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Actually, I think it's likely going to be seen as an overreaction in hindsight by the general public (even though it may not be). If these actions are successf

Actually, I think it's likely going to be seen as an overreaction in hindsight by the general public (even though it may not be). If these actions are successful in curbing the virus' spread, most people won't appreciate how bad things could have really gotten.

chrisco255 7y ago
So what do we do if this virus festers for another couple of years? We can't shut down society forever.
- Trasmatta 7y ago
  The goal at this point should be to flatten the curve as much as possible to prevent overwhelming healthcare until a vaccine is developed and tested. Nobody thinks this is going to be a permanent measure.
  - xur17 7y ago
    I don't disagree with the flattening the curve bit, but I do wonder - my understanding is that a vaccine is at minimum a year out. Would we need to keep doing this for that entire time period, or are there other factors at play here?
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      I think that there is a rough relation between the infection rate and the percent of the population that gets infected. Consider raw r0 of 3.0. Each case infects three other people. But as more and more of the population gets infected and acquires immunity the infection rate drops. Say half the population is immune due to prior infection. The rate is now half r0 = 3.0 * 0.5 Left unchecked 66% of the population will get infected and then the disease dies out. Social distancing, hand washing, quarantine reduces r0. And reduces the total number that the virus can infect before is dies out. Cut r0 from 3.0 to 1.5 and the number of infected goes from 66% to 33%. In the US that would be 100 million people. And maybe a million fewer deaths. Scuttlebutt is China and Taiwan due to high early compliance have r0 down to about 0.3, which means the epidemic is in a state of exponential crash.
    - pfranz 7y ago
      There are shortages in the supply chain; hand sanitizer, masks, and tests for coronavirus in addition to overwhelming hospitals by sick people. If there aren't open beds or staff (ideally who aren't overworked), people who otherwise would get medical attention will die. If a vaccine wasn't even in the picture flattening the curve would help with these things.
      - xur17 7y ago
        That's a good point. Also, my understanding is that antiviral medications might be an option in a "few" months.
        bluGill 7y ago
        There are a lot of things in the future. Antivirals show promise of working in a few months - but we don't actually know they will work (or for that matter that the virus won't evolve a new unique resistance to them). It will take time to figure out what works best for treatment.
  - fspeech 7y ago
    Or even just more personal protective gears for medical personnel, more isolation wards, and more ventilators could be readied. The medical system can be built up and reconfigured to take care of this disease but it needs time.
  - andrejk 7y ago
    A good analysis on this point from a public health perspective: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/
- empath75 7y ago
  They can just slow it down and prevent hospital systems from becoming overwhelmed. A lot of people will get immunity to it, which should confer some herd immunity that will protect older people. They’re eventually going to lift quarantines after it burns out in different areas.
- tim333 7y ago
  Maybe there will be vaccines, better treatment.
pbourke 7y ago
Yeah, I've been thinking something similar. In the American context, a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction. The administration responsible (federal or state) would be blamed for the economic damage and voted out. It would take a very strong leader who was willing to act without thought to reelection to really meet the crisis head on. That would be ... rare.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  >a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction. Seems likely. Since solving the problem would make it look like there was no problem in which case what was the point of all the work. This is also one of those cases where you have to overreact to begin with because once you have an actual problem its too late.
- zanderwohl 7y ago
  I think you're right, and that economic damage is something I think too many people are worried about. I've seen a lot of business magazines more worried about the dow-jones than the number of people who could die.
- fudged71 7y ago
  >a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction This is what worries me the most. Is there a name for this bias? Seems similar to survivorship bias, I'm sure it's seen across all kinds of contexts.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    Have you thought about inverting your thinking? Every pandemic this century ended up being a damp squib despite WHO et al promising doomsday.
    - admax88q 7y ago
      Was it the WHO promising doomsday? Or the media reporting on it?
Trasmatta 7y ago
So a Y2K style hindsight? I wonder if there is a phrase for that type of thing.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  "Closing the barn door after the horses have left" ?
  - Ensorceled 7y ago
    Closing the barn door before the horses leave and being blamed for the barn being too warm is actually what is happening.
rellui 7y ago
In this case though we've examples of how bad it can get. Iran comes to mind. As this progresses we'll see what happens to countries who didn't attempt any quarantine or drastic measures at all.
- bluGill 7y ago
  That won't be the US though which is already quietly quarantining things. Conferences are being postponed. Companies are stopping all non-emergency travel. Nursing homes are not allowing visitors.
throwaway237654 7y ago
Yup, it's the same reason why most people now see the Japanese internment as unjust. They just know we won the war and fail to connect the dots that the internment was potentially critical to winning the war.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sethaurus 7y ago
  Is this an accepted view among historians? I'd like to know more about that.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    There was a widespread, mostly inaccurate perception in the West that Japan's incredible territory gains early in the war must have been due to fifth-column agents preparing the battleground. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036444 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036444
pfranz 7y ago
Hopefully, we'll see articles like the recent articles talking about how closing schools during the 1918 flu saved lives. Specifically, closing schools before there were any identified cases were much more effective than waiting until one was detected.
rockmeamedee 7y ago
It's a common thread in Incident Response & "Resilience Engineering" that preventative measures that reduce the blast of incidents are always blamed, especially if they work. Whatever ends up working to fix the incident, you should have done it sooner or it was too drastic a response. (No matter the fact that it _did_ fix the incident, outsiders will blame you that way). One example is the Knight Capital trading disaster, where they eventually noticed (I don't remember the exact number) X minutes after the runway trading bot had been put into place, and shut it down, but got blamed for not shutting down the trading soon enough. Can't find any links about this right now though :(
- hateful 7y ago
  I see this in Programming/IT a lot. Also a very similar case whereby the person fixing the issue gets pressure to complete the fix and even blame after the fact. It would be like going to doctor and blaming the doctors for why I was sick.
  - afiori 7y ago
    > It would be like going to doctor and blaming the doctors for why I was sick. To be fair, I am sure doctors experience that a lot.
    - dr_zoidberg 7y ago
      It depends. I blame the dentist that fixed my tooth in a substandard way and then I had to have it removed, because the bad fix had it broken a couple of years down the line. I also blame him because, over the years, other patients of him had trouble for his sloppy work. I absolutely praise the dentist I went after that one, who made his best to fix everything, explained me the pros and cons of every decision he made, and ultimately got me top notch (as best as could be done). Sorry for he weird "counterpoint", but the example could be open to ambiguity. I still get the point: don't blame the guy fixing things when it's someone elses responsibility. In my case: I'd be wrong to blame the 2nd dentist for the mistakes of the 1st.
cm2187 7y ago
Hum. On the other side it is the story of the madman holding an umbrella in the middle of the summer. Someone asks him why he is holding an umbrella, it's not raining. He answers that it is to keep pink elephants from flying around. But there aren't any pink elephant flying. The madman responds: you see, it works.
fuckknows 7y ago
It depends on how bad it gets, if people are dying by the thousand I think the conventional wisdom will be we should have done more. Even with these measures I fear it wont be nearly enough to avert catastrophe.

chrisco255 7y ago

So what do we do if this virus festers for another couple of years? We can't shut down society forever.

Trasmatta 7y ago
The goal at this point should be to flatten the curve as much as possible to prevent overwhelming healthcare until a vaccine is developed and tested. Nobody thinks this is going to be a permanent measure.
- xur17 7y ago
  I don't disagree with the flattening the curve bit, but I do wonder - my understanding is that a vaccine is at minimum a year out. Would we need to keep doing this for that entire time period, or are there other factors at play here?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I think that there is a rough relation between the infection rate and the percent of the population that gets infected. Consider raw r0 of 3.0. Each case infects three other people. But as more and more of the population gets infected and acquires immunity the infection rate drops. Say half the population is immune due to prior infection. The rate is now half r0 = 3.0 * 0.5 Left unchecked 66% of the population will get infected and then the disease dies out. Social distancing, hand washing, quarantine reduces r0. And reduces the total number that the virus can infect before is dies out. Cut r0 from 3.0 to 1.5 and the number of infected goes from 66% to 33%. In the US that would be 100 million people. And maybe a million fewer deaths. Scuttlebutt is China and Taiwan due to high early compliance have r0 down to about 0.3, which means the epidemic is in a state of exponential crash.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    There are shortages in the supply chain; hand sanitizer, masks, and tests for coronavirus in addition to overwhelming hospitals by sick people. If there aren't open beds or staff (ideally who aren't overworked), people who otherwise would get medical attention will die. If a vaccine wasn't even in the picture flattening the curve would help with these things.
    - xur17 7y ago
      That's a good point. Also, my understanding is that antiviral medications might be an option in a "few" months.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        There are a lot of things in the future. Antivirals show promise of working in a few months - but we don't actually know they will work (or for that matter that the virus won't evolve a new unique resistance to them). It will take time to figure out what works best for treatment.
- fspeech 7y ago
  Or even just more personal protective gears for medical personnel, more isolation wards, and more ventilators could be readied. The medical system can be built up and reconfigured to take care of this disease but it needs time.
- andrejk 7y ago
  A good analysis on this point from a public health perspective: https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/
empath75 7y ago
They can just slow it down and prevent hospital systems from becoming overwhelmed. A lot of people will get immunity to it, which should confer some herd immunity that will protect older people. They’re eventually going to lift quarantines after it burns out in different areas.
tim333 7y ago
Maybe there will be vaccines, better treatment.

pbourke 7y ago

Yeah, I've been thinking something similar. In the American context, a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction. The administration responsible (federal or state) would be blamed for the economic damage and voted out. It would take a very strong leader who was willing to act without thought to reelection to really meet the crisis head on. That would be ... rare.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
>a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction. Seems likely. Since solving the problem would make it look like there was no problem in which case what was the point of all the work. This is also one of those cases where you have to overreact to begin with because once you have an actual problem its too late.
zanderwohl 7y ago
I think you're right, and that economic damage is something I think too many people are worried about. I've seen a lot of business magazines more worried about the dow-jones than the number of people who could die.
fudged71 7y ago
>a successful response would be seen by the uninformed as an overreaction This is what worries me the most. Is there a name for this bias? Seems similar to survivorship bias, I'm sure it's seen across all kinds of contexts.
- easytiger 7y ago
  Have you thought about inverting your thinking? Every pandemic this century ended up being a damp squib despite WHO et al promising doomsday.
  - admax88q 7y ago
    Was it the WHO promising doomsday? Or the media reporting on it?

Trasmatta 7y ago

So a Y2K style hindsight? I wonder if there is a phrase for that type of thing.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
"Closing the barn door after the horses have left" ?
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  Closing the barn door before the horses leave and being blamed for the barn being too warm is actually what is happening.

rellui 7y ago

In this case though we've examples of how bad it can get. Iran comes to mind. As this progresses we'll see what happens to countries who didn't attempt any quarantine or drastic measures at all.

bluGill 7y ago
That won't be the US though which is already quietly quarantining things. Conferences are being postponed. Companies are stopping all non-emergency travel. Nursing homes are not allowing visitors.

throwaway237654 7y ago

Yup, it's the same reason why most people now see the Japanese internment as unjust. They just know we won the war and fail to connect the dots that the internment was potentially critical to winning the war.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sethaurus 7y ago
Is this an accepted view among historians? I'd like to know more about that.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  There was a widespread, mostly inaccurate perception in the West that Japan's incredible territory gains early in the war must have been due to fifth-column agents preparing the battleground. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036444 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036444

pfranz 7y ago

Hopefully, we'll see articles like the recent articles talking about how closing schools during the 1918 flu saved lives. Specifically, closing schools before there were any identified cases were much more effective than waiting until one was detected.

rockmeamedee 7y ago

It's a common thread in Incident Response & "Resilience Engineering" that preventative measures that reduce the blast of incidents are always blamed, especially if they work. Whatever ends up working to fix the incident, you should have done it sooner or it was too drastic a response. (No matter the fact that it _did_ fix the incident, outsiders will blame you that way). One example is the Knight Capital trading disaster, where they eventually noticed (I don't remember the exact number) X minutes after the runway trading bot had been put into place, and shut it down, but got blamed for not shutting down the trading soon enough. Can't find any links about this right now though :(

hateful 7y ago
I see this in Programming/IT a lot. Also a very similar case whereby the person fixing the issue gets pressure to complete the fix and even blame after the fact. It would be like going to doctor and blaming the doctors for why I was sick.
- afiori 7y ago
  > It would be like going to doctor and blaming the doctors for why I was sick. To be fair, I am sure doctors experience that a lot.
  - dr_zoidberg 7y ago
    It depends. I blame the dentist that fixed my tooth in a substandard way and then I had to have it removed, because the bad fix had it broken a couple of years down the line. I also blame him because, over the years, other patients of him had trouble for his sloppy work. I absolutely praise the dentist I went after that one, who made his best to fix everything, explained me the pros and cons of every decision he made, and ultimately got me top notch (as best as could be done). Sorry for he weird "counterpoint", but the example could be open to ambiguity. I still get the point: don't blame the guy fixing things when it's someone elses responsibility. In my case: I'd be wrong to blame the 2nd dentist for the mistakes of the 1st.

cm2187 7y ago

Hum. On the other side it is the story of the madman holding an umbrella in the middle of the summer. Someone asks him why he is holding an umbrella, it's not raining. He answers that it is to keep pink elephants from flying around. But there aren't any pink elephant flying. The madman responds: you see, it works.

fuckknows 7y ago

It depends on how bad it gets, if people are dying by the thousand I think the conventional wisdom will be we should have done more. Even with these measures I fear it wont be nearly enough to avert catastrophe.