Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars • Hacker News Board

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#481

Post by arbitrary_name » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #476

throwanem wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing. I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover. Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable. How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to s…

It is not a slightly worse flu though. There are numerous experts in record pointing to it's long incubation time, that some people are asymptomatic, that it may be airborne, the death rate... It is not normal seasonal flu and it demands a different response. Now, what that response is can be debated, but it should be more than doing nothing.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#482

Post by bobbylarrybobby » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #398

dillondoyle wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate myself for saying this but if one wants a cold calculous thought experiment, what about thinking about the mortality age? mostly older people, not only don't work but are also often a net burden to society.

Yes we've already extracted all the value we could extract from them. Better get rid of the useless husks asap. Do you realize how that sounds?

If we’re gonna talk about the economic value of individuals to society, it makes sense to evaluate that value correctly. The premise of the discussion was that a life has finite value to society.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#483

Post by jogjayr » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #476

throwanem wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing. I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover. Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable. How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to s…

The difference is that for regular flu we have vaccines, herd immunity, and medicines that work. We have none of those things for COVID-19. The effect of that is to drive up hospitalization rates to the point that it's a DDoS on the healthcare system. People suffering from unrelated issues now can't get care on time, and some of them will die too.

We don't even know for certain if getting it once makes you immune. How do you know herd immunity will work if you don't have the answer to something basic like that?

Isolating just over-60s only works to some extent. What about the healthcare and nursing home workers whom they interact with?

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#484

Post by nostromo » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #473

sershe wrote: post #463

This may get downvoted, but I think the following judgement-free statement is true: this is starting to look scary/serious /solely/ because of the measures the governments are taking, and the media circus around it. Otherwise (while it would have almost certainly "started to look serious" eventually, probably for a short time), at this point, you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers.

Either you don't do anything and it eventually _gets_ serious, or you do something and it _looks_ serious. > you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers. Surely you'd notice if 15%+ of your family's elders died in one year. People don't seem to get that it's not so bad (health wise) as long as you take serious decisions to slow the spread, so yes, you're right, it _looks_ serious, because it is, and it w…

At 85 you have a 10% chance of dying each year for any and all reasons, and it goes up each year.

So most of us are indeed used to losing about 15% of our elders each year, and have been forever.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#485

Post by ChrisClark » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #476

throwanem wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion here and elsewhere has been that it would be ultimately less harmful overall to let the disease run unchecked, even if it kills millions in a few weeks that way, than to attempt to control it in the ways our various levels of government are doing. I have yet to see you substantiate that claim in any way.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover. Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable. How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to s…

If you are ignorant of the virus, why talk about it like this?

50% of the patients in ICU are under 50, and it causes permanent damage to your lungs and organs.

If you don't take paranoid drastic measures, many millions will die.

If you do take paranoid drastic measures, lives will be saved, and then everyone will call you crazy for taking those measures because it ended up not that bad.

Just like people think Y2K was an overblown non-issue. Because it was fixed by millions of people working hard.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#486

Post by lm28469 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #484

lm28469 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you don't do anything and it eventually _gets_ serious, or you do something and it _looks_ serious. > you would not have even noticed given the actual numbers. Surely you'd notice if 15%+ of your family's elders died in one year. People don't seem to get that it's not so bad (health wise) as long as you take serious decisions to slow the spread, so yes, you're right, it _looks_ serious, because it is, and it w…

At 85 you have a 10% chance of dying each year for any and all reasons, and it goes up each year. So most of us are indeed used to losing about 15% of our elders each year, and have been forever.

You got what I meant, no need to play with bs percentages. Old people will die, more than usual, and you would notice.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#487

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

thrownaway954 wrote: post #425

not trying to be a wise ass in anyway, a legitimate question .. i'm wondering do you have to shutdown a bar that still allows smoking? can the virus even survive on surfaces and in the air if tobacco smoke is present?

Smokers are a higher risk group for Covid-19, so you should probably avoid such bars, even if they weren't going to be shutdown.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#488

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #349

rocha wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that in both cases there is a selection bias, due poor testing, and having the majority of initial reported cases being severe enough to reach hospitals. In my opinion, South Korea has better data, due to massive testing, and not having a completely overwhelmed health system. The rate there is 0.6%, which is still significant.

0.6%-1% is what we would be looking at when everyone gets the medical care they need. But many people are suggesting that instead of shutting down a large portion of the economy we let this thing rip through our population. And if we do that, a very small percentage of the population will get the healthcare they need. So the rate we should use when considering the "rip the bandaid" off approach should be closer to 6%…

> And if we do that, a very small percentage of the population will get the healthcare they need. So the rate we should use when considering the "rip the bandaid" off approach should be closer to 6% than 0.6%.

And if you take the "rip the bandaid off" approach, you can't restrict your analysis to just CoVID-19 deaths. The strain on the medical system will mean there will be an increase in deaths from other causes that didn't get the treatment they need.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#489

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #218

topkai22 wrote: post #144

When talking about economic damage it is also worth thinking about what we are trying to avoid in the US- if SARS-Cov2 gets to 60% of the population, then at a 2% case fatality rate we are looking at 4 million excess deaths. Most importantly, that is a humanitarian tragedy that we must avoid. However, having numbers also let’s us put an economic value out there for what we are trying to save. A 1% reduction in the ca…

Current total deaths are 6,000 with China already saying the worst is behind them. Why the US would have 4M deaths?

> Current total deaths are 6,000 with China already saying the worst is behind them. Why the US would have 4M deaths?

The official Chinese death statistics are probably severely under-counting deaths, in Wuhan at least. IIRC, they only counted deaths of confirmed cases, but the medical system was so overwhelmed that many, many cases weren't getting confirmed, and people were dying at home.

Re: Washington governor announces shutdown of restaurants, bars

#490

Post by umvi » Mon, Mar 16, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

ChrisClark wrote: post #485

umvi wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, covid-19 is basically a "slightly worse flu". Most people are not at risk of dying and in fact most people don't even need to go to the hospital to recover. Surely there has to be a balance between protecting the vulnerable at the cost of ruining the economy and protecting the economy at the cost of ruining the vulnerable. How about instead of shutting down planet earth we advise people over the age of 60 to s…

If you are ignorant of the virus, why talk about it like this? 50% of the patients in ICU are under 50, and it causes permanent damage to your lungs and organs. If you don't take paranoid drastic measures, many millions will die. If you do take paranoid drastic measures, lives will be saved, and then everyone will call you crazy for taking those measures because it ended up not that bad. Just like people think Y2K wa…

> 50% of the patients in ICU are under 50

And what % of patients infected actually end up in the ICU vs. just have a sniffle and a cough for a few days?

When the mortality rate is 0.2% for people I'm not saying "do nothing", but I am saying "shut down the world" is too extreme in the opposite direction.