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But if every government had acted much earlier, when the probability seemed to exceed 10%, there wouldn't have necessarily been any total shutdowns like what we

But if every government had acted much earlier, when the probability seemed to exceed 10%, there wouldn't have necessarily been any total shutdowns like what we're seeing now (except for the initial containment in China). There would still be some economic harm, but it'd be far, far less.

mehrdadn 7y ago
What would've been there instead of a shutdown and how could that have avoided a shutdown? (Specifically thinking of the US here.)
- undersuit 7y ago
  The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    > The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavi...
    - makomk 7y ago
      Yeah, there is probably nothing that the US could have done unilaterally which would have contained this. Italy was still reporting something like three total cases in mid-February. There was no more reason to quarantine or monitor travellers from there than there was anyone else in the country.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        You mean 3 total confirmed cases? Note that even South Korea was apparently monitoring everyone and suddenly 1 person slipped through and infected like a thousand people (read this recently, don't have the link handy).
        Izkata 7y ago
        Patient 31: https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTER...
        matthewdgreen 7y ago
        But the ending to that story is very different. South Korea did have an outbreak, but they contained it. That’s the counterfactual to “nobody could have prevented this.”
        makomk 7y ago
        Note that Patient 31 is only the index case that caused the thousand-person cluster to be discovered, she's almost certainly not the cause of it despite various media reports that try and make it look that way. She had no recent overseas travel and no contact with known cases, I don't think anyone knows how she got it, and apparently she didn't even meet testing criteria and only got tested because some doctor ignored them on a hunch. She probably wasn't even the first person in the Shincheonji Church in Daegu to be infected. The timeline of her infection is just too late compared to the cases at the hospital in Cheongdo potentially tied to other church members, most of the membership is much younger than her and therefore likely to display mild or no symptoms, and some of them had in fact travelled to China. If anything, it seems likely that she caught it from there rather than the other way around.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Cool that would have given the US another 4 weeks to ignore the problem before it got exactly as bad it is now. You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      >You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction. Isn't that exactly what we're doing with social distancing?
grahamburger 7y ago
If we took those measures every time there was a 10% chance of a pandemic would we be better off overall? Honest question I don't know the answer. It's easy to say we should have acted sooner, but should we have also done more for ebola, zika, SARS, MERS etc in the US as well, even though those didn't end up having much of an impact here?
- angry_octet 7y ago
  We had this expectation that nothing was really important enough to interrupt international travel. Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations, and applying extreme pressure on countries to not restrict their entry. Basically the system has too much delay to respond, even to a strong signal. Even significant local deaths in the US is not strong enough to change politics and media. If Ebola had broken out we would have had the same problem. I think we are stuck in a local maximum. It takes a significant push for the system to escape oscillating back to where we are.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Ebola has an African name so I bet it would have panicked westerners into a stronger response if covid was called ebola.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations What? I remember Hubei was shut down with airports, and the rest of the world had to scramble evac flights to retrieve their citizens from the area.
    - angry_octet 7y ago
      They announced the lockdown before it was put into effect, leading to a bomb burst of potential carriers escaping in the next 24H. Even after that, international commercial flights were allowed to depart.

mehrdadn 7y ago

What would've been there instead of a shutdown and how could that have avoided a shutdown? (Specifically thinking of the US here.)

undersuit 7y ago
The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavi...
  - makomk 7y ago
    Yeah, there is probably nothing that the US could have done unilaterally which would have contained this. Italy was still reporting something like three total cases in mid-February. There was no more reason to quarantine or monitor travellers from there than there was anyone else in the country.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      You mean 3 total confirmed cases? Note that even South Korea was apparently monitoring everyone and suddenly 1 person slipped through and infected like a thousand people (read this recently, don't have the link handy).
      - Izkata 7y ago
        Patient 31: https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTER...
        matthewdgreen 7y ago
        But the ending to that story is very different. South Korea did have an outbreak, but they contained it. That’s the counterfactual to “nobody could have prevented this.”
        makomk 7y ago
        Note that Patient 31 is only the index case that caused the thousand-person cluster to be discovered, she's almost certainly not the cause of it despite various media reports that try and make it look that way. She had no recent overseas travel and no contact with known cases, I don't think anyone knows how she got it, and apparently she didn't even meet testing criteria and only got tested because some doctor ignored them on a hunch. She probably wasn't even the first person in the Shincheonji Church in Daegu to be infected. The timeline of her infection is just too late compared to the cases at the hospital in Cheongdo potentially tied to other church members, most of the membership is much younger than her and therefore likely to display mild or no symptoms, and some of them had in fact travelled to China. If anything, it seems likely that she caught it from there rather than the other way around.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Cool that would have given the US another 4 weeks to ignore the problem before it got exactly as bad it is now. You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    >You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction. Isn't that exactly what we're doing with social distancing?

grahamburger 7y ago

If we took those measures every time there was a 10% chance of a pandemic would we be better off overall? Honest question I don't know the answer. It's easy to say we should have acted sooner, but should we have also done more for ebola, zika, SARS, MERS etc in the US as well, even though those didn't end up having much of an impact here?

angry_octet 7y ago
We had this expectation that nothing was really important enough to interrupt international travel. Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations, and applying extreme pressure on countries to not restrict their entry. Basically the system has too much delay to respond, even to a strong signal. Even significant local deaths in the US is not strong enough to change politics and media. If Ebola had broken out we would have had the same problem. I think we are stuck in a local maximum. It takes a significant push for the system to escape oscillating back to where we are.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Ebola has an African name so I bet it would have panicked westerners into a stronger response if covid was called ebola.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations What? I remember Hubei was shut down with airports, and the rest of the world had to scramble evac flights to retrieve their citizens from the area.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    They announced the lockdown before it was put into effect, leading to a bomb burst of potential carriers escaping in the next 24H. Even after that, international commercial flights were allowed to depart.