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

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#551

Post by solidasparagus » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:22 AM UTC

sdkaufman wrote: post #525

solidasparagus wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'd rather my job ceased to exist than my parents or grandparents. Because that's the choice we're making now as a society.

Easy to say when you don't seriously have to face your children becoming homeless. While it certainly isn't as dramatic as a pandemic, there are severe human consequences of completely shutting down the economy. I'm sure I don't need to repeat the stats that showcase how close to the edge much of America lives - 40 million Americans don't consistently have access to enough food[1]. 1 in 6 children don't have access to enough food (which has massive effects on development and long-term health). 22 million children rely on school lunches as their primary source of nutrition[2]. Food insecurity is directly correlated with higher rates of diabetes and obesity[3]. Half of America has a negative net worth. Unemployment is correlated with alcohol and drug abuse[4].

Pretending that the only disaster we are facing is medical is blinding yourself to the reality that we are trying to navigate our way between twin catastrophes.

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/13/us/ap-us-virus-o...

[3] https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/2...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/how-job-l...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#552

Post by masklinn » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:30 AM UTC

feral wrote: post #192

I work as Principal ML Engineer, and did a little epidemic modeling in my ML PhD. I wrote an analysis of how this is going to hit Ireland, including the best calculations I could find on fatality rate: https://medium.com/@fergal.reid/predicting-the-impact-of-cor... I think that left unchecked this could kill millions of Americans in a couple of months. I'd love to be wrong.

For people who don’t find that clear enough, here’s a bloke comparing the obits in L’Eco Di Bergamo between Feb 9 and Mar 13: https://twitter.com/benphillips76/status/1238854071509016577

February 9 is 1 1/2 pages.

March 13 is 10 full pages.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#553

Post by adrianmonk » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #257

adrianmonk wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh right, of course I forgot to divide by 100. I should have also remembered what my other teacher said: always check your units.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#554

Post by visarga » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #103

tuna-piano wrote: post #44

Earlier 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.

You raise a high bar for China but if the virus appeared in many other countries the global outcome would have been much worse.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#555

Post by arendtio » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:34 AM UTC

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…

Maybe they should include this 3Blue1Brown video to explain what 'exponential' means in this context:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#556

Post by cameldrv » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:36 AM UTC

copperx wrote: post #402

cameldrv wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir may cause fatal arrithmias, in the case anyone out there is self medicating. It's one or the other.

Can you cite a source? Current Chinese treatment guidelines allow it.

Also very important to quantify side effect risks, even if it's a rough estimate. For example, if a 70 year old patient has already progressed to dyspena, they might have something like a 20% mortality rate from COVID. Even if there is a side effect profile for the treatment that normally would be considered very dangerous, it may be well worth it to administer it.

We see the same thing with chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The side effects are terrible and fairly often fatal, but they are safer than the disease. This is the situation in which we find ourselves.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#557

Post by ssss11 » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

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.

Thry silenced doctors, faked numbers to the medical community and eventually the lockdown was to save the Chinese economy & people not to stop the spread overseas, however, I’m sure the communist party will claim that.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#558

Post by cameldrv » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #445

cameldrv wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not unsubstantiated. It is proven in vitro, and this came out the other day: http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/con... I haven’t found the source paper if there is one yet — I can’t read Chinese except with google translate

Drugs shown to be effective in vitro routinely fail to show similar effects in vivo . Chloroquines have a long history of this in viral studies.

The point is that according to what the official Chinese medical line is, it works in vivo. This is apparently confirmed by Korean experience. I understand the skepticism, but you go to war with the data you have, and the data we have indicates Chloroquine works.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#559

Post by epistasis » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:40 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #369

epistasis wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some napkin math with the number of celebrities and professional sports players, who presumably have far better access to testing than the US public (which has essentially zero access), would show that we are at least at 150k-200k infections, if not more. At least, immediately before Tom Hanks announced his infection, I saw some napkin math that showed that since no politicians, movie stars, or professional a…

Does this control for the fact that celebrities and politicians do way more travel and meet way more people?

Nope! Napkin math will treat all cows as spherical. However, if they are traveling and meeting way more people, it's also likely they are spreading it far more in addition to having it at a higher rate than the more socially distant segment of the population. Also, would likely indicate vast amounts of community spread that is going completely undetected.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#560

Post by gvjddbnvdrbv » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

zhte415 wrote: post #546

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO has verified China's numbers.

The Lancet unverified those numbers quite a while ago https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I flagged this because it was published in January nearly a month earlier than the WHO's verification.

Essentially this was not in bad faith when it was published but it is now so out of date and misleading and sharing it now is dangerous in that it may cause people to ignore safety advice.