14 ms·

I do have one question and I'm asking this seriously, not to start an argument or to attack someone. I also saw this here in a lot of the posts about covid-19.

• marcosdumay 7y ago
  > We have numbers, but every time people tend to ignore them or say we should not trust the numbers, take them with a grain of salt Well, the numbers are very wrong. That's known. There are plenty of large factors with unknown impacts pushing the numbers both ways. But there are about as many people saying "it's not that large a problem" as there are saying "this is way worse"... What is just natural when we don't have reliable numbers.
• dpau 7y ago
  ever since the beginning of this crisis, countries have been either hiding or underreporting the numbers. lack of adequate testing means that clusters are discovered late, after the virus has had a chance to spread. it's not so much a thirst for disaster as it is a thirst for knowledge so that we can better prepare ourselves. even in the US, the CDC seems at odds with the president as to the severity of the virus and its spread. if anything, it's governments that are "aligning the numbers" so as to avoid mass panic, downturns in markets, etc.
  • logjammin 7y ago
    What evidence can you point to of this "hiding"? Lack of adequate testing is a factor, I Grant you, and a big one -- but clusters are discovered late because it now appears that people can shed virus when they're not symptomatic.
    • dpau 7y ago
      Perhaps the most notorious happened at the very beginning, search for Li Wenliang
• selectstatement 7y ago
  Agreed. I think we all know at this point that the numbers are not perfect, and that's OK. Also we all need to recognize the hysteria that seems to be ratcheting way up this week.
• 99052882514569 7y ago
  I don't think that calling the numbers unreliable implies incompetence or even worse, malice, on the part of the reporting country. It's simply difficult as shit to come up with reliable stats on something very new in the middle of an outbreak. Think of how many people aren't even noticing that they have the virus, and thus will never be counted as infected. This is just as true in Milan or California as it is in Wuhan. All numbers are noisy and subject to substantial revision. It is, however, quite clear that this virus is not as serious as SARS or especially MERS. It can still kill millions if it infects hundreds of millions though, so that's just a comment on whether you, individually, should worry about getting it.
  • arcticfox 7y ago
    > It is, however, quite clear that this virus is not as serious as SARS or especially MERS. I know that the 'severity' of the virus often refers to how severe it is once you have it, but in the context of new viruses and pandemics, IMO 'severity' should refer to overall potential impact. Covid-19 blows SARS/MERS out of the water on that front given its different transmission profile and already-established footholds.
• nik_s 7y ago
  If my original post gave off the impression of being conspiracy-theory-driven, I want to apologize, because that wasn't the intent. My original post aimed at clarifying that death rates in exponentially spreading diseases that have a lag between infection and possible recovery and death is a tricky topic, and that the numbers generally reported seem to not take this nuance into account. I think collecting accurate data in the middle of a crisis is incredibly difficult for a host of reasons, none of which need to originate from ill intent. Test kits may be missing, data may be collected differently, methodologies for evaluating "who is infected" and "who has recovered" may differ between countries, patients' records might just not be a top priority for hospital staff, ...
  • billfruit 7y ago
    Yet your post seemed to hint at willful manipulation of data, which isn't something for which there is reliable concrete evidence for, and which in my view is adding to the paranoia. The line of thinking for eg:, Chinese numbers are untrustworthy, WHO numbers are untrustworthy etc, is very frequently echoed by the western press, and even here in HN.
    • saber6 7y ago
      I can’t comment about the Chinese, but if you trust WHO, given who runs it, I also have a bridge to sell you.
    • nik_s 7y ago
      I think you're referring specifically to the "political and cultural pressure in China" part of my original post. I was basing this on reporting from the New York Times [1] of the original outbreak. It very well might be that the reporting has improved since then, but I do think that there is evidence to say that there was manipulation of data, or at least a very strong incentive to under-report cases initially. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus.html?showTranscript=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/podcasts/the-daily/corona...
    • mensetmanusman 7y ago
      People’s mistrust of China data stems from the known manipulation of economic indicators by Chinese authorities. The running assumption is that this behavior would apply to virus outbreak data, but this is unproven.
• duxup 7y ago
  I think being skeptical of numbers from China is reasonable. Historically speaking even inside China it is a pretty well known quantity (even openly spoken of in China) that local governments are hesitant to give bad news to the central government until it is too late and so on. The result usually is the central government is behind the ball dealing in broad (sometimes less than useful) strokes until things are resolved. As far as any conclusions you can draw such as "well it must be much worse". I think that is pure speculation. Specific speculation that isn't founded in much and IMO not helpful. The scale and wonkyness of China's efforts could be because this is a very dangerous / misunderstood disease ... or the massive efforts simply a byproduct if poor internal information / a product of the political nature of China.. panic by their leadership (historically they're very wary of any unrest of their own population), or both. Skepticism of some information from countries with proven track records of not being forthcoming / have had issues with accurate information is reasonable. Conclusions based in nothing, not so much.
  • bluGill 7y ago
    I think China has reached a tipping point in this one though and local governments are giving the information they have to the central government. When this started hiding things was a reasonable policy for the local governments, but now that this has so much international attention I think it is clear to everybody in local governments that being caught hiding anything is worse than whatever good could come out of the best case of hiding something. Do not mistake the above for local governments having good information to give. I'm also not sure if China is giving everything out either publicly or internationally. Of course I'm just an outside observer with no inside knowledge making what I think are reasonable guesses.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• cm2187 7y ago
  I agree, there is a doomer mentality that applies to everything (climate change, geopolitical tensions, etc) and which the media are more than happy to fuel to sell paper and commercials.
  • arcticfox 7y ago
    While I agree with the overall sentiment, in the context of a novel pandemic, downplaying the risks is far worse than overplaying them IMO.
    • generalpass 7y ago
      > While I agree with the overall sentiment, in the context of a novel pandemic, downplaying the risks is far worse than overplaying them IMO. Probably true, as long as you're not one of the ones rounded up and sent to prison, er, I mean, quarantine.
      • cm2187 7y ago
        Or the people who will lose their job because of the economic impact of an unnecessary panic.
        • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
          Unfortunately, sickness and death also have an economic impact. I have no idea how to balance those two forces.
    • bsaul 7y ago
      The problem with that reasonning is that it applies to pretty much every "risk", without consideration of quality. What you're saying is "better safe than sorry". I'm sure you wouldn't suggest putting everybody systematically in quarantine for a flu epidemic, every year, makes a lot of sense. Yet the death rates for influenza is much higher than coronavirus atm.. edit: much lower -> much higher
    • mythrwy 7y ago
• scarmig 7y ago
  My reasoning for thinking this is worthy of panic: I recently moved to China. The PRC has good numbers (internally) and knows more about COVID-19's severity and risk profile than anyone else. And, on the ground, the PRC is putting the entire country on what amounts to wartime footing (in a way that's unimaginable to most HN readers), to the point that it's willing to sacrifice a quarter or more worth of economic production because the alternative is potentially worse. It's managed to be successfully contained here (it's been some time since I saw any corpses ferried out of my apartment complex), but Western countries, let alone developing countries, simply lack the state capacity to respond as decisively and effectively as China has. I'm hoping Spring ends up curtailing the pandemic; letting warmer temperatures do their work requires slowing down the virus' spread as much as possible, and that requires significant disruptions to people's everyday lives.
  • DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    EDIT: --- As the replies to my comment indicate I have totally misunderstood the paper. And there IS in fact evidence that the temperature changes the transmission. Sorry my bad. leaving the rest as is --- > I'm hoping Spring ends up curtailing the pandemic; letting warmer temperatures do their work requires slowing down the virus' spread as much as possible, and that requires significant disruptions to people's everyday lives. from this paper "Temperature significant change COVID-19 Transmission in 429 cities": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v... > There is no evidence supporting that temperature changes COVID-19 transmission. Methods: We collected the cumulative number of confirmed cases of all cities and regions affected by COVID-19 in the world from January 20 to February 4, 2020, and calculated the daily means of the average, minimum and maximum temperatures in January. .... EDIT: I'm also very worried about this point you mention: > the PRC is putting the entire country on what amounts to wartime footing (in a way that's unimaginable to most HN readers), the effect of isolation/quarantine can have massive psychological damage and after-effects (especially on kids), such as PTSD, depression, ... years after the virus is gone: "The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30460-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Very much underrated. There isn't enough dialogue right now with the public about what they are likely to expect.
• thom 7y ago
  What level of expected infections and deaths would justify their panic, and how much do your estimates differ from those numbers?
• pjc50 7y ago
  There does seem to be a section of punditry and commentators, internet and traditional media, who are absolutely salivating for a big dramatic disaster. A lot of people seem to enjoy the thought of doom. It's as if everyone's joined a doomsday cult, like the Millenium.
  • mercer 7y ago
    As well as the opposite, the "it's just a flu" person, which honestly I've not given much thought before and am morbidly fascinated by.
• zamalek 7y ago
  COVID-19 is uniquely terrifying because it is so hard to quarantine. The fatality rate also doesn't factor in the debilitation rate: survivors aren't walking away from this thing unscathed - you have to worry for yourself also. A reasonable amount of panic is healthy, panic is an emotion that we experience for very good evolutionary reasons. Fight or flight often overidentifies threats, but it can underidentify them (e.g. America's official response). Conspiracy theories aside.
• mrandish 7y ago
  > It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere Yes, I see the same effect skewing media and popular perception. It's an artifact of natural selection biasing human responses to perceived potential danger. It slightly enhanced survival rates to incorrectly fear every rustling bush hid a hungry tiger than correctly calculate it was almost certainly a squirrel. Hence, every historical era is overrun with politicians, pundits, journalists and activists incentivized to leverage this innate bias in service of their cause. After a few decades of observing this in action, my best model is to assume everyone has some bias driven by their background, perspective and incentives - even if it's entirely unconscious. Then it's just a matter of determining direction and degree to apply a debiasing adjustment. Journalists tend to sensationalize, whether overtly or merely through curation ("the bad thing isn't so bad" doesn't get clicks). Politicians either over or underplay threats depending on the context. Exaggerating the Huawei threat to support tariff policy or minimizing COVID-19 to reduce negative economic perceptions in an election year. In my estimation, some sources, such as the CDC, are less biased not necessarily because they lack biasing incentives but often due to those incentives having opposite signs and offsetting each other. For example, the senior CDC administrators who control public statements (as opposed to the medical and science staff doing the work). Those administrators are most likely good people trying to do a very tough job as well as they can. However, they also live in a world of budget battles, congressional hearings, and the media blame-game. In the underplay direction, a public panic makes things worse and leads to post hoc blame game ("why wasn't the CDC ready?"). In the overplay direction, people not taking the threat seriously means they don't cancel large events or reduce airplane travel and it spreads faster.
• ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  The problem is in the healthcare capacities. I live in a country with ~2mio people. If you're patient zero here, you get a comfy private room, your own bed, 5 doctors, 10 nurses, whole research teams, respirators, priority with all the tests, examinations, etc. Same for patient 1, 2, 3. If 200k people get infected (10% of population), and only 10% of those need extra medical care, that's 20.000 people. We don't have that many hospital beds, doctors, respirators.. probably not even enough medicine (some test have shown that malaria medicine and aids medicine works on some people). You get thrown into an army tent or a school gym with many more ill people, and you get almost zero resources. Need a respirator? Sorry, only 5 available at that location, and are used on other people.. or kids.. or pregnant women... and you can just slowly suffocate. China built a hospital in a couple of days. I don't think there's a country in EU that can do anything remotely fast as that.. we probably need 10 days just to discuss where to put the emergency tents, and even then we'd get protesters not wanting them there. Same probably in the USA. We also don't have companies making respirators and other medical equipment. Large countries who do, are making them for their own hospitals (if they're not stuck in paperpushing hell with the government). Basically, if there's a wide-spread epidemic, a lot of people will get really really fscked.
  • ekianjo 7y ago
    Spot on. Medical facilities are not up to support in times of widespread epidemics. Which means most people would not get any treatment and you should expect mortality rate to increase over time as it becomes more widespread.
    • scarmig 7y ago
      You can see this in provincial level mortality rates: at low infection concentrations, it's a more deadly than flu but nothing insane. But once resources are swamped (e.g. in Hubei), the mortality jumps an order of magnitude.
      • SgtBastard 7y ago
        Thank you. I have this constant argument with those that want to shut borders and blow up our economy as a result: that if you break the stats down on Hubei vs everywhere else, it’s a very different picture of the virulence and mortality rates. Hubei’s mortality rate for literally everything at the moment would expected to be higher than anywhere else given how stretched their resources are.
• lurquer 7y ago
  >It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere, and this is not something that I would expect from Hackernews. Being somewhat of a cynic, it doesn't surprise me to see it here. HackerNews posters apparently love thinking about global catastophes and societal discontinuities. Read the breathless posts warning of dire consequences arising from the tariffs on in China 24 months or so ago. The flurry of horrific predictions arising as a result of Brexit. The neverending hysteria about CO2, ocean warming, ocean acidification, the mass-extinction insects, etc.... Most posts to hackernews come from workers who are bored... they turn to HackerNews to read interesting articles. And, there is nothing more interesting than fantasizing about some event that would give them a reason not to go work the next day. It's a normal thing to do... back in my day, it was nuclear strikes and Soviet invasions ( "wolverines!!"). Nowadays it's viruses and CO2... (a poor substitute, in my opinion, for the much cooler angst about nuclear winter and the like... but, to each their own.) And, whatever the cause celebre may be at the time, you can always count on posters getting really ticked off at skeptics and responding along the lines of, "You just don't get it! The science is clear! This time it's different!"
  • minikites 7y ago
    Complex society is more fragile than you think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
  • chimprich 7y ago
    Conversely, there's a group of people who like to show off how sensible and level-headed they are by being able to rise above the concerns of other people. They do this by handwaving away problems rather than engaging with the evidence. The threat of nuclear war was (and is) real. The mass reduction of insects is well-documented. The threat of rising CO2 levels is one of the most-studied phenomena in science. > "You just don't get it! The science is clear! This time it's different!" Actually, it's not necessarily different. There are historical precedents for viral pandemics. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed 50–100 million people. That doesn't mean this outbreak will be on the same scale, but it's not unreasonable to be concerned.
• jbay808 7y ago
  There's a difference between "my honest prediction is that this is legitimately going to get way worse, because of X, Y, and Z", and "I feel a psychological need to pretend that this small problem is much bigger than the information makes it seem, because I like drama". I've been watching Canada's medical system's near-total non-reaction to this situation. Basically the measures they have taken are to caution people not to worry to much or discriminate against Chinese people. Based on that, our throughput of travellers, and the fact that asking people if they've been in Wuhan in the last two weeks is no longer good enough to rule out cases, it's obvious that it's just a matter of time before Canada has a serious outbreak. When I crossed the US border recently, all they asked me was whether or not I've been to China. I think it's just realistic to acknowledge that at some point we lose the containment game, and that's very likely happened already. Maybe the long term consequence is a flu season that is twice as lethal. Or maybe there will be a very effective vaccine that eraducates the virus next year. Who knows.
• treespace89 7y ago
  To me I simply have never seen this before. I remember SARS, and H1N1. There was a big media blitz about both, but that was it. With this I am seeing cities / countries on lockdown. I have friends that can't go home in Italy because of the lockdown. My own government (Canada) has asked us to prepare for pandemic, and we only have a handful of cases ?!?
• jsight 7y ago
  The most bizarre thing to me is that people are taking the numbers with a grain of salt and assuming this means the real numbers are worse. Deaths are terrible, but they are also really easy to count. Hospitalizations are terrible, but they are only marginally harder to count correctly. Most of the difficulty is that there is some evidence of undercounting at this stage, but it isn't very strong. Non-hospitalizations of untested citizens with matching symptoms are practically impossible to count accurately. Each step leads to more error, but these errors may actually imply reduced severity rather than greater severity. Its bad, to be sure, but seriously, there is too much public panic in the air right now.
• 09bjb 7y ago
  > It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere People like to pretend like the world is causing their internal state, that their mood is an inevitable product of the environment they're in. I feel catastrophic, disastrous, and look at all the evidence that the world is headed for a cliff! True, we're embedded in our world, but a peaceful person doesn't spend as much time focusing on Eschatology. Life is confirmation bias. Numbers can help, I suppose.
  • polishdude20 7y ago
    Exactly this. It feels like this day and age people are trying to blame everything around them for their troubles. They can't bare to look at themselves and think "maybe I need to change?"
• lake_vincent 7y ago
  I'll be the guy. Yeah, I do want a pandemic. My reasons are my reasons, but a very dark part of me is incredibly excited about the prospect of millions of people dying. Just like how wildfires actually lead to healthier and more robust forests in the long-term, I think a real pandemic could be the bitter medicine we all need. For context: I am a millenial. As the status quo currently stands, I have absolutely NO hope that I will have an enjoyable life in the long term. The world will be a much bleaker, hostile place by the time I am nearing retirement age. It's not a world I want to raise kids in, and if it weren't for my loved ones, I would probably just check out once I get bored and things get REALLY bad - maybe in my mid 40s or thereabouts. And without a major global incident that completely alters the status quo, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that I'm wrong. The writing has been on the wall for decades, and the Old Guard has done nothing about it. Covid is only really deadly for older/sick people? Good. Take them. I'll happily trade them for a future that I actually want to live for.
  • sunpar 7y ago
    It's possible, and I would venture very likely, that the problem is within you and only you, and not the world at large. The large part of the rest of us would love for people everywhere to continue to live and thrive.
  • kian 7y ago
    This is pretty horrific. Wishing for the deaths of millions? Would you also wish it upon your friends and family that have respiratory disorders, or are on immunosuppressants? Plenty of Millenials will die as well. And the old people who will die will most likely not be the rich, powerful, and well-cared for. You should take a long look in the mirror and consider whether the joy you are feeling is at the changing to a new world order better for you and yours, or just a desire to see millions suffer, regardless of what they have done to you.
• tathougies 7y ago
  It's because modern life is exceptionally easy. Anyway, it's good for the markets anyway.
• dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > We have numbers, but every time people tend to ignore them or say we should not trust the numbers, take them with a grain of salt, "I think this is way worse, it's going to get way worse" and so on. I think everyone notices it now because they all say the same thing and in the same manner. It's always, the numbers can't be trusted ( China/WHO/CDC/EU/UN/US/etc ) followed by an "anecdote" and/or their own made up numbers and without fail an intentionally misleading and false mortality/fatality rate. Every covid and even non-covid thread has the exact same fearmongering. Whatever the case, it's definitely intentional and feels a tad bit organized.
• mercer 7y ago
  I think that it's possible, but unlikely, that this will 'blow over' and turn out to be a tempest in a teacup. But I also think that it is extremely worrying that this 'HN/internet hysteria' has so rapidly become part of the national conversation. Just yesterday we (NL) had a prime-time broadcast about this. The way I see it, it doesn't matter whether the facts align with the response. Clearly this is treated as more than just another virus, this will have effects on our global economy and compounded by a general sense of unease about there not being some big recession, it's going to have effects and they will suck. Practically speaking, it means that I stock up on shit so at the very best I don't need to wait in line for things. More hypothetically speaking, I'm thinking of our economy collapsing to some extent, because either it was due to anyways, or because it will because of a pandemic, or because it will because of everyone thinking there's a pandemic even when it's not that bad and <insert definition of pandemic> is not a cause for panic. We're in panic mode, and I'm surprised and worried that this is not just an 'internet thing'.
• real-hacker 7y ago
  Currently, it's better to overestimate the gravity of the situation, than to underestimate. Better to err on the right side. Panic is bad, but at least you get prepared.