4 ms·

This is going to be one of the costliest panics in history. A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, an

by whb07 7y ago

This is going to be one of the costliest panics in history. A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly. Half the world’s population lives in a 2 hour flight away from Wuhan, and even without testing, there have been no random spikes in deaths especially considering most of that world is significantly poorer and without proper healthcare infrastructure. The tragedy here isn’t about the immediate health impacts, of which are low, but of the second and third order effects to society and the world. That office cleaning night crew ain’t getting paid. New tax revenues to fund potential research at universities isn’t raised. Those with still less fashionable diseases, will have even less money for their cause.

bpeebles 7y ago
What "1000 person test case"? Every thing about what is actually happening in many places is the reverse if what you're saying.
- whb07 7y ago
  Where’s many places ? Let me guess you’ll say Italy and err Iran? You know there’s like 200 other countries. Furthermore, there are 2 billion+ people living an hour or two away from China. Why aren’t they saying it’s end of days. Please don’t just respond with a “simple they aren’t testing”. You don’t need a test for a massive spike in deaths.
  - bpeebles 7y ago
    The specific question I asked was about the test case you mentioned since I couldn't find it with a quick search. Also, I haven't really seen anyone saying it's the end of days, but more to use the US as an example, we're trying to reduce the likely death toll of millions (330M). It's heartening that it looks there's evidence that's some natural maximum coming out of China, but some US hospitals are already close to their capacity so we're trying to avoid a medical system breakdown here. From another comment, you said why "aren’t all dead" in existing regions, when literally no one has ever said they'd all die. The most pessimistic studies I see are like, 50% of population gets it and ~5% die after the hospitals run out of capacity (and another 10% have a really, really scary few weeks), so 2.5% of the population
    - whb07 7y ago
      The Diamond Princess cruise. They were a major cluster, and coincidentally got forced quarantined and turns out to be a natural test case. Notice how we only focus on the bank run on US hospitals. Are hospitals in poorer countries immune to these type of sudden rushes? Why aren’t we seeing millions of people in neighboring countries to China clogging up hospitals? Is it slightly possible this is just a tad over done? What would you say are the chances of that?
      - scottlocklin 7y ago
        People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN, because people are statistical imbeciles, but at least they're noticing that the denominator in the FR is a lot larger than they previously thought. That was abundantly obvious at the beginning; if you aren't widely administering a costly and rare test[2], you're enormously left censored in your estimator. You're also radically screwing up your R0 estimate. I suppose there are arguments to be made that more hot and humid climates prevent the spread of respiratory viruses in general, which is why you don't see problems in the more humid and hot regions of China and Vietnam.[3] The real question is why some countries look like Germany, and some look like Italy. The paranoid answer is Germany will soon look like Italy (and this might be true), except the claimed origin of the disease is .... Germany[4]. If it does turn out to be overblown in some sense, it's probably a valuable exercise in autarky. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statistics-undetected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statis... [2] And FWIIW none of the tests are well calibrated; in fact there are numerous tests in use with radically different biases. [3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists/coronavirus-may-have-reached-italy-from-germany-scientists-say-idUSKBN20Y35B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... (I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's a common assertion)
    - whb07 7y ago
      Also 2% of 2 billion is 40 million dead. We are 3 months+ since this outbreak started. Everyone keeps talking about how exponentials are hard to grasp, but whats harder to grasp is: fear + exponentials + too_many_unknowns == impossible to plot A feature that everyone talks about is how startups grow exponentially, fine, i get it, but most end up failing and going to zero. What if this was such a case? We ascribe to it an exponential growth path and yet it fails to take off for many reasons like perhaps a dog walking service or WeWork isn't the cat's pajamas?
zoul 7y ago
A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly. The mortality seems to be caused primarily by healthcare overload so far. In about 10 % cases the disease requires hospital care, if that’s available, things are mostly fine, if not, people die. How does an isolated test case model that?
- whb07 7y ago
  Can you explain why the other 2 billion living in the region, people mostly living in terrible conditions with very little healthcare as it compares to say Italy, aren’t all dead ? Why arent they having massive spikes in deaths? Even if they can’t be tested, why aren’t we seeing it?
simion314 7y ago
>A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly. Is healthy or dead the only 2 options? I think people with high fever won't be able to work and provide you with services , people that need to stay in hospitals are also a important number that you need to provide, also how many would die if there are not enough hospital bed with equipment and medicine? Each week we see some new drug that is tested , maybe a vaccine is to be created soon so if possible delay getting people infected especially if the cost is less sport events or similar.
- desertedisland 7y ago
  Most reasonable estimates are that a vaccine is at least a year to eighteen months away: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccine#when-will-it-be-ready https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccin... Are you really proposing to quarantine everyone for a year?
  - simion314 7y ago
    No, but cancel all big events especially international ones. Still I read about antivirals that are in tests that are already approved for other illnesses so delay as much as possible by canceling entertainment crap.
piva00 7y ago
This is a health issue not because of the disease being too deadly but by being a perfect combination of not being deadly enough and requiring intensive and long care for those affected by a severe case. This is not about you dying of COVID-19, it's about you dying because you got into an accident and didn't have enough ICU beds available to treat an injury you shouldn't die from. It's about avoiding crumbling to the pressure of the healthcare system which would trigger even bigger panics, even more social unrest and so on. Don't spread misinformation or opinions as a fact, you don't know what this is gonna be, I don't know and no expert knows, this is unprecedented territory in contemporary society. You are not better than a corpus of experts all around the world that are trying to contain the side and after-effects of it, the economy taking a huge hit and its ripples flowing through the fabric of our society is part of this crisis and would be of any major outbreak.
- whb07 7y ago
  The fact is we don’t have any facts. Then there’s the fact that everyone replying to me are wielding the unknown as truths and pointing at China and Italy while at the same time disregarding literally the other 2 billion people in the area who haven’t had any of the average-to-worst case scenarios depicted by people like yourself. I’d love to see what the infrastructure looks like in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the like and why haven’t we seen the large scale run on hospitals like everyone’s talking about. Happen to have any sources?
  - threatofrain 7y ago
    I'd be curious to see any discussion on the event that herd immunity / vaccinations aren't really effective because the virus may mutate quickly. Also discussion on the UK government suggesting there's going to be a winter resurgence.
  - lazylizard 7y ago
    Especially from lets say bali eh? Why haven't large numbers of tourists in bali been stricken with covid 19? As of 5 feb there were supposed to have been 5000 chinese tourists trapped on bali after flights were halted.. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-to-stop-flights-to-and-from-china-amid-wuhan-virus-concerns https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-to-stop-...

by whb07 7y ago

bpeebles 7y ago

What "1000 person test case"? Every thing about what is actually happening in many places is the reverse if what you're saying.

whb07 7y ago
Where’s many places ? Let me guess you’ll say Italy and err Iran? You know there’s like 200 other countries. Furthermore, there are 2 billion+ people living an hour or two away from China. Why aren’t they saying it’s end of days. Please don’t just respond with a “simple they aren’t testing”. You don’t need a test for a massive spike in deaths.
- bpeebles 7y ago
  The specific question I asked was about the test case you mentioned since I couldn't find it with a quick search. Also, I haven't really seen anyone saying it's the end of days, but more to use the US as an example, we're trying to reduce the likely death toll of millions (330M). It's heartening that it looks there's evidence that's some natural maximum coming out of China, but some US hospitals are already close to their capacity so we're trying to avoid a medical system breakdown here. From another comment, you said why "aren’t all dead" in existing regions, when literally no one has ever said they'd all die. The most pessimistic studies I see are like, 50% of population gets it and ~5% die after the hospitals run out of capacity (and another 10% have a really, really scary few weeks), so 2.5% of the population
  - whb07 7y ago
    The Diamond Princess cruise. They were a major cluster, and coincidentally got forced quarantined and turns out to be a natural test case. Notice how we only focus on the bank run on US hospitals. Are hospitals in poorer countries immune to these type of sudden rushes? Why aren’t we seeing millions of people in neighboring countries to China clogging up hospitals? Is it slightly possible this is just a tad over done? What would you say are the chances of that?
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN, because people are statistical imbeciles, but at least they're noticing that the denominator in the FR is a lot larger than they previously thought. That was abundantly obvious at the beginning; if you aren't widely administering a costly and rare test[2], you're enormously left censored in your estimator. You're also radically screwing up your R0 estimate. I suppose there are arguments to be made that more hot and humid climates prevent the spread of respiratory viruses in general, which is why you don't see problems in the more humid and hot regions of China and Vietnam.[3] The real question is why some countries look like Germany, and some look like Italy. The paranoid answer is Germany will soon look like Italy (and this might be true), except the claimed origin of the disease is .... Germany[4]. If it does turn out to be overblown in some sense, it's probably a valuable exercise in autarky. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statistics-undetected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statis... [2] And FWIIW none of the tests are well calibrated; in fact there are numerous tests in use with radically different biases. [3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists/coronavirus-may-have-reached-italy-from-germany-scientists-say-idUSKBN20Y35B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... (I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's a common assertion)
  - whb07 7y ago
    Also 2% of 2 billion is 40 million dead. We are 3 months+ since this outbreak started. Everyone keeps talking about how exponentials are hard to grasp, but whats harder to grasp is: fear + exponentials + too_many_unknowns == impossible to plot A feature that everyone talks about is how startups grow exponentially, fine, i get it, but most end up failing and going to zero. What if this was such a case? We ascribe to it an exponential growth path and yet it fails to take off for many reasons like perhaps a dog walking service or WeWork isn't the cat's pajamas?

zoul 7y ago

A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly. The mortality seems to be caused primarily by healthcare overload so far. In about 10 % cases the disease requires hospital care, if that’s available, things are mostly fine, if not, people die. How does an isolated test case model that?

whb07 7y ago
Can you explain why the other 2 billion living in the region, people mostly living in terrible conditions with very little healthcare as it compares to say Italy, aren’t all dead ? Why arent they having massive spikes in deaths? Even if they can’t be tested, why aren’t we seeing it?

simion314 7y ago

>A 1000 person test case was ran in isolation and they found this disease to not be very deathly, and this population was skewed toward the elderly. Is healthy or dead the only 2 options? I think people with high fever won't be able to work and provide you with services , people that need to stay in hospitals are also a important number that you need to provide, also how many would die if there are not enough hospital bed with equipment and medicine? Each week we see some new drug that is tested , maybe a vaccine is to be created soon so if possible delay getting people infected especially if the cost is less sport events or similar.

desertedisland 7y ago
Most reasonable estimates are that a vaccine is at least a year to eighteen months away: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccine#when-will-it-be-ready https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccin... Are you really proposing to quarantine everyone for a year?
- simion314 7y ago
  No, but cancel all big events especially international ones. Still I read about antivirals that are in tests that are already approved for other illnesses so delay as much as possible by canceling entertainment crap.

piva00 7y ago

This is a health issue not because of the disease being too deadly but by being a perfect combination of not being deadly enough and requiring intensive and long care for those affected by a severe case. This is not about you dying of COVID-19, it's about you dying because you got into an accident and didn't have enough ICU beds available to treat an injury you shouldn't die from. It's about avoiding crumbling to the pressure of the healthcare system which would trigger even bigger panics, even more social unrest and so on. Don't spread misinformation or opinions as a fact, you don't know what this is gonna be, I don't know and no expert knows, this is unprecedented territory in contemporary society. You are not better than a corpus of experts all around the world that are trying to contain the side and after-effects of it, the economy taking a huge hit and its ripples flowing through the fabric of our society is part of this crisis and would be of any major outbreak.

whb07 7y ago
The fact is we don’t have any facts. Then there’s the fact that everyone replying to me are wielding the unknown as truths and pointing at China and Italy while at the same time disregarding literally the other 2 billion people in the area who haven’t had any of the average-to-worst case scenarios depicted by people like yourself. I’d love to see what the infrastructure looks like in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the like and why haven’t we seen the large scale run on hospitals like everyone’s talking about. Happen to have any sources?
- threatofrain 7y ago
  I'd be curious to see any discussion on the event that herd immunity / vaccinations aren't really effective because the virus may mutate quickly. Also discussion on the UK government suggesting there's going to be a winter resurgence.
- lazylizard 7y ago
  Especially from lets say bali eh? Why haven't large numbers of tourists in bali been stricken with covid 19? As of 5 feb there were supposed to have been 5000 chinese tourists trapped on bali after flights were halted.. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-to-stop-flights-to-and-from-china-amid-wuhan-virus-concerns https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-to-stop-...