8 ms·

Common sense needs to prevail over mania, numbers over hyperbole and science over conjecture. But even then, this is hard if our data is collected poorly and th

Common sense needs to prevail over mania, numbers over hyperbole and science over conjecture. But even then, this is hard if our data is collected poorly and then poorly disseminated. So what is the answer then? Maybe a strengthening of resolve against all forms of panic? Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic?

brlewis 7y ago
>Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic? Surely there's a historical figure who at some point fled in panic. Having survived, they then changed the world. If you're having an asthma attack, running outside in a panic might get you away from the airborne allergen.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  All the training I learned in boy scouts, heard from survivalist, people who have survived outrageous circumstances by their own choosing and actions did not attribute their success to panic, but the opposite, keeping a clear head. It's likely we can find stories of people panicing and surviving, sure. But can a paniced person (one overwhelmed with intoxicating fear) help others? No. A drowning person will also drown their own lifeguard to attempt to save themselves. This is a well established fact that all trained lifeguards know. Panic causes irrational and often self destructive choices. And often hurt others.
  - brlewis 7y ago
    I absolutely agree that panic has only narrow uses.
root_axis 7y ago
> Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic? What does that mean? "Panic" is not a strategy, it's an instinctive response to fear.
rglullis 7y ago
This line of thinking is backwards. Usually the problems that we don't solve are the ones where we should have taken stronger measures (i.e, "panicked") earlier instead of waiting for evidence of a threat. We did listen to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over Y2K bug and a lot of money was spent on it before January 1st, 2000, so that got solved swiftly. On the other hand: - Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over the excess of the dot-com era, we wouldn't have pets.com and WebVan. - Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") about the mortgage crisis, we wouldn't have gone through the 2008 recession. - Had we listened to the ones warning about the need of controlling flights to China in January (i.e, "panicking"), half of Europe wouldn't be in lockdown.
- toyg 7y ago
  Italy was one of the first countries to ban flights from China. Fat lot of good it did. But I agree that there should have been a stronger reaction, in terms of testing / tracing / isolating.
  - rglullis 7y ago
    It did after it was already infected, by then they should've reduced the mobility of the people, close the football games, etc - which they didn't and led to people from Valencia going to Milan for the match, getting infected and spreading the thing faster still in Spain. No "panic" enough.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  Every circumstance you mentioned was not "solved" with panic, but was solved with thoughtful and persitant action. If you are proposing the only way to "thoughtful and persistent action" is by being induced by panic. Then I would appreciate your evidence of this. For example the 2038 problem is more serious that Y2k. My actions today (as soon as I found out about it) was to alter all current and future systems and plan to alter all current systems in place in the near future. No panic needed to take this action. Do you believe the only way to motivate people is to panic them? Do you not see a long term down side to this approach?
fraggle222 7y ago
What we need is more data. What is the % of Covid-19 cases that require hospitalization (and are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to?) ? Is it 20x that of flu or 2x? We need random testing throughout the population to know true mortality rate and herd immunity.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- acqq 7y ago
  We have the data we need. We know how fast it grows, we know how bad it is. It's at least order of magnitude (as in, surely ten times) worse than flu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F_ENG.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F... As shown, in Italy there were 55 times more deaths per week (two weeks already) than the peek during the flu season. And it continues to grow. > are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to? Surely no. In Italy, it is known that even the people who should go to hospitals can't be all admitted because the number of cases grows exponentially and fast, when uncontrolled. No limited resources could handle that. People already die because the hospitals are too full. Additionally, all people who are checked but than estimated to be able to survive without the hospital are advised to stay at home. But some of those still get sicker and die at home. That happens, infrequently for now, even in other European countries. The reason people are admitted to hospitals is that they have so big problems breathing that they either immediately or at least soon have to be connected to the breathing machines. Which nobody would ever do to a healthy enough person, it's to save the life. That's what are ICU on the graph above "intensive care units" -- the number of beds in typically small parts of hospitals where typically small number of people has to be connected to the machines to help them survive. Now the demand for those is huge. And even 30-year old doctors get to have to be treated so: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11226440/three-junior-doctors-aged-30-struck-down-by-coronavirus-in-the-same-hospital/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11226440/three-junior-doctors-...
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    Consider this, if the news reported "Old people with pre-existing conditions should quarantine themselves because a deadly virus may kill them", that would be rational advice based on data. Instead, the entire economy has been shut down, and the solution? Test everyone regardless of risk or value of testing. This is not rational, and many scientists and doctors are saying this. Doctors and nurses should be tested regularly as they are more susceptible to contraction do to proximity, and the elderly or those in contact with areas of high infection or high risk of fatality. Poorly reported sensationalism in the news needs a proper counter balance. And society needs something to overcome their power to induce irrational panic so easily.
empath75 7y ago
What is panic and why do you think this is a panic? If anything, the lack of concern by policy makers and the public has turned this into a catastrophe. If they had “panicked” three months ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Unfortunately, if we had panicked 3 months ago and prevented all of this, we'd never know it. People would just look and say, "see it was no big deal, we panicked for nothing".
  - odkamkfn 7y ago
    Reacting without panicking is possible.
partiallypro 7y ago
The craziest stat I heard today was on my local news, and it was about COVID19 in the county, Davidson County (Nashville, TN,) they said of all the active cases in the county only 2 had been hospitalized. That's out of 163. The others were sent home to be quarantined and medicated. I was floored. Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information. Hospitalization rates should be one of the main stats being shared, imo.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  It doesn't seem like hospitalization rates are being as consistently tracked. Or if they are, not disseminated. My state's official page tracks changes daily, but doesn't include hospitalizations.
  - acqq 7y ago
    There are countries that do report: "17 March: the total number of cases was 1705, of which 314 patients had been admitted to the hospital" That was week ago, now it's 1230 people in the hospital, or 4 times more. So I expect 5000 at the end of the next week in the Netherlands. The growth of the infection by the novel virus is exponential, until strong enough measures start to work, and the Netherlands wasn't (due to the politicians) ready to seriously enforce them. So it's around 20%, once one has more than a few cases. And that's far from being a small percentage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...
- tmh79 7y ago
  hospitalization rates are being shared. IIRC, they are generally around 20% of confirmed cases, but the testing rate is low here so hard to know the true numbers
  - odkamkfn 7y ago
    The testing rate is low almost everywhere. The mass testing done in the Italian town Vò suggests that 50-75% of infections are asymptomatic (but still contagious). This matches the findings from the cruise ship "Diamond Princess". Also note that the populations of both the cruise ship and Vò skew quite a bit older than the world average, and younger people are more likely to be asymptomatic (AFAIK we still don't know how more likely)
dsamarin 7y ago
Some historians attribute the French Revolution at least partly to a mass hysteria of the idea that aristocrats were planning on starving the populace during a grain shortage. And feudalism was abolished as a result.
- Dahoon 7y ago
  We can only hope it will happen again.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  Other countries managed to abolish feudalism without quite so many mass executions or consequent authoritarian strongmen plunging their continents into devastating series of wars.
  - toyg 7y ago
    ... often just because rulers were so scared by the French experience, that they caved at the first demand for better forms of government. In a similar way, a lot of worker rights gained in the XX century were introduced only because elites were utterly scared by the Soviet experience. Sometimes it helps to have a reference, so to speak.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Speaking of which, before the revolution in which Soviets came to power, we had serfdom in russia - basically our version of a feudal system
      - int_19h 7y ago
        Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861.
        rsynnott 7y ago
        Eh... _kind of_. It was abolished in such a way that in practice it kept more or less functioning for a very long time afterwards.
monadic2 7y ago
What do you mean by “common sense”?
jbay808 7y ago
Does 'panic' mean 'reacting to a problem with a severity of response that is proportionate to how big of a problem it will be in the future, rather than how big of a problem it is now'? Probably many problems have been solved by this.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  The definition of panic is: "A sudden, overpowering feeling of fear, often affecting many people at once. synonym: fear." The reason we don't panic about the number 1 killer of Americans is because we are rational about it. We've researched and considered the cause and results carefully. The solution to something that causes fear is not more fear is it?
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Bah, proper statistics on Chinese data showed this was going to be really bad in January. Nobody lifted a finger then other than quarantine, which already was known to be insufficient based on initial Chinese epidemiology. (When the curve was way past SARS-CoV-1 outbreak.) Correct data-driven measures have been taken somewhat too late.
watwut 7y ago
Epidemiologists were producing numbers, papers, estimates from the december and continue to produce them. But somehow these don't count?

brlewis 7y ago

>Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic? Surely there's a historical figure who at some point fled in panic. Having survived, they then changed the world. If you're having an asthma attack, running outside in a panic might get you away from the airborne allergen.

RobertRoberts 7y ago
All the training I learned in boy scouts, heard from survivalist, people who have survived outrageous circumstances by their own choosing and actions did not attribute their success to panic, but the opposite, keeping a clear head. It's likely we can find stories of people panicing and surviving, sure. But can a paniced person (one overwhelmed with intoxicating fear) help others? No. A drowning person will also drown their own lifeguard to attempt to save themselves. This is a well established fact that all trained lifeguards know. Panic causes irrational and often self destructive choices. And often hurt others.
- brlewis 7y ago
  I absolutely agree that panic has only narrow uses.

root_axis 7y ago

> Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic? What does that mean? "Panic" is not a strategy, it's an instinctive response to fear.

rglullis 7y ago

This line of thinking is backwards. Usually the problems that we don't solve are the ones where we should have taken stronger measures (i.e, "panicked") earlier instead of waiting for evidence of a threat. We did listen to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over Y2K bug and a lot of money was spent on it before January 1st, 2000, so that got solved swiftly. On the other hand: - Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over the excess of the dot-com era, we wouldn't have pets.com and WebVan. - Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") about the mortgage crisis, we wouldn't have gone through the 2008 recession. - Had we listened to the ones warning about the need of controlling flights to China in January (i.e, "panicking"), half of Europe wouldn't be in lockdown.

toyg 7y ago
Italy was one of the first countries to ban flights from China. Fat lot of good it did. But I agree that there should have been a stronger reaction, in terms of testing / tracing / isolating.
- rglullis 7y ago
  It did after it was already infected, by then they should've reduced the mobility of the people, close the football games, etc - which they didn't and led to people from Valencia going to Milan for the match, getting infected and spreading the thing faster still in Spain. No "panic" enough.
RobertRoberts 7y ago
Every circumstance you mentioned was not "solved" with panic, but was solved with thoughtful and persitant action. If you are proposing the only way to "thoughtful and persistent action" is by being induced by panic. Then I would appreciate your evidence of this. For example the 2038 problem is more serious that Y2k. My actions today (as soon as I found out about it) was to alter all current and future systems and plan to alter all current systems in place in the near future. No panic needed to take this action. Do you believe the only way to motivate people is to panic them? Do you not see a long term down side to this approach?

fraggle222 7y ago

What we need is more data. What is the % of Covid-19 cases that require hospitalization (and are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to?) ? Is it 20x that of flu or 2x? We need random testing throughout the population to know true mortality rate and herd immunity.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
acqq 7y ago
We have the data we need. We know how fast it grows, we know how bad it is. It's at least order of magnitude (as in, surely ten times) worse than flu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F_ENG.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F... As shown, in Italy there were 55 times more deaths per week (two weeks already) than the peek during the flu season. And it continues to grow. > are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to? Surely no. In Italy, it is known that even the people who should go to hospitals can't be all admitted because the number of cases grows exponentially and fast, when uncontrolled. No limited resources could handle that. People already die because the hospitals are too full. Additionally, all people who are checked but than estimated to be able to survive without the hospital are advised to stay at home. But some of those still get sicker and die at home. That happens, infrequently for now, even in other European countries. The reason people are admitted to hospitals is that they have so big problems breathing that they either immediately or at least soon have to be connected to the breathing machines. Which nobody would ever do to a healthy enough person, it's to save the life. That's what are ICU on the graph above "intensive care units" -- the number of beds in typically small parts of hospitals where typically small number of people has to be connected to the machines to help them survive. Now the demand for those is huge. And even 30-year old doctors get to have to be treated so: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11226440/three-junior-doctors-aged-30-struck-down-by-coronavirus-in-the-same-hospital/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11226440/three-junior-doctors-...
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  Consider this, if the news reported "Old people with pre-existing conditions should quarantine themselves because a deadly virus may kill them", that would be rational advice based on data. Instead, the entire economy has been shut down, and the solution? Test everyone regardless of risk or value of testing. This is not rational, and many scientists and doctors are saying this. Doctors and nurses should be tested regularly as they are more susceptible to contraction do to proximity, and the elderly or those in contact with areas of high infection or high risk of fatality. Poorly reported sensationalism in the news needs a proper counter balance. And society needs something to overcome their power to induce irrational panic so easily.

empath75 7y ago

What is panic and why do you think this is a panic? If anything, the lack of concern by policy makers and the public has turned this into a catastrophe. If they had “panicked” three months ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.

ineedasername 7y ago
Unfortunately, if we had panicked 3 months ago and prevented all of this, we'd never know it. People would just look and say, "see it was no big deal, we panicked for nothing".
- odkamkfn 7y ago
  Reacting without panicking is possible.

partiallypro 7y ago

The craziest stat I heard today was on my local news, and it was about COVID19 in the county, Davidson County (Nashville, TN,) they said of all the active cases in the county only 2 had been hospitalized. That's out of 163. The others were sent home to be quarantined and medicated. I was floored. Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information. Hospitalization rates should be one of the main stats being shared, imo.

ineedasername 7y ago
It doesn't seem like hospitalization rates are being as consistently tracked. Or if they are, not disseminated. My state's official page tracks changes daily, but doesn't include hospitalizations.
- acqq 7y ago
  There are countries that do report: "17 March: the total number of cases was 1705, of which 314 patients had been admitted to the hospital" That was week ago, now it's 1230 people in the hospital, or 4 times more. So I expect 5000 at the end of the next week in the Netherlands. The growth of the infection by the novel virus is exponential, until strong enough measures start to work, and the Netherlands wasn't (due to the politicians) ready to seriously enforce them. So it's around 20%, once one has more than a few cases. And that's far from being a small percentage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_t...
tmh79 7y ago
hospitalization rates are being shared. IIRC, they are generally around 20% of confirmed cases, but the testing rate is low here so hard to know the true numbers
- odkamkfn 7y ago
  The testing rate is low almost everywhere. The mass testing done in the Italian town Vò suggests that 50-75% of infections are asymptomatic (but still contagious). This matches the findings from the cruise ship "Diamond Princess". Also note that the populations of both the cruise ship and Vò skew quite a bit older than the world average, and younger people are more likely to be asymptomatic (AFAIK we still don't know how more likely)

dsamarin 7y ago

Some historians attribute the French Revolution at least partly to a mass hysteria of the idea that aristocrats were planning on starving the populace during a grain shortage. And feudalism was abolished as a result.

Dahoon 7y ago
We can only hope it will happen again.
jdminhbg 7y ago
Other countries managed to abolish feudalism without quite so many mass executions or consequent authoritarian strongmen plunging their continents into devastating series of wars.
- toyg 7y ago
  ... often just because rulers were so scared by the French experience, that they caved at the first demand for better forms of government. In a similar way, a lot of worker rights gained in the XX century were introduced only because elites were utterly scared by the Soviet experience. Sometimes it helps to have a reference, so to speak.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Speaking of which, before the revolution in which Soviets came to power, we had serfdom in russia - basically our version of a feudal system
    - int_19h 7y ago
      Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861.
      - rsynnott 7y ago
        Eh... _kind of_. It was abolished in such a way that in practice it kept more or less functioning for a very long time afterwards.

monadic2 7y ago

What do you mean by “common sense”?

jbay808 7y ago

Does 'panic' mean 'reacting to a problem with a severity of response that is proportionate to how big of a problem it will be in the future, rather than how big of a problem it is now'? Probably many problems have been solved by this.

RobertRoberts 7y ago
The definition of panic is: "A sudden, overpowering feeling of fear, often affecting many people at once. synonym: fear." The reason we don't panic about the number 1 killer of Americans is because we are rational about it. We've researched and considered the cause and results carefully. The solution to something that causes fear is not more fear is it?
AstralStorm 7y ago
Bah, proper statistics on Chinese data showed this was going to be really bad in January. Nobody lifted a finger then other than quarantine, which already was known to be insufficient based on initial Chinese epidemiology. (When the curve was way past SARS-CoV-1 outbreak.) Correct data-driven measures have been taken somewhat too late.

watwut 7y ago

Epidemiologists were producing numbers, papers, estimates from the december and continue to produce them. But somehow these don't count?