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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Seattle hospitals appear to be filling up because of unnecessary panic, not because of COVID-19.

The point you responded to, of not overreacting, is indeed correct.

I would love it if you're all correct on this. The problem I face is that I do notice other countries who are a week or two ahead of us really struggling, and taking increasingly drastic measures to try and maintain control. I guess I just don't really understand the argument people are making who are saying we are overreacting.

Are you saying we should do nothing, and just accept some tens of thousands of deaths and overburdened hospitals across all major cities? Or that this isn't really a big deal or contagious, and we should just ignore it?

It seems to me that the prudent and responsible thing is for us all to do our best to lower the secondary infection rate, in order to guard against these outcomes.

>I do notice other countries who are a week or two ahead of us

It is being reported that South Korea is testing 10k per day. The USA is still having an issue in even delivering test kits where required. That's months ahead, not weeks.

I think they meant in terms of viral propagation and effects being felt.

Not at all... follow best practices... wash your hands (before and after restroom use, before and after food prep or touching money), stay home if you're sick and for employers emphasize this and work as well as possible around the issue. Don't panic.

In the end, it will spread, it will kill, and the only thing panic does is make things worse. If people washed their hands more and stayed home when sick instead of working through it, that's the most you probably should do.

I disagree. Containment still seems to be the correct course of action, which requires drastic up-front measures to prevent millions of cases simultaneously. You might disagree with that strategy, in which case that's fine, I think you're wrong. But you're mischaracterizing that strategy as panic.

e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/fr...

It's not sufficiently containment, due to the high incubation time, there is transmission amongst many who do not think they are sick. That's a property of this virus that makes it different.

Slowing the spread helps too. It provides time to prepare and reduce the load on the health system.

Staying home when sick isn't containment?

Sure, and those few days before you become symptomatic but you're already beginning to be contagious to others you're also staying home?

...Spreading it to 2 people instead of 5 still slows it down, which is where we're at now.

So you want to test everyone in the country before they're showing symptoms, out just close the country for a few days?

(not to say some people aren't panicking. Which they of course should stop doing).

In one place I know of with a significant number of confirmed cases, I'm told by someone working on the problem that hospital visits are actually declining as sick people are too afraid to go to the hospital to get tested, for fear of being infected by COVID-19 if they don't yet, in fact, have the virus. And that is directly hindering efforts to diagnose, treat, quarantine and control the spread of the virus.

Overreaction can take many forms, depending on what people think is in their individual interest (even if it's at the expense of the collective interest).

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