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Not sure why this is on the number 1 spot currently. This is a letter signed by non-experts (albeit sometimes scientists/engineers). To me, it comes off as the

Not sure why this is on the number 1 spot currently. This is a letter signed by non-experts (albeit sometimes scientists/engineers). To me, it comes off as the climate-change denier letters or 9/11 "truthers" letters. Please let the experts do their job. Don't spread uninformed opinions backed up by Facebook posts and panicked researchers with expertise "relevant to virus spreading" such as electronics, architecture and art history. Be safe out there but don't let the fear and resulting panic of this virus be worse than the virus itself.

mochomocha 7y ago
Why do you believe this is misinformation? All it's trying to do is mobilize people who understand what an exponential is to act.
freepor 7y ago
The “experts” are not doing their jobs! In the US you would have expected the CDC under the President’s leadership to act decisively and promptly. Obviously this did not happen. The randos are providing much more value than the experts in the US. Other countries like South Korea and Singapore have experts who are doing quite well.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  The CDC can’t dictate state policies. These are executive decisions that the CDC can only strongly advise on.
  - mcbits 7y ago
    The CDC effectively dictated who could be tested and what test would be used. But those tests were faulty and now there are supply chain issues with the new tests. That was the point when they gave up and admitted failure. "Mitigation" and "flattening the curve" are admissions of failure. The only hope now is that summer blunts the spread, which is possible but by no means guaranteed.
rozab 7y ago
This letter doesn't make any contraversial scientific claims. Please, highlight anything you think is in doubt?
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > The virus is spreading at maximum speed, How do you determine scientifically the 'maximum' speed that a virus could be spreading?
  - loeg 7y ago
    This is a really pedantic nitpick over an ESLism. It's spreading extremely quickly. No one is seriously contesting that.
edgecrafter 7y ago
I hope you haven't read the reports from the medical frontline in Lombardie - They are making life or death choices now due to influx of ICU patient without enough equipment and medical staff exhausted and starting to get sick themselves One frontline story among many here https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538 https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...
- wnkrshm 7y ago
  Triage, i.e. if you show up and have any condition that reduces your chances of survival you are not treated at all. Palliative care only.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  Also the government, despite sounding enlightened and getting most of the praise of the press, is locking everyone up with exceptional measures, but still goes the bureaucratic way to procure respirators (which are essential in the current emergency, and they are needed now, not in the two weeks required for the lockdown to show any effect) and masks (either useless because not certified for medical use, or stuck in a warehouse due to "missing authorizations"). At this point my region (Lombardia) appointed someone with the sole task of getting an emergency hospital up in Milano to house more patients, doing whatever it takes. Hopefully this will help.
tomp 7y ago
By "experts" you mean the WHO who delayed declaring it an pandemic for more than a month? I think we're beyond experts already... it's time for leadership, decisive action after experts have failed across the board.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  They declared it a global emergency because it would turn into a pandemic (which has an actual definition and criteria that weren’t met) in January. People ignored them and they were right and were forced to declare it a pandemic a month later.
- kspacewalk2 7y ago
  What changed when they declared it a pandemic (i.e. when it meet some necessarily arbitrary bureaucratic definition)? Nothing much. Any government that was holding its breath waiting for this declaration is not listening to its experts anyway. Stop doing the internet equivalent of running around like a chicken with your head cut off. This is absolutely the Yinge to listen to experts, also known as people who know what they're talking about at a level much deeper than a few weeks' worth of regurgitated Reddit posts.
loeg 7y ago
Nothing in this letter is inaccurate or goes against what the scientific experts have been saying. When you say "experts," you're really talking about the bureaucrats and politicians who get to make these decisions and have been too hesitant to ramp up testing and quarantine measures.
VectorLock 7y ago
We are not anywhere near the point where the panic of this virus is worse than the potential outcome of the virus. If anything there is not ENOUGH strong movement being made.
- nostromo 7y ago
  Yes, we need more panic. Maximum panic please! For a disease that has a 0.5% fatality rate, and the medium death age is over the average life expectancy of one's country. And most scientists believe we can't stop it anyway. Yes, let's burn down the modern world and suspend all civil rights for this.
  - VectorLock 7y ago
    Yes we should be so flippant about hundreds of thousands of people dead. How dare you ask me to sacrifice going to a restaurant for that?
    - nostromo 7y ago
      For you it's not eating out. For working families it's losing their jobs, their healthcare, and their housing because a bunch of healthy young people, that are facing almost no risk, are afraid to leave their apartments. In Seattle we're one week into this and 50+ restaurants have closed and hundreds of jobs have been lost. Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare. That's one week. In one month it'll be much worse. By the way, you can prevent a malaria death for about $50 in Africa. It kills 500,000 people a year. How many dinners have you sacrificed to save those lives, personally?
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare. That's a problem specific to America. But regardless, what got is "having healthcare" if you don't actually have healthcare, because the whole system gets DDoSed by COVID patients in critical condition?
      - 7y ago
icedchai 7y ago
You don't need expertise beyond elementary school math to understand cases doubling every 2 to 3 days is very, very bad. Look at the charts for any of the countries. They all follow the same pattern. The US is going to look like France and Italy in a week, 10 days at the most. This is a certainty.
- nostromo 7y ago
  > This is a certainty. Are you an epidemiologist?
  - icedchai 7y ago
    I don't need to be. Just look at the graphs across various countries. Then ask yourself, has the US response been better or worse, to date?
  - jiggawatts 7y ago
    "nostromo", can I ask you to just do something for me? Open Excel. Or use a calculator and pen and paper. Start with the known number of confirmed patients in <insert your country here>. Or just "100" to use nice round numbers. Whatever. It doesn't matter that much. Write out some rows like this: Date, Cases 2020-03-15, 100 -- today 2020-03-20, 200 2020-03-25, 400 2020-03-30, 800 ... Each row is 5 days apart, which is the typical slowest doubling time in days. The cases double each row. Use a calculator if you need to. Work out when you'll be at 10,000 cases and 1 million cases. Please. Just do it. Now, you might think that <your country> is magically immune, that it's not populated with humans that have lungs, or that the weather will magically make the virus behave differently when it crosses your borders. If you believe that, look at these graphs: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/coronavirus-is-now-growing-faster-in-the-us-than-in-europe/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/coronavirus-i... None of those countries are magically immune.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      Why even have experts in epidemiology if everything is so simple? Just a few rows in excel! Done!
choonway 7y ago
they did the same thing with slaughterbots when deep learning was making the news.

mochomocha 7y ago

Why do you believe this is misinformation? All it's trying to do is mobilize people who understand what an exponential is to act.

freepor 7y ago

The “experts” are not doing their jobs! In the US you would have expected the CDC under the President’s leadership to act decisively and promptly. Obviously this did not happen. The randos are providing much more value than the experts in the US. Other countries like South Korea and Singapore have experts who are doing quite well.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
The CDC can’t dictate state policies. These are executive decisions that the CDC can only strongly advise on.
- mcbits 7y ago
  The CDC effectively dictated who could be tested and what test would be used. But those tests were faulty and now there are supply chain issues with the new tests. That was the point when they gave up and admitted failure. "Mitigation" and "flattening the curve" are admissions of failure. The only hope now is that summer blunts the spread, which is possible but by no means guaranteed.

rozab 7y ago

This letter doesn't make any contraversial scientific claims. Please, highlight anything you think is in doubt?

chrisseaton 7y ago
> The virus is spreading at maximum speed, How do you determine scientifically the 'maximum' speed that a virus could be spreading?
- loeg 7y ago
  This is a really pedantic nitpick over an ESLism. It's spreading extremely quickly. No one is seriously contesting that.

edgecrafter 7y ago

I hope you haven't read the reports from the medical frontline in Lombardie - They are making life or death choices now due to influx of ICU patient without enough equipment and medical staff exhausted and starting to get sick themselves One frontline story among many here https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538 https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...

wnkrshm 7y ago
Triage, i.e. if you show up and have any condition that reduces your chances of survival you are not treated at all. Palliative care only.
lbeltrame 7y ago
Also the government, despite sounding enlightened and getting most of the praise of the press, is locking everyone up with exceptional measures, but still goes the bureaucratic way to procure respirators (which are essential in the current emergency, and they are needed now, not in the two weeks required for the lockdown to show any effect) and masks (either useless because not certified for medical use, or stuck in a warehouse due to "missing authorizations"). At this point my region (Lombardia) appointed someone with the sole task of getting an emergency hospital up in Milano to house more patients, doing whatever it takes. Hopefully this will help.

tomp 7y ago

By "experts" you mean the WHO who delayed declaring it an pandemic for more than a month? I think we're beyond experts already... it's time for leadership, decisive action after experts have failed across the board.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
They declared it a global emergency because it would turn into a pandemic (which has an actual definition and criteria that weren’t met) in January. People ignored them and they were right and were forced to declare it a pandemic a month later.
kspacewalk2 7y ago
What changed when they declared it a pandemic (i.e. when it meet some necessarily arbitrary bureaucratic definition)? Nothing much. Any government that was holding its breath waiting for this declaration is not listening to its experts anyway. Stop doing the internet equivalent of running around like a chicken with your head cut off. This is absolutely the Yinge to listen to experts, also known as people who know what they're talking about at a level much deeper than a few weeks' worth of regurgitated Reddit posts.

loeg 7y ago

Nothing in this letter is inaccurate or goes against what the scientific experts have been saying. When you say "experts," you're really talking about the bureaucrats and politicians who get to make these decisions and have been too hesitant to ramp up testing and quarantine measures.

VectorLock 7y ago

We are not anywhere near the point where the panic of this virus is worse than the potential outcome of the virus. If anything there is not ENOUGH strong movement being made.

nostromo 7y ago
Yes, we need more panic. Maximum panic please! For a disease that has a 0.5% fatality rate, and the medium death age is over the average life expectancy of one's country. And most scientists believe we can't stop it anyway. Yes, let's burn down the modern world and suspend all civil rights for this.
- VectorLock 7y ago
  Yes we should be so flippant about hundreds of thousands of people dead. How dare you ask me to sacrifice going to a restaurant for that?
  - nostromo 7y ago
    For you it's not eating out. For working families it's losing their jobs, their healthcare, and their housing because a bunch of healthy young people, that are facing almost no risk, are afraid to leave their apartments. In Seattle we're one week into this and 50+ restaurants have closed and hundreds of jobs have been lost. Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare. That's one week. In one month it'll be much worse. By the way, you can prevent a malaria death for about $50 in Africa. It kills 500,000 people a year. How many dinners have you sacrificed to save those lives, personally?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Those people can't pay rent and now have no healthcare. That's a problem specific to America. But regardless, what got is "having healthcare" if you don't actually have healthcare, because the whole system gets DDoSed by COVID patients in critical condition?
    - 7y ago

icedchai 7y ago

You don't need expertise beyond elementary school math to understand cases doubling every 2 to 3 days is very, very bad. Look at the charts for any of the countries. They all follow the same pattern. The US is going to look like France and Italy in a week, 10 days at the most. This is a certainty.

nostromo 7y ago
> This is a certainty. Are you an epidemiologist?
- icedchai 7y ago
  I don't need to be. Just look at the graphs across various countries. Then ask yourself, has the US response been better or worse, to date?
- jiggawatts 7y ago
  "nostromo", can I ask you to just do something for me? Open Excel. Or use a calculator and pen and paper. Start with the known number of confirmed patients in <insert your country here>. Or just "100" to use nice round numbers. Whatever. It doesn't matter that much. Write out some rows like this: Date, Cases 2020-03-15, 100 -- today 2020-03-20, 200 2020-03-25, 400 2020-03-30, 800 ... Each row is 5 days apart, which is the typical slowest doubling time in days. The cases double each row. Use a calculator if you need to. Work out when you'll be at 10,000 cases and 1 million cases. Please. Just do it. Now, you might think that <your country> is magically immune, that it's not populated with humans that have lungs, or that the weather will magically make the virus behave differently when it crosses your borders. If you believe that, look at these graphs: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/coronavirus-is-now-growing-faster-in-the-us-than-in-europe/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/coronavirus-i... None of those countries are magically immune.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    Why even have experts in epidemiology if everything is so simple? Just a few rows in excel! Done!

choonway 7y ago

they did the same thing with slaughterbots when deep learning was making the news.