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

Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#31

Post by hatenberg »

lowdose wrote: post #23
zw123456 wrote: post #2

Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…

I second this it seems more and more like massa hysteria. 8.000 people died on 7.7 billion people. Its crazy to pull the handbrake on the economy. 99% of the people that died were going to be death in a year or 2 anyway. Have you heard about that school class full of 6 years old kids in Italy that died last a week? Didn't happen but when it happens we do not have this options anymore. Old people die and thats life.

This talk at the start of an exponential curve is exactly the problem

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#32

Post by ornornor »

lowdose wrote: post #23
zw123456 wrote: post #2

Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…

I second this it seems more and more like massa hysteria. 8.000 people died on 7.7 billion people. Its crazy to pull the handbrake on the economy. 99% of the people that died were going to be death in a year or 2 anyway. Have you heard about that school class full of 6 years old kids in Italy that died last a week? Didn't happen but when it happens we do not have this options anymore. Old people die and thats life.

The problem is that so many people are ill or die within a very very short window instead of being spread out as it is before the epidemic.

From a purely selfish point of view, assuming the disease will be a minor inconvenience to you because you’re young and healthy, there are other things to consider:

- what happens to your (presumably much older) parents when they get sick? Death is a very real outcome there

- what happens when you have a car crash and need intensive care but all hospital beds are full and there are also younger patients than you to treat with a better outcome? You’re triaged lower priority and may not get the care you’d normally get or survive at all

For perspective, there really aren’t that many ICU hospital beds altogether because the usual number of people who need intensive care at any given point in a city of millions is in the hundreds (maybe low thousand?) Once the exponential nature of the epidemics hits and there are thousands of people who need care right now on top of the usual load, then it’s like in Italy where some are left to die just because choices must be made and there are either healthier victims with better prognosis.

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#33

Post by mntmoss »

redis_mlc wrote: post #13
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Acting without reliable data reminds me of war. And that got me thinking: is this the closest exposure to "Total War" that any living generation (except the greatest generation) has experienced? It's not like recent wars that can be ignored by shutting off the TV. This captivates all of us and is becoming impossible to ignore.

No, as I wrote another day, polio, the Cold War, the meth/crack epidemic in the USA and the vodka epidemic in Russia were/are pretty scary. (A lot of apartment blocks in Russia became 100% female after all the men either died in the Afghanistan war or destroyed their livers with vodka/wood alcohol.) SARS (Corona-1) in 2002/2003 was bad too, but mostly affected Asia, with isolated incidents in North America.

A distinctive feature of a pandemic event is that it really is a global thing. Even the world wars could claim to have quiet fronts... and that matters as a global society. Normally - since the modern era began - we're in a default state of national competition and every country is under some obligation to work itself to the bone and exploit what it can to get ahead of the others. Hence the default response to crises has long been "keep a strong international image, maintain business as usual". The crisis harms a select group somewhere and everyone else ignores it. But we did periodically have pandemics, and each one changed the character of things going forward.

And it's clear why that is the case; you can't really get ahead if you don't take care of the disease. The as-usual response fails because it affects everyone. Even AIDS, which was approached so, so reluctantly, eventually got an organized response.

And this response is more likely to be humane than most crisis management because there is so little room to evade the issue and try to fit it into the usual powermongering circus.

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#34

Post by mokarma »

naner wrote: post #4
zw123456 wrote: post #2

Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…

The problem is not so much the health risk but the overwhelming of healthcare systems and lack of supplies. This isn't a theory, we already know the outcome of not slowing down infection rates fast enough (China, Italy, etc).

So why aren't we scrambling to build more hospitals?

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#36

Post by simion314 »

ailideex wrote: post #18

[flagged]

This is not a solution for the present, also to prevent this happening in the future I would strongly suggest not focusing only on China but maybe have a program setup for this kind of emergencies that were predicted already and for some reason governments were not prepared, this will happen again and it might originate in a different place, it might affect the young and it might be more infectious.

Blaming China is good political strategy to shift the blame and responsibility though, so use that if you are a politician responsible of inaction maybe you get re-elected, you could blame the immigrants and people working over the borders ... fuck political thinking...

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#37

Post by csharptwdec19 »

aaron695 wrote: post #27
zw123456 wrote: post #2

Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…

What is the value of a human life in the West? My figure is $2 million. Then a billion $ is 500 lives. A trillion $ is 500,000 lives. This is how I rate it. What is your figure on a life? And how would you relate loss and gain of $ to buying / destroying lives? The discussion changes when you leave the West, so start there.

I remember that the author of XKCD dug up that the EPA puts a human life around 8.4mil.

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#38

Post by aaron695 »

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #37
aaron695 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the value of a human life in the West? My figure is $2 million. Then a billion $ is 500 lives. A trillion $ is 500,000 lives. This is how I rate it. What is your figure on a life? And how would you relate loss and gain of $ to buying / destroying lives? The discussion changes when you leave the West, so start there.

I remember that the author of XKCD dug up that the EPA puts a human life around 8.4mil.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/96/

Sounds ok. I think it's less, but it's the same for this calculation.

Do people even get trained in napkin math anymore?

Wiki is very limited on the topic- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-of-the-envelope_calculati...

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#39

Post by NhanH »

mokarma wrote: post #34
naner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not so much the health risk but the overwhelming of healthcare systems and lack of supplies. This isn't a theory, we already know the outcome of not slowing down infection rates fast enough (China, Italy, etc).

So why aren't we scrambling to build more hospitals?

Doctors and nurses is the big cap alongside equipments and rooms.

Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

#40

Post by travisporter »

ornornor wrote: post #32
lowdose wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this it seems more and more like massa hysteria. 8.000 people died on 7.7 billion people. Its crazy to pull the handbrake on the economy. 99% of the people that died were going to be death in a year or 2 anyway. Have you heard about that school class full of 6 years old kids in Italy that died last a week? Didn't happen but when it happens we do not have this options anymore. Old people die and thats life.

The problem is that so many people are ill or die within a very very short window instead of being spread out as it is before the epidemic. From a purely selfish point of view, assuming the disease will be a minor inconvenience to you because you’re young and healthy, there are other things to consider: - what happens to your (presumably much older) parents when they get sick? Death is a very real outcome there - wha…

Really appreciate you posting such a rational and reasoned reply.
Post reply on HN