4 ms·

Ok, is now a good time to start taking this seriously? Spanish Flu had an R0 of about 2[1]. Current published estimates for 2019-ncov are 2.3-3.8 for this pape

Ok, is now a good time to start taking this seriously? Spanish Flu had an R0 of about 2[1]. Current published estimates for 2019-ncov are 2.3-3.8 for this paper [1] and there's another floating around which gets as high as 6-8. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404/ 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122

hef19898 7y ago
What makes you think it isn't taken seriously?
- allovernow 7y ago
  How about the fact that it wasn't priced into the markets until today. This information has been around for weeks.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    SO stock markets are the measure if a pandemic is taken seriously or not. I wuld rther say that the measrues being taken are good enough for the mrkets to not worry. Or that markets simply don't care. But than again, WiseTech Global, a logistics software company, lost quite some value over this. Kind of rediculous but still.
- 2a0c40 7y ago
  There are almost no travel restrictions in place
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    If you can show a model for a travel restriction that would actually help to prevent the spread, I'd love to see it. The travel restrictions are in place for political reasons, not well-evidenced public health reasons.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Well, Italy just closed of roughly 50k people. And didn't airlines limit flights to China? What do you expect, a complete, worldwide shutdown of travel? Even between, say, Canada and Greenland?
_-___________-_ 7y ago
And there are others that are much lower. It's also worth remembering that given many cases are asymptomatic, or are so mild that people may not see a doctor, the number of cases does not accurately reflect the number of infected people. So these mortality rates should not be read as an indicator of your chance of dying if you are infected with the virus. One reason that many people don't seem to be "taking this seriously" is because the narrative of people who keep fearmongering about COVID-19 just doesn't make sense. There are still direct flights from China to many countries, and they're not empty. Screening is mostly based on taking people's temperature with handheld devices that have twice registered my temperature as 32C (no, I wasn't rushed to a hospital). Where more reliable screening has been implemented, there have been many documented failures. Many quarantine protocols are voluntary / honour-based. People from cruise ships where they were exposed to others who were infected have dispersed worldwide with varying levels of monitoring (in some cases none). If this thing was half as deadly and easily-spread as continues to be claimed on the Internet, 200 new cases in Italy wouldn't be international news at this point.
- allovernow 7y ago
  Are they consistent with China's unprecedented response?
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    I assume you're being facetious, but regardless of early failings and a lack of transparency, it's hard to imagine any other country imposing a quarantine on a city the size of Wuhan in the manner they have, or building hospitals at the rate they have.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      I thought this article was interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coron... Particularly the point about "Why build hospitals?" Because in strongly centralized, command political systems, grand projects are one of the few things done well. And so crisis management becomes "What can we build, to show we're taking it seriously?"

hef19898 7y ago

What makes you think it isn't taken seriously?

allovernow 7y ago
How about the fact that it wasn't priced into the markets until today. This information has been around for weeks.
- hef19898 7y ago
  SO stock markets are the measure if a pandemic is taken seriously or not. I wuld rther say that the measrues being taken are good enough for the mrkets to not worry. Or that markets simply don't care. But than again, WiseTech Global, a logistics software company, lost quite some value over this. Kind of rediculous but still.
2a0c40 7y ago
There are almost no travel restrictions in place
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  If you can show a model for a travel restriction that would actually help to prevent the spread, I'd love to see it. The travel restrictions are in place for political reasons, not well-evidenced public health reasons.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Well, Italy just closed of roughly 50k people. And didn't airlines limit flights to China? What do you expect, a complete, worldwide shutdown of travel? Even between, say, Canada and Greenland?

_-___________-_ 7y ago

And there are others that are much lower. It's also worth remembering that given many cases are asymptomatic, or are so mild that people may not see a doctor, the number of cases does not accurately reflect the number of infected people. So these mortality rates should not be read as an indicator of your chance of dying if you are infected with the virus. One reason that many people don't seem to be "taking this seriously" is because the narrative of people who keep fearmongering about COVID-19 just doesn't make sense. There are still direct flights from China to many countries, and they're not empty. Screening is mostly based on taking people's temperature with handheld devices that have twice registered my temperature as 32C (no, I wasn't rushed to a hospital). Where more reliable screening has been implemented, there have been many documented failures. Many quarantine protocols are voluntary / honour-based. People from cruise ships where they were exposed to others who were infected have dispersed worldwide with varying levels of monitoring (in some cases none). If this thing was half as deadly and easily-spread as continues to be claimed on the Internet, 200 new cases in Italy wouldn't be international news at this point.

allovernow 7y ago
Are they consistent with China's unprecedented response?
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  I assume you're being facetious, but regardless of early failings and a lack of transparency, it's hard to imagine any other country imposing a quarantine on a city the size of Wuhan in the manner they have, or building hospitals at the rate they have.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I thought this article was interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coron... Particularly the point about "Why build hospitals?" Because in strongly centralized, command political systems, grand projects are one of the few things done well. And so crisis management becomes "What can we build, to show we're taking it seriously?"