Comment by lbeltrame | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbeltrame | Hacker News Reader

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As a person who lives in the region just locked, I can tell you: the government is totally in panic for the increase in cases (about 50% of them found with aggressive screening with little or no clinical manifestations, FTR, although that does not mean the hospitals are not under pressure) and played the "Wuhan" card.

How much this is enforceable remains to be seen. What's worse, there was already histeria caused by a leak of the document before it was completed (and people blaing the "lack of responsibility" for the leak, when such things have been going for more than a decade...), with people rushing to stations trying to get away.

There is no clear communication (the same government ministers saying different things over the course of a day), there's the "emergency department" (Protezione Civile) that is not able to keep up, there's blaming the victim ("Act responsibly", "You must change your way of life", said from people who have never understood how normal people live and work).

This has been a mess from a policy and communication perspective. Not surprising from a government that was elected "to give politicians a lesson", "to crack open the Parliament like canned tuna", and in the supreme name of "honesty" was built out of complete incompetents.

I'm truly hoping that we'll get out of this... despite them.

Well, in Spain the evolution of cases is very similar to that of Italy but with a 10-day delay, and the government is doing practically nothing (apart from some very localized measures like close elderly daycare centers after there was an outbreak in one). They keep repeating that it's just like a flu and nothing needs to be done. Today there are going to be feminist demonstrations and next Sunday is the beginning of the Fallas de Valencia, a massive celebration that attracts tourists and locals alike, and they keep repeating that none of that is going to be cancelled.

Don't they have a freaking advisor that understands the exponential function? It doesn't seem that hard to look at the graphs and see that we are heading the same way as Italy.

I think I'd prefer the way of acting of the Italian government who at least seem to be trying to do things. Although who knows. The grass is always greener at the other side of the fence.

Good luck with the situation there for you and your loved ones.

> I think I'd prefer the way of acting of the Italian government who at least seem to be trying to do things.

I understand that Singapore is a very small country and ran way differently than my own, but please look up what the PM there said when he addressed the country on COVID-19 matters and compare it (if you can find a subtitled version) with what our "Giuseppi" said. A world of difference.

Of course now they must do something. But way before the outbreak, local administrations of the now-locked regions who asked for quarantine controls from people from Wuhan and China in general were called "Sinophobes" and the government was far more eager to lock down direct flights from China (useless if you go via hub) as opposed to quarantining or at least tracing those people, and of course to show all support for Chinese people. (Note that I do not condone Sinophobia at all: but a matter of public health policy - like everything, improvable - was just framed as racism).

Ok, this might have not helped at all given that the current theory is that SARS-CoV-2 came to Italy from Germany. But the government was too eager to return to the "important affairs" (meaning, discussing whether a member of the coalition would leave the majority or not). Then when the first cases arrived, there was a total "tug of war" with the legislation ("close down", "ok, maybe not", "maybe yes", "SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING").

So nothing Singapore or South Korea-like. COVID-19 worries me, but I'm far, far more worried about this government.

Singapore had been through this because of sars so had systems in place to deal with a viral outbreak. Quarantining is mostly to decrease the rate of spread so that the healthcare systems don't collapse under the weight of to many patients. But China did a true quarantine they not only stopped people from leaving the cities but also from coming out of their homes. I don't think quarantining cities without people staying in would help much.

More than how they deal with the outbreak, I was referring to the communication of said events. It's much better than what our disfunctional government is doing.

What really gets me about all this is that, after pushing the narrative that imposing quarantine on travellers from China would be racist and getting Italy and a bunch of other countries to buy into it back when travellers from there were spreading the virus, the Chinese government has now decided that it's going to enforce quarantines on travellers from Italy.

China said banning flights would be ineffective. They’ve always said quarantining travelers would be the preferred response.

Italy banned flights from China early on (near the end of January).

Only direct flights. And there was neither control nor quarantining in place.

I am very curious about the lockdown in North Italy.

Are you still going to work?

Are supermarkets open? Are restaurants and cafes?

Is public transport running?

Yes; Yes; Yes but not in the weekend; Yes up to 6 p.m. Not sure.

The official document enforcing the "red zone " for this morning is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y3Vl8VmAww2sGfFBSH9Vfa4fwQ8...

It's in Italian, you may try a machine translation if needed

Ok. Let's hope that is enough to get the spread under control.

It is still far from the lockdown in Wuhan where people are not allowed to leave their appartments and get food delivered by the authorities.

I am in Copenhagen where the latest is that the government has adviced against gatherings of more than 1.000 people causing some football matches to be on TV only and some concerts to lower their number of attendees to 950.

We are Italians and we are unable to respect the rules. Tonight a pdf of a draft of the above document has leaked and we had thousands of people rushing to the train stations to get out from Milan and Lombardia region. So basically we created a situation where thousands of people packed to flee from the red zones to get back to their regions in south italy (and possibly to spread the disease even more). Italians are strong individualists and think they're really smart. Spoiler: we are not

> Tonight a pdf of a draft of the above document has leaked

I'm surprised people are surprised that such a thing leaked. This has been going on for years, except, no one batted an eye.

> We are Italians and we are unable to respect the rules.

As an Italian too, I don't like this generalization. You can make people more willing to follow rules if you approach them correctly. Going full-paternalistic mode (like this government has been doing) or even blaming them ("don't play dumb", is that something one would expect from a PM?) isn't going to help.

Ok, so the thousands people at the train station it must be a one off situation, my mistake. It's quite obvious that generalizations are always wrong, but you know our people as I do. I believe the patterns should be quite evident by now. Obviously there are outliers that do not share the common patterns among Italians too.

Ignoring the snark, I'm not surprised by people rushing to trains. It's not their fault: they perceived a threat, they're not equipped to deal with it, so "everyone for himself".

And why that happened? Because whoever is in charge of making sure that the population is reassured (and that's different from pretending that nothing is happening) did not do that.

(Personally, I believe that it's those who not do what should be done are the actual outliers, although the media does an excellent job at cherry picking bad apples).

According to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51787238

"It's not quite a complete lockdown - planes and trains are still running and access will be permitted for emergency or essential work reasons."

"Restaurants and cafes in the quarantined zones can open between 06:00 and 18:00 but customers must sit at least 1m (3ft) apart"

These seem like ineffective measures. Planes and trains seem like great vectors for letting the virus live on surfaces. What kind of disinfecting protocols are they following? I have doubts that the hustle and bustle of a typical restaurant would allow the 1m apart rule to be well implemented.

I was wondering about this just earlier today - more specifically, how one eats.

I'd be just fine for some days. But by the end of a 2-week quarantine, I'd be eating much more poorly than I would the first week. And I'd be lucky: I have a well-stocked kitchen. I eat a lot of beans and lentils and rice and have all three around. There is pasta here. I make bread most days: I'd certainly have to ration the dried yeast, though.

I'll run out of milk and vegetables (I don't use a lot of frozen ones). If the timing was wrong, I'd run out of flour.

Other folks would fare worse, though. So much worse, just because of what they have in the house. I'd definitely run out of canned tomatoes, even if I used only half. My food wouldn't taste.. wonderful, per se, but I'd survive.

But I'd be lucky: I have this stuff around. Not everyone does and lots of folks would be learning to cook with weird stuff. Some folks simply wouldn't have food.

There is no one, even in China, who dies of starvation because of government lockdown.

To be fair, I was more curious about the mechanisms in place to avoid it. A google search just had advice on stocking up supplies (for most).

I'd really like to believe this - and I hope it is the case.

But geez, we let folks die of starvation on the best of days. We let folks eat literal trash. We let folks have cases of malnutrition, too, without fixing things. The only thing I think that saves folks in the states is that during a lockdown, it is the government's responsibility to do stuff - but I'm not really convinced so many governments have stuff in place.

There are a few vlogs of people in Wuhan.

I particularly like this family, as they show what they cook everyday.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsa3H2gvWgP5mm4OUcu7rLA

Early on, when they could still go out, the husband would visit various supermarkets that were open and before you entered, the greeter would take your temperature.

Then when the lockdown intensified and the people were restricted to their apartment complexes, designated sellers would visit the apartment complexes every day at a specific time so you could buy things.

I was surprised to see so many fresh vegetables.

Similar questions were raised by other interested parties (like for goods travel).

Some of these measures are quite onerous and I can expect that many smaller establishments will prefer to close than try to enforce them: how can a bakery, for example, make sure that "not many people enter at once" ("restricted access", says the document, or at least my poor translation from "bureaucrat-speak") and that "distance is at least one meter" between people?

Personally, I can work remotely if need be (haven't done that in about ~10 years, but technically, I can). I've yet to see what my workplace will do, though.

PS: for the HN crowd, you can look up data by region in Italy here: https://opendatadpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index....

Bear in mind that the numbers on the map are incorrect (as opposed to tables): they're the cumulative sum of current cases + deaths + recoveries.

>> how can a bakery, for example, make sure that "not many people enter at once" ("restricted access", says the document, or at least my poor translation from "bureaucrat-speak") and that "distance is at least one meter" between people?

You make them queue in front of the bakery keeping a distance of a meter between each other?

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