. Additionally, the flu does have significant seasonality, and flu season will be tapering off in the coming weeks and months, meaning more healthcare resources to dedicate to coronavirus infections.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#825

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

defined wrote: post #340

corel_ wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where this level of panic is coming from. Numbers are about to spike everywhere pretty much no matter what anybody does, because better testing and funding has become available. Quarantining an entire continent, and even worse than this badly doing it, seems to be an astonishing overreaction. The average age of death for coronavirus victims is 83. The mortality rate seems to be as low as 0.6% in South Ko…

Death is not the only thing that coronavirus can do to you. You can spend weeks or months in therapy before you are recovered, or you can get scarring in your lungs - or worse - that leaves you with a permanent disability. Not to mention damage to other organs. I think many are discounting, or are unaware of, these other nasty possibilities. We don’t know enough yet of the prevalence of these effects, but we do know…

> You can spend weeks or months in therapy before you are recovered, or you can get scarring in your lungs - or worse - that leaves you with a permanent disability. Not to mention damage to other organs.

Given that we've only been tracking the virus closely for 2 months, and we've only had a decent sample size of patients for only about 1 month, you really can't be making claims like this at this point.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#826

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

hnick wrote: post #287

dorchadas wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because people with mild symptoms aren't likely going to the doctor. They can't afford to take off work and go, and if it's simply mild right now, why risk their livelihood? I kinda hope this whole thing is a wake-up call for why our system is so unsustainable.

People on reddit (take that as you will) have been reporting that even if the symptoms are significant and match the profile, tests aren't being run if no travel has taken place recently. These people get turned away. It matches this article on restrictive testing. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavir...

COVID-19 doesn't mean there aren't regular flu / colds going around, too.

Long distance travel and exposure to those who have been (e.g. hugging your wife got off a plane from Spain 2 days ago) is still a top predictor for exposure.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#827

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

alasdair_ wrote: post #575

logicchains wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All reductions in (non-essential) travel are good in a pandemic. All travel is essential to somebody. All restrictions on movement also have a cost, and any analysis that only looks at the benefits of something without looking at the costs cannot hope to be correct.

> All travel is essential to somebody I travelled to starbucks today. I’d hardly consider that essential.

What about to your job, if you don't have a job that you can do remotely? Employers generally don't like paying people who can't make it in to work, and it's hard to pay for food without money.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#828

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

dorchadas wrote: post #249

penagwin wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the only reason we aren't reporting large numbers of new cases is because of the lack of widespread testing currently being done compared to other countries at this moment (other countries are performing magnitudes higher tests a day). Even if you think you have it, there's still not enough test kits available yet - even if you're swabbed it can be days for a result(Saying this from west michigan).

And because people with mild symptoms aren't likely going to the doctor. They can't afford to take off work and go, and if it's simply mild right now, why risk their livelihood? I kinda hope this whole thing is a wake-up call for why our system is so unsustainable.

This is a twice-in-a-century event. (Consider AIDS the other pandemic.) Our system should not be built for outlier events. Instead, we should make exceptions for those outlier events. (For example, we could have salary supports for those in quarantine and unable to work remotely equal to their average reported income over the last 12 weeks || a minimum wage and support for landlords or mortgages until the pandemic ends.)

Overpay for an extreme case rather than adapt your system around it.

Now, I have other complaints about our system and how it is unsustainable, but this is a poor argument as to why.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#829

Post by ebiester » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #668

irq11 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be contained. That’s what the pandemic declaration means (even though the WHO should have done this weeks ago). At this point, the only rational thing to do is to try to slow the spread. The good news is that this is a very mild virus, and the vast majority of infected people will have minor symptoms. The fatality rate in Korea is currently 0.6%, and becuase of the comprehensive nature of their testing, thi…

"the upper bound on CFR" I think you mean that this should be considered the goal upper bound on CFR. It's really the lower bound on CFR if you do everything right. If you do everything wrong, like the US is heading towards, you get overloaded health systems, critical shortages, and a 12% CFR or higher.

A 12% CFR is overstating it, but also because we won't be counting the heart attacks that weren't treated, the chemo and radiation therapy that was postponed, and the other health effects.

I think the true measure will be the year over year total mortality.

Re: U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days

#830

Post by Seenso » Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #826

hnick wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on reddit (take that as you will) have been reporting that even if the symptoms are significant and match the profile, tests aren't being run if no travel has taken place recently. These people get turned away. It matches this article on restrictive testing. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavir...

COVID-19 doesn't mean there aren't regular flu / colds going around, too. Long distance travel and exposure to those who have been (e.g. hugging your wife got off a plane from Spain 2 days ago) is still a top predictor for exposure.

> COVID-19 doesn't mean there aren't regular flu / colds going around, too.

Which is exactly why everyone with those symptoms needs to be tested. One of the most important things we need to do right now is detect the people who got the virus through community transmission.

> Long distance travel and exposure to those who have been (e.g. hugging your wife got off a plane from Spain 2 days ago) is still a top predictor for exposure.

I'd say that testing those people should be lower priority, since an assumption they're infected is more likely to be accurate, so they can take preventative measures without needing a test.