Italy is extending its coronavirus quarantine measures to the entire country • Hacker News Board

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

#841

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #830

ceejayoz wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yep. People do this with Y2K, for example. "Nothing happened, what an overreaction!" Nothing happened because an enormous amount of work was done in advance, but people don't see that side of it as it's reasonably hidden.

Don't think we know why "nothing happened". I think the remediation was generally worth doing, but that's just a guess. There is no final reveal that tells you whether or not it was. We'll never really know.

There were a lot of small scale reveals. I worked in a lab in 1997 that turned the clock on some machines forward and watched what happened. We then told all customers this machine hasn't been made since 1975: it breaks and we won't update it - they responding by setting the clock back. We spent a lot more time testing (and fixing) the then current replacements.

Though to be fair, most of the media predicted bad outcomes were completely unrealistic and wouldn't have happened even if no effort was put into mitigation.

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

#842

Post by hurrdurr2 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #474

hurrdurr2 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of our older neighbors are inviting everyone on the nextdoor app to go to their house for movie night to prove that this is just a flu. The entire thread is people making fun of covid19 and how they are angry their retirement accounts are getting hit. I wish I was making this up.

"there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated" - NOFX The whole song is disturbingly accurate/prophetic. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.htm... I'm completely unsurprised by what you're describing. I observed similarly disturbing behavior waiting in line @ Home Depot the other day. A customer was excited to find they had hand sanitizer in stock, and another customer told him th…

Yeah it's crazy. I suggested in the thread that they should take this a little more seriously and was immediately attacked for being a doom mongering idiot.

Oh well, I tried.

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

#843

Post by dd36 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

ferdbold wrote: post #835

vkou wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is to his base. For now. His base is, however, going to be disproportionately impacted by this virus.

Why would you think that? The virus is going to hit way harder in dense cities than in rural areas, and cities heavily lean towards the left

It's most deadly to older people.

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

#844

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

tomohawk wrote: post #551

llamataboot wrote: post #458

The US really really /really/ needs to get out in front of this. We have the lowest per-capita testing rate in the world, there are likely already significant outbreaks in Seattle, Santa Clara co, NYC, and DC. Probably elsewhere. We are literally like 12 days behind and can see into our future. If this virus does indeed require such intense hospital resources (as in Wuhan and now Northern Italy) letting it spike is j…

We have the lowest testing rate because the CDC made some big mistakes early on. 1) the CDC told all the other labs to stand down and wait for the CDC test kit 2) the CDC refused permission to test except under very narrow conditions 3) the CDC test kit was defective due to being over engineered, and delayed availability during a very critical period Now that we're behind the exponential growth curve, any measures th…

Which of those would you have cited if you didn't have the benefit of hindsight?

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

#845

Post by jfkebwjsbx » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #823

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facepalm. Are you really still claiming this is not real?

No, I am claiming that this specific sound file might not be real given that there are references to it from the 21st of january (i.e. way before it hit Italy) and given the stated incidence of cases in younger people while the narrative is that the disease is mostly mild in those under 50. There is no doubt that there is a pandemic going on, I can see it happen around me here in Sweden.

My apologies then.

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

#846

Post by lend000 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #778

lend000 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at highly infectious diseases that were effectively eradicated, most either ran their course and infected hundreds of millions (Spanish flu, swine flu), or were eradicated with both quarantine and vaccination (Smallpox, rinderpest). I would be very interested if you could find an example of a highly contagious disease that was stopped without a cure or vaccine [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradic…

You're measuring the wrong thing. Quarantine isn't an attempt to "eradicate" this disease. Like you say, it's likely to become a pandemic and infect hundreds of millions or more. You quarantine to halt the rate of infection and give your health care facilities time to care for the seriously infected. And that saves lives . A lot. It can save a lot of lives.

That's the conventional wisdom, but as I mentioned in another comment on this thread, I'm not convinced that's the case, especially with a contagion that is most dangerous to less active people.

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

#847

Post by bluGill » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #391

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the phenomenon where a slowdown in traffic on a road causes all of the cars to bunch up. And then after the blockage is gone, the bunch up continues to cause more cars to bunch up and the slowdown exists long after the issue is gone. It seems like the fact that toilet paper is gone causes people to buy it whenever its available which causes it to be gone.

I see this on I88 outside of Chicago all the goddamn time. Takes a little bit of aggressive driving to get past it, but eventuallually you'll find a point where there is a mile gap in the left lane, becausr people dont accelerate after a slowdown. Its fruatrating and caises me easily 10 minutes per day. I'm fine if you want to drive below the speed limit, but move put of the way (I'm talking people driving 45 in a 60…

The only way to solve this problem is as you reach the slow zone add a bigger gap in front of you, and leave that gap there until the zone is over.

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

#848

Post by rthomas6 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #832

rthomas6 wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a virus. The infection grew exponentially like virus infections do. We could be wrong, but we're probably not.

Epidemics don't follow exponential functions. You are aware of that?

They do until they hit their inflection point.

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

#849

Post by ajross » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #846

ajross wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're measuring the wrong thing. Quarantine isn't an attempt to "eradicate" this disease. Like you say, it's likely to become a pandemic and infect hundreds of millions or more. You quarantine to halt the rate of infection and give your health care facilities time to care for the seriously infected. And that saves lives . A lot. It can save a lot of lives.

That's the conventional wisdom, but as I mentioned in another comment on this thread, I'm not convinced that's the case, especially with a contagion that is most dangerous to less active people.

Then with all due respect, you really need to cite someone expert on the subject. Seriously public health policy folks are universally recommending social isolation (of which quarantine is the most expensive variant), and it has worked. Who exactly leads you to believe that this isn't working?

This is a poor time for armchair analysis when we're looking at worst case scenarios involving millions of deaths.

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

#850

Post by lend000 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #849

lend000 wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the conventional wisdom, but as I mentioned in another comment on this thread, I'm not convinced that's the case, especially with a contagion that is most dangerous to less active people.

Then with all due respect, you really need to cite someone expert on the subject. Seriously public health policy folks are universally recommending social isolation (of which quarantine is the most expensive variant), and it has worked. Who exactly leads you to believe that this isn't working? This is a poor time for armchair analysis when we're looking at worst case scenarios involving millions of deaths.

This is an online forum for technically minded people -- none of these comments result in prescribing public policy. Like you, I am only an armchair expert in this particular field, but it seems like a perfectly fine medium to discuss and debate new hypotheses. Not every idea needs to be put forward by someone with the right badge to be worth discussing, especially on an open forum, so please don't try to limit intellectual discussion simply because of fear.