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

Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

left.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 740 posts

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#731

Post by caseysoftware »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #728
caseysoftware wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Looks like lots of people consider them the same.

"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity,[2] and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#732

Post by Fnoord »

soVeryTired wrote: post #9
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

As a physicist, it still feels odd to me they are talking about statistics with such confidence here. It seems only SK has earned that right and has tested enough people to get reliable statistics. If you only measure the sick in the hospital...

The pattern is fairly consistent across countries [0]: [0] https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

The graph can be reproduced with more recent data here [1]. It is based on WHO data, and lags a bit behind. If you want to see more data and graphs, see [2].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-confirmed-cases-sin...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#733

Post by gpderetta »

c789a123 wrote: post #672
gpderetta wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy was one of the first countries to cut down traffic from China months ago. Didn't do any good.

Where you got that info? Any link?

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/...

It happened on the 31st of Jan. I think that was before Taiwan stop, but I'm not 100% sure.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#734

Post by jerf »

sneak wrote: post #470
jerf wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like China, "the USA" is very large and probably not something that can be treated as an atomic entity. Even much-smaller Italy is probably too large for that. While there may be hot spots that develop in the US, I can tell you from personal experience that there states that have taken strong measures when there are still single-digit numbers of infected in them. The state I'm in is not in a mandatory full lockdown p…

The majority of spread is from small groups/gatherings, not stadiums and such. Restaurants, cafes, offices, homes, et c.

"Small groups and gatherings" have collapsed here, too. Like I said, we're not in total isolation, but most people aren't going out, restaurants are abandoned, etc., and the few foolhardy folks still doing it are fading fast.

The exposure network hasn't been trimmed to zero, but its branching factor has been radically cut down. This is going to have an effect.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#735

Post by jerf »

newtoday wrote: post #424
jerf wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like China, "the USA" is very large and probably not something that can be treated as an atomic entity. Even much-smaller Italy is probably too large for that. While there may be hot spots that develop in the US, I can tell you from personal experience that there states that have taken strong measures when there are still single-digit numbers of infected in them. The state I'm in is not in a mandatory full lockdown p…

'may be hot spots that develop in the US' You're kidding right? Under what conditions that things are fine are you preposing? If you're not taking this serious, and in the US, you're definitely part of the problem. That attitude, statistics aside, is going to get people killed.

Settle down and read more carefully.

Among the things you should have derived from reading more carefully is the fact that state I'm living in is taking it quite seriously. Personally, my hatches are battened down and I'm prepared to be isolated for at least a month, maybe two. (Have to admit it's hard to tell how far my supplies will go, I've never actually had to live on them before.)

You're talking to someone who specially prepped for this about seven weeks ago, in addition to the general prep I already had on hand. If you can match that, then maybe consider start lecturing me. I actually got a bit of flak from my wife for the amount of prepping I did, because it was before she'd hardly even heard there was a new virus. Now she's glad I did, because I bought all the things that are missing in the stores around here now long before it was "hoarding".

I'm in the top tier of taking it seriously. At the same time... Don't panic. Don't advise panic. Don't fall into the cognitive trap of modeling this as a zombie apocolypse or some other thing where the virus is intelligently seeking out victims. Isolation measures will slow the virus down. It isn't possible to keep it "out of the US" but it remains possible to keep it out of your county, or your city, or your neighborhood, with sufficient steps. Total doom is not yet inevitable, and even then, how you are impacted remains significantly under your control even if your government is feckless. Or, at least, it was, if you got your prep in before the panic rush... you may be a bit more at the mercies of your government now.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#736

Post by account42 »

terramex wrote: post #248
wnkrshm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't see how trying to limit testing to people who had contact with known cases or traveled to at risk countries (as practiced in Germany) can be successful.

Are you sure that Germany does not perform extensive testing? I admit that reddit comments should not be used as sources but I would love to know more about German approach to testing. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fguheu/why_have... Earl_of_Northesk: The RKI is conducting random sample testing to keep track of Influenza in Germany. These tests now also test on COVID-19. So far, not a single prior unde…

No matter good the test coverage in germany is, the growth is still exponential so the currect prevention measures are insufficient.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#737

Post by ComputerGuru »

mrfusion wrote: post #127
ComputerGuru wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t fast track things past what they’ve already been fast tracked. Stop second guessing the experts. What is the use of a hurried vaccine tomorrow if next month it turns out to cause birth defects or global infertility or cancer.

Birth defects and infertility aren’t issues for most of these patients.

You don’t vaccinate patients, you treat them. Everyone else gets the vaccine. These are absolutely concerns for the people that would be vaccinated.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#738

Post by pmontra »

lmz wrote: post #598
pmontra wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially because they are in the position to help other countries now, when everybody else have to think only about their own citizens. They sent doctors to Italy with medical equipment (Italy sent some help to China earlier on) so they're going to take some credit for the recovery. Then there will be the real recovery. Western Europe was rebuilt with US money after WW2 and the USA consolidated an hegemony which is…

Maybe China will emerge as the winner because they kept the number of victims down, just like the US emerged as the winner of WW2 after its industry was spared destruction by bombing.

Seconded, but the USA also had the will to push their hand. They could have said goodbye and went back to the Americas, instead they did their best to control the world. Of course everybody in that position would have done the same but they had a competitor (the USSR) so it didn't come for free.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#739

Post by moriturius »

bitcharmer wrote: post #529
moriturius wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is exactly the essence of why I don't like politics. It's super easy to retrospectively say "they should've done something else". You might think that even you would do the right choice, but you are wrong. Such decision is hard for any authority. You may vote for any person in the whole world and the result would probably be similar. Lockdown delivered too early could send whole country into chaos. Also Chi…

> Don't judge others. It is by observing others and judging their decisions and actions that we can learn and avoid other people's mistakes. Is it not?

Judgement is pointing fingers.

What you are asking about is just drawing conclusions. I wouldn't mix those up.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#740

Post by moriturius »

sdkaufman wrote: post #536
moriturius wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is exactly the essence of why I don't like politics. It's super easy to retrospectively say "they should've done something else". You might think that even you would do the right choice, but you are wrong. Such decision is hard for any authority. You may vote for any person in the whole world and the result would probably be similar. Lockdown delivered too early could send whole country into chaos. Also Chi…

> saying retrospectively "you should've known better" is just childish European governments were not the first to have to deal with the epidemic (China), nor among the first few (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore etc.). They were fully aware of what happened in Wuhan without early action. They literally just had to follow what Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea etc were all doing. Those countries had less informa…

As I said in my original post: China managed this so well that it could make others think that it was not that big of a deal.

Wasn't until it got Italy hard that most people opened their eyes.

But the point I was trying to make was that saying that somebody should've done something differently is not helping anybody. That's just complaining and nobody needs that.

Post reply on HN