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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

#91

Post by Benmcdonald__ »

Benmcdonald__ wrote: post #75
exegete wrote: post #54

The last part urges lockdowns like China and South Korea but my understanding is that South Korea has not been doing lockdowns and instead was able to ramp up testing quickly and isolate infected from others. Is that incorrect?

Yes no lock downs and I believe minimal travel restrictions (only Wuhan, China?). They did extend the school holidays. Even in the center of the outbreak Daegu there was no lockdown in the city.

Other things people probably don't realise about Korea. Self isolating and monitoring for people entering the country. Also they aggressive tracked contact with infected people. Watching supermarket survalence video seeing who they were near and then publishing nationally the time and location of where they had been

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#92

Post by Ninjak8051 »

The handwaving arguments in this letter are not convincing (especially the "You do also understand that, as long as the rate of increase is exponential, no linear solution to contrast it will work (I.e. increasing x times the number of ICU machines, etc.)" nonsense). The stats in this very letter indicate that 10% of patients require ventilators, which cost about $4000. So even if the entire population were sick at the same time, would need population * 0.1 ventilators, at a cost of $400 per resident.

The fact that we haven't spent $400 per resident to stockpile ventilators is a failure of society and a failure of government. The economic damage over these next few weeks will be far, far greater than $400 per resident.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#93

Post by sorum »

mirimir wrote: post #37

Maybe Italy is a worst case, both because it didn't quarantine early enough, and because greater population inversion. > It's now a well-established fact that older people and those with underlying health issues are more susceptible to succumbing to Covid-19. With 23 percent Italians aged 65 or above and a median age of 47.3, the Italian population is the oldest in Europe. This is chiefly responsible for the high fat…

Italy isn't the worst case, they're just 2 weeks' ahead of most other countries.

Looking at the latest SitRep from WHO, my home country (Sweden) has small no. infected (775), but grew 25% vs the previous day. If that rate keeps up, number of infected will keep on doubling every 4-5 days and in 14 days' time will be at what Italy is today (17k infected). And then another week later it'll break 100k. Exponential growth is a bastard in that sense.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#94

Post by cknoxrun »

VectorLock wrote: post #56
cknoxrun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first case only just made its way to our city a couple of days ago. We have been rather distracted of course by getting signatures and cheques. For context, our schools and daycares are still open, as are city rec centers, gyms, and public transit. Only yesterday did the province recommend no gatherings over 250 people. Perhaps we should have been quicker, but here we are.

That doesn't bode well that you're so focused on getting checks that you've completely failed to observe the world around you.

I don't feel that snipe was necessary. I've expressed myself honestly, and no one acts perfectly in situations like this.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#95

Post by baby »

delegate wrote: post #46

I've seen comments here trying to play down the message or discredit the signatories of this letter. Don't. Please take it seriously. This is not sensationalism. What the letter means is that if your country is not there yet, you might be DAYS away from widespread panic and total lock down. I'm writing this from Barcelona, Spain. This last Sunday, 6 days ago, I went on a walk with my girlfriend, had a nice lunch, too…

Can we make sure we’re reading this kind of information when given by people who actually study and work in a relevant field?

Now more than ever we should look at the source of every information.

I know I'm going to get downvoted for saying this, but I think it is important enough.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#96

Post by kspacewalk2 »

ISL wrote: post #34
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...

If they're making this statement based only on the cases they know about, then the argument is even stronger if there are more cases.

There are more cases, they are on average much more mild, the real mortality rate is much lower, it is actually not doubling every two days (it is the tests that are doubling every few days). Lots of possible and very consequential conclusions.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#97

Post by jsjddbbwj »

lbeltrame wrote: post #36

As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the w…

It is a good model because it works. The end justifies the means. You can't argue with the results.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#98

Post by zozbot234 »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #63
zozbot234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Hopefully he/she was nabbed quickly, without spreading the disease to anyone else. Is Isreal using electronic tagging on those quarantined folks to ensure that they can't just leave their assigned place without anyone knowing about it?

They are starting to talk about it, but there are big privacy concerns of tracking citizens by intelligence agencies. Not sure what the status of this is, but will probably pass parliament because everyone is very scared. They can abolish it later, but we all know they probably won't. It is unclear of the idiot that evaded quarantine is sick or only precautionary, but that's just the people we have—morons. Very diffe…

> but there are big privacy concerns of tracking citizens by intelligence agencies.

Huh? An ankle bracelet ("tag") is quite transparent, it's not covert "intelligence". The deal is, you get to wear it for a couple weeks while you recover from your potential illness, and you know you're being monitored so you're not going to just leave your assigned place and hang out anywhere else.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#99

Post by nostromo »

VectorLock wrote: post #76
itcrowd wrote: post #4

Not sure why this is on the number 1 spot currently. This is a letter signed by non-experts (albeit sometimes scientists/engineers). To me, it comes off as the climate-change denier letters or 9/11 "truthers" letters. Please let the experts do their job. Don't spread uninformed opinions backed up by Facebook posts and panicked researchers with expertise "relevant to virus spreading" such as electronics, architecture…

We are not anywhere near the point where the panic of this virus is worse than the potential outcome of the virus. If anything there is not ENOUGH strong movement being made.

Yes, we need more panic. Maximum panic please! For a disease that has a 0.5% fatality rate, and the medium death age is over the average life expectancy of one's country. And most scientists believe we can't stop it anyway. Yes, let's burn down the modern world and suspend all civil rights for this.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#100

Post by kspacewalk2 »

thedance wrote: post #26
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?

Is there some parable about getting too excited about exponential growth and taking the extrapolation game way too far?
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