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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

#351

Post by taw16092019 »

uk_programmer wrote: post #249
taw16092019 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That not not really that relevant.

It looks like a great cover up, which will be used if/when origins of virus will be traced back to RF. Such behavior is typical for RF. IMHO, it's better to watch actions of RF government and army. AFAIK, they already agitated some desperate Chinese, which lost someone they love, to spread virus at Evil West. They have plans to spread virus within Ukraine, as reported by Ukrainian intelligence agency. It looks like they have no fear of this virus and plan to use this situation for their advantage.

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

#352

Post by jvvw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #256
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 thing…

I have heard through word-of-mouth (third hand) that there are models made by experts not being shared publicly (but presumably with governments etc).

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

#353

Post by mullingitover »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #322
makomk wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that pretty much all of the data is garbage quality, and if you feed garbage into a computer you of course just get garbage out. The figures from Wuhan are particularly bad, probably just a function of their testing ramp-up until well after the peak, and the ones from Italy might not be much better. (The other problem is that China has taken the position that their numbers are an exact description of r…

You can model the quality of your data too, with proper tools. No articles in public circulation do that, though.

Is there an open data portal for emergency room visit stats? That would probably paint a better picture of the real case count, by showing us whether there's a spike in visits for acute respiratory illness.

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

#354

Post by true_religion »

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…

Closing schools makes senses in democratic nations for two reasons.

First, it puts societal pressure on businesses to close or modify their operations by allowing people to work from home. Many families are simply not setup to have kids at home, but parents at work, so factoring that in will cause businesses to change.

Most importantly, all this happens without government directly intervening in business decisions.

Secondly, it lays the groundwork for politicians to take more drastic actions. If schools remain open, even if it makes sense by “the numbers”, it’s still going to be politically difficult to cancel events, restrict general travel, and eventually close businesses. The public sees school closures as step 1 in any disaster situation. You can’t discount the importance of emotional signaling.

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

#355

Post by Certhas »

ericol wrote: post #300
Certhas wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is, exponential for how long? For instance, all seems to indicate measures in Italy are taken too late: and the exponential growth is still happening there (almost 3 weeks after the problem started) import pandas as pd import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt %matplotlib inline it = pd.read_json('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/master/dati-json/dpc-covid19-ita-andamento-nazion…

It's to early to say. The people who are popping up with symptoms now might have been infected up to two weeks ago.

If you look at the Wuhan data, you see that the lockdown worked, but the number of confirmed cases at the time continued to rise dramatically until 12 days after the lockdown went into effect. We are only three days in on the Italy lockdown.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130

Figure 1.

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

#356

Post by mercutio2 »

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…

Freedom of assembly is at an equal level of importance, legally, in the USA, to freedom of speech; they’re set forth in the same amendment.

Culturally, freedom of assembly is, if anything, MORE significant for Americans than freedom of speech, it’s just not relevant to Internet forums, so you don’t hear it much discussed online.

Neither right is absolute.

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

#357

Post by xkcd-sucks »

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…

This analysis could just as well be applied to "war on terror" -- The response to which was opposite, and a lot of people profited by it (careers, contracts, etc). What makes them different?

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

#358

Post by s1artibartfast »

helij wrote: post #19
mtsr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted it like this: deaths are less expensive than lost productivity. This might actually hold given the groups that are the most at risk are probably least productive: the old and the infirm.

Not aimed at you, but, I am disgusted at even a mention of these kind of 'calculations'. And yes, I am prepared to take a hit in my earnings, paying higher taxes if needed after this if that is what it takes for at least one person more to live.

>I am disgusted at even a mention of these kind of 'calculations'.

These calculations have to be made because economic impacts also have a death toll. It all comes back to saving lives in the end.

>I am prepared to take a hit in my earnings, paying higher taxes if needed after this if that is what it takes for at least one person more to live.

As a side note, you can do this any time, and unrelated to the pandemic. There are charities you can donate to to save lives if you are so inclined.

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

#359

Post by Natsu »

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…

> The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve.

The public at large are terrible bosses. We're disengaged and bad at measuring what our employees (leaders) do, so style trumps substance and it's hard for us to tell if any of them have a measurable impact.

We have little ability to get to the truth of what's going on and are deliberately dissuaded from this with huge omnibus bills and whatnot. News has become about narratives instead of substance, with hardly anyone caring to look at the underlying evidence of anything, letting liars get away with so much.

We constantly raise standards with no way of enforcing them. Naturally, cheating is the only way to appear perfect, driving out very good but imperfect people in favor of massive liars who cheat. We're also not good at holding anyone in politics to account. Everyone knows that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, but only some low level guards will be held to account for it most likely. The general public has no idea what to do and the leaders are too happy to sweep it under the rug.

So you're probably right, we have the leaders we deserve in some sense. The general public makes for terrible bosses, which is probably why too many people work under bad ones.

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

#360

Post by C1sc0cat »

AstralStorm wrote: post #172
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

I raise you that Japan has higher population density, especially vulnerable old people. Which is more important? Nobody knows. (And it wasn't closed to travel until recently either.)

You have not got lots of people going on holiday to Italian ski resorts on cheap flights / driving and going back home.
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