Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics • Hacker News Board

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#351

Post by imtringued » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

lou1306 wrote: post #345

bad_user wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the far more likely explanation is that the total number of cases reported for Italy don't reflect reality. Because they are overwhelmed Italian hospitals basically send people home if they have a fever or other symptoms with no test administered, instructed to come back in case the symptoms worsen, only people having trouble breathing being admitted in the ICU. Italy could easily have in reality 10 times the num…

> Because they are overwhelmed Italian hospitals basically send people home if they have a fever or other symptoms with no test administered, Sources, please. > only people having trouble breathing being admitted in the ICU. Well, why would you put someone without respiratory failure in an ICU to egin with? Also, Italy performs 1 test per 1000 people [1]. Surely there are more cases than the reported ones, but 10 tim…

Did they test random people or only people with symptoms? If the latter then your distribution is heavily biased and a 10x difference is not an outlier, it's the expected outcome.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#352

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #147

nostromo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the media should report on deaths over 80, or even over 90. It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. So saying this disease kills 15% (for example) of 80+ year olds without context sounds horrific, but contextualized in the actual risks of just being very old to begin with, sounds much l…

Fatality numbers won't reflect those who developed permanent lung damage or had to go into intensive care. Best not to suggest anything that might down play the seriousness considering how infectious this virus is. (Otherwise it may encourage risky behavior.)

I think it's best not to overstate like the media currently has been (at least here in the USA) which is that everyone should be panicky and worried if they'll be alive next week.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#353

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #62

T-A wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.65% / 1.75% ~ 2.09, so the difference in age profile might explain a factor 2 in the mortality ratio of Italy vs South Korea. The actual ratio is currently 7.9: 827 out of 12462 cases in Italy (6.6%), 66 out of 7869 cases in South Korea (0.84%).

A large number of South Korea infections are even younger due to how it spread. Italy: Above 80: 1,532 (18.4)% vs age 20-29: 296 (0.0)% South Korea: Above 80: 243 (3.1)% age 20-29: 2,261 (28.7)% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I... Of note, neither country has had anyone under 30 die. Deaths in the 80+ age range are 8.23% in So…

[deleted]

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#354

Post by makomk » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

ddeck wrote: post #282

joe_the_user wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large number of South Korea infections are even younger due to how it spread. Another possibility is that Italy doesn't have a handle on who is or isn't infected so what they report are the obvious infections, who tend to be older.

>Another possibility is that Italy doesn't have a handle on who is or isn't infected so what they report are the obvious infections, who tend to be older. This is very likely the case, as can be seen in the positive test outcome rates. 16.7% in Italy vs. 3.6% in South Korea Italy has run around 60k tests. South Korea are testing around 15k people/day and have tested 234k people in total. They've even setup drive-thro…

Yup. Meanwhile, the New York Times has run an article about how northern Italy is "a warning to the world" with the eye-catching claim that "about 50 percent of the people who tested positive for the virus required some form of hospitalization": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coro... Between this and other reporting, I'm starting to wish they hadn't opened up their paywall for coronavirus articles.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#355

Post by timwaagh » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:12 AM UTC

I do not know how south korea managed to get as many test kits as they did, but Italy (and the rest of europe, the us, everyone except south korea and singapore) simply do not have enough testkits to be able to copy them. So instead we have to limit the spread by telling people to work from home. Also Italy found out they were infected much later than south korea. people estimate the virus had been spreading for weeks when they did.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#356

Post by tenant » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:19 AM UTC

One tangential snippet that I heard but I don't know if it is true or not is that in Northern Italy, there are whole garment factories that are staffed and possibly owned by Chinese purely so that they can be designated as Italian clothing manufacturers.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#357

Post by jsjddbbwj » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

runawaybottle wrote: post #294

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember ebola? I don't.

Ebola never got to America.

I am not American, and there were infected people in my country. We had a right wing government then also, and since all the media is left wing here, they made an incredibly huge deal out of it. And now nobody remembers a thing.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#358

Post by kjakm » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:32 AM UTC

lou1306 wrote: post #348

kjakm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that - but then I watched today's press conference with the chief scientific adviser and chief medical adviser. They made some very good cases for not locking stuff down just yet. Primarily you need to consider the behaviour of people. This is going to go on for a while no matter what we do and if we lockdown people now, by the time we hit the peak they will be ready to give up and go outside again. We need…

> We need to save the drastic measures for the peak. If you only act when you hit the peak, any measures will be moot. Countries need to act now to reduce that peak and flatten the curve. But sure, why not letting thousands of Atletico supporters into Liverpool, while Madrid has 1k+ cases. Was it also a "drastic measure" to play a football match behind closed doors?

I'd suggest watching the government press conference today where the chief science advisor + medical officer explain it. They explain exactly why you're wrong (and I'm more inclined to believe them after hearing them make the case).

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#359

Post by kjakm » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:38 AM UTC

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #178

kjakm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The resulting economic impact therefore can’t be that big. The impact on the spread of the virus can't be that big either. My point though is that big flashy moves like banning all flights appear to do very little compared to more mundane tactics. At least based on the info in the press conference I'm referring to the data doesn't support flight bans, banning large gatherings etc.

You shouldn't discount the psychological factor of these things. Today, 1 day after the big move by the US to ban flights from Europe, we're seeing a lot more movement from various governments and states in taking action against the virus' spread. So even though the action itself might not be that useful, it's big enough that it gets people attention and it seems to have moved people across governments into more acti…

True but I'd still go back to the UK advice: the virus is going to spread (we aren't going to stop it) so we need to focus on spreading the peak out so we can deal with it. If we force people to make drastic changes too early (well before the peak) then when we actually need them to make those changes (just before the peak) they will be burnt out and won't do it nearly as effectively.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#360

Post by tremon » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 11:47 AM UTC

eisa01 wrote: post #317

gpderetta wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible you are right. IIRC, 17% of those tested were positive in Italy. That's a very high percentage. Very likely the actual infected number is much higher.

Yup, you probably only have to look at the counts of infected tourists coming back. In Norway that is 89 from Italy, and 112 from Austria (25% of the total infected as of writing...)

True, same here, in The Netherlands. Of the first 500 reported cases, around 25% were tourists returning from the Alps region (northern Italy, western Austria), and around 50% were traced to secondary infections from those first 25%. The other 25% were unexplained, hence we're now in the endemic spread phase.

FAFAIK, we've never had a policy to pre-emptively test every returning tourist, and even now we don't test everybody. The current policy is to test new cases only if they have no relation to an already-established case. For example, people living in the same house as a known Corona case will not get tested. If they start showing symptoms, they're automatically assumed to have contracted it.