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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

#191

Post by nostromo »

icedchai wrote: post #83
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…

You don't need expertise beyond elementary school math to understand cases doubling every 2 to 3 days is very, very bad. Look at the charts for any of the countries. They all follow the same pattern. The US is going to look like France and Italy in a week, 10 days at the most. This is a certainty.

> This is a certainty.

Are you an epidemiologist?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#192

Post by feral »

I work as Principal ML Engineer, and did a little epidemic modeling in my ML PhD.

I wrote an analysis of how this is going to hit Ireland, including the best calculations I could find on fatality rate:

https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-cor...

I think that left unchecked this could kill millions of Americans in a couple of months. I'd love to be wrong.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#193

Post by pedrocr »

ausjke wrote: post #142

It's said Germany does not lock down cities and fatality remains to be extremely low, which gives British, even USA the confidence to practice herd immunity. I hope in US we will not see this exponential infected scenario, finger crossed.

Germany seems to be doing the South Korea solution of very extensive testing and quarantine so that they end up with more confirmed cases that in other places would not even be found. That drives down their mortality rate just because the denominator is bigger. But that just means they're more days behind in the exponential than the confirmed cases number would suggest. It does not mean they have it under control.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#194

Post by lucb1e »

FiberBundle wrote: post #116
wnkrshm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't see how trying to limit testing to people who had contact with known cases or traveled to at risk countries (as practiced in Germany) can be successful.

If the availability of testing kits is low and the ratio of infected to non infected people is extremely low, it makes absolutely no sense to sample randomly from the population.

How many do you need though? If you take 0.1-1% of your testing capacity, those handfuls of samples a day give you some information. Not regional level or very reliable data, but it gives an idea of whether people (as a population) are having it and are having mild symptoms and are not reporting anything, or if it isn't widespread yet and the hospital cases are the only cases.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#195

Post by [deleted] »

baby wrote: post #95
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.

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#196

Post by sfj »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #121
crazygringo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 coul…

>> processed by their bureaucracy

That is the issue here. They completely ignored it until people were dying in the hallways of hospitals and then implemented a draconian policy.

And now they're locking up anyone who criticizes them. See this article about "Gratitude education", a term that tops Orwell in its dystopian implications:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/gratitude-educ...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#197

Post by adinobro »

teknologist wrote: post #172
jacquesm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bat infecting a pig could easily happen in Italy. Or anywhere else for that matter.

What we know so far is that it's likely to have started at a wet market in Wuhan where people lived with bats and other wild animals. Chances of cross-infection are much higher in that scenario.

The virus cannot have started back in November and started at the wet market at the same time.

Either one is true or the other is true.

People don't live with bats. The animals they farm live near bats.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#198

Post by coliveira »

zozbot234 wrote: post #163
scarmig wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The very end of December" was 20+ days prior to the Wuhan lockdown, which was was essentially the only instance where China officially acknowledged the disease - before then, the local government was having police caution their doctors and scientists not to talk or "spread untrue rumors" about it. In the meantime, people in Wuhan and elsewhere were just hanging out as usual with no social distancing behaviors whatso…

People are very quick to blame Chinese officials, but I think they were correct in avoiding panic before knowing for sure the true dimensions of the problem they had at hand. The government has its credibility at stake: if you start using harsh measures without evidence, you lose credibility for the next time it is really needed.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#199

Post by temac »

ausjke wrote: post #142

It's said Germany does not lock down cities and fatality remains to be extremely low, which gives British, even USA the confidence to practice herd immunity. I hope in US we will not see this exponential infected scenario, finger crossed.

Exp is the simplest, and works very well with this virus.

To not get exp you have to basically eradicate it (can be done locally with strict lockdown measures, but one day or another you will have to lift them...)

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#200

Post by graeme »

cameldrv wrote: post #145
jennyyang wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Drugs are a solution for mitigation. They already have a preliminary trial result in China that says Chloroquine works. South Korea agrees and I believe is combining it with Zinc. South Korea has the lowest fatality rate of any country.

This has a lot to do with their age distribution. Their fatality rate by age is similar to elsewhere. A large fraction of the infected cult members were young.

Korea also hasn’t had any hospital breakdown related increase in the death rate.

Chloroquine may indeed work, but the Korean stats are misleading if you don’t adjust for ages.

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