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Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

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Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#241

Post by [deleted] »

c789a123 wrote: post #227
zozbot234 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree with the above comments that China is not a model to follow at all but the true sole responder for today's situation. From the number of people and the wide range of field and institutions signing this letter, I suspect a very strong CCP secret united action behind it to paint a good picture for CCP reputation. The most probably org that manipulated this letter is the so called "Chinese Students and Scholar O…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#242

Post by caseysoftware »

fma wrote: post #218
zozbot234 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The very end of December" was 20+ days prior to the Wuhan lockdown, which was was essentially the only instance where China officially acknowledged the disease - before then, the local government was having police caution their doctors and scientists not to talk or "spread untrue rumors" about it. In the meantime, people in Wuhan and elsewhere were just hanging out as usual with no social distancing behaviors whatso…

I can give China the benefit of the doubt that not everything was known. Or even blame them for suppressing info. But we (the world, US) knew the severity 2 months ago and Trump was still trying to downplay it. Fox News is still downplaying it. They called a "Democratic Hoax". I live in a conservative area and residents are cursing out local leaders for canceling events, canceling school...

I live in Austin where people are still lamenting SXSW being canceled and the Democrat Mayor was still encouraging people to go out to concerts after he canceled SXSW.

And the tech press mocked "no handshakes" until less than a month ago.

Stupid knows no political party.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#243

Post by js2 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #229

Please also read this, I believe it's the right approach: https://medium.com/@jb_89278/the-11-day-plan-to-contain-covi... The guy is tech enterpreneur and VC investor who has been advising our (Czech) PM.

It would be impossible to do this in the U.S. I'm not sure he appreciates the size of the U.S., the resistance among many Americans who don't like being told what to do, the denial by Fox et al, the distributed nature of our government and on and on. I can't even imagine it working in my county.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#244

Post by tantalor »

rosybox wrote: post #236

It's unlikely that other countries can do what China has done. As an example, China is able to do 200 CT scans a day at each fever station throughout the affected regions. In the US we can maybe do what 10 CT scans a day with a single machine? In China they were able to figure out within a short duration if someone needed to be quarantined. They built hospitals in days. It's not just about locking down. China has peo…

Do CT scans even help?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#245

Post by stjohnswarts »

jennyyang wrote: post #110
lbeltrame wrote: post #36

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…

They can fast track drugs if that drug has been tested for other things. It happens all the time. I mean like all the time doctors do it for other cases, there's not reason it couldn't happen for cov19

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#246

Post by c789a123 »

adinobro wrote: post #178
garmaine wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

New viruses come out all the time. This viruses wasn't isolated as different till the end of December. The Doctor wasn't jailed ... The virus was spread at the market. It didn't start at the market. Until we know where it started we don't know if it would have stopped the virus or not.

The doctors were not jailed, because luckily CCP need them to work to fight the virus. Some of them died for it already, mostly due to the hard work, insufficient protection CCP provided to the doctors, and in one case at least, intentionally punish the doc by delay his treatment.

Talking about the origin of this virus, this paper of 2015 is quite interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 . In this paper, the wuhan P4 institute people basically described how they produced a prototype of the 2019 wuhan virus.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#247

Post by jacquesm »

nate_meurer wrote: post #225
jacquesm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, not even close. Those wet markets are a fucking nightmare. There are truly optimized for pulling new diseases into the human population. Thousands of animals, hundreds of different species, many known to be reservoirs of potential human pathogens, crammed together in close proximity with each other and with humans who eat them. In his interview with Joe Rogan, Michael Osterholm called it "the perfect experiment t…

You are missing the point of my comment. A bat infecting a pig or some other two step is a pre-cursor to many Zoonotic events. Those wet markets are indeed a huge accelerator. But the pre-conditions exist in many places and all it takes is one butcher that isn't paying attention and you've got the ball rolling.

Africa and Asia have a lot of this and so are a recurring theme in these very unfortunate stories. But it could happen here, and viruses really don't care about location.

Wet markets and bushmeat is how we got SARS and HIV. We're not sure if COVID-19 was really transferred that way, maybe we'll never know. The Swine flu also jumped species in a regular farm. So there are lots of opportunities all over the world, some more dangerous than others.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#248

Post by terramex »

wnkrshm wrote: post #68
bsaul wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wish more countries did randomized testing over its whole population, or extensive testing, like SK.

Exactly. I don't see how trying to limit testing to people who had contact with known cases or traveled to at risk countries (as practiced in Germany) can be successful.

Are you sure that Germany does not perform extensive testing? I admit that reddit comments should not be used as sources but I would love to know more about German approach to testing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fguheu/why_have...

Earl_of_Northesk: The RKI is conducting random sample testing to keep track of Influenza in Germany. These tests now also test on COVID-19. So far, not a single prior undetected case of COVID-19 has shown up in these samples. It is thus highly likely that the extensive early tracking and testing means that Germany has, in comparison to other countries, a very low rate of undetected cases, which would obviously lead to a lower mortality rate. That's what the President of the RKI also said in todays press conference together with Angela Merkel.

Painy_: How big is the RKIs sample size tho?

patientzero_: All cases that had the flu and went to the hospital. So the more severe once. But they also re-ran the tests from the beginning of the year to test for Covid-19. If you can't detect it in there it wasn't in the country most likely

Sounds like a massive amount of testing that no other country can match.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#249

Post by tomp »

bsaul wrote: post #35
davidw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is 'confident' about a lot of things. But everyone who has seen what is happening in Italy is confident that taking a 'wait and see' attitude will cost lives.

i wish more countries did randomized testing over its whole population, or extensive testing, like SK.

Why even test? The decision procedure is the same: treat the ill, lock down everyone else at home, avoiding social contact at the max; enforce social isolation and/or masks in "critical" spaces (power plants, grocery stores, ...). What does a positive or negative test change?

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#250

Post by greedo »

incompatible wrote: post #90
lbeltrame wrote: post #36

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 could afford to take the economical hit" The faster and better that you deal with it, the smaller the economic hit is going to be. China is going to be the big winner here.

Although China has a large internal market, they still rely on exports. If those are curtailed due to slackening demand, quarantine and tariffs, how do they become the "big winner?"
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