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That's the policy of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, who are doing great. All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK. For larger nations, there s

That's the policy of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, who are doing great. All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK. For larger nations, there simply aren't enough tests available, nor enough treatment facilities for those who are likely to become very sick if the virus spreads rapidly through the population.

knzhou 7y ago
> For larger nations, there simply aren't enough tests available Why? If your nation is twice as big, then all else equal, your government has twice as much money, twice as many resources, and hence twice as many tests. China now has more tests than they need and they're the 2nd most populous nation in the world.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  No amount of money helps if there aren't enough tests available to buy. What is missing are manufacturing and distribution facilities, which of course are calibrated to the normal levels of work and not to a relatively sudden pandemic outbreak of one particular virus. China has huge resources but has managed so far to keep the infection mostly contained to one specific area. It's not clear how long they'll be able to sustain that or whether they'd have enough resources to go around if all of China were the same as Hubei. Of course all of this also assumes that tests are effective and that you can then do something useful if you confirm that a patient is indeed infected.
AlchemistCamp 7y ago
> All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK. Is 66 million really that qualitatively different than 24 million?
- Silhouette 7y ago
  The honest answer is that I don't know. Perhaps I generalised too readily before, given Taiwan is quite a bit closer to the UK in population than the other two. Even so, assuming that strategies that appear to have been relatively successful in a smaller, more densely populated country will necessarily also work in a larger and less densely populated one seems to be dubious. We know that we don't have the resources we'd need to implement that strategy in the UK right now, and I haven't personally seen any experts arguing that it's a viable option for us, so I'm cautious about extrapolating too much here.
  - tim333 7y ago
    China doesn't have a small population and has it under control. I don't think it's a population size thing.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      China does seem to be on of the most interesting cases so far. The quarantine measures, once introduced, do seem to have been viewed favourably by the experts and do seem to have been remarkably effective. This assumes we trust the reported statistics, which I acknowledge as a possible risk in this instance. On the other hand, it may be that China has been able to achieve that in part by pulling resources from all over to focus on the main region affected. That isn't necessarily an option that will be open to other nations, particularly if their outbreaks are distributed across their whole area almost immediately.
golem14 7y ago
Taiwan population is smaller, but not really "tiny" compared to UK's.
1_over_n 7y ago
and much denser populations, with a lot of international travel. which have a huge culture of eating food in hawker centres which would really seem to make a big threat to containment yet they appear to be doing well.
kragen 7y ago
Taiwan is 23 million people. The UK is 67 million people. The level of confidence of your comment does not seem to be warranted by your level of knowledge.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Please don't make comments like this on HN. They lower the tone and add nothing of value to the discussion. We have explored a little whether the population of Taiwan being somewhat closer to the UK's than the other two named countries was significant in a sibling thread. In addition, in the UK, which is the subject of this discussion, it is certainly the case that we do not currently have sufficient resources to cope with a widespread, uncontrolled outbreak. There have been a number of further announcements today regarding how the government is hoping to acquire new space for treatments, acquire essential equipment like ventilators on a much larger scale than is currently available, and bring in more trained staff to make use of these resources to help treat coronavirus patients. Even if these plans work out as is hoped, all of them will require at least several weeks to make a large difference. This isn't my opinion, it's coming straight from senior government figures and their senior medical and scientific advisors.
  - kragen 7y ago
    I'd like to ask you to not make comments like the one you did — confident assertions about things you know nothing about, that you haven't made even the most trivial effort to verify, whether that's the population of Taiwan or the general relationship between country size and testing kits per capita. Regardless of how politely you make them, statements unconnected to any concern for truthfulness lower the signal to noise ratio, and they add nothing of value to the discussion. On the contrary, calling out such recklessly false statements does add something of value to the discussion. Instead of criticizing my tone, which was in fact fairly restrained, you should thank me for taking the time to correct you. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22529609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22529609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370446 It is true that the UK does not have sufficient resources to cope with a widespread, uncontrolled outbreak, lacking for example one to two orders of magnitude in ventilator capacity; but, as should be obvious, this is not a result of the UK being a large country — the UK is much smaller than China, slightly smaller than Japan, the same size as South Korea, and slightly larger than Taiwan. But this conversation would be of higher quality if, instead of containing such your obviously false assertion and also fact-based rebuttals such as these, you had not posted the assertion in the first place (perhaps because you had read enough to see that it was false), so no rebuttal would be necessary.

knzhou 7y ago

> For larger nations, there simply aren't enough tests available Why? If your nation is twice as big, then all else equal, your government has twice as much money, twice as many resources, and hence twice as many tests. China now has more tests than they need and they're the 2nd most populous nation in the world.

Silhouette 7y ago
No amount of money helps if there aren't enough tests available to buy. What is missing are manufacturing and distribution facilities, which of course are calibrated to the normal levels of work and not to a relatively sudden pandemic outbreak of one particular virus. China has huge resources but has managed so far to keep the infection mostly contained to one specific area. It's not clear how long they'll be able to sustain that or whether they'd have enough resources to go around if all of China were the same as Hubei. Of course all of this also assumes that tests are effective and that you can then do something useful if you confirm that a patient is indeed infected.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

> All of which have tiny populations compared to the UK. Is 66 million really that qualitatively different than 24 million?

Silhouette 7y ago
The honest answer is that I don't know. Perhaps I generalised too readily before, given Taiwan is quite a bit closer to the UK in population than the other two. Even so, assuming that strategies that appear to have been relatively successful in a smaller, more densely populated country will necessarily also work in a larger and less densely populated one seems to be dubious. We know that we don't have the resources we'd need to implement that strategy in the UK right now, and I haven't personally seen any experts arguing that it's a viable option for us, so I'm cautious about extrapolating too much here.
- tim333 7y ago
  China doesn't have a small population and has it under control. I don't think it's a population size thing.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    China does seem to be on of the most interesting cases so far. The quarantine measures, once introduced, do seem to have been viewed favourably by the experts and do seem to have been remarkably effective. This assumes we trust the reported statistics, which I acknowledge as a possible risk in this instance. On the other hand, it may be that China has been able to achieve that in part by pulling resources from all over to focus on the main region affected. That isn't necessarily an option that will be open to other nations, particularly if their outbreaks are distributed across their whole area almost immediately.

golem14 7y ago

Taiwan population is smaller, but not really "tiny" compared to UK's.

1_over_n 7y ago

and much denser populations, with a lot of international travel. which have a huge culture of eating food in hawker centres which would really seem to make a big threat to containment yet they appear to be doing well.

kragen 7y ago

Taiwan is 23 million people. The UK is 67 million people. The level of confidence of your comment does not seem to be warranted by your level of knowledge.

Silhouette 7y ago
Please don't make comments like this on HN. They lower the tone and add nothing of value to the discussion. We have explored a little whether the population of Taiwan being somewhat closer to the UK's than the other two named countries was significant in a sibling thread. In addition, in the UK, which is the subject of this discussion, it is certainly the case that we do not currently have sufficient resources to cope with a widespread, uncontrolled outbreak. There have been a number of further announcements today regarding how the government is hoping to acquire new space for treatments, acquire essential equipment like ventilators on a much larger scale than is currently available, and bring in more trained staff to make use of these resources to help treat coronavirus patients. Even if these plans work out as is hoped, all of them will require at least several weeks to make a large difference. This isn't my opinion, it's coming straight from senior government figures and their senior medical and scientific advisors.
- kragen 7y ago
  I'd like to ask you to not make comments like the one you did — confident assertions about things you know nothing about, that you haven't made even the most trivial effort to verify, whether that's the population of Taiwan or the general relationship between country size and testing kits per capita. Regardless of how politely you make them, statements unconnected to any concern for truthfulness lower the signal to noise ratio, and they add nothing of value to the discussion. On the contrary, calling out such recklessly false statements does add something of value to the discussion. Instead of criticizing my tone, which was in fact fairly restrained, you should thank me for taking the time to correct you. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22580049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22529609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22529609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370446 It is true that the UK does not have sufficient resources to cope with a widespread, uncontrolled outbreak, lacking for example one to two orders of magnitude in ventilator capacity; but, as should be obvious, this is not a result of the UK being a large country — the UK is much smaller than China, slightly smaller than Japan, the same size as South Korea, and slightly larger than Taiwan. But this conversation would be of higher quality if, instead of containing such your obviously false assertion and also fact-based rebuttals such as these, you had not posted the assertion in the first place (perhaps because you had read enough to see that it was false), so no rebuttal would be necessary.