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Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

bbc.com

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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#491

Post by ncallaway »

yellowapple wrote: post #441
ncallaway wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what country you're from. If you're from the States (where I see a lot of denialism): Italy has 3.18 beds per 1,000 people. The United States has 2.77 beds per 1,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...

I'm not sure what the GP's comment has to do with one's nationality. Both are facts, regardless of whether or not the United States is worse on one of those metrics.

In the United States there's a lot of denialism right now.

People here are trying to find any reason that they can point to about other countries to indicate that the drastic measures that they've taken aren't necessary here.

That the hospitals being pushed to the breaking point won't happen here.

I wasn't sure if that's what cjbprime was going for (and it wasn't!), but I thought I'd respond to that sentiment just in case. I think it's important that more people here (specifically in the United States) consider the possibility that we'll be in a similar situation as Italy in a few weeks.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#492

Post by alasdair_ »

bdamm wrote: post #364
asdfaoeu wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is the incubation period is around 5 days. So really the numbers are at least 5 days behind.

And of course in the US there are not as many testing kits as in other countries, so the numbers are basically 3 months behind.

I live in Seattle, so I’ve been following the WA outbreak with particular fervor.

What is utterly batshit insane to me is that as of YESTERDAY, the nursing home with almost every death in the USA STILL didn’t have enough testing kits to test the 63 residents left, nevermind the dozens of staff. They received 45 test kits. Total. This is AFTER Mike Pence visited the state and assured everyone that “millions” of kits were available.

I am extremely angry about the way Trump and his cronies have fucked up the most basic level of competency required here.

People dying and people needing to be tested should not be a political issue. We should not have to worry if we make his “numbers look bad” to get basic help with a pandemic.

Seattle is a fucking ghost town. Basic competency at governance would have mitigated this. I am enraged at the level of incompetence the current administration has displayed.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#493

Post by zelphirkalt »

paganel wrote: post #24
fosk wrote: post #9

Italy is a country of 60M+ people and the 8th largest economy in the world, with a very high national debt and that significantly relies on tourism for its economy. Above and beyond the Coronavirus, this can terribly affect the long-term solvency of the country.

I hope (and suspect) that the ECB (and Europe as a whole) will financially stand behind Italy, no questions asked (I'm a fellow European).

As the EU is mostly only its parts and everyone now in alert, I highly doubt it. Everyone is keeping their medical items to themselves now, because there is not even sufficient for their own country. EU will mostly be talk.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#494

Post by TeMPOraL »

baddox wrote: post #453
sciinfo wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people don't have an intuitive understanding of exponential growth. People not trained well in math and science don't even have/know the tools to help them understand it analytically. We need (much) better math education for people studying all majors .

The whole “people don’t understand exponential growth” thing isn’t a very good explanation, considering that it applies to any contagious disease for which every person tends to infect some constant number of other people.

Which there are few in circulation, thanks to vaccines among other reasons (which lower effective transmission rate), so most people haven't really experienced it working. Somebody mentioned noroviruses the other day as probably the closest relevant thing people may have experienced - let someone with one loose on a cruise ship, and shit literally hits the fan very fast.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#495

Post by zelphirkalt »

nutjob2 wrote: post #414
PeterStuer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to forget that the ECB is there for the banks, not for the people or their countries.

Yes, the ECB is there to support and regulate the banks, that is its job. There is a very good reason for this: if you don't have stable and healthy banks you don't have a functioning economy. People of your ideological ilk see this as some sort of negative but it's absolutely vital. You may think of banks as evil and having a lot of money, but that money is not theirs but "the people's."

Many banks certainly don't tend to act like it is the people's money.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#496

Post by pfdietz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #383
mantap wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians have no understanding of exponential growth. They look at low numbers and think "we have a lot of time" then are surprised later when they in fact don't.

"Exponential growth" in itself isn't really the issue. If every week you have 10,000% as many cases as last week, you're screwed. If every week you have 105% as many cases as last week (i.e. 5% more), that's exponential, but after a year there would be less than a 13X increase, by which point there could be a vaccine or other measures that cause the weekly number to go from 105% to 95%. You can also have non-exponent…

Calls to not panic are worse that useless. They are dangerous, extremely dangerous now. They lead to complacency and they will lead to death.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#497

Post by dorkwood »

ALittleLight wrote: post #419
muyuan wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Chinese living in Bay Area. What's described by the Italian doctor was exactly like the situation in Wuhan right after the lockdown for the first 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately, I think it will hit Italy harder this time, China locked down Wuhan but every other provinces send in supplies and doctors to help, just building new hospitals is not enough, and I don't see France/Germany doing the same to Italy. The US res…

I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster. Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future. I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled,…

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

I think this is exactly what's happening. It's an extension of the way individuals feel -- no one wants to be seen preparing too early, because people might think they're silly.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#498

Post by alasdair_ »

newtoday wrote: post #413
Ma8ee wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the us something as simple as paid sick leave for all service workers could make a huge difference.

In the past 5 days, some organizations who can afford it have shut down offices and are providing just that. I'm not at liberty to expose info on who, because I'm not sure it's been made public or not.

I also work for one such organization.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#499

Post by csomar »

rlt wrote: post #433
shalmanese wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the US though, you have other countries in Europe handling this abysmally like The Netherlands. Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage despite multiple cases in Singapore being traced back to Indonesian travel (including one rich Indonesian who couldn't find anyone to treat them in Indonesia so deliberately flew to Singapore on a private plane to get healthcare).

To be clear, I don't believe the following (Hanlon's razor, etc), but it would make a good dystopian/thriller: As some point one might consider if governments see COVID-19 as an opportunity to "cull the herd". Japan and Italy have the two largest aging populations of any countries. The US has a large number of citizens with COVID-19 comorbidities. I'm not sure if the long term savings on entitlements and health care…

What makes you assume that the economic output of these old people, on total, is negative? They might be holding/running investments, collected massive knowledge along their careers or have enough savings and are making money for the private healthcare system.

If they go away, we might lose on the knowledge or their investments might stop working and the new youth might not manage it any better. So a total loss of society.

Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country

#500

Post by Thlom »

standardUser wrote: post #422
bdamm wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course in the US there are not as many testing kits as in other countries, so the numbers are basically 3 months behind.

The US is probably a much larger vector than we realize. The testing rate is the lowest in the world and Americans travel like mad. Who knows how many undiagnosed Americans have been globe trotting over the last couple weeks?

And you have millions without basic access to healthcare, meaning they will go around untreated passing the virus along to their fellow citizens.
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