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

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

#311

Post by sumedh »

aetherspawn wrote: post #12

Had an interesting thought earlier. Seeing as a majority of deaths are in the range 60 years and above, and very little of the casualties affect younger (working) people, from the governments POV the virus will do well to decrease the disproportionate number of older pension receivers and nursing home residents in comparison with the dwindling number of young people working and paying taxes. In other words, the gover…

Lot of politicians are old as well so they will make sure their country has the resources to fight it just out of self interest.

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

#312

Post by makomk »

michaelt wrote: post #227
dboreham wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If the internment of Japanese-American citizens during WW2 [1] was legally possible for the federal government, to me it would seem odd if cancelling Coachella wasn't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

The US courts have since explicitly rejected the reasoning used to justify the internment of Japanese-American citizens. It would not be legally possible today.

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

#313

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#314

Post by sumedh »

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…

> kids are not the main factor in spreading the virus, as seen in other countries.

Why did Japan close down schools, do they know something which Belgium does not or did Japan make a mistake by closing down schools.

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

#315

Post by PaulHoule »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #291
PaulHoule wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're out of N95 masks in the U.S. and we have to wait a month or so to get them from China.

3M is retooling their US factories. They should be producing by now.

There also is a factory in Georgia that makes them. They probably are working three shifts.

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

#316

Post by sumedh »

rat9988 wrote: post #177
C1sc0cat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is an island, Germany is in the Schengen area and has lots of travellers to and from Italy and other European countries

Japan's density is way higher though.

and they have lot of old people.

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

#317

Post by whatshisface »

Freak_NL wrote: post #281
ericol wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 vali…

>Face masks need to be worn properly to work, and in cultures where people don't wear them normally this is an issue.

But clearly this is not insurmountable.

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

#318

Post by TeMPOraL »

hef19898 wrote: post #292
TeMPOraL wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thing…

Industrial grade is the key word here. They have there customers, so they don't need "cheap" PR. They are specialized in chemical plants, usually professional organizations know there limits (conditions apply). Plus, the WHO and others have these models and tools as well. Plus the domain knowledge needed. Why wo don't have anything from these bodies is a different story, so.

> Plus, the WHO and others have these models and tools as well.

Assuming they have[0], my core issue is: why won't they share them? Society is not 100% made of illiterate rubes who can only add (but not multiply) and read a line chart (and get confused by a log scale). There's enough people who could make use of more sophisticated information, including politicians and political advisors.

The discussion about e.g. whether a country should stop mass gatherings now or later would be infinitely better if it wasn't just "I think so" and "we have to flatten the curve!!11", but instead if one could say "look, the WHO model shows it won't help much", or "an alternative model proposed by virologist X suggests that it has most benefits if done today; here, look at this chart", especially if people could play with the models themselves and propose corrections.

--

[0] - I'm not convinced; I have the feeling most work in this space is still done with Excel or basic Python and R toolkits.

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

#319

Post by gjulianm »

ballenf wrote: post #289
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…

Flattening the curve depends entirely on the kind of measures taken, and the curve also depends on how is the epidemic spreading. Measures taken depend on their effectiveness, feasibility and side effects given a certain situation. It's very hard to argue the economic effects based just on the curve of cases.

However, this guy (who, by the way, is just a developer who has given "a few days of thought" to this issue) does not seem to know anything about this issue but still proposes a conspiranoic theory that HN entertains way too much.

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

#320

Post by sumedh »

stoicShell wrote: post #298
soyyo wrote: post #129

Last Sunday it was 8th of March, International Women's Day, and the current spanish government has appropriated it to the point that women from other political parties are not welcomed in the protests that happen that day. When gatherings of people started to be canceled all around the world, the government kept going ahead with the plans because this is a key event for their agenda. The very next day, they acknowled…

The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve. It's a simple projection from voter space to elected space. As a former pol.sci. student/researcher, I've grown disillusioned by the fact that representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended — the projection is flawed with regards to the conduct of affairs. I don't know why: - might be that voting…

> representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended

What is your solution, almost all dictators are not benevolent.

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