Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.
People have also argued the opposite: the US is special because we have large natural borders (mostly). Or maybe the US is special because the US has a large Chinese-American population, many of whom travel regularly.
Epidemiology is a science. Why listen to Twitter randos when you have specialists?
(Counterpoint: HN has a huge selection bias for educated, technical types and a higher overall pool of talent. Doesn't mean disinformation campaigns and marketing won't work on this crowd, though)
Access to health care is a factor in that unhealthy populations are more at risk of complications. The thing that makes covid scary is how it spreads, and the focus of the health authorities is intervening to slow that down.
I am not an expert in the field, but I consulted for a few of them in the past. Ignore twitter bullshit with political overtones and seek out what is being said by CDC, state health departments and related researchers.
The same goes for many of the other assertions, such as parents forcing their children to go school sick. Or the extremely thin premise of elderly people dying because of a huge number of parents sticking them with their sick children while they work. In fact, what data we do have seems to suggest that children barely get sick from this thing at all, or their sickness is so mild it doesn’t get diagnosed. A recent paper in JAMA found that of the first 44,672 cases confirmed in China, only 416 were in children younger than 10. In fact, only 10% were in people younger than 30.[0] It seems ridiculous to entertain scenarios where elderly people all die off because overworked parents foist their parental duties onto them.
It’s also worth stating that a lot of these concerns are not unique to the US. Many of them also apply to other countries like China and Japan, which are already in the midst of their outbreak. Yes, author is only comparing the US and Europe, but that seems like a useless comparison given that the number of infections in both regions is so small and contained right now.
And finally, the author fails to account for reasons why the US might be better off than Europe. As is often pointed out on this site, usually in a negative context, the US is far less dense than Europe. Fewer people are living in tightly packed urban communities, and more live in suburban and rural areas. Far fewer rely on public transportation. That means far fewer opportunities to come across someone contagious. And the US has some measure of protection in its borders. Except for Canada and Mexico, we can only be accessed via plane or boat. Most of the EU has open borders, meaning that it will only be that much more difficult to coordinate quarantines and control measures.
[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?gu...
How dense do you have to be to assume that the default answer to pretty much all these questions is "no" or [citation needed]?
It's like asking for data to prove the world is round. Sure, in isolation that's a fair enough question, but practically speaking it's idiotic.
Lots of people over here would not go to a doctor when they have flu symptoms, even if it's free to do so because we're not retarded, collectively. But if it can cost money it's obvious we'd be even less likely to do so, society and 'Asians' and spread of corona-virus be damned.
The common reaction to something uncommon is, well, common. I'd say it's upon the 'commoners' to provide data that this thing that experts say is worrisome is, in fact, not.
I fail to see any health background.
Also, she has a BS in computer science, which often seems to qualify anybody in the HN comment sections to be an authority on anything.</sarcasm>
Eric Feigl-Ding, Epidemiologist at Harvard pointed out:
- US has no free testing or treatment for population.
- US government does not cover any preventive measures for healthcare workers like China does.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/china...
Seems like perfectly fair lay person analysis to me. It would be somewhat of an argument from authority fallacy to dismiss based only on no health background.
(I don’t want to call what they’re doing fear mongering either because that suggests bad intent. I don’t think their intentions are bad. I just think we’re paying a lot of attention to a Twitter thread because it’s on top of Hacker News, not because of its own merits as a well-reasoned argument.)
The flu infects 50 million people in the US every year and kills 0.1% of them.
COVID-19 appears to have higher mortality by at least 20x.
It also appears to be more contagious.
But if it can't be contained before a vaccine is ready, and assuming it only infects the same number of people as the flu, a million could die.
They could’ve added some stats at the end to convince people to go to the doc but instead it just ends.