5 ms·

In the discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22934704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22934704 patio11 was pilloried for claiming that, We pro

by btilly 7y ago

In the discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22934704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22934704 patio11 was pilloried for claiming that, We project a true count of over 500,000 infections, including more than 5,000 severe cases, and a breakdown in provision of care (“overshoot”) in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo, before the end of April. And yet, according to medical staff, Tokyo is close to a collapse of the medical system. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/ says that there are currently over 12,000 reported cases in Japan and this doubled in the last 10 days. So it is likely to be in the 20-25k range by the end of the month. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/new-york-virus-deaths-top-15k-cuomo-expected-to-detail-plan-to-fight-nursing-home-outbreaks/2386556/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/new-york-virus-deaths-... says that New York reported COVID-19 seems likely to underreport actual cases by a factor of 10. Which puts Japan at the 200,000-250,000. But as widespread reports say, Japan's testing has been extremely anemic. That can easily put us back in the ballpark discussed. You know, that projection is looking reasonably close for having been made over a month ago.

aikinai 7y ago
The article isn’t talking about the volume of patients but the stigma on medical professionals. “Collapse” was probably a poor word choice since these days that almost exclusively means going over capacity due to a surge in Covid-19 patients.
- jiofih 7y ago
  > They warned that a “collapse of the medical care system” come happen soon if the situation continues. It is about the stigma causing the medical professionals to quit, which will lead to lower, and hence exceeded, capacity. It helps when you read it.
  - hcurtiss 7y ago
    Overwhelming the hospital system by virtue of a decrease in capacity seems to me to be a different thing than by virtue of an increase in cases.
    - mensetmanusman 7y ago
      All that matters is the delta, physical and social sicknesses are reducing the number of health care workers everywhere.
danielharan 7y ago
The NY study is preliminary, not peer reviewed. The sampling strategy used over-represents people going out, and we have no information on which test was used or its accuracy. Given antibody testing done in places like Vô, the NY results seem a bit of a stretch. Hopefully Japan gets it together and starts testing properly, though.
- rbritton 7y ago
  The NY study does align fairly well with similar studies done in Santa Clara County and Los Angeles County in California, though. All three indicate a significantly lower IFR than previously expected.
  - koeng 7y ago
    That would only be true if their tests work well. In my experience, IgG and IgM suck big time, and I wouldn’t trust results. Would love to see one of those randomized studies with qRT-PCR tests.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      The problem with RT-PCR is that it only pick up viral RNA from a currently active infection, while IgG and IgM (antibody) tests will tell you if the person tested had been infected in the past. Also, depending on how effective the detected antibodies are in fighting off the infection, we might get insight in to how much immunity people have and how long it lasts. RT-PCR will not tell you any of that.
      - koeng 7y ago
        You’re making a massive assumption there - that the IgG and IgM tests tell you if the person has been infected in the past. To which my experience says: no, it doesn’t. Both false positive and negative rates are very high in comparison to people previously negative / positive with RT-PCR tests.
  - btilly 7y ago
adventured 7y ago
> Japan's testing has been extremely anemic Anemic is definitely a nice way to put it. Japan is testing at a per capita rate below that of Iraq, Ukraine, Vietnam, Mongolia, Moldova and South Africa. Their testing rate is so extraordinarily low, the US is testing more people per day than Japan has tested in total across the past four months.
- blago 7y ago
  I'm not sure how Vietnam ended up on your list but I'm pretty sure they have been testing pretty extensively, and more importantly, much earlier than most other countries.
  - swebs 7y ago
    Here's the data for all countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
  - rovolo 7y ago
    Vietnam also has fewer confirmed cases per-capita (3/mil vs 100/mil) despite testing more people per-capita than Japan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-tests-cases-scatter-with-comparisons https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-tests-cases-scat... Japan's low per-capita tests could be justified by saying they don't have many per-capita cases, but their test-to-positive ratio is similar to places which have been hit hard like Italy and Portugal. It should be easier for them to have a higher ratio given that they have so few cases compared to Italy
ipsum2 7y ago
.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Have you read that blog post? He published a hash as a point of reference (which is a great thing in itself, because "nobody could see it coming" bullshit comments are plenty), but on top of that, he started and led a working group and spoke out behind the scenes to relevant parties, in order to save lives. You'd have him die on his sword and achieve nothing just for the sake of appearances.
  - ipsum2 7y ago
    .
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Public sentiment alone isn't sufficient to push a country into closing down. The work done by Patrick may or may not have contributed to the authorities deciding to go ahead with the lockdown.
- hbosch 7y ago
  Exactly what kind of clout do you think he has? What kind of audience? He's a local celeb here on HN, and more broadly a somewhat prominent figure in tech circles, but he's not Bill Gates. Certainly he isn't the kind of guy to get a slot on CNN and further, if he did, he wouldn't be taken seriously. While I get your point (why hide a prediction that could have saved lives?), I think you're overly idealistic about what impact this same prediction would have had if released publicly at the time.
  - ipsum2 7y ago
    .
- tvanantwerp 7y ago
  As someone who works in policy, his response was about as good as I could hope for from someone not involved in policy normally. Talking privately to credible people, working with experts, and getting the message to media channels, are all what you're supposed to do. Him shouting on Twitter wouldn't have accomplished anything. (I'm still a bit mystified by the purpose of the whole hash dropping thing. I don't really know what it achieves, aside from the potential to say "I knew it!" at some point in the future.)
pcurve 7y ago
considering how late they're to the game, how massive and dense Tokyo metro is, even 200,000 looks like charitable estimate to me. Tokyo metro has 38 million people.

by btilly 7y ago

aikinai 7y ago

The article isn’t talking about the volume of patients but the stigma on medical professionals. “Collapse” was probably a poor word choice since these days that almost exclusively means going over capacity due to a surge in Covid-19 patients.

jiofih 7y ago
> They warned that a “collapse of the medical care system” come happen soon if the situation continues. It is about the stigma causing the medical professionals to quit, which will lead to lower, and hence exceeded, capacity. It helps when you read it.
- hcurtiss 7y ago
  Overwhelming the hospital system by virtue of a decrease in capacity seems to me to be a different thing than by virtue of an increase in cases.
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    All that matters is the delta, physical and social sicknesses are reducing the number of health care workers everywhere.

danielharan 7y ago

The NY study is preliminary, not peer reviewed. The sampling strategy used over-represents people going out, and we have no information on which test was used or its accuracy. Given antibody testing done in places like Vô, the NY results seem a bit of a stretch. Hopefully Japan gets it together and starts testing properly, though.

rbritton 7y ago
The NY study does align fairly well with similar studies done in Santa Clara County and Los Angeles County in California, though. All three indicate a significantly lower IFR than previously expected.
- koeng 7y ago
  That would only be true if their tests work well. In my experience, IgG and IgM suck big time, and I wouldn’t trust results. Would love to see one of those randomized studies with qRT-PCR tests.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    The problem with RT-PCR is that it only pick up viral RNA from a currently active infection, while IgG and IgM (antibody) tests will tell you if the person tested had been infected in the past. Also, depending on how effective the detected antibodies are in fighting off the infection, we might get insight in to how much immunity people have and how long it lasts. RT-PCR will not tell you any of that.
    - koeng 7y ago
      You’re making a massive assumption there - that the IgG and IgM tests tell you if the person has been infected in the past. To which my experience says: no, it doesn’t. Both false positive and negative rates are very high in comparison to people previously negative / positive with RT-PCR tests.
- btilly 7y ago

adventured 7y ago

> Japan's testing has been extremely anemic Anemic is definitely a nice way to put it. Japan is testing at a per capita rate below that of Iraq, Ukraine, Vietnam, Mongolia, Moldova and South Africa. Their testing rate is so extraordinarily low, the US is testing more people per day than Japan has tested in total across the past four months.

blago 7y ago
I'm not sure how Vietnam ended up on your list but I'm pretty sure they have been testing pretty extensively, and more importantly, much earlier than most other countries.
- swebs 7y ago
  Here's the data for all countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
- rovolo 7y ago
  Vietnam also has fewer confirmed cases per-capita (3/mil vs 100/mil) despite testing more people per-capita than Japan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-tests-cases-scatter-with-comparisons https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-tests-cases-scat... Japan's low per-capita tests could be justified by saying they don't have many per-capita cases, but their test-to-positive ratio is similar to places which have been hit hard like Italy and Portugal. It should be easier for them to have a higher ratio given that they have so few cases compared to Italy

ipsum2 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Have you read that blog post? He published a hash as a point of reference (which is a great thing in itself, because "nobody could see it coming" bullshit comments are plenty), but on top of that, he started and led a working group and spoke out behind the scenes to relevant parties, in order to save lives. You'd have him die on his sword and achieve nothing just for the sake of appearances.
- ipsum2 7y ago
  .
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Public sentiment alone isn't sufficient to push a country into closing down. The work done by Patrick may or may not have contributed to the authorities deciding to go ahead with the lockdown.
hbosch 7y ago
Exactly what kind of clout do you think he has? What kind of audience? He's a local celeb here on HN, and more broadly a somewhat prominent figure in tech circles, but he's not Bill Gates. Certainly he isn't the kind of guy to get a slot on CNN and further, if he did, he wouldn't be taken seriously. While I get your point (why hide a prediction that could have saved lives?), I think you're overly idealistic about what impact this same prediction would have had if released publicly at the time.
- ipsum2 7y ago
  .
tvanantwerp 7y ago
As someone who works in policy, his response was about as good as I could hope for from someone not involved in policy normally. Talking privately to credible people, working with experts, and getting the message to media channels, are all what you're supposed to do. Him shouting on Twitter wouldn't have accomplished anything. (I'm still a bit mystified by the purpose of the whole hash dropping thing. I don't really know what it achieves, aside from the potential to say "I knew it!" at some point in the future.)

pcurve 7y ago

considering how late they're to the game, how massive and dense Tokyo metro is, even 200,000 looks like charitable estimate to me. Tokyo metro has 38 million people.