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

Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 915 posts

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#101

Post by Melting_Harps »

giomasce wrote: post #83
Melting_Harps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fatality rate of Italy is scary high. I read the reason is that they have such a high percentage of elderly. And has one of the lowest fertility rates [1] in not just the EU, but in the World. Odd considering how just a generation ago having a large catholic, and poor, family was one of the most prominent qualities of Italian life. They keep trying to monetarily incentivize increasing birth-rates, much like Jap…

In which way would be Italy incentivizing births?

> In which way would be Italy incentivizing births?

Its literately the first line in the link:

>> It’s been almost two years since Prime Minister Matteo Renzi introduced an €80-a-month ‘baby bonus' for low-and-medium income families.

>>> But now Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin wants to double that amount in a bid to stave off what she describes as a “catastrophic” decline in the country’s birth rate, as well as introduce higher payments for second and subsequent children.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#102

Post by igravious »

airstrike wrote: post #47
paganel wrote: post #21

Unreal, a month ago (February 7th) I was posting this news story [1] related to the city of Shenzen which was about to be put into some form of lockdown, it only received one upvote. A month from that event and we have an entire European country (a G7 member to add) under lockdown. I guess the normalcy bias [2] was too strong for too many people until reality hit us hard in the face. [1] https://www.epochtimes.com/gb…

I had a trip booked to Italy starting on March 20 so have been following the news very closely since at least mid February... I Ask HN'd how people were tracking the virus, and the answers I got were "I'm not tracking it in any way, shape or form and I hope it reciprocates the courtesy." Quite funny, but the stats don't lie[0]. The number of new cases in Italy has grown at an exponential rate. This is a developed eco…

People keep extrapolating that tens of millions will die, and I don't doubt that tens of millions surely would _if_ there were no lock-downs! (The subject of this article!)

The whole point of locking down Wuhan/Hubei and then northern Italy and now the whole country and other places and cancelling large public gatherings and events is that local, regional, and national authorities start seeing the numbers soaring and initiate extreme mitigation strategies.

We don't know how successful these strategies will be individually/collectively in the long run but if China is anything to go by it can severely retard the spread of the virus.

To show I'm not spouting out of my derriere compare the logarithmic infection and death rates of China[1] and Italy[2]

So you have to modify your formula: `7.8 billion * 0.6 * 0.03 * mitigation_factor = ?` We just don't know what the mitigation_factor is yet and because the spread is exponential any dent in the rate of spread brings the fatality number tumbling down[3].

I happen to believe this virus is a very serious global threat and I assure you that I am not one given to alarmism. But I also have never seen governments respond to the onset of an epidemic like this before and I'm nearly fifty and my mother says she can't remember anything like this in her lifetime. So yes, tens of millions absolutely could die but I'm willing to bet that between lock-downs and modern medicine tens of millions won't and I pray to, you know, $deity I am not wrong.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg [Exponential growth and epidemics]

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#103

Post by afiori »

tunesmith wrote: post #43
lollerk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The opposite of normalcy bias is overreaction, or worst-case scenario bias, in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signals of an impending catastrophe. The question is to which one we are closer? That's what I think no one knows. Like how reddit says "2 million will die in the US" and some people say "it's just a flu" the truth maybe between the two half way there or so

It doesn't matter - what matters is the point when hospitals get overwhelmed. Past that points, fatality rate goes up just from lack of treatment. Societies have already proven they can put in sufficient containment practices to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed, so it's a matter if other countries follow similarly effective practices or let themselves get overwhelmed.

I think this in and underdeveloped topic; as I see it this infection even if it is comparable to the flu in mortality require often more intense medical intervention.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#104

Post by inferiorhuman »

Someone1234 wrote: post #57
DrNuke wrote: post #50

Tocilizumab drug in Naples hospital seems promising: «The health of the patient suffering from covid 19, who arrived in critical condition, intubated and treated with the new drug therapy is recovering. Maybe we extubate him because his conditions have improved a lot ». They also say they got confirmation from Chinese colleagues who tested that earlier on 21 cases. The drug is now undergoing trial at Roche. https://w…

I'm incredibly ignorant, can someone explain why a drug used to treat arthritis might work against a Coronavirus? I just don't understand the connection/interaction, or why this was even tried originally? Genuinely looking to learn.

can someone explain why a drug used to treat arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease and not a "oh I'm old and I've worn down all of my cartilage" disease.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#105

Post by fspeech »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #39
fosk wrote: post #9

Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.

The ripple effect of potential Italian bank defaults will ripple throughout the EU and the USA as well.

If the ECB forbears they can in turn forbear with their own customers. That is the only sane thing to do. This is not the banks' doing and they don't need to be disciplined at this particular moment.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#106

Post by joaomacp »

This sounds authoritarian as fuck, you have to sign a document to say why you're outside.

Some countries are following the chinese example of "authoritarian democracy", particularly European countries with big commercial ties to China.

Then you have the reverse side of things: USA, where not even tests are being done in obviously suspect cases. But people can still go to work, buy things, live their life.

There's pros and cons to both approaches, but compared to how H1N1 was handled I definitely see a turn to authoritarianism, at least in Italy.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#107

Post by PeterStuer »

paganel wrote: post #24
fosk wrote: post #9

Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.

I hope (and suspect) that the ECB (and Europe as a whole) will financially stand behind Italy, no questions asked (I'm a fellow European).

You seem to forget that the ECB is there for the banks, not for the people or their countries.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#108

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

paganel wrote: post #91
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that the news and videos she was publishing were real?

Because news organisations like the FT or the BBC published the same news that she had published two or three days before. Granted, she was not the only one publishing them on Twitter, but she was the one I was following the most. Also to add, news organisations like the FT or the BBC were only publishing news that could be taken for a political spin, like in the case of Li Wenliang, they were not publishing news abo…

But you see the obvious concern, right? If news organizations publish some but not all of the same news she's reporting, that could mean that they're selectively skipping news to push a political angle - or it could mean that she's selectively adding fake news for her own political motivations. My inclinations are not to break the tie in favor of the person posting about a mystical connection between coronavirus and the shape of the Wuhan train station.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#109

Post by tonfa »

tiborsaas wrote: post #60
oarabbus_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ripple effect of potential Italian bank defaults will ripple throughout the EU and the USA as well.

The ripple effect is already in place. Flybe airline just defaulted, I've read a post on Linkedin that a small catering firm is suffering in Hungary due to cancelled events and other companies in the food chain will probably suffer a lot more especially if they operate with a razor thin margin. After the human factor, the virus will hit the economy hard. It's probably only a matter of time till it triggers a serious…

Since beginning of March, Switzerland has 2.5k workers on part-time unemployment (a setup to use reduced working time instead of layoffs).

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#110

Post by humaniania »

zjaffee wrote: post #48
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of 14 people dying in a 120-bed nursing home of the seasonal flu in a 3 week time span either, but the Coronavirus is making that happen in Kirkland, WA right now. Actually, about 30 people have died, but since they don't have enough tests, they can't say that it was Coronavirus. My wife is an administrator at a Nursing facility that is much larger, and this many people DYING so quickly is terrifying…

I was able to look at the press release from this nursing home this morning, and the numbers are far worse than this. The number is much higher than that, as there are an additional 12 deaths that haven't been tested for coronavirus yet. 26 have died in the last three weeks as compared to 7 in a typical month. Another 26 are in the hospital, with the rest being quarantined at the home. Over 1/3rd of the staff there i…

Do you have a source for those numbers?
Post reply on HN