Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 373 posts

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#161

Post by crispyporkbites »

wisienkas wrote: post #153
badpun wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but I believe they stop the droplets, which are vectors for viruses.

It has been proved that most of those masks sold simply aren't closely sewed enough to stop the droplets containing the disease. So in general the mask don't help. Secondly the mask only help avoiding spreading the virus from yourself to other and it doesn't protect from receiving the virus

> So in general the mask don't help.

Is that proven?

> Secondly the mask only help avoiding spreading the virus from yourself to other and it doesn't protect from receiving the virus

Doesn't this contradict your first statement? In fact the statement contradicts itself, stopping spreading the virus from one person to another by definition protects from receiving the virus.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#162

Post by adrianN »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #145
mcsb4 wrote: post #85

I don't understand why we are not trying to interrupt the transmission vectors with masks and hand sanitizer like the Chinese do. They ramped the daily production from 10M to 100M and even advised the use of make-shift masks. The reaction in the west: masks are not protecting 100% and also we don't have any and we are too lazy to produce them, although they are much cheaper than the economic impact covid-19 has. 1. y…

Do masks even work on things as small as viruses?

Yes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/

The virus is not airborne, it is spread is small droplets. Those are effectively reduced by all kinds of masks.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#163

Post by tomp »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #130
tomp wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it is highly paternalistic to tell people what to spend money on. Indeed, and that's kind-of the point: (1) you eliminate bullshit spending (on things like alcohol, tobacco, lottery) that many people are prone to do, but that they arguably shouldn't (to some extent, those products are "predatory"); (2) it provides a minimal standard (survival) yet incentivizes people to work (be productive) to increase their…

> eliminate bullshit spending (on things like alcohol, tobacco, lottery) How do you propose to prevent people acquiring drugs, and gambling?

I don't! I fully support people's freedom to spend their own money for anything they want! Just not the tax-payer's money, that's why I'm in favor of things like food-stamps (that could only be exchanged for some "basic" staples), government-provided housing, ...

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#164

Post by realusername »

neuronic wrote: post #154
swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do masks even work on things as small as viruses?

Masks contain spread. They do not protect from it. So if you are sick, wear a mask. Here in Germany you still get publicly ridiculed for it.

Same everywhere in Europe I think, people get scared if you are wearing a mask, which should be the opposite...

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#165

Post by mcsb4 »

wisienkas wrote: post #153
badpun wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but I believe they stop the droplets, which are vectors for viruses.

It has been proved that most of those masks sold simply aren't closely sewed enough to stop the droplets containing the disease. So in general the mask don't help. Secondly the mask only help avoiding spreading the virus from yourself to other and it doesn't protect from receiving the virus

Please stop spreading this false information and have a look at the infection numbers in China. The masks stop droplets coming from your mouth and nose and if everybody wears them, then they are a very effective mean to massively slowing down the spreading of the virus.

No, the masks are not 100% virus tight. Yes, they prevent spreading of diseases. That's why they are worn by surgeons.

They are 20 cents a piece, that's nothing compared to the current economic costs of useless social distancing as long as people still go to work. Unless we stop the economy, masks and hand sanitizer are the way to go.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#166

Post by pishpash »

keiferski wrote: post #127
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it needs to be based on good science. As someone in thread said, the false positive rate needs to be staggeringly low. And the false positive for Testosterone -> AntiSocial behaviour is huge - marathon runners to entrepreneurs and weight lifters. So the idea is good - test people for something bad they will do - but the ability to test reliably for all the bad things is real low. I think we shall just stick to pa…

I don't think it is a good idea or good tool at all. I don't need or want some external authority to tell me if I'm allowed to leave my house. I used the example of "Anti Social" behavior as a joke and I thought that was obvious...but apparently not. The idea is entirely antithetical to a free society. As someone indicated in another comment, the proper way to do this is through personalized incentives and social enc…

Sure, but what do you have against a personal in-home test? The information should be available at least to the individual.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#167

Post by titzer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #129
tomp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this logic, and I understand it even less now. If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?! No need to go via the "money -> essentials" route... that way you're only indirectly making landlords and grocery store owners rich. For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone…

> For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone... that money is mostly going to find its way into the pockets of already rich people Whose pockets do you think it's going to come out of, whether by taxes or inflation (which is a tax on holders of dollar denominated assets). It's just doing more work for other people along the way.

> Whose pockets do you think it's going to come out of

Well, if America just reversed the past 3 years of tax policy, that money would come out of the pockets of the top 1%, primarily. That's people earning more than $400k a year.

As it is, we are going backwards. The government is literally borrowing money now to give money back, in droves, to rich people, instead of to poorer and middle class people.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#168

Post by neuronic »

Udik wrote: post #46
Taek wrote: post #26

Heavy testing and aggressive isolation of infected persons and areas seems to be effective. In the absence of heavy testing, broad quarantine seems to be effective. The answer at this point seems to be heavy, widespread quarantine until testing infrastructure is sufficient to closely track every active case. Once that testing is in place, most quarantines can be lifted, and any second wave can be managed. There are n…

Let me dream: how hard would it be to create a test that can be distributed by the billions on paper strips like a ph test? You take one every evening and by the morning it tells you if you can go out or not. Is it conceivable or (borderline) impossible?

Bioinformatician here (well, former): I would never say something is impossible but the way these things are tested right now, it pretty much is impossible.

We need to amplify some molecules and run a process called PCR on them for which you need a full lab setup. It would take nothing short of a revolution in detection to achieve this.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#169

Post by titzer »

jonrimmer wrote: post #12

In this event, the solution will be the creation of a permanent, South Korea and China inspired infrastructure for testing, tracking and constraining infectious citizens by all developed countries. Regardless of the privacy and civil liberty concerns, I think that's where we'll eventually end up, and to your children it will one day seem crazy that a person with an infectious illness was once able to freely walk the…

> I think that's where we'll eventually end up,

Until the first economic downturn, when the ruling party throws it all out the window, cuts taxes, and cuts interest rates. And the rich people will eat it up.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#170

Post by dragonwriter »

tomp wrote: post #71
netsharc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.

I never understood this logic, and I understand it even less now. If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?! No need to go via the "money -> essentials" route... that way you're only indirectly making landlords and grocery store owners rich. For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone…

> If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?!

Because my utility function isn't the same as yours, so outside of goods and services where there is strong reason to believe that the conditions do not exist for markets to work, it's better to provide people fungible currency and allow them to maximize their own utility function through purchasing decisions rather than have a centralized bureaucracy decide what they most need. Also because despite the aforementioned variability in utility functions, agency seems to pretty consistently be positively valued, so centrally imposed selection would be inefficient in utilitarian terms even if it perfectly reflected the recipients utility function before considering agency.

Post reply on HN