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But Italy did not start earlier; France and Germany did. Here's an animated map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outb

But Italy did not start earlier; France and Germany did. Here's an animated map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak_in_March_2020#/media/File%3ACOVID-19-outbreak-timeline.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932... So I ask again, if this is such a super-pandemic, why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures and earlier outbreaks than Italy? And why do you expect them to get dramatically worse over the next week?

yongjik 7y ago
Germany and France now have 1,151 and 1,209 patients, with latest daily increase of 31% and 27%, respectively. What do you mean they are "fine"?
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  I mean that they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties for an arbitrary period of time, and rightly so. Is this what you want in your community? https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/809965742/personal-essay-from-wuhan-living-in-hell https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/8099657...
  - yongjik 7y ago
    > ... they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties ... If that's your definition of "fine", then when you wrote this: > why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures ... were you actually saying: "why are Germany and France having looser quarantine measures despite having looser quarantine measures?" /shakes head
    - leggomylibro 7y ago
      I understand your point of view, but I would phrase it more like: "Why are Germany and France not worse off than Italy despite having looser quarantine measures and an earlier start to their outbreaks?" And I still haven't heard an answer which comes close to justifying Italy suspending its citizens' rights. But that's fine; it won't matter in a few months, and we're approaching an easy opportunity to make money and travel smart as the herds follow their predictable migrations. I just wish that people were less eager to give our fundamental rights away over this; history shows that they are unlikely to come back once they are surrendered. I'm already tired of the CBP shutting down entire 80mph interstates to search every vehicle passing through; where does this end? Anyways, arguing about it is just something to do while everything is shut down, eh? :)
bonzini 7y ago
For the exponential phase of the epidemic to kick in, you need a cluster that goes undetected for a week or so. For example it can be a young local person that just shrugs it off as a bad cold and meets a lot of people while he's sick---which is exactly what happened in Italy. Italy found out after someone that "shouldn't have gotten sick" ended up in the ICU with pneumonia and a clever doctor decided to test him for COVID-19. That was in mid February, one week before 10 municipalities were the first to be locked down. Looking back at the January data, however, there were already more cases of pneumonia than usual in that same area and many of those that survived now have antibodies. And in fact, the strain that is hitting Italy was actually already present in Germany in January based on genome analysis; for whatever reason the real outbreak started a bit later in Germany than in Italy, but that's expected because the initial phases of the epidemic are random.

yongjik 7y ago

Germany and France now have 1,151 and 1,209 patients, with latest daily increase of 31% and 27%, respectively. What do you mean they are "fine"?

leggomylibro 7y ago
I mean that they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties for an arbitrary period of time, and rightly so. Is this what you want in your community? https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/809965742/personal-essay-from-wuhan-living-in-hell https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/8099657...
- yongjik 7y ago
  > ... they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties ... If that's your definition of "fine", then when you wrote this: > why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures ... were you actually saying: "why are Germany and France having looser quarantine measures despite having looser quarantine measures?" /shakes head
  - leggomylibro 7y ago
    I understand your point of view, but I would phrase it more like: "Why are Germany and France not worse off than Italy despite having looser quarantine measures and an earlier start to their outbreaks?" And I still haven't heard an answer which comes close to justifying Italy suspending its citizens' rights. But that's fine; it won't matter in a few months, and we're approaching an easy opportunity to make money and travel smart as the herds follow their predictable migrations. I just wish that people were less eager to give our fundamental rights away over this; history shows that they are unlikely to come back once they are surrendered. I'm already tired of the CBP shutting down entire 80mph interstates to search every vehicle passing through; where does this end? Anyways, arguing about it is just something to do while everything is shut down, eh? :)

bonzini 7y ago

For the exponential phase of the epidemic to kick in, you need a cluster that goes undetected for a week or so. For example it can be a young local person that just shrugs it off as a bad cold and meets a lot of people while he's sick---which is exactly what happened in Italy. Italy found out after someone that "shouldn't have gotten sick" ended up in the ICU with pneumonia and a clever doctor decided to test him for COVID-19. That was in mid February, one week before 10 municipalities were the first to be locked down. Looking back at the January data, however, there were already more cases of pneumonia than usual in that same area and many of those that survived now have antibodies. And in fact, the strain that is hitting Italy was actually already present in Germany in January based on genome analysis; for whatever reason the real outbreak started a bit later in Germany than in Italy, but that's expected because the initial phases of the epidemic are random.