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Well people hopefully don’t run around if they suspect being infected. Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their

Well people hopefully don’t run around if they suspect being infected. Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their apartments, we currently still trust people to do the right thing. If that’s the right strategy remains to be seen, I think/hope we will be able to stop the growth of (verified) infected people at 50.000 or less, then we won’t overburden the health system. So far it seems to work as the number of new infections seems to go down, we will have to wait until next week to see if it really works though.

megous 7y ago
Our gov said that about half of the people that were told to self quarantine after returning from Italy just went shopping outside. (determined by credit card usage data) Card sharing may account for low percentage of that perhaps. So I'd trust about 50% of people, perhaps. I guess this number rises, as the effects of the crisis are getting more severe and immediate.
- jonfw 7y ago
  Which gov is 'our gov'? Can you cite that report?
  - megous 7y ago
    https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polovina-lidi-alespon-jednou-porusila-karantenu-94555 https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polov... Google translate: > COVID19CZ's IT Initiative has put together anonymised card payment data at merchants. They show that people do not comply with the mandated quarantine, but also that many Czechs are still in risk areas. Article Those arriving from Italy are going to quarantine for two weeks, the government announced on Friday 6 March. The measure began to apply from Saturday. That person was supposed to report on the phone to his general practitioner, who decided on quarantine on Monday. If returning Czechs have taken this step, it is not clear, but their payment data shows that 46 percent of people quarantined at least once in the first week in the first week. “We can look at the number of people who paid with a card for one week in Italy and the next one in the Czech Republic. It can be seen from payment transactions that such people often went somewhere in the Czech Republic and bought something, ”says Petr Bednařík from DataSentics, who is part of the initiative of several Czech technology companies and IT enthusiasts COVID19CZ. It focuses on helping to combat a new type of coronavirus pandemic. His analytical group, consisting of DataSentics and Keboola, works with leading Czech financial institutions. The analysis of Czech payment card activities abroad was based on Dateio data. [...]
kolinko 7y ago
Huh? You will reach 50k by Thursday, that is guaranteed! Germany just began any serious action, and there is a 2 week lag before seeing any sort of impact. In Poland we had a national lockdown a week ago (which you can see everywhere - empty streets and so on), and so far the numbers don’t reflect it at all. As for locking people down, yes you can do it, it’s called a quarantine.
- Slartie 7y ago
  Actually the measures in Germany started on Monday, six days ago. That's when all the schools and kindergartens closed down, many stores closed, and those interventions also triggered the first significant changes in people's behavior. Of course effectively it was a gradual change over the week, with more and more stores closing and public spaces emptying, but that Monday six days ago was clearly the major tipping point. So I would expect to see first effects in new infection numbers over the coming week, with nearly full effect probably visible some time during the following one.
  - foepys 7y ago
    Nothing really changed. In my city people still went to parks together and were more or less cuddling with each other in the supermarkets. Most might have stayed at home but the 5% that didn't are still enough to spread it exponentially.
    - Slartie 7y ago
      I've observed significant changes. Can't say much about parks (haven't been in one during the last days, for obvious reasons) but at stores and supermarkets people were trying to keep their distance. My regular supermarket has painted lines on the floor in all places that typically get crowded to help with keeping the 1.5m minimum distance while waiting. Multiple hardware stores have limited the number of customers admitted to the store at once, surplus customers have to wait in line outside (at appropriate distance). Home office has changed from being the exception to being the norm for a week now at my workplace (an IT company), and I've heard the same from members of my family working elsewhere (in non-IT businesses).
saila 7y ago
Western nations certainly do protect people by force. There are a lot of circumstances where this is true--both protecting people from others as well as from themselves. In the current circumstances, in a lot of places in the U.S. people are being told to stay home unless they have a specific, approved reason to go out. These are legal orders--not suggestions--that are ultimately upheld by the threat of force. If things get really bad, we could see the National Guard deployed to enforce curfews and such. And there are other uses of force that are legal in emergency circumstances. I assume things are similar in Germany and other European countries. The German government could order people to stay home under threat of fines or jail time, even if they haven't done so yet. (I'd be very surprised if this isn't the case.) Now, I'm not saying the U.S. or Germany is equivalent to China or anything nonsensical like that. I just don't see why people need to keep saying we don't do this or that (e.g., use force) when we clearly do. I don't have much optimism that people, on the whole, will do the right thing and self-quarantine. Being forced to stay home is probably the only thing that will work.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > unless they have a specific, approved reason to go out Which includes things like walking, running, & hiking with people at 6ft distance. Not sure how serious that is. > These are legal orders--not suggestions--that are ultimately upheld by the threat of force. They're also not getting enforced AFAIK, so not everyone's taking it seriously. I don't really have reason to think anybody's getting "forced" in the sense of threat-of-force.
  - fsh 7y ago
    They are absolutely getting enforced by the police.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Wait really? I've seen/heard no indication of such, but a fair bit to suggest otherwise. Is this a very recent development? (Any links you can share?)
FpUser 7y ago
"Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their apartments" Wait until you will (chance of avoiding it I think is really small)
lnsru 7y ago
I can bet, Germany will reach 100k next week. The people don’t care at all. Only minority wears masks and try to keep proper distance. Even today police force was needed to cancel something like party in part in Munich.
apta 7y ago
> we currently still trust people to do the right thing Except it's been shown time and time again that people can't be trusted to do the right thing.
- sneak 7y ago
  I don’t think this is a universal truth. It can be trusted that a small percentage of people will be selfish or indifferent, even in the light of warnings; while that always means >0, I don’t think that such a thing can be said to apply to “people” in general.
  - apta 7y ago
    I think it is. Look at alcohol for example. Governments that permit alcohol consumption "trust" that people will "drink responsibly". However, just look at the disasters that alcohol has brought about, from drunk driving, to being the cause of many rape and homicide crimes, to health issues for drinkers, to breaking apart families, etc.
    - sneak 7y ago
      Many, many more people drink alcohol responsibly than those who cause problems with it. I am not sure that "a minority of people, given freedom, do harmful things with it" is a good reason to broadly take away freedoms from people in general. There are many other good examples, like driving, over-the-counter medications, and firearms, for example. The fact that 56,000 people each year in the US end up in an ER because of acetaminophen overdose is not a good reason to ban Tylenol from being sold.
      - apta 7y ago
        > Many, many more people drink alcohol responsibly than those who cause problems with it. The argument is that those who do cause issues cause them in a disproportionate manner that it makes total sense to ban it outright. It is 100% the logical thing to do. The Tylenol argument doesn't make sense because it is a medicine that can have good come out of it. Alcohol is dangerous, and it mainly exists for companies to profit hugely from it (it's sufficient to watch the lewd ads around alcohol to know what's going on).

megous 7y ago

Our gov said that about half of the people that were told to self quarantine after returning from Italy just went shopping outside. (determined by credit card usage data) Card sharing may account for low percentage of that perhaps. So I'd trust about 50% of people, perhaps. I guess this number rises, as the effects of the crisis are getting more severe and immediate.

jonfw 7y ago
Which gov is 'our gov'? Can you cite that report?
- megous 7y ago
  https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polovina-lidi-alespon-jednou-porusila-karantenu-94555 https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polov... Google translate: > COVID19CZ's IT Initiative has put together anonymised card payment data at merchants. They show that people do not comply with the mandated quarantine, but also that many Czechs are still in risk areas. Article Those arriving from Italy are going to quarantine for two weeks, the government announced on Friday 6 March. The measure began to apply from Saturday. That person was supposed to report on the phone to his general practitioner, who decided on quarantine on Monday. If returning Czechs have taken this step, it is not clear, but their payment data shows that 46 percent of people quarantined at least once in the first week in the first week. “We can look at the number of people who paid with a card for one week in Italy and the next one in the Czech Republic. It can be seen from payment transactions that such people often went somewhere in the Czech Republic and bought something, ”says Petr Bednařík from DataSentics, who is part of the initiative of several Czech technology companies and IT enthusiasts COVID19CZ. It focuses on helping to combat a new type of coronavirus pandemic. His analytical group, consisting of DataSentics and Keboola, works with leading Czech financial institutions. The analysis of Czech payment card activities abroad was based on Dateio data. [...]

kolinko 7y ago

Huh? You will reach 50k by Thursday, that is guaranteed! Germany just began any serious action, and there is a 2 week lag before seeing any sort of impact. In Poland we had a national lockdown a week ago (which you can see everywhere - empty streets and so on), and so far the numbers don’t reflect it at all. As for locking people down, yes you can do it, it’s called a quarantine.

Slartie 7y ago
Actually the measures in Germany started on Monday, six days ago. That's when all the schools and kindergartens closed down, many stores closed, and those interventions also triggered the first significant changes in people's behavior. Of course effectively it was a gradual change over the week, with more and more stores closing and public spaces emptying, but that Monday six days ago was clearly the major tipping point. So I would expect to see first effects in new infection numbers over the coming week, with nearly full effect probably visible some time during the following one.
- foepys 7y ago
  Nothing really changed. In my city people still went to parks together and were more or less cuddling with each other in the supermarkets. Most might have stayed at home but the 5% that didn't are still enough to spread it exponentially.
  - Slartie 7y ago
    I've observed significant changes. Can't say much about parks (haven't been in one during the last days, for obvious reasons) but at stores and supermarkets people were trying to keep their distance. My regular supermarket has painted lines on the floor in all places that typically get crowded to help with keeping the 1.5m minimum distance while waiting. Multiple hardware stores have limited the number of customers admitted to the store at once, surplus customers have to wait in line outside (at appropriate distance). Home office has changed from being the exception to being the norm for a week now at my workplace (an IT company), and I've heard the same from members of my family working elsewhere (in non-IT businesses).

saila 7y ago

Western nations certainly do protect people by force. There are a lot of circumstances where this is true--both protecting people from others as well as from themselves. In the current circumstances, in a lot of places in the U.S. people are being told to stay home unless they have a specific, approved reason to go out. These are legal orders--not suggestions--that are ultimately upheld by the threat of force. If things get really bad, we could see the National Guard deployed to enforce curfews and such. And there are other uses of force that are legal in emergency circumstances. I assume things are similar in Germany and other European countries. The German government could order people to stay home under threat of fines or jail time, even if they haven't done so yet. (I'd be very surprised if this isn't the case.) Now, I'm not saying the U.S. or Germany is equivalent to China or anything nonsensical like that. I just don't see why people need to keep saying we don't do this or that (e.g., use force) when we clearly do. I don't have much optimism that people, on the whole, will do the right thing and self-quarantine. Being forced to stay home is probably the only thing that will work.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> unless they have a specific, approved reason to go out Which includes things like walking, running, & hiking with people at 6ft distance. Not sure how serious that is. > These are legal orders--not suggestions--that are ultimately upheld by the threat of force. They're also not getting enforced AFAIK, so not everyone's taking it seriously. I don't really have reason to think anybody's getting "forced" in the sense of threat-of-force.
- fsh 7y ago
  They are absolutely getting enforced by the police.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Wait really? I've seen/heard no indication of such, but a fair bit to suggest otherwise. Is this a very recent development? (Any links you can share?)

FpUser 7y ago

"Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their apartments" Wait until you will (chance of avoiding it I think is really small)

lnsru 7y ago

I can bet, Germany will reach 100k next week. The people don’t care at all. Only minority wears masks and try to keep proper distance. Even today police force was needed to cancel something like party in part in Munich.

apta 7y ago

> we currently still trust people to do the right thing Except it's been shown time and time again that people can't be trusted to do the right thing.

sneak 7y ago
I don’t think this is a universal truth. It can be trusted that a small percentage of people will be selfish or indifferent, even in the light of warnings; while that always means >0, I don’t think that such a thing can be said to apply to “people” in general.
- apta 7y ago
  I think it is. Look at alcohol for example. Governments that permit alcohol consumption "trust" that people will "drink responsibly". However, just look at the disasters that alcohol has brought about, from drunk driving, to being the cause of many rape and homicide crimes, to health issues for drinkers, to breaking apart families, etc.
  - sneak 7y ago
    Many, many more people drink alcohol responsibly than those who cause problems with it. I am not sure that "a minority of people, given freedom, do harmful things with it" is a good reason to broadly take away freedoms from people in general. There are many other good examples, like driving, over-the-counter medications, and firearms, for example. The fact that 56,000 people each year in the US end up in an ER because of acetaminophen overdose is not a good reason to ban Tylenol from being sold.
    - apta 7y ago
      > Many, many more people drink alcohol responsibly than those who cause problems with it. The argument is that those who do cause issues cause them in a disproportionate manner that it makes total sense to ban it outright. It is 100% the logical thing to do. The Tylenol argument doesn't make sense because it is a medicine that can have good come out of it. Alcohol is dangerous, and it mainly exists for companies to profit hugely from it (it's sufficient to watch the lewd ads around alcohol to know what's going on).