Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#351

Post by llcoolv » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #346

duchenne wrote: post #155

I guess it is easy to dismiss the message from ordinary people, since they do not express themselves as well as the professional speakers we are used to listen to. If instead of saying "I want a haircut.", they would say like Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." would they be taken more seriously? In the movie versio…

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. ... with their own lives . You're talking about allowing people to risk other people's lives, and no, that's not ok. > The most accurate data about the fatality rate of covid-19 may come from the Diamond Princess cruise boat where everyone has been tested. The 60-to-80 year old infected passengers had a fatality rate of ~2%. There was no fatality among the infected m…

> ... with their own lives. You're talking about allowing people to risk other people's lives, and no, that's not ok.

So, let's ban driving then?

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#352

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

legostormtroopr wrote: post #303

camgunz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

Hyperbole much? People do take calculated risks with the lives of others - again driving is a dangerous activity, you take the lives of everyone in your car and those around you in your hands while driving. Even chefs are responsible for not giving people food poisoning. Because of our hyperconnected world, we depend on people taking risks around us constantly. Additionally, NYC had 500 deaths because its approaching…

> you take the lives of everyone in your car and those around you in your hands while driving.

The key point there is that you do that with their consent. Also you are required to be insured to cover you in the case that you screw up and hurt or kill people. Please show me the insurance company that will cover you if you recklessly spread COVID-19 to someone who then dies.

I don't consent to you risking my life and the lives of people I care about just because you're getting a little cabin fever.

> you take the lives of everyone in your car and those around you in your hands while driving.

Says who? The data we have so far does not support (or refute) that. We just do not know yet.

> But the economic costs - the careers and education opportunities lost to regular people will impact their whole lives.

Yes, that's potentially true. But if you want to be persuasive, you're going to need to quantify that, with error bars and probabilities. We have pretty solid estimates as to how many people are likely to die based on various social distancing, shelter-in-place, full quarantine, etc. scenarios. Those lost lives can't be "fixed" after they're gone.

Economic harm can be lessened and even fixed. No, I do not have confidence that everyone will be made whole after this; unfortunately governments and people in general are far from perfect. But that's not an excuse to take other actions that will directly cause deaths.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#353

Post by camgunz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

hartator wrote: post #338

camgunz wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let me rephrase. COVID is the deadliest thing most people will ever have a chance of coming into contact with, you'll spread it to others before you even know you have it, thus it's almost certain you won't be the only one "taking the risk". It's not like driving, flying, takeaway, or any other inane, minimizing comparison. It is a highly infectious, stealthy, lethal pathogen. If we let everyone get it, at even…

That’s actually not true. We are talking 0.2-0.3% lethality which is still a lot but it will bellow 250k deaths even if we are back to full normal right now. Current estimations are 60-70k deaths from it but the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19.

I think those numbers are way low. Based on demographic numbers:

Older than 85: 650k deaths

65-84: 150k

55-65: 400k

I don't think everyone will be infected, but lets say it's half. That's 600k. Let's say it's 10%. That's 120k. By any measure, the loss of life is... just breathtaking. But either way, parent was taking about letting everyone get it to build herd immunity, so that's where "everyone gets it" is coming from.

https://www.livescience.com/is-coronavirus-deadly.html

> the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19

This had been circling the internet a little, but I would caution against extrapolating an uptick in suicides into doubling by the end of the year. There are no doubt consequences to sheltering in place, domestic abuse is a concern as well for example. But this is the best we've got.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#354

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

hartator wrote: post #338

camgunz wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let me rephrase. COVID is the deadliest thing most people will ever have a chance of coming into contact with, you'll spread it to others before you even know you have it, thus it's almost certain you won't be the only one "taking the risk". It's not like driving, flying, takeaway, or any other inane, minimizing comparison. It is a highly infectious, stealthy, lethal pathogen. If we let everyone get it, at even…

That’s actually not true. We are talking 0.2-0.3% lethality which is still a lot but it will bellow 250k deaths even if we are back to full normal right now. Current estimations are 60-70k deaths from it but the doubling of suicides resulting of lockdowns this year to 100k make us more likely to die from suicide than covid-19.

Do you have citations to back up those numbers? I've been looking for things to read that try to quantify the potential harm of shelter-in-place orders, but haven't found much that go anywhere beyond wild guesses.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#355

Post by NotSammyHagar » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #273

djsumdog wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has open schools, movie theaters, restaurants (limited people; tables further apart) and bars (can't buy beer). People are working from home when they can. High risk people and older people are told to self isolate. Their hospitals are not overwhelmed. Their people do no wear masks. They hope the infection can spread slowly and they can deal with it. Sweden is criticized heavily, but if their strategy works, t…

To be clear, they have closed high schools and universities, and kept open junior schools under the theory that many children would need childcare anyway (over 80% of families have two working parents). Enough parents are keeping their kids home anyway that they are sending out warnings. 50% of the workforce is now working from home, under government orders for employers to support it where possible. People who have…

Sweden started out well but recent numbers indicate some concern. 1,580 deaths [1] as of Apr 20. Here are some comparisons and projections. I'm just using other people's estimates (I'm no expert but IHME ([3]) is). Sweden's expected total deaths of 5,890 by IHME, looks to be about 4,000 more deaths (preventable?) than comparable countries per capita (comparing Sweden to Switzerland which has 1429 current deaths). All data as of April 20, 2020 evening time PST us, or Apr 21 6am utc.

Current deaths per million population: Sweden 156 deaths/mil, Norway 63 d/m, Finland 33d/m, Switzerland 165 d/mil; overall populations Sweden 10 mil, Finland 5.5 mil, Norway 5.x mil, Switz. 8.5 mil.

Sweden not doing well compared to Norway & Finland but it's doing better than Spain, Italy, France (446 deaths/mil, 399 d/m, 310 d/m). If you look at Sweden's daily numbers it varies a lot in a kind of repeatable way. That's apparently attributable to private labs are closed on the weekends and there's a delay in reporting (similar things in other countries); some countries report 1 day late to add up everything too.

Doubling per day time [2], [4], [5]. This is more complicated but Sweden is growing faster than comparisons. I don't have exact current numbers.

Predictions of total deaths [3]: Sweden 5,890 and Switzerland 1,584 (recall pop is 10 mil vs 8.5 mil). Notice Sweden has many more deaths per capita. Norway 280 expected deaths (5+ mil pop). Sweden will have disproportionately more deaths than Switzerland (pop adjusted Switzerland 1584-> expected 1863 per capita (1585*10/8.5). But expected deaths is 5,890, 4000 more!

1. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden (etc)

2. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-confirmed-deaths-si...

3. https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

4. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/

5. https://www.economist.com/news/2020/03/11/the-economists-cov...

I hope this was useful, hopefully not too many typos!

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#356

Post by orbifold » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #305

I usually stay out of the political/topical threads on HN but this is personal to me. From my point of view few if any of us commenting here are knowledgeable enough to connect all the disparate data points we keep snatching at and synthesize them into conclusions that are likely to be correct. The people who can do that are working on it, and generally too busy at the moment to post on forums or give interviews. The…

I had to google the ratio of patients to nurses in various countries, because 2:1 seemed very low. In Germany it is 13:1 under normal circumstances and according to a German newspaper it is 5.3 : 1 on average in the US. So something very unusual is going on at your wives hospital or the number of ICU nurses per patient is just higher than in normal stations.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#357

Post by camgunz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

antpls wrote: post #341

camgunz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

> Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives maybe are at stake. You are extrapolating only to spread FUD. Covid19 could kill only a few people, but very fast, which could also explain the data we have for now. There is no evidence "that millions of lives are at stake" and the available data shows cars and tabacco have killed and will kill more people than the covid19 over 20 years "We could all die from cov…

Even with the lowest lethality rates 1.2 million people over 55 will die from COVID if they're all exposed. That's why we need to shelter in place until we set up adequate testing.

The "tobacco also kills us so we should let COVID kill us faster" argument makes no sense, by the way.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#358

Post by camgunz » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

tdfx wrote: post #347

camgunz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should be able to take a calculated risk. That is not at all what we're talking about here. People should not be able to take a calculated risk with the lives of others . Let me tell you why it's not like driving: the NHTSA reports 102 car fatalities a day in 2016. NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. One city. 5x the fatalities. Compared to a country of 300 million people. This is, by far , the most o…

> NYC just got under 500 COVID deaths a day. Important to remember what led up to that. High risk people were going about their daily activities, no one was social distancing. It’s disingenuous to imply that anyone who is anti-lockdown is talking about a complete return to pre-pandemic behavior that caused the numbers we are seeing in NYC.

> It’s disingenuous to imply that anyone who is anti-lockdown is talking about a complete return to pre-pandemic behavior that caused the numbers we are seeing in NYC.

Feel free to point out where I've done that.

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#359

Post by orbifold » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #307

projektfu wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned that Facebook censors gifs from Team America World Police, so I’m not sure that it should be relied on for a conversation about anything critical.

America is strange. The idea of censorship seems to rile up more than the practicalities of it. Facebook is hugely censored, and has been for years . There's a distinct lack of gore, of child porn, or even just porn in general. There aren't torrent links to download the latest TV show or video game. And, dare I say it, it's better for it.

That is not censorship but removal of illegal content (with the exception of non-child porn)

Re: Facebook says it has removed promotion of anti-quarantine events

#360

Post by totony » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

SerLava wrote: post #152

CryptoPunk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die Yes you absolutely can. The workers interacting with the quarantined subset of the population could use PPE to avoid transmitting it to them. Packaging on groceries, as well as the grocery bag, can easily be disinfected before being tran…

1. We can't even get PPE. We won't have PPE for a long time. Not even doctors have enough. 2. We're not going to train minimum wage workers and quarantined vulnerable individuals to follow sanitary procedures to any adequate degree. 3. We don't even have enough trained medical workers to treat dying people, so no they aren't going to make the deliveries. This problem will only get worse if you go all "herd immunity"…

Instead of testing people who already have symptoms, maybe we could use those tests to ensure sick people don't come into contact with their groceries?

Of course quarantining part of the population is hard, but I fail to see how it is harder than quarantining the whole population