7 ms·

If locking down a whole city - "cordon sanitaire", doesn't work, why did Italy just do so? Do they not have the same public health experts, or were they educate

by Leary 7y ago

If locking down a whole city - "cordon sanitaire", doesn't work, why did Italy just do so? Do they not have the same public health experts, or were they educated at different schools.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
What I heard is that it does not stop the virus, but it does slow the spread, which is key considering that we are currently in a flu season. If 40% of the population is going to get infected, it's better to deal with them over a couple years than have them show up all at once.
- carlmr 7y ago
  Or in guessing have patients who have the flu and covid concurrently.
- 98Windows 7y ago
  Hopefully it also gives other regions time to prepare
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  actually I wonder if that 40% still holds given the recent news that the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct (although I guess that doesn't mean it can't be transmitted by asymptomatics, only that we are back to uncertain) Then again, the world is not really structured to letting someone with light fever lay in bed for two weeks so maybe it's the same thing.
  - saurik 7y ago
    The references I have found for "the recent news that the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct" are all over a month old, while the references I find for asserting that new evidence is confirming asymptomatic transmission is in fact happening are only a week and a half old. Can you help disambiguate?
    - culturestate 7y ago
      For what it's worth, the WHO assesses the situation thusly: "The main way the disease spreads is through respiratory droplets expelled by someone who is coughing. The risk of catching COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms at all is very low. However, many people with COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms. This is particularly true at the early stages of the disease. It is therefore possible to catch COVID-19 from someone who has, for example, just a mild cough and does not feel ill." https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      I saw a an article yesterday (I believe it was linked here on HN) it was on some science site which said basically that everyone was on agreement that asymptomatic transmission happened because of this study that was done a while ago but it turned out the study had an improper methodology and the lady they thought had been asymptomatic (some Chinese lady visiting Berlin IIRC) had in fact had light fever and weakness. However this does not mean that asymptomatic transmission does not happen, the article said that the study had been supposed to be true for confirming what a lot of people had suspected. I can't remember the article, I didn't bookmark, also I'm not sure what computer it was on.
  - fierarul 7y ago
    > the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct (although I guess that doesn't mean it can't be transmitted by asymptomatics, only that we are back to uncertain) [citation needed]
chvid 7y ago
Of course it works. It is just very expensive.
- altcognito 7y ago
  And it does require a certain amount of discipline. So far Italy hasn't done great, we had trains of people trying to escape the quarantine, which is pretty much the opposite of what you want.
lbeltrame 7y ago
As a person who lives in the region just locked, I can tell you: the government is totally in panic for the increase in cases (about 50% of them found with aggressive screening with little or no clinical manifestations, FTR, although that does not mean the hospitals are not under pressure) and played the "Wuhan" card. How much this is enforceable remains to be seen. What's worse, there was already histeria caused by a leak of the document before it was completed (and people blaing the "lack of responsibility" for the leak, when such things have been going for more than a decade...), with people rushing to stations trying to get away. There is no clear communication (the same government ministers saying different things over the course of a day), there's the "emergency department" (Protezione Civile) that is not able to keep up, there's blaming the victim ("Act responsibly", "You must change your way of life", said from people who have never understood how normal people live and work). This has been a mess from a policy and communication perspective. Not surprising from a government that was elected "to give politicians a lesson", "to crack open the Parliament like canned tuna", and in the supreme name of "honesty" was built out of complete incompetents. I'm truly hoping that we'll get out of this... despite them.
- chvid 7y ago
  I am very curious about the lockdown in North Italy. Are you still going to work? Are supermarkets open? Are restaurants and cafes? Is public transport running?
  - J_cst 7y ago
    Yes; Yes; Yes but not in the weekend; Yes up to 6 p.m. Not sure. The official document enforcing the "red zone " for this morning is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y3Vl8VmAww2sGfFBSH9Vfa4fwQ8-hmAP/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y3Vl8VmAww2sGfFBSH9Vfa4fwQ8... It's in Italian, you may try a machine translation if needed
    - chvid 7y ago
      Ok. Let's hope that is enough to get the spread under control. It is still far from the lockdown in Wuhan where people are not allowed to leave their appartments and get food delivered by the authorities. I am in Copenhagen where the latest is that the government has adviced against gatherings of more than 1.000 people causing some football matches to be on TV only and some concerts to lower their number of attendees to 950.
tanilama 7y ago
Because it works. I think some experts are too fond of their theory, the beauty and sophistication of it, and forgets about the problem that it tries to solve. Lock-down does work, but only if you can execute it effectively. Apparently that is conditioned on individual countries. Some countries can't make it work, doesn't necessarily means others cannot.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> If locking down a whole city - "cordon sanitaire", doesn't work It's not as simple as "work or doesn't work". It slows down the spread, for a certain cost. Whether it's worth it or not is a matter of appreciation. Just like the speed limits. Decreasing speed limit saves lives, so it works, but do we want to do it? > Do they not have the same public health experts Ultimately, the final decision is taken by politicians, who answer to the public.
masklinn 7y ago
The main goal at this point is to flatten the curve, you might have the same number of patients but there's a difference between having them all at once and having them spread out over time, especially with respect to the healthcare system's (over)load.
- mrob 7y ago
  And measures taken against Covid-19 reduce the prevalence of other infectious diseases too, which further reduces load on the healthcare system.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
I feel that lately there is a lot of politics involved in these issues. China has taken drastic measures of quarantine and they seemed to have worked reasonably well: the bulk of the cases have remained in Wuhan and Hubei. That seems to created a political issue in the West with, I feel, a lot of reluctance to be seen praising China or copying China because the Chinese government is the boogeyman. Certainly in Europe it seems to me that governments are neither prepared not willing to take decisive measures, or (like Italy now) they start taking them late.
- endogui 7y ago
  If the West is going to eschew the Chinese route, then they need to embrace the Korean route: agressive testing and contact tracing, mandatory quarantines for suspected contacts, bans on public gatherings, massive PSA campaigns about hand washing and wearing face masks, providing a hotline people with symptoms can call so they don't walk into an ER and accidentally shut down their neighborhood hospital for two weeks. So far the West is striking out on most of these measures, either for lack of political will or for technical incompetence.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    This "Korean route" is what China has been doing (see WHO fact-finding mission). If calling it "Korean" rather than "Chinese" helps make it happen in the West so be it. But I fear that there is indeed no readiness or much will at the moment.
  - neffy 7y ago
    Your part of the West may not be doing that, but my part started doing all of that as soon as the first cases showed up. (Via the skiing holiday route from Italy.)
tus88 7y ago
Italy is extremely dysfunctional...so quite possibly.
chewz 7y ago
"cordon sanitaire" works - it worked well in China. But European politicians are way behind curve with this epidemics. Europe had been trying to keep the borders open while France and Germany forbade exporting masks, respirators and other equipment to Italy. They have closed borders way too late. Italy won't be able to build a hospital in a week, won't manufacture quarter million tests per day, won't make special squads that will trace every single person suspected of transmitting the disease. Won't enforce total lockdown. In my opinion Europe is in it for a long time with way too many victims.

by Leary 7y ago

If locking down a whole city - "cordon sanitaire", doesn't work, why did Italy just do so? Do they not have the same public health experts, or were they educated at different schools.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

What I heard is that it does not stop the virus, but it does slow the spread, which is key considering that we are currently in a flu season. If 40% of the population is going to get infected, it's better to deal with them over a couple years than have them show up all at once.

carlmr 7y ago
Or in guessing have patients who have the flu and covid concurrently.
98Windows 7y ago
Hopefully it also gives other regions time to prepare
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
actually I wonder if that 40% still holds given the recent news that the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct (although I guess that doesn't mean it can't be transmitted by asymptomatics, only that we are back to uncertain) Then again, the world is not really structured to letting someone with light fever lay in bed for two weeks so maybe it's the same thing.
- saurik 7y ago
  The references I have found for "the recent news that the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct" are all over a month old, while the references I find for asserting that new evidence is confirming asymptomatic transmission is in fact happening are only a week and a half old. Can you help disambiguate?
  - culturestate 7y ago
    For what it's worth, the WHO assesses the situation thusly: "The main way the disease spreads is through respiratory droplets expelled by someone who is coughing. The risk of catching COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms at all is very low. However, many people with COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms. This is particularly true at the early stages of the disease. It is therefore possible to catch COVID-19 from someone who has, for example, just a mild cough and does not feel ill." https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    I saw a an article yesterday (I believe it was linked here on HN) it was on some science site which said basically that everyone was on agreement that asymptomatic transmission happened because of this study that was done a while ago but it turned out the study had an improper methodology and the lady they thought had been asymptomatic (some Chinese lady visiting Berlin IIRC) had in fact had light fever and weakness. However this does not mean that asymptomatic transmission does not happen, the article said that the study had been supposed to be true for confirming what a lot of people had suspected. I can't remember the article, I didn't bookmark, also I'm not sure what computer it was on.
- fierarul 7y ago
  > the study showing that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic people wasn't correct (although I guess that doesn't mean it can't be transmitted by asymptomatics, only that we are back to uncertain) [citation needed]

chvid 7y ago

Of course it works. It is just very expensive.

altcognito 7y ago
And it does require a certain amount of discipline. So far Italy hasn't done great, we had trains of people trying to escape the quarantine, which is pretty much the opposite of what you want.

lbeltrame 7y ago

As a person who lives in the region just locked, I can tell you: the government is totally in panic for the increase in cases (about 50% of them found with aggressive screening with little or no clinical manifestations, FTR, although that does not mean the hospitals are not under pressure) and played the "Wuhan" card. How much this is enforceable remains to be seen. What's worse, there was already histeria caused by a leak of the document before it was completed (and people blaing the "lack of responsibility" for the leak, when such things have been going for more than a decade...), with people rushing to stations trying to get away. There is no clear communication (the same government ministers saying different things over the course of a day), there's the "emergency department" (Protezione Civile) that is not able to keep up, there's blaming the victim ("Act responsibly", "You must change your way of life", said from people who have never understood how normal people live and work). This has been a mess from a policy and communication perspective. Not surprising from a government that was elected "to give politicians a lesson", "to crack open the Parliament like canned tuna", and in the supreme name of "honesty" was built out of complete incompetents. I'm truly hoping that we'll get out of this... despite them.

chvid 7y ago
I am very curious about the lockdown in North Italy. Are you still going to work? Are supermarkets open? Are restaurants and cafes? Is public transport running?
- J_cst 7y ago
  Yes; Yes; Yes but not in the weekend; Yes up to 6 p.m. Not sure. The official document enforcing the "red zone " for this morning is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y3Vl8VmAww2sGfFBSH9Vfa4fwQ8-hmAP/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y3Vl8VmAww2sGfFBSH9Vfa4fwQ8... It's in Italian, you may try a machine translation if needed
  - chvid 7y ago
    Ok. Let's hope that is enough to get the spread under control. It is still far from the lockdown in Wuhan where people are not allowed to leave their appartments and get food delivered by the authorities. I am in Copenhagen where the latest is that the government has adviced against gatherings of more than 1.000 people causing some football matches to be on TV only and some concerts to lower their number of attendees to 950.

tanilama 7y ago

Because it works. I think some experts are too fond of their theory, the beauty and sophistication of it, and forgets about the problem that it tries to solve. Lock-down does work, but only if you can execute it effectively. Apparently that is conditioned on individual countries. Some countries can't make it work, doesn't necessarily means others cannot.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> If locking down a whole city - "cordon sanitaire", doesn't work It's not as simple as "work or doesn't work". It slows down the spread, for a certain cost. Whether it's worth it or not is a matter of appreciation. Just like the speed limits. Decreasing speed limit saves lives, so it works, but do we want to do it? > Do they not have the same public health experts Ultimately, the final decision is taken by politicians, who answer to the public.

masklinn 7y ago

The main goal at this point is to flatten the curve, you might have the same number of patients but there's a difference between having them all at once and having them spread out over time, especially with respect to the healthcare system's (over)load.

mrob 7y ago
And measures taken against Covid-19 reduce the prevalence of other infectious diseases too, which further reduces load on the healthcare system.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

I feel that lately there is a lot of politics involved in these issues. China has taken drastic measures of quarantine and they seemed to have worked reasonably well: the bulk of the cases have remained in Wuhan and Hubei. That seems to created a political issue in the West with, I feel, a lot of reluctance to be seen praising China or copying China because the Chinese government is the boogeyman. Certainly in Europe it seems to me that governments are neither prepared not willing to take decisive measures, or (like Italy now) they start taking them late.

endogui 7y ago
If the West is going to eschew the Chinese route, then they need to embrace the Korean route: agressive testing and contact tracing, mandatory quarantines for suspected contacts, bans on public gatherings, massive PSA campaigns about hand washing and wearing face masks, providing a hotline people with symptoms can call so they don't walk into an ER and accidentally shut down their neighborhood hospital for two weeks. So far the West is striking out on most of these measures, either for lack of political will or for technical incompetence.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  This "Korean route" is what China has been doing (see WHO fact-finding mission). If calling it "Korean" rather than "Chinese" helps make it happen in the West so be it. But I fear that there is indeed no readiness or much will at the moment.
- neffy 7y ago
  Your part of the West may not be doing that, but my part started doing all of that as soon as the first cases showed up. (Via the skiing holiday route from Italy.)

tus88 7y ago

Italy is extremely dysfunctional...so quite possibly.

chewz 7y ago

"cordon sanitaire" works - it worked well in China. But European politicians are way behind curve with this epidemics. Europe had been trying to keep the borders open while France and Germany forbade exporting masks, respirators and other equipment to Italy. They have closed borders way too late. Italy won't be able to build a hospital in a week, won't manufacture quarter million tests per day, won't make special squads that will trace every single person suspected of transmitting the disease. Won't enforce total lockdown. In my opinion Europe is in it for a long time with way too many victims.