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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

#181

Post by TeMPOraL »

nostromo wrote: post #155
VectorLock wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we should be so flippant about hundreds of thousands of people dead. How dare you ask me to sacrifice going to a restaurant for that?

For you it's not eating out. For working families it's losing their jobs, their healthcare, and their housing because a bunch of healthy young people, that are facing almost no risk, are afraid to leave their apartments. In Seattle we're one week into this and 50+ restaurants have closed and hundreds of jobs have been lost. Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare. That's one week. In one month it'll be…

> Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare.

That's a problem specific to America. But regardless, what got is "having healthcare" if you don't actually have healthcare, because the whole system gets DDoSed by COVID patients in critical condition?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#182

Post by nostromo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #174
nostromo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously we should try and slow it down. But there's a fine line between slowing it down and overreacting.

Overreacting would be nuking the affected cities. Locking down a country to give healthcare a chance to cope will have some unpleasant economic consequences, but it won't "burn down the modern world and suspend all civil rights".

[flagged]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#183

Post by marcosdumay »

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!)

It's a completely different situation. If China contained the disease when they had only 10 cases, there would be no disease anymore. If Italy contained the disease when they had only 10 cases, new cases would arrive, again and again.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#184

Post by mtmail »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #115
yelloweyes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I care. These doom and gloom shrieks and exhortations for President Madagascar to Shut. Down. Everything are distracting from the real work governments have to do to tackle this severe and protracted crisis in a competent manner, i.e. following the advice of real, not collective-letter experts.

The advise from real experts is also to shut everything down.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#185

Post by georgemcbay »

garmaine wrote: post #136
zozbot234 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan... Uh, China dropped the ball for a full 3 months since the first reports of a novel respiratory disease started back in November . First denying it, then jailing the doctors who tried to raise the alarm. Not to mention not enforcing their own laws regarding food hygiene put in place after SARS which would…

None of that is really the point though. The point is that so many other countries are dropping the ball in the same (or worse!) ways than China did after having the luxury of seeing what happened in China.

If you have 3 people and one slips on a patch of ice and falls you could argue they should understand how ice works and should have been more careful, but if you have 2 other people see that person fall and they blithely walk across the ice and also fall, who should you judge more harshly?

For me personally, I'm going with the people who saw the result of the first event and then followed the same path.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#186

Post by tenpies »

jbay808 wrote: post #105
mjoin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Which is why I honestly don't understand why the mainstream media isn't saying "do what Korea/Japan did". Other countries have handled this admirably (e.g. Taiwan and Singapore), but Korea and Japan are larger and had very sudden upward trajectories in infection rates. Both countries acted decisively and they got this under control incredibly quick and with minimal loss of life, all without resorting to extreme authoritarian measures.

What China did is not something that other countries may want to replicate, but we should all be replicating the Korean and Japanese measures. Actually we should have been doing it weeks ago instead of pretending that if we didn't test then there would be no cases.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#187

Post by adinobro »

ksec wrote: post #118
mjoin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>you're missing that China initially suppressed info abt this virus Not only that, refuse to acknowledge, or share any information to international communities. The amount of things they do just to saves faces.

You mean like making the DNA public, posting statistics daily, sending doctors and resources to other countries to help train ...

That kind of not sharing information?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#188

Post by tom_ »

VectorLock wrote: post #147
cknoxrun wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I appreciate you owning up to your myopic short comings and hopefully you'll correct that course before those that have hitched their carts to your wagon feel the ramifications.

Perhaps you should ask those people how they feel too!

Still, if there's a problem, perhaps they can get a ride on your high horse?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#189

Post by pbourke »

Benmcdonald__ wrote: post #91
Benmcdonald__ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

plus everyone is wearing a mask
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