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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

#601

Post by makomk »

robocat wrote: post #439
garmaine wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan... Uh, China dropped the ball for a full 3 months since the first reports of a novel respiratory disease started back in November . First denying it, then jailing the doctors who tried to raise the alarm. Not to mention not enforcing their own laws regarding food hygiene put in place after SARS which would…

Taiwan started acting on 31st December. Taiwan were prepared because they predicted an event like this could happen. Taiwan hasn’t been hit by a sledgehammer even though they have huge flows of Chinese people travelling. Any delays by other 1st world countries after 31st Dec are largely their own fault.

I don't think you've followed this argument to its logical conclusion. Taiwan started acting on the 31st of December because they didn't believe a word coming out the Chinese government's mouth. They haven't been hit like a sledgehammer even though they usually have huge flows of Chinese people travelling because they promptly rounded up and quarantined travellers from the affected regions and their close contacts back when China was falsely claiming it was a small outbreak with no evidence of person-to-person transmission, and then locked down travel entirely over the objections of China and the WHO which insisted doing so was racist and counterproductive. Any delays by other 1st world countries after 31st Dec are therefore largely their own fault for believing a word coming from of a totalitarian dictatorship with a long history of cover-ups and their parrots over at the WHO.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#602

Post by ghthor »

jiggawatts wrote: post #230
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

As a physicist, it still feels odd to me they are talking about statistics with such confidence here. It seems only SK has earned that right and has tested enough people to get reliable statistics. If you only measure the sick in the hospital...

So, as a physicist, you should know how exponential growth works. Let's say you have a pile of Uranium that's juuuust sub-critical. You would likely to be confident to stand next to it without significant fear. But if someone throws on just enough additional Uranium for the pile to go supercritical , you would run for your life because none of the following will matter[1] all that much to the final outcome: 1) How mu…

Most people will not go to the hospital, they'll stay at home and they wont die unless they dont drink water and eat food with poor nutritional value.

That's why I dont understand the crisis communication on the subject. I understand exponential growth, I dont under and the panic about getting sick with a flu like virus.

If it was something causing skin lesions I'd be in panic mode because the victims would be at a higher risk of co-infectious diseases. This is not that. But hey, fuck my civil liberties some more, for that matter fuck my freedom and that of my countrymen. I dont give a fuck anymore.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#603

Post by makomk »

Yetanfou wrote: post #581
toohotatopic wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

This isn't exactly the stated goal of the UK, so much as something our government has concluded is the inevitable outcome no matter what they do. The goal is the one you suggest - to limit the load on the healthcare system and the number of people who die as a result.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#604

Post by enitihas »

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…

China did handle the situation poorly in the beginning, trying to suppress the numbers maybe. But the thing is, other countries are doing the same mistake, while not being prepared to do what China did next.

Trump said there is nothing to worry about. He even compared the numbers to flu numbers. This is similar to what the CCP did in the beginning.

Wuhan was locked down at 100 new cases a day. This is much faster response than countries who had seen Wuhan and even had better data.

The CCP did screw things up in the beginning, but made up for that by a very effective response. Countries are matching CCP on the initial response, but not ready to match the final response.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#605

Post by j7ake »

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…

There are several non-authoritarian states in Asia that have successfully contained the virus by implementing similar strategies as China.

So there is no need to equate the need for an authoritarian government to successfully contain the virus.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#606

Post by bo1024 »

toohotatopic wrote: post #574
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.

>If that trajectory persists, and we don’t arrest it, in the 2 weeks closest to peak rate, we’ll have seen 75% of our cases emerge. vs >in a couple of months. Why months? If there are 75% of the cases within 2 weeks, won't 75% of the deaths also occur within 2 weeks?

It says in the two weeks closest to peak rate. So if the peak is mid-May, those 75% would all fall in May.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#607

Post by sdkaufman »

antpls wrote: post #595
sdkaufman wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why on Earth is this a good model? Because it worked. Millions of lives have been saved - 1% of 1.3B is 13M people. That's 1/5 of Italy. Are there better models? Maybe. But there are also much worse models, as I suspect we might soon find out in the US [1]. Personally I'd much rather take the Chinese model for the next few months than risk me and my family dying or going bankrupt over the next few months. And, inst…

> Because it worked. Millions of lives have been saved - 1% of 1.3B is 13M people. That's 1/5 of Italy. This is an inacurrate estimation. I guess your figure of 1% is from South Korea case fatality rate. The confirmed cases represent a biased sample of the population, and the mortality rate could be lower in reality (but not higher). > consider the economic impact of 13M people suddenly dying. The mortality is mainly…

> This is an inacurrate estimation.

Sure, the actual number will likely be different for each country / state / city, but doesn't really matter for the sake of the argument. I was using 1% as a lowball number. Official mortality rate from the WHO is 3-4%; some studies say 2%, Italy is reporting 7%.

And for those 80+, current data suggests a mortality rate of 1/7 - not far off from a round of Russian roulette.

So if you have 4 grandparents who are 80+, there's a ~60% chance at least one will die if the disease spreads through our population in the next few months.

> The mortality is mainly for 70+ years old people, who are already not in the workforce anymore.

Firstly, if hospitals are overrun (which is the way we're headed), people of all ages will die preventable deaths. Hospitals in the US are already postponing elective surgeries.

Secondly, it's simply not true that older people don't contribute to the economy.

The elderly still consume food, housing, health care etc., and a negative demand shock is a recipe for recession. For example, think about what happens to nursing homes or physical therapists if a large percentage of older people die. Or what happens to local housing prices if lots of homes are suddenly put up for sale because elderly owners died en masse.

And many older people continue to work and volunteer (e.g. just look at our president, congressmen, and senators), and that some grandparents help with child care (like in my family right now).

Sources: - https://time.com/5798168/coronavirus-mortality-rate/ - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lamvo/coronavirus-death... - https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/heres-why-the-coronavirus-deat... - https://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/economic-growth...

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#608

Post by Cantbekhan »

cameldrv wrote: post #556
copperx wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same for many EU guidelines

Source as I posted on other submissions

Chloroquine is mostly admitted as a valid treatment now

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22582374

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#609

Post by brabel »

jbay808 wrote: post #105
mjoin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're missing that China initially suppressed info abt this virus, which caused it to spread. had they reacted immediately, we might be in a much better situation rn

That's a very important point if we're discussing the upsides and downsides of censorship, or whether China is a bad country and should feel bad about itself. But if we're looking for an example of how to solve the pandemic, when people point to China as an example, they aren't saying "we should spend a few weeks pretending the virus doesn't exist, threaten doctors who talk about it, order our labs not to study it, a…

China was the first to have to handle the issue, so they had the difficult job of figuring out whether this virus was just like the flu (which some people are still claiming even today) or whether it was something to worry about much more than that. Imagine the cost to your credibility if you call it out for a huge danger, and it turns out it is just a new flu variant... The spread to other countries seems to only have started once the Chinese had conclusively shown this virus was very dangerous (and started the lock downs to prevent its spread). Hence, other countries had the benefit of this knowledge which China didn't, yet still failed to act. Some countries like the UK and Sweden even now pretending this is not a big deal and not taking anywhere enough measures to avoid widespread infection rates.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#610

Post by syshum »

sdkaufman wrote: post #575
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…

> Why on Earth is this a good model? Because it worked. Millions of lives have been saved - 1% of 1.3B is 13M people. That's 1/5 of Italy. Are there better models? Maybe. But there are also much worse models, as I suspect we might soon find out in the US [1]. Personally I'd much rather take the Chinese model for the next few months than risk me and my family dying or going bankrupt over the next few months. And, inst…

>>Personally I'd much rather take the Chinese model for the next few months than risk me and my family dying or going bankrupt over the next few months.

Always makes me sad when Americans willing give up essential liberty to purchase perceived safety. Personally I would much rather look the situation rational, may the assessment of risk for myself, then choose on my own what course of action(s) I will take. Not have those actions dictated and imposed on me by an authoritarian government.

I would rather lose my health or my life than to lose my liberty

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