5 ms·

Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery

60 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

m3kw9 7y ago
Looks like he got lucky predicting 80000 cases and that is reported cases. He predicted the actual people that got tested and positive. He also is another one of those that the flu is worse and not understanding the high severity of many of the Covid cases is the thing that is what is worrying a lot of the professionals. The last thing is that the economics involved that may not make things fine in 1-2 year period, you cannot restart an economy like a light switch.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  Right plus, this is not the last corona virus
- partiallypro 7y ago
  Did he get lucky or did China fix the numbers to his conclusion? China has a suspect history of magically hitting numbers on the mark, every time.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I feel like the headline is somewhat irresponsible. The framing encourages a "don't worry, be happy" attitude. Reading the article, the message is more like "If we keep doing the right things, we will be fine." The problem with such a headline is it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't need to make any effort whatsoever for things to "be fine." I think this is not a great signal to send.
- drcode 7y ago
  Exactly: I've actually been somewhat alarmist early on about this virus, but I actually agree with the article. We've had to make some crazy sacrifices in the last 2 weeks, but now that we've done those, things are actually looking moderately optimistic: Most of the US hopefully isn't going to become a "big Italy", besides a few unfortunate hotspots. Other areas will still see heavy infections, but likely without overwhelming the hospital systems, if we maintain at least some far more moderate social distancing measures for another year. ...I do worry about the Deep South, due to poverty and lack of leadership by governors in that area.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I am doing what I can to make resources available online. I've done this a long time. I'm encouraged to see a lot of online resources popping up in response to this. My hope is that the most vulnerable areas will get some relief from local issues because of the availability of online resources. I run a Citizen Planners subforum. I write a bit about making money online. Etc. There's a lot of free information available online and the internet proved to be a hugely helpful thing for me when I was homeless. It's proving to be a big deal for helping people cope in the face of quarantines, etc. I'm cautiously optimistic -- assuming we continue to take it seriously and don't decide it's time to dance in the streets and party like it's 1999.
    - mercer 7y ago
      As a general response to this thread: it's a big problem over here in The Netherlands that apparently tons of people are not properly practicing 'social distancing'. There have been quite a few frustrating images shared that showed a sign imploring people to keep 1.5m distance with a huge crowd right next to it waiting to be let into some particular section of a park. Also pictures of health care workers expressing their frustration at dealing with things while the rest of the country acts like it's just a big vacation. I expect that possibly tonight the government will impose a stronger quarantine as a result, which is a shame. I had hoped we'd collectively better at following advice. More specifically in response to you: is there a way to discuss with you one of these days what you're working on and perhaps in particular how perhaps advice on how we might help the homeless here? I'd very much like to chat about that, whether via email or some other channel.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        You are always welcome to email me about my work. My email is in my profile.
W-Stool 7y ago
Question from the cheap seats here : what causes a virus to "burn itself out" or fail to keep replicating? A lack of new hosts it can infect? Environmental details (heat, humidity)? If anyone truly knows I'd like to hear it.
- rosywoozlechan 7y ago
  I am not a credible source on this, but I believe if we achieve heard immunity the virus burns itself out because it will eventually not find new hosts to infect. The virus has to keep finding new hosts, because otherwise the people infected will either get well and gain immunity or die. If enough people gain immunity then the virus can't spread anymore. Not everyone has to be become immune, just enough.
  - mhandley 7y ago
    The problem is that for this virus, "just enough" immune people is about 60% of the population. If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths. The other alternative is social distancing, so you can reduce R0 (the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to) from something like 2.5-3 down to less than 1. Then it dies back by itself. This is what China and South Korea succeeded in doing.
    - rosywoozlechan 7y ago
      Yes, and I think we wouldn't need to wait until the coronavirus is completely dead to end complete social distancing, just until it becomes manageable to track and isolate just those still infected.
    - guscost 7y ago
      > If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths. I remain astounded by the level of certainty people can have about things which they barely understand at all.
jacquesm 7y ago
Here's to hoping he is right. Question to the virologists on HN: human cells have some limits on how many generations they can be copied, have there even been similar mechanisms observed in viruses?
- jackyinger 7y ago
  I’m not a virologist, but I did pay attention in biology class fwiw. Evolutionary, a virus that can only replicate a few times is a dead end. That’d be like mule, a viable life form, but one that cannot reproduce successfully. Think about the mechanisms of cells with generation limits, I’d intuit that they preform functions related to morphogenisis (we only want this bone to be this long), and forcing evolutionary iteration by limiting the maximum age of a individual. I’d posit that extreme longevity is an affront to evolution. I could be totally off my rocker with the second part, but I’d like to think that a basic knowledge of biology and an obsession with cellular automata might have given me a useful intuition.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I was thinking more along the lines of a virus that is able to reproduce indefinitely in one species, but after a species jump ends up being able to reproduce only a limited number of generations due to the copying mechanism being subtly different in the host cell of the new species. But you're right that from an evolutionary standpoint such a virus would be a dead end if it happened in any species. It would very much depend on how - and if - the different ribosomes and other cell mechanisms responsible for copying the viruses RNA (or DNA in some cases) would deal with the virus. The effect you'd see would be a species jump, followed by a very virulent episode fizzling out when the copy errors accumulated to the point that the copies would no longer be viable.
    - unsrsly 7y ago
      This is an interesting question! Note that human stem cells and cancer cells do not have a limit on how many times they can divide. This is because they possess the enzyme telomerase. Also, note that in human reproduction, there is an unbroken lineage of cell divisions through generations (egg and sperm are produced by specialized cell divisions called meiosis, and combine in sexual reproduction to develop a new human who can eventually produce more egg or sperm). However, it is true that differentiated somatic cells (most of the cells in your body) cannot divide indefinitely. A virus, unlike a differentiated somatic cell, does not have an intrinsic limit to how many times it can replicate. It hijacks cellular machinery to make an exact replica of itself (+/- any replication errors a.k.a. mutations that occur). However, a virus that becomes evolutionarily unfit could go extinct. If you look at phylogenetic trees of viruses, there are many branches that go extinct (become a dead end). But there are other branches that continue succeeding. All of this is driven by evolutionary dynamics rather than by a lack of telomerase leading to a hard limit on the number of times the virus can replicate. Now, just to blow your mind, oncogenic viruses like certain strains of HPV can induce human cells to produce telomerase and become able to divide indefinitely! Wowww this is so confusing!
Der_Einzige 7y ago
If you don't do what China or South Korea did, we're not "going to be fine". The US handling of this is extremely poor. One shouldn't give the people false hope.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- v64 7y ago
  This was my initial reaction, but it seems that he came to this conclusion after analyzing the numbers in other countries as well. > He analyzed 78 countries with more than 50 reported cases of COVID-19 every day and sees “signs of recovery.” He’s not looking at cumulative cases, but the number of new cases every day — and the percentage growth in that number from one day to the next. > Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy, and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, “a consistent decline means there’s some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers,” he said.
- forgingahead 7y ago
  I also don't think you (and others) should be gleefully clutching pearls for too long just yet. Yes, western governments have been woefully unprepared and very slapshot in their response to this. Yes, valuable time was wasted. But please avoid the trap the media wants to drown us all in, that of despair and permanent anxiety. We will solve this, one way or another. It won't be easy, and there will be a ton of pain (a lot of which is already being felt). But a solution will be found (my best guess: probably a vaccine in the medium to long run, and in the short to medium term stronger testing and isolation regimes to let us get back to some semblance of normal life again)
  - pavas 7y ago
    Beating this thing requires sacrifice and it seems very few people are willing to voluntarily do it. There is no reason to despair or panic or be anxious if you are following the proper precautions to prevent its spread. I think there is just cause for spreading fear until people get it into their heads that this is serious and behave accordingly, at which point the focus needs to switch towards keeping people optimistic and healthy in isolation without social interaction. The alternative is millions of deaths and a collapse of our medical system.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nopinsight 7y ago
Key points missing from the headline: social distancing is necessary, PPE supplies must be sufficient, and healthcare system must not have broken down for us ‘to be fine’. He predicted the Chinese cessation of outbreak correctly because China consistently implemented the lockdown plan across regions and had strict measures to make sure of compliance. From what we see, few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. Some people’s behaviors and general lack of mask wearing don’t help. (I think Germany may eventually accomplish that. The 2-person-max meeting rule and relatively extensive testing should help.) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries We must read professional epidemiologists, like Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, whose expertise is more relevant and who don’t have nearly as rosy a view on the epidemic. (Marc is also on Twitter.) https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action
- tathougies 7y ago
  Except China is clearly lying about having their outbreak contained. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for everyone to realize.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    It would help, I think, if such claims were supported in ways that didn't make them sound like conspiracy theories and fearmongering. Perhaps you'd like to do so. If not, consider that this is a singularly bad time to be spreading misinformation, no matter how plausible you may find it. People are already frightened enough.
    - senectus1 7y ago
      Present it like they do Malaysia or Indonesia... they're just not testing and not reporting. nothing more complicated than that.
      - throwanem 7y ago
smallgovt 7y ago
The article is basically saying "we're going to be fine if we continue implementing extreme social distancing measures". In other words, if we stop panicking, and big hotspots don't implement extreme social distancing measures, we won't be fine. A certain level of panic is required to enforce efficacy of these social distance programs, so it seems dangerous to spread this message less people begin to act out of self interest.
- manicdee 7y ago
  No amount of panic is useful, not ever. A certain level of taking life and death situations seriously and doing the next right thing towards controlling the situation is required, from everybody. cf Anna, “The Next Right Thing” Frozen 2 https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo Panic = people dying needlessly
willis936 7y ago
15,000 people are dead. Forget being fine for a moment. This is a substantial loss of life compared to recent wars. That number is guaranteed to, at the absolute minimum, double, but has a more probable lower bound at 100,000. This will be a death toll that hasn’t been seen in a lifetime. Yeah, maybe the economy won’t collapse. Maybe it will. Regardless, it’s unkind to downplay the severity of the situation.
- jameslevy 7y ago
  This shouldn't be compared to a war, in terms of death count. We never want to take death lightly, but a large percentage of the deaths happening now are in people that are already very sick or old and likely to be severely affected by a number of health ailments and infections.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- briefcomment 7y ago
  But how many "Covid" deaths would have been attributed to something else if we hypothetically had never become aware of it? Hopefully we are able to answer this someday, with more reliable data, and a thorough analysis of the events that are occurring at the moment. I could see the answer ranging from "all of them" to "much less than the majority currently think". I just hope we can answer it with confidence, so we are better prepared in the future.
- mahesh_rm 7y ago
  What you are reporting is disingenuous and uninformed. CDC estimations of flu deaths in 2019 suggest that the number you provide match a regular flu season. Note that this source provides US only stats: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Do CDC do the same as UK, who apparently report all additional Winter deaths as "flu" (which rather helpfully for the government shifts focus away from poor elderly care during "austerity", still being cut further AFAICT). Only the ONS (Office for National Statistics) also report the actual verified data on flu and instead of numbers O(10k) it's O(100). For 2017, the most recent year, it's ~450 deaths total for the UK [1], vs an anticipated infection rate of 20% of the adult population and 50% of the rest. That's 450/15M, 0.003%. Reported death rates are O(1%) for Covid19. Could you explain that discrepancy? The BMJ (British Medical Journal) has some discussion of the controversy of over-reporting of flu deaths here [2]. Re those CDC figures, do you really have ~200,000 people hospitalised with flu each month in USA? --- [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathregistrationssummarytablesenglandandwalesreferencetables https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6 https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6
richk449 7y ago
Since this is hacker news, where is the Girardian analysis? This situation seems to call for it with the fear of outsiders and scapegoating. Hard to worry about mimetic contagion when there is a real contagion?
lph 7y ago
We're going to be fine... whew, that's a relief... > Levitt said the social-distancing mandates are critical ...as long as we practice fastidious social distancing, which, at least in the U.S., big parts of the country are utterly failing at... > The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but perhaps with body temperature surveillance...and immediate social isolation. ...and if we have widely deployed testing, which the U.S. government has failed at spectacularly. So: We're going to be fine if we take this seriously and have a coordinated, competent government response. I'll be in my doomsday bunker if anyone needs me.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  Not sure social distancing is materially effective
  - thephyber 7y ago
    My intuition tells me otherwise. Do you have evidence that I don’t?
  - meowface 7y ago
    If a sufficient percentage of people consistently do it for an extended period of time, why would it not be effective?
fny 7y ago
You can already see this playing out on this site which tracks the rate of new cases along with the total cases: https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en I think the bigger issue that we'll need to address after we handle the case influx is how we'll go about achieving herd immunity. I'm starting to think it might be wise to consider letting small, not-at-risk populations out with the intention of allowing the virus to spread in a fashion that wouldn't overwhelm the health systems. A controlled burn, if you will. I'd definitely join in to something like this.
- ardit33 7y ago
  that's called a vaccine... and it is 12-18 months away... you can start now by volunteering to join the vaccine trials....
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
2 points: 1. The fact that the author is a Nobel laureate adds no weight to his conclusions. The Nobel laureate who invented PCR was otherwise what I would describe as "crazy" - he was a notorious HIV denialist for years. Not saying this Nobel laureate is, but Nobels go for novel discoveries, not for being the best scientist. 2. Look at the amount of extreme lockdowns that have been deployed in China for months to get this reduction in transmission (assuming they aren't lying). There was a Twitter thread posted here recently describing the current situation in Wuhan, and their "lightened" levels of current restrictions are way more intense then any of the shelter-in-place restrictions in the US.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  Right, see Linus Pauling
  - senderista 7y ago
    Or Brian Josephson
nardi 7y ago
Uh, why the hell would we listen to a chemist’s opinion about a pandemic? There is literally a whole field of science that studies this, and it’s not remotely similar to chemistry.
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/doeNm https://archive.md/doeNm

60 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

Looks like he got lucky predicting 80000 cases and that is reported cases. He predicted the actual people that got tested and positive. He also is another one of those that the flu is worse and not understanding the high severity of many of the Covid cases is the thing that is what is worrying a lot of the professionals. The last thing is that the economics involved that may not make things fine in 1-2 year period, you cannot restart an economy like a light switch.

ykevinator 7y ago
Right plus, this is not the last corona virus
partiallypro 7y ago
Did he get lucky or did China fix the numbers to his conclusion? China has a suspect history of magically hitting numbers on the mark, every time.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I feel like the headline is somewhat irresponsible. The framing encourages a "don't worry, be happy" attitude. Reading the article, the message is more like "If we keep doing the right things, we will be fine." The problem with such a headline is it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't need to make any effort whatsoever for things to "be fine." I think this is not a great signal to send.

drcode 7y ago
Exactly: I've actually been somewhat alarmist early on about this virus, but I actually agree with the article. We've had to make some crazy sacrifices in the last 2 weeks, but now that we've done those, things are actually looking moderately optimistic: Most of the US hopefully isn't going to become a "big Italy", besides a few unfortunate hotspots. Other areas will still see heavy infections, but likely without overwhelming the hospital systems, if we maintain at least some far more moderate social distancing measures for another year. ...I do worry about the Deep South, due to poverty and lack of leadership by governors in that area.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I am doing what I can to make resources available online. I've done this a long time. I'm encouraged to see a lot of online resources popping up in response to this. My hope is that the most vulnerable areas will get some relief from local issues because of the availability of online resources. I run a Citizen Planners subforum. I write a bit about making money online. Etc. There's a lot of free information available online and the internet proved to be a hugely helpful thing for me when I was homeless. It's proving to be a big deal for helping people cope in the face of quarantines, etc. I'm cautiously optimistic -- assuming we continue to take it seriously and don't decide it's time to dance in the streets and party like it's 1999.
  - mercer 7y ago
    As a general response to this thread: it's a big problem over here in The Netherlands that apparently tons of people are not properly practicing 'social distancing'. There have been quite a few frustrating images shared that showed a sign imploring people to keep 1.5m distance with a huge crowd right next to it waiting to be let into some particular section of a park. Also pictures of health care workers expressing their frustration at dealing with things while the rest of the country acts like it's just a big vacation. I expect that possibly tonight the government will impose a stronger quarantine as a result, which is a shame. I had hoped we'd collectively better at following advice. More specifically in response to you: is there a way to discuss with you one of these days what you're working on and perhaps in particular how perhaps advice on how we might help the homeless here? I'd very much like to chat about that, whether via email or some other channel.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      You are always welcome to email me about my work. My email is in my profile.

W-Stool 7y ago

Question from the cheap seats here : what causes a virus to "burn itself out" or fail to keep replicating? A lack of new hosts it can infect? Environmental details (heat, humidity)? If anyone truly knows I'd like to hear it.

rosywoozlechan 7y ago
I am not a credible source on this, but I believe if we achieve heard immunity the virus burns itself out because it will eventually not find new hosts to infect. The virus has to keep finding new hosts, because otherwise the people infected will either get well and gain immunity or die. If enough people gain immunity then the virus can't spread anymore. Not everyone has to be become immune, just enough.
- mhandley 7y ago
  The problem is that for this virus, "just enough" immune people is about 60% of the population. If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths. The other alternative is social distancing, so you can reduce R0 (the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to) from something like 2.5-3 down to less than 1. Then it dies back by itself. This is what China and South Korea succeeded in doing.
  - rosywoozlechan 7y ago
    Yes, and I think we wouldn't need to wait until the coronavirus is completely dead to end complete social distancing, just until it becomes manageable to track and isolate just those still infected.
  - guscost 7y ago
    > If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths. I remain astounded by the level of certainty people can have about things which they barely understand at all.

jacquesm 7y ago

Here's to hoping he is right. Question to the virologists on HN: human cells have some limits on how many generations they can be copied, have there even been similar mechanisms observed in viruses?

jackyinger 7y ago
I’m not a virologist, but I did pay attention in biology class fwiw. Evolutionary, a virus that can only replicate a few times is a dead end. That’d be like mule, a viable life form, but one that cannot reproduce successfully. Think about the mechanisms of cells with generation limits, I’d intuit that they preform functions related to morphogenisis (we only want this bone to be this long), and forcing evolutionary iteration by limiting the maximum age of a individual. I’d posit that extreme longevity is an affront to evolution. I could be totally off my rocker with the second part, but I’d like to think that a basic knowledge of biology and an obsession with cellular automata might have given me a useful intuition.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I was thinking more along the lines of a virus that is able to reproduce indefinitely in one species, but after a species jump ends up being able to reproduce only a limited number of generations due to the copying mechanism being subtly different in the host cell of the new species. But you're right that from an evolutionary standpoint such a virus would be a dead end if it happened in any species. It would very much depend on how - and if - the different ribosomes and other cell mechanisms responsible for copying the viruses RNA (or DNA in some cases) would deal with the virus. The effect you'd see would be a species jump, followed by a very virulent episode fizzling out when the copy errors accumulated to the point that the copies would no longer be viable.
  - unsrsly 7y ago
    This is an interesting question! Note that human stem cells and cancer cells do not have a limit on how many times they can divide. This is because they possess the enzyme telomerase. Also, note that in human reproduction, there is an unbroken lineage of cell divisions through generations (egg and sperm are produced by specialized cell divisions called meiosis, and combine in sexual reproduction to develop a new human who can eventually produce more egg or sperm). However, it is true that differentiated somatic cells (most of the cells in your body) cannot divide indefinitely. A virus, unlike a differentiated somatic cell, does not have an intrinsic limit to how many times it can replicate. It hijacks cellular machinery to make an exact replica of itself (+/- any replication errors a.k.a. mutations that occur). However, a virus that becomes evolutionarily unfit could go extinct. If you look at phylogenetic trees of viruses, there are many branches that go extinct (become a dead end). But there are other branches that continue succeeding. All of this is driven by evolutionary dynamics rather than by a lack of telomerase leading to a hard limit on the number of times the virus can replicate. Now, just to blow your mind, oncogenic viruses like certain strains of HPV can induce human cells to produce telomerase and become able to divide indefinitely! Wowww this is so confusing!

Der_Einzige 7y ago

If you don't do what China or South Korea did, we're not "going to be fine". The US handling of this is extremely poor. One shouldn't give the people false hope.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
v64 7y ago
This was my initial reaction, but it seems that he came to this conclusion after analyzing the numbers in other countries as well. > He analyzed 78 countries with more than 50 reported cases of COVID-19 every day and sees “signs of recovery.” He’s not looking at cumulative cases, but the number of new cases every day — and the percentage growth in that number from one day to the next. > Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy, and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, “a consistent decline means there’s some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers,” he said.
forgingahead 7y ago
I also don't think you (and others) should be gleefully clutching pearls for too long just yet. Yes, western governments have been woefully unprepared and very slapshot in their response to this. Yes, valuable time was wasted. But please avoid the trap the media wants to drown us all in, that of despair and permanent anxiety. We will solve this, one way or another. It won't be easy, and there will be a ton of pain (a lot of which is already being felt). But a solution will be found (my best guess: probably a vaccine in the medium to long run, and in the short to medium term stronger testing and isolation regimes to let us get back to some semblance of normal life again)
- pavas 7y ago
  Beating this thing requires sacrifice and it seems very few people are willing to voluntarily do it. There is no reason to despair or panic or be anxious if you are following the proper precautions to prevent its spread. I think there is just cause for spreading fear until people get it into their heads that this is serious and behave accordingly, at which point the focus needs to switch towards keeping people optimistic and healthy in isolation without social interaction. The alternative is millions of deaths and a collapse of our medical system.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nopinsight 7y ago

Key points missing from the headline: social distancing is necessary, PPE supplies must be sufficient, and healthcare system must not have broken down for us ‘to be fine’. He predicted the Chinese cessation of outbreak correctly because China consistently implemented the lockdown plan across regions and had strict measures to make sure of compliance. From what we see, few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. Some people’s behaviors and general lack of mask wearing don’t help. (I think Germany may eventually accomplish that. The 2-person-max meeting rule and relatively extensive testing should help.) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries We must read professional epidemiologists, like Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, whose expertise is more relevant and who don’t have nearly as rosy a view on the epidemic. (Marc is also on Twitter.) https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action

tathougies 7y ago
Except China is clearly lying about having their outbreak contained. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for everyone to realize.
- throwanem 7y ago
  It would help, I think, if such claims were supported in ways that didn't make them sound like conspiracy theories and fearmongering. Perhaps you'd like to do so. If not, consider that this is a singularly bad time to be spreading misinformation, no matter how plausible you may find it. People are already frightened enough.
  - senectus1 7y ago
    Present it like they do Malaysia or Indonesia... they're just not testing and not reporting. nothing more complicated than that.
    - throwanem 7y ago

smallgovt 7y ago

The article is basically saying "we're going to be fine if we continue implementing extreme social distancing measures". In other words, if we stop panicking, and big hotspots don't implement extreme social distancing measures, we won't be fine. A certain level of panic is required to enforce efficacy of these social distance programs, so it seems dangerous to spread this message less people begin to act out of self interest.

manicdee 7y ago
No amount of panic is useful, not ever. A certain level of taking life and death situations seriously and doing the next right thing towards controlling the situation is required, from everybody. cf Anna, “The Next Right Thing” Frozen 2 https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo Panic = people dying needlessly

willis936 7y ago

15,000 people are dead. Forget being fine for a moment. This is a substantial loss of life compared to recent wars. That number is guaranteed to, at the absolute minimum, double, but has a more probable lower bound at 100,000. This will be a death toll that hasn’t been seen in a lifetime. Yeah, maybe the economy won’t collapse. Maybe it will. Regardless, it’s unkind to downplay the severity of the situation.

jameslevy 7y ago
This shouldn't be compared to a war, in terms of death count. We never want to take death lightly, but a large percentage of the deaths happening now are in people that are already very sick or old and likely to be severely affected by a number of health ailments and infections.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
briefcomment 7y ago
But how many "Covid" deaths would have been attributed to something else if we hypothetically had never become aware of it? Hopefully we are able to answer this someday, with more reliable data, and a thorough analysis of the events that are occurring at the moment. I could see the answer ranging from "all of them" to "much less than the majority currently think". I just hope we can answer it with confidence, so we are better prepared in the future.
mahesh_rm 7y ago
What you are reporting is disingenuous and uninformed. CDC estimations of flu deaths in 2019 suggest that the number you provide match a regular flu season. Note that this source provides US only stats: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Do CDC do the same as UK, who apparently report all additional Winter deaths as "flu" (which rather helpfully for the government shifts focus away from poor elderly care during "austerity", still being cut further AFAICT). Only the ONS (Office for National Statistics) also report the actual verified data on flu and instead of numbers O(10k) it's O(100). For 2017, the most recent year, it's ~450 deaths total for the UK [1], vs an anticipated infection rate of 20% of the adult population and 50% of the rest. That's 450/15M, 0.003%. Reported death rates are O(1%) for Covid19. Could you explain that discrepancy? The BMJ (British Medical Journal) has some discussion of the controversy of over-reporting of flu deaths here [2]. Re those CDC figures, do you really have ~200,000 people hospitalised with flu each month in USA? --- [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathregistrationssummarytablesenglandandwalesreferencetables https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6 https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6

richk449 7y ago

Since this is hacker news, where is the Girardian analysis? This situation seems to call for it with the fear of outsiders and scapegoating. Hard to worry about mimetic contagion when there is a real contagion?

lph 7y ago

We're going to be fine... whew, that's a relief... > Levitt said the social-distancing mandates are critical ...as long as we practice fastidious social distancing, which, at least in the U.S., big parts of the country are utterly failing at... > The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but perhaps with body temperature surveillance...and immediate social isolation. ...and if we have widely deployed testing, which the U.S. government has failed at spectacularly. So: We're going to be fine if we take this seriously and have a coordinated, competent government response. I'll be in my doomsday bunker if anyone needs me.

ykevinator 7y ago
Not sure social distancing is materially effective
- thephyber 7y ago
  My intuition tells me otherwise. Do you have evidence that I don’t?
- meowface 7y ago
  If a sufficient percentage of people consistently do it for an extended period of time, why would it not be effective?

fny 7y ago

You can already see this playing out on this site which tracks the rate of new cases along with the total cases: https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en I think the bigger issue that we'll need to address after we handle the case influx is how we'll go about achieving herd immunity. I'm starting to think it might be wise to consider letting small, not-at-risk populations out with the intention of allowing the virus to spread in a fashion that wouldn't overwhelm the health systems. A controlled burn, if you will. I'd definitely join in to something like this.

ardit33 7y ago
that's called a vaccine... and it is 12-18 months away... you can start now by volunteering to join the vaccine trials....

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

2 points: 1. The fact that the author is a Nobel laureate adds no weight to his conclusions. The Nobel laureate who invented PCR was otherwise what I would describe as "crazy" - he was a notorious HIV denialist for years. Not saying this Nobel laureate is, but Nobels go for novel discoveries, not for being the best scientist. 2. Look at the amount of extreme lockdowns that have been deployed in China for months to get this reduction in transmission (assuming they aren't lying). There was a Twitter thread posted here recently describing the current situation in Wuhan, and their "lightened" levels of current restrictions are way more intense then any of the shelter-in-place restrictions in the US.

ykevinator 7y ago
Right, see Linus Pauling
- senderista 7y ago
  Or Brian Josephson

nardi 7y ago

Uh, why the hell would we listen to a chemist’s opinion about a pandemic? There is literally a whole field of science that studies this, and it’s not remotely similar to chemistry.

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/doeNm https://archive.md/doeNm