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Italy last is a special case - not that everyone else doesn’t need to take exceptional action. To be sure social distancing, closures of places of congregation

Italy last is a special case - not that everyone else doesn’t need to take exceptional action. To be sure social distancing, closures of places of congregation is in order, and safety practices like washing hands often are necessary. But Italy is a special case... - Italian leather manufacturing is by and large run by Chinese ownership today. - Many of the employees in these shops are from China as they will work for much less. - Italian population skews very old - a very vulnerable population. - Italian culture has close families that meet near daily, have generational family living together, and populations are proximal. - The wide Chinese population in north Italy went back and forth to infected areas of China during the Chinese New Year. - When they came back there were many “patient 0’s” in the region. - Because of this, numerous exponential functions were set off at the same time. - Because of the closeness of Italian culture the virus had the necessary engine to propagate. It’s not Italy’s fault. They got a perfect storm here. They are managing the best they can.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> But Italy is a special case... That's trivially disproved by simply taking JHU daily data of Italy and other countries, and plotting it as date x log(cases). You can see that most Western countries follow the exact same path.
- nemo44x 7y ago
  We don’t even know what “cases” really means. So many people have been infected and not tested by this point. It is estimated over 200k have been infected in the USA and have not required medical help or felt symptoms. Italy has had a more rapid and intense breakout coupled with a vulnerable population and social customs that spread things more quickly. I’m not British but their strategy of lock away the weak (old people and other vulnerable) and let the young/healthy take the brunt and burn the virus out is pretty smart. Unless in reinfected of course.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'm not buying the British strategy. I feel they're trying to do a suicide burn[0][1]. But with insufficient testing coupled with all that's unknown about the virus - including how long the immunity lasts - I don't think they can control the infection rate anywhere near well enough to pull this off. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585289 [1] - https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10307/what-is-a-suicide-burn https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10307/what-is-a-su...
    - nemo44x 7y ago
      Possibly. The question I ask when I see these graphs indicating “days behind Italy” is why is Italy ahead? As if cities like NYC didn’t have anyone from Wuhan enter while sick? We all had essentially the same “day 0”. We are moving much slower than Italy. There are other reasons (and not Italian incompetence) why they are in a greater crisis than others in the West. Most countries are well ahead of them in this regard. The UK strategy is sound in that you don’t need testing - the hospital numbers indicate and can be extrapolated.
mlyle 7y ago
> Because of this, numerous exponential functions were set off at the same time. This doesn't make much difference, other than complicating contact tracing, etc. Italy doesn't appear to be too different from other countries based on the data so far.
- nemo44x 7y ago
  It doesn’t indeed until you consider the differences in how people live together, the fact this was building well before Italy became a crisis, and the age of their population. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything and we need to take drastic evasive action. But Italy is different when you consider the proximity to each other, population demographics, and onset parameters.
csomar 7y ago
> Italian culture has close families that meet near daily, have generational family living together, and populations are proximal. That's like ... most of the world. The special case is the Western world and the USA.
- nemo44x 7y ago
  What about the part of having a ton of people go to the original sick zone and back before it’s noticed? The leather factories of north Italy matter a lot in this equation.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> But Italy is a special case... That's trivially disproved by simply taking JHU daily data of Italy and other countries, and plotting it as date x log(cases). You can see that most Western countries follow the exact same path.

nemo44x 7y ago
We don’t even know what “cases” really means. So many people have been infected and not tested by this point. It is estimated over 200k have been infected in the USA and have not required medical help or felt symptoms. Italy has had a more rapid and intense breakout coupled with a vulnerable population and social customs that spread things more quickly. I’m not British but their strategy of lock away the weak (old people and other vulnerable) and let the young/healthy take the brunt and burn the virus out is pretty smart. Unless in reinfected of course.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'm not buying the British strategy. I feel they're trying to do a suicide burn[0][1]. But with insufficient testing coupled with all that's unknown about the virus - including how long the immunity lasts - I don't think they can control the infection rate anywhere near well enough to pull this off. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585289 [1] - https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10307/what-is-a-suicide-burn https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10307/what-is-a-su...
  - nemo44x 7y ago
    Possibly. The question I ask when I see these graphs indicating “days behind Italy” is why is Italy ahead? As if cities like NYC didn’t have anyone from Wuhan enter while sick? We all had essentially the same “day 0”. We are moving much slower than Italy. There are other reasons (and not Italian incompetence) why they are in a greater crisis than others in the West. Most countries are well ahead of them in this regard. The UK strategy is sound in that you don’t need testing - the hospital numbers indicate and can be extrapolated.

mlyle 7y ago

> Because of this, numerous exponential functions were set off at the same time. This doesn't make much difference, other than complicating contact tracing, etc. Italy doesn't appear to be too different from other countries based on the data so far.

nemo44x 7y ago
It doesn’t indeed until you consider the differences in how people live together, the fact this was building well before Italy became a crisis, and the age of their population. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything and we need to take drastic evasive action. But Italy is different when you consider the proximity to each other, population demographics, and onset parameters.

csomar 7y ago

> Italian culture has close families that meet near daily, have generational family living together, and populations are proximal. That's like ... most of the world. The special case is the Western world and the USA.

nemo44x 7y ago
What about the part of having a ton of people go to the original sick zone and back before it’s noticed? The leather factories of north Italy matter a lot in this equation.