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Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

left.it

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Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#131
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're making this statement based only on the cases they know about, then the argument is even stronger if there are more cases.

There are more cases, they are on average much more mild, the real mortality rate is much lower, it is actually not doubling every two days (it is the tests that are doubling every few days). Lots of possible and very consequential conclusions.

Deaths follow a predictable exponent too.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#132

As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the w…

China's initial response was terrible. When they realized what they had on hand and how fast it was developing they did what they could to turn it around.

That said, I would take any numbers coming out of China with a very large grain of salt; Italy looks way worse than China going by the numbers but I'd trust the Italian numbers more.

Also: it is much better to go by deaths and critical cases than it is to go by the number of cases themselves. The deaths and the critical cases are a lot harder to hide.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not anywhere near the point where the panic of this virus is worse than the potential outcome of the virus. If anything there is not ENOUGH strong movement being made.

Yes, we need more panic. Maximum panic please! For a disease that has a 0.5% fatality rate, and the medium death age is over the average life expectancy of one's country. And most scientists believe we can't stop it anyway. Yes, let's burn down the modern world and suspend all civil rights for this.

Yes we should be so flippant about hundreds of thousands of people dead. How dare you ask me to sacrifice going to a restaurant for that?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#134

As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the w…

Drugs are not a solution in the next 2-3 months. There's no way a drug can be tested and ensure safe and scaled up to the tens/hundreds of millions of doses you would need. It's impossible so don't even bother considering it. Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation. There's no other solution we have as a society to slow down the pace of infections. People who normally wouldn't die will die bec…

You are wrong. Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine have already been proven effective.

Do a google search.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#135

My co-founder and I are really struggling with the decisions ahead of us. We feel we should act quickly, and enforce our team to work from home, but the spread in our city is quite low for now. We also wonder how long this can go on, are we going to be isolated for months? We are at a critical point where we have just closed our seed round this past week. We have both put so much energy and time into this moment and…

The spread may appear low in your city, but how much of that is from lack of testing? If your employees can work from home, it is best for you to implement work from home ASAP. Businesses in Washington State have shuttered or gone to work from home over the last 3 weeks, had most businesses made this change earlier(eg: at the beginning of those 3 weeks) we would see much less spread and quicker easing of restrictions…

Alberta has been testing at 1800 / million (7100 tests). For context when the US was at our point they were at 5 / million.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#136

As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the w…

> As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan, and then largely to Wuhan itself and Hubei - they didn't let the population know about the danger, so for quite some time no one was thinking about protecting themselves by wearing m…

> China dropped the ball for a full 10 days back when the disease was nicely contained to a small part of Wuhan...

Uh, China dropped the ball for a full 3 months since the first reports of a novel respiratory disease started back in November. First denying it, then jailing the doctors who tried to raise the alarm. Not to mention not enforcing their own laws regarding food hygiene put in place after SARS which would have prevented the transmission in the first place.

Yeah, they're now showing containment measures that work. But they could have stopped this in its tracks before going global, or prevented it entirely.

Too little, too late.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like China, there was a time when Italy had 1 case, then 2 cases, then 4, etc. Italy was unable to stop the spread before reaching a huge level and spreading to other countries. Why blame China for "allowing this virus to spread all around the world" when Italy allowed the same? (Italy even had a warning that it was coming!)

A bit facetious I know but I don't feel that bat soup or pangolin pie would ever be an element of Italian cuisine

A bat infecting a pig could easily happen in Italy. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#138
post #5

> It’s hard for non-specialists to intuitively grasp the way an exponential rate increase can get out of control. The best way to explain the exponential growth (and shock people) is ask them about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

I like the way a teacher explained it in grade school. She said to imagine we had a choice between two deals. One option is that someone would give us $100 each day for a month. The other is to receive 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second day, 4 cents on the third day, doubling each day until a month has passed.

Of course we all chose $100/day. Then she told us it was too bad we didn't take the other option, because we would have been multi-billionaires.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#139

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...

As a physicist, you are familiar with formulas similar to this: N_obs = p_detect * 2^( n_days / T_double ) N_obs : The number of observed cases p_detect : The fraction of actual cases that are detected (assumed to be constant) n_days : number of days T_double : The number of days it takes for the number of real cases to double If you examine the formula, the p_detect constant is almost insignificant. If T_double = 2,…

That assumes you are sampling uniformly, and not in already saturated clusters. The doubling time is also not a known constant, as it depends on actions taken etc, and uncertainty in it will broaden the distribution.

Obviously, all this is basic statistics and should be known to epiodemiologists, who hopefully have some input to policies.

For large N_obs, this will maybe be less important as you're going to find the severe cases anyway, but the uncertainty is significant in the beginning stages, and it is unfortunately these stages where actions will have most impact.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#140

As an Italian, I raise my eyebrows every time China is mentioned as an example for the successful containment of this virus. It could do that because it could afford to take the economical hit and because it is an authoritarian state, which means you can get almost everyone to obey, in one way or another. Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the w…

> Why on Earth is this a good model? Pretty much all countries have mechanisms for emergency powers. China being authoritarian has nothing to do with it. I'm not familiar with Italy's constitution or laws, but I assume it has similar provisions? > Also, the Chinese Party is what caused this mess to begin with, by allowing this virus to spread all around the world. Huh? On the one hand you're arguing China was too dra…

Not sure why this is greyed out. I might not agree with all of it, but you're not out of line.
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