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

290 points by aaron695 7y ago

joak 7y ago
In the preparation list, scaling ICU is most needed. A lot of people survived thank to intensive care units. There might not be enough to cope with the peak
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That 'might' is probably safely replace with 'are'. No country - even the richest - is prepared to deal with this many ICU cases. For instance in the UK (which has a very good healthcare system) there are about 6k ICU beds on a population of ~65 million. And then there is the risk of having ICU personnel become infected themselves. This is not a trivial challenge.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    In this case, I guess we have to just trust the people that go through the most competitive and intellectually demanding decade of school and professional training on the planet. They have the benefit of being on the front lines themselves, with the lives of themselves and their coworkers at risk. edit: if it helps avoid distractions, let me say it is obviously not a "benefit" and medical professionals are underappreciated heroes. They deal with infections disease every day, sometimes far more dangerous than covid-19. For them, the danger and planning isn't hypothetical like it is for a vast majority of the commenters here. I trust the medical community to plan for this appropriately more that I trust any other group of professionals.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      That's not a benefit. And given that these people will try to do their jobs even when under=equipped and understaffed they are paid too little to begin with.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - exikyut 7y ago
    Perhaps that's why there's no point declaring a pandemic. If you do, some prepare, some panic, the panicking ones clog the ICU and the virus spreads like wildfire, the ICU can't keep up. If you don't, nobody prepares, everybody's sprung upon and taken by surprise, the stampedes oversubscribe ICU capacity in much the same way as above. At the end of the day I think the two variables all of this boils down to are infrastructure capacity limits and individual survival rates - and that no relevant models exist that can readily catalyze this specific set of circumstances with confidence. IIUC, what models do exist are not precise/disambiguating enough. So it all comes down to unresolvable clique interpretation. Officials can't work with that. :(
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      The difference is that we can recognize that containment has failed and start planning accordingly. I don't think any rational authority is at this point still arguing that this will be contained to within the borders of those countries now affected. So you might as well accept that we do indeed have a pandemic on our hands, which will have substantial economic impact but need not have a substantial toll in terms of lives lost. Waiting with that declaration is the same as what the authorities in Wuhan did initially: they hoped it would blow over. But viruses do not care about our politics. And if we do not take relatively drastic measures to stop community spreading then the impact will be much higher, both economic and in terms of lives.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        There's a lot of options between "ignoring it" and "declaring a global pandemic".
        jacquesm 7y ago
        Such as?
        maxerickson 7y ago
        Lots of examples in the news... Or do you somehow think there is currently no response?
- Engineering-MD 7y ago
  So scaling of ICU is already possible to a degree. In most hospitals in case of a major accident (eg terror isn’t attack with many injured) theatres are used as ICUs and all non emergency surgery is stopped. I suspect this will happen in these cases. The main issue is going to be sufficient nursing staffing (ICU requires 1:1 nurse:patient ratio usually).
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That trick doesn't work when you're talking about infectious diseases. You need to isolate your patients from each other to avoid re-infection and you need to stop rotating your ICU personnel between units or they themselves will become vectors for infection to people who would otherwise recover or may be mis-diagnosed.
    - Engineering-MD 7y ago
      Theatres are isolated from each other and often adjacent to the main ICU for this reason. So the trick should be effective.
contemporary343 7y ago
The lack of testing and testing capacity in the US is deeply alarming. They’ve only run 500 tests so far and criteria still require the patient to have recently traveled from Hubei! By comparison South Korea is running thousands of tests per day, which is why it is picking up so many cases. Absolutely unforgivable complacency and lack of transparency from CDC. There is almost certainly community spreading in the US that is going undetected. Once local cases finally start getting reported and tested in the US, there will be panic and a lot of the same irrational hoarding behavior and shortages observed elsewhere. It would be better if the CDC mentally prepared and educated the public for what is to come. Normalcy bias is very real, and people here are still culturally not ready for this reality.. Edit: Some background for the above comments: Epidemiologist at Harvard/ Brigham and Women’s responsible for virology testing there: https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1231503805159813121 https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/12315038051598131... “Reminder: As of today (Feb 23), the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.” “Now >10 days since CDC recalled kits w still no explanation for failure. Failure to share what went wrong hinders progress by all labs nationwide. Expeditious sharing of information is a must during epidemics. We say this to China and CDC should practice as well.” “Without more information, public health labs & well resourced hospital labs setting up CDC published assay in-house are held at complete standstill, unable to prepare for what will inevitably be concern for local transmission.” “Without rapid diagnostics ready to go, healthcare infrastructure may become rapidly inundated, even if cases turn out all negative - an abundance of caution will require quarantines until test rules out a case. Any backlog can quickly hamper hospitals.” “Additionally, recommendations for testing continue to tie in to recent travel to China or some contact. With cases in at least 28 countries, and local transmission increasing, testing and surveillance nationally must move forward” “We cannot know if there is coronavirus here in US if we are not testing. We must get the US up to speed for diagnostics and we need expeditious information sharing from @CDC to the lab testing community here and abroad.”
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  FYI, the article you linked is the same one the OP links to. Did you mean to link something else?
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
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 everyone needs to have, and needs to get through, preferably without being accused of hysteria. > It is better to get through this OMG moment now rather than later. The preparedness tips in the article are generic enough, but worth skimming. Basically: - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it - A couple months of non-perishable food storage is a good idea - Practice band washing and avoid touching your face. - Cross train employees at work to minimize the impact of absences.
- carbocation 7y ago
  I think there is a real need to understand how much of a vector our phone screens are. People touch their phones, wash their hands, and then touch their phones again.
  - speedgoose 7y ago
    Yes, we should wash our phones too. It's very simple when the phone is waterproof.
    - dbcurtis 7y ago
      All the telephone sanitizers left on the B arc.
      - Freak_NL 7y ago
        That was another planet in another time. We (Earth) are the descendants of the B arc.
        jacquesm 7y ago
patagonicus 7y ago
As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: What should I personally do to prepare? I'm living alone and have the ability to work remotely once the virus starts spreading here. My guess is mostly stocking up on food, which I've planned to do for a long time - sounds like a good motivation to finally prepare a list and get shopping. Should I bother with a N95 mask? I already have surgical masks that I used last year when I got a cold, but FWIU they only help protecting others when you're already sick. I can spare the money for a N95 mask even if I don't end up using it, but I'm not sure it'll actually help. Touching your face less and using knuckles to touch buttons as well as washing your hands more often are things I'm already working on. I guess I'll start carrying hand sanitizer when leaving the house. What else can/should I do?
- popotamonga 7y ago
  The mask is good to train to not touch the face.
- PragmaticPulp 7y ago
  > As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: Be careful. Comment sections tend to attract overconfident armchair experts rather than professional advice. This is a forum where technology people congregate, not virologists. You may get repeated advice about general prepper techniques, but in my experience the mainstream prepper types can be over focused on unlikely doomsday scenarios instead of more realistic extended economy-slowing scenarios. > What should I personally do to prepare? I suggest reading the linked article. This is exactly what the article is about.
  - patagonicus 7y ago
    Of course, I'm not going to treat anything here as the absolute truth, but I'm looking for things I might have missed. I read the article, but other than keeping food and not touching your face etc. I didn't see much actionable advice for me. I'm not taking any prescription drugs, I don't have any family members close enough that I could treat them and handshakes are uncommon at my office.
jacquesm 7y ago
I think the WHO not declaring a pandemic is mostly wishful thinking on their part, the longer they wait the bigger the impact to the system. There are now 30 countries with known infections, a large number with likely undetected cases due to lack of local infrastructure. Impact to the economy and general panic are on the one side of the scale, there is still only a very small chance that they will be able to contain this.
pyk 7y ago
Recommendations for what individuals can do are buried but very practical: * Try to get a few extra months’ worth of prescription meds, if possible. * Think through now how we will take care of sick family members while trying not to get infected. Cross-train key staff at work so one person’s absence won’t derail our organization’s ability to function. * Practice touching our faces less. So how about a face-counter app like the step-counters so many of us use? * Replace handshakes with elbow-bumps (the “Ebola handshake”). * Start building harm-reduction habits like pushing elevator buttons with a knuckle instead of a fingertip.
- popotamonga 7y ago
  Is hand saniziter any good, for when you touched the wrong places?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Yes. Alcohol is sufficient, antibiotic treatments are useless against viruses. Wet wipes may also be convenient.
- ianai 7y ago
  Wish getting meds in advance were more accessible.
  - carbocation 7y ago
    With few exceptions, you should be able to ask your MD for a 90 day supply with 3 refills (enough for 3 months immediately, with refills for the rest of the year).
    - ianai 7y ago
      Have to pay cash though if you’ve filed it recently.
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      But the exceptions are the things you really don’t want to be running out of. Which is extremely unfortunate and silly given that those who want to source these things illicitly will do so and those who follow the rules will suffer.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
We will see. The graphs of numbers of confirmed infected all seem to be bending down, but of course there's the possibility of biases like unreleased numbers and incomplete testing. I guess we will know in a few weeks which direction it is going to go. That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why most people should panic more than they do about flu season. Obviously it is a serious concern, but I think on the extremes there is a bit more alarmism than is warranted. Of course, those same sensational articles are going to be the ones that get upvoted on social media sites like this one. I remember when the avian influenza scare was on how many end of the world articles there were. Not that it wasn't a pressing concern but it seems like these types of situations capture the public's imagination and fears a little more than is justified by the facts on the ground. Also keep in mind that this message is coming from a "risk communication expert" who probably gets more exposure and therefore more business the more extreme their predictions are. Are they actually privy to any information or knowledge the other experts aren't aware of? Do they have any skin in the game at all when they make this prediction? Consider the source is all I'm saying.
- popotamonga 7y ago
  Most have older family no?
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Sure. And we should be concerned for them. But I sense that many people are scared for their own lives and those of their children, which I feel is not really warranted. Maybe I'm generalizing my personal experience of my own mental state and who I've talked to, but that is what I've been exposed to. And of course the items discussed in the rest of my comment should modulate people's fears as well.
    - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
      Regardless, it is always a good idea to have some backup supplies in case of a natural disaster. Whether it be an earthquake or pandemic or a storm.
bpfrh 7y ago
There is a video which compares that to other causes of deaths and other "pandemics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU Please stop threating the virus as if we would all die. The things you have in the article should be the things you should do anyway: -No touching your face, is something you should stop anyway, as the flu will also kill you if you have bad luck and it is the same problem -Having certain things prepared in case there is a local emergency is a good idea anyway, but the recommandation at least in austria is about 10-14 days, so I hope most of the people already have that. -Supply chains won't break down because of such a virus, just as it didn't because of the swineflu and other things. -If supply chains break down, we have more than the coronavirus to worry about. edit: Pressed submit to soon
- jacquesm 7y ago
  No, we won't all die. But the impact will be substantial if the infections are not brought under control. Just like not everybody dies from many other diseases such as the flu. The difference here is that it also hits hard on otherwise healthy people and that healthcare workers are very much exposed to infection. If that front line does not hold it can get worse rapidly. Western countries with good medicine and infrastructure in place stand a chance of riding this out with just (possibly substantial) economic impact. Poor countries are in for a rough ride. Check out what is happening in Iran right now (which your linked video conveniently leaves out, possibly because it does not fit their narrative). Mortality rates around 2-5% for a pandemic are nothing to sneeze at, infection rates in close proximity are very high making it hard to care for those that are showing symptoms and put high density population centers at serious risk.
  - bpfrh 7y ago
    You can't controll infections. You can try to fasttrack vaccinies, but you can't really stop a virus with such a transmission way from spreading. That is a problem but it is nothing new. Every few years we will have new diseases and unfortunately they will spread and kill people. The flu does that yearly. Does that suck? Yes Will it mean the end of the world or have a high impact on countries that have a robust healtcare system? No
leesec 7y ago
https://www.ready.gov/pandemic https://www.ready.gov/pandemic Basic things the US gov recommends in the case of a pandemic. I personally went out and got 2 weeks of supplies last night.
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  > 2 weeks What a noob Seriouslu though, if it strikes it'd be at least for a few months.
  - leesec 7y ago
    I don't think the idea is to be sustainable for 2 weeks, it's to mitigate the stress on the supply line by staggering demand.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    Rationing. If it becomes a huge pandemic, at least I'll lose all that excess weight I've been wanting to shed.
est31 7y ago
> One horrible effect of this continued “stop the pandemic” daydream masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage-inducing measures by many countries against travelers from other countries, even their own citizens back from other countries. But possibly more horrible: The messaging is driving resources toward “stopping,” and away from the main potential benefit of containment – slowing the spread of the pandemic and thereby buying a little more time to prepare for what’s coming. I don't get this part of the article at all. What's exactly counter-productive about not allowing civilian travellers from affected provinces? That seems like the best method to slow the spread to me. The longer we can keep it away from anybody, the better, because the more time we have to come up with a vaccine or alternative ways to combat the disease. It's definitely possible that covid-19 will eventually reach all parts of the globe, but we should try everything possible to not let it reach those parts before we have come up with a vaccine.
- bpfrh 7y ago
  Closing borders isn't easy. Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
    - 7y ago
RobertRoberts 7y ago
Give me the numbers. People panic over everything imaginable. The only defense is logic. (which unfortunately is only a slow and long term defense) At this point I feel I am more likely to win the lottery and get struck my lightning twice before I get this virus. And even then, what is the death rate for healthy adults? It's amazing how easily people freak out these days.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  At this point, yes. But that's not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is what will happen over the next couple of weeks/months and to what degree we can avoid community spreading once the virus achieves a foothold, which - sorry - at this point is mostly a matter of time. Containment can be done early on and if done effectively can get you back into your 'no need to worry' mode. But once containment has failed you are in different territory and will have to play a much more complex game with more substantial impact. So your present day chances of contracting this in the next 24 hours are looking pretty good but your chances of contracting this in the next couple of months are substantially better than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning even once. Unless you live the life of a hermit. A vaccine would be quite handy, but we do not have one - yet , though that race is on - and even if we had it you still need to make it in quantity to be effective. A virus doesn't particularly care about whether you are able to think logically or not. It cares about contact between people and not killing its host too quickly. That way it improves its chances of spreading its genetic code.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    There is a lot I can do for my family and friends about helping them not be _irrationally_ afraid. Eliminating irrational fear is valuable. Spreading undue panic is reprehensible. What are the numbers? What is the risk equation? If we avoid these, then we are not speaking from knowledge but simply guessing and editorializing. Which tends towards panic, not rationality.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
velcro 7y ago
At the risk of going full doomsday mode (and besides stockpiling on food and masks) - lets say pandemic happens and some useful meds/vitamins do go out of stock - is there any advice what those are i.e. what kind of meds/vitamins would be practical to buy right now to help fight/slow COVID-19/infection in the future?
- friendly_fren 7y ago
  Fish antibiotics
  - dijksterhuis 7y ago
    Antibiotics do not protect against viruses. This is a viral infection, not a bacterial one.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      It would be funny if it weren't sad.
    - solnyshok 7y ago
      when stocking up on meds, I would certainly include antibiotics (need prescription in my country). just as water and food do not fight coronavirus, antibiotics is simply a BFG one needs to have around against simpler infections when hospitals are overloaded and supply systems halt.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hu3 7y ago
  I'm also interested in what drugs are commonly used on COVID-19 positive individuals.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  No, just food and meds for fever. I'm actually concerned there will be a shortage of food just because everybody is stocking up at a sudden panic, not necessarily because we actually end up with a huge pandemic (which might or might not happen at a later point in time). So for the first time in my life I'm thinking about actually doing this.
johnwheeler 7y ago
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 happens, you will be prepared and validated? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology-reveals-the-comforts-of-the-apocalypse/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology...
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I wonder how those questions would be answered by that doctor that tried to ring the alarm but was silenced.
  - throwlaplace 7y ago
    Have you ever heard The expression "the exception that proves the rule"? Do you understand the meaning of the expression? It means that the rule is so good that exceptions to it are so rare that they seem significant. The prototypical examples are plane crashes.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      What do you think the chances are that I haven't heard about that? What do you think makes this an exception? There is a lot of politics happening around this theme. Can you trust the numbers put out by the authorities? Yes, within a margin of error due to unreported cases. The article is not at all in the fearmongering category. It appears to me quite level headed and simply acknowledges that we are past the point of containment, something that seems born out by the facts. To continue to deny that there is a pandemic will do a lot more harm than to accept that as a fact and act accordingly.
      - throwlaplace 7y ago
        >What do you think makes this an exception? Do you realize it's completely irrational to debate unknown unknowns? Any certainty comes from bias. So you think the doctor is the tip of the iceberg but you absolutely can't know how big the iceberg is. I think the doctor isn't and honestly I can't know that either. What I do have going for me is the biased perspective that on balance the world is being run adequately and if all of these subversive things were true that couldn't be the case. But I readily admit that that's circular and to the extent that it's not it's completely apriori.
nednar 7y ago
Well. Infection rate is going down already. Death rate is starting to slow down. Death rate was never higher than a common flu. Healing rate is increasing drastically, many heal without medical needs. So, should we really talk about a pandemic? A flu pandemic? Or has the virus changed in the last few days and I've missed it?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Infection rate in China is going down and the way they keep changing their criteria makes it hard to find continuity in the numbers. Elsewhere it is still rising.
  - nednar 7y ago
    Actually the changes in China are the reason why the number increased from 40k+ to 60k+ wasn't it?
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      That caused the jump. But those cases were there all along, just not reported. Now they have - again - changed the criteria and made them more stringent resulting in an apparent drop in the number of cases.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Day-to-day percentages are the numbers to watch. They're coming down nicely: 0.8% vs. steady 20% (31-Jan - 4-Feb), as high as 64% in late January. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak#/media/File%3ANCoV20200209_Hubei_China_ROW_cases.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak#/... Rest-of-world is going the wrong way.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 7y ago
  They got the rates down in Wuhan pretty much by confining everyone to their houses. If they have to so that globally it's not going to be pretty.
sbussard 7y ago
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stigma.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stig...
jpm_sd 7y ago
There is a lot of panicky misinformation out there, the WHO is calling it an "infodemic"! This Wikipedia article is doing a respectable job tracking some of the conspiracy theories and falsehoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_... Wikipedia also has a good summary of the overall state of things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The way outlets such as The New York Post deal with this is absolutely irresponsible. They keep on re-posting total garbage that has been debunked multiple times and Google isn't helping by linking to it. This is also worth keeping an eye on: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html#map https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirme...
  - timbit42 7y ago
    Perhaps they should be sued.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      It's owned by Murdoch and faithfully trumpets the party line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence Good luck suing them.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      It's not illegal to print lies. There has to be some other hook to hang a suit on other than the information being false.
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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anonsivalley652 7y ago
PSA: spreading FUD and panic isn't helping anyone. The common flu is a "pandemic" every year, so should we freak out and buy 1000 kg of wheat while inconsistently not having any means of food production? Don't act out of fear; act out of reason, honesty and proportionality.
- jopsen 7y ago
  To be fair the common flu has a fatality rate around 0.01%, sars-cov-2 is around 2%. (Not sure there is much we can do in the long run though)
  - dom96 7y ago
    Does it though? COVID-19 may actually have a much lower fatality rate as we are only getting reports of people that get symptoms, maybe that's only 10% of infections, maybe even less.
    - jopsen 7y ago
      Indeed, it could also be higher.. Wishful thinking doesn't really make it so :) (Even though I really wish it did) Whether it matters in practice I don't know.. how much can we really do ?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The common flu has a total case fatality rate of ~<10% to 0.1% that of 2019-nCoV, based on still-evolving data. A key point of actions to date has been an attempt to prevent 2019-nCoV from achieving pandemic status, so that it doesn't recur on an annual basis. If sufficiently widespread, and affecting a quarter to half the globe's population, we're looking at tens of millions of deaths. Contrast 12,000 - 61,000 deaths in the US from influenza (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html), and 291,000 - 641,000 worldwide (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/cdc-global-annual-flu-deaths-greater-than-previously-estimated.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/cdc-global-ann...). That's with effective vaccines and antivirual treatments, neither of which exist presently for 2019-nCoV. Preventing this coronavirus from becoming "just another flu" would be a Very Good Thing.
7532yahoogmail 7y ago
This article does not read like cogent CDC advice. It seems written in a more page-6 OP-ED style. Not sure this is the perspective we need.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hu3 7y ago
This might sound tasteless but... What's the probable impact of such pandemy on the stock market? Any low hanging fruit to invest on? Any category of assets to stay away from?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Travel stocks and travel related stocks down, health related stocks up would be my first guess.
  - iooi 7y ago
    Not health insurance though, they could be in for massive liabilities should a lot of people start contracting.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Correct, I was thinking of Pharmaceuticals, should have been more precise.
- el_cujo 7y ago
  When things are uncertain, $VIX volatility index is a good bet. Maybe look into the most popular sellers/manufacturers of those surgical face masks, I'm sure those guys are making a killing right now.
- mathgenius 7y ago
  Remote work, zoom, etc.
DevX101 7y ago
This is one case where it's worth overreacting to. Biological epidemics are the only thing that has had the capacity to kill >50 million people in a year. In my risk classification hierarchy I put pandemics above nuclear war and wayyyy above terrorism. Yet we've spent trillions on the war on terror the past 20 years while there's no coordinated plan in the U.S. for this yet. If there's even a 2% chance of this going pandemic in the U.S. we should be allocating at least a billion with apolitical expert driven policy implementations to prevent spread. My jaw dropped when I read that the State Dept allowed infected Americans to fly with uninfected persons to the U.S. from Japan against the express recommendations of the CDC. This is what we're dealing with and I'm not optimistic.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The plans the US already has for a flu pandemic should mostly carry over, no? COVID is probably worse than the seasonal flu, but it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do. By about 3-4 orders of magnitude, it is. The flu tends to kill about 60K people annually and most of those are old or very young or already had a compromised immune system. This is with the figures known so far and before there is a vaccine around 2-3%. If left unchecked it would overwhelm available health care capacity pretty quickly. The Chinese mis-handled this. But it would be a mistake to think that the west is super prepared for something like this compared to China. ICU capacity is limited, test capacity is limited. Our advantages are mostly in more transparent messaging and wealth. Those two will have a big impact on the economic and health care aspects but it may not be enough to drop this down to the level of yet another flu.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      A flu pandemic, in official terminology, is a different and more severe thing than the seasonal flu. The government regularly plans for such outbreaks and isn't afraid to spend a billion dollars when needed; for example, about 5 years ago they preemptively struck against bird flu by obliterating poultry farms at government expense. (And that one didn't even affect humans!) I don't think you're getting your numbers from an accurate source either. The flu kills a lot more than 6k people by every estimate I've seen.
dkarl 7y ago
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 it’s very possible, even likely, that it may eventually happen,” she said. “Our goal continues to be slowing the introduction of the virus into the U.S. This buys us more time to prepare communities for more cases and possibly sustained spread.'" Sooooo... today's edgy "the media and authorities are keeping us in the dark" blog post got scooped two days ago by the CDC and USA Today. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronavirus-who-contain-outbreak-iran-deaths-south-korea-cases/4829278002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronav...
- Frost1x 7y ago
  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. There is a lot of consideration regarding deaths cause by panic actions which are often estimated/modeled as well and if panic related deaths and side effects are higher than a current actual threat, it's often viewed that the best course of action is to suppress panic until warranted. So lack of pandemic talk doesn't inherently mean there is a legitimate reason not to panic, just that you're being given limited information. 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. The best course of action is to also take a holistic look at situations independent of these groups and make your own rational assessment of risks and impact. If you don't already have some non-perishable food supplies, you should have completely irrespective of this specific recent viral outbreak--its basic preparedness for emergencies. Some basic preparedness (I'm not talking bunkers and 2 year food cache craziness) are warranted in general for unpredictable disaster cases so these situations are good reminders for people to check their pantry for food, etc. just in case something awful was to happen, those supplies can help significantly.
swsieber 7y ago
To those commenting about infection rate going down: Do you take into account that China relaxed the requirements for diagnosing a case many days ago, and then made them strict again a couple of days ago? That's one sucky move that makes thing seem like they're slowing down. Or so you just look at graph and think everything is fine? Or is everything actually improving even taking the reporting changes into account?
- thenaturalist 7y ago
  Got any sources for these claims?
  - swsieber 7y ago
    It's well documented in various day to day coverage feeds. The one I'm thinking about is CNN. I'm pretty sure its public information disseminated by China. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_20...
Ninjak8051 7y ago
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you're a virus researcher, every outbreak looks like a pandemic. The facts on the ground don't match the pandemic conclusion. There were two cases in all of Santa Clara County a few weeks ago, now there is one case.
- carapace 7y ago
  Got a link for that?
  - Ninjak8051 7y ago
    https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-coronavirus/Pages/home.aspx https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-co...
    - carapace 7y ago
      Cheers!
scythe 7y ago
The biggest question to me is: do you really believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense? Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.
- zuckluni 7y ago
  it is weird. but anecdotally it seems like tropical climes less hard hit. India? low numbers could just be measuring detection ability instead of actual rates.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    There is an aspect with these viruses that is temperature sensitive that makes them favor colder regions.
m3kw9 7y ago
The WHO knows this and the pandamic button is also a early signal, they don’t press it when is “too late”. They have protocol and procedures after they declare it, and doing it too early will probably mess it up and cause confusion. This guy is living in his own world.
tapejek 7y ago
There's a lot of randomness in life
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
aazaa 7y ago
> ... In most countries ... ordinary citizens have not been asked to prepare. Instead, they have been led to expect that their governments will keep the virus from their doors. This will be a painful but necessary shift. Realizing there's no way to stop the spread of coronavirus from "over there" to "over here," the best move individuals and groups can take is to forego large gatherings: > ... the switch to measures like canceling mass events designed to keep us from infecting each other. How long this will take is anybody's guess. But any organization still planning a conference of more than a few dozen people should really stop and consider the wisdom of that plan at this point.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
Sounds like the word "Pandemic" is getting the "AI" treatment: A lot of people have heard of it in the movies, the movies make it seem like if this word applies to your situation is an end of times scenario and people should be panicking and worrying. I don't think that's what the CDC and others want to get across. Much like (most) AI researchers and partitioners trying to downplay the fear mongering. As a species we really seem to love Existential crises.
rglover 7y ago
For those uncertain of how to treat this information, these are the razors I've used on myself the past few weeks: https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382
asciimike 7y ago
Fear-mongering aside, the article basically says "have some masks and be prepared for supply disruptions of critical things (medicine in particular)" which seems like generally a good idea? Maybe that's just the Boy Scout "be prepared" in me, but that feels like a low cost way to insulate yourself from the unexpected (pandemic or otherwise). I really enjoy "Doomsday prepping for less crazy folk", where this is discussed: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7 http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7
pmoriarty 7y ago
Earlier in the week I went to large university library. There were at least 5 people there severely coughing. Everyone else was sitting around like it was perfectly natural, no masks, no attempts at containment or isolation. Yes, we're in cold and flu season, so it could be just ordinary cold and flu (which is bad enough, as the flu kills lots of people as is, so spreading it is irresponsible at best), but the US is hardly doing any testing, so for all we know it could also be COVID-19. The amount of complacency around the US right now is stunning. People are just burying their heads in the sand and acting like it couldn't happen to them, relying on the media or government to tell them when to take it seriously, and both the mainstream media and the government flat failing to get people to prepare or take any measures to slow down the spread of this disease apart from telling them to wash their hands. The numbers coming out of China are not reliable, but given the numbers we do have (including non-China cases) it seems COVID-19 (aka SARS2) is far worse than the regular flu (for which at least we have a vaccine, though not nearly enough people take it). We should be doing everything we can to slow the spread of this disease, to buy some time for medicine to study it and come up with treatments, but instead outside of countries that are already obviously seriously affected people are acting like it doesn't exist. That kind of complacency provides the perfect breeding ground for this disease. For those of you who want to keep a closer watch on what's going on, see: https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/ (more lax moderation) https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/ (more strict moderation) https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ (science-oriented news and discussion)
sabujp 7y ago
what is happening with antivirals, why should these take years in crisis/pandemic situations? Would govts rather see mass hysteria and huge hit to economies rather than trying new vaccines?
bunchOfCucks 7y ago
How do we keep our dependencies updated over this outbreaks?
sabujp 7y ago
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?
greendestiny_re 7y ago
I loathe these kinds of clickbait headlines with all my being and will not give them my click under any circumstances. I can only imagine the writer twisting his/her nipples in expectation of all the extra traffic he/she will get from Hacker News.

290 points by aaron695 7y ago

joak 7y ago

In the preparation list, scaling ICU is most needed. A lot of people survived thank to intensive care units. There might not be enough to cope with the peak

jacquesm 7y ago
That 'might' is probably safely replace with 'are'. No country - even the richest - is prepared to deal with this many ICU cases. For instance in the UK (which has a very good healthcare system) there are about 6k ICU beds on a population of ~65 million. And then there is the risk of having ICU personnel become infected themselves. This is not a trivial challenge.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  In this case, I guess we have to just trust the people that go through the most competitive and intellectually demanding decade of school and professional training on the planet. They have the benefit of being on the front lines themselves, with the lives of themselves and their coworkers at risk. edit: if it helps avoid distractions, let me say it is obviously not a "benefit" and medical professionals are underappreciated heroes. They deal with infections disease every day, sometimes far more dangerous than covid-19. For them, the danger and planning isn't hypothetical like it is for a vast majority of the commenters here. I trust the medical community to plan for this appropriately more that I trust any other group of professionals.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That's not a benefit. And given that these people will try to do their jobs even when under=equipped and understaffed they are paid too little to begin with.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- exikyut 7y ago
  Perhaps that's why there's no point declaring a pandemic. If you do, some prepare, some panic, the panicking ones clog the ICU and the virus spreads like wildfire, the ICU can't keep up. If you don't, nobody prepares, everybody's sprung upon and taken by surprise, the stampedes oversubscribe ICU capacity in much the same way as above. At the end of the day I think the two variables all of this boils down to are infrastructure capacity limits and individual survival rates - and that no relevant models exist that can readily catalyze this specific set of circumstances with confidence. IIUC, what models do exist are not precise/disambiguating enough. So it all comes down to unresolvable clique interpretation. Officials can't work with that. :(
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    The difference is that we can recognize that containment has failed and start planning accordingly. I don't think any rational authority is at this point still arguing that this will be contained to within the borders of those countries now affected. So you might as well accept that we do indeed have a pandemic on our hands, which will have substantial economic impact but need not have a substantial toll in terms of lives lost. Waiting with that declaration is the same as what the authorities in Wuhan did initially: they hoped it would blow over. But viruses do not care about our politics. And if we do not take relatively drastic measures to stop community spreading then the impact will be much higher, both economic and in terms of lives.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      There's a lot of options between "ignoring it" and "declaring a global pandemic".
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Such as?
        maxerickson 7y ago
        Lots of examples in the news... Or do you somehow think there is currently no response?
Engineering-MD 7y ago
So scaling of ICU is already possible to a degree. In most hospitals in case of a major accident (eg terror isn’t attack with many injured) theatres are used as ICUs and all non emergency surgery is stopped. I suspect this will happen in these cases. The main issue is going to be sufficient nursing staffing (ICU requires 1:1 nurse:patient ratio usually).
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That trick doesn't work when you're talking about infectious diseases. You need to isolate your patients from each other to avoid re-infection and you need to stop rotating your ICU personnel between units or they themselves will become vectors for infection to people who would otherwise recover or may be mis-diagnosed.
  - Engineering-MD 7y ago
    Theatres are isolated from each other and often adjacent to the main ICU for this reason. So the trick should be effective.

contemporary343 7y ago

The lack of testing and testing capacity in the US is deeply alarming. They’ve only run 500 tests so far and criteria still require the patient to have recently traveled from Hubei! By comparison South Korea is running thousands of tests per day, which is why it is picking up so many cases. Absolutely unforgivable complacency and lack of transparency from CDC. There is almost certainly community spreading in the US that is going undetected. Once local cases finally start getting reported and tested in the US, there will be panic and a lot of the same irrational hoarding behavior and shortages observed elsewhere. It would be better if the CDC mentally prepared and educated the public for what is to come. Normalcy bias is very real, and people here are still culturally not ready for this reality.. Edit: Some background for the above comments: Epidemiologist at Harvard/ Brigham and Women’s responsible for virology testing there: https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1231503805159813121 https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/12315038051598131... “Reminder: As of today (Feb 23), the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.” “Now >10 days since CDC recalled kits w still no explanation for failure. Failure to share what went wrong hinders progress by all labs nationwide. Expeditious sharing of information is a must during epidemics. We say this to China and CDC should practice as well.” “Without more information, public health labs & well resourced hospital labs setting up CDC published assay in-house are held at complete standstill, unable to prepare for what will inevitably be concern for local transmission.” “Without rapid diagnostics ready to go, healthcare infrastructure may become rapidly inundated, even if cases turn out all negative - an abundance of caution will require quarantines until test rules out a case. Any backlog can quickly hamper hospitals.” “Additionally, recommendations for testing continue to tie in to recent travel to China or some contact. With cases in at least 28 countries, and local transmission increasing, testing and surveillance nationally must move forward” “We cannot know if there is coronavirus here in US if we are not testing. We must get the US up to speed for diagnostics and we need expeditious information sharing from @CDC to the lab testing community here and abroad.”

SkyMarshal 7y ago
FYI, the article you linked is the same one the OP links to. Did you mean to link something else?

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

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 everyone needs to have, and needs to get through, preferably without being accused of hysteria. > It is better to get through this OMG moment now rather than later. The preparedness tips in the article are generic enough, but worth skimming. Basically: - Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it - A couple months of non-perishable food storage is a good idea - Practice band washing and avoid touching your face. - Cross train employees at work to minimize the impact of absences.

carbocation 7y ago
I think there is a real need to understand how much of a vector our phone screens are. People touch their phones, wash their hands, and then touch their phones again.
- speedgoose 7y ago
  Yes, we should wash our phones too. It's very simple when the phone is waterproof.
  - dbcurtis 7y ago
    All the telephone sanitizers left on the B arc.
    - Freak_NL 7y ago
      That was another planet in another time. We (Earth) are the descendants of the B arc.
      - jacquesm 7y ago

patagonicus 7y ago

As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: What should I personally do to prepare? I'm living alone and have the ability to work remotely once the virus starts spreading here. My guess is mostly stocking up on food, which I've planned to do for a long time - sounds like a good motivation to finally prepare a list and get shopping. Should I bother with a N95 mask? I already have surgical masks that I used last year when I got a cold, but FWIU they only help protecting others when you're already sick. I can spare the money for a N95 mask even if I don't end up using it, but I'm not sure it'll actually help. Touching your face less and using knuckles to touch buttons as well as washing your hands more often are things I'm already working on. I guess I'll start carrying hand sanitizer when leaving the house. What else can/should I do?

popotamonga 7y ago
The mask is good to train to not touch the face.
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
> As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: Be careful. Comment sections tend to attract overconfident armchair experts rather than professional advice. This is a forum where technology people congregate, not virologists. You may get repeated advice about general prepper techniques, but in my experience the mainstream prepper types can be over focused on unlikely doomsday scenarios instead of more realistic extended economy-slowing scenarios. > What should I personally do to prepare? I suggest reading the linked article. This is exactly what the article is about.
- patagonicus 7y ago
  Of course, I'm not going to treat anything here as the absolute truth, but I'm looking for things I might have missed. I read the article, but other than keeping food and not touching your face etc. I didn't see much actionable advice for me. I'm not taking any prescription drugs, I don't have any family members close enough that I could treat them and handshakes are uncommon at my office.

jacquesm 7y ago

I think the WHO not declaring a pandemic is mostly wishful thinking on their part, the longer they wait the bigger the impact to the system. There are now 30 countries with known infections, a large number with likely undetected cases due to lack of local infrastructure. Impact to the economy and general panic are on the one side of the scale, there is still only a very small chance that they will be able to contain this.

pyk 7y ago

Recommendations for what individuals can do are buried but very practical: * Try to get a few extra months’ worth of prescription meds, if possible. * Think through now how we will take care of sick family members while trying not to get infected. Cross-train key staff at work so one person’s absence won’t derail our organization’s ability to function. * Practice touching our faces less. So how about a face-counter app like the step-counters so many of us use? * Replace handshakes with elbow-bumps (the “Ebola handshake”). * Start building harm-reduction habits like pushing elevator buttons with a knuckle instead of a fingertip.

popotamonga 7y ago
Is hand saniziter any good, for when you touched the wrong places?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Yes. Alcohol is sufficient, antibiotic treatments are useless against viruses. Wet wipes may also be convenient.
ianai 7y ago
Wish getting meds in advance were more accessible.
- carbocation 7y ago
  With few exceptions, you should be able to ask your MD for a 90 day supply with 3 refills (enough for 3 months immediately, with refills for the rest of the year).
  - ianai 7y ago
    Have to pay cash though if you’ve filed it recently.
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    But the exceptions are the things you really don’t want to be running out of. Which is extremely unfortunate and silly given that those who want to source these things illicitly will do so and those who follow the rules will suffer.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

We will see. The graphs of numbers of confirmed infected all seem to be bending down, but of course there's the possibility of biases like unreleased numbers and incomplete testing. I guess we will know in a few weeks which direction it is going to go. That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why most people should panic more than they do about flu season. Obviously it is a serious concern, but I think on the extremes there is a bit more alarmism than is warranted. Of course, those same sensational articles are going to be the ones that get upvoted on social media sites like this one. I remember when the avian influenza scare was on how many end of the world articles there were. Not that it wasn't a pressing concern but it seems like these types of situations capture the public's imagination and fears a little more than is justified by the facts on the ground. Also keep in mind that this message is coming from a "risk communication expert" who probably gets more exposure and therefore more business the more extreme their predictions are. Are they actually privy to any information or knowledge the other experts aren't aware of? Do they have any skin in the game at all when they make this prediction? Consider the source is all I'm saying.

popotamonga 7y ago
Most have older family no?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Sure. And we should be concerned for them. But I sense that many people are scared for their own lives and those of their children, which I feel is not really warranted. Maybe I'm generalizing my personal experience of my own mental state and who I've talked to, but that is what I've been exposed to. And of course the items discussed in the rest of my comment should modulate people's fears as well.
  - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    Regardless, it is always a good idea to have some backup supplies in case of a natural disaster. Whether it be an earthquake or pandemic or a storm.

bpfrh 7y ago

There is a video which compares that to other causes of deaths and other "pandemics": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU Please stop threating the virus as if we would all die. The things you have in the article should be the things you should do anyway: -No touching your face, is something you should stop anyway, as the flu will also kill you if you have bad luck and it is the same problem -Having certain things prepared in case there is a local emergency is a good idea anyway, but the recommandation at least in austria is about 10-14 days, so I hope most of the people already have that. -Supply chains won't break down because of such a virus, just as it didn't because of the swineflu and other things. -If supply chains break down, we have more than the coronavirus to worry about. edit: Pressed submit to soon

jacquesm 7y ago
No, we won't all die. But the impact will be substantial if the infections are not brought under control. Just like not everybody dies from many other diseases such as the flu. The difference here is that it also hits hard on otherwise healthy people and that healthcare workers are very much exposed to infection. If that front line does not hold it can get worse rapidly. Western countries with good medicine and infrastructure in place stand a chance of riding this out with just (possibly substantial) economic impact. Poor countries are in for a rough ride. Check out what is happening in Iran right now (which your linked video conveniently leaves out, possibly because it does not fit their narrative). Mortality rates around 2-5% for a pandemic are nothing to sneeze at, infection rates in close proximity are very high making it hard to care for those that are showing symptoms and put high density population centers at serious risk.
- bpfrh 7y ago
  You can't controll infections. You can try to fasttrack vaccinies, but you can't really stop a virus with such a transmission way from spreading. That is a problem but it is nothing new. Every few years we will have new diseases and unfortunately they will spread and kill people. The flu does that yearly. Does that suck? Yes Will it mean the end of the world or have a high impact on countries that have a robust healtcare system? No

leesec 7y ago

https://www.ready.gov/pandemic https://www.ready.gov/pandemic Basic things the US gov recommends in the case of a pandemic. I personally went out and got 2 weeks of supplies last night.

animalnewbie 7y ago
> 2 weeks What a noob Seriouslu though, if it strikes it'd be at least for a few months.
- leesec 7y ago
  I don't think the idea is to be sustainable for 2 weeks, it's to mitigate the stress on the supply line by staggering demand.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  Rationing. If it becomes a huge pandemic, at least I'll lose all that excess weight I've been wanting to shed.

est31 7y ago

> One horrible effect of this continued “stop the pandemic” daydream masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage-inducing measures by many countries against travelers from other countries, even their own citizens back from other countries. But possibly more horrible: The messaging is driving resources toward “stopping,” and away from the main potential benefit of containment – slowing the spread of the pandemic and thereby buying a little more time to prepare for what’s coming. I don't get this part of the article at all. What's exactly counter-productive about not allowing civilian travellers from affected provinces? That seems like the best method to slow the spread to me. The longer we can keep it away from anybody, the better, because the more time we have to come up with a vaccine or alternative ways to combat the disease. It's definitely possible that covid-19 will eventually reach all parts of the globe, but we should try everything possible to not let it reach those parts before we have come up with a vaccine.

bpfrh 7y ago
Closing borders isn't easy. Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
  - 7y ago

RobertRoberts 7y ago

Give me the numbers. People panic over everything imaginable. The only defense is logic. (which unfortunately is only a slow and long term defense) At this point I feel I am more likely to win the lottery and get struck my lightning twice before I get this virus. And even then, what is the death rate for healthy adults? It's amazing how easily people freak out these days.

jacquesm 7y ago
At this point, yes. But that's not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is what will happen over the next couple of weeks/months and to what degree we can avoid community spreading once the virus achieves a foothold, which - sorry - at this point is mostly a matter of time. Containment can be done early on and if done effectively can get you back into your 'no need to worry' mode. But once containment has failed you are in different territory and will have to play a much more complex game with more substantial impact. So your present day chances of contracting this in the next 24 hours are looking pretty good but your chances of contracting this in the next couple of months are substantially better than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning even once. Unless you live the life of a hermit. A vaccine would be quite handy, but we do not have one - yet , though that race is on - and even if we had it you still need to make it in quantity to be effective. A virus doesn't particularly care about whether you are able to think logically or not. It cares about contact between people and not killing its host too quickly. That way it improves its chances of spreading its genetic code.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  There is a lot I can do for my family and friends about helping them not be _irrationally_ afraid. Eliminating irrational fear is valuable. Spreading undue panic is reprehensible. What are the numbers? What is the risk equation? If we avoid these, then we are not speaking from knowledge but simply guessing and editorializing. Which tends towards panic, not rationality.
  - jacquesm 7y ago

velcro 7y ago

At the risk of going full doomsday mode (and besides stockpiling on food and masks) - lets say pandemic happens and some useful meds/vitamins do go out of stock - is there any advice what those are i.e. what kind of meds/vitamins would be practical to buy right now to help fight/slow COVID-19/infection in the future?

friendly_fren 7y ago
Fish antibiotics
- dijksterhuis 7y ago
  Antibiotics do not protect against viruses. This is a viral infection, not a bacterial one.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    It would be funny if it weren't sad.
  - solnyshok 7y ago
    when stocking up on meds, I would certainly include antibiotics (need prescription in my country). just as water and food do not fight coronavirus, antibiotics is simply a BFG one needs to have around against simpler infections when hospitals are overloaded and supply systems halt.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hu3 7y ago
I'm also interested in what drugs are commonly used on COVID-19 positive individuals.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
No, just food and meds for fever. I'm actually concerned there will be a shortage of food just because everybody is stocking up at a sudden panic, not necessarily because we actually end up with a huge pandemic (which might or might not happen at a later point in time). So for the first time in my life I'm thinking about actually doing this.

johnwheeler 7y ago

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 happens, you will be prepared and validated? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology-reveals-the-comforts-of-the-apocalypse/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology...

jacquesm 7y ago
I wonder how those questions would be answered by that doctor that tried to ring the alarm but was silenced.
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  Have you ever heard The expression "the exception that proves the rule"? Do you understand the meaning of the expression? It means that the rule is so good that exceptions to it are so rare that they seem significant. The prototypical examples are plane crashes.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    What do you think the chances are that I haven't heard about that? What do you think makes this an exception? There is a lot of politics happening around this theme. Can you trust the numbers put out by the authorities? Yes, within a margin of error due to unreported cases. The article is not at all in the fearmongering category. It appears to me quite level headed and simply acknowledges that we are past the point of containment, something that seems born out by the facts. To continue to deny that there is a pandemic will do a lot more harm than to accept that as a fact and act accordingly.
    - throwlaplace 7y ago
      >What do you think makes this an exception? Do you realize it's completely irrational to debate unknown unknowns? Any certainty comes from bias. So you think the doctor is the tip of the iceberg but you absolutely can't know how big the iceberg is. I think the doctor isn't and honestly I can't know that either. What I do have going for me is the biased perspective that on balance the world is being run adequately and if all of these subversive things were true that couldn't be the case. But I readily admit that that's circular and to the extent that it's not it's completely apriori.

nednar 7y ago

Well. Infection rate is going down already. Death rate is starting to slow down. Death rate was never higher than a common flu. Healing rate is increasing drastically, many heal without medical needs. So, should we really talk about a pandemic? A flu pandemic? Or has the virus changed in the last few days and I've missed it?

jacquesm 7y ago
Infection rate in China is going down and the way they keep changing their criteria makes it hard to find continuity in the numbers. Elsewhere it is still rising.
- nednar 7y ago
  Actually the changes in China are the reason why the number increased from 40k+ to 60k+ wasn't it?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    That caused the jump. But those cases were there all along, just not reported. Now they have - again - changed the criteria and made them more stringent resulting in an apparent drop in the number of cases.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Day-to-day percentages are the numbers to watch. They're coming down nicely: 0.8% vs. steady 20% (31-Jan - 4-Feb), as high as 64% in late January. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak#/media/File%3ANCoV20200209_Hubei_China_ROW_cases.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak#/... Rest-of-world is going the wrong way.
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tim333 7y ago
They got the rates down in Wuhan pretty much by confining everyone to their houses. If they have to so that globally it's not going to be pretty.

sbussard 7y ago

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stigma.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stig...

jpm_sd 7y ago

There is a lot of panicky misinformation out there, the WHO is calling it an "infodemic"! This Wikipedia article is doing a respectable job tracking some of the conspiracy theories and falsehoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_... Wikipedia also has a good summary of the overall state of things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...

jacquesm 7y ago
The way outlets such as The New York Post deal with this is absolutely irresponsible. They keep on re-posting total garbage that has been debunked multiple times and Google isn't helping by linking to it. This is also worth keeping an eye on: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html#map https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirme...
- timbit42 7y ago
  Perhaps they should be sued.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    It's owned by Murdoch and faithfully trumpets the party line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence Good luck suing them.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    It's not illegal to print lies. There has to be some other hook to hang a suit on other than the information being false.
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anonsivalley652 7y ago

PSA: spreading FUD and panic isn't helping anyone. The common flu is a "pandemic" every year, so should we freak out and buy 1000 kg of wheat while inconsistently not having any means of food production? Don't act out of fear; act out of reason, honesty and proportionality.

jopsen 7y ago
To be fair the common flu has a fatality rate around 0.01%, sars-cov-2 is around 2%. (Not sure there is much we can do in the long run though)
- dom96 7y ago
  Does it though? COVID-19 may actually have a much lower fatality rate as we are only getting reports of people that get symptoms, maybe that's only 10% of infections, maybe even less.
  - jopsen 7y ago
    Indeed, it could also be higher.. Wishful thinking doesn't really make it so :) (Even though I really wish it did) Whether it matters in practice I don't know.. how much can we really do ?
dredmorbius 7y ago
The common flu has a total case fatality rate of ~<10% to 0.1% that of 2019-nCoV, based on still-evolving data. A key point of actions to date has been an attempt to prevent 2019-nCoV from achieving pandemic status, so that it doesn't recur on an annual basis. If sufficiently widespread, and affecting a quarter to half the globe's population, we're looking at tens of millions of deaths. Contrast 12,000 - 61,000 deaths in the US from influenza (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html), and 291,000 - 641,000 worldwide (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/cdc-global-annual-flu-deaths-greater-than-previously-estimated.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/cdc-global-ann...). That's with effective vaccines and antivirual treatments, neither of which exist presently for 2019-nCoV. Preventing this coronavirus from becoming "just another flu" would be a Very Good Thing.

7532yahoogmail 7y ago

This article does not read like cogent CDC advice. It seems written in a more page-6 OP-ED style. Not sure this is the perspective we need.

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hu3 7y ago

This might sound tasteless but... What's the probable impact of such pandemy on the stock market? Any low hanging fruit to invest on? Any category of assets to stay away from?

jacquesm 7y ago
Travel stocks and travel related stocks down, health related stocks up would be my first guess.
- iooi 7y ago
  Not health insurance though, they could be in for massive liabilities should a lot of people start contracting.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Correct, I was thinking of Pharmaceuticals, should have been more precise.
el_cujo 7y ago
When things are uncertain, $VIX volatility index is a good bet. Maybe look into the most popular sellers/manufacturers of those surgical face masks, I'm sure those guys are making a killing right now.
mathgenius 7y ago
Remote work, zoom, etc.

DevX101 7y ago

This is one case where it's worth overreacting to. Biological epidemics are the only thing that has had the capacity to kill >50 million people in a year. In my risk classification hierarchy I put pandemics above nuclear war and wayyyy above terrorism. Yet we've spent trillions on the war on terror the past 20 years while there's no coordinated plan in the U.S. for this yet. If there's even a 2% chance of this going pandemic in the U.S. we should be allocating at least a billion with apolitical expert driven policy implementations to prevent spread. My jaw dropped when I read that the State Dept allowed infected Americans to fly with uninfected persons to the U.S. from Japan against the express recommendations of the CDC. This is what we're dealing with and I'm not optimistic.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
The plans the US already has for a flu pandemic should mostly carry over, no? COVID is probably worse than the seasonal flu, but it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do. By about 3-4 orders of magnitude, it is. The flu tends to kill about 60K people annually and most of those are old or very young or already had a compromised immune system. This is with the figures known so far and before there is a vaccine around 2-3%. If left unchecked it would overwhelm available health care capacity pretty quickly. The Chinese mis-handled this. But it would be a mistake to think that the west is super prepared for something like this compared to China. ICU capacity is limited, test capacity is limited. Our advantages are mostly in more transparent messaging and wealth. Those two will have a big impact on the economic and health care aspects but it may not be enough to drop this down to the level of yet another flu.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    A flu pandemic, in official terminology, is a different and more severe thing than the seasonal flu. The government regularly plans for such outbreaks and isn't afraid to spend a billion dollars when needed; for example, about 5 years ago they preemptively struck against bird flu by obliterating poultry farms at government expense. (And that one didn't even affect humans!) I don't think you're getting your numbers from an accurate source either. The flu kills a lot more than 6k people by every estimate I've seen.

dkarl 7y ago

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 it’s very possible, even likely, that it may eventually happen,” she said. “Our goal continues to be slowing the introduction of the virus into the U.S. This buys us more time to prepare communities for more cases and possibly sustained spread.'" Sooooo... today's edgy "the media and authorities are keeping us in the dark" blog post got scooped two days ago by the CDC and USA Today. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronavirus-who-contain-outbreak-iran-deaths-south-korea-cases/4829278002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronav...

Frost1x 7y ago
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. There is a lot of consideration regarding deaths cause by panic actions which are often estimated/modeled as well and if panic related deaths and side effects are higher than a current actual threat, it's often viewed that the best course of action is to suppress panic until warranted. So lack of pandemic talk doesn't inherently mean there is a legitimate reason not to panic, just that you're being given limited information. 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. The best course of action is to also take a holistic look at situations independent of these groups and make your own rational assessment of risks and impact. If you don't already have some non-perishable food supplies, you should have completely irrespective of this specific recent viral outbreak--its basic preparedness for emergencies. Some basic preparedness (I'm not talking bunkers and 2 year food cache craziness) are warranted in general for unpredictable disaster cases so these situations are good reminders for people to check their pantry for food, etc. just in case something awful was to happen, those supplies can help significantly.

swsieber 7y ago

To those commenting about infection rate going down: Do you take into account that China relaxed the requirements for diagnosing a case many days ago, and then made them strict again a couple of days ago? That's one sucky move that makes thing seem like they're slowing down. Or so you just look at graph and think everything is fine? Or is everything actually improving even taking the reporting changes into account?

thenaturalist 7y ago
Got any sources for these claims?
- swsieber 7y ago
  It's well documented in various day to day coverage feeds. The one I'm thinking about is CNN. I'm pretty sure its public information disseminated by China. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_20...

Ninjak8051 7y ago

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you're a virus researcher, every outbreak looks like a pandemic. The facts on the ground don't match the pandemic conclusion. There were two cases in all of Santa Clara County a few weeks ago, now there is one case.

carapace 7y ago
Got a link for that?
- Ninjak8051 7y ago
  https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-coronavirus/Pages/home.aspx https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-co...
  - carapace 7y ago
    Cheers!

scythe 7y ago

The biggest question to me is: do you really believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense? Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.

zuckluni 7y ago
it is weird. but anecdotally it seems like tropical climes less hard hit. India? low numbers could just be measuring detection ability instead of actual rates.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  There is an aspect with these viruses that is temperature sensitive that makes them favor colder regions.

m3kw9 7y ago

The WHO knows this and the pandamic button is also a early signal, they don’t press it when is “too late”. They have protocol and procedures after they declare it, and doing it too early will probably mess it up and cause confusion. This guy is living in his own world.

tapejek 7y ago

There's a lot of randomness in life

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aazaa 7y ago

> ... In most countries ... ordinary citizens have not been asked to prepare. Instead, they have been led to expect that their governments will keep the virus from their doors. This will be a painful but necessary shift. Realizing there's no way to stop the spread of coronavirus from "over there" to "over here," the best move individuals and groups can take is to forego large gatherings: > ... the switch to measures like canceling mass events designed to keep us from infecting each other. How long this will take is anybody's guess. But any organization still planning a conference of more than a few dozen people should really stop and consider the wisdom of that plan at this point.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

Sounds like the word "Pandemic" is getting the "AI" treatment: A lot of people have heard of it in the movies, the movies make it seem like if this word applies to your situation is an end of times scenario and people should be panicking and worrying. I don't think that's what the CDC and others want to get across. Much like (most) AI researchers and partitioners trying to downplay the fear mongering. As a species we really seem to love Existential crises.

rglover 7y ago

For those uncertain of how to treat this information, these are the razors I've used on myself the past few weeks: https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382 https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382

asciimike 7y ago

Fear-mongering aside, the article basically says "have some masks and be prepared for supply disruptions of critical things (medicine in particular)" which seems like generally a good idea? Maybe that's just the Boy Scout "be prepared" in me, but that feels like a low cost way to insulate yourself from the unexpected (pandemic or otherwise). I really enjoy "Doomsday prepping for less crazy folk", where this is discussed: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7 http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7

pmoriarty 7y ago

Earlier in the week I went to large university library. There were at least 5 people there severely coughing. Everyone else was sitting around like it was perfectly natural, no masks, no attempts at containment or isolation. Yes, we're in cold and flu season, so it could be just ordinary cold and flu (which is bad enough, as the flu kills lots of people as is, so spreading it is irresponsible at best), but the US is hardly doing any testing, so for all we know it could also be COVID-19. The amount of complacency around the US right now is stunning. People are just burying their heads in the sand and acting like it couldn't happen to them, relying on the media or government to tell them when to take it seriously, and both the mainstream media and the government flat failing to get people to prepare or take any measures to slow down the spread of this disease apart from telling them to wash their hands. The numbers coming out of China are not reliable, but given the numbers we do have (including non-China cases) it seems COVID-19 (aka SARS2) is far worse than the regular flu (for which at least we have a vaccine, though not nearly enough people take it). We should be doing everything we can to slow the spread of this disease, to buy some time for medicine to study it and come up with treatments, but instead outside of countries that are already obviously seriously affected people are acting like it doesn't exist. That kind of complacency provides the perfect breeding ground for this disease. For those of you who want to keep a closer watch on what's going on, see: https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/ https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/ (more lax moderation) https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/ (more strict moderation) https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ (science-oriented news and discussion)

sabujp 7y ago

what is happening with antivirals, why should these take years in crisis/pandemic situations? Would govts rather see mass hysteria and huge hit to economies rather than trying new vaccines?

bunchOfCucks 7y ago

How do we keep our dependencies updated over this outbreaks?

sabujp 7y ago

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?

greendestiny_re 7y ago

I loathe these kinds of clickbait headlines with all my being and will not give them my click under any circumstances. I can only imagine the writer twisting his/her nipples in expectation of all the extra traffic he/she will get from Hacker News.