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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

#121

Post by TeMPOraL »

crazygringo wrote: post #88
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? Pretty much all countries have mechanisms for emergency powers. China being authoritarian has nothing to do with it. I'm not familiar with Italy's constitution or laws, but I assume it has similar provisions? > Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the world. Huh? On the one hand you're arguing China was too dra…

> I haven't heard any reputable source suggest there was any practical way of containing it perfectly.

Of course there was. If they somehow magically divined the true danger of the virus the day they identified it.

But they didn't, it took time and observation, and they shut down the affected areas as soon as the extent of danger was realized and processed by their bureaucracy. There's plenty of things here that could've been done better, but it's asinine to blame them for the virus taking hold everywhere else. Doubly so given that most of the world had a month+ warning before they registered their first cases.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#122

Post by goodcjw2 »

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…

First thing first, this is science, not politics.

Everyone wants a drug and vaccine, but good science takes time to happen. Make no mistake, no one wants a lock down, but so far, it's the only option in the lack of a functional medical solution. If tons of scientists tell us lock down is the only option for now, we should'd listen rather than discredit them.

Now, if someone really wants to move on to talk about politics. It's about a nation as a whole can do the right thing, not about authoritarian vs. democracy.

A ideal democracy society works because we trust reasonable individuals can collectively make the right decision. In this COVID-19 case, lock the hell down and do the best practice to stop it from spreading. I don't see why a functional democracy nation can't do that. But it has to be a functional one.

Unfortunately, authoritarian was necessary when the general population (including local governments at various level) cannot function as well. China for example, has to reply on THE ONE in the center to make the right call and execute order top down to be functional. At least according to the CCP, the general population cannot be trusted. Thus the authoritarian regime. It's easy to see it's effectiveness when there is the right order in place. But it's also equally easy to neglect the fact that such an order takes really long (from Dec 2019 to end of Jan) to materialize.

IMHO, I think both Italy and China failed here, while we are all ignoring the one did really well, at least so far, Japan. (Or maybe Taiwan and Singapore, but they are small states which is easier to govern).

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#123

Post by mrfusion »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #47
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…

You can’t fast track things past what they’ve already been fast tracked. Stop second guessing the experts. What is the use of a hurried vaccine tomorrow if next month it turns out to cause birth defects or global infertility or cancer.

I’m sure there’s still a ton of bureaucracy. We need to go back to first principles and really look at what makes a drug safe and how quickly we can find out.

And also take a look at what safeguards we are willing to cut when every day of delay is thousands of deaths.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#124

Post by lbeltrame »

jennyyang wrote: post #110
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 bec…

> Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation.

The question is, for how long? Until the infection curve goes down? Until there is not a single infected cases in the whole country?

While you can't know when this will happen (especially the former, most models are inaccurate because too little is still known about this virus), I don't believe it is sustainable to keep an extended lockdown on a whole country (as opposed to "just" Hubei, which however has almost the entire population of Italy) more than a few months.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#125

Post by dsqrt »

mirrorlake wrote: post #107

Can anyone vouch for the legitimacy of the names on this list? Is this authentic? I've been running my own numbers, and it does not seem far fetched at all. Governments need to be taking this extremely seriously.

For what it means, I know some of the people on that list and I can say that they are real scientists.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#126

Post by [deleted] »

zozbot234 wrote: post #80
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…

> As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan, and then largely to Wuhan itself and Hubei - they didn't let the population know about the danger, so for quite some time no one was thinking about protecting themselves by wearing m…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#127

Post by mrfusion »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #47
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…

You can’t fast track things past what they’ve already been fast tracked. Stop second guessing the experts. What is the use of a hurried vaccine tomorrow if next month it turns out to cause birth defects or global infertility or cancer.

Birth defects and infertility aren’t issues for most of these patients.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#128

Post by TeMPOraL »

Animats wrote: post #109
soVeryTired wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 day…

I still don't get how people - including apparently some governments - don't get or don't believe it. Getting this graph is as simple as 1) taking the daily measurements, and 2) plotting them on log scale (and technically 3) shifting the lines to overlap, but that's just cosmetics). The trajectory of the entire West being the same as Italy's is immediately apparent.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#129

Post by scarmig »

zozbot234 wrote: post #80
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…

> As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan, and then largely to Wuhan itself and Hubei - they didn't let the population know about the danger, so for quite some time no one was thinking about protecting themselves by wearing m…

The full danger was unknown in the initial stages. Provincial officials were downplaying it for various reasons, and until the very end of December it wasn't known to even transmit person-to-person.

Once the threat was clear, the government of China acted much more alacrity and decisiveness than any Western country, which have had months of advance notice.

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