Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics • Hacker News Board

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#271

Post by netsharc » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #198

marcinzm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember 9/11, saw the second plane hit with my own eyes. Other than airports and flying being more inconvenient nothing fundamental really changed as I saw it. People still traveled, people still flew and so on. Now you just budget an extra hour before a flight.

Geopolitics has seen massive impact since then. For example, the rise of ISIS is a direct descendant of the Iraq war which is a direct consequence of corrupt and criminal decision making by the Bush/Cheney admin in response to 9/11. Debatable if the Arab Spring would have occurred without it, as the Middle East might have been much more stable.

Hear hear. And war refugees entering Europe is causing right-wing populism to rise (not that years of stupid austerity polcies was helping).

Would Brexit have happened without 9/11?

There's an ancient TIME article I have in my archives highlighting how the Dubya admin ignored Clinton's intelligence team's attempts to hand over info about the threat of a terrorist attack in the US. Would 9/11 have been prevented if Gore had won 2000? God damn hanging chads and rigged elections...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#272

Post by jotm » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #172

js2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore is probably doing as best as any country could hope to. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/12/8145224... Also, as an American, I'm embarrassed by my country's response and by how my president addresses the nation. PM Lee shows how you talk to your country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mYs1Uyx3c8 His original address five weeks prior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dExr76Wckr8

Singapore has been competent, but Taiwan's response has been more impressive. It's very close to the hot zone, millions of people travel to and from mainland China every year, it has roughly the population of Australia living on 10% of the land Japan has, the WHO refuses any cooperation, and yet there have been under 50 cases and no local transmission. Not only that, but as a democratic state, Taiwan's control measur…

Meanwhile, around here people break advised self quarantine because "fork off, I'm fine".

No trust in government and a general attitude of "it's just a flu, and I got things to do"...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#273

Post by zanny » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #262

marcinzm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember 9/11, saw the second plane hit with my own eyes. Other than airports and flying being more inconvenient nothing fundamental really changed as I saw it. People still traveled, people still flew and so on. Now you just budget an extra hour before a flight.

Pretty much the US just introduced the security measures other countries had had for years before.

The TSA has been proven many times over to be totally ineffectual security theater - theres this popular report from a few years back that the TSA has a 95% failure rate when their measures are tested[1].

It doesn't go anywhere because there is now a lot of private industry in it for contract money to supply the spectacle whom have the lobbying power to keep it in place, but it is a total waste of money and gross violation of privacy for no positive benefit to society.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tsa-fails-95-percent-tests-ho...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#274

Post by netsharc » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #243

landryraccoon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I remember 9/11, and this feels worse. The world won’t be the same for a decade. Are you too young to remember when you could just walk straight onto a plane without being searched? Those days never came back.

America is still not the same. I'm not talking about airport security, although that's a minor, minor difference. I'm talking about the government, the society, the culture. The terrorists won on 9/11 and they've been winning every day since. America is not a free country, if it ever was. The surveillance state has been ramped up. The police state has been ramped up. Wars have been ramped up. We started a war with a…

The American ideal was land of the free and brave, and the writing at the Statue of Liberty welcomed poor refugees. But now Stephen Miller sits in the White House and is whispering Nazi ideas into a senile infant's ear.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#275

Post by jotm » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

rconti wrote: post #118

jancsika wrote: post #111

Especially relevant to HN: > This includes enforcing a law that grants the government wide authority to access data: CCTV footage, GPS tracking data from phones and cars, credit card transactions, immigration entry information, and other personal details of people confirmed to have an infectious disease. The authorities can then make some of this public, so anyone who may have been exposed can get themselves - or the…

I wish we developed this kind of capability so that we could opt-in. Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot better than nothing if 50% of the population chose to download the app, allow it to access our location and allow us to input symptoms and status, receive recommendations, then when this is all over, delete it?

Except that last part won't happen.

Like the PATRIOT act, it just keeps being extended.

"For the greater good"

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#276

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

scholia wrote: post #208

Aeolun wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a fever, and enough money, I’d happily pay $140 for the peace of mind that comes with that test.

Agreed, but unless you can self-isolate, it's not going to last very long. If you got tested weekly, the costs would soon mount up.....

I'd hope to not have a fever weekly.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#277

Post by jotm » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

wott wrote: post #65

enitihas wrote: post #5

Just curious, does anybody know how did Japan manage to do so well, inspite of a very old population. Also what does HN think is the better place to be right now? A mega city or a small village?

Single point of data: All the years I lived in cities and did what an average urban dweller does: packed in an office, packed in public transportation or even packed on the pavement, packed in shops, packed in bars, packed in elevators, packed on the terraces or in a concert hall; I was getting a flu (or something very similar putting me in bed for 3 days) at least twice a year, sometimes thrice. In the last 7 years,…

Same, but with the cold. The cold affects me severely, I remember the last time I had the flu over a decade ago, I really don't want to experience that again heh.

Living in a big city you're just exposed to more people, you're just more likely to catch something

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#278

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

beachy wrote: post #248

techslave wrote: post #235

Is there a site that comments on general news, has an educated audience and debunks spurious or dubious claims? I’d like to read my news through such portal. GN or WN (General, World) vs HN

The reason HN works (well one reason) is vigorous moderation and a stamping out of any mode of discourse apart from collegial intellectual discussion. As a result, we don't see memes or most of the other cheap humour you will find on e.g Reddit. It also seems to lead inevitably to people whining about downvotes, and to people whining about people whining about downvotes. HN is basically ideal for analytical, logic bo…

HN sometimes has good political discussions - not as often as one would hope, but more often than (I suspect) just about anywhere else.

The rest of the time, yes, the political discussion turns into a steaming garbage pile, and deng has to kill it.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#279

Post by WildGreenLeave » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #263

m_mueller wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is another factor as well: have a look at train stations during rush hour on East Asia currently vs. Europe. 1) the density is significantly higher but 2) nearly everyone is wearing surgical masks now. I think that mask wearing is an effective measure to slow down the spread, acting at the sender side rather than the receiver (which Western people tend to focus on). You can see a similarly lower exponen…

Part of the problem is that pretty much everybody in East Asia already owned at least one mask. In Europe pretty much nobody owned a mask prior to COVID-19. And masks have been sold out for weeks. If masks were easily available you'd see people wearing them I'm sure.

At least in The Netherlands there are still plenty of masks to be found. You won't find the surgical masks anymore but masks for construction work is still plenty available.

I think most europeans look down on wearing masks as something stupid, most europeans also think hand sanitizer is stupid. (This just applies to my dutch family and friends over there, I am currently in Thailand and always wearing a mask and hand sanitizer)

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#280

Post by kijin » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

T-A wrote: post #114

krzyk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infection in Italy started in hospital or in retirement home (I don't remember which), so the first infected were people > 70. In South Korea it started in a cult, where most people were young And the rest was South Korean lack of regard for privacy (they have a map for each case where you can trace where and when a given infected person was - so you can check if you were near him/her) and technological superiori…

> The infection in Italy started in hospital or in retirement home (I don't remember which), so the first infected were people > 70. Italy's patient #1 is 38 (see the article). Patient #0 has not been identified. > In South Korea it started in a cult, where most people were young That would be the Shincheonji Church of Jesus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shincheonji_Church_of_Jesus#As... I don't know what their age…

About 80% of South Korean cases were less than 60 years old, with a peak in the 20s [1]. It is widely rumored that Shincheonji prefers to recruit young people who are easier to exploit.

[1] https://coronaboard.kr/#age-card