Hacker News Reader

Comment by thalassos | Hacker News Reader

This is only a badly embossed law proposal, which has not been approved yet. Its release to the news, is a huge mistake and it is aleeady causing havok all across the country. People are hoarding trains to go away from the supposed red zones undoubtfully spreading even further the virus.

View on HN

Thanks. We've edited the title to make this clearer.

This is no longer a draft: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/08/coronavirus-decreto-isolame... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtoF7wagkyY

Yeah. I suppose there is a point at which government should be truthful and also a point at which it’s better to act and then explain why.

China did it correctly, by announcing the quarantine an hour before it went into effect.

> About 5 million residents left Wuhan before the lockdown because of the deadly coronavirus epidemic and the Spring Festival holiday, mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047720/chin...

that's a terrible and harmful idea.

law makers and politicians would be well advised to give the public as much notice as possible and prepare them and educate them about what to expect mentally.

The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

For some reason, I feel that minimizing "fears, frustration, boredom" (as your paper says) is less important than minimizing infections and deaths.

of course it is less important and shouldn't be blocking the quarantine to be carried out.

But we had enough time in all the Western countries by now which most didn't use the opportunity to educate their public.

the effects / shock / stress from quarantine will be much higher than when you discuss it openly with people and educate them.

it's negligent to just force anyone into isolation without telling them about the effects of isolation and steps to avoid anxiety or panic.

imagine if you can't tell your environment about what happened to you or you get caught in another city. what if you have a pet waiting at home to be fed. etc ...

Sure for some all this can be sorted out as it unfolds, but it sure doesn't have to be done like this.

There have been weeks in fact where Italians, Europeans had time to discuss these scenarios, and educate their constituents.

What? The entire reason the subthread you’re participating in exists is because the person who started it believes that giving the public notice in advance is a mistake that fundamentally defeats the purpose of a quarantine. In other words, it’s a terrible and harmful idea. But I guess you’re saying it’s the quarantines themselves that are terrible and harmful because they hurt the precious feelings of individuals who want to be free to leave?

you utterly missed the point of what I was saying, as I just pointed out to sibling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22517206

Letting people escape a quarantine because you give a large heads-up on it defeats the whole purpose of quarantine.

I never suggested letting people go or getting rid of quarantine, that's ludicrous https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22517206

is a quarantine effective if you give rich people enough time to skip town beforehand?

Where did you get "rich people" from..?

substitute rich with power and you have exactly how it plays out in China. uniformed people being in charge of those not in uniform. it will be more civilized in the West, but never for one second assume that a filthy cop who is usually happy to abuse the system when it comes to making parking tickets disappear for friends and family, or who is using the system to stalk a prospective date, ... there will be plenty of situations where if you have power you get to wield it.

Please spare us this naivete-trolling.

The world - yes even in 2020 - mostly is greased by the lubricant of money.

You won't find this in HBS case studies or find mentions of the influence of money on epidemic responses in the Lancet.

This is how the world operates - the rich mostly get their way and have apparatuses in place to be notified first in times of emergency, whether its extra-legal or not.

Italy is notorious for facilitating the ways of the old money. There are various tiers of corruption management offered by PR agencies - with armies of career diplomats, executives, liaisons of non-profits and megacorps alike, other attaches working for them - based on your ability to pay for it; tinpot republics cant afford the PR of richer nations like Italy where its kept hush hush.

The former "Bunga Bunga" Prime Minister was ( and is ) a multi-billionaire and a close friend of Putin. Italy's oldest bank was embroiled in a huge scandal that in all likelihood you probably haven't heard a peep about. Not to mention the lengthy list of Italian wealth-hiders revealed in the Panama Papers.[1] [2] [3]

If we had a media that gave a fair shake to all dollar value scandals equally you would read and watch reports on these just as often as the ones that the media is preoccupied with.

Somehow the media doesn't care to shine enough light on the dealings of your average Berlusconis or Gerhard Schröders ( former Chancellor of Germany ) or Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. [4][5][6]

Perhaps we should stop putting certain countries on a pedestal because of how much we are enamored of, of their histories and our fondness for their culture in general.

You are making a value judgment that some seediness engaged in, by some countries is okay whereas others deserve the full glare of media exposure.

It's plainly wrong and history will find you culpable for it.

[1] Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin: the odd couple

https://www.ft.com/content/2d2a9afe-6829-11e5-97d0-1456a776a...

[2] Panama Papers: Italians Involved, from Trulli to Montezemolo

https://www.corriere.it/english/16_aprile_04/panama-papers-i...

[3] Why Deutsche Bank's Monte Paschi Scandal Still Matters

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-11/why-de...

[4] How a $450 Million Loss Was Hidden From Sight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtuRDmkm_7E

[5] Anger as German ex-chancellor Schroeder heads up Rosneft board

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41447603

[6] Why Putin's Pal, Germany's Ex-Chancellor Schroeder, Isn't On A Sanctions List

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/18/601825131/...

edit: changed naive to naivete

Well, maybe it's meant to be a little gift to the railway system :)

Most people can not afford to leave town

Seems reasonable to implement cancelations of movies, public gatherings, weddings, funerals etc. The best we can do is slow it down until there is a vaccine.

"Flattening the curve"[1] has a huge impact on mortality rates, just because people may not personally need hospitalization doesn't mean it won't save lives by reducing the strain on the healthcare systems.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESizCK7UYAAxIBa?format=jpg&name=...

This is pretty key. Halving the rate of transmission doesn't sound too impressive, but it can decrease mortality by 80%+. That's why you got very scary mortalities in Hubei (3%+) and serious but less apocalyptic elsewhere (<0.5%).

COVID-19 is highly treatable, but it has to be treated.

At this point new cases in China are declining. They may have misstepped seriously at first but their heavy handed response seems to be working out now.

People I know (outside Hubei) in the megacities are already back in office (cautiously). The management felt confident enough to also request the expats to fly back and join (most had left before CNY which is when this started blowing up). So I'd say not just working but close to back on track.

Same with Singapore, due to the close family and business connections to China, there was a flurry of early cases but rapid contact tracing and quarantine has slowed the spread.

I'm in Beijing, and I spent yesterday afternoon walking through the park. I easily walked pass hundreds of people: it's fairly active. Some people were even gasp removing their masks. Cafes and restaurants are opening again. The big risk for Beijing (and the rest of the country except Wuhan) right now is importation of foreign cases.

It came at significant economic cost, but China's quarantine worked, and the processes established will likely continue to help protect China from another outbreak from re-importation.

From what they tell us.

You mean hiding the numbers..?

If not, it's just hard to believe.

That's what doctors and experts who have actually visited China are telling us. Temporary hospitals are shutting down, emergency rooms are getting emptier, test queues are getting shorter, factory production, traffic, and air pollution are going back up. Ask anybody you know who lives in China, it's obvious to them.

If they're hiding the numbers, they're doing it across the board: infectious disease case numbers across the board are down, not just corona. This is true in China and in South Korea.

Let's hope so!

Seems like a good course of action..?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com