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Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

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Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#231

Post by empath75 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #110
patagonicus wrote: post #7

As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: What should I personally do to prepare? I'm living alone and have the ability to work remotely once the virus starts spreading here. My guess is mostly stocking up on food, which I've planned to do for a long time - sounds like a good motivation to finally prepare a list and get shopping. Should I bother with a N95 mask? I already have surgical ma…

Do not tell people to stock up on food. There is no need and this is how you create runs on supermarkets and panic. If the situation becomes severe enough for this to become a problem, this will be organised by authorities. Keep calm, follow basic hygiene, and be ready to work from home at short notice. Maybe don't travel unless you have to. This is not the end of the world and the risk is low. Change course only if…

Waiting until the last minute to stock up on food is what’s going to cause a panic. You should be stocking up now while people _aren’t_ panicking.

Once a few towns in the us go on lockdown, people are going to go en masse to stock up. You want to get ahead so you _aren’t_ contributing to that.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#232

Post by mytailorisrich »

justin66 wrote: post #211
mytailorisrich wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that China has managed to keep things organised in Wuhan and throughout the country but American commenters on HN seem to expect that in their country it would be Mad Max.

Was this response intended for a different comment? Regardless, I don't get the feeling you're overly familiar with what's going on in China or in this comment thread...

I am very familiar with what is going on in China. It isn't Mad Max and people aren't starving.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#233

Post by empath75 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #81
coconut_crab wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why most people should panic more than they do about flu season. This is my thoughts why Covid-19 is much more dangerous than seasonal flu: first it is much more virulent, and hard to detect, many of the infections in Korea were due to one 61 years old woman alone. Secondly the mortality rate is higher too, estimated at 2-3%, with the serious ca…

The mortality rate for hospitalized flu patients in the US is about 10%. Mortality rates of categories like "serious cases" depend on a bunch of arbitrary and unverifiable assumptions, so I don't think this proves the coronavirus is bad or isn't bad, but 10% isn't as high of a number as I think you're intuitively expecting.

The mortality rate for hospitalized corona virus patients is closer to 50%

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#234

Post by mytailorisrich »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #218
mytailorisrich wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not tell people to stock up on food. There is no need and this is how you create runs on supermarkets and panic. If the situation becomes severe enough for this to become a problem, this will be organised by authorities. Keep calm, follow basic hygiene, and be ready to work from home at short notice. Maybe don't travel unless you have to. This is not the end of the world and the risk is low. Change course only if…

The US gov (see: https://www.ready.gov/pandemic and https://cchealth.org/pandemic-flu/pdf/individuals_and_famili... ) frequently tell you to stockpile some amount. The point of this stockpile isn't to deal with total long-term breakdown. They're not telling you to get 2 weeks supply because they think there will be no food available for 2 weeks. They're telling you to build up a supply to help ease the very supply di…

We are always "before a pandemic"... so is the advice to always have 2 weeks of food and water stocked? Only in the USA...

Here in the UK the advice is "keep calm and carry on, and wash your hands".

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#235

Post by jacquesm »

maxerickson wrote: post #195
jacquesm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as?

Lots of examples in the news... Or do you somehow think there is currently no response?

The response so far seems to have concentrated on containment. That has - you could argue this - failed. The next logical step is to declare a pandemic, according to the CDC there are now cases in 32 countries with confirmed community spreading in about half of those.

Note that a pandemic is only related to the geographical spreading in combination with the risk factors (highly contagious, relatively high mortality rate).

Anyway, this thread will be obsolete before the week is out, I would be highly surprised if WHO/CDC will not do this in the next couple of days. The only way they can avoid doing it is if the number of cases and the number of countries affected will go down.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#236

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jacquesm wrote: post #215
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A flu pandemic, in official terminology, is a different and more severe thing than the seasonal flu. The government regularly plans for such outbreaks and isn't afraid to spend a billion dollars when needed; for example, about 5 years ago they preemptively struck against bird flu by obliterating poultry farms at government expense. (And that one didn't even affect humans!) I don't think you're getting your numbers fr…

Sorry, dropped a '0' there. My bad. Edited. Also, 'pandemic' is just about the geographic spread, not about the mortality or the rate of infection.

Normally, yes, but the seasonal flu is excluded from the definition so we don't have to say that there's an annual recurring pandemic. When agencies talk about flu pandemic preparations, they're referring to an outbreak so severe that it no longer counts as just the seasonal flu.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#237

Post by jacquesm »

iooi wrote: post #208
jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Travel stocks and travel related stocks down, health related stocks up would be my first guess.

Not health insurance though, they could be in for massive liabilities should a lot of people start contracting.

Correct, I was thinking of Pharmaceuticals, should have been more precise.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#238

Post by carbocation »

dom96 wrote: post #168
carbocation wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a real need to understand how much of a vector our phone screens are. People touch their phones, wash their hands, and then touch their phones again.

There is also a need to look at it the other way around, what problems are we causing by being overly obsessed with disinfecting everything?

Are you conflating the overuse of antibacterial soaps (risky, likely harmful), with cleaning surfaces that people touch (helpful, mandated in hospitals)?

I'm not talking about keeping children inside instead of letting them play in the dirt. I'm talking about people accidentally exposing themselves to a thin fecal veneer on their phones because of usage patterns.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#239

Post by jacquesm »

zuckluni wrote: post #179
scythe wrote: post #172

The biggest question to me is: do you really believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense? Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.

it is weird. but anecdotally it seems like tropical climes less hard hit. India? low numbers could just be measuring detection ability instead of actual rates.

There is an aspect with these viruses that is temperature sensitive that makes them favor colder regions.

Re: Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now

#240

Post by jacquesm »

dredmorbius wrote: post #136
bpfrh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closing borders isn't easy. Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.

The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R inevitably , the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neit…

Excellent comment and too bad it is this far down the thread.
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