Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where? Or how?
1918
Take a look at the calendar. It is 2020.
Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#612Unreal, a month ago (February 7th) I was posting this news story [1] related to the city of Shenzen which was about to be put into some form of lockdown, it only received one upvote. A month from that event and we have an entire European country (a G7 member to add) under lockdown. I guess the normalcy bias [2] was too strong for too many people until reality hit us hard in the face. [1] https://www.epochtimes.com/gb…
I had a trip booked to Italy starting on March 20 so have been following the news very closely since at least mid February... I Ask HN'd how people were tracking the virus, and the answers I got were "I'm not tracking it in any way, shape or form and I hope it reciprocates the courtesy." Quite funny, but the stats don't lie[0]. The number of new cases in Italy has grown at an exponential rate. This is a developed eco…
> That's a once-in-a-century, catastrophic black swan event.
It's a catastrphic event but I don't see any reason it won't happen again in the coming years / decades. The virus itself could even have worse characteristics in terms of transmissibility and mortality. Our transportation network is so great and modern society so dependent on it there is no hope stopping these outbreaks going global, only slowing them down.
In fact it should probably be fairly easy for a malicious actor to engineer a worse virus. Longer incubation period, truly airborne, super lethal. Whatever the final death toll is, I don't think it'll be the last or the worst of the 21st century.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Denmark yesterday a couple of kids in the same class in a school were tested positive, they closed the classroom - not even the school. I would certainly like to see the example of a country able to learn from the mistakes of others.
In Germany a friend of mine refused to go to a meeting at a client's office where someone tested positive and HR threatened him because he was violating his employment contract.
If they closed the office, cleaned it, and tested everyone else, it would be reasonable. But I guess they didn't do this. Which really our society is not set up for.
Actually Covid-19 cleaning solutions would be a temporary business to get into.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are any those organisations like Walmart or McDonalds that employ a lot of people who often don’t have any savings and any margins at all?
Definitely not. When common franchise chains close, and people can't work, nor shop, is when it will be too late, and dire.
Maybe not necessary to close the whole shop, just make the workers with symptoms afford to stay away.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Fair, though I don't think the US is especially unique in that regard; plenty of other countries seem to be denying the issue until it's too late. Even China waited until right before the start of the Chinese New Year (by which point a bunch of people were already out and about traveling) to impose its quarantine on Wuhan; by that point, South Korea already had confirmed cases, and the virus was likely already in Italy (the first two cases were confirmed just a couple days later).
Hell, my folks think we all might've gotten in way back in early January on a family cruise we took; a bunch of us came down with what we all thought was a particularly nasty flu, but without any nausea (just headaches, muscle aches, fatigue, and coughing) midway through. My stepmom ended up going to the hospital when she didn't get over it after a week (but it was still well before anyone thought SARS-CoV-2 had spread beyond China, so nobody tested for it, despite testing for the more typical flus and not finding anything; they ended up treating her as if it was a flu anyway). The rest of us toughed it out and eventually got over it, me figuring "alright I guess the normal seasonal flu is just extra bad this year; next year I'm totally gonna remember to get that flu shot, promise".
The thought was in the back of my mind for awhile that "maybe we did get Coronavirus somehow" (e.g. from other tourists on the boat), especially when the reports of cruise ship quarantines hit the news. In hindsight, I probably should've acted on it and gotten checked out, or otherwise at least said something. If only foresight was 20/20, too. I still don't think it really was SARS-CoV-2 (if it was, I'd expect coworkers and friends and non-cruise-attending family to have gotten it, too, but that didn't seem to be the case; then again, maybe they did get sick and made the same assumption of "nah, this is just the usual winter flu or cold"), but still.
Not sure where I was going with that, but yeah. I think the denialism's just because of previous epidemics in recent memory getting widespread news coverage (swine flu, bird flu, West Nile, etc.) only to end up being minor compared to, say, Spanish flu or polio or measles or other "realer" pandemics from "back in the olden days" (or even current ones like HIV/AIDS, which we all were fine with ignoring 'cause "we're good Christians boys and girls and not them there homosexuals or adulterers").
And then we see the same pattern unfolding here and expect it to blow over again. For all we know we've all been getting infected but we laugh it off as "oh yeah, sure, I totally have the beer virus, guess I get to call in sick, hahaha" and work through it, hoping that there's no truth to that particular joke.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany a friend of mine refused to go to a meeting at a client's office where someone tested positive and HR threatened him because he was violating his employment contract.
Am in Germany. Everyone is acting like nothing is happening. It's infuriating.
Well, in Bavaria at least, people are forced to self-quarantine for two weeks if they had contact to people from o where in high risk areas. Same goes for children in schools and kindergardens. Some schools are closed already. Corporate travel came more or less to a halt and soccer games are most likely taking place without spectators.
So yes, just business as usual.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#617Earlier 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.
They don’t need an understanding of exponential growth, they only need to look at examples: China, extreme measures and barely contained it; Italy delayed measures, turning fast into a disaster. How many examples do we need?
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Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't think of 2% annual growth as exponential.
And even fewer realize that a 2.1% growth rate is itself exponentially faster than a 2% growth rate. If something grows by 2% per day, vs 2.1% per day, after a year the second one is >20x bigger.
What you say is true in principle, but your numbers are wrong. I got a rather less dramatic 50% difference after a year:
>>> 1.02**365
1377.4082919660768
>>> 1.021**365
1969.6808462403098
>>>Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These politicians are representative of their voters, as democracy should be. Isn't it that they make decisions on behalf of the voters and should take the best professional advice on their behalf?
Professional advice is not necessarily the best political advise, unfortunately. It's a giant PR/social-media game and they have to play it otherwise the other side will get the upper hand. It's very unfortunate that we've turned "democracy" into such a game instead of a mechanism for societal-level decision making.
The same is true in all political systems. A king must constantly play a social media game too or their rivals may gain the upper hand. A modern despot must constantly ensure that they never show weakness for the same reasons. There are always rivals and there is always a game.
So far we have never come up with a working political system that banishes this stuff. It's a game theory problem.
Re: Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don’t need an understanding of exponential growth, they only need to look at examples: China, extreme measures and barely contained it; Italy delayed measures, turning fast into a disaster. How many examples do we need?
In Denmark yesterday a couple of kids in the same class in a school were tested positive, they closed the classroom - not even the school. I would certainly like to see the example of a country able to learn from the mistakes of others.
This is terrible. Was it Rysensteen Gymnasium?
Edited: Just found the article (Malling Skole i Østjylland)
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/skole-sender-klasse-i-kara...