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There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We

There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. We have to face the truth that the quality of people we vote for government is not where it needs to be and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. Some of asia learned from SARS but that's it. Madrid was hosting marches, political rallies and soccer games with 10.000-100.000 people a week ago because people did not want to make the hard choices needed even as Korea was burning and Italy started to. Excuses that China is authoritarian do not cut it - this was a huge fail of governance and doing what people are elected to do

jacquesm 7y ago
The post-mortem (for want of a better term) on this will be pretty bad for some people in leadership positions. Assuming they survive. Very precious time was squandered with half-assed measures and uninformed decisions.
- hatenberg 7y ago
  I don't share your optimism. We already seeing not acting recast as strategy. At least German politicians had the sense to step aside and hand the mess they made to the scientific experts to clean up.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
    The UK's moronic lack of response?
- alisonatwork 7y ago
  I am not holding out much hope for the people responsible for this to face consequences for their mismanagement. Here in China Xi Jinping has already been recast as the man who led the country to victory in the "people's war", mere weeks after widespread condemnation of his administration's disastrous failure to respond. Once the media switches their focus from outrage at the politicians to feel-good stories of community solidarity, people will forget how angry they were. The political elite will weather the storm, even as thousands die on their watch.
Taek 7y ago
No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.
- res0nat0r 7y ago
  The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113 https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113
  - jtaft 7y ago
    wow
  - beamatronic 7y ago
    I cannot understand why unnecessary flying was not shut down weeks or months ago.
    - nullc 7y ago
      Go read HN comments from weeks and months ago, and see the posters encouraging prompt measures getting called paranoids. :) Now scale this up to the whole country and account for the fact that HN is probably a little better on average about reasoning about these things. But now, on HN now we're mostly preaching to the choir... I've been contacting the officials of my state and surrounding communities since February 28th urging action. If your community isn't taking action you should join in. Even if your politicians don't respond to math, they'll still respond to public outcry. The best time to respond was a while ago, but today is still vastly better than tomorrow.
      - nodamage 7y ago
        > Go read HN comments from weeks and months ago, and see the posters encouraging prompt measures getting called paranoids. Exactly. Two weeks ago every coronavirus thread on Hacker News was full of deniers claiming this was no worse than the flu and this was all just media hysteria. Some probably still hold that opinion. I don't think they will be convinced until the hospitals start overflowing.
wrs 7y ago
Have you not been reading the news in the US and Europe the last few years? This is exactly what was to be expected from the current set of government leaders. Respect for expertise and rationality are considered disqualifying qualities in a politician nowadays.
- jjcc 7y ago
  I would think it's the current eco system that makes those who respect for expertise and rationailty happened to have some compettive advantages during the prodedure. They have better odds to be elected over their opponents. There are some observation supporting the hypothesis but too long to discuss here.
_jal 7y ago
Allow me to suggest we wait to blame until after things are on the upswing. I completely understand the impulse -- hell, I'm doing it myself -- but for most of the folks reading, the worst of this is ahead. I'm trying to focus on a bit of prep I haven't done, trying to anticipate for different scenarios and being kind to those around me. And my snarky side says there will be plenty more targets to blame in the coming weeks - think of it as an investment.
chongli 7y ago
Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth. It's just too fast for our primitive brains. In some sense, we are standing in the middle of the road, frozen like deer in the headlights. Science is supposed to mitigate the shortcomings of our natural intuitions and cognitive biases. The problem is that most people are not scientists. When a non-scientist is asked to trust a scientist, he or she is subject to all of the usual suspects: arguments from authority, confirmation bias, Bulverism, appeal to emotion, etc. What this means in practice is that scientists are generally not trusted over the word of one's friends and family.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  by intuitively I suppose you mean feel it, which I guess is true, but it does not take a genius to actually understand the concept, especially if it is explained as right now you will get this many people per day, in a week you will get this many, in a month this many. That is pretty easy, a politician should be able to follow it. But as has been pointed out before most people think if you do something big and dramatic to fix an oncoming problem, and it does fix it, lots of people will stupidly assume that you did not need to do the big, dramatic thing because it wasn't really a problem. So any politician who reacted appropriately would run the risk of fixing the problem and losing power in doing so, I would prefer to fix a problem like this even if it meant I would not have the power to fix later problems as my calculation would be if I do not fix this problem now I probably won't have the power to fix later problems anyway.
  - chongli 7y ago
    One way to test this is to ask random people the question: "The number of lily pads on a pond double every day. If it takes 20 days for the lily pads to completely cover the pond, how long does it take to cover half the pond?" I think you will be surprised by how many people say "10 days."
    - thedance 7y ago
      This is because most people are unable to suppress their reflexive response to being asked what's half of 20, not because people don't understand exponentiation.
friedman23 7y ago
> The math was very clear by early/mid February The leaders of the country, the people in power, and the populace are not math literate.
- droithomme 7y ago
  The leaders all have math literate advisors. They ignore them for a variety of reasons.
  - friedman23 7y ago
    Politicians only listen to experts when it is politically convenient.
arvinsim 7y ago
> and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. There are scandals in the sciences too. Peer review rings, studies that tend toward positive bias due to the pressure to publish, some studies being paid by big companies that favors their vested interests, etc.
- QuesnayJr 7y ago
  Science is a product of human beings and not saints, so of course there are scandals. There always were. What's changed is that now that meme-ing is replacing thought, science is easier to attack, particularly by people with an agenda.
CriticalCathed 7y ago
>science discredited and ignored There is a large faction of people in the USA who believe this a politically motivated hoax. This is the world we are living in. How can we vote in competent leaders when a large faction holds such strong influence?
- sneak 7y ago
  https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationist... This has nothing to do with the politicians.
moriturius 7y ago
This post is exactly the essence of why I don't like politics. It's super easy to retrospectively say "they should've done something else". You might think that even you would do the right choice, but you are wrong. Such decision is hard for any authority. You may vote for any person in the whole world and the result would probably be similar. Lockdown delivered too early could send whole country into chaos. Also China managed this so well that it actually could work counterproductive for other countries. What I'm trying to say is: Don't judge others. You have little idea of the situation they are in, and saying retrospectively "you should've known better" is just childish. Just learn from their mistakes. With your attitude, you can choose any party and will always be unhappy about the choice.
- hatenberg 7y ago
  Accountability is important. Also - doing nothing until it is too late - not even educating - is not even a choice. It's not a strategy. Its dereliction of duty.
  - supportlocal4h 7y ago
    So if the govt waited until there were 30 million cases in the country in a four month period, that would be irresponsible? If it put 300k people in the hospital, that would be an unthinkable national disaster? What if it killed 20k people in just four months in just one country? Those are the conservative figures for influenza in the USA since 2019 November. Where was your outrage last year and the year before. Couldn't we have prevented this influenza tragedy from happening all over again. Is this also dereliction of duty?
- bitcharmer 7y ago
  > Don't judge others. It is by observing others and judging their decisions and actions that we can learn and avoid other people's mistakes. Is it not?
  - moriturius 7y ago
    Judgement is pointing fingers. What you are asking about is just drawing conclusions. I wouldn't mix those up.
sdkaufman 7y ago
This is classic normalcy bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias People will grasp at any excuse to convince themselves "it'll be fine, it won't happen to me". The fact it started in China made it easy - the Chinese government must be overreacting because it's authoritarian, it's halfway across the world, my government must have gotten this figured out, my health care system must be better than China's, etc etc. And of course the classic "it's just a flu". It's sad that so many will suffer and die because of this.
hrerwer342343 7y ago
> There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. It might be worth revisiting top comments on HN threads relating to Covid19 in the past few weeks. Quite telling how much the 'know-it-all' folks actually know about the real world - makes you even more afraid that these are the same people who run countries and have an outsized influence in the public sphere.

jacquesm 7y ago

The post-mortem (for want of a better term) on this will be pretty bad for some people in leadership positions. Assuming they survive. Very precious time was squandered with half-assed measures and uninformed decisions.

hatenberg 7y ago
I don't share your optimism. We already seeing not acting recast as strategy. At least German politicians had the sense to step aside and hand the mess they made to the scientific experts to clean up.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
  The UK's moronic lack of response?
alisonatwork 7y ago
I am not holding out much hope for the people responsible for this to face consequences for their mismanagement. Here in China Xi Jinping has already been recast as the man who led the country to victory in the "people's war", mere weeks after widespread condemnation of his administration's disastrous failure to respond. Once the media switches their focus from outrage at the politicians to feel-good stories of community solidarity, people will forget how angry they were. The political elite will weather the storm, even as thousands die on their watch.

Taek 7y ago

No leader wants to take drastic action for their nation when the number of deaths they can point to for justification is smaller than the number of deaths for the seasonal flu. If they save lives and prevent the disease from spreading, it looks like they over-reacted and unnecessarily tanked the economy.

res0nat0r 7y ago
The USA is going to be in terrible shape very soon, just look at this as of tonight: https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113 https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1239004689338970113
- jtaft 7y ago
  wow
- beamatronic 7y ago
  I cannot understand why unnecessary flying was not shut down weeks or months ago.
  - nullc 7y ago
    Go read HN comments from weeks and months ago, and see the posters encouraging prompt measures getting called paranoids. :) Now scale this up to the whole country and account for the fact that HN is probably a little better on average about reasoning about these things. But now, on HN now we're mostly preaching to the choir... I've been contacting the officials of my state and surrounding communities since February 28th urging action. If your community isn't taking action you should join in. Even if your politicians don't respond to math, they'll still respond to public outcry. The best time to respond was a while ago, but today is still vastly better than tomorrow.
    - nodamage 7y ago
      > Go read HN comments from weeks and months ago, and see the posters encouraging prompt measures getting called paranoids. Exactly. Two weeks ago every coronavirus thread on Hacker News was full of deniers claiming this was no worse than the flu and this was all just media hysteria. Some probably still hold that opinion. I don't think they will be convinced until the hospitals start overflowing.

wrs 7y ago

Have you not been reading the news in the US and Europe the last few years? This is exactly what was to be expected from the current set of government leaders. Respect for expertise and rationality are considered disqualifying qualities in a politician nowadays.

jjcc 7y ago
I would think it's the current eco system that makes those who respect for expertise and rationailty happened to have some compettive advantages during the prodedure. They have better odds to be elected over their opponents. There are some observation supporting the hypothesis but too long to discuss here.

_jal 7y ago

Allow me to suggest we wait to blame until after things are on the upswing. I completely understand the impulse -- hell, I'm doing it myself -- but for most of the folks reading, the worst of this is ahead. I'm trying to focus on a bit of prep I haven't done, trying to anticipate for different scenarios and being kind to those around me. And my snarky side says there will be plenty more targets to blame in the coming weeks - think of it as an investment.

chongli 7y ago

Human beings do not intuitively understand exponential growth. It's just too fast for our primitive brains. In some sense, we are standing in the middle of the road, frozen like deer in the headlights. Science is supposed to mitigate the shortcomings of our natural intuitions and cognitive biases. The problem is that most people are not scientists. When a non-scientist is asked to trust a scientist, he or she is subject to all of the usual suspects: arguments from authority, confirmation bias, Bulverism, appeal to emotion, etc. What this means in practice is that scientists are generally not trusted over the word of one's friends and family.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago
by intuitively I suppose you mean feel it, which I guess is true, but it does not take a genius to actually understand the concept, especially if it is explained as right now you will get this many people per day, in a week you will get this many, in a month this many. That is pretty easy, a politician should be able to follow it. But as has been pointed out before most people think if you do something big and dramatic to fix an oncoming problem, and it does fix it, lots of people will stupidly assume that you did not need to do the big, dramatic thing because it wasn't really a problem. So any politician who reacted appropriately would run the risk of fixing the problem and losing power in doing so, I would prefer to fix a problem like this even if it meant I would not have the power to fix later problems as my calculation would be if I do not fix this problem now I probably won't have the power to fix later problems anyway.
- chongli 7y ago
  One way to test this is to ask random people the question: "The number of lily pads on a pond double every day. If it takes 20 days for the lily pads to completely cover the pond, how long does it take to cover half the pond?" I think you will be surprised by how many people say "10 days."
  - thedance 7y ago
    This is because most people are unable to suppress their reflexive response to being asked what's half of 20, not because people don't understand exponentiation.

friedman23 7y ago

> The math was very clear by early/mid February The leaders of the country, the people in power, and the populace are not math literate.

droithomme 7y ago
The leaders all have math literate advisors. They ignore them for a variety of reasons.
- friedman23 7y ago
  Politicians only listen to experts when it is politically convenient.

arvinsim 7y ago

> and that science has too long been discredited and ignored. There are scandals in the sciences too. Peer review rings, studies that tend toward positive bias due to the pressure to publish, some studies being paid by big companies that favors their vested interests, etc.

QuesnayJr 7y ago
Science is a product of human beings and not saints, so of course there are scandals. There always were. What's changed is that now that meme-ing is replacing thought, science is easier to attack, particularly by people with an agenda.

CriticalCathed 7y ago

>science discredited and ignored There is a large faction of people in the USA who believe this a politically motivated hoax. This is the world we are living in. How can we vote in competent leaders when a large faction holds such strong influence?

sneak 7y ago
https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationist... This has nothing to do with the politicians.

moriturius 7y ago

This post is exactly the essence of why I don't like politics. It's super easy to retrospectively say "they should've done something else". You might think that even you would do the right choice, but you are wrong. Such decision is hard for any authority. You may vote for any person in the whole world and the result would probably be similar. Lockdown delivered too early could send whole country into chaos. Also China managed this so well that it actually could work counterproductive for other countries. What I'm trying to say is: Don't judge others. You have little idea of the situation they are in, and saying retrospectively "you should've known better" is just childish. Just learn from their mistakes. With your attitude, you can choose any party and will always be unhappy about the choice.

hatenberg 7y ago
Accountability is important. Also - doing nothing until it is too late - not even educating - is not even a choice. It's not a strategy. Its dereliction of duty.
- supportlocal4h 7y ago
  So if the govt waited until there were 30 million cases in the country in a four month period, that would be irresponsible? If it put 300k people in the hospital, that would be an unthinkable national disaster? What if it killed 20k people in just four months in just one country? Those are the conservative figures for influenza in the USA since 2019 November. Where was your outrage last year and the year before. Couldn't we have prevented this influenza tragedy from happening all over again. Is this also dereliction of duty?
bitcharmer 7y ago
> Don't judge others. It is by observing others and judging their decisions and actions that we can learn and avoid other people's mistakes. Is it not?
- moriturius 7y ago
  Judgement is pointing fingers. What you are asking about is just drawing conclusions. I wouldn't mix those up.

sdkaufman 7y ago

This is classic normalcy bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias People will grasp at any excuse to convince themselves "it'll be fine, it won't happen to me". The fact it started in China made it easy - the Chinese government must be overreacting because it's authoritarian, it's halfway across the world, my government must have gotten this figured out, my health care system must be better than China's, etc etc. And of course the classic "it's just a flu". It's sad that so many will suffer and die because of this.

hrerwer342343 7y ago

> There is really no excuse for this happening in Europe. There was ample warning and no, not just from China. The math was very clear by early/mid February. It might be worth revisiting top comments on HN threads relating to Covid19 in the past few weeks. Quite telling how much the 'know-it-all' folks actually know about the real world - makes you even more afraid that these are the same people who run countries and have an outsized influence in the public sphere.