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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

#321

Post by eyegor »

pbourke wrote: post #171
on_and_off wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are 1600 confirmed cases but the lack of tests hides how many real infections there are. 2,695 at the moment, per the NYT tracker https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m...

Last official update from cdc was 1629 [0]. NYT seems to be aggregating data from state reports, and even that is out of date. NYT reports 607 in WA, but the state itself reports 642 [1] (cdc reported 457 in WA on Friday).

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

[1] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#322

Post by Dylan16807 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #307
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…

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 gotta say this but I don't think we should put forward the position that total lockdown is an irrational position. Total lockdown seems fully rational, not a product of mere panic at all. Total lockdown worked in Wuhan. Absolute and complete isolation inherently results in exponential de…

> "you know that promises to the largest loss of life on US soil ever"

From what I'm aware, if hospitals are able to handle the patients, it shouldn't be up to that level.

And the "slow it down" plan is primarily about not overwhelming hospitals.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#323

Post by hatenberg »

jacquesm wrote: post #306
hatenberg wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…

The post-mortem (for want of a better term) on this will be pretty bad for some people in leadership positions. Assuming they survive. Very precious time was squandered with half-assed measures and uninformed decisions.

I don't share your optimism. We already seeing not acting recast as strategy.

At least German politicians had the sense to step aside and hand the mess they made to the scientific experts to clean up.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#324

Post by macintux »

tomp wrote: post #249
bsaul wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wish more countries did randomized testing over its whole population, or extensive testing, like SK.

Why even test? The decision procedure is the same: treat the ill, lock down everyone else at home, avoiding social contact at the max; enforce social isolation and/or masks in "critical" spaces (power plants, grocery stores, ...). What does a positive or negative test change?

How do we know when to initiate or let up on the lockdown if we don’t have any testing?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#325

Post by cameldrv »

graeme wrote: post #200
cameldrv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China’s fatality rate is also way down. Partly of course from less stress on the medical system, but they’ve also just learned a lot about how to treat it, particularly what drugs to use. I believe Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir + Interferon or Ribavirin is state of the art.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#326

Post by chongli »

hatenberg wrote: post #292
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…

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…

Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth. It's just too fast for our primitive brains. In some sense, we are standing in the middle of the road, frozen like deer in the headlights.

Science is supposed to mitigate the shortcomings of our natural intuitions and cognitive biases. The problem is that most people are not scientists. When a non-scientist is asked to trust a scientist, he or she is subject to all of the usual suspects: arguments from authority, confirmation bias, Bulverism, appeal to emotion, etc. What this means in practice is that scientists are generally not trusted over the word of one's friends and family.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#327

Post by contravariant »

RivieraKid wrote: post #310

"Flattening the Curve" is a deadly delusion https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-dea... "Flatten the curve" scenario requires r0 to between 1.0 and a small number above 1.0, like 1.1. In other words, it's not happening, you either contain the virus or let it explode.

It's also somewhat troublesome that for the 'flatten the curve' tactic the best case scenario is still infecting everyone...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#328

Post by tormeh »

Taek wrote: post #313
hatenberg wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…

No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.

This. No self-preserving politician wold have reacted early to this. And you don't get to that level without being self-preserving.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#329

Post by hatenberg »

Taek wrote: post #313
hatenberg wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and socc…

No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.

The science that this was not the flu was clear 6-8 weeks ago. Even if you thought china was under-reporting, it was clear what would happen. Then korea happened.

There was no excuse because there was never a chance for another outcome. The WHO was screaming into the void.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#330

Post by MetalGuru »

zozbot234 wrote: post #293
fattire wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the fact that here in the US tests are literally not happening on an epic scale that will be the subject of numerous investigations, hearings (, and prosecutions?) in the years to come. And forget that even if we had legit numbers, those numbers we can see are a tip of the iceberg, representing at most 20% of the actual more-serious cases. Put that all aside. Remember-- the numbers we see now are a look…

> Don't forget-- the numbers we see now are a look at the PAST. The infection incubates silently for a median 5 days. Then symptoms present. Then a week goes by with relatively mild illness. THEN shit gets real. And the "shit gets real" part only occurs 20% of the time, give or take - which means the virus might spread quite a bit while showing symptoms no more severe than a common cold. That also introduces some fur…

It gets hospital-level serious for 20% of cases? I thought the lethality rate wasn’t even that high for the most at-risk demographics (something like 14%).
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