5 ms·

For the love of God, why don't people understand yet that healthcare systems are not ready to be over-run by the sheer number of patients in the worst case? Tha

For the love of God, why don't people understand yet that healthcare systems are not ready to be over-run by the sheer number of patients in the worst case? That the death rate of just the virus is not a good indicator of potential casualties with an over-burdened healthcare network? That even if that wasn't true, that the preventable deaths of people due to incompetent governance and leadership are still a cause for concern? I see this sentiment, this statistic, and this comment several times, every day. And I see it debunked several times, every day. Why do people keep saying this?

scrollaway 7y ago
Because some people are dying to defend whatever their politician-of-choice's line of thinking is.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post shallow dismissals or flamebait here. No one knows what's happening right now, so it's natural and inevitable that are different views. As long as people express their views thoughtfully and respectfully, that's within the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    Ok, sorry.
randyrand 7y ago
Maybe you should read the NYT article I sent. That is the death rate of Wuhan, where “care” meant being forcible quarantined on a stadium floor. 1.4% figure is the death rate with terrible care. Compare that to the non-corona USA death rate of of 0.8% In other words, even with terrible care the death rate of people with corona is only twice the death rate of people without corona. That’s not very alarming to me. And hardly worth these totalitarian economy stopping measures.
- oaiey 7y ago
  So we do not trust Italy either. Especially northern Italy where hospitals are on US/European level?
- bobjob 7y ago
  That is not true. People that needed intensive care got it. They build new medical centers for a reason. Not everything China does is bad, we simply don't understand the cultural reasons for the way they sometimes act because it is different!
- endorphone 7y ago
  This completely specious position is useful for all arguments! Gun deaths, drunk driving, terrorism, opioid deaths, suicides -- just compare them to the natural death rate and call it a day. I mean, those ones all pale compared to COVID-19, so apparently they're complete non-issues.
  - randyrand 7y ago
    That’s not a terrible argument. But people are more upset about murder drunk driving, terrorism, opiod, and suicide than dying of disease because it’s human caused. It would make most sense to compare CoVID19 to deaths caused by disease per year in the USA, as that is apples to apples. I don’t have those numbers off hand. Edit: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death The overall rate is roughly the same as the death rate from disease.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      As I said in a previous comment, this is your fallacy: 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.
      - randyrand 7y ago
        Thats not a fallacy. Thats exactly my point. It's not worth decimating human rights over 1 year of 2x the human death rate. If it were 4x, 5x sure, but 2x is not worthy of banning nearly all physical human interaction for many months or more.
zaroth 7y ago
I think people are searching for answers that no one has yet, and also for leaders to gauge both sides of the impact of any response. We must admit that a severe economic impact is also a severe health impact. That much is settled science. So one reasonable question becomes how much damage, not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of lives, would for example a GDP of -25% cause? The impact of the virus to the percentage of the population that requires treatment is magnified significantly by an overrun healthcare system. That is a salient point. It means that spreading out infections over a longer time will allow better treatment for hospitalized COVID patients on average and save lives. But graphics like the famous “flatten the curve” animation [1] are unfortunately quite misleading. The “capacity” line is drawn crossing some point on the y-axis which makes the graphic look compelling. The true ICU/ventilator capacity line is perhaps 4 pixels off the y-axis on that chart. We also don’t have any x-axis units, how many months would the curve have to stretch to keep the number of cases under capacity? And there’s another factor, for as long as hospital ICUs and healthcare dollar spend is dominated by COVID cases, there are all the other healthcare needs of the country / world which are suffering. It’s reasonable to expect a macro level analysis of the net health impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as widespread and long-term suppression. I have yet to see a compelling scientific analysis on this topic. Even the UK Imperial College report admits that there is not a clear cut moral or ethical “answer” based on the severe economic and health impacts of taking dramatic action to populations that otherwise would not be severely impacted by COVID. The thing right now that’s confounding me is trying to comprehend how China and South Korea were able to, not flatten, but stop exponential growth, given the level of spread that we would expect to have occurred before suppressive measures were taken, based on the unmitigated R0 range. There were a lot of people traveling out of Wuhan before the lockdown [2], and yet the impact to greater China was relatively minimal, while most of China is now back to work. Frankly it gives me hope that there’s reason to believe, particularly with warmer weather coming, that it’s easier to get R0 below 1 than we might otherwise suspect. It would be a welcome relief to be spared having to make the extremely difficult choice for or against long-term suppressive measures. [1] - https://images.app.goo.gl/FtdN3kYowN2bSD3HA https://images.app.goo.gl/FtdN3kYowN2bSD3HA [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronav...

scrollaway 7y ago

Because some people are dying to defend whatever their politician-of-choice's line of thinking is.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post shallow dismissals or flamebait here. No one knows what's happening right now, so it's natural and inevitable that are different views. As long as people express their views thoughtfully and respectfully, that's within the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- scrollaway 7y ago
  Ok, sorry.

randyrand 7y ago

Maybe you should read the NYT article I sent. That is the death rate of Wuhan, where “care” meant being forcible quarantined on a stadium floor. 1.4% figure is the death rate with terrible care. Compare that to the non-corona USA death rate of of 0.8% In other words, even with terrible care the death rate of people with corona is only twice the death rate of people without corona. That’s not very alarming to me. And hardly worth these totalitarian economy stopping measures.

oaiey 7y ago
So we do not trust Italy either. Especially northern Italy where hospitals are on US/European level?
bobjob 7y ago
That is not true. People that needed intensive care got it. They build new medical centers for a reason. Not everything China does is bad, we simply don't understand the cultural reasons for the way they sometimes act because it is different!
endorphone 7y ago
This completely specious position is useful for all arguments! Gun deaths, drunk driving, terrorism, opioid deaths, suicides -- just compare them to the natural death rate and call it a day. I mean, those ones all pale compared to COVID-19, so apparently they're complete non-issues.
- randyrand 7y ago
  That’s not a terrible argument. But people are more upset about murder drunk driving, terrorism, opiod, and suicide than dying of disease because it’s human caused. It would make most sense to compare CoVID19 to deaths caused by disease per year in the USA, as that is apples to apples. I don’t have those numbers off hand. Edit: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death The overall rate is roughly the same as the death rate from disease.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    As I said in a previous comment, this is your fallacy: 1. "New thing X puts us at risk of losing Y lives every day." 2. "We lose Y lives to car accidents every day". 3. "Ergo, X is harmless!" Except you now have 2Y lives lost every day.
    - randyrand 7y ago
      Thats not a fallacy. Thats exactly my point. It's not worth decimating human rights over 1 year of 2x the human death rate. If it were 4x, 5x sure, but 2x is not worthy of banning nearly all physical human interaction for many months or more.

zaroth 7y ago

I think people are searching for answers that no one has yet, and also for leaders to gauge both sides of the impact of any response. We must admit that a severe economic impact is also a severe health impact. That much is settled science. So one reasonable question becomes how much damage, not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of lives, would for example a GDP of -25% cause? The impact of the virus to the percentage of the population that requires treatment is magnified significantly by an overrun healthcare system. That is a salient point. It means that spreading out infections over a longer time will allow better treatment for hospitalized COVID patients on average and save lives. But graphics like the famous “flatten the curve” animation [1] are unfortunately quite misleading. The “capacity” line is drawn crossing some point on the y-axis which makes the graphic look compelling. The true ICU/ventilator capacity line is perhaps 4 pixels off the y-axis on that chart. We also don’t have any x-axis units, how many months would the curve have to stretch to keep the number of cases under capacity? And there’s another factor, for as long as hospital ICUs and healthcare dollar spend is dominated by COVID cases, there are all the other healthcare needs of the country / world which are suffering. It’s reasonable to expect a macro level analysis of the net health impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as widespread and long-term suppression. I have yet to see a compelling scientific analysis on this topic. Even the UK Imperial College report admits that there is not a clear cut moral or ethical “answer” based on the severe economic and health impacts of taking dramatic action to populations that otherwise would not be severely impacted by COVID. The thing right now that’s confounding me is trying to comprehend how China and South Korea were able to, not flatten, but stop exponential growth, given the level of spread that we would expect to have occurred before suppressive measures were taken, based on the unmitigated R0 range. There were a lot of people traveling out of Wuhan before the lockdown [2], and yet the impact to greater China was relatively minimal, while most of China is now back to work. Frankly it gives me hope that there’s reason to believe, particularly with warmer weather coming, that it’s easier to get R0 below 1 than we might otherwise suspect. It would be a welcome relief to be spared having to make the extremely difficult choice for or against long-term suppressive measures. [1] - https://images.app.goo.gl/FtdN3kYowN2bSD3HA https://images.app.goo.gl/FtdN3kYowN2bSD3HA [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronav...