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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

#721

Post by fuzzfactor »

joe_the_user wrote: post #314
warent wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see them say anything about "fleeing a lockdown." She was fleeing a potentially life-threatening virus in a scary situation in order to be with her family. That isn't so hard to grok, and obviously she felt she was making the right decision. Shaming someone for looking for security and safety in a scary situation (i.e. for being human) is just absurd.

She was fleeing a potentially life-threatening virus in a scary situation in order to be with her family. I hate to put this harshly but... She may well be fleeing with a life threatening virus that will kill her family. This has happened already, even documented, in China. We can't look to our own comfort at this point. All my family visits are postponed and my food is mostly stocked up. And it's a hard situation wh…

>She was fleeing a potentially life-threatening virus in a scary situation in order to be with her family.

True.

>She may well be fleeing with a life threatening virus that will kill her family.

And true.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#722

Post by bluGill »

dragontamer wrote: post #572
bluGill wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we do know one number :the total number of people in ICU is normal for this time of year. There are a handful of confirmed cases (I'm not sure if they are in ICU), but the total number of cases is still low. It is hindsight, but expontial grow means that despite not testing we didn't have a problem two months ago. Maybe we should have been in lock down a week ago, but anything sooner would be overreacting an…

It takes about 7 days after developing symptoms for the hospitalized cases to come in. Most people who get sick think its a normal cold. They stay at home for a week, and when they can barely breath anymore, they finally enter the emergency room.

Exactly. 2 weeks ago this was a worry but not significant as evidence by current ICU fill rates. Expect Washington, hopefully the rest of the country doesn't follow

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#723

Post by fuzzfactor »

tomp wrote: post #249
bsaul wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wish more countries did randomized testing over its whole population, or extensive testing, like SK.

Why even test? The decision procedure is the same: treat the ill, lock down everyone else at home, avoiding social contact at the max; enforce social isolation and/or masks in "critical" spaces (power plants, grocery stores, ...). What does a positive or negative test change?

Most complete lockdown would seem to coincide with health care system stress beyond a certain level.

Universal testing and full identification, isolation, and clearance of all patients across multiple checkpoints would result in the fewest number subject to confinement, confined in the least broad of areas for the shortest periods of time.

OTOH if insignificant testing has been achieved, lockdown itself will need to be inversely universal and long-lasting.

There is an exponential component involved, so the effect will be felt sooner than you think.

Theoretically either way, it's possible no one will be able to be unconfined across multiple checkpoints without a real-time valid negative test or credential.

That decision could be the same either way.

But the fewer and less reliable the tests, the fewer the number of citizens that can be expected to be allowed to move about with some freedom.

After pandemic stress exceeds the magnitude where there can be no treatment resources for additional patients anyway, movement will certainly not be relaxed, and those who might have had a chance with earlier & more thorough action & testing will be left to expire undertested in confinement.

Not every scenario is that uplifting.

Due to the excess rate of confinement resulting from inadequate testing, the greater stress on the marginal economic needs of a large contingent of the populace may result in a need for lockdowns to become oppressive enough to theoretically halt the spread of all possible crime in addition to disease.

Depends on how serious it gets, if it's bad enough you could get unrulyness or looting like there is during some disasters regardless.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#724

Post by sdkaufman »

dependenttypes wrote: post #715
sdkaufman wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people cannot just wall themselves off from the rest of society. What if they live with or are cared for by other family members? How will they get health care for existing conditions? Hospitals have been shown to be a major vector for transmission [1]. And how do they even get to the hospital if they can't drive? What about grocery shopping over the next few months? The National Guard is stepping in to help de…

> Hospitals have been shown to be a major vector for transmission Not sure how this is relevant to my post. > What if they live in a nursing home in close proximity to other elderly people? The nursing home could stock up and ban people from coming in or out of it.

> Not sure how this is relevant to my post.

Many older people cannot just stop getting medical care, and by doing so will be exposed to COVID-19. Especially because hospitals and clinics are overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.

> The nursing home could stock up and ban people from coming in or out of it.

And all the nursing home staff will be locked inside and not leave for months? Where do they sleep / shower etc?None of the nursing home staff have families or children to care for?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#725

Post by bsder »

cameldrv wrote: post #332
bsder wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already have a preliminary trial result in China that says Chloroquine works Chloroquine has a long history with many diseases of "sorta, but not really" working when subjected to actual test. Please don't spread unsubstantiated info.

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

Bleach or a handgun also work "in vitro".

Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/1217/

Chloroquines will be tried since they already pass the "safe" bar.

However, I suspect that if they worked "in vivo", we would have compelling data on that from China already. The fact that we don't have such data suggests that they don't.

We seem to have much better data about the effectiveness of standard anti-virals already.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#726

Post by nostrademons »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #686
zhte415 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are claiming that a study published in January supercedes a study in February. No, I am no. I am saying the study supercedes numbers reported by authorities. The point of the study was to scatter information on very opaque reporting. > China's numbers are a minimum. Many people are saying online they are a maximum. I.e. claiming that there are lots of hidden mild infections when there are not. That doesn't pars…

A lot of people are claiming that China's death rate was under 1%. That is one of the reasons everyone is delaying action.

Death rate was under 1% outside of Wuhan and in South Korea. It's over 5% within Wuhan and in Italy.

The way I interpreted that discrepancy is that in the presence of full testing and good ICU care, the death rate from COVID-19 is about 0.7-1%. When the hospitals get overloaded, as they've been in Wuhan and Italy, the death rate skyrockets to 5-10%. This also squares roughly with the number of people who need ICU care in places where the death rate is low. If you need ICU care and don't get it, presumably you'll be dead.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#727

Post by empath75 »

bsaul wrote: post #584
empath75 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imm…

There aren’t large numbers of random people testing positive for it where they’ve done wide spread testing. Korea in particular probably has close to an accurate count, and their mortality rate is still close to 1%

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#728

Post by inferiorhuman »

caseysoftware wrote: post #665
inferiorhuman wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid knows no political party. It's a spectrum of stupid. Moscow Mitch is holding up financial relief because it's a good opportunity to stick it to Planned Parenthood.

Your anti-Russia, nationalist rhetoric is not welcome here.

You're conflating self-determination with nationalism, and the upvotes I got would suggest that HN is generally OK with calling out foreign election interference.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#729

Post by Retric »

nostrademons wrote: post #726
gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are claiming that China's death rate was under 1%. That is one of the reasons everyone is delaying action.

Death rate was under 1% outside of Wuhan and in South Korea. It's over 5% within Wuhan and in Italy. The way I interpreted that discrepancy is that in the presence of full testing and good ICU care , the death rate from COVID-19 is about 0.7-1%. When the hospitals get overloaded, as they've been in Wuhan and Italy, the death rate skyrockets to 5-10%. This also squares roughly with the number of people who need ICU ca…

Median death is 14 days after first symptoms with many cases taking significantly longer. That combined with an exponential growth curve looks significantly less deadly. A major discrepancy is the under detection of cases as full population testing has been rare outside of the cruse ships which also have an elderly population.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#730

Post by ghthor »

Intermernet wrote: post #627
ghthor wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people aren't susceptible to dying from this. They are likely to spread it. Those who are susceptible to dying from this number in the millions. You can worry about your civil liberties and freedom after you worry about infecting someone who might die because you decided that the personal risk to you wasn't worth a few weeks of inconvenience.

I'd rather people die then risk the state grabbing power against the right to organize in groups.
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