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

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#611

Post by mft_ » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #610

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…

>>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…

Even if it's temporary?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#612

Post by iforgotpassword » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:16 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…

> Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the world.

So did Italy, and they even got a head start in knowledge about the virus of about a month. Yet, the majority of cases here in Germany can be traced back to Italy, and not directly to China.

It's depressing how every country still tries their best to ignore their own failings and defaults to "well China should have stopped it right in the beginning"

I am absolutely sure that things would have been at least as bad if not worse, had this virus originated in Italy. Or Germany, or pretty much anywhere else.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#613

Post by apexalpha » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #53

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...

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... Start reading at "2. What Will Happen When These Coronavirus Cases Materialize?"

Who is this mr Pueyo? And why should we listen to him regarding this subject?

From his Medium profile page it seems he is a 'Storyteller' and 'Viral marketer'. So, someone who knows how to tell a story with confidence even if you know nothing of the subject.

I'm gonna listen to my government regarding this, rather than medium posts by viral marketeers. Thank you.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#614

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

listsfrin wrote: post #588

sfj wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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"?

Italian doctors have been writing about this since ~Tuesday. There's loads of reports and newspaper articles about it. They're in full-on triage mode, and there isn't time or manpower to give people even palliative care.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#615

Post by brabel » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

adinobro wrote: post #493

makomk wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like pretending it was an unknown disease that showed no sign of person-to-person spread when they'd already sequenced its entire RNA and found cases of it spreading within the community. Like having to be pressured into revealing what little details they did. Like, as I recall, only admitting that it was spreading person-to-person when another country spotted this. That kind of not sharing information.

It is a Novela virus. By definition you don't know anything about it until it is proven. If you don't know the source (which is still unknown) then you cannot verify that it has spread human to human. (They should have assumed that it did) Researches outside of China said there was no evidence of human to human transmission. The first 2 weeks of January were handled rather poorly. But lack of information since then i…

When people dislike a certain government or person, they jump to the worst conclusions about them rather quickly. This is extremely dangerous. Imagine a sensitive situation develops where there's weak evidence the victim of your dislike did something that might endanger you or your country... if you immediately jump to conclusions, which you are very likely to do as this thread shows, then the situation would easily develop into a confrontation... this is not hypothetical. With Americans and Chinese (and Russians, Iranians) coming face-to-face in more and more sensitive situations around the world, it's only a matter of time until the mutual distrust will cause one side to pull the trigger under unreasonable circumstances.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#616

Post by wesleywt » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:21 AM UTC

ghthor wrote: post #602

jiggawatts wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

What child of summer you are.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#617

Post by sdkaufman » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #610

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…

>>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…

It's not just about your health or your life. This is what R0 means - even if you end up fine after getting the disease, you're going to transmit it to other people who may end up dying because of you.

In other words, it's also your liberty vs other people's lives.

Are you going to be the grandson who kills his grandma? Or the employee who kills the CEO? Or the Trump supporter who ends up helping elect Biden?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#618

Post by dguest » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

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…

Maybe to put a more positive spin on it: the sooner you act the more leeway you have. Better that you realize now that someone has to come in and install a remote power switch on some server. In a week it might be a bit harder to ask someone to shoot over to BestBuy and pick it up. The same goes for your workers: they might appreciate some time to set up their home office.

Exponential growth means employee expectations will go from "completely safe at work" to "don't leave home except for food" pretty fast. You don't want to be that guy who asks employees to violate the (possibly government imposed) lock down to keep the lights on.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#619

Post by iforgotpassword » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #570

MiroF wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a huge defender of China, but it is disingenuous to claim that not realizing the import of the virus in the first 10 days is anywhere near the magnitude of the Italian government's failure.

The Italian government as the first Western country facing an outbreak was dealing with the prisoner's paradox. If you are the only one instituting strong lockdown measures you are the only one paying the economic price. It was wrong, but it's understandable that the government hoped that the infection could be contained to two clusters. The other European governments and the US on the other hand have absolutely no e…

So you're arbitrarily suggesting that being the first western country is special. China's economy was already affected at that point. In our global world, why doesn't that count? By your logic, I could also say the US doesn't do enough for obvious reasons: They're the first western non-European country affected. They don't want to be the only ones (after China and Italy) paying the economic price.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#620

Post by dguest » Sun, Mar 15, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

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...

It's interesting that you lead by saying "as a physicist".

As a physicist I'm used to thinking about orders of magnitude and whether something grows like log(N) or N!. I'm pretty sure all the data points to this being O(a big problem) but I'd leave it to the epidemiologists to say anything with confidence.