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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

#291

Post by RivieraKid »

beatgammit wrote: post #271
js2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, there would be rioting pretty much immediately if anyone tried that here, and I'm sure the same would happen elsewhere. I'm personally a fan of controlled, opt-in infections to help speed up research for a vaccine along with moderate quarantine (cancel many public events, encourage self quarantine). It may not be as effective, but it's much less likely to end in riots.

The alternative may be an explosion of cases and a complete collapse of the health care system. Because there is a good chance that mild social distancing measures are simply not enough.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#292

Post by hatenberg »

delegate wrote: post #46

I've seen comments here trying to play down the message or discredit the signatories of this letter. Don't. Please take it seriously. This is not sensationalism. What the letter means is that if your country is not there yet, you might be DAYS away from widespread panic and total lock down. I'm writing this from Barcelona, Spain. This last Sunday, 6 days ago, I went on a walk with my girlfriend, had a nice lunch, too…

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February.

We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored.

Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it.

Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and soccer games with 10.000-100.000 people a week ago because people did not want to make the hard choices needed even as Korea was burning and Italy started to.

Excuses that China is authoritarian do not cut it - this was a huge fail of governance and doing what people are elected to do

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#293

Post by zozbot234 »

fattire wrote: post #276
on_and_off wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear that the situation is already at that state in the USA. There are 1600 confirmed cases but the lack of tests hides how many real infections there are.

Leaving aside the fact that here in the US tests are literally not happening on an epic scale that will be the subject of numerous investigations, hearings (, and prosecutions?) in the years to come. And forget that even if we had legit numbers, those numbers we can see are a tip of the iceberg, representing at most 20% of the actual more-serious cases. Put that all aside. Remember-- the numbers we see now are a look…

> Don't forget-- the numbers we see now are a look at the PAST. The infection incubates silently for a median 5 days. Then symptoms present. Then a week goes by with relatively mild illness. THEN shit gets real.

And the "shit gets real" part only occurs 20% of the time, give or take - which means the virus might spread quite a bit while showing symptoms no more severe than a common cold. That also introduces some further unpredictable lag between any social distancing behaviors being introduced and their effects on the actual numbers.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#294

Post by bluGill »

tomp wrote: post #252
ISL wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFH. Do it now. Individual actions have outsized impact in the face of exponential growth. The problem is twice as hard every time the number of cases doubles. If you don't want to work from home for many months, start working from home now. Working from home isn't as bad as it seems. Modern collaboration tools are great. Our research group and wider laboratory have gotten into the swing of things within a week.

> Individual actions have outsized impact in the face of exponential growth. Are you sure? I think it's the other way around. Nothing I can do (apart from staying completely indoors, which I can't because I don't have enough supplies (food, etc.) to last for months) can prevent me from being infected (eventually). Luckily I'm in the low-risk group (young); I advised my parents the latter (hopefully they're following…

The combined actions of individuals counts. You alone don't mean much (but if you happen to be the one who needs ICU care it matters to you), but when you and a million others avoid going out for anything other than groceries (washing hands well after that trip) there are many less opportunities for this to spread.

Obviously there are a lot of people required to get groceries to you, but if you are not in medicine or groceries stay home. That is a large supply chain but sti tiny and even those people are not going to other functions which reduces risk

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#295

Post by jbverschoor »

adrianmonk wrote: post #138
jakub_g wrote: 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, beca…

21m. Not billion yet

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#296

Post by hatenberg »

warent wrote: post #270
joe_the_user wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame on her People should stay where they are. Lockdown is not a disaster. People fleeing lockdown are literally the carriers of this disaster. Stay where you are, wait. Don't travel. Don't fight the locdown. Lockdown is the current, appropriate course of action. A very effective lockdown can eliminate the infection in, well, however long it took to eliminate it in Wuhan. Fleeing the lockdown now is just going to an…

I didn't see them say anything about "fleeing a lockdown." She was fleeing a potentially life-threatening virus in a scary situation in order to be with her family. That isn't so hard to grok, and obviously she felt she was making the right decision. Shaming someone for looking for security and safety in a scary situation (i.e. for being human) is just absurd.

We elect governments to protect us from our own fight-or-flight response which is not a good thing in modern society

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#297

Post by xnyan »

solotronics wrote: post #267
jerf wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like China, "the USA" is very large and probably not something that can be treated as an atomic entity. Even much-smaller Italy is probably too large for that. While there may be hot spots that develop in the US, I can tell you from personal experience that there states that have taken strong measures when there are still single-digit numbers of infected in them. The state I'm in is not in a mandatory full lockdown p…

I live in Dallas and two of my friends who work at hospitals both have multiple corona patients. It's everywhere, the official numbers are lying.

I wish people were lying, that implies that officials know the reality and are hiding it. That is too optimistic I’m afraid.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#298

Post by malandrew »

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.

Maybe not. You want a society to develop herd immunity for a flu-like disease during warmer weather months. Since they failed to contain it, the disease is just going to show up in China again but this time from sick people traveling to China. The worst case scenario is lockdown during warmer months and then having it flare up again in winter months.

That said, we could just apply medical quarantine procedures used for animals to humans. Get a lab test 48 hours prior to international travel and have an additional test performed upon landing at the destination. The first test minimizes the likelihood of someone with viral shedding traveling and the lab test upon landing let’s you get the person and isolate them immediately before they’ve shed virally.

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#299

Post by bluGill »

StudentStuff wrote: post #40
cknoxrun wrote: post #10

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…

Hospital ICU units are not overwhelmed which puts a limit to total infections. (unless this is now less deadly I guess, an unlike win though)

Re: Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

#300

Post by twistedpairs »

adrianmonk wrote: post #138
jakub_g wrote: 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, beca…

Using max possible days in month gives ~21 million js:

  [...Array(31).keys()]

  .map(num => Math.pow(2,num))

  .reduce((total,num) => total + num)

  / 100
$21,474,836.47

or since the sum is equal to the next sequential (2 to power of n+1) minus 1 cent => 2^31 - 1 = $21,474,836.47

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