4 ms·

> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend Every cold and flu grow exponentially. Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponenti

> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend Every cold and flu grow exponentially. Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponential. Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators, and the futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown.

nullc 7y ago
Like soylent green the economy is made of people. If people are doing well, the economy will likely catch up-- weak businesses will fail, new ones will be created. It may hurt, may hurt for a while-- but from a purely economic perspective this might turn out to be a useful reboot. There are going to be a lot of phenomenal opportunities in the coming year. But the economy cannot do well if the people are not. For a thought experiment, imagine for a moment that we didn't need to keep delivering food and power and whatnot. It would be possible to simply pause the entire economy-- just like contracts that don't consider weekends business days-- in this fictional world we could freeze all accounts and all debts and whatnot for a year and then do "2020" over again. We can't do this because we need to keep a lot of people working to keep food and medical care flowing-- but I think the crazy idea is a useful illumination that the economy is a shared delusion. Whats going on now is only as devastating as we allow it to be, but the deaths of millions would be devastating (economically and otherwise) regardless of what we otherwise want.
- sorisos 7y ago
  I wish and hope just pausing the economy is as easy as you say. I'm worried though, as the last decades the Economy appears to be this unpredictable daemon that affects everything and everyone but no one knows how to please it.
matwood 7y ago
> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. For many layperson, this is their first experience when it really matters. My mom isn't sitting around thinking about exponential spread when she gets a cold. > I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators I agree. Something like 80% of the people who end up on a ventilator die. Of course those other 20% are happy one was available, but by the time ventilators are being discussed it's really too late. Prevention is key. > futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown Depends. The economy was going to be hit hard regardless. Even if nothing was ever forced closed, the number of people sick and the number of overwhelmed hospitals would have killed the economy. For example, even before there were any official lockdowns in the US, companies I work with were already stopping all travel (late February timeframe).
- saalweachter 7y ago
  We also do take notice when more mundane exponential threats crop up -- for instance, the R0 of measles is something like 12-18 (compared to a "measly" 2-2.5 for the novel coronavirus, or 1.28 for the typical seasonal flu), and when it got out of control in a few cities in the US last year, it was a Big Deal even though most people are vaccinated for it.
mannykannot 7y ago
> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. The issue of exponential growth is of relevance in response to those saying that the number of deaths (insert the inplicit 'so far' here) is much less than from infuenza (annually.) It is not a 'fixation' to expose the irrelevance of that line of thinking. More generally, the issue is a combination of the facts that this virus is significantly more dangerous, for all age groups, than at least post- Spanish Flu infuenza; it is very readily transmitted; and there is no (or much less) herd immunity. When you combine these fact with the math of exponential growth, and have establshed the doubling rate, you can do some scientific prediction that goes beyond "so far it has not been as bad as the flu", which is true just so long as it is, and no longer. To do that, however, you have to hold more than one idea at a time in your head.
- thu2111 7y ago
  The idea that viruses always grow exponentially until they reach total saturation of the population comes from mathematical models that have never successfully modelled any real epidemic, ever. It doesn't come from experience of real diseases in nature, many of which were predicted by epidemiologists to grow to enormous proportions and yet - even in the absence of control measures - that isn't what happens. It seems there are a ton of people right now who are enjoying thinking of themselves as intellectually and even morally superior to people who are just pointing out facts about the statistics gathered so far (which point to flu-like levels of danger and properties). I think the HN community is especially prone to this because it's full of computer programmers who are used to thinking in powers of two; some seem tempted to ascribe near-magical wisdom to this familiarity. But nature isn't a computer and just saying "exponential growth" over and over will eventually make fools of a lot of people, because it isn't there. If this virus was really spreading exponentially, you'd expect to see the proportion of positive tests going up exponentially as well. But that isn't what is seen. In places that report the total number of tests administered (some places don't), the proportion of positive tests increases sub-exponentially or even hardly at all, coming to rest at about 15%, which is roughly the background level of coronavirus infections in the population during normal times. It's especially disappointing to see PG fall into the trap of blaming politicians. Politicians have in the blink of an eye ceded power to a tiny cabal of (primarily) epidemiologists. So far they by and large aren't asking questions, instead simply doing whatever they're told even if it makes little sense. But we really need people to start asking those scientists difficult questions. Citizens can do it but ultimately it only matters when politicians do it. Epidemiologists have a track record of absolute failure. They failed with Zika, they failed with foot and mouth disease, they're failing with CV. Go look at the models they produce and weep; some are invalidated the day they're published! This guy is doing a good job of pointing out the many errors of modellers: https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson There's also some background here: https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-useful-a4ec54e59569 https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-useful-a4ec54e59569
watwut 7y ago
> Every cold and flu grow exponentially. When it is growing exponentially, they close a few schools here and there or stop visits in hospitals. That is enough to stop spread, get the R below 1 and making it not exponential. It is simply not true that every cold and flu grows exponentially.
belltaco 7y ago
>Every cold and flu grow exponentially. No, that's true only if it's brand new. Immunity for a certain strain lasts several years, which means there's a level of herd immunity that constraints infection from even reaching some of the non-immune folks, hence it's hard for it to be exponential. This is not the case with the 'novel' coronavirus. There is no large scale immunity among the population.

nullc 7y ago

Like soylent green the economy is made of people. If people are doing well, the economy will likely catch up-- weak businesses will fail, new ones will be created. It may hurt, may hurt for a while-- but from a purely economic perspective this might turn out to be a useful reboot. There are going to be a lot of phenomenal opportunities in the coming year. But the economy cannot do well if the people are not. For a thought experiment, imagine for a moment that we didn't need to keep delivering food and power and whatnot. It would be possible to simply pause the entire economy-- just like contracts that don't consider weekends business days-- in this fictional world we could freeze all accounts and all debts and whatnot for a year and then do "2020" over again. We can't do this because we need to keep a lot of people working to keep food and medical care flowing-- but I think the crazy idea is a useful illumination that the economy is a shared delusion. Whats going on now is only as devastating as we allow it to be, but the deaths of millions would be devastating (economically and otherwise) regardless of what we otherwise want.

sorisos 7y ago
I wish and hope just pausing the economy is as easy as you say. I'm worried though, as the last decades the Economy appears to be this unpredictable daemon that affects everything and everyone but no one knows how to please it.

matwood 7y ago

> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. For many layperson, this is their first experience when it really matters. My mom isn't sitting around thinking about exponential spread when she gets a cold. > I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators I agree. Something like 80% of the people who end up on a ventilator die. Of course those other 20% are happy one was available, but by the time ventilators are being discussed it's really too late. Prevention is key. > futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown Depends. The economy was going to be hit hard regardless. Even if nothing was ever forced closed, the number of people sick and the number of overwhelmed hospitals would have killed the economy. For example, even before there were any official lockdowns in the US, companies I work with were already stopping all travel (late February timeframe).

saalweachter 7y ago
We also do take notice when more mundane exponential threats crop up -- for instance, the R0 of measles is something like 12-18 (compared to a "measly" 2-2.5 for the novel coronavirus, or 1.28 for the typical seasonal flu), and when it got out of control in a few cities in the US last year, it was a Big Deal even though most people are vaccinated for it.

mannykannot 7y ago

> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. The issue of exponential growth is of relevance in response to those saying that the number of deaths (insert the inplicit 'so far' here) is much less than from infuenza (annually.) It is not a 'fixation' to expose the irrelevance of that line of thinking. More generally, the issue is a combination of the facts that this virus is significantly more dangerous, for all age groups, than at least post- Spanish Flu infuenza; it is very readily transmitted; and there is no (or much less) herd immunity. When you combine these fact with the math of exponential growth, and have establshed the doubling rate, you can do some scientific prediction that goes beyond "so far it has not been as bad as the flu", which is true just so long as it is, and no longer. To do that, however, you have to hold more than one idea at a time in your head.

thu2111 7y ago
The idea that viruses always grow exponentially until they reach total saturation of the population comes from mathematical models that have never successfully modelled any real epidemic, ever. It doesn't come from experience of real diseases in nature, many of which were predicted by epidemiologists to grow to enormous proportions and yet - even in the absence of control measures - that isn't what happens. It seems there are a ton of people right now who are enjoying thinking of themselves as intellectually and even morally superior to people who are just pointing out facts about the statistics gathered so far (which point to flu-like levels of danger and properties). I think the HN community is especially prone to this because it's full of computer programmers who are used to thinking in powers of two; some seem tempted to ascribe near-magical wisdom to this familiarity. But nature isn't a computer and just saying "exponential growth" over and over will eventually make fools of a lot of people, because it isn't there. If this virus was really spreading exponentially, you'd expect to see the proportion of positive tests going up exponentially as well. But that isn't what is seen. In places that report the total number of tests administered (some places don't), the proportion of positive tests increases sub-exponentially or even hardly at all, coming to rest at about 15%, which is roughly the background level of coronavirus infections in the population during normal times. It's especially disappointing to see PG fall into the trap of blaming politicians. Politicians have in the blink of an eye ceded power to a tiny cabal of (primarily) epidemiologists. So far they by and large aren't asking questions, instead simply doing whatever they're told even if it makes little sense. But we really need people to start asking those scientists difficult questions. Citizens can do it but ultimately it only matters when politicians do it. Epidemiologists have a track record of absolute failure. They failed with Zika, they failed with foot and mouth disease, they're failing with CV. Go look at the models they produce and weep; some are invalidated the day they're published! This guy is doing a good job of pointing out the many errors of modellers: https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson There's also some background here: https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-useful-a4ec54e59569 https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-useful-a4ec54e59569

watwut 7y ago

> Every cold and flu grow exponentially. When it is growing exponentially, they close a few schools here and there or stop visits in hospitals. That is enough to stop spread, get the R below 1 and making it not exponential. It is simply not true that every cold and flu grows exponentially.

belltaco 7y ago

>Every cold and flu grow exponentially. No, that's true only if it's brand new. Immunity for a certain strain lasts several years, which means there's a level of herd immunity that constraints infection from even reaching some of the non-immune folks, hence it's hard for it to be exponential. This is not the case with the 'novel' coronavirus. There is no large scale immunity among the population.