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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

#641

Post by kiba »

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…

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 world.

Can we stop using mode of government as an explanation for success and failure?

Clearly your country have its head screwed on better than mine. Meanwhile, my president is complacency in chief, more worried about the stock market than lives being lost. The local governments know what they're doing moreso than the feds, when it should be the other way around.

South Korea certainly seemed to have its head screwed most on head. They learned from previous lessons and are very successfully in applying them.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#642

Post by CydeWeys »

solidasparagus wrote: post #551
sdkaufman wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This is where the government needs to step in and guarantee healthcare, paid sick leave, and improve unemployment. It's already starting to happen. We'd be in much better shape if we were already closer to European countries in this regard, though.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#643

Post by Medicalidiot »

7177Y wrote: post #412
Medicalidiot wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My attending went on the news to say that flattening the curve is our best bet at the moment. He's also considered to be one of the top physicians in the region. Y'all can sit here in a bubble, but the medical community has no hallucination that containment should have been done months ago and now it's past that.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#644

Post by eveningcoffee »

lbeltrame wrote: post #146
goodcjw2 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing first, this is science, not politics. Everyone wants a drug and vaccine, but good science takes time to happen. Make no mistake, no one wants a lock down, but so far, it's the only option in the lack of a functional medical solution. If tons of scientists tell us lock down is the only option for now, we should'd listen rather than discredit them. Now, if someone really wants to move on to talk about polit…

I wouldn't view it as science vs politics. Science advises, correctly, the politicians. But the ultimate decision stays (for the good, or bad) with politics, because they have to balance things. As I said elsewhere, a vaccine is likely less "important" in the immediate, especially because it can have far deeper side effects, and no test has been done on humans whatsoever, while most of the drugs are on Phase III (ear…

This is correct. All the methods help in the future.

It ultimately means that these methods should have been used in the past.

It does not mean that they should be not used today because without using them the future will be orders of magnitude worse.

I compiled a small investigation http://www.savespain.eu/italy-vs-germany It might be interesting for you.

If you want your future to be better, start acting today.

Every Italian should have realized by now that you should hide your grandma and grandpa if you want to see them alive.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#645

Post by Proven »

kiba wrote: post #641
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…

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 world. Can we stop using mode of government as an explanation for success and failure? Clearly your country have its head scre…

[dead]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#646

Post by iforgotpassword »

bonzini wrote: post #623
iforgotpassword wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's special in that the Western world and their economies are much more interconnected and fragile than China or Iran, and South Korea was considered special due to the sect. It's also special in that they didn't have any experience with SARS. Besides Italy did start to apply lockdown measures to specific towns, and closed schools when they had 20 cases. It was insufficient but at least it was an attempt. The US has…

> It was insufficient but at least it was an attempt.

And it should've been clear with all the data we had that it would be. Don't get me wrong, I don't think any of the other western countries does it right. Italy got unlucky because it was the first country where shit hit the fan. Might as well have been Germany if they wouldn't have gotten lucky in stopping the spread from their Bavaria case. But I fully stand by my point anyways that no country in the west did a good job, and points like yours are weak excuses at best, since it basically boils down to "well we're delaying taking down our economy a bit and make sure the rest of Europe suffers too, so we're not as ducked in comparison to them." There's certainly some logic to that, but it shows how shallow our advanced civilized world really is.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#647

Post by Twixes »

datastoat wrote: post #600
csomar wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why on Earth is this a good model? It's not but I guess it's the best they have right now. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore are still functioning and have "contained" the virus. The number of cases/deaths did not explode despite contracting the virus much earlier.

It's good you put "contained" in quotes. Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong are all (according to this plot [0]) showing exponential growth in the number of cases. It's a slower exponential than elsewhere, but it's still an exponential. [0] https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

Well, that's how these graphs tend to look like for a while for infectious diseases. All we can do at this point is reduce the growth factor so that doctors don't have to choose who gets to use lifesaving machinery and who dies like in Italy.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#648

Post by heisenbit »

> Every minute is exceptionally important as it means saving lives. Don’t waste it!

The fact that the US Senate did not speed up the emergency measure by staying is loosing 2 days. At that time the measures are in place the problem is twice as large. In normal times this is just a business day delay but in these times calendar days are the measure and weekends are counted too. We really need to start thinking and acting differently.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#649

Post by kerng »

bonzini wrote: post #623
iforgotpassword wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's special in that the Western world and their economies are much more interconnected and fragile than China or Iran, and South Korea was considered special due to the sect. It's also special in that they didn't have any experience with SARS. Besides Italy did start to apply lockdown measures to specific towns, and closed schools when they had 20 cases. It was insufficient but at least it was an attempt. The US has…

It's interesting that the encouragement for self isolation in Washington came from companies like Microsoft about 10 days ago. That raised awareness quite a bit.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#650

Post by lawn »

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…

Note that it's only the opinion of someone that Sweden is following the "herd immunity" strategy, and it's denied by several officials.

Sweden hasn't closed down schools etc like other countries have done so it's fair to argue that it's being done in practice, but it doesn't seem to be a conscious decision.

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