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Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

• KarlKemp 7y ago
  It’s almost tautologically true that the cost of closures are considered in the decision-making process. This “article” tries to portrait this entirely obvious fact as some sort of sinister conspiracy, with cargo-cult charts to appeal all scientify.
• 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  I think this theory gives way too much credit to governmental competence. I think Yes Minister's Four Stage Strategy is a much more accurate assessment: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen. Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it. In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do. Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now. https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Sounds like climate change denial.
  • gherkinnn 7y ago
    This reminds me of my department head. It hurts.
• varjag 7y ago
  Doesn't seem very well thought out. The economic cost of the first scenario (numerous deaths in peak period) would likely be the highest with the impact both on workforce and market sentiment. The impact of long tail scenarios lower because death toll would not be just redistributed but also reduced by likely an order of magnitude.
  • mtsr 7y ago
    I interpreted it like this: deaths are less expensive than lost productivity. This might actually hold given the groups that are the most at risk are probably least productive: the old and the infirm.
    • lotsofpulp 7y ago
      And they’re owed pensions or other tax expenditures like healthcare.
      • mtsr 7y ago
        Cynical but probably true.
    • Cthulhu_ 7y ago
      Sounds like some dystopian eugenics shit to be honest, get rid of those who no longer contribute to society. I for one am working towards my old age, I'd hate to be left to just die.
      • the8472 7y ago
        The outcome may sound dystopian. But once you put monetary value on a life - I think insurances do around a few million per person - then the economic damage will be worth several lives anyway no matter which scenario you choose. And that kind of calculation does make sense because at some point economic damage starts to translate directly to deaths, at the latest when your food and medical supply collapses, probably sooner than that. So you end up trading some deaths for other deaths. Of course I'm not saying that anyone has done those tradeoffs optimally, especially considering that those relations probably are non-linear in practice.
        • JediWing 7y ago
          But we are nowhere near that point. Issue some Fiat money to businesses most heavily impacted. Reduce the spread of the virus. Save lives. Worry about the money later.
• AllegedAlec 7y ago
  > Here in Belgium though … we’re doing nothing. No government-based sanctions. That's because Belgium has no government to put sanctions into place.
  • artemonster 7y ago
    What?
    • AllegedAlec 7y ago
      After the last elections on 26 May 2019, the winnings parties have been unable to form a coalition, so there is no real cabinet at the moment which has the power to do the things that need to be done.
      • seszett 7y ago
        We do have a government though (quite a few of them even, but the federal government is the one that matters here) with all the power needed to do whatever it deems necessary. And the federal government has said that indoor meetings with more than 1000 persons are "not recommended". The Brussels government has cancelled those, the Walloon cities don't have events of more than 1000 persons planned in the near future, and the Antwerp government seems to be using the whole thing as an opportunity to criticize and reject any responsibility on the federal government without taking any decision (as far as I know, the Simple Minds concert hasn't been cancelled yet, and is supposed to have a lot more than 1000 people). There are actually a lot of governments which each have the power to do things. I personally think that the only reason they don't do anything useful is pure incompetence, irresponsibility and political calculations.
        • AllegedAlec 7y ago
          > We do have a government though (quite a few of them even, but the federal government is the one that matters here) with all the power needed to do whatever it deems necessary. Really? Because I seem to have read that budget deficit is getting out of hand because there is no federal government to fix it. Also, yeah, fair enough. There are a handful of other governments that technically could take a decision, but as you said: it's easy to say: "well, this is a federal decision, so we won't do anything".
• izacus 7y ago
  Or perhaps our government is acting and handling the threat, just not in a way mass hysteria on Twitter demands. Knee jerk reaction usually ends up in theater, not proper containment. (Then again, my government isn't the Belgian government.)
  • cosarara 7y ago
    The article states that beligum is not taking any measures at all. So the gov is handling the threat by inaction?
  • exegete 7y ago
    So to you would consider what’s been done so far by the US federal government not theater?
    • KarlKemp 7y ago
      There are countries besides Belgium and the US (thank God!). Sou5 Korea seems to be doing ok, Italy is certainly doing the right things, even China did pretty well, especially considering they didn’t get advanced warning. In the US, a lot of the action is at the state level, and WA, for example, seems to be doing fine. The federal response, and especially the testing situation, is complete amateur-hour bordering on negligence-in-the-criminal-sense, yes.
    • rsynnott 7y ago
      The US is doing particularly badly (and going for nonsensical solutions; note the most recent one). Various Asian and European states are being much more aggressive. Some US states are also doing the best they can.
  • duemti 7y ago
    Exactly! From what i have seen, the governments are acting, even in my country with only 3 confirmed cases, the schools are already shut down. It is media that amplify the panic so that no matter what governments do it seems not enough.
• anotheryou 7y ago
  I see how the struggle for economic reasons, but I have too little faith in them being smart enough for that plan and doubt they have good enough data scraping by the max capacity line so closely with confidence. Even the graph in the article is weird, why is there a sharp limit at max capacity in the T2 curve? the virus doesn't care about max capacity....
  • pishpash 7y ago
    Yeah, no. Nice hyperactive imagination to find any plausible justification for inaction. The intuitive impulse is there (trade off hospitals getting "creamed" vs. shutting down economy), but the implementation isn't realistic, so with the incubation period and lag in testing, all governments act too late. It's an impossible control problem. On the other hand, maybe the right time to act is to watch your stock market. It's a forward predictor. When it starts to tank, go all out.
    • anotheryou 7y ago
      it does tank already, no? (sorry for the german link, just literally what I have open in the next tab) https://www.onvista.de/etf/VANGUARD-FTSE-ALL-WORLD-UCITS-ETF-USD-DIS-ETF-IE00B3RBWM25 https://www.onvista.de/etf/VANGUARD-FTSE-ALL-WORLD-UCITS-ETF...
      • pishpash 7y ago
        At least the US seems to have waited for the markets to signal, not epidemiology.
• iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
  I like how cost is modelled as linear with time here and independent of deaths. Surely, cost is the area under the curve of the original graph. Massive strain on our systems doesn’t come for free.
• aetherspawn 7y ago
  Had an interesting thought earlier. Seeing as a majority of deaths are in the range 60 years and above, and very little of the casualties affect younger (working) people, from the governments POV the virus will do well to decrease the disproportionate number of older pension receivers and nursing home residents in comparison with the dwindling number of young people working and paying taxes. In other words, the government probably realizes that despite the grim reality, their POV may be that the virus will have a net positive effect on the economy and also accommodation affordability for the younger generation.
  • croon 7y ago
    Worst campaign ever pissing off your largest demographic by emphatically proving you don't care about them.
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
    >their POV may be that the virus will have a net positive effect on the economy and also accommodation affordability for the younger generation. Stressing systems like that is far more damaging/costly than managing the situation with care. Even if the death toll for the elderly explodes, there will be far more more old people requiring intensive care over time. Don't look at the death tool only, the coronavirus does not "kill clean".
  • johnpowell 7y ago
    You assume that the government cares about expenditures. Old people vote. So it would be in your best interest to keep the people that voted you into office alive.
    • xenonite 7y ago
      I second this. Because of this I don't understand why the German government is not acting more drastically in terms of isolating old people. Especially the current CDU/CSU/SPD leadership was largely voted by the elderly. Sources: https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/bundestagswahlen/279740/waehlerstimmen https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/bundestags... (Zweitstimmenergebnis) https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/parteien-in-deutschland/zahlen-und-fakten/140358/soziale-zusammensetzung https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/parteien-in-deutschla...
• hidiegomariani 7y ago
  Nice analysis, although there is no evidence that the economic impact is as described in the chart (#deaths/cost)
• polote 7y ago
  This article describes how to approach the problem to minimize economic cost by keeping under control the number of deaths. Which would be how a company think, I'm pretty sure governments don't think like that Most presidents want to be elected at the next election and this is probably the main thing they are trying to optimize right now
• nextstep 7y ago
  I think HN should enact stronger Coronavirus-related moderation like Reddit has. This is a bad post from a software engineer (not a health professional) and it offers an amateur analysis without even providing a real suggestion. What benefit does this provide in a crisis?
  • mostafab 7y ago
    posts from health professionals can be even worse. this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites (who think they can fine-tune an epidemic)
    • gjulianm 7y ago
      Not too bad? This is a post from a guy who, from his Twitter, "has been thinking for the last few days" and somehow he knows the thinking of ruling elites? Honestly, I am really surprised that this post is being upvoted at all. Empty speculation for no reason at all. It's also very wrong, as it depends on what measures are required for each curve, and as it seems clear, this guy does not seem to know the possible measures at hand, their feasibility and effectiveness.
    • endorphone 7y ago
      "this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites" By inventing a completely unsupported rationalization/conspiracy theory? "Ruling elites" are not omnipotent, and paradoxically most are in the most vulnerable demographic. And as others said, it is a situation where one can be damned regardless of which way they act. In the case of strong containment/quarantines, unless you're willing to completely close the borders indefinitely at this point it is futile doing maximum containment: it's past the point where you can stop it, as the world managed to do with SARS and MERS. At this point every government is vulnerable to every other government, and further vulnerable to the possibility that there are super-carriers spreading it. And FWIW, a number of countries have a done a very good job of managing it, but again it isn't a closed-loop.
      • mostafab 7y ago
• tasogare 7y ago
  They don’t act because they don’t care. It’s people dying, and their eyes are focused on purely economic metrics, not the well-being of the population or its survival. In the particular case of Europe, this is not the first thread that is totally discarded by the ruling elite, it’s the usual way of acting. It’s more visible with the virus because the timescale is shorter, but fundamentally there is no difference with how some other important threats are handled (for instance, see how the current acts of war from Turkey against Greece are handled by France and Germany).
  • collyw 7y ago
    If its only economic factors, don't you think that having an active workforce would make more sense to them?
• nl 7y ago
  This is just so completely wrong. He just relabelled the curves for no apparent reason! To make it clear: The vertical axis should not be number of deaths. While the number infected remains below the health system capacity the number of deaths should remain relatively low. But once it hits capacity there is a step function that ratchets it up. And the horizontal axis isn't cost at all. The green line shows something that is within the normal capacity of the health system. There aren't additional costs and so should be relatively cheap. And the green curve is great - everyone would like that - that's the normal Flu. The Blue curve is the maximum we can sustain without overwhelming the health system.
• sandgiant 7y ago
  This looks like false conclusions from oversimplifying the death ratio above health care saturation. You can't just change the axis labels because the death ratio depends non-linearly on infection ratio above the threshold. Are we willing to take the risk when we don't know the consequences?
• tomp 7y ago
  I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted out 3) pandemic, no action -> government was "wrong", caused loss of lives and damaged the economy -> voted out 4) pandemic, action - this is the trickiest scenario, so let's consider two options: 4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected 4b) pandemic, action, doesn't work -> government was "wrong", their actions failed, they're incompetent -> voted out There's two winning scenarios, (1) and (4a), but the problem is that (4a) has vanishingly small probability of success... with little information available about the virus, and rampant globalization, it's hard to know what action makes sense, is correct and viable... Case in point is Italy, which did act in time (they banned flights from China 2 weeks before the outbreak), but still failed (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their neighboring countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act. So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.
  • DonHopkins 7y ago
    The idea of dividing the outcome up into two binary "it works" and "it doesn't work" is a logical fallacy. It's like the ridiculous anti-gun control arguments that say because a measure doesn't stop 100% of gun deaths, it's not worth doing at all.
    • tomrod 7y ago
      Gotta cut the strategy space somewhere.
  • jcadam 7y ago
    Also in the case of 4a it's hard to define "it works." Because it's hard to know to what degree any actions taken mitigated the severity of the pandemic.
• tda 7y ago
  Just a little thought experiment: If the current wisdom is actually that almost everyone will be infected eventually, wouldn't it (ignoring any ethical issues) be wiser to deliberately infect medical personnel as soon as possible, so the 5-10% of infected that need IC treatment can actually get it, before the medical system is overrun by the infected general population. In a few weeks, all doctors are immune (or deceased) so that they are much better prepared when the number of cases in the general public explodes
  • DailyHN 7y ago
    There is a chance people can get the virus a second time. Though, cases of reoccurrence may have been due to human error.
  • nhumrich 7y ago
    Potentially, yes. But, only if by being infected, it would mean you were now immune, which isn't the case with covid-19. Reinfections have happened.
    • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Is there any evidence of that at scale or is it just the odd anecdote?
      • coldcode 7y ago
        I have not seen any evidence either way. At this point it is too early to have any.
      • jaynetics 7y ago
        Probably little evidence for Covid-19, but for SARS, studies in animals have found limited immunity after both infections and vaccination attempts. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/706717_1 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/706717_1
• DanBC 7y ago
  > Why aren’t we going for green though, that seems even better? Because we want to avoid Covid-19 becoming a recurrent winter illness like other coughs and colds and flu. Those already cause considerable pressure on healthcare systems, and adding annual covid-19 season on top would be pretty rough.
  • earnubs 7y ago
    Yes! We don't want to flatted the curve so much that it extends into winter, because then we compound other seasonal illnesses like the flu, and the pressure on the health service is back above the red line.
• nathell 7y ago
  This presupposes rational action on behalf of those in power, which I don't think is a correct premise.
• fxtentacle 7y ago
  TLDR: It's cheapest to let old people die, so that the young can continue working. A very cruel view on humanity, but I would be surprised if these thoughts hadn't crossed our politicians minds. Also, many initiatives by young people (e.g. limiting climate change, re-structuring society to be more equal-opportunity) are being blocked by old people who wish to preserve the status quo. So there is a general dislike by young people - those mostly unaffected by Covid - against the elderly - those most likely to die from Covid. And for many years, there have been heated discussions about whether it is fair to force an ever smaller number of young people to pay for an ever growing number of old people, even if those old people directly undermine the young people's livelihood, for example by driving up rental prices or by voting to stop free education (which they themselves benefited from, when young). So you could probably even win some young votes with a platform of "let's sacrifice the unneeded grumpy grandmas for the greater good".
  • lm28469 7y ago
    If you do that in the US you'd lose 60% of politicians and 90% of presidential candidates.
    • fxtentacle 7y ago
      Which, in the eyes of young people, might not be that bad.
    • selimthegrim 7y ago
      Good lord I hope Gabbard isn’t the one that’s left
    • tsukurimashou 7y ago
      don't get my hopes up like that
  • michaelt 7y ago
    I find it hard to believe there's a significant number of people who would cheer the deaths of their own parents and grandparents?
• johnchristopher 7y ago
  While it's true our federal government hasn't issued orders but only advice the local and provincial authorities have the power to prevent some things from happening. And they are using it: some classes or schools are getting shut down, some away trips are being cancelled. But I agree, everything's fine in Belgium :D. The virus is likely to have taken a detour to avoid Belgium, like the Chernobyl cloud did.
• DonHopkins 7y ago
  How long is the pandemic expected to last? What are the furthest out conferences that have been (or should be) canceled? How is the end of a pandemic even defined?
• hoseja 7y ago
  >The deathtoll would be immense. Would it though?
• collyw 7y ago
  They are in some places. In Spain gatherings of over 1000 people have been banned.
• scarmig 7y ago
  At this point, the writing for the USA is on the wall: either institute a national quarantine policy, or face a mass die off of hundreds of thousands of the elderly in the next couple months. We need to start the national quarantine before things blow up to Italy and Wuhan level proportions. Yes, it will be extremely costly. But riding on imaginary hopes that the virus will just disappear for no real reason is extraordinarily irresponsible. The details of what it looks like will take time to figure out--it will be a complicated collaboration between the federal, state, and local authorities, with the justice system and health sectors being deeply involved. That's reason to start figuring those details out now, and not two weeks from now. Donald Trump was elected because he said he was a risk taker willing to do what needs to be done despite criticism from everyone. A national quarantine is needed now, and we need bold action to get it started. This is his moment to make a difference.
  • bluGill 7y ago
    The US has already started mass quarantine. Hospitals will only allow visitors if they are over 16 and a primary caregiver (ie spouse), and even they are screened before being allowed in. Nursing homes are limiting visitors, both who can come, and where they can go. Companies are halting non-essential travel. It isn't as drastic as you might think it should be, but it is significant at limiting risk for the most vulnerable. Most of the above is running plans that have been in place for a long time (far longer than Trump), walking the line between overreacting and things getting out of control.
• temptemptemp111 7y ago
  Amazing how brainwashed the HN community is... Kobe-911 is an obvious scam. Just go test old blood samples, they will test positive too. Seasonal flu you sheep!
• CheeseCookie 7y ago
  Hmm,Trump even suspended traveling from Europe..
• drenginian 7y ago
  There just waiting for the death count to jump so they won’t be blamed for taking radical action that will hurt the economy. The deaths are the cover they need, so action will come in the next few weeks.
• soyyo 7y ago
  Last Sunday it was 8th of March, International Women's Day, and the current spanish government has appropriated it to the point that women from other political parties are not welcomed in the protests that happen that day. When gatherings of people started to be canceled all around the world, the government kept going ahead with the plans because this is a key event for their agenda. The very next day, they acknowledged that the virus is out of control in several regions in Spain, started to take very aggressive measures that are only increasing each day. Today, it has been announced that Irene Montero, head of the women rights ministry, that lead the main protest that day, has tested positive for coronavirus. Stupidity at its finest
  • stoicShell 7y ago
    The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve. It's a simple projection from voter space to elected space. As a former pol.sci. student/researcher, I've grown disillusioned by the fact that representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended — the projection is flawed with regards to the conduct of affairs. I don't know why: - might be that voting is skewed by marketing (permanent campaign) money, government is too corrupt and establishment too entrenched, the "conspiracy hidden in plain sight / normalcy" idea; - could be that democracy simply doesn't work as a system, or maybe not anymore, because the "average" is somehow not good enough — that was certainly not my belief, not for a decade, but I had to come to terms: it's a question worth asking, I assure you. Just considering the quality of information and the noise/signal ratio throws a huge wrench in the mechanics of any sane decision-making process... - ... (many more hypotheses) Regardless, this may help us craft the next-new-better political system, which might or might not be a regime of increased freedom compared to now (my guess: much more in some domains, much less in others, and not everyone will like the distribution). I mean, look where we are. We had 15 years to get ready for such an event since coronavirus of the 2000's — tons of reports and words of good will. “Guys, we're not ready for a massive outbreak!” — everybody and their Bill Gates said so! But alas, the political fantasy kept going and it's all been just words. It wasn't that hard to stockpile masks and various supplies for when the day comes... It's a sad day in history when we must face the consequences of our choices, but it's like a cycle... We get too complacent and something slams us, again and again and again (give it 3-4 generations apart to "forget", it's as if written language doesn't exist). I'm jaded at the irony of our collective behavior, and sad for all those who will suffer and leave. Hopefully this will be a painful but learning experience that will last. I'm sad to report that it almost exclusively takes real pain, real hurt for societies to learn anything meaningfully in the face of history, of evolution. So, here we are, destiny.
• numpad0 7y ago
  First: SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoronaVirus-2. COVID-19 is COronaVIrus Disease-2019 which is the disease caused by CoV-2. Second: Flattening the curve isn't about shortening any duration. The Y axis is the number of infected. In the Red Line scenario, like packets overflowing a buffer, patients above the dashed line will (have to) be medically neglected. Rest assured, our immune system will eventually gain the upper hand, the virus will eventually decides its job done, red line settles, we'll congratulate the lucky few who won scarce beds at surviving hospitals, as well as those who treated themselves next to remains of deceased hospital staffs. Then we will assemble at rubble of our cities and start walking towards the former glory of human civilization up until 2020(hyper exaggeration). The Blue Line, "Flattening the curve", lets us avoid that apocalyptic situation: by boldly suppressing infection early on and spreading it out to a longer duration, ignoring economical disaster ensuing, no patient will be left behind. The hope is that by allowing every patients to be semi-adequately treated WHEN infected(not IF infected), total population of alive and recovered combined at the end of this pandemic at maybe late 2022 or so is going to be far better than the Red Line scenario. So we'd want to flatten the curve. Green, is just a pipe dream. Makes no sense. If that's possible we might as well get production back up full over in China. I think there's an important, sub-vocally communicated notion: the containment had failed long ago, and there is an ongoing pandemic. Many stays asymptomatic, some experience manageable illness, some would need to stay at ICUs, around 0.5-1% life will be lost, but we will all(~70%) get infected. Ideas that requires or aims at containing infection or isolating infected few are useless. We must all accept that almost all of us are situationally required to "schedule" an infection, and fortunately, exact time, place or severity of it is left to our discretion. We must be aware of these facts, and must use it to our maximum advantage, starting from washing hands often.
  • ronyfadel 7y ago
    Since it seems deadlier than the common flu at the moment, I personally would prefer to “schedule” my infection by waiting for a vaccine. I’m in Latin America where it isn’t spreading as fast (my best guess is warm weather), and I’m planning to wait it out until it’s warmer in the northern hemisphere or a vaccine comes out.
• robertofmoria 7y ago
  Or government is acting according to the threat it poses. It has been three months now since it has moved globally. Likely longer actually. This isn't a plague killing everyone in its wake. It is the newest Y2k, 2012, Bird Flu, or Global warming hysteria push by governments and the media. Look at news from China, they are using it to be more in control except now with support. This going to blow over with little interuptions due to the virus itself. I bet more deaths arise from lack of service due to people inundating the ERs with negative cases than the virus causes.
• a_diplomat 7y ago
  This is just not correct. Governments are acting on this throughout the world. Don't conflate governments with politicians. For well-functioning states, state agencies are dealing with this through well-established protocols that don't need political clearence. This means that the countries where politicians are the most visible and calling for action could very well be the ones that have prepared the least.
  • dx034 7y ago
    Exactly. In many countries it's down to the city or county to act and federal government can only take over as last resort. We're not there yet. Not all cities are equipped equally and it's frustrating that they don't have a common policy but they all seem to act. For them that's also the first time they are confronted with a pandemic and there's a lot at stake. Under these circumstances, I'm actually somewhat surprised how quickly certain policies are enacted around the globe. A week ago, banning large public events was a novelty, now they're basically banned in most of Europe and parts of the US. The quarantine in Italy seemed extreme a week ago, now several countries are heading towards the same measures. In democracies, curtailing peoples' rights is always tricky, it's the first time I've seen bureaucrats take away individual rights daily without backtracking on decisions.
  • Veedrac 7y ago
    This is even more obvious when you consider what the economically-optimal thing to do would be: Shut down nonessential travel to other countries and enact quarantine protocols for essential travel between countries, before you have community transmission. Then test heavily, for cheap. Trump shut down travel just as doing so became pointless, the USA is barely testing people, and the CDC is resisting drive-through test centres because they are (actual quote) “trying to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers.”
• AngeloAnolin 7y ago
  The action that any government should take now is find a cure for the virus. Collectively pool resources, bring up the brightest minds in health sciences and devise a way to remove the virus from the equation. The fact that despite lockdown and other government actions and the virus is still spreading just mean that all this measures would become nil at some point.
  • hef19898 7y ago
    I had the impression they are doing so. All the measures taken now aim at flattening the curve. Which spreads cases out to prevent ICU beds and hospitals from being overwhelmed. This helps to keep the hard cases alive and buys time. Which might also explain why countries act differently, the max threshold for the respective medical system is different. As are projections of the spread. But I don't think we have to believe governments aren't analyzing the development daily at least.
• dboreham 7y ago
  A couple of other factors: Governments don't seem to be able to act based on non-local information. Once the hospitals fill up _here_ , then action is taken. Hospitals filling up somewhere else causes no action. There appears to be concerted disinformation operation underway, using the same outlets used for politics. I live in a "red" part of the US and can see comments from people on local TV news posts, and I talk to other local people. It's pretty clear there is lots of false information being propagated: comments like "Media stop overblowing this", "it's just the flu", "we can still shake hands here, it's a long way away" (that was a teacher at last night's parent teacher meetings). If the population don't have a realistic view of the situation then how can government take the necessary steps?
• silvestrov 7y ago
  Denmark did act yesterday evening & today: - events with more than 100 people forbidden. - all schools will close - all non-critical employees must stay home. - all private employees off-job as much as possible. - stay in your home. - don't travel to [many] countries, more restricts will come. - All indoor cultural institutions, libraries, leisure facilities, etc. are closed. And today they made a temporary law which will sunset 1 year from now (the law is only in effect for 1 year): - ability to force people to be tested and put into isolation - enter homes without warrant when occupant is suspected to be infected. - much expanded ability to forbid events and collection of people (Note: the permission to assemble is just as fundamental culturally to Danish people as freedom-of-speech is to USA). - ability to forbid/restrict use of transportation (likely number of passengers in buses, trains) - suspension of "free choice" of hospitals and quarantee of treatment within some time frame (we have "socialized medicin" where we have a right to treatment within a given time frame) - allow temporary suspension of other laws if deemed necessary Why did this happend now: They were told yesterday that Northern Italy no longer has enough resources in their health care system and that there are now official guidelines for whom to treat and whom to let die: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-h... Italy is close and "one of us".
  • mhandley 7y ago
    Denmark's situation is very unusual. This graph gives an idea of where Denmark lies relative to Italy: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu-norm2.png http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu-norm2.png This is actual case data, plotted with the time offsets shown in the key. No other country had a ramp-up like that. Right now, Denmark is 5-6 days behind Italy in terms of cases per million inhabitants, and the incubation period is about that time. Really pleased to see some quick decision making on the part of the Danish government.
    • bufferoverflow 7y ago
      Maybe it is quick decision making, but the list of decisions is questionable. This one the most: > events with more than 100 people forbidden. Which still allows rapid infections of relatively large groups of people. In Italy you can't even walk outside without a valid reason (buying groceries, medical emergency, solo exercising).
• qaq 7y ago
  Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis. Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it. Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
• hnarn 7y ago
  The headline of the actual post is: > Why your government isn't acting on the Corona/COVID-19 threat Maybe we could correct this weird Indian grammar seen in the current headline on HN?
• csomar 7y ago
  This is just one guy thinking that government know what they are doing and that they are "fine". I have read other delusional thinking on Reddit along the lines of "Trump seems to be so confidant, this must be a bio-attack on China/Iran and somehow the virus is not going to spread in the USA". This was before the virus spreading to Italy and Iran/China being the only countries with breakouts. This kind of delusional thinking is not very different from religion and believing in God. People who believe in God, when they are found in hard situations, will think that somehow god (the savior) will come for their rescue. Apparently, people who do not believe in God will think that somehow the universe/government or whatever will come to their rescue. The issue is that people holding power/government seems to be, eh, usual folks. They are still operating with a normal brain which when confronted with abnormal situations that it can't handle will just imagine that stuff is going to return to normal. Bill Gates has already warned about something close to the Coronavirus and that we are very far from being ready. Nobody was listening and my guess is the change is going to happen through natural selection.
• wjnc 7y ago
  Let's start with one fundamental assertion that I feel is missing in many of the discussions in this thread: There is no "the government". In most countries "government" is a collection of agencies, staffed by individuals, not completely in sync on all levels (micro, meso, macro). You see that playing out when measures on one level (most prominently medical advise) are not in line with broader approaches to managing events, groups, tourism and travel. We all notice the disconnect, and some might think of 'dark conspiracies'. There are none (rule of the most kind interpretation). It's the dispersion of institutions in action. Another one is my assertion, as a former public servant with friends in places that /should know/, that there is no structured economic analysis of possible outcomes of various scenarios of intervention. There are no models, there is no time, there is not enough collaboration between agencies. On the one hand you have the medical staff and agencies doing what they can where they can on a medical level, on the other hand you have bureaucrats making decisions with limited information and way more limited understanding. Politicians probably get in the way more than they support. My thought: Governments are acting. They are just not acting in a way that we, the public, can understand is internally consistent. That's because the acts aren't internally consistent. That is due to the fact that governement is made up of institutions with different levels of understanding, information, scope and time to act. In a pandemic, this is all very unfortunate and a more singlehanded style of governement could help. China got it quite right after an initial denial. Nobody in the West is equipped to both think about and act on China-style measures. In normal situation our distributed model of application of knowledge (Hayek) is more efficient. Most we can hope for is rapid learning in our institutions and the fact that a whole lot of capital, both human and monetary, is available for solving this crisis. I'm quite in a shock (my province is in partial quarantine) with what's happening, but if the world economy proofs resiliant to this shock on a say 2-yr horizon, I'm quite bullish on how strong and adaptable our institutions are and see more hope for f.e. tackling climate change than before.
• deleted 7y ago
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• JdeBP 7y ago
  Far more enlightening than reading some inexpert web log with wobbly hand-drawn graphs with unmarked axes is to read the actual after-the-fact analyses of the measures taken against the 1918 Influenza pandemic. People learned from history, what actually did not work. It influenced what they did the next time around, in the 1920s. Don't read some Belgian web developer's web log. Read the likes of Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary published by the National Academies Press in 2007 (ISBN 9780309107693 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54167/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54167/). Read “Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic (Nancy Tomes. Public Health Rep. 2010. 125(Suppl 3) 48–62. PMC2862334. PMID 20568568. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S308 https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S308 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/) Tomes is particularly enlightening on the internal conflicts between government public heath departments.
• Proven 7y ago
  Good analysis but I think 1) Governments are not profit motivated and are generally incompetent 2) Most measures to protect taxpayers don't play along with the overall globalist agenda
• cstross 7y ago
  This all assumes that executive level government functions rationally and in the long-term national interest. Which is normally the case, but this is an abnormal decade. Let me be extremely cynical (at risk of down-voting) about the current US administration's motives: Consider Trump's just-announced travel ban on the EU-26. It misses out the UK and Ireland, despite COVID-19 having a toe-hold in those countries ... but the UK and Ireland have Trump-branded golf courses! A ban on travel from UK and IE would hurt their viability, so it was quietly omitted. Meanwhile, the Trump hotel chain is being hit as badly as anyone else in the hospitality trade by fears of a pandemic, and revenue of his hotels in Florida is driven by spring break traffic. So he's downplaying anything that might reduce vacation travel at spring break. Denying that COVID-19 is anything to worry about is personally advantageous for Donald Trump as a hotel magnate, because it protects his investments. It's disadvantageous for the USA as a whole, but where do his priorities lie?
  • Zenst 7y ago
    His travel ban was for schengen EUrope countries, many refer to them as Europe, when they are only part of it. Much the same way that some think the UK is leaving Europe and fail to grasp the difference of economic areas and tectonic plates.
    • cstross 7y ago
      It's being reported here (the UK) as "anyone who has visited or trsvelled through a Schengen zone country in the past 14 days". Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-outbreak-us-trump-latest https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-ou...
      • Zenst 7y ago
        Yip, I read that elsewhere as well. Honestly should of just said, all air travel. How the thing spread to other countries in the first place. Still, I'd be supprised if London don't end up with quarantine zones before the month is up. Going by how it has patterned in countries that have had to move from containment onto delay. Then it's not a case of if, but when.
• ThePhysicist 7y ago
  It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home. I'm not saying this is bad, I just think such recommendations and articles should come from people that have more experience with modeling such epidemics. Fitting a dataset with an exponential function is easy, it just doesn't tell us much beyond the current growth rate. It's also a bit ridiculous to judge how bad the situation is in a given country without accounting for differences like the number of tests that are done and the overall population of these countries.
  • whydoineedone 7y ago
    mind sharing the 'growth hacker from SF's article?
  • Dumblydorr 7y ago
    This is because quality science is not correlated with good marketing, virality of media (bad word choice), or how people feel about scientific content. Most people are woefully uneducated in science and it's showing on the internet especially.
  • hef19898 7y ago
    Exactly this! I kind of understand the WHO, the broad public, including media, doesn't care about models and such things. Providing to much details can have the opposite effect, instead of calming things down it could spark more fear. On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential curves fit so nicely early on. What could, and should, be done by large tech companies is preventing this. Google could make sure that every Corona related search ends up showing the WHO on top, followed by local sources like the CDC, Robert Koch, John Hopkins and so on. They could support these parties in getting them up in the search results. Facebook could do the same, as does Twitter. In Germany, you have to explicitly include Robert Koch or RKI in your search for the link to show. Even by doing so, earlier today it still wasn't the tip link. The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere. And yet, nothing like that happens.
• Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
  I think Hanlon's razor applies here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I'm in Spain, one of the countries that is doing way too little, way too late. When I see the measures and statements from our politicians, I don't see a machiavellian plan, I see stupidity. In fact, a prominent member of the government has been infected after attending feminist demonstrations on March 8 that anyone reasonably informed and intelligent knew shouldn't have been held in the first place, others also attended and could follow. If they were such diabolical masterminds, I doubt they would have done that...
  • nmeofthestate 7y ago
    Except there's not necessarily any malice exposed by this explanation. To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. For example, in the UK austerity is blamed for tens of thousands of deaths (some people say 130,000, others 30,000). The unpalatable fact is that trade-offs need to be made when deciding how to tackle this. In the case of covid-19 I don't envy anyone who has to make these decisions, due to the exponential nature of infection spread making small changes in measures potentially have big results. We are all in uncharted territory. Hopefully the examples of countries such as Italy will help decision makers get it right, or perhaps more importantly will influence peoples' behaviour to reduce transmission. Also, I think he's wrong about the Y axis equalling "deaths" - the point is to keep cases manageable by the health system, which minimises deaths. Dragging things out doesn't necessarily improve outcomes for at-risk people.
    • creaghpatr 7y ago
      >To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. This is also the main argument against taking dramatic action to combat climate change.
• mhandley 7y ago
  When is too late to act? Clearly Italy acted too late. I've been plotting the actual case data, in an attempt to get some idea of where countries lie with respect to Italy: https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760 https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760 These are not strictly predictions, but they give some idea of what will happen if we act in a similar way to Italy. Note that there's a 6 to 10 day lag in the stats (~6 days incubation, up to 4 days testing, at least in the UK right now). Without isolation measures, we're seeing 33% per day increase rates. If we wait until we can measure the scale of the problem, it's likely to be too late to prevent it.
• Pusha_Drugz 7y ago
  It depends, a lot of european countries right now are banning events that have more than 1000 people, schools are closing down and simmilar places. Technically, they need to push the agenda even further as everyone should buy more so that the economy would not collapse as it is already near that
• dustingetz 7y ago
  Game of Chicken
• ginko 7y ago
  What's with the random question mark added to the title? At least reword it so it's grammatically correct.
• generalpass 7y ago
  This the type of analysis that comes from people who spend most of their lives analyzing data. If you were to go into the offices of the elected and the offices of the government, you would generally find the same thing: The actions they are taking are based on what they feel will serve them best. This should be the first assumption in the analysis.
• pingec 7y ago
  Well at least Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria are closing down the borders, cancelling schools and kindergartens etc.
• neuro_image3 7y ago
  The more I see and hear about coronavirus, its origins and the knock on effects it has on the economy and society I can only hope that this becomes our 'come to Jesus' moment (figuratively speaking). This pandemic started because too many people are living together in close proximity, eeking out a living by literally catching and eating any living thing they can. The economic effects are due to an unforgiving system that takes pride in an 'eat what you kill' culture and a 'winner take all' model of enterprise. As a consequence, there are a LOT of businesses running on thin margins and making just enough to cover costs each month. Even one month of things going to zero will ruin a whole host of restaurants, sole proprietors, real estate speculators, and on down the chain. I hope I'm wrong, but this kind of instant systematic reduction in the economy feels unprecedented within the last 50+ years. There are so many knock on effects of all this - people will be unemployed with limited opportunities at best. They'll potentially lose their healthcare, and in the worst cases their homes. Schools are closing around the country, and they won't have lunch programs running which means a lot of kids are likely to go without adequate food. We need to fix (or create) safety nets in our country (and indeed the world), so when things like this happen we can all chip in to cover each other. Basic healthcare, affordable or public housing, eviction protections, food programs. These aren't radical ideas, these are the only way forward.
• xvilka 7y ago
  Ethics aside, more fatalities will cause the bigger economical impact as well due to the lower amount of consumers, the lower consumption rate of the survivors (they will lose their close people, relatives, friends), will increase the long-term burden to the public health due to increased depression levels, lower immunity levels, and so on. Moreover, the political damage of the governance system, including healthcare. It's sick that people look just to the first-order effects but completely forget about second-order ones.
• XorNot 7y ago
  The graph this blog draws doesn't work that way. The whole point of not overloading the medical system - and definitely not getting it at 100% capacity, is that once you're at capacity, it's not just COVID-19 treatment which stops (which means, all those people who would otherwise survive die) - it's all treatment. Get appendicitis? Routine surgery, can be done in a few hours. And will definitely kill you without treatment. Break a bone? Car crash? Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support. The cost of overburdening the healthcare system is not some calculation of a nuisance amount of citizen death over a time period - it's a whole bunch of people who otherwise live full and productive lives, instead stop existing. What happens when you go above that dotted line is not the continuation of a predictable trend, it is a chaotic bifurcation in behavior which does not have predictable secondary effects. The COVID-19 case load follows that shape. The deaths and long-term health problems do not.
  • Roritharr 7y ago
    Thank you for putting it so succinctly!
  • ericol 7y ago
    > Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support. This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now. Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term. I know the generalized idea is no face masks if you don't have symptoms, but if we all used them it might have a good effect on curving the spread. Unfortunately, western cultures associate face mask with sickness, and are frowned upon.
    • PaulHoule 7y ago
      I think we're out of N95 masks in the U.S. and we have to wait a month or so to get them from China.
      • 7y ago
• fiatjaf 7y ago
  It's ridiculous to imagine governments are doing the best thing possible and then try to decode their actions from our inferior standpoint, like if they were full of wisdom we just don't understand -- more likely doing the worst thing possible and we are the victims.
• cletus 7y ago
  So I encourage people to go watch the Joe Rogan podcast on this [1]. A few snippets: - He describes this as more like a "winter" than a "blizzard" in that this is going to go on for months; - No one really knows what the mortality rate is but it's become clear there are certain risk factors eg the fatality rate among people over 70 in China is about 3x for men than women but men are much more likely to smoke than women in China in this age group. - Keeping schools closed is a mixed bag. For one, kids below 9 or so don't seem to get sick or die. In China only 2% of cases are under age 19. There are other diseases like this (eg Hepatitis-A). If you keep kids home, some people will lose their jobs or simply be unable to work as they take care of those children. Some of those people will be health care professionals. The lack of those will likely kill people; - It's unclear yet what other risk factors (other than age and smoking) there are. Obesity in the developed world is a big cause for concern as this unfolds. A stat quoted is that 45% of people in the US aged 45 and older are obese or severely obese; - It's largely a question of when not if you'll get this; - It's a myth that we'll have a vaccine before ~18 months. You can't rush this. It's like trying to rush a pregnancy. - Italy is a window to how most places will be in ~3 weeks; - We, as a society, have a short attention span. We could've developed a vaccine for coronaviruses after previous outbreaks (SARS/MERS) but there seemed to be no appetite for that when they faded; - Disruptions to the supply chain are likely to be the biggest problem. We don't stockpile anything and we're dependent on China for a lot of medical equipment (eg respirators) and a bunch of essential medicines, some of which people will die if they don't receive. The guest here (Michael Osterholm) is an expert on infectious diseases and the author of Deadliest Enemies [2]. I can't speak to the reaction of different governments. It's no surprise there's variance. This probably comes down to just 1 or 2 personalities. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Enemy-Against-Killer-Germs-ebook/dp/B01HZFB5EW/ https://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Enemy-Against-Killer-Germs-...
• PaulHoule 7y ago
  What I see is that the impetus to action starts from below and works up. New York City declared a state of emergency first, then the state. I guess the U.S. is in a state of emergency because it is shutting down flights. For a while people were accusing WHO of inaction, finally WHO declares a pandemic and they start accusing other people of inaction. The structure is that an outbreak creates a crisis in one spot even though others are currently unaffected.
• mg794613 7y ago
  I know this sounds like a lame joke, but it is not. The true reason why Belgium is not doing anything, is because they can't form a government, let alone take these kind of coordinated measures.
• Paul_S 7y ago
  "Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story problem. If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 50 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall? You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall."
• mensetmanusman 7y ago
  Halt air travel, reduce large gatherings, let people live their lives knowing that: 1) Test kits are not helpful because of their high false positive rates. 2) The goal of these activities is to slow the spread, because it is not possible to stop. 3) Slowing the spread gives vaccine developers more time
• gdubs 7y ago
  I think there’s a simpler explanation which is that governments are comprised of people, and people are — to borrow a phrase — predictably irrational. We consistently prioritize the short term over the long term. Take Climate Change. There’s no shortage of brilliant scientists who have warned us of the long term costs (in human toll and wealth) of inaction. Yet we wait. Unfortunately, scientists are not the ones flying the plane, so to speak. There are brilliant epidemiologists here in the United States. What are their recommendations behind closed doors? Classified. We don’t know. We do know the opinions of the ones who are free to speak their minds, and they have been warning us to be proactive. For years, before this crisis, actually. The rest of us are sitting in the back of the plane, uncomfortably contemplating whether the pilots have perhaps made a fatal error in their judgement. It happens. Now we wait. To quote Carl Sagan: “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness“
• muh_gradle 7y ago
  I don't know who the author of this blog is, but this was sincerely the least insightful article that I've ever read. Kindergarten level, crayon drawn graphs were representative of their insight.
• angry_octet 7y ago
  I've read a lot of dumb COVID-19 takes, and this has to be in the top 10. Disregard the wishful thinking, psychopath level lack of empathy and poor graphing. The problem with this is the lack of any actual model or incorporation of any variables that disagree with it. Things like confidence, certainty, the value of all those parents & grandparents. I'm chalking this one down to ostrich syndrome.
• cycomanic 7y ago
  Here is a discussion of some of the numbers and models. It's in German but I guess deepL should give a reasonable translation. One part of an answer that I extract from this article is that it's complicated. People do have more sophisticated models (see some of the ones mentioned in the article), the issue is these require more parameter inputs with significant uncertainties (we really don't have enough information on the virus yet). if some government would come out and say this is the model we are using you would immediately have lots of discussion about the validity and how everything would be easy peasy if we just change this parameter. Another aspect is probably that accurate modelling is not the primary focus right now.
  • cycomanic 7y ago
    Sorry missed to paste the link: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen-bitte-3-4-Coronavirus-Fallsterblichkeit-False-Number-4679338.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen-bitte-3-4-Cor...
• bronzeage 7y ago
  This is all dumb. saying this is unstoppable is a misconception. China reduced cases. South Korea and Singapore and Hong Kong and Taiwan have it under control. This is a statistics game, if you manage to reduce infection rate below 1 you win. the faster you respond, less time it takes. it's also clear, that if you could respond patient 0, that would be ideal, and you can prove by induction from here it's always better to act sooner. There is no reason whatsoever that makes it better to stop the spread after it reached 1000 people versus when it reached 10. What works when you have 1000 cases works just as well for 10.
• Morgangeek 7y ago
  Finally actions are taken by the mentioned country (Belgium)