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Ask HN: What Will You Do to Save Civilization?
If the incompetent, selfish, and very disordered response from politicians to the virus continues, we will see modern civilization dissolve around us. This is the greatest threat I have seen in my lifetime to all of us.
Read this article recommended by Bill Gates, who over the last twenty years turned himself from one of the world’s best programmers and best businessman, into one of the world’s lead foremost authority on disease. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/?linkId=85439737.
If we can use our prowess to get out the message that the globe must unite or tens of millions of people could die, we have the potential to save many lives. Governments need to get billions of tests made and distributed, million of ventilators built worldwide, tens of billions of masks built, comprehensive tracing and tracking of those who have been infected, and most importantly a massive logistics effort to bring help to whichever areas are seeing the worst outbreaks. People worldwide need to work to understand the virus and what they personally can do to fight it.
This is the most important time of our lives, and we need to bring our very best efforts.
If you have good ideas to get the message out, please share here… And don’t stop there, tell everyone you know.
- markus_zhang 7y agoI'll do what I can: stay home most of the time and wear masks when shopping. And try to convince others to do the same. I doubt this is the worst we see in our life.
- vl 7y agoI was born in Soviet Union, I grew as it was collapsing, when I left Russia, it already was through two devastating crises. US had no serious calamity since Civil War. All wars since then were not on the main territory, 9/11 is actually relatively minor. As such nation is not prepared to deal with any serious problem. On top of that economy and business are hyper-optimized, and thus extremely fragile. For many other countries this pandemic is not a huge deal, not because it’s not terrible, but because they recently have seen worse. They will take their losses and move on. US eventually will do the same, but will learn the lesson the hard way.
- krapp 7y agoThe rest of the world seems to be handling this crisis more or less competently. It seems to be only the US with its aggressively dysfunctional government that can't even manage the basics. Modern civilization will be fine, but Americans are going to have to learn the hard way that their actions have consequences.
- adventured 7y ago> The rest of the world seems to be handling this crisis more or less competently. It seems to be only the US with its aggressively dysfunctional government that can't even manage the basics. The US is doing better than several prominent nations in Europe, including France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands. Given how poorly the US has done, that's really saying something. The UK wasn't even testing people regularly until the last week (that's over two months late), which is why their case numbers finally began soaring. That's held up as an example of the US failing, while it's ignored when it's done by the UK. It's also why the British PM got infected (another example of competence?). The US mortality rate vs cases is under 2%. Mortality rates vs cases: Italy: 11.4%, Spain: 8.6%, The Netherlands 7.3%, France: 6.7%, UK: 6.2%, Belgium: 5.5% The US needs to increase its per capita mortality rate 21 times to match Italy and Spain. Five times to match France. 2.5 times to match the UK. Seven times to match Belgium. Six times to match the Netherlands. I entirely disagree with your notion of competence. Italy and Spain have 20,000 deaths and still climbing rapidly. The US requires 64,000 deaths and ~800,000 cases to match Spain's present figures; approximately 65,000 deaths to match Italy's present figures. Germany's 67,000 positive cases is competence? That's obviously not true. Their mortality rate is showing competence so far, however. The US per capita mortality rate is only slightly behind Germany's outcome so far. For the US to match Switzerland's cases per capita, it needs 650,000 positive cases, and the final tally isn't in yet. That's an example of extreme incompetence. If the US gets to 650,000 cases, nobody is going to say that is a great success, it will be considered an immense failure. And it's an immense failure for Switzerland as well. To match Belgium's rate, the US needs about 400,000 cases. Nobody will define that as success or competence if the US hits that many cases. And it's not competence for Belgium either, to say nothing of their extreme mortality rate. The US will require ~23,000 deaths from Covid to match the per capita rate in Belgium. I assure you that will not be declared as competence if it happens. The EU has shown tragic incompetence widely. It's ripping the EU apart, as they've entirely abanoned Italy and Spain, leaving them alone to fend for themselves. The first thing Germany and other EU nations did is lock down their own medical supplies and refuse to help their fellow EU members that were in the most need. Then the borders began to shut down, further isolating their friends in such desperate need. So far China has helped Italy with more supplies than the other EU members have. That's a demonstration of competence? Obviously it's the opposite, the EU has failed across the board. They're making the US look really organized by comparison. Some figures for comparison, per 100,000 people. Notice the US just above Germany at the bottom. The US still has to climb a long ways to reach the level of ... competence displayed by the supposedly elite healthcare systems in Western Europe. And if it does, it will then be declared to be on par with Europe's finest healthcare systems? Italy: deaths 19.6, cases 156 Spain: deaths 17.4, cases 200 Belgium: deaths 6.2, cases 112 Netherlands: deaths 5, cases 69 France: deaths 4.5, cases 67 Switzerland: deaths 4.34, cases 185 Luxembourg: deaths 3.7, cases 331 UK: deaths 2.1, cases 34 Denmark: deaths 1.6, cases 53 Austria: deaths 1.5, cases 112 Sweden: deaths 1.4, cases 40 Portugal: deaths 1.4, cases 63 Ireland: deaths 1.1, cases 60 US: deaths 0.9, cases 47 Iceland: deaths 0.6, cases 302 Germany: deaths 0.79, cases 81 Norway: deaths 0.65, cases 83 Finland: deaths 0.23, cases 26 * Note: Sweden, Finland and Norway have almost no recovery cases, which is why their mortality rates are still low. Several other European nations have extremely low recovery cases, so their mortality rates will jump even higher yet (eg the Netherlands). Germany by contrast has a lot of recovered cases already, so its mortality rate would be expected to remain quite low.
- matt_s 7y agoIf you don't have the ability/skills to work on epidemics and are not a health care worker of some kind, stay home. A church in Florida held a service and 10's of people are infected now, which knowing the exponential spread will be 100's in a few days and 1000's a few days after that. The message is out there, people are not hearing it and/or choosing to endanger the lives of others by going out. A simple (but may appear drastic) solution in the US would be closer to complete lockdown for 6-8 weeks where the National Guard assists local law enforcement to make sure people stay home. Politicians have failed us in preparing for and battling this pandemic. The biggest thing people can do in the US is vote this November to get them out.
- mrfusion 7y agoI think that’s the end of our democracy if the national guard locks down the entire country. I’m surprised you’d advocate that so casually.
- matt_s 7y agoI didn't state I was advocating for it, just that it is a solution. Others in the media have said if we could freeze everyone in place for 14 days this virus would not have as much impact, if any. People are blatantly ignoring instructions to stay home because "it doesn't impact me" and some counties are enforcing things via $5000 fines for public gatherings.
- silexia 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22780457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22780457 here is my follow up on this.
- throw_away_45 7y agoListen to the professionals. Stay Home. And tell your loved ones to stay home too! If your financial situation allows you to, be generous. Donate to organizations that are supporting the ones who need it the most. Shameless plug : 1. https://www.citymeals.org https://www.citymeals.org - Delivers meals to elderly in NYC 2. https://getusppe.org https://getusppe.org - PPE for ones on the frontline 3. http://khanacademy.org http://khanacademy.org - Democratizing education for all
- silexia 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22780457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22780457 here is my follow up on this.
- bjourne 7y agoI'm not that worried about Covid-19. Pandemics come and go but human civilization has not collapsed. I'm much more worried about climate change which has the potential to cause orders of magnitudes more damage to human civilization and mass extinction. Can human civilization survive a pandemic? Yes. Can human civilization survive a 3C increase in global temperatures? Maybe.
- kleer001 7y ago> If you have good ideas to get the message out, please share here… And don’t stop there, tell everyone you know. I disagree. I say keep the noise to a minimum and let the professionals have the metaphorical floor. That said it's important to be well informed AND help to quash misinformation. And misinformation at these volumes we as a species have never had to deal with before. So flag misinformation, report the posts and users to mods, send people friendly messages, unfriend/unfollow dangerous a-holes, call the cops on people being idiots in public, be a good citizen, etc...
- dev_north_east 7y ago> What Will You Do to Save Civilization? Keep providing for my family and raising my kids to be decent people.
- shahbaby 7y agoI'd rather just grab some popcorn and watch it burn.