Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

virologydownunder.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 394 posts

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

#331

Post by s1artibartfast »

arkades wrote: post #64
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

The premise of this article is that we should essentially press the “panic button” now, to get people through the shock of preparing for a pandemic while we know it’s safe to do so. > Suggesting things people can do to prepare for a possible hard time to come doesn’t just get them better prepared logistically. It also helps get them better prepared emotionally. It helps get them through the Oh My God (OMG) moment eve…

> - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong. Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well,…

This depends on the doctor, patient, location, and reason.

I have never been turned down for additional medications. My roommate just got a 3 month supply of all of controlled painkillers upon request.

Also, If you have a life-sustaining medication and can afford it, it is probably a good idea to have a supply even if you have to pay out of pocket.

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

#332

Post by sabujp »

tldr; use "ebola" elbow bumps instead of handshakes, don't touch your face, there should be an app to count the # of times you touch your face, tell your friends not to touch their face when they touch their face. Did I mention not to touch your face?

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

#333

Post by FriendlyNormie »

anonsivalley652 wrote: post #66
johnwheeler wrote: post #49

Before you propagate this information and take action, read this post about the psychology of fear mongering, and ask yourself if you identify with it. 1. Do you tend to mistrust authority? 2. Do you feel powerless to control the course of your life? 3. Do you feel like you have special information and insight the rest of us do not? 4. Do you feel comfort when thinking about the end of the world because once it happe…

InfoWars types. Arrogant paranoia often manifested in tribal communities that reinforce similar delusions. Recent example: the mom who killed her husband, brother and kids because she and her new lover believe in an "apocalypse" summer 2020.

Do you mean “HN types”? Almost everyone in this HN thread seems to agree that we should worry about the virus.

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

#334

Post by waynecochran »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

The premise of this article is that we should essentially press the “panic button” now, to get people through the shock of preparing for a pandemic while we know it’s safe to do so. > Suggesting things people can do to prepare for a possible hard time to come doesn’t just get them better prepared logistically. It also helps get them better prepared emotionally. It helps get them through the Oh My God (OMG) moment eve…

> Over-alarming risk messages are far more forgivable than over-reassuring ones.

The risk of panic is that if there ends up no need to panic, then folks won't listen later when there is a need to panic.

I see this all the time with fire alarm tests. No one takes them seriously -- when a real fire comes they will not take the necessary steps to evacuate fast enough.

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

#335

Post by hazeii »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #298
big_chungus wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time you shouldn't assume experts, the media, etc. are somehow mass conspiring against your health/safety. Assessments are probably reasonable to follow. True, but it's also not their job to work for my personal benefit. Mine is. Their job is to do the greatest good for the greatest number, but what is good for the most people is not always good for me. My job is to keep myself and my family safe, and I…

> the mortality rates aren't all that high (a few percent) That's about the same mortality rate as the pandemic flu of 1918, which wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

Tricky to compare, because health care is better these days so mortality would be expected to be lower (unless the system is overwhelmed, of course).

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

#336

Post by cameldrv »

pmoriarty wrote: post #276
dkarl wrote: post #140

The article becomes much less edgy if you know what the authorities are actually saying. For example, the American CDC, in USA Today[1]: "Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Friday that U.S. health officials are preparing for the coronavirus to become a pandemic." "'We’re not seeing community spread here in the United States, yet, but i…

"We’re not seeing community spread here in the United States" The US is barely doing any testing, so if there was community spread of COVID-19 in the US right now, there's a good chance they wouldn't even know about it.

My understanding is that until very recently they wouldn’t do the test unless you had been to Hubei, so there would be no community spread by definition.

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

#337

Post by FriendlyNormie »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #213
arkades wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong. Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well,…

Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. I hate your advice, seriously. You can't speak for every person and every prescription. You are talking people out of taking action when you are outright wrong for some, if not most, situations. Literally yesterday just got an extra 30-day subscription for a handful of prescriptions. Not for coronavirus, but because we are planning to be vi…

How? I once went to three different urgent care clinics and two different emergency rooms begging for an Augmentin prescription. I felt a stabbing pain in my gut hours after eating bacon for the first time in 10 years, and I had strong reason to believe Augmentin was the solution. They all refused to prescribe me Augmentin. I even tried bribing a few doctors with two thousand dollars in cash. They all said no. They all insisted I needed a CT scan before they’d do anything else. I finally obtained Augmentin by finding a discord server full of Mexicans who I paid to mail me some Augmentin they simply ordered over the counter there. After a month of extreme pain, I felt fine again 24 hours after taking the Augmentin.

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

#338

Post by jcranmer »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #307
jcranmer wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how many of them required anything but the standard response from authorities? What do you mean by "standard response"? It seems to me that you have a working definition that is less an objective standard and more a subjective, circular definition of "anything that didn't fail." Take Hurricane Harvey for example. The rain Houston received was record-breaking: ~30" in the course of a day or so, when the previous…

What I mean by the "standard response" are actions that are just some variation of: mobilize national guard, provide emergency shelter, distribute emergency rations of food, provide mobile health care, etc, and usually to some reasonably localized geographic location. Basically the sort of responses where simply modeling your response after the previous similar disaster is sufficient. The problem with Katrina and Mar…

> Basically the sort of responses where simply modeling your response after the previous similar disaster is sufficient. The problem with Katrina and Maria was precisely that the playbook from prior disasters was inadequate either due to the type or scale of problems faced.

The Gulf of Mexico is no stranger to hurricanes, and Katrina and Maria don't even top out the strongest hurricanes on the list (that honor goes to Wilma). Hell, Katrina is only the third strongest hurricane of 2005. That's why the response was so heavily criticized: Katrina was essentially the hurricane that New Orleans' levees were designed for, a repeat of Hurricane Betsy a few days shy of 40 years earlier. Even the levee failures should have been scenarios that had been planned for in terms of disaster response.

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

#339

Post by sgt101 »

DevX101 wrote: post #330
sgt101 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear war could kill hundreds of millions in a few hours. Why are you less concerned?

I think mutually assured destruction works well enough to prevent all out nuclear war between multiple nuclear armed states. Riskiest scenario there is a nuclear state attacking a non-nuclear state that cannot retaliate in kind. With a pandemic there's no one to negotiate with to come to an armistice.

Unless there's a miscalculation. Cuba was a very close shave.

With a nuclear war there'd be no negotiations either.

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

#340

Post by irq11 »

peanut_is_yum wrote: post #328
Frost1x wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following a few comments from experts in the field and looking at some of the data being presented, it's fairly obvious this pandemic case was reasonably high. There are of course lots of unknowns models used can't account for but that's no reason to discard the potential risk entirely. Keep in mind, many of these decisions to avoid "pandemic" talk try to take most holistic views in regards to public safety/health. T…

Thanks for the tip! Since I hadn't lived thru anything that threatened my society, I never believed in stocking up on non-perishables. However, the fact that I'm living thru a potential pandemic convinces me that we as a race aren't nearly as resilient as our modern amenities and high QoL suggest.

News you can use: you’re living through multiple pandemics, all the time.

There’s a flu pandemic (several, actually), that are far more immediately threatening to you than this virus. Society has not yet fallen.

Post reply on HN