Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

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Then why are countries like Germany, which were exposed earlier, not experiencing similar problems and lockdowns? I am deeply troubled by this sort of isolated authoritarian overreach and the eagerness with which people accept it.

If states in the US do try to lock down their borders, I might drive across a few just to reinforce the fact that such measures are unconstitutional and anti-American. This is all starting to feel like mass hysteria, considering how much reports vary from country to country and the whiplash speed at which the overton window is moving. How long until Congress passes the Pandemic-triot act to suspend the 1st amendment in the same way that the Patriot act suspended the 4th and 5th?

This happens every 5 years or so; SARS, swine flu, and H1N1 were all more severe, and we didn't destroy our societies over them. We just have more access to information and mediums of emotional contagion nowadays. I understand that most people disagree with me on this, but that's what happens with mass hysteria and emotional contagion. Know that not everyone buys into it, and if you are keeping calm you are not alone :)

Personally, I'm thinking of visiting Venice in a few weeks once the planes and trains are operating again. This seems like a great opportunity to avoid the crowds and get a good deal on seeing the city before it is submerged for good.

Of course every country has its own share of idiots. According to the latest Korean news, some elderly lady moved from Daegu to her daughter's home at Seoul, had a flu-like symptom, went to one of the biggest hospitals in Seoul and lied five times that she wasn't from Daegu. Now they have to quarantine the hospital.

Well, at least she didn't claim that it was her constitutional rights to barge into random hospitals carrying virus. Cultural differences, I guess.

> Then why are countries like Germany, which were exposed earlier, not experiencing similar problems and lockdowns?

Just wait a week or so.

Why would it be taking much longer for the virus to spread in Germany than it is in Italy, when Italy is implementing much stricter quarantine measures than Germany?

"Just wait a week" is the refrain of everyone who is panicking right now, as it has been for the past few weeks.

> Why would it be taking much longer for the virus to spread in Germany than it is in Italy

Because that's how the exponential function works. Italy started earlier so its numbers are still growing by thousands every day.

But the numbers for France and Germany are almost exactly the same as the numbers that Italy had 10 days earlier, and Switzerland trails Italy by only 5 days once you correct for the smaller population.

But Italy did not start earlier; France and Germany did. Here's an animated map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932...

So I ask again, if this is such a super-pandemic, why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures and earlier outbreaks than Italy? And why do you expect them to get dramatically worse over the next week?

Germany and France now have 1,151 and 1,209 patients, with latest daily increase of 31% and 27%, respectively. What do you mean they are "fine"?

I mean that they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties for an arbitrary period of time, and rightly so.

Is this what you want in your community?

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/03/8099657...

> ... they have not felt the need to take the extremely aggressive step of suspending their citizens' civil liberties ...

If that's your definition of "fine", then when you wrote this:

> why are Germany and France fine despite having looser quarantine measures ...

were you actually saying:

"why are Germany and France having looser quarantine measures despite having looser quarantine measures?"

/shakes head

I understand your point of view, but I would phrase it more like:

"Why are Germany and France not worse off than Italy despite having looser quarantine measures and an earlier start to their outbreaks?"

And I still haven't heard an answer which comes close to justifying Italy suspending its citizens' rights. But that's fine; it won't matter in a few months, and we're approaching an easy opportunity to make money and travel smart as the herds follow their predictable migrations.

I just wish that people were less eager to give our fundamental rights away over this; history shows that they are unlikely to come back once they are surrendered. I'm already tired of the CBP shutting down entire 80mph interstates to search every vehicle passing through; where does this end?

Anyways, arguing about it is just something to do while everything is shut down, eh? :)

For the exponential phase of the epidemic to kick in, you need a cluster that goes undetected for a week or so. For example it can be a young local person that just shrugs it off as a bad cold and meets a lot of people while he's sick---which is exactly what happened in Italy. Italy found out after someone that "shouldn't have gotten sick" ended up in the ICU with pneumonia and a clever doctor decided to test him for COVID-19. That was in mid February, one week before 10 municipalities were the first to be locked down.

Looking back at the January data, however, there were already more cases of pneumonia than usual in that same area and many of those that survived now have antibodies. And in fact, the strain that is hitting Italy was actually already present in Germany in January based on genome analysis; for whatever reason the real outbreak started a bit later in Germany than in Italy, but that's expected because the initial phases of the epidemic are random.

So you say in 1 week Germany will turn into Italy? With multiple hundreds of deaths and states closed down?

I say at least two of France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. Of course I'd be happy to be wrong.

> that such measures are unconstitutional and anti-American

You're wrong. The constitution explicitly carves out allowances for quarantines.

A "nobody is allowed to leave their homes starting now" type order would obviously be practically impossible to enforce, but that's a different matter.

... but roving armed police cruisers are, obviously, a good start to such enforcement, and most American towns already know how to do that.

>The constitution explicitly carves out allowances for quarantines.

Where? I could be missing something, but I don't see that:

https://constitutionus.com/

The closest I could find was the part that grants Congress the power to pass any law that it wants, but I don't think that the executive arm could unilaterally lock down interstate travel. It also says:

>The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

We are citizens of the United States, not of one state in particular. We pull together, or we fall apart.

Gibbons v Ogden (1824) — states may pass quarantine laws under the interstate commerce clause.

That sounds like it involves the legislature passing a law, not an executive decision.

Normally I lean heavily libertarian and I agree with your concerns, but all of the literature out of China on lancet, pubmed, etc are demonstrating that this is far worse than SARS or anything else that's hit. At the very least the rate of spread is .25-4 times higher than the Spanish flu and lethality is comparable.

China shut down it's entire industry for two months. Knowing full well the risk of losing global business permanently. Perhaps it is time for drastic measures.

I don't understand how people can keep saying this with a straight face. It's been months since the infections started in Wuhan, people keep predicting imminent doom within the next week, and it keeps not happening.

I think we need to acknowledge that the worst-cast predictions are laughably inaccurate, and a little bit of fear of the unknown is not worth losing our civil rights over.

You are misinformed. This is literally starting now. Jesus man open your eyes. Multiple states have declared states of emergency. At the very least that means the virus is here.

Now do you honestly think China would shut down it's entire economy for 2 months over the flu? Have you actually read any published literature on the virus, or are you just watching people around you prepare and laughing at them? 8% of the Iranian parliament was infected last week - two were dead by Friday.

Because this is all unfolding slowly, we still don't even know if any of the following speculation is true:

1. Multiple Chinese sources report reinfection after recover

2. Multiple sources report positive tests after recovery

3. Hot weather may not stop the virus (see Singapore)

This is not SARS. This is not just another flu outbreak. Global markets are crashing because they see what's happened in 6+ countries now. It's time to get your head out of the sand.

Do you know that fucking Mecca is deserted right now? I don't think that's ever happened before.

Sure I believe that the virus is here and that it is serious. I wouldn't be surprised if my neighbors had it, and I might have had it a week ago judging from symptoms, but so what? I'm staying away from at-risk groups like the elderly and immune-compromised, I have enough food and water to last a few weeks, and I'm not running out to social gatherings. But I also believe that it is not an excuse to suspend the Constitution. Jesus man open your eyes, a lot of people died for those rights and it's insane to throw them away over a momentary panic.

The markets crashing is overdue IMO; things have been overheated for a long time now and a correction has been expected for awhile. It had may as well come as a result of herd behavior rather than market fundamentals, and I say let it ride. Like the old adage goes: be greedy when people are fearful, and fearful when people are greedy.

Also, the Hajj isn't until July this year; it's not surprising that Mecca is not crowded, and closing it for most business at this point in time is not beyond the pale in a global sense.

The thing that stopped the spread of coronavirus in Hubei after ~50k infections is the lockdown. The lockdowns began January 22-23rd, affecting about 59m people. Nobody is leaving their homes except a few essential personnel, to include medical personnel and food delivery. That works in China but it probably won't fly in most liberal democracies. At the time, less than 2k people were confirmed infected. Exponential growth continued for two more weeks, until hitting its inflection point. That's with the lockdown.

Coronavirus has begun exponential growth in the rest of the world. The rest of the world already has more cases than China did when exponential growth inflected.

As of today, it's not showing any signs of inflection. On February 26th, Trump said we had 15 cases in the US, and would be close to zero within a few days. 11 days later, we have 607 cases, 22 deaths, and 8 recoveries. That's a growth rate of 40% per day, and holding steady.

The scary number isn't 607. And it isn't even 22. Nor is it 22/607 or 22/(8+22). (which, tbh, is pretty scary)

The scary number is 40%.

Sure, it's "just" old people with a high probability of dying. But I have several elderly relatives. I'm not enthusiastic about losing any of them.

> At the very least the rate of spread is .25-4 times higher

See how China scientifically tracked spreading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22528245

> China shut down it's entire industry for two months

and kept everybody at home (and if you violate those restrictions, go to jail), and had masks for everybody... It's safer to be in China than EU now.

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