11 ms·

I am a Chinese living in Bay Area. What's described by the Italian doctor was exactly like the situation in Wuhan right after the lockdown for the first 2-3 wee

by muyuan 7y ago

I am a Chinese living in Bay Area. What's described by the Italian doctor was exactly like the situation in Wuhan right after the lockdown for the first 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately, I think it will hit Italy harder this time, China locked down Wuhan but every other provinces send in supplies and doctors to help, just building new hospitals is not enough, and I don't see France/Germany doing the same to Italy. The US response so far feels very much like what I saw early Jan in China, the government kept assuring the public everything is in control and risk is very low. One could argue it's either cover up or they simply didn't know, I think it's a combination of both. But I really cannot understand why US is handling it this way after seeing what happened in Wuhan and now Italy, it almost feels like Trump has some secret weapons ready to save the day. You would think that, since most of the leaders are in a high risk demographic and spend large chunk of their time shaking hands with strangers, they would be more vigilant

pengaru 7y ago
> it almost feels like Trump has some secret weapons ready to save the day. You would think that, since most of the leaders are in a high risk demographic and spend large chunk of their time shaking hands with strangers, they would be more vigilant He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection. There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show.
- xienze 7y ago
  > He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection. > There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show. Can't really disagree, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with the way people in the US are talking about the response now. Was the US MSM not spending all of January and February telling us "calm down, you know the common flu kills WAY more people than this thing and we don't freak out about it!" and complaining how Trump's proposed Chinese traveler ban was both a) racist and b) would have little to no effect?
  - sciinfo 7y ago
    The vast majority of people don't have an intuitive understanding of exponential growth. People not trained well in math and science don't even have/know the tools to help them understand it analytically. We need (much) better math education for people studying all majors.
    - hurrdurr2 7y ago
      One of our older neighbors are inviting everyone on the nextdoor app to go to their house for movie night to prove that this is just a flu. The entire thread is people making fun of covid19 and how they are angry their retirement accounts are getting hit. I wish I was making this up.
      - newtoday 7y ago
        Geez, what part of the country if you don't mind me asking? Arrogance, ignorance, and disinformation is literally going to kill us. Thanks for sharing that.
        hurrdurr2 7y ago
        Bay Area, CA
        newtoday 7y ago
        Thanks for the reply. I guess I'm not surprised. What movie? ;)
      - pengaru 7y ago
        "there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated" - NOFX The whole song is disturbingly accurate/prophetic. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.html https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.htm... I'm completely unsurprised by what you're describing. I observed similarly disturbing behavior waiting in line @ Home Depot the other day. A customer was excited to find they had hand sanitizer in stock, and another customer told him there's a whole aisle full of the stuff and that all the covid stuff is fake news which devolved into nonsensical madness between yokels I had to just walk away from. Of course our Home Depot had some in stock, we're in rural bumblefuck middle of nowhere. Our stores only run out of things when the employees forget to do their jobs.
cylinder 7y ago
No disrespect intended but you've probably had a misguided idea of what America is and is not and this reality is violating that for you. America is a marketing machine, remember that. For myself an American who lives abroad and interfaces with the US federal government regularly, incompetence is deep and pathological within large US organisations especially government.
tanilama 7y ago
Trump's performance so far is a massive disappointment to say the least, and more of a parody even by Trump's standard. I am not sure what he is doing is even remotely serving himself that well either. Addressing the Coronavirus upfront is the only way to cheer up the market right now. Did he really think he can just fight this virus with speech or tweets? This is bothering me no end, and severely impact my confidence in US itself overall. Damn it, this is a full on crisis, the shit is about to hit the fan so hard.
- briandear 7y ago
  And if the shit doesn’t hit that fan will Trump be credited with restraint? Of course not. Literally no matter what he does people on the left will hate him for it.
  - atomi 7y ago
    That comes with the territory. However partisan comments like yours never seem to address the issue. Is this administration doing what it should be doing to mitigate the spread of this pandemic?
  - endorphone 7y ago
    His anti-intellectualism, anti-science history of saying catastrophically stupid things earned him that response. Just to be clear, this is an anti-vax president who continues to state just completely wrong things, and you're complaining about the poor guy being mistreated? The fact that this isn't much bigger news, the guy ousted by his own party, indicts the entire US political system. And to be clear, a pretty heady amount of the criticism of Trump is coming from "The right". Sam Harris, George Conway, David Frum -- these are not "the left". They also think Trump is an imbecile at the worst possible moment.
shalmanese 7y ago
It's not just the US though, you have other countries in Europe handling this abysmally like The Netherlands. Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage despite multiple cases in Singapore being traced back to Indonesian travel (including one rich Indonesian who couldn't find anyone to treat them in Indonesia so deliberately flew to Singapore on a private plane to get healthcare).
- arczyx 7y ago
  >Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage This is true until last Thursday, but now the government had acknowledged at least 19 confirmed cases. Still super late though.
  - shalmanese 7y ago
    Yeah, but if multiple Singaporeans who are spending just a few days in Indonesia are coming back with COVID, it's obviously not 19 cases. Indonesia is where Iran was just a few weeks ago.
- rlt 7y ago
  To be clear, I don't believe the following (Hanlon's razor, etc), but it would make a good dystopian/thriller: As some point one might consider if governments see COVID-19 as an opportunity to "cull the herd". Japan and Italy have the two largest aging populations of any countries. The US has a large number of citizens with COVID-19 comorbidities. I'm not sure if the long term savings on entitlements and health care costs would outweigh the short term economic damage, though.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Pretty much by definition in countries with large populations of old people, the current governments largely rely on the vote of those old people to stay in power. This makes the cull-the-herd theory rather unlikely in my opinion. I think simple incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
ALittleLight 7y ago
I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster. Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future. I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle. What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."
- newtoday 7y ago
  I'm feeling the same. I just started becoming concerned on Friday, and trying to keep up on accurate news. Do you, or anyone else in the US know how to help raise public awareness for prevention, preparedness for the worse, or lessening the impact on healthcare systems and communities? I feel like this needs its own thread, or platform for collaboration. I'm worried that without wider availability of testing, we're already fucked and that quarantine = police state.
  - dpau 7y ago
    good luck with that. you think it would be possible for people to look at china and italy and realize the same thing is now happening here in the US. but large percentage populace has already been fed multiple contradictory narratives and have convinced themselves it's "just the flu" as it's the most convenient reality. your "science" is fairly useless in combatting ignorance, arrogance and selfishness. but regardless i hope you do try.
    - hef19898 7y ago
      Combatting selfischness is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, news outlets are to bussy spreading panic to adress the actual risks of hording stuff fromm food over medical PTE to toilett paper.
mariushn 7y ago
[sarcasm] Because the virus is fake news: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1237027356314869761 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370273563148697... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1237024551294382081 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370245512943820... I'm amazed not only at these affirmations, but at the likes they get. Incredible.
- Tepix 7y ago
  Wow. I actively avoid reading Trumps tweets, it seems everytime I run across them eventually, it's so much worse.
Scarblac 7y ago
They didn't believe what happened in Wuhan would happen to them, mostly because of racist superiority I think. Surely our hospitals must be better than China's, we are healthier, et cetera. And people distrust anything coming out of China's government so they simultaneously think China covered up a lot and there were way more dead, and they exaggerated how bad the virus is...
grey-area 7y ago
Trump is indifferent to the suffering to come, and doesn’t feel it will touch him. He welcomes chaos, because it provides opportunity for personal enrichment. “You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have a, you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great,” https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/country-goes-hell-2014-video-shows-trump-bragging-crash-economy-get-way/ https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/country-goes-hell-2014-vide...
anigbrowl 7y ago
The USA is a disaster waiting to happen. I've lived through a disease outbreak that required lockdown/curfews in another country and I don't think the US is logistically or culturally prepared. I don't want to go into longer detail as it will be subjective and seem political, but I'm expecting things to Get Weird.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- realusername 7y ago
  I do agree, it will be a disaster in Europe but the US will be even worse, absolutely nothing is prepared for that.
  - chinathrow 7y ago
    Now if you think about the US even worse, what are you thinking about under-developped nations? Africa?
    - realusername 7y ago
      That's a good point, I can't say anything about Africa right now. It seems the virus hasn't affected the continent too much for now, it's difficult to say why, maybe bad conditions for the virus, luck or just a lack of testing (that's what I fear).
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      No clue. Given the way it seems to be more deadly for older people or those with comorbidities African countries may not have as big a % of the population at risk, plus it might not travel as fast there as there is less commercial and discretionary travel. But it's easy to think of other factors which would make it far worse.
    - BlargMcLarg 7y ago
      Doesn't Africa at least have the benefit of being a warmer continent, with the current claims of the virus preferring milder, wet climates? Or has that last statement been debunked yet?
inciampati 7y ago
Italy is following China's lead. It has been harder to change social behavior here. But it will change due to the severity of the situation. The lag in response will definitely make things more severe. But the climate may help, assuming warmer temperatures reduce transmission.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I don't have this impression. Many nations are trying to find a cure or a vaccine. Nobody knows the long term development of this virus. You could lock up everything, the economy collapses and it would hurt people even more than the virus might have. It is a gamble at this point. Political games come into play if people demand answers that nobody can give. If some presume to be able to do that, they are lying to your face. If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably. For people who lost loved ones it was a catastrophe, for other part of the normal life risk. Any publicly uttered judgement has to keep that in mind, so it will always be relative. Some are more forthcoming, but probably not public officials. Of course the virus is not under control, how could it be? I would prefer measures to reduce its spread, but that is basically intuition and listening to some doctors with the knowledge that it just buys time. Anyone using this crisis for political points doesn't really win any cookies with me personally, on the contrary. The incentive to cover something up is just a reflex to save face. I don't like covering something up. There is a risk of disproportionate overreaction, but I think a bad information policy reinforces this. If they covered something up, it must be really bad, right?
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably. More like few millions in US alone, based on what happened in Italy which is more representative than China. Italy has >4% mortality rate last time I checked. And we talk about very well equipped and highly rated healthcare. I can't imagine this not having brutal effects on global economy. Another point - unless we have proper fully working cure / vaccine, this ain't going anywhere. June ain't some magical time when virus decides to roll back because enough is enough. Southern hemisphere will keep the virus going on through our summer, so it will come back in autumn. An additional point - this might be early to judge but it seems immunity is not gained after recovery, so re-infection is probable. There are more points, like its high infection rate etc.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    This is completely debased. You don't have reliable info on recoveries, infections or death rate. Currently around <3000 people died in China to my info and yes, that number will increase unfortunately. While I think you should take it seriously, it is another thing to predict millions of dead people. It is a respiratory disease and yes, those can kill you. > so re-infection is probable. I have the info the virus is not inclined to mutate. But it is just too early to tell.

by muyuan 7y ago

pengaru 7y ago

> it almost feels like Trump has some secret weapons ready to save the day. You would think that, since most of the leaders are in a high risk demographic and spend large chunk of their time shaking hands with strangers, they would be more vigilant He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection. There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show.

xienze 7y ago
> He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection. > There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show. Can't really disagree, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with the way people in the US are talking about the response now. Was the US MSM not spending all of January and February telling us "calm down, you know the common flu kills WAY more people than this thing and we don't freak out about it!" and complaining how Trump's proposed Chinese traveler ban was both a) racist and b) would have little to no effect?
- sciinfo 7y ago
  The vast majority of people don't have an intuitive understanding of exponential growth. People not trained well in math and science don't even have/know the tools to help them understand it analytically. We need (much) better math education for people studying all majors.
  - hurrdurr2 7y ago
    One of our older neighbors are inviting everyone on the nextdoor app to go to their house for movie night to prove that this is just a flu. The entire thread is people making fun of covid19 and how they are angry their retirement accounts are getting hit. I wish I was making this up.
    - newtoday 7y ago
      Geez, what part of the country if you don't mind me asking? Arrogance, ignorance, and disinformation is literally going to kill us. Thanks for sharing that.
      - hurrdurr2 7y ago
        Bay Area, CA
        newtoday 7y ago
        Thanks for the reply. I guess I'm not surprised. What movie? ;)
    - pengaru 7y ago
      "there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated" - NOFX The whole song is disturbingly accurate/prophetic. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.html https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.htm... I'm completely unsurprised by what you're describing. I observed similarly disturbing behavior waiting in line @ Home Depot the other day. A customer was excited to find they had hand sanitizer in stock, and another customer told him there's a whole aisle full of the stuff and that all the covid stuff is fake news which devolved into nonsensical madness between yokels I had to just walk away from. Of course our Home Depot had some in stock, we're in rural bumblefuck middle of nowhere. Our stores only run out of things when the employees forget to do their jobs.

cylinder 7y ago

No disrespect intended but you've probably had a misguided idea of what America is and is not and this reality is violating that for you. America is a marketing machine, remember that. For myself an American who lives abroad and interfaces with the US federal government regularly, incompetence is deep and pathological within large US organisations especially government.

tanilama 7y ago

Trump's performance so far is a massive disappointment to say the least, and more of a parody even by Trump's standard. I am not sure what he is doing is even remotely serving himself that well either. Addressing the Coronavirus upfront is the only way to cheer up the market right now. Did he really think he can just fight this virus with speech or tweets? This is bothering me no end, and severely impact my confidence in US itself overall. Damn it, this is a full on crisis, the shit is about to hit the fan so hard.

briandear 7y ago
And if the shit doesn’t hit that fan will Trump be credited with restraint? Of course not. Literally no matter what he does people on the left will hate him for it.
- atomi 7y ago
  That comes with the territory. However partisan comments like yours never seem to address the issue. Is this administration doing what it should be doing to mitigate the spread of this pandemic?
- endorphone 7y ago
  His anti-intellectualism, anti-science history of saying catastrophically stupid things earned him that response. Just to be clear, this is an anti-vax president who continues to state just completely wrong things, and you're complaining about the poor guy being mistreated? The fact that this isn't much bigger news, the guy ousted by his own party, indicts the entire US political system. And to be clear, a pretty heady amount of the criticism of Trump is coming from "The right". Sam Harris, George Conway, David Frum -- these are not "the left". They also think Trump is an imbecile at the worst possible moment.

shalmanese 7y ago

It's not just the US though, you have other countries in Europe handling this abysmally like The Netherlands. Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage despite multiple cases in Singapore being traced back to Indonesian travel (including one rich Indonesian who couldn't find anyone to treat them in Indonesia so deliberately flew to Singapore on a private plane to get healthcare).

arczyx 7y ago
>Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage This is true until last Thursday, but now the government had acknowledged at least 19 confirmed cases. Still super late though.
- shalmanese 7y ago
  Yeah, but if multiple Singaporeans who are spending just a few days in Indonesia are coming back with COVID, it's obviously not 19 cases. Indonesia is where Iran was just a few weeks ago.
rlt 7y ago
To be clear, I don't believe the following (Hanlon's razor, etc), but it would make a good dystopian/thriller: As some point one might consider if governments see COVID-19 as an opportunity to "cull the herd". Japan and Italy have the two largest aging populations of any countries. The US has a large number of citizens with COVID-19 comorbidities. I'm not sure if the long term savings on entitlements and health care costs would outweigh the short term economic damage, though.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Pretty much by definition in countries with large populations of old people, the current governments largely rely on the vote of those old people to stay in power. This makes the cull-the-herd theory rather unlikely in my opinion. I think simple incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

ALittleLight 7y ago

I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster. Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future. I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle. What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."

newtoday 7y ago
I'm feeling the same. I just started becoming concerned on Friday, and trying to keep up on accurate news. Do you, or anyone else in the US know how to help raise public awareness for prevention, preparedness for the worse, or lessening the impact on healthcare systems and communities? I feel like this needs its own thread, or platform for collaboration. I'm worried that without wider availability of testing, we're already fucked and that quarantine = police state.
- dpau 7y ago
  good luck with that. you think it would be possible for people to look at china and italy and realize the same thing is now happening here in the US. but large percentage populace has already been fed multiple contradictory narratives and have convinced themselves it's "just the flu" as it's the most convenient reality. your "science" is fairly useless in combatting ignorance, arrogance and selfishness. but regardless i hope you do try.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Combatting selfischness is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, news outlets are to bussy spreading panic to adress the actual risks of hording stuff fromm food over medical PTE to toilett paper.

mariushn 7y ago

[sarcasm] Because the virus is fake news: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1237027356314869761 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370273563148697... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1237024551294382081 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370245512943820... I'm amazed not only at these affirmations, but at the likes they get. Incredible.

Tepix 7y ago
Wow. I actively avoid reading Trumps tweets, it seems everytime I run across them eventually, it's so much worse.

Scarblac 7y ago

They didn't believe what happened in Wuhan would happen to them, mostly because of racist superiority I think. Surely our hospitals must be better than China's, we are healthier, et cetera. And people distrust anything coming out of China's government so they simultaneously think China covered up a lot and there were way more dead, and they exaggerated how bad the virus is...

grey-area 7y ago

Trump is indifferent to the suffering to come, and doesn’t feel it will touch him. He welcomes chaos, because it provides opportunity for personal enrichment. “You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have a, you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great,” https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/country-goes-hell-2014-video-shows-trump-bragging-crash-economy-get-way/ https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/country-goes-hell-2014-vide...

anigbrowl 7y ago

The USA is a disaster waiting to happen. I've lived through a disease outbreak that required lockdown/curfews in another country and I don't think the US is logistically or culturally prepared. I don't want to go into longer detail as it will be subjective and seem political, but I'm expecting things to Get Weird.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
realusername 7y ago
I do agree, it will be a disaster in Europe but the US will be even worse, absolutely nothing is prepared for that.
- chinathrow 7y ago
  Now if you think about the US even worse, what are you thinking about under-developped nations? Africa?
  - realusername 7y ago
    That's a good point, I can't say anything about Africa right now. It seems the virus hasn't affected the continent too much for now, it's difficult to say why, maybe bad conditions for the virus, luck or just a lack of testing (that's what I fear).
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    No clue. Given the way it seems to be more deadly for older people or those with comorbidities African countries may not have as big a % of the population at risk, plus it might not travel as fast there as there is less commercial and discretionary travel. But it's easy to think of other factors which would make it far worse.
  - BlargMcLarg 7y ago
    Doesn't Africa at least have the benefit of being a warmer continent, with the current claims of the virus preferring milder, wet climates? Or has that last statement been debunked yet?

inciampati 7y ago

Italy is following China's lead. It has been harder to change social behavior here. But it will change due to the severity of the situation. The lag in response will definitely make things more severe. But the climate may help, assuming warmer temperatures reduce transmission.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I don't have this impression. Many nations are trying to find a cure or a vaccine. Nobody knows the long term development of this virus. You could lock up everything, the economy collapses and it would hurt people even more than the virus might have. It is a gamble at this point. Political games come into play if people demand answers that nobody can give. If some presume to be able to do that, they are lying to your face. If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably. For people who lost loved ones it was a catastrophe, for other part of the normal life risk. Any publicly uttered judgement has to keep that in mind, so it will always be relative. Some are more forthcoming, but probably not public officials. Of course the virus is not under control, how could it be? I would prefer measures to reduce its spread, but that is basically intuition and listening to some doctors with the knowledge that it just buys time. Anyone using this crisis for political points doesn't really win any cookies with me personally, on the contrary. The incentive to cover something up is just a reflex to save face. I don't like covering something up. There is a risk of disproportionate overreaction, but I think a bad information policy reinforces this. If they covered something up, it must be really bad, right?

saiya-jin 7y ago
> If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably. More like few millions in US alone, based on what happened in Italy which is more representative than China. Italy has >4% mortality rate last time I checked. And we talk about very well equipped and highly rated healthcare. I can't imagine this not having brutal effects on global economy. Another point - unless we have proper fully working cure / vaccine, this ain't going anywhere. June ain't some magical time when virus decides to roll back because enough is enough. Southern hemisphere will keep the virus going on through our summer, so it will come back in autumn. An additional point - this might be early to judge but it seems immunity is not gained after recovery, so re-infection is probable. There are more points, like its high infection rate etc.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  This is completely debased. You don't have reliable info on recoveries, infections or death rate. Currently around <3000 people died in China to my info and yes, that number will increase unfortunately. While I think you should take it seriously, it is another thing to predict millions of dead people. It is a respiratory disease and yes, those can kill you. > so re-infection is probable. I have the info the virus is not inclined to mutate. But it is just too early to tell.