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Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

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Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#21

Post by w3mmpp »

hoka-one-one wrote: post #6
spacephysics wrote: post #3

We don’t need military patrolling our streets just yet. Not saying it won’t come down to it, but the sentiment in the US is less, uh... flexible, towards being heavily locked down as compared to the aforementioned countries.

I don't think there's any realistic situation that would justify caving to the isolationism and xenophobia that's been pushed by the Trump administration for the last four years.

Are you making a parallel between isolate yourself to not catch and spread a disease with "isolationism and xenophobia"?

I sure hope you (and people in general) can separate the 2 concepts or we're really doomed.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#22

Post by davidw »

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

Here's what Paul Graham wrote on twitter:

> When you're dealing with exponential growth, the time to act is when it feels too early.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1237801364023017472

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#23

Post by yelloweyes »

iRobbery wrote: post #16

Just from the start already i dont get a scientific feeling. "In just 3 weeks from the beginning of the outbreak, the virus has reached more than 10.000 infected people." Does this mean only tested 10.000 people? Reads a bit odd though too, i assume they were not infected already when the virus reached them? "From our data, about 10% of patients require ICU (Intensive Care Unit) or sub ICU assistance and about 5% of…

Who cares. The point is to get people out of their comfortable complacency.

Read this one: "We are now in the tragic situation that the most efficient health system of the richest area of the country (Lombardy) is almost at its full capacity and will soon be difficult to assist more people with Covid-19."

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#24

Post by davidw »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

As a physicist, it still feels odd to me they are talking about statistics with such confidence here. It seems only SK has earned that right and has tested enough people to get reliable statistics. If you only measure the sick in the hospital...

No one is 'confident' about a lot of things. But everyone who has seen what is happening in Italy is confident that taking a 'wait and see' attitude will cost lives.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#25

Post by bsaul »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

As a physicist, it still feels odd to me they are talking about statistics with such confidence here. It seems only SK has earned that right and has tested enough people to get reliable statistics. If you only measure the sick in the hospital...

As someone who's dealing with analytics data regularely, thank you !

i absolutely don't understand how can someone give any ratio about this disease knowing how only the most severe cases got tested ( except in SK), and that the symptoms are almost undistinguisable from the flu.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#26

Post by thedance »

jakub_g wrote: post #5

> It’s hard for non-specialists to intuitively grasp the way an exponential rate increase can get out of control. The best way to explain the exponential growth (and shock people) is ask them about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

Or you could present them with the classic cognitive reflection question: A lake has one lily pad. Every day the number of lily pads doubles. After fifty days the lake is completely covered by lily pads. How many days did it take to cover half the lake with lily pads?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#27

Post by davidw »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #12

Here in Israel, ministry of health wanted a full lockdown. But business won, so only a partial lockdown is enforced, and they are shutting down only clubs and restaurants. People will still be able to visit parks, roam freely, etc. Today there was an article [1] that some idiot that was in quarantine left it and was arrested on the street. There is no discipline. A hard lockdown is likely the best option everywhere.…

That lasted for a few days in Italy and then they shut it all down anyway. But more people got infected in the meantime!

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#28

Post by philliphaydon »

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

Our Singapore office started working from home at beginning of Feb. Everyone in the office here (10 people) have very very young kids, or is pregnant. Don’t want anyone in the team getting sick and making their kids sick. Family is always more important than work. So everyone is working from home till this thing blows over.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#29

Post by taf2 »

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

We went ahead and have all employees working remote for at least the next week and we will be evaluating the situation each week. I struggle with this decision as well feeling like maybe this is an overreaction but the reality is we should be able to function remotely and if doing so can help then we should do it. I’m optimistic our actions will help slow the spread

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#30

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

Are you kidding?

You should have implemented WoH weeks ago. Thinking whether or not doing it now is a disservice to all humanity and a testament of why we have reached this situation as a society.

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