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Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

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Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#31

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

sonicxxg wrote: post #17
moultano wrote: post #3

I sent this email to my team last night. Feel free to steal it for your own workplaces. We should consider working from home. You may all have seen the news by now. A patient was just diagnosed with COVID-19 at UC Davis after having no known contact with anyone travelling. Importantly, they were diagnosed after being intubated already for 7 days. It is suspected that this is the first known case of public transmissio…

I wonder why people/news seem so obsessed about the death rate itself, while ignoring the incidence of permanent organ tissue damage caused in survivors, as some papers already indicate. I'm assuming this has to be studied further.

Do you have any links for this? Otherwise you’re injecting a lot of scary, unsubstantiated info here, implying the survivors are gonna envy the dead.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#33

Post by claudeganon »

OJFord wrote: post #29
claudeganon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're actually worse off (ranked 36th vs. US' 32nd) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp... Here are the full stats: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=30183

I think you're agreeing with GP? Who's saying that the US has more spare capacity than Canada. But also, #beds per capita isn't the same as spare capacity.

They edited their comment. It was a more general question of comparable rates before.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#34

Post by Spooky23 »

bart_spoon wrote: post #9

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

Facebook gets the extra evil points because they make money, but Twitter is much more effective in getting bullshit propagated to the world.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#35

Post by oefrha »

wolfram74 wrote: post #30
oefrha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.brynntannehill.com/about/ I fail to see any health background.

Yeah, but she does have operations research experience with the air force and campaign analysis experience with the navy, and she's not making any biology claims that aren't reasonably supported by the literature, she's drawing conclusions about secondary effects which seems more in her wheel house. Also, she has a BS in computer science, which often seems to qualify anybody in the HN comment sections to be an author…

I’m apparently not saying she’s not entitled to have an opinion and voice it. However, whether she should be taken seriously is a different matter. I certainly don’t take most HN comments on health (or anything) seriously.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#36

Post by ethbro »

piker wrote: post #21
ailideex wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thunder God Mountain may not have been possible in the US What would you say would be the biggest impediment here? I would think actually that just government regulation in and of itself would prevent any private company from achieving this feat. And even Federal and State governments are similarly encumbered by regulation.

It seems like the US government isn't structured to deploy such resources so quickly (e.g., FEMA's responses to Katrina, Sandy, etc.) and regulation would seem to kill private efforts. Maybe a state or local government could pull it off with accommodation from federal regulators.

In the US, private industry is broadly empowered to say "No" or "I'll see you in court" to government demands, to a larger degree than many other countries.

The side effect of empowering private industry is that organizations like FEMA and the CDC can't force much, and typically advise or request.

Which doesn't get things done nearly as efficiently when it's a situation where proposed actions are detrimental to one corporation, even if good for the nation.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#37

Post by lvh »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #27
bart_spoon wrote: post #9

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

Literally no part seems like fear mongering. It even goes out of its way to say this is a risk assessment and the author is not asserting these things _will_ happen. Seems like perfectly fair lay person analysis to me. It would be somewhat of an argument from authority fallacy to dismiss based only on no health background.

“I’m not saying this will happen but it could” is a pretty standard fear-mongering hedge.

(I don’t want to call what they’re doing fear mongering either because that suggests bad intent. I don’t think their intentions are bad. I just think we’re paying a lot of attention to a Twitter thread because it’s on top of Hacker News, not because of its own merits as a well-reasoned argument.)

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#38

Post by senordevnyc »

moultano wrote: post #3

I sent this email to my team last night. Feel free to steal it for your own workplaces. We should consider working from home. You may all have seen the news by now. A patient was just diagnosed with COVID-19 at UC Davis after having no known contact with anyone travelling. Importantly, they were diagnosed after being intubated already for 7 days. It is suspected that this is the first known case of public transmissio…

I would keep your expectations low. I’m in NYC working at a public tech company that is explicitly making a big push to become more distributed and remote-friendly and there’s been not a whisper about people switching to work from home. Everyone seems desperate to totally ignore this crisis until it’s on their doorstep. Which will probably be in the next few weeks when we actually start testing and cases explode.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#39

Post by kelchm »

bart_spoon wrote: post #9

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

It is fear mongering. The CDC attributed 61,000 deaths in the US to the flu in the 2017/2018 season alone.

Re: Some unique aspects in US which make risks of COVID19 higher than Europe

#40

Post by ericlewis »

simonh wrote: post #26
ericlewis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The powers that be have access to healthcare the masses could only see in a glint of their eye.

There are no magic wands against this thing, at any price. It's too new.

No magic wands, but superior health care to stave off the symptoms presented. True it won’t be 100% effective, but more effective than the masses.
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