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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

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.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Continuing to adopt such a hostile tone still doesn't further the discussion. I am happy to debate this subject, but I will not reply further if you continue to make unnecessary personal attacks in your comments. Is it your contention that the countries you mentioned do have sufficient tests and treatment facilities available to successfully implement the "third strategy" advocated by knzhou in the comment I first replied to? I can see little evidence that would support such a claim so far, in this discussion or otherwise. China's recent official statistics may not be entirely trustworthy: they showed the expected exponential growth curve earlier on, but then levelled off remarkably quickly. In any case, its strategy has so far been primarily one of containment, with resources focussed on one specific area, Hubei, where the outbreak was also concentrated at the start. It is not known whether China has an effective testing or tracking regime in operation at this point, nor whether it has sufficient resources to treat large numbers of people if they became seriously ill in the absence of that containment, as may yet happen when the heavy quarantine measures are eventually lifted. Japan's official statistics have also attracted scepticism, with the suspicion that they aren't testing widely enough to get an accurate picture of how the virus is spreading. South Korea has had possibly the most successful response so far in terms of credible raw numbers and as such it is certainly worth looking at, but the strategy there has also been primarily one of containment. Again, that doesn't tell us anything about whether SK has the resources to look after much higher volumes of intensive care patients than usual if those containment efforts fail, or if heavy lockdown measures were not attempted and instead that "third strategy" of test, track and treat were used. The UK isn't just "slightly larger" than Taiwan, it has almost 3x the population and almost 7x the land area. As I already acknowledged in the other thread long before you replied to me, I may have chosen too strong a word when I described three countries including Taiwan as having populations that were tiny compared to the UK, but my fundamental point stands in that we should not assume a strategy that could work at the scale of Taiwan would necessarily also work at the scale of the UK. You argue for fact-based rebuttals, but where is the evidence that your examples are countries that do have sufficient testing and treatment facilities available to employ that test, track and treat strategy rather than the stronger quarantine measures that most countries are attempting?

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.

Silhouette 7y ago
Continuing to adopt such a hostile tone still doesn't further the discussion. I am happy to debate this subject, but I will not reply further if you continue to make unnecessary personal attacks in your comments. Is it your contention that the countries you mentioned do have sufficient tests and treatment facilities available to successfully implement the "third strategy" advocated by knzhou in the comment I first replied to? I can see little evidence that would support such a claim so far, in this discussion or otherwise. China's recent official statistics may not be entirely trustworthy: they showed the expected exponential growth curve earlier on, but then levelled off remarkably quickly. In any case, its strategy has so far been primarily one of containment, with resources focussed on one specific area, Hubei, where the outbreak was also concentrated at the start. It is not known whether China has an effective testing or tracking regime in operation at this point, nor whether it has sufficient resources to treat large numbers of people if they became seriously ill in the absence of that containment, as may yet happen when the heavy quarantine measures are eventually lifted. Japan's official statistics have also attracted scepticism, with the suspicion that they aren't testing widely enough to get an accurate picture of how the virus is spreading. South Korea has had possibly the most successful response so far in terms of credible raw numbers and as such it is certainly worth looking at, but the strategy there has also been primarily one of containment. Again, that doesn't tell us anything about whether SK has the resources to look after much higher volumes of intensive care patients than usual if those containment efforts fail, or if heavy lockdown measures were not attempted and instead that "third strategy" of test, track and treat were used. The UK isn't just "slightly larger" than Taiwan, it has almost 3x the population and almost 7x the land area. As I already acknowledged in the other thread long before you replied to me, I may have chosen too strong a word when I described three countries including Taiwan as having populations that were tiny compared to the UK, but my fundamental point stands in that we should not assume a strategy that could work at the scale of Taiwan would necessarily also work at the scale of the UK. You argue for fact-based rebuttals, but where is the evidence that your examples are countries that do have sufficient testing and treatment facilities available to employ that test, track and treat strategy rather than the stronger quarantine measures that most countries are attempting?