Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community • Hacker News Board

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#251

Post by dfox » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

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 have one issue with or maybe just question about this graph. Why it starts with 100 detected cases? It seems like arbitrary round number, but it also seems to be the smallest arbitrary-looking number that makes SK overlap other countries. Why is that? Why is the initial slow spread in SK irrelevant? What caused it to be initially slower than in other countries?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#252

Post by tomp » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #31

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

WFH. Do it now. Individual actions have outsized impact in the face of exponential growth. The problem is twice as hard every time the number of cases doubles. If you don't want to work from home for many months, start working from home now. Working from home isn't as bad as it seems. Modern collaboration tools are great. Our research group and wider laboratory have gotten into the swing of things within a week.

> Individual actions have outsized impact in the face of exponential growth.

Are you sure? I think it's the other way around. Nothing I can do (apart from staying completely indoors, which I can't because I don't have enough supplies (food, etc.) to last for months) can prevent me from being infected (eventually). Luckily I'm in the low-risk group (young); I advised my parents the latter (hopefully they're following my advice).

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#253

Post by babayega2 » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

tenpies wrote: post #186

jbay808 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 auth…

I'm in Rome and I called my friend in Japan to enquire his whereabouts and he told me there they're not doing the same way Korea did it. Peoples continue to go to work. No mass screening. So cases aren't really reflecting the reality. It's like in USA. But one thing he conceide is Japanese are clean.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#254

Post by caseysoftware » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

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.

The China travel ban went into effect 6 weeks ago. Italy, South Korea, and Japan followed not too long after.

He was even called a dictator for that.

Correction: South Korea & Japan were "do not travel" not specific travel bans.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#255

Post by tcbawo » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #41

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

> the spread in our city is quite low for now If you’re in the United States, where testing has been infuriatingly limited, the fact of the matter is you have no idea what the spread in your community is. The numbers aren’t low because nobody has the virus, they’re low because nobody has been tested. If we did actual testing, they might come in low or they might come in high, who knows. As it stands, nobody has any r…

The state of Ohio has only 26 confirmed cases, but two days ago the Director of the Ohio Department of Health estimated that 1% of the state's population (100k) may be infected due to the high ratio of cases being community-spread [1].

This is the likely reason for such a high number of celebrities in the news testing positive -- it's already everywhere; they are the only ones getting tested.

[1] https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/ohio-de...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#256

Post by peckrob » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

cknoxrun wrote: post #10

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

As a data point: my company liberalized work from home to every employee a week before the first case was detected in our state, under the assumption that it was either already here and just hadn't been discovered in testing yet, or would be very shortly.

When the first case was detected, the office was closed and work from home became mandatory at least through the beginning of April.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#257

Post by tomp » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #138

jakub_g wrote: post #5

> It’s hard for non-specialists to intuitively grasp the way an exponential rate increase can get out of control. The best way to explain the exponential growth (and shock people) is ask them about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

I like the way a teacher explained it in grade school. She said to imagine we had a choice between two deals. One option is that someone would give us $100 each day for a month. The other is to receive 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second day, 4 cents on the third day, doubling each day until a month has passed. Of course we all chose $100/day. Then she told us it was too bad we didn't take the other option, beca…

Keep in mind that your teacher is wrong (or you remember incorrectly). Given that a month has at most 31 days, 0.01 * 2 ^ 30 = 10 737 418.24 (if you sum up all the payments, double that - $20m), so quite far away from "multi-billionaires". The general principle stands though.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#258

Post by gdubs » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

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…

So, It seems that China did some things very wrong in the beginning, but then took some big actions to turn things around. There was a long form piece in the Wall Street Journal last weekend that looked at the timeline. It seems that in the early phases, authorities didn’t want to have bad news leading up to the end of year / New Years period. There was suppression of information coming out about there being a novel virus — to the extent the doctor had to offer a public apology for ‘spreading rumors’ — dots weren’t connected, etc. The Wuhan banquet wasn’t cancelled, number of cases exploded shortly after.

And, look — I’m sitting here in the US where I’ve been horrified at our own response over the last month. But the question was, could it have been contained? Looking at that timeline, it certainly seems possible that it could have been. Of course, we’ll never know.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#259

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

troughway wrote: post #119

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…

>6 days later, we're at over 6000 infections, the country is in total lock down. Similar anecdote here. My SO texted me earlier this week saying how she will be taking the train from Madrid to Barcelona to go back to her family. She figured it will be empty on Sunday at 6 am. I have been following the situation evolve in Italy and told her to get on the train right away and leave immediately before it gets worse. Luc…

Shame on her

People should stay where they are. Lockdown is not a disaster. People fleeing lockdown are literally the carriers of this disaster.

Stay where you are, wait. Don't travel. Don't fight the locdown. Lockdown is the current, appropriate course of action. A very effective lockdown can eliminate the infection in, well, however long it took to eliminate it in Wuhan.

Fleeing the lockdown now is just going to another area that is going to be on lockdown later on anyway.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#260

Post by sk5t » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

cknoxrun wrote: post #94

VectorLock wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't bode well that you're so focused on getting checks that you've completely failed to observe the world around you.

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

I'm not sure it was a snipe, because there's so often an emergency of some sort or other, causing us to lose focus on the big picture. The "one more thing" to do that will make everything all right.