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

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#581

Post by Yetanfou » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:44 AM UTC

toohotatopic wrote: post #567

tapland wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden we've avoided testing people who haven't been in high risk areas, and moved from that to only testing 'risk groups' (elderly and with preexisting conditions), so the numbers shouldn't be seen as reflective of the total number of infected.

Isn't Sweden itself a risk area? Looking at cases per 1M population [1], Sweden is at no 10, and its neighbors Norway and Denmark are at 2 and 6. How come there are so many cases per capita? All the neighboring regions like Poland, Russia and even the North of Germany, have fewer cases. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Sweden, like the UK and possibly the Netherlands has chosen to let the disease spread among the population to achieve what they call "herd immunity" [1 - Swedish]. There might be some truth to the herd immunity thought, the problem is they don't have any control over the speed at which the infection will spread through society. Eventually everyone who can be infected will get infected no matter what is done so that herd immunity will also occur in a situation where the spread is limited by isolation as is done in most other countries. In other words, herd immunity is a given outcome of all approaches and as such does not need to be stated as a goal. The goal should be to limit the load on the health care system so as to limit the number of people who will die in the wake of reverse triage in an overloaded system.

In short, the stated goal will always be achieved so it is a variable which can be struck from the equation. Having this as a goal is the equivalent of not having any goal at all.

[1] https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/strategin-lat-manga-smittas...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#582

Post by handedness » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:46 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.

> The full danger was unknown in the initial stages.

The danger was sufficiently known, sufficiently early.

Those sounding the alarm were silenced.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#583

Post by pinkfoot » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:49 AM UTC

leppr wrote: post #17

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…

Take comfort in knowing the whole world will slow down, your competitors included.

However, the rent on your offices, the interest on your mortgage, and your school fees will not.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#584

Post by bsaul » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:52 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #152

bsaul wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's dealing with analytics data regularely, thank you ! i absolutely don't understand how can someone give any ratio about this disease knowing how only the most severe cases got tested ( except in SK), and that the symptoms are almost undistinguisable from the flu.

It simply must be much more dangerous than the flu for the simple reason that comparatively few people have it and it is overwhelming hospitals.

i wonder if it's really true that "few people" have it. We do observe a huge amount of people going to the hospital in italy, but that could very well be because we reached the peak of the epidemie, where almost all of the population have been infected and remain asymptomatic. in this hypothesis, you implement a lockdown and see number drops over two week but what you're really seing is a population reaching herd immunity.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#585

Post by SZJX » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

spectramax wrote: post #473

coliveira wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are very quick to blame Chinese officials, but I think they were correct in avoiding panic before knowing for sure the true dimensions of the problem they had at hand. The government has its credibility at stake: if you start using harsh measures without evidence, you lose credibility for the next time it is really needed.

"You lose credibility for the next time it is really needed" when I hear the government harrass NBA officials, gamers, non-citizens of the world when they criticize the CCP, going around banning movies and books left and right, never mind the extraordinary surveillance state it has built for its own citizens. I feel like the CCP has already lost its credibility when it can't have a spine and a composure, constantly f…

A quite black-and-white view to take when it's shown pretty well in this letter how the containment strategy they adopted apparently cut down the transmission a lot and potentially prevented many deaths. Would an alternative government that you propose do better in China? Very debatable. The world is not a good vs. evil story you know.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#586

Post by pinkfoot » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:58 AM UTC

liquidify wrote: post #398

Here in the U.S.A. in Indianapolis, my 60 year old dad is out at a club right now dancing with his old people girlfriends. He is a smart dude (on paper - tenured professor of finance), but he doesn't think he has a thing to worry about. I hope we get a lock down here. Many people are too selfish, arrogant, and stupid to make the right choices even when it is obvious.

I would argue that your father's actions are brutally rational: get the virus now, so he still has a shot at a ventilator before the system is swamped. He could be recovered and immune when the rest of you are figthing over the ICU.

Not exactly neighbourly though.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#587

Post by solidasparagus » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:59 AM UTC

sdkaufman wrote: post #579

solidasparagus wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

And there aren't severe human consequences from millions of people dying in the next few months? Easy to say when you don't seriously have to face the possibility of your parents and grandparents dying, I guess. Remember that the mortality rate for people 80+ is 1/7, which isn't far from a game of Russian roulette. Plus, all the school districts that have shut down so far have continued to offer meals for students AF…

I actually very much do need to seriously face that possibility. And I still think complete isolation is too extreme.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#588

Post by listsfrin » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 8:59 AM UTC

sfj wrote: post #196

TeMPOraL wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't heard any reputable source suggest there was any practical way of containing it perfectly. Of course there was. If they somehow magically divined the true danger of the virus the day they identified it. But they didn't, it took time and observation, and they shut down the affected areas as soon as the extent of danger was realized and processed by their bureaucracy. There's plenty of things here that coul…

>> processed by their bureaucracy That is the issue here. They completely ignored it until people were dying in the hallways of hospitals and then implemented a draconian policy. And now they're locking up anyone who criticizes them. See this article about "Gratitude education", a term that tops Orwell in its dystopian implications: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/gratitude-educ...

Where did you read that people were "dying in the hallways of hospitals"?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#589

Post by SZJX » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 9:00 AM UTC

c789a123 wrote: post #227

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…

I agree with the above comments that China is not a model to follow at all but the true sole responder for today's situation. From the number of people and the wide range of field and institutions signing this letter, I suspect a very strong CCP secret united action behind it to paint a good picture for CCP reputation. The most probably org that manipulated this letter is the so called "Chinese Students and Scholar O…

Not sure if this is a parody or not. So in your logic anything good being said about CCP is surely their propaganda, and they can do nothing else but being evil and destroying the world? Well I have bad news for you: the world is probably not as black-and-white, good vs. evil as you think. They do some stuffs wrong or at least controversial, and also some others right, or effective, just like every other political entity. Otherwise China would definitely not be where it is today, economically. Even the WHO recommended a lot the actions by China. Memeing them like Kim Jong-Un doesn't get you anywhere.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#590

Post by SZJX » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #500

adinobro wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Chinese markets generally don't sell bat meat or eat bats. They eat lots of animals but bats are not one of them. (I'm sure there is a village in China where they do eat bats. It is a big country.) The photos you see online of Chinese people eating bats are Tourist in the Pacific.

Correct, Chinese markets generally don't sell such things. I know, I'm Chinese ;) But this particular part of China does . It's more a subculture derived from one of the minority groups in that province, but it's there.

Never heard about such a thing. Sounds like some sort of conspiracy theory unless you have concrete proof of that.

The original hypothesis was that some other animal sold at the market acted as an intermediate host between bat and human, just like the case in 2003 SARS, but this is also not proven.