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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

#231

Post by kspacewalk2 »

__s wrote: post #166
thedance wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could present them with the classic cognitive reflection question: A lake has one lily pad. Every day the number of lily pads doubles. After fifty days the lake is completely covered by lily pads. How many days did it take to cover half the lake with lily pads?

That's a big lake to have room for 1125899906842624 lily pads

Nonsense. Nothing in the real world can impede the progress of endlessly extrapolating exponential growth and impressing your friends with Really Big Numbers.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#232

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#233

Post by tomp »

fma wrote: post #221
nullc wrote: post #216

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. 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.…

Agreed. And where is Trump's response? We don't even have enough testing kits. We had 2 months to ramp things up.

At least he closed the borders. Russia as well. EU can't even do that.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#234

Post by shrthnd »

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 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.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#236

Post by rosybox »

It's unlikely that other countries can do what China has done. As an example, China is able to do 200 CT scans a day at each fever station throughout the affected regions. In the US we can maybe do what 10 CT scans a day with a single machine? In China they were able to figure out within a short duration if someone needed to be quarantined. They built hospitals in days. It's not just about locking down. China has people taking temperatures of people entering their apartments or when they show up at work. There are drones patrolling the streets that detect people with a high temperature. I have a hard time seeing us in the US build out what China did in just a few days.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#237

Post by jyrkesh »

scarmig wrote: post #129
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…

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 local police imprisoned a doctor for speaking out about a fast-growing pneumonia disease. They didn't just ignore it, they actively quashed discussion of it

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#238

Post by nxc18 »

fma wrote: post #218
zozbot234 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

[flagged]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#239

Post by xrendan »

cknoxrun wrote: post #135
StudentStuff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spread may appear low in your city, but how much of that is from lack of testing? If your employees can work from home, it is best for you to implement work from home ASAP. Businesses in Washington State have shuttered or gone to work from home over the last 3 weeks, had most businesses made this change earlier(eg: at the beginning of those 3 weeks) we would see much less spread and quicker easing of restrictions…

Alberta has been testing at 1800 / million (7100 tests). For context when the US was at our point they were at 5 / million.

I was looking at the numbers for today (because I was curious about the U of A which has gone fully remote for course and exam delivery). There's a model in here https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... that you can plug numbers into. I would say work from home though, you'll feel absolutely devastated if one of your employees falls ill and you were the cause. Trust them to do their work remotely and they will reward that trust.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#240

Post by kspacewalk2 »

mtmail wrote: post #184
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. It is to flatten the curve, i.e. to get infected slowly and manageably, in order to minimize peak ICU admissions. This will minimize deaths. If you fuck up initially, like China and Italy, by severely underestimating the problem, you're forced to shut down everything for a bit, but in the end everyone will be doing the same thing - shutting down some things to control the infection, not try in vain to "stop" it.
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