Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

left.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 740 posts

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#411

Post by ElderKorihor »

contravariant wrote: post #327
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...

No it isn't. The hope is that at some point a vaccine or lighter treatment becomes available. If that occurs before the end of the flat curve, that's a major change in outcome.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#412

Post by 7177Y »

Medicalidiot wrote: post #353
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.

Flattening the curve is the only scenario a lot of countries can realistically do outside of a Wuhan style quarantine.

It's certainly effective propoganda to calm the Populus, from the government to the population and the population to itself. Hopefully leaders are sorting out more drastic measures in the meantime.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#413

Post by psadri »

chongli wrote: post #326
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…

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 subj…

Humans don’t understand exponential growth. But they could look at China and Italy and think - those guys are the same as us. We are not special. The same thing that is happening to them is going to happen unless we act now.

The real sad part of all this is that this is simply human nature. And we are next gonna go down the same path with climate change. And then not even lock downs will help.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#414

Post by CydeWeys »

solidasparagus wrote: post #404
CydeWeys wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is possible, STAY HOME. People need to stay home, period. Unless you work in healthcare, a grocery store, or some essential service, or are going to one of the same, you need to stay home. I know there's lots of reasons people aren't staying home yet, like they don't have paid sick leave, but still, none of this overrides the sheer importance of stopping the pandemic. So the phrasing should be "Stay home, per…

I wonder if you'd be so absolute if this meant your job ceasing to exist.

People's jobs are going to cease to exist on account of this whether they want it or not. What anyone wants or feels has nothing to do with it. This is what is going to happen, period.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#415

Post by sidek »

grecy wrote: post #370
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the interesting case where anecdote really does become data. If there are truly only 1,600 confirmed cases then hearing a few stories from a friend of a friend that they know people are sick should still be very unlikely. The fact that many people here and around the web are sharing stories of sick friends is are a set of anecdotes that would be nearly impossible if the reported numbers were correct. I suspec…

Canada has a population of 38 million, and only 150 confirmed cases. But one of those cases is the Prime Minister's wife. Do we really think there are only 150 cases? It's obviously way, way, way higher than that.

Mme. Grégoire Trudeau seems to have contracted the novel coronavirus in the UK, so your datapoint doesn't really suggest anything about the situation in Canada.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#416

Post by fma »

nxc18 wrote: post #238
fma wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

One of my neighbors is a Trump supporter. He just shared a photo on Facebook of Pelosi that had the caption "This is the real virus".

He's a nice guy, too...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#417

Post by thedance »

chongli wrote: post #384
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by intuitively I suppose you mean feel it, which I guess is true, but it does not take a genius to actually understand the concept, especially if it is explained as right now you will get this many people per day, in a week you will get this many, in a month this many. That is pretty easy, a politician should be able to follow it. But as has been pointed out before most people think if you do something big and dramat…

One way to test this is to ask random people the question: "The number of lily pads on a pond double every day. If it takes 20 days for the lily pads to completely cover the pond, how long does it take to cover half the pond?" I think you will be surprised by how many people say "10 days."

This is because most people are unable to suppress their reflexive response to being asked what's half of 20, not because people don't understand exponentiation.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#418

Post by Retric »

nostrademons wrote: post #389
MetalGuru wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%).

Yes, hospital-level serious for 20% of cases. 5-10% require ICU care. The ~2% fatality rate is with ICU support and ventilation. When the hospitals get overrun it increases to ~7%, which is what we saw in Wuhan and now Italy. Your chance of dying if you do need hospitalization but don't get it appears to be > 50%. Death rates by age range also assume ICU care. It's virtually unheard of for healthy middle-aged people…

It’s far from clear how accurate those numbers for Italy and China are. China essentially gave up on testing the general population in Wuhan and their numbers mostly represent the most serious cases. Italy’s infections seem to be mostly centered around the elderly with 40% of infections in the 70+ age range despite 65+ year olds only representing 21.53% of their population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#419

Post by 7177Y »

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…

Imo (and free advice is best left unheeded): Better that you miss out on this opportunity and get to keep your IP and try again than risk you and your employees contracting a severe respritory illness.

People will understand disruptions due to Covid. It's not business as normal. Google told the entire north american staff to stay home. Be glad that you can still all be relatively productive while remote, and enjoy your runway while you don't have to pay for the lights in your offices.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#420

Post by dboreham »

newtoday wrote: post #394
res0nat0r wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113

I'm in the US, no one cared about this until a few days ago. Now, some stores are getting low on food supplies, and people are posting about it. But, I was at a store today where they were completely stocked, and the only empty shelf was the toilet paper supply! It's insane.

Surely the hand sanitizer shelf was empty too?
Post reply on HN