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Covid-19 is now officially a pandemic, WHO says

• jennyyang 7y ago
  What sort of effect will this have on contracts that have Force Majeure clauses? That's a big unknown to me that could have a big recessionary effect.
  • toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I think there's going to be so much nuance around this (what does your contract say? when did you sign it? do you have insurers backstopping you? if so, what does their policy say?) that the answer is going to be, "Talk to your lawyer". Personal opinion, not a lawyer, not your lawyer, is that the further into the global pandemic we were when executing an agreement, the less wiggle room you might have. Again, talk to your lawyer; that's what they get paid for.
  • Hongwei 7y ago
    Somewhat related - pandemic bonds will now pay out towards relief efforts and investors will lose their money. Matt Levine does some analysis here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/the-fintechs-are-banks-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/the-fi...
    • alexpotato 7y ago
      Interesting history on catastrophe bonds in general: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.h...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • ac29 7y ago
    I share an office with a travel agent, and I can tell you a lot of people with "cancel for any reason" travel insurance are getting screwed by force majeure clauses. Unsurprisingly, insurance companies have no interest in paying out policies that threaten the existence of their company.
    • jennyyang 7y ago
      That sounds like a great way to kill the travel insurance industry. Not paying out means that the same people won't buy it again next time.
      • exhilaration 7y ago
        Oh there's more than enough suckers out there to make travel insurance profitable forever.
  • PeterisP 7y ago
    It's exactly what force majeure clauses are for. If something gets cancelled or becomes unreasonable because of Covid-19, this gives a reasonable way to exit contracts without penalties, and that is a good thing because given very unusual circumstances, we want people and organizations to be able to adapt instead of being pressured financially to execute things that seemed reasonable last year but are not now. The first area where I'm seeing widespread uses of force majeure clauses is the cancellation of large events, conferences etc with limited or compensation for the cancellations. And again, while this hurts some people a lot, this is mostly a good thing, because we do want to give the organizers the ability to break their commitments and cancel the conference with much smaller consequences (to them) than an ordinary cancellation would have; we don't want the organizers to be pressured to hold the event at all costs.
• finaliteration 7y ago
  Even though I rationally know it’s the right thing to do, I’m terrified about my daughter’s school closing and her and other students severely falling behind academically. I can work from home and watch her, but my spouse and I are not AT ALL equipped to home school her for a lengthy period of time. She is not a good self-learner and already struggles in some areas. How should we be preparing for that? How are other people doing it who have to keep their children home and away from educational resources and teachers? Edit: I’m getting mixed reactions to this. I’m not at all saying academics are more important than slowing the spread of the virus. But I see many comments calling for a complete shutdown of schools and very few saying that for many parents this is a legitimate source of hardship and anxiety, even if it’s the right thing to do.
  • ZeroCool2u 7y ago
    I'm not a parent, but I had a period of time, about a month, when my Mom had to teach me, because I couldn't attend school. What worked well for us was structuring and scheduling time. What didn't work well was her winging it with the curriculum. I think if we went through that time again and I was in her shoes, I would take advantage of Khan Academy. Especially for Math, it's incredibly well structured and forces you to convince it that you've truly learned the content with built-in quizzes. It doesn't hold you back if you've got a handle on the lessons and makes sure that if you're having issues that you practice until you've really got it down. I think the most work for you will be setting her up properly, making sure she's comfortable with the system, and being available if she's got questions that it's not quickly answering.
    • jethro_tell 7y ago
      This is what I'm working on now, I'm trying to set up 'classes' for my second grader with math, reading, writing, typing, and programing. She has music and art at school and I can't really teach that but I may look into a little more. I'm not too worried about her falling behind, but I do want to make sure it's not just idle time, I assume I'll have to do some WFH though I don't really expect to hit full time with it.
  • dickjocke 7y ago
• atombender 7y ago
  Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223
  • swasheck 7y ago
    I prefer the non-paywall npr site so I hope that this one stays up
    • atombender 7y ago
      Sure. When the admins merge dupes, they consider what the best link is and reparent the comments, which has now happened. Now thread had more upvotes and comments.
  • bagol 7y ago
    That one requires you to sign up for whatever reason.
• sonicxxg 7y ago
  Who says? I don't know, you tell me.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• pingyong 7y ago
  Water is wet, more news at 7. I'm not sure why they waited so long, it's not like they didn't know where this was going for at least 2 weeks.
• fear91 7y ago
  This should have been done way earlier. WHO's excuse of not declaring it before was that it didn't reach Antarctica yet... which is ridiculous. Had they raised alarm early on, more countries would have enforced proper procedures (look at South Korea). Instead, the thing spread around and starts impacting economy. To me, WHO lost all credibility.
  • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
    Well it's gotta hit Madagascar before it can win
    • mizzao 7y ago
      Reminds me of the difficulty of getting Madagascar in this game: https://www.addictinggames.com/strategy/pandemic-2 https://www.addictinggames.com/strategy/pandemic-2 Too soon?
      • pdpi 7y ago
        It's a reference to Plague Inc
      • ratsimihah 7y ago
        I like to think it's never too soon, most seem to think otherwise.
      • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
        Holy hell! That site still exists? I remember going on there all the time in the early 2000's cause my parents couldn't afford a newer console and our PS2 basically died.
  • tripa 7y ago
    > To me, WHO lost all credibility. Are you saying Covid-19 isn't a pandemic anymore?
    • mc32 7y ago
• aazaa 7y ago
  Does anyone have a list of previous pandemic declarations and year?
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    I always hate linking to wikipedia, but it's the best such list I could find: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
    • bairrd 7y ago
      May I ask why you hate linking to wikipedia?
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        Because tend I assume that people have already checked Wikipedia, so the link may not give them what they were looking for.
        • kortilla 7y ago
          Never assume that. People rarely even read the article they comment on.
    • aazaa 7y ago
      I'm looking specifically for WHO pandemic declarations.
  • eganist 7y ago
    Doesn't look like anyone is tracking "pandemics" formally. WHO.int is tracking public health emergencies of international concern, which appear to include epidemics with pandemic potential as well as outbreaks with pandemic potential and extremely egregious likelihood of permanent harm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Emergency_of_International_Concern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Emergency_of_Int... But from what I could dig up, the last widely accepted pandemic declaration was the H1N1 2009. The two current pandemics include HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. There is a list of epidemics, but that list also includes localized or regional matters rather than just global-scale pandemics, and not all of them may amount to PHEICs.
• LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  My college just basically closed and hour ago saying everything is online now after spring break. Kinda nice for my easy classes. Sucks for my harder ones though.
  • munk-a 7y ago
    Good luck - I think I would've had a lot of issues had I ever been forced to remote into classes. When I was in college I definitely didn't have the discipline for that.
  • impendia 7y ago
    Speaking as a college professor: Read your textbook, do homework exercises, and (above all) feel free to contact your professors and ask them for help. That is what they are paid to do!
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Underrated advice. I'd get 10x as much benefit from my undergraduate studies than I did if anyone got it through my head that the academic staff will help you with the stuff that was in the class - and more importantly, they're very happy to tell you everything about their field of research.
    • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
      I mean I'm a returning student and have always been good with online classes so it's honestly an actual perk for me. The hardest part is instructors who feel like unlocking everything to let people work at their own pace is somehow egregious...I think it's so stupid that a teacher cant somehow manage grading the same stuff for everybody at the same time but just ignores the other students who are ahead until they get to that point. The best online teachers I've ever had were the ones that unlocked it all from the start and helped you with the few questions you had along the way.
  • MrFoof 7y ago
    In the Boston area, Harvard, MIT, Boston University, all five UMASS campuses (including Boston and Lowell), Tufts University, Suffolk University, Emerson College, Northeastern and Olin have all moved to online classes. Plus Amherst College out in western Mass. That seems like a lot until you realize there's still Boston College, Simmons, Berklee College of Music, Emmanuel, Brandeis, Babson, Bentley, Wellesley, a pharmacology college, two art colleges, and a bunch of community colleges -- and plenty of others I'm forgetting -- I could reach via public transit are still to announce anything, presumably because it's all still being discussed. For Boston this is really weird and impactful. There is a massive population (somewhere between 350,000 - 400,000 students I think) in the area that is just a transient student population. Though outside of NYC and VERY specific parts of the SFBA, the Boston area is one of the most population dense parts in the US, so there's no more fooling around.
• stakkur 7y ago
  [EDIT] I greatly misjudged this audience. Fear is everywhere, but (at least) so is data. WHO 10 March report: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/ https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    >In the US, you have a significantly higher chance of dying from the flu than from covid-19. Today, but the thing about time is that before long next month will be today.
  • magduf 7y ago
    >80% of all cases are still in China. That's impossible to know. We have no idea how many cases there are in the US, because we're not doing a significant amount of testing here, because our government is incompetent and unprepared for this.
    • chungus_khan 7y ago
      And it should be very obvious from the fact that the rate of positives relative to the number of tests is enormously higher in the US than elsewhere that the number of infected are much higher than believed. Alongside this, cost prevents many from seeking care for things like respiratory illnesses, and in the case of one that actually requires care would probably do so until it is severely progressed.
    • lolc 7y ago
      True. And we don't care about the number of cases anyway. We care about the growth. Assuming China has been ramping up its testing efforts, that gives us a clear picture of the spread in China. Especially compared to countries with slow-to-start, spotty testing. It seems to me that the U.S. government would prefer for cases to not be tested. Whatever medical competence there is appears to be sidelined by other interests.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• JdeBP 7y ago
  Duplicates via different news services: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547345
• deadalus 7y ago
  Since Covid-19 is now a Pandemic, my Health Insurance provider will no longer provide treatment to me for free :-(
  • tribaal 7y ago
    Wait, what? I'm not familiar with how the US system works but that seems... strange. Why would the WHO declaring it a pandemic affect your coverage?
    • alexpotato 7y ago
      I would imagine it's similar to all insurance: there are events outside the scope of your agreement with the insurance company for coverage. For example, your home insurance would cover your house burning down but might have a clause along the lines of "if the whole town burns down, we will not cover you." I'm guessing some health insurance plans have a similar clause of "if there is a WHO declared pandemic, we won't cover you". The fire example from a real historical event: a German city burned to the ground and put multiple insurance firms out of business. This led to the development of "re-insurance" aka insurance firms that insure other insurance firms. For an interesting take on the above plus catastrophe bonds in general (mentioned in another comment) I highly recommend this article by Michael Lewis: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.h... EDIT: changed "would have" to "might have a clause"
      • mergejoin 7y ago
        good comparison with the city v.s. house burning!
      • nvahalik 7y ago
        > For example, your home insurance would cover your house burning down but would have a clause along the lines of "if the whole town burns down, we will not cover you." This isn't true. Insurance companies can and do regularly cover people in areas where massive destruction occurs within a particular area (e.g. hurricanes). This is why some companies no longer write policies in certain areas: their risk managers usually require them to "spread out risk" and so they write some stuff in some areas and then they may stop and lower rates elsewhere which are deemed "lower risk". EDITED: Actually, some companies will even cover you in some pretty extreme circumstances, but this is stuff you have to pay for extra and isn't usually included on most policies. At any rate, what _is_ true is that most insurance companies won't cover you based upon the cause of something: e.g. if your house is burned down due to a riot "civil unrest" or because of something like war, it will not cover you. If your house floods because a pipe bursts, then it is OK. If water comes up from the ground (i.e. a _real_ flood) then it will not cover you because it looks not only at what happened but how it happened.
• anticensor 7y ago
  They mean that SARS type 2 is a pandemic. COVID-19 looks like a JIRA ticket to me.
  • xenonite 7y ago
    The virus is called "SARS-Cov2", the disease is called "COVID-19".
    • anticensor 7y ago
      The disease should be called SARS type 2, because the virus is called SARS-CoV-2.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• Aaronstotle 7y ago
  WHO is a complete joke, from praising China's lack of a response as ground-breaking and refusing to label this thing as a Pandemic until now. Trust in institutions is at an all time low because these institutions perform so poorly that most people dismiss them entirely (even if the advice is sound). I hope the world will learn it's lessons from this outbreak, so at least we can react faster next time.
• linsomniac 7y ago
  Yesterday I had the sudden realization that the US Republican Party is likely to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, but also seems to be avoiding taking precautions to prevent the spread. Mortality and impacts seem to hit people over 50 the hardest, and that is where a majority of the Republican supporters come from. It would be a curious footnote to have COVID-19 swing an election.
  • throwaway7877 7y ago
    I ran the numbers for Florida. Unless Imm way off it was only a 1-2 year difference of the existing aging out.
    • Uhhrrr 7y ago
      The vote tally there in 2016 was 4,605,515 (49.1%) to 4,485,745 (47.8%), though. And other swing states were even closer.
  • echelon 7y ago
    Do you think this won't hurt urban areas worse than rural ones, where the liberal voting blocs are concentrated?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • lsc 7y ago
      It's an interesting question. Urban areas, it would seem, are likely to get the spread a lot faster, but they also have way better medical infrastructure. It will spread slower in rural areas, but you have way fewer hospital beds, and less medical infrastructure in general.
      • SubiculumCode 7y ago
        In the latter case, property prices might drop as children inherit properties of departed elderly.
• anikan_vader 7y ago
  The problem with pandemics is that they tend to grow exponentially. What people often forget about exponential growth is that it's actually very slow around t = 0.
  • wrs 7y ago
    Much worse is that it’s always slow at t compared to what it’ll be at t+1. No matter how crazy it seems at t.
    • gmfawcett 7y ago
      Not true. There are growth limiting factors in infectious disease models, e.g., herd immunity.
      • empath75 7y ago
        They're talking about exponential growth in general, i think.
        • gmfawcett 7y ago
          Ah, I didn't consider that.
  • hprotagonist 7y ago
    that is true. what is also true is that nature abhors a naked exponential nearly as much as she abhors a naked singularity. it's nearly always a sigmoid in disguise. What we are trying our damndest to control is the carrying capacity.
    • WilliamEdward 7y ago
      obviously its not going to be exponential forever, no one believes that. The more people get infected, the less people there are to infect. This is obvious. The problem is no one knows where the inflection point is yet, and it depends entirely on how countries react to the illness.
• xchip 7y ago
  Most insurances don't cover pandemics, so guess who is benefited by this ;)
  • xenonite 7y ago
    in the USA?
  • m0zg 7y ago
    As of a few days ago they cover coronavirus specifically: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486816-pence-major-health-insurers-have-agreed-to-waive-copays-for-coronavirus https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486816-pence-major-hea... Quote: "all the insurance companies here, either today, or before today, have agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing, and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans"
    • SkyPuncher 7y ago
      I think this comes with a big asterisk. As far as I can tell, there was a lot of room for caveats in that statement. In particular, it was scoped to companies they met with.
      • m0zg 7y ago
        You should see the list. I've been living in the US for ~21 years now, and at no point I had coverage from a company _not_ on that list. I'm also pretty sure the rest will also get their balls stepped on, this being the election year and all.
  • Florin_Andrei 7y ago
    > guess who is benefited by this ;) It will create so much value for our shareholders!
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• riyadparvez 7y ago
  In preparation of stopping next pandemic, maybe we should have an international agreement like Paris climate change agreement. Like climate change and nuclear weapons this is an existential risk. Yes, outbreak of zootonic diseases is still possible through widely consumed firm animals (chickens, pigs, or cows). But we can dramatically reduce the risk of next pandemic if we stop eating exotic wild animals like bats, which is not hard to give up. We may have been able to stop outbreak of COVID-19 on the first place if we had learned our lessons from SARS outbreak and stopping eating exotics animals. EDIT: bat was used as an example. You can replace any exotic animals in place of bats, the point still stands. This video touches on the topic of outbreak of coronavirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54
  • jiofih 7y ago
    MERS has camels as hosts, is the deadliest by far and 1) camels are not exotic in the Middle East 2) you don’t need to eat it to be infected.
    • smt1 7y ago
      Although MERS is more deadly than SARS-CoV-2, it looks it's less transmissible between people than SARS-CoV-2. I heard an epidemiologist theorize that it might be because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 shed the virus before they show any signs of COVID. Maybe that's why MERS never spread widely outside of areas where camels don't exist widely.
      • jiofih 7y ago
        Yeah, plus dead people tend to not socialize a lot.
  • oppositelock 7y ago
    Is there any evidence whatsoever that the current coronavirus outbreak was due to eating exotic animals. Yes, the press has reported that a market in Wuhan sold exotic animals, but it seems this is uncorroborated, and after asking an acquaintance in Wuhan about it, I was told it's fake news, and that said market sells farmed animals as far as she's ever seen.
• SubiculumCode 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538779 Might be useful in case you or loved ones get infected.
• d4mi3n 7y ago
  Cross posting this from the other Pandemic thread since I thought it was interesting: > d4mi3n > What happens when the WHO classifies a pandemic? I imagine a number of processes and procedures come into effect--anybody know what they are? > Hongwei > My limited understanding understanding is that it automatically releases funding (from the WHO and other bodies) to help with the crisis. It should also trigger some catastrophe and pandemic bond clauses, meaning investors who bought these bonds will lose their money as it now goes towards relief funding. Full thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547349
  • mkagenius 7y ago
    > is that it automatically releases funding I was listening it live and they said its just a classification, they are already doing what they should be doing, the classification changes nothing.
• mrleiter 7y ago
  Here in Austria the government forbade any indoor gatherings of >100 people (outdoor >500), all universities and colleges are closed (except administration and research), including libraries and also museums. All schools and kindergartens will gradually close coming monday. That's more than 1.5m students/pupils against a total population of 8.8m. Nurses and doctors are being honed in from retirement. We completely locked down our borders to Italy. This is all very unprecedented.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • Florin_Andrei 7y ago
    Finally - vigorous, coordinated action. That's exactly what's needed right now and I'm glad to see countries stepping up to the challenge.
    • mrleiter 7y ago
      Yes, I'm glad. Currently we have 246 confirmed cases and with those measures they may rise slower than otherwise.
    • StavrosK 7y ago
      Isn't this happening in many places? In Greece, schools are closing for two weeks, all gatherings are prohibited, and celebrations for various holidays have been canceled. Notably, the Church of Greece has announced that "the virus cannot be spread through Communion" (where everyone drinks wine from the same cup). You can imagine how angry this self-serving move made most people.
      • TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Same in Poland. Schools, kindergartens, universities all closed starting Monday (Thursday and Friday are "if you must" to give people time to cope), but from what I hear from people, the Church considers itself to be a "hospital for the soul", and "you wouldn't close hospitals during a pandemic". smh. > "the virus cannot be spread through Communion" I assume Greece is Catholic, right? Because pope himself told people to take the "spiritual communion" instead of the actual one, and yet the Church in Poland doesn't seem to care. EDIT: sorry. Somehow I thought Orthodox is mainly in Russia. But my rant against Polish Catholic Church still stands. Pope himself shows people what to do, but in Poland, we're going to do the opposite.
• coliveira 7y ago
  A lot of the initial response to Covid-19 in the US was based plainly on implicit racism against Asians. Essentially the government saw the Chinese, Korean and Japanese fighting this virus with all their forces and then just thought "this will never happen in American because somehow we are better". They had 3 months to prepare and, still, they believe that to fight the virus is just enough to wash hands and stay a few feet away from their coworkers, just as with a normal seasonal flu. That's ridiculous.
  • ravenstine 7y ago
    How do you know that? I'd be more willing to bet that Americans have been mostly complacent as they haven't dealt with any meaningful threat since 9/11. Most of them don't prepare like they should anyway, even when Obama told them to do so. If there's any racism going on, it's with the people who fear Asians because they think they're all contaminated with COVID-19. > They had 3 months to prepare and, still, they believe that to fight the virus is just enough to wash hands and stay a few feet away from their coworkers, just as with a normal seasonal flu. That's ridiculous. That's what they've been told to do by government officials and journalists.
  • kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
    As an Asian American... no, I don’t think racism played into this at all. Would have been exactly the same if it started in London.
    • blymphony 7y ago
      As an Asian American, let's not try to speak on behalf of a minority of 18+ million. Especially to downplay a possibly valid concern of an individual of your supposed group
      • kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
        It’s a stupid concern. The reason the government is incompetent is that the government is incompetent. That’s not uniquely American, and there’s no evidence that race has played into any of this. We didn’t exactly change our tune when Italy freaked out. Does that mean we’re racist against Italians?
• echelon 7y ago
  By delaying the "pandemic" designation, the WHO has inadvertently cost more lives. They will strongly need to reevaluate their role and policies going forward, because this was a monumental process and leadership failure. The messaging from the media (who are laypersons) and the politicians (who are economically motivated laypersons) has been that this is "just the flu". Weak messaging from both the WHO and the CDC has only reinforced this in the public's perception. The WHO should have taken the decisive move to encourage greater caution by employing the "pandemic" label. That label comes with real power. While there is danger in crying wolf, it was evident months ago from the growth rate of the virus and the lack of quarantine procedures being put in place that this virus would reach the pandemic stage. If the role of the WHO is to stave off pandemics and not just to monitor them, then elevating the risk profile of the virus should have been a top priority. Since people look to the WHO for guidance, their actions have direct impact to sequestration and bringing the outbreak under control. Both the WHO and the CDC were too afraid to take early action. Their wait and see approach will ultimately result in more human deaths and suffering.
  • gjs278 7y ago
    oh my god I sincerely hope you catch the virus. you are annoying as hell. the WHO isn’t responsible for any of this shit. have some self reliance. you’re like a fucking turtle stuck upside down on its shell.
  • IAmEveryone 7y ago
    I don’t know what “media” you’re referring to, put the idea that it’s being dismissed as “just the flu” by anyone except the US government and their alt-right propaganda channels strikes me as blatantly wrong.
    • kortilla 7y ago
      > their alt-right propaganda channels Sure, those classic alt-right propaganda outlets like the Today show.
    • sounds 7y ago
      There's also the political backlash if the WHO accurately says, "this is a pandemic," early enough to flatten the curve and save lots of lives. Do you expect politicians to actually think? Especially when they can point at the "fakenews WHO." (I don't know how Trump would actually say it but you get the picture.) If the WHO declares a pandemic early, they _do_ save lives. But they take the political beating because "nothing happened." If the WHO declares a pandemic late, they don't save lives. They take a mild wrist slap because "they were late to declare it," which will not be remembered in about a month.
• yumraj 7y ago
  Hopefully the school districts will now close. Parents from every school districts in the Bay Area have collected thousands of signatures to close, but the politicians are not doing their job. I was on call with Santa Clara county hotline and the school district and the standard answer I got was: Oh, the kids are at low risk and the numbers are low so we're not closing yet. What they don't realize is that the kids can still be carriers and many teachers and parents are in the danger zone (age or underlying conditions)
  • RandallBrown 7y ago
    It's not that simple to just close schools, especially for long periods of time. Who is supposed to watch these kids if the parents can't stay home with them? What about the thousands of low income kids that rely on school for most of their meals? I'm sure these are solvable problems, but I think there are good reasons that it's taking longer than most people want.
    • yumraj 7y ago
      I understand that. In which case at least they should make school optional. Several Universities are closed, several schools are closed and we need to worry more about the spread because if we don't we'll have the problems you mentioned in addition to a massive spread.
    • jennyyang 7y ago
      Those are actually the least solvable problems. A disproportionate amount of poor people are going to lose their jobs during the next 3-6 months because of a recession. A lot of people especially in the US are going to suffer because of the vast income inequality that has arisen. So there is no good solution, just like quarantine isn't a good solution but at some point we have to do it.
  • jlisam13 7y ago
    I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Michael Osterholm and he gave an interesting perspective. He said that most nurses who have children will suffer if kids have to be sent home. They most likely don't have people that can help take care of their children while they are supporting the influx of patients. Moreover, many children rely on school provided meals so sending them home will be very tough on the families.
• jdkee 7y ago
  The US is likely about 11 to 14 days behind Italy in terms of medical infrastructure collapse.
  • sp332 7y ago
    We're that many days behind in raw case numbers. We have a lot more capacity than Italy overall, and our larger hospitals are prepped for mass shootings which means they have procedures in place for a sudden influx of patients who need ventilators. Story from a couple years back about that last point: https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-vegas-ed-saved-hundreds-lives-worst-mass-shooting-u-s-history/ https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-...
    • onionjake 7y ago
      > What he came up with was that if you have two people who are roughly the same size and tidal volume, you can just double the tidal volume and stick them on Y tubing on one ventilator. Would this help increase the number of covid-19 patients that could be treated? Or do they not require ventilators? I wonder if the study they mentioned about it was ever completed?
      • sp332 7y ago
        COVID-19 hospitalizations are mostly for respiratory failure, which can be treated with ventilators. I don't actually know about that study though.
      • sp332 7y ago
        Super late update: I found at least a pilot study that shows that the technique is promising. There's also some evidence that this is being used in the current crisis but I don't know how reliable these sources are: https://twitter.com/alandrummond2/status/1240008793167192066 https://twitter.com/alandrummond2/status/1240008793167192066 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY
• plainOldText 7y ago
  Anyone following the social media and the news would’ve called the pandemic weeks ago. I hope this will make people realize that we need to abolish centralized institutions in our highly complex world. They are single points of failure which introduce significant systemic risks. CDC also dropped the ball on this one. In Washington state local authorities discovered the outbreak only because they defied federal regulators. We need better organization at the local level, and we need it now.
  • IAmEveryone 7y ago
    The WHO knew (and told people) that this disease had the potential for a pandemic and/or widespread harm a long time ago. Here’s a two-months old article with the title “Narrowing window to contain outbreak, WHO says”: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51591091 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51591091 There is a difference between a potential, or even a certain, pandemic and an actual one. You and the WHO knew what it meant when you looked at that egg. But only now has it become an actual chicken.
  • allovernow 7y ago
    >I hope this will make people realize that we need to abolish centralized institutions in our highly complex world. While I too favor decentralization, what we really need to do is return merit to our institutions. We need a social climate that encourages Pattons and Churchills and the like. Unfortunately to return to such a time of competent leadership (not just in government, but society at large) would require undoing decades of propaganda that convinced some two generations of children that we all have equal ability and any of us can do anything. The dangerous downside of giving everyone a trophy across society is that now people have grown up less able to judge competence and merit in others.
    • mr9 7y ago
      Yeah, now world environment goona change. All people need to care about COVID-9. In some country can't find surgical masks but suddenly I can find it from a website. They sale at a cheap rate, if you need then you can buy your mask from here https://cutt.ly/StsiWK8 https://cutt.ly/StsiWK8
• victorlin 7y ago
  I've been watching COVID-19 very closely since 2019 Dec it, I also witnessed how WHO responses to this Pandemic. If you were me, you will notice that WHO tried very hard to please China, rather than taking people's health into consideration. Many things they did: - Advice not to ban flight to China after China locked down hubei lockdown (yes, many country trust WHO, like Japan and Korea) - Met and praised Xi many times, admire how wonderful they did - Keep down playing how serious the problem can be, and didn't advice any action And recently, China suddenly donate $20M to WHO https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-china-to-donate-20-million-to-who-to-fight-coronavirus-report-2191858 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-china-t... For more details, please watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8
  • allovernow 7y ago
    Yes, I've been saying this from the start as well. Also note that they used China's severely misleading statistics from day 1 with no disclaimer. The WHO is incompetent and/or corrupt.
    • lsd5you 7y ago
      This is a lot of media. Bizarrely no skepticism, just writing articles matter of factly using dubious (or at the very least opaque/unverifiable) figures from foreign governments.
      • allovernow 7y ago
        And a surprising lack of reporting on the dozens of side channel leaks from China - videos of dead bodies, videos from leakers including the young doctor who was admonished and succumbed to the disease... Yeah a lot of it was rumor and hard to verify but...nothing? You'd almost start to wonder whether our journalists were cooperating with the Chinese government or something in censoring everything. I struggle to come up with a legitimate excuse other than total incompetence. It was all over the internet and a lot of it (first hand accounts from Chinese citizens within China) would have been reasonably easy to verify for a journalist who knew a Chinese speaker.
• xchip 7y ago
  This are great news for many insurance companies because if you get sick the won't need to cover your expenses. Stay safe!
  • chrxr 7y ago
    Not true at least for many Blue Cross Blue Shield areas: https://home.bluecrossma.com/coronavirus https://home.bluecrossma.com/coronavirus
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  It's worth noting that the US test situation is still going to be held up for a while due to a shortage of lab chemicals: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/coronavirus-testing-lab-materials-shortage-125212 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/coronavirus-testing...
• beamatronic 7y ago
  Curious if anyone has tried to look on the bright side, and see where humanity will be in the long run. 1. Will take infectious disease more seriously 2. Will build out health care infrastructure to guard against future occurrences 3. Personal sanitation will be improved 4. People less likely to take risky behaviors like getting together in huge groups edit: formatting
  • ratsimihah 7y ago
    Will we though? I'd like to agree but weren't the past pandemic/epidemic diseases within the last 20 years, yet this all feels like a new problem?
    • 52-6F-62 7y ago
      One data point might be Toronto. SARS had a pretty large social impact here, and people are far more cautious and measured in the face of COVID-19, but not panicking. Not yet anyway. But small changes have been impactful—like some businesses immediately getting on wider WFH policies and self-quarantine for returning business travelers as well as general hygiene—people aren't always great at that but it's a conscious act on everyone's part lately. Businesses and buildings even started placing more sanitizer stations, etc.
    • beamatronic 7y ago
      The scale is different, certainly. But the prep work is the same. Imagine if we did all this for the flu. We'd make pretty short work of that.
  • fokinsean 7y ago
    Playing Devil's advocate, but if the situation does fizzle out in the US due to active measures, people will likely look back and say how it "ended up not being a big deal".
    • venantius 7y ago
      Given that current measures in the US don't come close to Italy/SK/China, that seems highly unlikely.
• aty268 7y ago
  Please keep in mind I might be wrong, I just want to understand things outside of the hype. So I don't buy all the hype, can somebody tell me why i'm wrong? I keep hearing claims from brilliant people that 50-80% of the population could easily be infected. Exponential growth is obviously the answer, and is occurring because the median person is infecting more than one other person, which right now is coming from people not knowing they have the virus and not worrying about getting the virus. This will change as more people become infected. Assuming even the most BASIC of measures are taken, (people washing their hands, not going to crowded areas often, not travelling etc.) this will probably stop exponential growth. In China, 5 people have been infected for every 100,000 citizens, and the virus isn't exponentially growing anymore. But fine, maybe they took good measures. In Italy, it's closer to 20 people per 100,000. Fine, four times as high, but still a TINY portion of the population. If you assume that their graph will ever look anything like China's, there is no way in hell more than 1% of the population will be infected. It probably won't come within two orders of magnitude. In what god forsaken situation could even 1% of the US get the Coronavirus? Even without government intervention, as cases increase people will start taking this more seriously and the exponential growth will stop. Even if you don't have symptoms but have the virus, you aren't going to that concert or that vacation because you don't want to catch the virus from someone else. As long as you at most infect 1 other person, the exponential growth stops. This will happen way before 1% of the population is infected. EDIT: I'm incorrect in the idea that people shouldn't worry about it, you should, but I believe that worrying about it will be enough to stop the exponential growth.
  • Leary 7y ago
    All depends on the mitigations people take. If people think it's serious, they'll take actions to prevent that serious outcome. If people think it's not serious, then it may become serious.
    • Fragoel2 7y ago
      Most countries (and leaders) and not taking this seriously until they are it HARD by it. They should learn from the nations that were first affected and not just minimize it with "They handled it badly, we're gonna be fine".
• aresant 7y ago
  What are HNers doing with elementary age school kids in CA / Bay Area? Seems inevitable that we are heading towards school closures en mass - reasonable to get an early start?
  • 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    I hope our over-pressured Bay Area children get a month respite from their usual schedule to just be children, and not anything else.
• hodder 7y ago
  Reminds me of Moody's after Lehman. Very timely warning!
• wh-uws 7y ago
  Here's my question. As a technical community here. How can we help? i.e. I'm hearing about things like the ways for hospitals to report numbers to the CDC having just been set up. This seems likely something any local technical person could help tackle. Is there a place to go to find out how to help in any way possible?
  • mackrevinack 7y ago
    saw this a few days back: https://foldingathome.org/ https://foldingathome.org/ don't know anything about it though or whether it's that effective
    • sixstringtheory 7y ago
      Got into it only recently after having known about it for a long time. Just checked the leaderboards and discovered to some amusement that there's crypto based on it: https://curecoin.net https://curecoin.net
  • SamuelAdams 7y ago
    For people embedded in companies: make sure your company can work remotely. Buy more VPN licences, update firewalls to handle the traffic, find meeting / conferencing software, whatever else you need to do to keep people working outside of the office. For really big tech companies (FAANG), improve data analytics for automated reporting of health data to government agencies (CDC, FDA, etc). Google Flu Trends [1] is a great example of this. Basically google combines common symptom queries with geolocation data to track diseases in near-real time across a region. I first read about this in Datacalysm (Christian Rudder) and it's a fascinating thing. For individuals: maybe make some cool graphs or ways of analyzing the publicly available COVID-19 data? There's a lot of misinformation going around and helping to curb that with real data will help the whole fear thing. For example [2]: people are saying to donate blood to get tested for COVID-19 "for free" but the test itself is a swab, not a blood pull. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/fguxil/coronavirus_loophole/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/fguxil/...
• antaviana 7y ago
  Possibly a big relief for insurance companies as life insurances typically have exclusions for a pandemic.
• rronalddas 7y ago
  So no summer Olympics I guess
• drummer 7y ago
  Covid-19 is being hyped up causing worldwide hysteria while most people recover from it just like any other flu. Seems to me like someone wants to benefit.
• sequoia 7y ago
  As a US citizen very familiar with the US healthcare system, I'm very glad to be living in Canada during this epidemic where everyone has a Go To The Doctor Free card, literally. At times I am a bit surprised how readily Canadians will go to the doctor because they "woke up with a headache/back is hurting/eyes are red and itchy." Coming from the US it would never occur to me to go to the doctor for such "minor" complaints (to be honest, in the US I didn't go to the doc unless I was worried about immediate mortal peril or had an extremely long-running complaint, it's just too much trouble & they rarely help). In this scenario, I think it's fantastic that Canadians are so quick to go to the doctor, and that everyone can do it on-demand. It means we're more likely here to catch more cases early & hopefully slow the spread. In the US, who is going to go to the doctor just because they have flu-like symptoms? And pay the 20, 50, 75, ?? dollar copay, wait in the line, then spend hours fighting with insurance later when they refuse to cover it? Yeah right. "May as well stay home," and this is going to cause tons more cases to go undetected & spread. Canada is not perfectly prepared & is definitely making missteps (parade is still on in Toronto this weekend) but I predict the universal healthcare system will make the impact night & day different from USA.
  • geddy 7y ago
    Honest question - what kind of capacity can possibly be supported during a pandemic when people already go to the doctor for (seemingly) trivial reasons? I see the benefits here, don't get me wrong, but I can't imagine the waiting rooms when people go to the doctor with actual emergencies.
    • sequoia 7y ago
      I'm not sure, but I can say anecdotally that I spend less time waiting for a same-day appointment or drop-in here in Canada than I did in the US when making an appointment in advance with my PCP at my regular doctor's office. So the deterrent effects of private pay & shitty insurance bureaucracy didn't seem to reduce wait times in my area of the USA.
• claytongulick 7y ago
  There are a lot of folks on here asserting facts that are not supported by evidence. The actual facts are this: we don't know what the CFR (case fatality rate) is. CFR is very difficult to accurately calculate, and varies widely with age, location, health conditions and even biological sex (so far, this seems to affect men a bit worse than women). The "2-3%" mortality rate that's being tossed around as fact, is most likely wildly inaccurate. We don't know what the mutation rate is. Viruses tend to become less lethal over time, because the fatal strains kill the host and don't spread as well, which puts evolutionary pressure on the virus to become milder. Will that happen in this case? We don't know. We don't know what the appropriate government response is. It's somewhere between welding people into their houses and doing nothing. Which is to say, who knows? Go overboard and everyone criticizes the government for crying wolf and wasting funds. Too little, and everyone criticizes the government for standing by and letting people die. It's a very difficult balance to strike, and I have a lot of sympathy for the folks who are in the position of making these decisions. They'll invariably get some wrong. Hopefully not too many. IMHO, the best resource to learn about what we do know is the comprehensive Ars Technica article[1], which is frequently updated. I would like to suggest a) that folks stop claiming mortality rates in a panicky tone - because we don't know. and b) that everyone who is reading folks claiming mortality rates and the upcoming apocalypse - reserve judgement until we have more information. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-compr...
  • jmkni 7y ago
    +1 for that Ars Technica article, been following the updates as well.
• marcinjachymiak 7y ago
  FYI for anyone else who was wondering, the WHO declaration has no impact on whether or not pandemic bonds default.
  • deleted 7y ago
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• eagsalazar2 7y ago
  Crazy line of thinking: I keep reading that because of how insanely transmissible covid is, this doesn't end until enough people have already had it that there just aren't that many people around you to infect anymore. It's been described as "trying to stop the wind". We can maybe slow it down but not stop it, and in the US since our response has been so weak, we especially shouldn't hope to stop it unless we're willing to totally isolate our entire families. At the same time we're hearing that Italian hospitals are completely overwhelmed to where they are having to "choose who to let die" vs providing acute treatment. So... (1) is it fair to say that focusing on prevention is pointless and we should just focus on survival which is largely about staying healthy and receiving care and therefore (2) (this is the crazy part) does it actually make sense to get it now before hospitals are overwhelmed and you might be unlucky enough to be sick with something else. Basically choose the most opportune survivable situation to get it versus letting the virus and bad luck pick when you have to fight this battle? My gut tells me a bunch of people are going to crap all over this question but I'm not coming up with good counter-arguments off the top of my head. (one other point, I live in SF, a large dense city, and I have two little kids that get everything so I'm maybe more fatalistic about the idea that I and my family will eventually get it either way)
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • austincheney 7y ago
    Not exactly. Looking at Italy as a case study we need to limit the spread of this virus only for the reason of reducing stress on the medical industry at any given single moment while accepting everyone is likely to encounter this thing eventually. Aside from slowing the rate of transmission the guidance, from the medical experts, says to treat this no differently than the flu. The reality is that this virus will be everywhere because it is at least as transmissible as the flu but with more benign symptoms and a longer incubation period. The incubation period for the flu is generally 5-7 days but the early data from China was suggesting an incubation period of 10-14 days for corvid19. Both of those numbers are variable upon a given snapshot and environmental factors. On the other hand the earlier people encounter this thing means the earlier a population can build the necessary mass immunity resistance.
• theseadroid 7y ago
  Hey HN, in light of the current situation and the potential ordeal in the coming weeks, may I ask you instead of blaming whoever, let's find some solutions to help people? As a Chinese, I read first hand materials from Chinese social media and friends on what life is like in a lockdown area. People there depends on deliveries for groceries and medicine, and occasionally restaurants take-outs. All those services, and a bunch of other services for small businesses are possible because of Wechat. Wechat is obviously not a popular option here in N.A. Is there something we can do to help both the people buy whatever they need via delivery and help local businesses? In Wuhan when the entire family had to be isolated, no one was left to take care of family pets. I heard there's volunteer groups to take them but their capacities were very limited due to the short notice for them to take on such responsibilities. Can we be more prepared and maybe find a technology(-assisted) solution to this before it becomes a huge issue? I feel this will be an issue sooner rather than later because in N.A. it appears the current policy for mild cases is self-isolating, which will very likely infect the entire family. Also in Wuhan during the lockdown many people felt so lonely, especially the older generation who can't use the internet effectively to stay connected to their families/rest of the world. Can we find ways to help people prepare for it psychologically? A lot of people will break medical suggested self-isolation because of the eagerness to stay connected to certain people/group. Instead of blaming them, can we help them find ways to stay connected yet in isolation? I'm sure there are more things the mighty HN crowd can do to help others overcome this difficult time. Let's give it a try?
  • austincheney 7y ago
    I cannot up vote this enough. I wish there were a government or social agency in place to better consider these issues.
    • rabidrat 7y ago
      It would be great if we had some kind of global institution with distributed local branches whose aim was to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, and commune with the destitute.
      • 7y ago
• mrb 7y ago
  16 days ago I wrote: "The reason the WHO is not declaring the coronavirus a "pandemic" is likely to avoid causing a panic at this point. They will only use the P-word once it is clear to everyone that it is one." https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1232094407584710656 https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1232094407584710656 I was criticized for being "alarmist." But I was right. It was obvious to those of us who did the research (100+ hours reading peer-reviewed articles) that it was going to turn into a very big deal.
  • amalter 7y ago
    I browsed Reddit for 30 minutes a day and concluded the same thing. Don't congratulate yourself too much, it was blindingly obvious. For all the things that Reddit gets wrong, early-January r/cornavirus was pretty much spot on the money.
  • makomk 7y ago
    The obvious corollary, given the tone of the announcement, is that they want people to be more panicked now.
• vkaku 7y ago
  The WHO did not call it early enough, due to political pressure. I don't trust them.
• zahreeley 7y ago
  Stop eating another life. Save from viruses
• app4soft 7y ago
  WHO is who says that.
• dznodes 7y ago
  Where is the site for noob preppers to adopt best-prep practices in anticipation for covid-19?
• bronzeage 7y ago
  What people don't understand is that this can be stoppped so much faster if we just learn from china and do everything we can from the first moment. Gradual escalation of measures is useless.
• cm2187 7y ago
  Pointing to the last Sam Harris podcast [1]. He interviewed an infectious disease specialist, who like several other infectious disease specialists I heard before, isn't particularly concerned by this event. It is serious, but not alarming. I should note that Sam Harris is rather on the worried side of the spectrum (and felt compelled to add a disclaimer at the begining). [1] https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/
• williesleg 7y ago
  Now we're all gonna die. Really this time. Not fake global warming or endless wars, this time it's for real.
• throwaway8291 7y ago
  I leave this here for future reference: if we paint a worst case scenario, by the end of summer 2020, we may have 1M+ casualties in Germany alone. It's hard to assess the global consequences of hundreds of thousands of flats getting vacant (increasing real estate supply in an overvalued market), labor shortages (which is high even today) and economic output reduction and the all the societal costs. The only positive thing I see is an event, that unites the whole world - you will be able to relate to strangers - and this is actually a very good thing.
  • usuallymatt 7y ago
    Why would hundreds of thousands of flats be vacant? 1M+ infections won't translate to hundreds and thousands of deaths.
    • jxub 7y ago
      A small increase in supply available, even if it's not a large absulute number will probably lead to a proportionally bigger dip in prices as tenants or prospective buyers might have other options, especially in very bubbly markets with high competition (correct me if this line of reasoning is wrong).
  • guerrilla 7y ago
    That's an interesting point. It reminds me of that TV series "The Leftovers."
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    The mortality rate is almost certainly overstated due to spotty reporting. Even if ever single German were infected (unlikely, with any disease), I still doubt there would be that many deaths.
• pauljurczak 7y ago
  It seems to me that WHO waited for the stock market to tumble down first, before declaring this pandemic. This way, WHO may avoid getting blamed for the end of the bull market.
• mensetmanusman 7y ago
  I just learned that testing kits are wrong almost 30% of the time, that means they are more likely to contribute to misinformation than not. Therefore, just wait for it to happen?
• nodamage 7y ago
  I wonder if the internet "experts" here (and on other forums) who declared two weeks ago that "this is just overblown media hysteria and no more dangerous than the flu" will retract their claims now that the WHO has declared a pandemic? Or will they continue to bury their heads in the sand because denial is easier than acknowledging the seriousness of the situation?