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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 ‘t

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
      Sources?
      - throwaway210 7y ago
        Has HN been taken over by Chinese bots? It is absolutely incredulous that every comment mentioning something remotely negative about China gets downvoted/whitelisted/removed.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - taiwanboy 7y ago
    https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014 https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014 China sees drop in new coronavirus cases; all new cases imported, March 22 https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_claim_there_are_no_new_local_cases/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_c... Translated: On March 20th, A local community management issued a notice, stating that one of the unit has 2 patient found, the unit will be sealed and no one is allowed to enter or exit. It essentaily means that they are starving to death in the room. Don’t trust the Chinese government’s propaganda
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Have you considered it takes a while for cases to filter up or down? Incompetence is usually a better candidate than malice. It could be they'll report it a few days from now, or that these cases were found and reported a few days prior to the 20th and were folded into earlier reportings. For instance, if the cases were identified and reported on the 18th, and the notice was posted on the 20th, that would remain consistent. Stop with the unfounded speculation and fearmongering.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      So, I'm not to trust a government - which is fair; I don't - but a totally unsourced and unverifiable Reddit post is 100% okay? When its claim is that the CCP is competent enough to enforce the murder by starvation of two innocent people, while the existence of the post that makes the claim implies that the CCP is too incompetent to prevent word of such a crime getting out, even to the point of issuing an official document to prove they're doing it? Do you see what I mean about seeming like a conspiracy theory? Heinlein's Red-baiting about Soviet cosmonauts unpersoned when their early space capsules failed and stranded them, despite being nonsense, had at least the virtue of originality. But that was over half a century ago. I'd like to hope our standards have risen in the interim.
      - taiwanboy 7y ago
        You are being a bit naive about journalism in an authoritarian country that has control over digital media coming out of the country. The fact that this picture made it out (suggesting that image recognition/AI censor rules are still naive in China) is proof enough that there are voices desperately trying to tell the outside world - don’t trust their government!!
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Actually the burden of proof is on you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You claim China's official figures are true. However, China lied about human transmissibility of the virus until Jan 20. They lied about where the virus came from including lying that it was an American invention. They also did not count pneumonia deaths caused by the virus: https://www.wsj.com/articles/relatives-wonder-whether-pneumonia-deaths-were-tied-to-coronavirus-11579915630 https://www.wsj.com/articles/relatives-wonder-whether-pneumo... They have also kicked out american media so there are no independent fact checkers on the ground. Their official death rate is also lower than every other country's. Thus, the null hypothesis is that china is lying, like they always do. A claim that they are not lying would need to be supported by evidence. Otherwise this is just the fallacy of an appeal to authority.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      We have tons of non-China sources, and their death rate is low because of their overwhelmingly aggressive response and tactics, which were lauded by the WHO.
      - throwaway210 7y ago
        Are you a Chinese Spy?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Here you go. From Caixin, an independent chinese newspaper, https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-03-04/lights-are-on-but-no-ones-working-how-local-governments-are-faking-coronavirus-recovery-101524058.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-03-04/lights-are-on-but-no... Again, doesn't take a genius.
- arcticbull 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. You have no data to back up your totally spurious allegations. Are you just outright speculating? If you're going to say something so bold, citations are necessary. What we do know is this: - Apple has re-opened their factories and all 42 Apple stores in all of China [1], and closed their Apple stores in the entire rest of the world [2]. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Apple would do this except in the face of evidence. What kind of PR nightmare do you think they'd be inviting if it was discovered they put lives at risk to placate the PRC? - Tourist attractions and factories are re-opening. [3] - The WHO said: "China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real." [4] - I've no doubt this will be confirmed via observation of atmospheric release of nitrous oxides in short order. Fine, if you don't want to believe China, Apple or the WHO (and soon NASA), you better have some data, otherwise it's just breathless unsubstantiated fear-mongering and conspiracy theories. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-china-reopened-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-chi... [2] https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/apple-extends-coronavirus-triggered-store-closures-indefinitely/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/apple-extends-coronavirus-trig... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2020/03/21/no-new-coronavirus-local-cases-china-is-reopening-its-tourist-attractions/#5df740e12488 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2020/03/21/no-new-... [4] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    I’ve heard that rather than eliminate all new cases, the best we can hope to achieve would be to slow down the spread so our health system isn’t overwhelmed all at once (most of us would get the virus, just not all at once). Somehow China is claiming to achieve the complete elimination goal rather than the more pragmatic slow the spread goal. Which begs the question, what are we getting wrong in the rest of the world?
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  While I don’t believe the line that their new cases are at zero, I have a lot of contact with the Asian and Chinese supply chain and I can assure you that things are mostly back to normal with Chinese factories. So the situation in China is much improved at the very least.
  - throwaway210 7y ago
    This is anecdotal evidence and notice...Articbull is nowhere to be found. This user only casts down posts that question the true story of how China is handling Chinese Virus. Notice how this user claims that all users that disagree are conspiracy theorists, fearmongers, and I am sure that the next ad-hominem attack will be racist.
ykevinator 7y ago
Not sure of the "because" and not sure that China is a trustworthy self reporter of status.
apatters 7y ago
If preventative measures aren't employed correctly, then eventually, most people are going to watch someone they know die. I reckon that experience will cause them to employ preventative measures immediately.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  That will be way too late.
- nopinsight 7y ago
  Let's imagine how this will play out for a minute.... Assuming 1 person knows 100 people, it would take 1 million deaths to seriously warn 100 million. And since it takes 3-4 weeks from infection to death, during which the warning still wouldn't be personally grave, and infections continue to spread. Thus, the population will be infected until herd immunity is sufficiently high (~60% of population if R0 is ~2.5). [1] If hospitalization rate is 15% & Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is 1%, then 9%/0.6% of the population will be severely ill/die within 1-2 years, respectively, just from this one disease. One can do further arithmetic for a given country. The 'solution' above is clearly unacceptable to the vast majority of people. [1] Herd immunity threshold Vc= 1 - 1/R0, where R0 is basic reproduction number of a disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics
cma 7y ago
>few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. There's an expected lag, we saw that in the Wuhan lockdown. Beyond a certain density of infection though, maybe it just won't be effective enough. Wuhan lockdown was Jan 23rd and cases continued to rise for some time after because there is an incubation period, and additional family (and maybe within apartment building?) infection. Italy lockdown is just where they were Wuhan was on Feb 2nd or so, it didn't look like it was slowing down enough for them at that point, but then did.
- nopinsight 7y ago
  The lagging effect is true. What we see is a snapshot to the past. However, most accounts suggest that the European 'lockdown', esp early days in Italy, is too lax. The trajectory will bend down. Whether it's sufficient we'll see in a couple of weeks, but that might be too late.
mhandley 7y ago
At the moment it's looking like France is doing better than Germany. Many Eastern European countries acted early too, and it looks to be working. Lots of graphs here: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/
- nopinsight 7y ago
  The number of deaths and those in critical/severe conditions are better measures than the number of infections. The latter greatly depends on testing policy and availability. Germany is doing better than most in Europe by the former measures. South Korea also had a higher infection growth rate since they tested extensively. Because of that they can identify cases and contain the spread.
  - mhandley 7y ago
    Agreed, but in the end what will make most difference is getting off of exponential growth soonest. If you don't do that, no country can care for the surge of patients. South Korea is the only country to shut down exponential growth once it got properly started without a complete shutdown of the country.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
01100011 7y ago
If what I've seen in the grocery stores of the bay area is representative of overall behavior in the US, we're screwed. People still have very little awareness of personal space and very few people were wearing masks. Unless people commit to actual social distancing, there's no way we're going to stop the spread.

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
    Sources?
    - throwaway210 7y ago
      Has HN been taken over by Chinese bots? It is absolutely incredulous that every comment mentioning something remotely negative about China gets downvoted/whitelisted/removed.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- taiwanboy 7y ago
  https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014 https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21A014 China sees drop in new coronavirus cases; all new cases imported, March 22 https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_claim_there_are_no_new_local_cases/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/fmz3d6/while_china_c... Translated: On March 20th, A local community management issued a notice, stating that one of the unit has 2 patient found, the unit will be sealed and no one is allowed to enter or exit. It essentaily means that they are starving to death in the room. Don’t trust the Chinese government’s propaganda
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Have you considered it takes a while for cases to filter up or down? Incompetence is usually a better candidate than malice. It could be they'll report it a few days from now, or that these cases were found and reported a few days prior to the 20th and were folded into earlier reportings. For instance, if the cases were identified and reported on the 18th, and the notice was posted on the 20th, that would remain consistent. Stop with the unfounded speculation and fearmongering.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    So, I'm not to trust a government - which is fair; I don't - but a totally unsourced and unverifiable Reddit post is 100% okay? When its claim is that the CCP is competent enough to enforce the murder by starvation of two innocent people, while the existence of the post that makes the claim implies that the CCP is too incompetent to prevent word of such a crime getting out, even to the point of issuing an official document to prove they're doing it? Do you see what I mean about seeming like a conspiracy theory? Heinlein's Red-baiting about Soviet cosmonauts unpersoned when their early space capsules failed and stranded them, despite being nonsense, had at least the virtue of originality. But that was over half a century ago. I'd like to hope our standards have risen in the interim.
    - taiwanboy 7y ago
      You are being a bit naive about journalism in an authoritarian country that has control over digital media coming out of the country. The fact that this picture made it out (suggesting that image recognition/AI censor rules are still naive in China) is proof enough that there are voices desperately trying to tell the outside world - don’t trust their government!!
- tathougies 7y ago
  Actually the burden of proof is on you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You claim China's official figures are true. However, China lied about human transmissibility of the virus until Jan 20. They lied about where the virus came from including lying that it was an American invention. They also did not count pneumonia deaths caused by the virus: https://www.wsj.com/articles/relatives-wonder-whether-pneumonia-deaths-were-tied-to-coronavirus-11579915630 https://www.wsj.com/articles/relatives-wonder-whether-pneumo... They have also kicked out american media so there are no independent fact checkers on the ground. Their official death rate is also lower than every other country's. Thus, the null hypothesis is that china is lying, like they always do. A claim that they are not lying would need to be supported by evidence. Otherwise this is just the fallacy of an appeal to authority.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    We have tons of non-China sources, and their death rate is low because of their overwhelmingly aggressive response and tactics, which were lauded by the WHO.
    - throwaway210 7y ago
      Are you a Chinese Spy?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tathougies 7y ago
  Here you go. From Caixin, an independent chinese newspaper, https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-03-04/lights-are-on-but-no-ones-working-how-local-governments-are-faking-coronavirus-recovery-101524058.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-03-04/lights-are-on-but-no... Again, doesn't take a genius.
arcticbull 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. You have no data to back up your totally spurious allegations. Are you just outright speculating? If you're going to say something so bold, citations are necessary. What we do know is this: - Apple has re-opened their factories and all 42 Apple stores in all of China [1], and closed their Apple stores in the entire rest of the world [2]. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Apple would do this except in the face of evidence. What kind of PR nightmare do you think they'd be inviting if it was discovered they put lives at risk to placate the PRC? - Tourist attractions and factories are re-opening. [3] - The WHO said: "China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real." [4] - I've no doubt this will be confirmed via observation of atmospheric release of nitrous oxides in short order. Fine, if you don't want to believe China, Apple or the WHO (and soon NASA), you better have some data, otherwise it's just breathless unsubstantiated fear-mongering and conspiracy theories. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-china-reopened-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-chi... [2] https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/apple-extends-coronavirus-triggered-store-closures-indefinitely/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/apple-extends-coronavirus-trig... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2020/03/21/no-new-coronavirus-local-cases-china-is-reopening-its-tourist-attractions/#5df740e12488 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2020/03/21/no-new-... [4] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I’ve heard that rather than eliminate all new cases, the best we can hope to achieve would be to slow down the spread so our health system isn’t overwhelmed all at once (most of us would get the virus, just not all at once). Somehow China is claiming to achieve the complete elimination goal rather than the more pragmatic slow the spread goal. Which begs the question, what are we getting wrong in the rest of the world?
toasterlovin 7y ago
While I don’t believe the line that their new cases are at zero, I have a lot of contact with the Asian and Chinese supply chain and I can assure you that things are mostly back to normal with Chinese factories. So the situation in China is much improved at the very least.
- throwaway210 7y ago
  This is anecdotal evidence and notice...Articbull is nowhere to be found. This user only casts down posts that question the true story of how China is handling Chinese Virus. Notice how this user claims that all users that disagree are conspiracy theorists, fearmongers, and I am sure that the next ad-hominem attack will be racist.

ykevinator 7y ago

Not sure of the "because" and not sure that China is a trustworthy self reporter of status.

apatters 7y ago

If preventative measures aren't employed correctly, then eventually, most people are going to watch someone they know die. I reckon that experience will cause them to employ preventative measures immediately.

jnwatson 7y ago
That will be way too late.
nopinsight 7y ago
Let's imagine how this will play out for a minute.... Assuming 1 person knows 100 people, it would take 1 million deaths to seriously warn 100 million. And since it takes 3-4 weeks from infection to death, during which the warning still wouldn't be personally grave, and infections continue to spread. Thus, the population will be infected until herd immunity is sufficiently high (~60% of population if R0 is ~2.5). [1] If hospitalization rate is 15% & Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is 1%, then 9%/0.6% of the population will be severely ill/die within 1-2 years, respectively, just from this one disease. One can do further arithmetic for a given country. The 'solution' above is clearly unacceptable to the vast majority of people. [1] Herd immunity threshold Vc= 1 - 1/R0, where R0 is basic reproduction number of a disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics

cma 7y ago

>few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. There's an expected lag, we saw that in the Wuhan lockdown. Beyond a certain density of infection though, maybe it just won't be effective enough. Wuhan lockdown was Jan 23rd and cases continued to rise for some time after because there is an incubation period, and additional family (and maybe within apartment building?) infection. Italy lockdown is just where they were Wuhan was on Feb 2nd or so, it didn't look like it was slowing down enough for them at that point, but then did.

nopinsight 7y ago
The lagging effect is true. What we see is a snapshot to the past. However, most accounts suggest that the European 'lockdown', esp early days in Italy, is too lax. The trajectory will bend down. Whether it's sufficient we'll see in a couple of weeks, but that might be too late.

mhandley 7y ago

At the moment it's looking like France is doing better than Germany. Many Eastern European countries acted early too, and it looks to be working. Lots of graphs here: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/

nopinsight 7y ago
The number of deaths and those in critical/severe conditions are better measures than the number of infections. The latter greatly depends on testing policy and availability. Germany is doing better than most in Europe by the former measures. South Korea also had a higher infection growth rate since they tested extensively. Because of that they can identify cases and contain the spread.
- mhandley 7y ago
  Agreed, but in the end what will make most difference is getting off of exponential growth soonest. If you don't do that, no country can care for the surge of patients. South Korea is the only country to shut down exponential growth once it got properly started without a complete shutdown of the country.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

01100011 7y ago

If what I've seen in the grocery stores of the bay area is representative of overall behavior in the US, we're screwed. People still have very little awareness of personal space and very few people were wearing masks. Unless people commit to actual social distancing, there's no way we're going to stop the spread.