Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools • Hacker News Board

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#141

Post by contravariant » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #133

contravariant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the number of cases is slightly less important than the rate. Denmark's numbers are increasing at a rate that's unprecedented amongst all current COVID-19 outbreaks (amongst the data that is available). The past 2 days the numbers in Denmark have tripled twice (and are on track to triple another time today). You could expect Denmarks numbers to overtake Norway's before the end of today or whenever the n…

Denmark's # of confirmed cases was up 627% from yesterday. For anyone interested in watching this unfold, I highly recommend the daily posts by /u/Fwoggie2 on /r/supplychain. Every day he posts a status update on the growth of cases per country and supply chain impacts for goods across the globe. Here's the link to today's report. https://new.reddit.com/r/supplychain/comments/fgwbrx/covid19...

It's worth pointing out that he seems to have missed the update on 2020-03-09 where the total was set to 90. But yeah it's pretty worrying. Especially since it almost doubled again today.

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#142

Post by kgwgk » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

phillipseamore wrote: post #139

kgwgk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 intensive care beds may prove insufficient if there is widespread infection. Not only the elderly need intensive care: in Italy 40% of the patients in intensive care are below 60.

It's expected that about 550-600 people would have to be sick (not just infected) before their 29 ICU bed's are at capacity.

Infected people are more likely to be symptomatic than not, as far as we know (for example from the Diamond Princess).

Even if it was only 10%, should I find reassuring that 6000 people (less than 2% of the population) would have to get infected for the collapse of the healthcare infrastructure to start?

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#143

Post by nikolay » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

simplyinfinity wrote: post #40

nikolay wrote: post #11

Smart move! Ignoring the best practice of preventing loss of life during pandemics will be a costly mistake!

According to cdc expert, kids up to 19 mostly don't get sick, or if they do, it's not as bad as in adults over 40 https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw

We know so little now that it's better to be safe than sorry! We're talking about millions of lives!

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#144

Post by nikolay » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #26

All of these shutdowns, especially the large ones recently announced, raise the question: how long? How long do we continue and what criteria will be used to begin opening things back up? How long before other parts of the economy begin to fail?

My point as well. Things are not gonna be any better 2-4 weeks from now.

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#145

Post by jopsen » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

jmartinpetersen wrote: post #123

jopsen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably more Danes to skiing in northern Italy. And who knows maybe the authorities have done a good job tracking down infected people -- implying that the number of unknown cases is small.

The reason for these actions are that they can no longer track the infections.

Well, they said that they would continue, but that they don't expect to be able to track everything.

In fact from what I understand that have been able to track most cases.

Honestly, I'm guessing this is the case because they tracked the cases from original sources and then kept following them.

Being good at tracing could also explain why the number jumped so much. Tripling in 3 days, maybe it's easy to find cases if you trace contact :D

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#146

Post by acqq » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

0xfaded wrote: post #125

unexpected wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree here. Denmark is acting proactively and shutting down schools for 2 weeks. This is a "rip the band aid off early" type of move. By shutting down everything for 2 weeks, they effectively self-quarantine during the entire incubation period and will dramatically slow the rate of the virus. China, on the other hand, did not do this, and they were forced to shut down schools for 6 months. These moves are HARD a…

I live in Denmark and have been following this way too closely. I think we will be Italy within the next two weeks. Until today people have been completely unconcerned. But in the last three days the number of detected cases has jumped from 37 to 92 to 264 to 516. Nobody was taking this seriously until today, and there's just no way this hasn't already spread across the country undetected.

The number of "detected" cases is influenced by the testing capability of those performing the tests. In a few days the real average "growth" rate will be clearer, but until the effects of some strong enough measures start to affect the numbers nobody can expect anything much better than what we see in Italy -- the curves across the Europe have "similar" growth:

https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760

or

https://twitter.com/illandancient/status/1237857213621907456

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#147

Post by 0xfaded » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #146

0xfaded wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Denmark and have been following this way too closely. I think we will be Italy within the next two weeks. Until today people have been completely unconcerned. But in the last three days the number of detected cases has jumped from 37 to 92 to 264 to 516. Nobody was taking this seriously until today, and there's just no way this hasn't already spread across the country undetected.

The number of "detected" cases is influenced by the testing capability of those performing the tests. In a few days the real average "growth" rate will be clearer, but until the effects of some strong enough measures start to affect the numbers nobody can expect anything much better than what we see in Italy -- the curves across the Europe have "similar" growth: https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/123778116215371…

Sorry for not being clear. The point I'm making is exactly that people have been complacent due to the low numbers, primarily sure to inadequate testing.

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#148

Post by dcolkitt » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #122

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is that interest rates in Denmark is currently negative. That means that the government, and even large credit-worthy corporates, can borrow and actually get paid to do so. That makes weathering a storm like this relatively easy from an economics standpoint. It's easy to delay revenue and cover fixed costs without incurring any significant financing costs.

That seems to be a cheerful economics standpoint that treats accounting as having primacy over physical supply of goods. It is good if they have a neat legal mechanism to stop companies going bankrupt but the economy is going to tank if everyone stays home and does nothing (or less than normal; in some roles that can work from home). Any economy that doesn't report that it is tanking is an economy built of lies and c…

I disagree. The interest rate is not entirely divorced from tangible reality. Rather it's the emergent manifestation of the aggregate behavior and preferences of investors, savers, and foreign traders across the entire economy.

A low interest rate is the direct result of indifference to inter-temporal substitution. It indicates that households are willing to shift consumption from the present to the future, that firms can readily defer capital investments, and that foreign producers are willing to cover temporary shortfalls in domestic production because they have high faith in the currency and financial system.

All of those things are physical manifestations of how and why it would be easy for Denmark to weather a temporary supply shock. 3-6 months of reduced economic output can easily be handled by relatively painless deferrals in demand. Danish consumers will shift back vacations, home upgrades and new cars until later in the year. Danish businesses have very well maintained capital equipment, and can stretch maintenance and upgrade cycles. Chinese and Russian exporters have very high faith in the Danish Krona, and will sell goods today for the promise of Danish goods in the distant future.

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#149

Post by usrusr » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #69

pierreminik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw the Joe Rogan clip[1] and I agree that Michael Osterholm's analysis of this seems correct when it comes to the United States. Denmark however has a completely different structure socially. All private sector employees who can work from home are urged to work from home. All public sector employees who are not working in any matter-of-life-and-death function are forced to stay at home. The public sector employees…

Wait, how would this prevent health care workers with children from needing to be home? Who is going to be watching those kids while the parents are working at a hospital?

How about keeping the daycares open for the children of those in healthcare and only for them? Still a big spread reduction, zero healthcare side-effects. It would be very difficult to enforce because so many others would think that they deserve an exception as well...

Re: Denmarks shuts down all schools, daycare facilities, universities, highschools

#150

Post by slurms » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #22

JPKab wrote: post #12

Something that I heard from an epidemiologist the other day is how shutting down schools and daycares can be incredibly counterproductive, because such a high percentage of health care workers have children which suddenly are at home and need to be supervised, pulling these workers out of their duties. I suppose its ok early on, but seems problematic if enough people eventually get infected. Understood that schools a…

Probably best to shut them down too early or not at all. Grandparents tend to be relied upon as babysitters in time of need, so if you wait until transmission among school children is widespread your actions just delivered the virus to some of the most vulnerable populations.

My parents are elderly and my partner's parents live 150 miles away, and both work; We have no family that is able or willing to watch our child so we pay for care (and it's hugely expensive, over $2500/mo for center based care)

My partner works as an RN, and I'm in software development. I've always taken the days off when our child is ill, it's logistically simpler, but I make 2X the salary so we have always said my job is the priority if we lose child care long term.

If our daycare closes for a long period that means my partner needs to stop going to work and there's one less RN at that hospital.

To make things worse, our daycare has already stated that the current "24 hours fever free" policy of your child returning is now "14 days fever free, or a physician's note indicating it's safe to return" -- and you must keep paying while they are out, that's the existing policy when it's a day or so and apparently will continue even when it's two+ weeks... no relief expected.

If daycares are forced to shutdown, but still require payment from parents, that will be absolutely egregious and infuriating.