Maybe Italy is a worst case, both because it didn't quarantine early enough, and because greater population inversion. > It's now a well-established fact that older people and those with underlying health issues are more susceptible to succumbing to Covid-19. With 23 percent Italians aged 65 or above and a median age of 47.3, the Italian population is the oldest in Europe. This is chiefly responsible for the high fat…
Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
281–290 of 740 posts
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!)
Doctors and civilians tried to sound the alarm that something was going on, and were silenced until it was too late. To their credit, the CCP fired the Wuhan officials who presumably silenced those people, but it is still their responsibility for fostering a culture where towing the line and hiding problems until they cannot be hidden is acceptable for leadership positions.
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 an…
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#284Please also read this, I believe it's the right approach: https://medium.com/@jb_89278/the-11-day-plan-to-contain-covi... The guy is tech enterpreneur and VC investor who has been advising our (Czech) PM.
Or maybe even twice per year, for the northern and southern hemispheres, if they have different flu season schedules. (Edit: Or just do it once per hemisphere, but with restricted travel between hemispheres during the quarantine.)
22 days at home every year... okay, a bit boring, and the economy would take a small hit from that... BUT, there would also be far fewer people taking sick days, and workers would also get more rest and come back more refreshed. It may only be a net loss of a couple days of work, lets say 3 days of work, 1% of Global GDP.
Global GDP grows at about 2-3% per year from what I can see. So a loss of 1% would set us back to the level of late 2019 or New Years' 2020, which was hardly the dark ages.
Not to mention Work From Home policies would adapt so it's likely very little productivity would be lost.
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#285Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
New viruses come out all the time. This viruses wasn't isolated as different till the end of December. The Doctor wasn't jailed ... The virus was spread at the market. It didn't start at the market. Until we know where it started we don't know if it would have stopped the virus or not.
The doctors were not jailed, because luckily CCP need them to work to fight the virus. Some of them died for it already, mostly due to the hard work, insufficient protection CCP provided to the doctors, and in one case at least, intentionally punish the doc by delay his treatment. Talking about the origin of this virus, this paper of 2015 is quite interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 . In this paper,…
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#287Earlier 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.
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 an…
I didn't see them say anything about "fleeing a lockdown." She was fleeing a potentially life-threatening virus in a scary situation in order to be with her family. That isn't so hard to grok, and obviously she felt she was making the right decision. Shaming someone for looking for security and safety in a scary situation (i.e. for being human) is just absurd.
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#289My 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…
[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/17YyCmjb2Z2QwMiRR...
Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community
#290Earlier 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.
Are you sure that Germany does not perform extensive testing? I admit that reddit comments should not be used as sources but I would love to know more about German approach to testing. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fguheu/why_have... Earl_of_Northesk: The RKI is conducting random sample testing to keep track of Influenza in Germany. These tests now also test on COVID-19. So far, not a single prior unde…