Back in time ( end of January ) when I heard the news about Wuhan and what happened there I was a bit worried, but always positive. When the virus spread in Italy ( I live in Berlin ) I was daily asking "Why don't they stop people from / to Italy?", "Why don't they go and help Italy?", "Where is a plan for handling the situation?", "Why nobody knows >how< to handle the situation, don't they see how China managed?"
All in all the answers were : "They don't want to kill the economy, that's why no restrictions.", "We are democracy, that's why no restrictions."
Look at the situation now. Killed economy, unstoppable virus and nobody knows for how long. They can't contain it anymore. What we do is flattening the curve, not eliminating the thread.
Come on. These politicians, IMO should be investigated for committing crime agains humanity. I can't believe that in 2020 there is no such thing as emergency procedure / plan in case of ... well ... emergency. I tend to think that all government decision makers make a "daily" for what should happen today and then wait for tomorrow, with no further planning.
Yeah it's a fundamental failure of government. One key function of government is to hedge against and plan for unlikely but serious scenarios just like these, especially when there is no money to be made by doing what's in the public interest. Helping to deal with crises like this is a big part of why epidemiological research gets public funding. Despite this deep underlying infrastructure, the weakest link is usually whoever is in power at the moment doing things like disbanding pandemic response groups and censoring experts.
How is it a crime against humanity to not stop individuals from hurting each other? Doesn't responsibility lie with the person infecting others after being warned?
Proactively shutting things down and restricting freedoms are politically impossible to implement. There's no incentive for any single politician to do anything like this because if it actually worked there'd be no visibility to the general public and thus nobody would understand what they actually did.
It's like the proverbial secret goverment agency that stops a bomb from going off and nobody knows what they did.
In politics this mean that the general public would only see the downsides of such measures and not the gains. This would not get a single politician re-elected.
Therefore in terms of politics it's much better and safer to be reactive only rather than proactive. Later speech can include statements "we could not have possibly known", "there was no indication that...", "it was a complete surprise...", "we acted as quickly as possbile..."
Not true, because there will be enough "test groups" due to this thinking already (and I believe now even the last one realized that this will now go everyhwere).
China locked down around ~400 known infections, in terms of spread we will soon learn what it means to have only done similar but much less strict lockdown at 1000, 4000, 8000 infections, actually it is all a number game, and the numbers were sharp enough and visible for everyone during February already.. we will pay a lot four our stupidity and "politically impossible", we said this since start of the year about Chinas measures, but what was politically impossible will now take longer and almost reach same strictness levels here..
There is one harsh reality I see in all this: World screwed itself by being over reliant on China. At least Canada did. Big time. Big percentage of things here in Canada is 'Made in China' - yup, you name it -- Masks, gloves, and items such as syringes, etc. heck even plastic cutlery and tooth brushes are made in China.
Now that Chinese economy got shutdown and people in Canada went into panic mode, we have severely decimated supply of essential items such as hand sanitizers, masks, gloves, etc even for the health workers!
I know this pandemic nor future pandemic/wars would change anything because humans are just collateral (and sometimes even treated as adversary) for the mega corporations, but my wish is each Country (or atleast Geographical region) learn to become self sufficient when it comes to making items such as Clothing, medical and sanitary supplies, etc. This may mean that in places like the West where Corporations have to hire local workers at higher cost to produce the same clothing items being produced by $1/hr workers in Bangladesh, but so be it -- in times of emergency, you need local production of items to save you.
No need to put so much reliance on countries like China (manufacturing, assembly, electronics, clothing, plastics), Germany (Manufacturing, machinery), South Korea (Electronics, appliances), India (textile, assembly), Mexico (assembly) and Bangladesh (textile).
Asian countries that managed this crisis correctly took steps to prepare, which mostly means having quick access to testing, and stockpiling materials.
Any Western government had in its power the ability to invoke urgent measure to redirect production for face masks and equipment. That equipment could have been bought beforehand if the governments had listened to the advice of its own experts.
I'm an Italian living in the UK, so I've been following both the stats and the debate in Italy (and elsewhere) very closely. My conclusion is that whoever thinks that this problem can be not stopped, but contained to a manageable level without very strict steps is in for a bad surprise. And, given the exponential nature of initial growth, the earlier these steps are adopted, the less harsh they need to be.
If that's any reassurance to you they are observing an inflection in Italy, potentially a sign that the lockdowns have their desired effects. We just need to hold on for a couple weeks before it curves back as in China. And that's discounting the ongoing trials for treatments that could solve this quicker than expected.
That's my point - it took pretty harsh measures before we started getting any signs of the spread slowing down (and we'll need a few more days to verify that those signs are actually reliable).
Now obviously there are scaling issues going from 3300 people to millions but I'm not sure it's impossible. S Korea also mostly controlled things by testing.
Training the postal service to be able to take nasal swabs could scale this though you would need to robocall all those on the postal route what time to present themselves at the edge of their property. Starting with geographic locations where there have been clusters, then individual cases, then the general population. Also when an antibody test is available have them delivered by the postal service with instructions and URL for a video on how to administer it.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that China has stopped community spread within the country - I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’re getting PRC propaganda when we hear about “all new cases we’re imported”.
While you are reasonable to be sceptical over the official reports, I have no insight into the true number, I am sure there is still some lingering virus floating around in China. That said, you are grossly underestimating the cultural response to this: here is some flavour of how people acted different in China.
Chinese New Year (equivalent to Christmas / New Year if you are a westerner) was effectively cancelled by the government, and I know that my in-laws at least adhered to this and all their neighbours did as well.
The government were happy to physically dig up roads to contain Wuhan, and people outside Hubei would snitch on people fleeing Hubei so they would be sent back.
My mother in-law has been in isolation since the end of January, solely venturing out to buy supplies. She wears a mask when she leaves, and she immediately showers + disinfects her clothes when she gets home.
This may surprise you, but she is not really in the minority. People in Asia are fairly risk-averse when it comes to contagion, coupled with the history of SARS, the community-level response to COVID-19 has been starkly different.
Separately, a friend living in Shanghai said (during February) that the only people out on streets were expats/foreigners.
Why is CCP letting foreigners in to China, and letting them move freely? They've locked down interior movement but opened the border? That just smells like deception.
I think it was more a case that the timings of this were before the pandemic had spread widely outside of China and the lockdown outside of Hubei was much softer than inside.
But the locals were more individually prepared to comply with guidelines
WHO seems to believe. We would have a prior expectation that a strong lockdown would reduce transmission to below 1 per case. China has a strong lockdown. And it would be extremely hard for them to hide it plus massive downside risk and limited upside. So why don't you believe them.
"The reason for the WHO’s failure to properly act to contain the outbreak, and its repeated issuing of inaccurate and bad advice, is not merely the result of incompetence. Rather, the malfeasance is the direct result of the CCP deliberately buying out WHO’s leadership, with tragic consequences."
Yeah I'm not really buying what these articles are selling. The world had plenty of time to act and opted not to. This all seems more like an attempt to avoid blame than a credible analysis of the situation. It's a far better story for the western politicians that the evil Chinese didn't give enough warning than to acknowledge that plenty of warning was given and none was heeded until the developing crisis was already realized in western countries.
It's hard to prepare when the WHO [0] was still telling that the virus probably doesn't spread between humans as little as 2 months ago. Of course the western governments should've reacted earlier, but the margin wasn't that big. The WHO were the observers on the ground and they chose to play down the whole thing to ease china.
2 months ago China had already announced human to human transmission.
WHO isn't a an omniscient god. They don't have any information that regional authorities don't give them. If Chinese government lies, that's the Chinese government's crime.
People got sick at a fish market in December. It was reported up to government as a potentially novel illness by Dec 31.
A mere 2 weeks later on Jan 14 there was no clear evidence of transmission yet, because viruses take time to transmit and incubate and sicken and get reported to authorities.
On Jan 20 Chinese authorities announced human transmission.
The WHO continually and explicitly encouraged countries to leave borders open at a time when all cases (outside of Hubei) were imported from abroad. Since almost all cases at the time were Chinese, I don’t see any reason for this advice other than appeasing the PRC.
Even today the vast majority of new cases in my country (Canada) are directly related to international travel. It seems obvious that all of this could have been avoided with earlier border closures.
I blame the WHO for mishandling this pandemic because they were the only international agency that could have coordinated multilateral border closures in a diplomatic way but chose not to in order to make China happy.
1)The credibility of the WHO in regards to the CCP.
2)The culpability of CCP in regards to covering up the pandemic which began in territory it controls. Allegedly this outbreak began in November. Doctors who warned about it were arrested.
Your response references a third issue
3)Western officials had sufficient time to formulate a 'better' response
To the extent the CCP covered this up in Nov/Dec, it was definitely an evil act. However, I don't think that should very much move the needle on what we believe about the state on the ground in China today. The country is not so closed off that they could hide ongoing mass COVID infections. The WHO's agreement is only one of the several datapoints I mentioned.
Not in the least. That said, having lived and worked in China, any official at the local level would be prudent find a way to attribute all local cases to being imported and not local transmission. This whole debacle will end up being the CCP's Chernobyl moment; systemic failure due to CYA mentality because the consequences from the state apparatus are perceived as the worst possible personal outcome.
They might have contained it better as they went pretty intense on lockdown. There were lots of videos on internet from their lockdown on which people were laughing at China being an authoritarian state. The videos displayed homes being taped from outside if someone in that home was suspected of having it, people being picked from streets etc. Being an authoritarian state really helps in these scenarios as you can suppress liberties easily without people rising up in arms about it.
Having said this though, being an authoritarian state with constant efforts to have a good image, they might have underreported the numbers of actual cases.
That's fair, but aren't all the comments talking about PRC propaganda propaganda itself?
> I hope I’m wrong
Do you really? It seems to me that many who share your sentiments actually want things to get worse both in china and around the world. That's just the feeling I get reading the comments.
Also, it would be interesting if there was a study done on the "PRC propaganda" crowd and the "CCP propaganda" crowd - from a linguistic and propaganda standpoint.
To add to other comments here; I follow some supply chain news, and my impression is that China has been recovering for a month now. I sincerely doubt that they'd let a thoroughly infected population back to work, and that it wouldn't leak out. So this is a weak support that their success story is true.
Your scepticism would be more intelligent if there weren't also South Korea and Taiwan. Basically all countries that made any real effort at suppression seem to be doing comparably well ATM, no? And I think both of them may rank higher in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index than Italy, so probably brutal censorship is not the only reason they appear to be doing better.
I saw today on Japanese TV that China reportedly doesn't count asymptomatic people who tested positive as of the 14th of February, and that there might be 40k+ of those.
They have this "zero-out" campaign, effectively goading local officials into reporting zero cases, you will need to think about your political career before reporting one.
- never tested asymptotic people
- in the first weeks, didn't tested anyone unless they had symptoms AND came back from China or Italy
- now only takes care of serious cases, which means that if you have mild symptoms you don't get tested
I live in Spain. Yesterday I saw a group of five people standing together in the dog park, about 2 meters apart from each other. Good thing they are practicing social distancing, but their dogs were still playing with each other. We're indeed being laughed at, and rightfully so. Many people are not taking the lock down serious here.
So what happens if I have covid19, I pet or hug a dog, and five minutes later someone else touches it? The virus suddenly disappears across the entire dog's surface?
Now I agree with your general sentiment but can't help but feel the unhelpful tone in your finishing question. We might as well do without that. You can frame your messages to be less hostile without loosing the meaning of what you want to write.
Not sure if you missed the "dogs can spread coronavirus to humans" part but the source you linked finishes with this:
> The spokesman emphasised [SIC] that there is currently no evidence that pet animals can be a source of COVID-19 for humans or that this virus can cause the disease in dogs
Surely they can't be infected but I know that when I get sick, I have a lot close contact with my dogs, which includes that they sometimes get saliva on them (sleeping on them and drooling and/or coughing near them), which means their fur would carry the virus.
I can't comment on what's happening in China, but I do know that south east asians especially students fled from the UK and no doubt elsewhere over the last few weeks back home where it was considered the worse was over. I believe Cathay Pacific put on extra flights back to Hong Kong.
It's noticeable Singapore, Hong Kong and China all reporting imported cases.
In the UK due to the lack of Testing no one but the wealthy know if they have or had Covid unless in a very bad way.
You cannot stop this virus unless you somehow tag who is "clean" and who is "infected"
I.e. a solution to this issue would require:
1) Massive testing of everyone. This can be done via a mobile lab or "at home" kit.
2) Issue a clean certificate
3) Division of all areas to "clean" (you can prove that you have been tested) and "infected". For example, you can board a flight or a train only if you are "clean".
In general, the initial test should be done in parallel and hopefully at the same time.
Once this test is done, all the "clean" certificate can be issued and the quarantine can end.
I personally cannot see any other way. I.e. even if you end the quartine after X weeks, the virus will start again.
So the race is either to massive testing or to a vaccine. I think that reaching massive testing is easier.
First we laughed at China, downplayed it, now we ignore them again? (And if not China, why not look more at Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, there seem to be ways to keep the load for the health system reasonable enough .. but what I also miss too much is how we go forward, not just flatten the curve, but also rump up hospitals, and masks for everyone, and what else it takes to get into some reasonable state as before).
The reason why China thinks it can lower its shutdown is because they believe they control it now well enough. What is not clear to us in the West is how draconian but efficient they did the lockdown and quarantine:
- Immediate true and complete lockdown of whole China. They do not agree what we understand as lockdown in Italy and other European countries.
- In Shandong (80.000.000 inhabitants) they started tracking by licenses plates, train tickets and mobile phones all 70.000 persons that were in Wuhan and sent them to quarantine. That is like if Germany would have sent anyone who was in Italy on vacation into quarantine start of February.
- Every known infected case had 5 people working on it that via big data, tracking and interviews identified every contact person and put these into quarantine.
- As there was an infection case in a block, the whole house (30 flats) came for 14 days into quarantine into a hotel, they disinfected the whole house, and everyone else in the block (500 flats) were fever checked daily by security.
- Patrols in Wuhan arrested everyone breaking quarantine.
- Fever checking at every checkpoint.
But there was not only force, they are getting daily SMS to their chinese SIM:
- current state of epdemics
- state of food stocks of the province and there is no reason to hamster
- inform that all health costs due to corona will be paid
- how many face masks are produced each day
- that any price gouging is strictly forbidden, with a hotline you can call to report violations
- and general tips for behaviour
They partly paid people also a month wage if they went into hospital for testing/reporting their corona.
What we don't understand in Europe is that Chinese government looked at Wuhan for few weeks and then decided that the cheapest way out of this will be this dramatic complete lockdown.
Everyone travelling into China btw must go into 2 weeks quarantine. Thus they feel safe from a second big outbreak wave.
--
Let's see if that works (keep in mind everyone there is wearing masks, while not perfect, they likely have a huge impact on reproduction coefficient on large scale).
I believe we should have learned much earlier when everyone was reporting that they e.g. build a hospital ultra quick, and then sent everything into complete lockdown, that they maybe had known what they have at their hands.
By doing our small steps, and also not having massive testing and good behaviour available like South Korea, I'm afraid, it will just take longer for us and the pain will be much larger. In Italy it already is :(
The 2 week quarantine on incoming people, appears to be the only way to control the re-emergence of the virus, from external sources.
Three weeks is probably safer, but they can relax movement on the third week, and allow the person to move about, with active monitoring.
However, this will kill the tourism industry.
Another way, is they only allow entrance from other countries that are certified to also be virus-free. And which controls their borders from other uncertified countries, while maintaining an active health monitoring of the traveling person.
Maybe they stopped the spread in Hubei, but suppose just one infected person travels to another heavily populated province. What is the contingency plan for this obviously dangerous scenario?
It feels like Europe and the US only have a few options:
* Let the virus run its course and accept a huge death count.
* Continue the lockdowns for months, strangling the economy.
* Do what's in this article and allow life and the economy to return to normal.
* Hope for a miracle.
They could find an effective cure that would make managing the disease a lot easier. We could let the disease spread if we had a reliable way of curing people and reducing the death rate to an acceptable level. After all we don't go on lockdown every year during flu season.
Maybe you put that in the "miracle" bullet point but I think that's a bit pessimistic.
I believe the UK just ordered millions of antibody tests, that will tell you if you've previously had the virus. If we can confirm that people who previously had it are immune, we should be able to selectively let those back into normal society a lot faster.
Which creates a two-tier society. Those with antibodies get to go about their business, go out to cafes and pubs, get hired for jobs which antibodyless people can't do.
Those who don't have the antibodies are stuck under house arrest, so decide "ahh screw it, I'm going to go and get infected".
It sounds like the politician hopes the tests are "built" in few weeks but the producer has not them yet and I am not sure they will have in "a few weeks" unless he means months
The virus doesn't magically teleport from one person to another. Aerosol infection is still somewhat disputed. If adults washed their hands and stopped putting their hands in their mouth and nose like toddlers, their viral load and resulting infection would be less severe. We will all sooner or later get some copies of COVID-19 in our bodies, make sure it's not too much.
Hopefully the panic measures introduced because people are too dumb to understand basic hygiene will be pulled back soon before the economy blows up and we have much bigger problems than a few 100.000 dead people.
perhaps what you are missing is that even lesser measures could have massive impacts,
- do we need to take the temperature of everyone at each hour? almost certainly not. Should you be reporting in from every location? almost certainly not. Should we be treating each other as bioweapons all in the name of "safety"? absolutely not.
- is it good if mobility is reduced? almost certainly it has a massive effect.
I think the right course of action is to give all these measures some time to work. Let's stop adding yet another measure and keep making the ones that exist better.
Epidemiologists need to chill out a bit and stop treating a society as a mathematical model or molecules bouncing around in a container.
Modeling the spread of a virus is insanely complex and all existing models are certainly flawed one way or the other but doing nothing and just see what happens doesn't seem very rational to me. As more data comes in, models improves and we can adjust the response.
I do not believe the US nor any of its states have made it a goal to stop the virus. Please give me links if this is wrong. Everything I have seen from government sources talks about "flatten the curve" or "slow the spread" or similar. The end result of any flatten the curve effort is 40-80% of the population is infected until the combination of herd immunity and social distancing stops the spread.
Please can anyone link to a government source saying that stopping the virus is a goal? I would love to be wrong.
There are two sides of this coin, that are sort of mutually exclusive:
1) On one hand, it's sort of a "competition" to gain "herd immunity". Of course if this is achievable, every country would want this, but not while disrupting civil society. So the measures makes sense for controllable scenarios, if introduction is managable.
2) COVID-19 is a completely new ("Novela") virus. We don't know long-term health impacts or long-term branches of mutation. Introduction to the masses is not without risks and costs. So if possible, stopping the virus would be preferable. There are uncountable potential viruses that are just waiting to be introduced as well, so an "open policy" doesn't necessarily make any sense. This shows how interconnected humans are today, that the "Me Only"-mantra is unsustainable, and that Capitalism crumbles in the face of real existential, uncertain adversity. This crisis is really minor.
That's not true. Coronaviruses did exist, and they are not new.
//"Me Only"-mantra is unsustainable.//
Exactly opposite, we will see in the near future that the government which one destroyed their economy will eat shit in next years.
> The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm.
I’ve watched every one of Cuomo’s press conferences. He message is always clear - that we are trying to not overwhelm the health system.
He doesn’t say “flatten the curve” because he believes words matter and tries to communicate to avoid panic (Hence his refusal to call “Stay Indoors” as “Shelter in Place”)
But the medical side of the state government - along with their action - has been consistently flatten the curve.
No one but the highly delusional believes we can roll back community spread.
This piece of this story is utterly fascinating to me right now. It's like half the population has a completely different interpretation of the phrase shelter-in-place. I feel like it's entirely too vague and has led to a situation where, in my neck of the woods in Orange county, CA, people are using the ambiguous language to justify going about their daily lives. Where, to me, the order is very clear: stay in or near your home. The beach isn't in or near my home. It isn't in or near the majority of our homes. And neither is the dog park, or the county or state parks, or the national forest near us, etc.. And, yet, on social media, it's very easy to find people complaining about how surprised they were when they went to the beach, or where ever, and it was totally packed with people. It's making me question my sanity that we can have such wildly different interpretations of this situation.
I had to venture out Friday in NYC and parks and streets were filled with people. Lines to get cocktails going down the street. Basketball games. No one wearing masks. For the first time since it started I started to be worried about my family and myself.
I think "Stay In Your Home" or "Stay the Fk Home" are needed as daily SMS messages and voicemails.
Because the American conception of "gently tell people to do the right thing, and their good ole spirit will volunteer to do the right thing" is false.
In France, there are drones flying around blasting speakers at high decibals for people to stay in their homes. There are fines, and repeat offenders can face six months of jail.
In NYC (I live in NYC), we've denigrated the police for the past few years as "fascist" -- ask any average 25 year old you meet in a coffeeshop or Brooklyn bar -- there are protests over arresting people who do illegal things. Police enforcement of simple crimes is considered "a waste of police resources" at best and at worst "systemic racism in action." If you talk about enforcement of subway vagrancy and crimes like smoking on the platform, urinating and so forth, you'll hear a lecture about redlining and some other academic topics from history, you'll be reminded of stop and frisk, quotas and so on. So there you have it, the Left made it hard to sustain order. But the Right doesn't get away scot-free: every Trump supporter I talk to says, "It's my Constitutional Right to do what I want!"
So there you have it. Both Right and Left united in favor of individualism and against common good.
I've been blown away by Cuomo's steady hand and
calm reassurance in this time. While De Blasio has flip-flopped from apathy to utter panic, Cuomo has remained fairly consistent. I appreciate his insistence on preventing panic by using specific language.
“The timeline, nobody can tell you, it depends on how we handle it,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But 40 percent, up to 80 percent of the population will wind up getting this virus. All we’re trying to do is slow the spread, but it will spread.”
Just keep in mind that less lethal (and disabling) strains are inherently better fit and will thus spread faster than more lethal ones. (But yes, it can also contaminate again everybody that has had the virus, most likely with much milder simptoms.) Virus mutation is not cause for despair.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. Maybe because of the second sentence?
Mutation is a very real problem. After all flu goes through it all the time. That is the main reason why we get flu regularly.
Second reason is that the immunity may be temporary.
What we understand under "mutation" consists of 2 basic facts:
* During replication of cells, DNA changes happen by accident and random chance. This yields random new traits.
* A random trait might be useful to survival and reproduction, or it might be a hindrance. Maybe a trait that was once beneficial becomes a hindrance when the environment in which an organism lives shifts (i.e. higher Ph values of a pond of water will cause a shift in which bacteria will thrive, and which won't)
Regardless of what you do, you can't stop mutation as long as cells are living and replicating. You don't control the appearance of traits directly as replication is basically a roll of the dice. (Technically, you can through genetic engineering, but we're talking about what happens outside the lab).
Finally, viruses are arguably life. They are envelopes with genetic material. They aren't a hive mind following a conscious strategy. Their emergent behavior is dictated by the traits they happen to have, and a gazillion environmental factors. Nothing else.
So, when we say "The virus is spreading", we are really saying "More people are infected and infecting others as well." a virus doesn't willfully jump between hosts.
Lethality isn't a good trait either. The goal of a virus is to spread genetic material, killing its host is an inadvertent second order effect of replication. Viruses that are inadvertently too lethal will run out of hosts rather quickly.
This SARS-Cov2 is a perfect storm because (a) of the properties of the virus itself - very contagious in 1-1 contact, low lethality, it's entirely new - and (b) because of environmental circumstances: 7.75 billion available hosts and globalisation / massive mobility.
While we don't control mutation, the best case scenario is that quarantines, lockdown and eventual treatments will subdue that people keep spreading this strain. But replication might yield other traits and less harmful cousins of this virus might spread instead.
(edit: lest we forget, homo sapiens sapiens is the net result of many mutations over the course of millions of years. So, beware of inadvertent value attribution!)
As much as I appreciate the lengthy explanation, my concern was strictly related to the possibility that immunity gained by getting over the infection once, may be cancelled if/when the virus mutates (enough).
So how do you fight mutation? By avoiding further spread of the virus. So really, this "danger of mutation" talk does not add anything to the discussion. In fact, it could equally well happen that the virus mutates to something less lethal.
I disagree that the danger of mutation does not add anything to the conversation. If it is real, then it just shows how important it is to act now swiftly and to not rely on developing herd immunity.
Which experts are proposing the way forward is actually a total lockdown? This article is distorting what experts are actually saying. This virus will not go away, it needs to be managed. Please consider the following articles of what experts are ACTUALLY saying:
It is important to understand the context and timing of the Imperial paper. It was produced as part of UK government decision making in the days leading up to the 12th of March in order to make a binary decision between to immediate alternatives: Mitigate and flatten the curve or suppress and crush the curve.
It was well understood by the authors that a permanent lockdown was not possible and that there would need to be a step 2. They did some modelling of possible step 2 (proposing alternating lockdowns with relaxations for example) but did not go into detail on other options such as enhanced contact tracing, widespread testing, or other options.
Right, both papers are mainly what should be done right now. They both conclude that a hard lockdown is the only realistic option that won't overload the health system in the next few months. It's not so clear what to do afterwards.
Stopping the virus takes a negative growth rate, such that the rate of recovery exceeds the number of new cases. Like the article said some East Asian countries are proof it can be done, but it requires great deliberate inconvenience.
"Americans must be persuaded to stay home, they said, and a system put in place to isolate the infected and care for them outside the home. Travel restrictions should be extended, they said; productions of masks and ventilators must be accelerated, and testing problems must be resolved. But tactics like forced isolation, school closings and pervasive GPS tracking of patients brought more divided reactions."
I hear many keep saying "stay positive"! Wishful thinking and optimism typically lead to shorter lifespans and the reasoning is optimists underestimate threats, ignore symptoms, don't prepare to handle threats. Not to panic, but be more on the pessimistic side, save lives - including your own! We have an excellent saying here in America, which the young do not follow (especially in Flordia!) these days: "Better safe than sorry!"
There is no way to stop the virus in the US - 10 million undocumented immigrants in the US can not afford to sit at home and watch TV for 3 months, they can't help you to do your fancy contact tracing to expose their families and friends who are also undocumented. They can't afford to be tested or treated as none of them will be on the government hands out list.
How could you stop the coronavirus when 10 million REAL people are totally ignored from all these measures? That is the size of the Wuhan population.
I see you're being downvoted, but I don't sense any malice in your post. You're also not incorrect in your assessment, but your scope is a bit limited. There are far more than just undocumented immigrants who can't afford to stay home and will have to do whatever they can do to keep life going for themselves. This is true everywhere, not just the US.
The last to comply won't be holding out due to malice or ignorance, but necessity.
Immigration status has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are undocumented immigrants who can afford it, and undocumented immigrants who cannot. The relevant factor is someone's financial position, not their immigration status. Regardless of intent, the parent comment singles out a demonized population of people. This is not constructive or helpful.
> Immigration status has absolutely nothing to do with it.
This is the sort of obvious nonsense that gets in the way of constructive solutions. Undocumented immigrants aren't getting stable employment or social benefits. Nor can they rely on the medical system or any local or federal institutions for support. They are, with absolute certainty, an identifiable group where an extraordinary majority are undoubtedly in a situation where compliance will be terrifying, if not impossible.
Pretending they are being 'targeted' or 'demonized' in this thread is pure intellectual dishonesty. The reason they're being discussed is because they are in the position they are in, and because that situation creates a need for special care and attention.
> This is not constructive or helpful.
Actually, it is. Considering they we have millions of people who might be unable to comply, for totally logical and non-malicious reasons, is constructive.
You know what's not constructive? Putting blinders on and conveniently ignoring an entire group of people who may find themselves in dire financial and medical situations, and who can potentially spread the virus to others unintentionally. This isn't demonization. This is reality. Nobody in this thread is saying 'Let's deport/kill/refuse care to all the illegals!' These people need to eat just like the rest of us, let's not pretend they just don't exist.
But the OP is misguided and targeting a beaten down population. What difference does it make if you’re making $7.25/hr as a natural born citizen or an undocumented immigrant? Either way this thing is hurting you hard, and people are going to act like people.
It’s really, really misinformed to think that undocumented immigrants are the only ones suffering, and that “good natural born Americans” can all afford to sit inside for a few weeks.
People are quick to assume the intent of another. The quickest way to make the point that a non-compliant, but non-malicious population exists is to give an example. OP gave one, but now people seem to assume that because of the (heavily politicized) example given that they've "targeted" a group. Overreactive responses make it difficult to have a serious discussion about all sorts of issues.
OP also hasn't said anything even remotely akin to:
> undocumented immigrants are the only ones suffering, and that “good natural-born Americans” can all afford to sit inside for a few weeks.
It seems intellectually dishonest to make such lofty assumptions based on a post the length of a tweet or two. Imagine if instead of assuming ill-intent we just said 'hey he's right there are people that can't afford to comply...we should consider that in our policy to the benefit of everyone involved...'
The author’s rhetoric is likely the cause of the downvotes, in particular focusing explicitly on “undocumented immigrants” when there seems to be no evidence that this group of people presents any greater (or lesser) risk than other groups that share their socioeconomic or demographic status.
To contrast with your interpretation, I found the author’s comment to be unnecessarily divisive.
Consider, for example, that Asian people are being harassed and assaulted in response to how aspects of this pandemic have been framed.
Now consider the response that the author’s comment might incite towards demographics associated with undocumented immigrants, in light of this, given that there is no reason to believe the premise.
I don't believe that this interpretation of OP is very charitable.
Regardless of the politics of undocumented immigrants, you have to account for how you are going to service these people. This group is currently living outside of the system.
To combat COVID19, we need them to participate inside of this system.
This isn't actually a bad thing to point out and it SUPPORTS the "undocumented immigrants" cause.
We can't keep pretending that they don't live IN this society.
Acknowledging that as it stands, they can't economically or politically participate in the system is not the same thing as advocating for them to be removed or punished.
If anything, it acknowledges that the current system doesn't work and needs to be re-worked to include this group of people.
Again, 10M people are unable to participate in a productive treatment or cure. This will ensure that we all fail to contain and mitigate this disaster.
> This group is currently living outside of the system.
I think that the point that I’m trying to make (as are others in this thread) is that there are many more people who are “living outside the system” when we consider “the system” to be those who can get treatment and afford to distance themselves from others (i.e. stay home from work or work remote).
Expressing concern about the problem that undocumented immigrants pose is such a massively premature thing to do that I find it impossible to read the original comment in good faith.
> 10M people are unable to participate in a productive treatment or cure.
Many more than 10M people are going to be unable or unwilling to participate in treatment or inoculation due to the structure of the American healthcare system.
Raising the concern about undocumented immigrants inhibiting our recovery effort is naïvely misinformed at best and a dogwhistle for encouraging discriminatory behavior at worst.
> Raising the concern about undocumented immigrants inhibiting our recovery effort is naïvely misinformed at best and a dogwhistle for encouraging discriminatory behavior at worst.
This type of comment is really unproductive.
OPs comment is easily read as the opposite of what you're suggesting. Again, this is easily pro immigration/healthcare for all.
Yes, during a global pandemic crisis like this, undocumented immigrants are the problem.
I bet every single one of those people in Disney World last week, partygoers in New Orleans, and spring break beach students were overwhelmingly not undocumented immigrants.
Fear mongering a disenfranchised population will get you nowhere.
OP wasn't suggesting that immigrants are the problem, they are simply saying that you have to do something with 10M people that CAN'T participate in the system as designed. How do you solve for this variable?
If anything, this is a PRO immigrant stance. We need to take care of these people as well and can't think of them as _outside of the system_.
As a resident of New Orleans I can categorically tell you 99% of those assholes in the pictures on Bourbon St were tourists taking advantage of cheap tickets
I figured 99% of the people on Bourbon St (apart from the workers) were always tourists. I couldn't see myself ever wanting to go there if I lived in New Orleans.
If there’s anything the current debacles in Europe and the U.S. has taught us, it’s that selfish and/or irrational jerks abound, and asking nicely doesn’t work at all.
This. I'm terrified by the number of utter idiots violating the restrictions and putting so many vulnerable people at risk.
Or those people recorded while spreading their spit all over a train cart.
Where is this coming from? What is those people's end game? It can't be due to stupidity; there must be some malice in this behaviour as well, right?
This is classic attention seeking behavior by people who have suffered trauma (neglect, physical/emotional abuse, etc) themselves. Their brain is wired differently than a "normal" brain due to the trauma.
I don't think there is any malice, it's just ignorance. We're in uncharted territory here and people have no idea how to behave. Not to mention humans are social creatures and it's very much against our instincts to be shut-ins that don't interact.
Oh I misunderstood, yes some people vwant too see the world burn or alternatively they don't understand the gravity of the situation and the potential harm to themselves or others.
Small point of disagreement on this one. There may not be a 1:1 correspondence between what’s happening now and any exact historical event, but I would have hoped that traditionally Western nations would have studied countries affected by SARS (et al.) and learned from their successes/failures.
It's also a cultural problem. We've taken individualism too far. It's become a religion with dogmatic followers who will double down on it even when it is absolutely the worst option for the circumstance.
I believe that the trend to call vast numbers of people selfish and irrational is itself inaccurate and part of in group psychology. People who are not like our group are immoral. Perhaps someone is struggling with drugs or mental issues or poverty and needs to go out, perhaps there are other factors which should not be waved way as selfishness or being jerks? How can you tell? It's easier not to bother and have less empathy, ironically.
We should take a page out of social scientists and ask these others how they think and feel and not simply cast them away to the immoral bin. I can detect a certain glee in people who are looking forward to harsher measures to punish the outsider.
It's similar to what it was like after 9/11. Many people would do anything to save lives and punish the evil. We should take a step back before we step forward on people.
I don't know about beaches. I can easily go to a beach and stay more than 2m away from others and I get to enjoy lots of fresh air, exercise, and time outside of my tiny apartment. Definitely a necessary therapy in these times.
I know this is a little politically incorrect an opinion for HN: While there are definitely people with underlying issues (drugs, poverty, mental health), many people are simply narcissistic jerks by nature, for no real reason. Asking nicely and pleading for them to behave will not work, nor will shaming misbehavior. Jerks respond only to incentives and disincentives.
Without enforcement, all these "orders" about distancing and sheltering in place and not hoarding are just going to be ignored by the jerks, like any rule without enforcement.
I don’t believe most people are jerks. They are just in disbelief that such a dire situation is possible.
Yes, it’s important to ask and with a high level of seriousness. If the internet has taught me anything, it’s that people need to read something 8 or more times before fully internalizing it.
I didn’t say most people, I said “abound”. Even 5% of people ignoring “asking nicely” could deal critical damage containment efforts, and I suspect the number is more than 5%.
The Imperial College report[1] found suppression to be effective even with much less compliance. Here are the different measures they modeled and the assumed compliance, taken from the table on page 6 of the report and edited out the info about assumed impact on transmission, for brevity.
> Case isolation in the home — Assume 70% compliance — Symptomatic cases stay at home for 7 days. Household contacts remain unchanged.
> Voluntary home quarantine — Assume 50% compliance — Following identification of a symptomaticcase in the household, all household members remain at home for 14 days.
> Social distancing of those over 70 years of age — Assume 75% compliance
> Social distancing of entire population — Assume 75% reduced contact outside household, school or workplace (the wording here is different, does not mention "compliance")
> Closure of schools and universities — 100% of schools, 75% of universities
I would recommend reading the report. Unlike certain summaries, the report itself is very clear about all the assumptions baked in, and so you won't get a false sense of "This is 100% how it will be". (That said, I'm not questioning their numbers since I think they're likely more accurate than any I could come up with myself).
I meant that most of the people who are not self-isolating are not jerks.
To convince them to participate in containment, their more responsible friends, family, and colleagues need to reach out, and more importantly we need to have consistent messaging from the government.
It's the same reason people climb over fences and past signs at the Grand Canyon for a photo and end up falling: they've never experienced mortal danger and and have been so coddled by modern society that they don't even know what it looks like.
as much as I agree on the importance of flatting the curve, I also share this sentiment. there are people who have been living in a precarious state for far too long and for who flatting the curve seems a hypocrit luxury invented by those who have ignored them for far too long. the list would include anyone incarcerated, undocumented workers, addicts on hard drugs now unable to get their fix[1], migrants stuck between borders or in a refugee camp, ... the list is long and incomplete.
then there are those who have fallen prey to politicans telling them it's a hoax and who have made up their mind long ago (once the mind is made up it's impossible to walk them back to another reasoning), and now see it as just another attack by cancel culture on their values.
then there are the politicans who use a blunt tool like closing borders and export stops: notable example any EU country (Germany, France etc) who watched Italy's numbers explode and refused to supply PPE under the justification that it's soon needed by themselves (ignoring that early containment would be a common goal). Especially in Europe the lack of a common coherent response is a disappointment - and instead every country is on its own.
then there is cancel culture itself who like to throw these camps under the bus and use overly simplistic reasoning and resort to name-calling which hardens their opponents views even further.
maybe this is cynical but I doubt we'll win this, instead we'll just muddle through as always and either blame each other or congratulate how well we did depending on the individual outcome.
[1] methadone is only an option if you're already a registered user, and I doubt priority of doctors today is to give appointments to addicts who suddenly see themselves facing a supply problem
I’m not actually blaming the jerks (which is rather pointless, jerks will be jerks), I’m blaming governments for ostensibly believing jerks don’t exist and asking nicely is enough.
South Korea has virtually no new active cases daily, only 100 deaths after 4 months of exposure and hasn't brought in any laws even close the authoritarian stuff that is going on elsewhere across the planet in the name of covid-19/sars-cov-2
Buyer beware. Undoing laws and measures is a lot harder than enacting them in a "crisis".
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
That's because South Korea rolled out massive testing early, so they caught it before more extreme measures were necessary. On top of that, Koreans did a good job of voluntarily complying with social distancing measures.
> Everyone who is infected in South Korea goes into isolation in government shelters, and phones and credit card data are used to trace their prior movements and find their contacts. Where they walked before they fell ill is broadcast to the cellphones of everyone who was nearby.
> Anyone even potentially exposed is quarantined at home; a GPS app tells the police if that person goes outside. The fine for doing so is $8,000.
In Seoul, multiple emergency alerts asking people to keep 2 meter distance and to cancel trips and meetings were pushed to mobile phones for the first time yesterday morning. Pedestrian streets in popular districts are still fairly bustling tonight, even if less crowded given the season.
Pushing mobile alerts is what any country with half a clue should be doing. I get regular ones telling me to wash my hands and avoid contact, it's comforting to see them everyfew days.
In South Korea they were a bit overused I think. In addition to hand washing reminders, each phone is getting up to 2 loud but not-really-quite-actionable alerts per day, which report on 2–3 new cases discovered in nearby city districts.
(But then the government uses the same alerts to notify about strong winds and elevated pollution levels, so it’s more or less a given.)
The ones from yesterday were the first to ask people to limit their mobility.
People always quote that Franklin thing but please remember that was wartime propaganda. Franklin himself was later heavily involved in creating the United States Constitution and governments are essentially trade offs between safety and liberty so it's clear he wasn't an absolutist.
What actions do you think should be taken to stop other preventable deaths?
I'm in a country that has banned all unnecessary movement, traffic/pedestrian accidents have dropped dramatically, it has saved magnitudes more from dying than from covid-19.
Logically, all movement be banned then? Keen to hear a rationalisation for 10 traffic lives vs 1 contagious virus life.
10 people have died in 3 months since the virus was first tested here. 1500 have died on the roads. I'm interested in the sort of person who would stand up and decree one life worth more than others. Please justify the logic behind such selections.
I'm with you. I don't think "saving lives" is a good enough reason to give up our freedoms (barring an apocalyptic event or something).
That being said, there's a lot we can do without infringing on freedoms too much. I think South Korea has a good model for handling disease spread, and The Netherlands has a good model for encouraging cycling and protecting cyclists from cars, both of which lead to lower vehicular deaths. Both countries were able to improve things without significantly disrupting society.
Yeah, maybe tens of thousands of people will die a few years before they would normally die without drastic measures, but the cost to save those lives doesn't seem to be worth it.
You seem to be saying that fighting coronavirus has the side effect of reducing traffic deaths, but then you put "traffic lives" against "contagious virus lives". It doesn't make sense to speak of tradeoffs when you just said the same measures deal with both. Where is the conflict that your rhetorical framework relies on?
All in all the answers were : "They don't want to kill the economy, that's why no restrictions.", "We are democracy, that's why no restrictions."
Look at the situation now. Killed economy, unstoppable virus and nobody knows for how long. They can't contain it anymore. What we do is flattening the curve, not eliminating the thread.
Come on. These politicians, IMO should be investigated for committing crime agains humanity. I can't believe that in 2020 there is no such thing as emergency procedure / plan in case of ... well ... emergency. I tend to think that all government decision makers make a "daily" for what should happen today and then wait for tomorrow, with no further planning.
That's just irresponsible.