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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

#211

Post by bengalister »

Here in France even with the Italian experience relayed in the press, i.e doctors having to make many times a day a choices between the ones who will live or die, many people don't take it seriously.

I am shocked but not surprised by the behavior of my fellow citizens. Many people still went out shopping, went to the restaurants, still think it is a simple seasonal flu and do not at all comply with the recommendations of avoiding contacts.

The government decided at last today to close the restaurants and most of the shops except grocery stores and drug stores.

Also I think in France at some point the army will have to be called to help, to let policemen enforce the rules and be used to secure sensitive sites. With the periodic social unrest that France endures since the last major "ethnic" riots of 2005 and the more recent and more social yellow vest protests, I am afraid that in France there will be also a lot of indirect deaths of the sars-cov-2 pandemic.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#212

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

feral wrote: post #192

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.

I thought that was an excellent analysis. Thank you.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#213

Post by jamesrcole »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128
Animats wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In part, because they think they already understand the situation, and the nature of that understanding precludes taking things like that seriously.

“It’s just the flu”

“It only kills 2% of people”

“The flu, cancer, car accidents, malnutrition, etc have killed far more people”

“People were worried about SARS, Swine Flu, and H1N1, and they turned out to be hardly kill anyone.”

“There number of cases here is small. Why are you panicking over nothing?”

“People need to stop panicking. People are going hysterical. The media is trying to make people panic. Just look at them hoarding toilet paper”.

“People are trying to ruin the economy over nothing”

“The experts — epidemiologists — say there’s nothing to worry about” (I’ve had this said to me and I was given a link to a news article that spun statements from some epidemiologists to make it sound that way. They were saying that they didn’t know how the situation would pan out, and this was presented as if it meant they didn’t think there was any issue).

I imagine that most people aren’t aware of the graphs. I imagine most people would be dismissive of them for reasons like the following:

They simply believe the apparent normalcy in front of them more than some abstract maths. They don’t grasp the notion of exponential growth, so it seems fanciful. They also don’t understand how it’s possible to project into the future like that. Maybe they think it’s just fear-mongering speculation. What concrete evidence do they actually have for the situation in Italy? And why should they believe what’s going on in a different country will apply to their country. Maybe their country has a good health care system, and they assume that Italy doesn't.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#214

Post by everybodyknows »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128
Animats wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>log scale

There's your answer. To 90% of elected officials, a "log scale" sounds like something a timber company might weigh their product with.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#215

Post by jerf »

on_and_off wrote: post #151
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…

I fear that the situation is already at that state in the USA. There are 1600 confirmed cases but the lack of tests hides how many real infections there are.

Like China, "the USA" is very large and probably not something that can be treated as an atomic entity. Even much-smaller Italy is probably too large for that. While there may be hot spots that develop in the US, I can tell you from personal experience that there states that have taken strong measures when there are still single-digit numbers of infected in them. The state I'm in is not in a mandatory full lockdown per se, but pretty much every vector the virus has to spread by the dozens/hundreds/thousands at a time has been eliminated; what few are still left are fading fast. I don't know what will happen, but a full on r0-2.3 (or whatever the latest number is) spread isn't going to happen here under these conditions. (I highlight those last three words.)

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#216

Post by nullc »

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. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state,

You know what is MUCH more effective than an authoritarian response? An _earlier response_.

An earlier response, even if it weaker, is much more potent than a stronger later response.

The intensity of china's response would not be necessary where the response is faster.

> but following rules in place in an outbreak does not mean one should not question their principles.

The best way to preserve civil rights and not have to bend them to protect against loss of life is to respond as early as you can reasonable justify.

In the US the fact that our principles (and laws!) tie our hands somewhat is all the more reason that it's important that we act aggressively within the space that our society allows.

> Personally I'd like fast-tracking of anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs instead

Responding earlier keeps people alive longer for those drugs to become available.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#217

Post by bsder »

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.

> They already have a preliminary trial result in China that says Chloroquine works

Chloroquine has a long history with many diseases of "sorta, but not really" working when subjected to actual test.

Please don't spread unsubstantiated info.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#218

Post by fma »

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…

I can give China the benefit of the doubt that not everything was known. Or even blame them for suppressing info.

But we (the world, US) knew the severity 2 months ago and Trump was still trying to downplay it. Fox News is still downplaying it. They called a "Democratic Hoax".

I live in a conservative area and residents are cursing out local leaders for canceling events, canceling school...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#219

Post by goatlover »

nostromo wrote: post #180
furyofantares wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 150 cases in AU at the time Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson got it. Only a thousand in the US when two NBA players got it. Only 150 in Canada when the Prime Minister's wife got it. Only 150 cases in Brazil when the press secretary got it. These people certainly have more exposure to other humans than most people do. But not so much that they should be making up whole percentages of the infected population. I believe t…

There are two sides of that coin. One side: it's much more widespread than we realize. Other side: it's much more mild and less fatal than we first thought.

A third side is a majority of the infections are still early stage, as was the case in Italy a couple weeks ago.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#220

Post by lbeltrame »

kadoban wrote: post #206
lbeltrame wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The purpose now of social distancing and quarantine is to spread out the infections so that the hospitals are not overrun by everyone being sick at once. A significant proportion of infected need hospitalization to survive. If we all get sick at once, there simply aren't enough hospital beds to go around, not to mention other supplies. If the hospitals go far beyond capacity, the fatality rate will be _far_ higher th…

The press reports several models which say between next week and the end of April for the so called "peak" (I don't think the press understands what it means, however), but at least to me they're useless because the confidence intervals are not given (I can't expect a newspaper to do so, but providing a source to consult in such cases would be beneficial).

Some of these models are also different in nature, which adds to the uncertainty: some are epidemiological models, some are economical (used to evaluate the impact of the measures on the long term).

Lastly, a lot of qualified people speak and try to give estimates. I'd love if they don't, because currently the best answer is "we do not know yet".

That said, I think that going over two months of lockdown will be probably ruinous for the country as whole.

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