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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

#101

Post by theferalrobot »

tuna-piano wrote: post #44
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…

Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc. Italy was unable to stop the spread before reaching a huge level and spreading to other countries. Why blame China for "allowing this virus to spread all around the world" when Italy allowed the same? (Italy even had a warning that it was coming!)

>Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc.

Just like the spread of fire, the window of opportunity to put it out is right at the beginning.

Yes, Italy could put it out when it first came to Italy but they would have to do it many many more times to successfully contain it. China just had to do it once and they failed.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#102

Post by gameswithgo »

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…

>Why on Earth is this a good model?

While a state like China would be a bad idea, here in America we could perhaps learn the benefits of not heading too far in the opposite direction.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#103

Post by nexuist »

tuna-piano wrote: post #44
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…

Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc. Italy was unable to stop the spread before reaching a huge level and spreading to other countries. Why blame China for "allowing this virus to spread all around the world" when Italy allowed the same? (Italy even had a warning that it was coming!)

Doctors and civilians tried to sound the alarm that something was going on, and were silenced until it was too late. To their credit, the CCP fired the Wuhan officials who presumably silenced those people, but it is still their responsibility for fostering a culture where towing the line and hiding problems until they cannot be hidden is acceptable for leadership positions.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#104

Post by cknoxrun »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #67
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.

I am just super curious. Do your startup employees need physical infrastructure or deal with super confidential data that require them to be on site? Do you not trust them the employees to work their part on their own?

They can work from home. But I'm learning from this thread, that being in a rather northern location where no one in the entire city has started working from home is not the norm. Again, it was only yesterday that the government gave any official guidance on travel or gatherings of people.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#105

Post by jbay808 »

mjoin wrote: post #62
tuna-piano wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc. Italy was unable to stop the spread before reaching a huge level and spreading to other countries. Why blame China for "allowing this virus to spread all around the world" when Italy allowed the same? (Italy even had a warning that it was coming!)

you're missing that China initially suppressed info abt this virus, which caused it to spread. had they reacted immediately, we might be in a much better situation rn

That's a very important point if we're discussing the upsides and downsides of censorship, or whether China is a bad country and should feel bad about itself.

But if we're looking for an example of how to solve the pandemic, when people point to China as an example, they aren't saying "we should spend a few weeks pretending the virus doesn't exist, threaten doctors who talk about it, order our labs not to study it, and THEN take decisive action". They're saying we should do the stuff that China did, starting from the decisive action part.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#106

Post by thehoomanist »

Also someone from Italy here: never, ever praise China as it is the same authoritarian state that caused all these deaths by silencing the truth when it mattered the most. Had they not violently censored doctors (like their own people or the current holocaust being carried on against Muslims), we would not be suffering through this devastation. This is also absolutely not an open letter "from Italy": it's a message from a minor—poorly written— publication.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#108

Post by LeoNatan25 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #98
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What they were speaking about here is using people’s phones.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#109

Post by Animats »

soVeryTired wrote: post #9
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...

The pattern is fairly consistent across countries [0]: [0] https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

That is the most useful graph on this subject so far. Go look at it now. Most countries have exactly the same growth trajectory measured from 100 cases. That's solid data about how this behaves.

Singapore and Hong Kong have been able to slow things down by strong measures, but it's still a straight line on a log graph, just with 1/3 of the growth rate. Italy is on the same line, just 8 days ahead of Europe and 13 days ahead of the US.

Only South Korea shows flattening so far.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#110

Post by jennyyang »

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…

Drugs are not a solution in the next 2-3 months. There's no way a drug can be tested and ensure safe and scaled up to the tens/hundreds of millions of doses you would need. It's impossible so don't even bother considering it.

Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation. There's no other solution we have as a society to slow down the pace of infections. People who normally wouldn't die will die because of the lack of medical care.

The problem we face in the US is lack of testing, which makes it impossible to do anything except a quarantine.

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