Why did/does China lie so early and so often about the progression of the epidemic?
Because like the current US administration, local officials punish and silence the bearers of bad or ideologically-inconsistent news.
Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#22What should governments be doing for maximum practical containment?
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#23What does successful containment look like 3 months, 6 months, and a year from now?
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#24Reliable data on asymptomatic cases.
The models we have at the moment are trying to fit parameters based on the known data, but of the known data, the only reliable one is the death rate. So there are a lot of degrees of freedom here with regards to the spread of the virus. (Because carriers are only identified on a limited basis, mostly in hospitals, it presents a skewed picture, so this data is not hugely useful)
Once antibodies tests are available, you can get a sense of how many people in a sample population have had the disease with mild-to-no symptoms, and that can say a lot about how it's spread.
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#25What is the true mortality rate? All the numbers are based on positive test counts, but testing isn't being done for most people with nominal (casual) symptoms.
This has led to a situation where we think (for example) 2% of positive cases die, when in reality, there may be millions of positive untested cases resolving without issue.
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#26To what extent will lies, half-truths, spin, and disinformation increase preventable fatalities?
What can be done within existing legal frameworks to stop this disinformation?
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#27more granular or qualified statistics.
e.g. yesterday, Gov. Newsom went on the radio and said something along the lines of "half of people hospitalized were 18-60" (paraphrasing, don't remember the numbers exactly, etc). But something like 2/3rds of our population is that age!
Another thing would be statistics on triage as the outbreak overwhelmed Italy. I'd like to know who was going to the hospitals, who was admitted, who needed to be in the ICU, etc, and how the profile of patients changed as beds got filled.
Nutrition. I've already noticed food purchasing has changed at my local stores. I would like to know if we're exasperating our public health crisis by ruining our diets and if we should be concerned about that moving forward.
And finally, alcohol and drug consumption - particularly by millenials. Anecdotally, many of my peers are drinking a lot more regularly than they normally would during the day and week. There are plenty of memes about it, but I'd like to know if we're looking for hope at the bottom of a bottle for the next few months.
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#28I've heard that high blood pressure is a risk factor for the severity of a covid19 infection. But does that mean... (a) People who have actual, uncontrolled high BP? (b) People who would have high BP, but don't because it's controlled by medication? (c) People who are taking specific BP-controlling meds? (d) Some combo of (a), (b), (c)?
MedCram on youtube has a good video on this. cant get the link on my corporate vpn though.
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#29As per: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594... In China: Total Confirmed = 81,782 Total Recovered = 74,181 Total Dead = 3,291 -------------------------- Remaining = 4,370 * I am assuming the number 4,370 will fall either into Recovered or Dead. Can someone confirm this theory? Is this going to the same for US? Total Confirmed Cases = 69,684 Total Recovered = 619 Total Dead = 1,049 -----------…
80%-85% of the 68k are probably mild cases that will recover without medical help.
15-20% will need hospitalization. ~5% will need ICUs.
0.5%-5% will die depending on whether the medical system is overwhelmed.
Re: Ask HN: What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
#30The origin of the virus. The mainstream media assumes the virus was created in a natural process of mutation and jumping species, while there's this little paper [1] in Nature Medicine from 2015 where authors (virologists) confirm that they created a novel, human-transmisible coronavirus, based on a new virus they discovered among bats. Some of the authors of the paper are from Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and…
These days, if a plane crashes, a well known politician or celebrity dies, or a disease appears, or anything else dramatic, people will claim it was due to a conspiracy. Typically there even be several mutually contradictory conspiracy theories.
We fully expected an outbreak like this to happen eventually, and yet somehow having the expected result occur has spawned accusations of it being an American or Chinese plot.