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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Fortunately, the universe will be able to resolve our dispute rather convincingly, and rather soon, even.

I predict that:

1. France will have an exponential explosion of cases.

2. France, after dragging its heels, will eventually undertake similar quarantine measures.

3. Whatever economic damage that early mitigation would have caused will be inflicted multi-fold, as the country reacts too late.

4. Those same doctors will be shrugging their shoulders, and crying: "How could anyone have foreseen this?"

5. People in the next country over will be busy arguing that the virus is causing irrational panic, and that all these measures are an overreaction.

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1. Agree

2. Possibly, I don't think Macron is immune to over-reaction

3. The economic damage is the damage caused by the reaction, not by the virus itself

4. I am not talking about some rural generalist. These are infectious diseases specialists, who from what I can tell publish in the likes of the New England, I give them more credit on that topic than the average TV anchor or newspaper editor

>The economic damage is the damage caused by the reaction, not by the virus itself

Exactly. I wonder what would have happened if this entire virus was treated similarly to the seasonal flu.

Then you'd get Wuhan, all over the world. A swamped medical system, 3+% death rates, infected population growing exponentially, thanks to nobody having an immunity.

This experiment has already been run.

Where? Or how?

1918

Take a look at the calendar. It is 2020.

In the beginning, in Wuhan.

I rather consider Wuhan to be the textbook case of a mass-panic in the face of an unknown virus. What I am primarily concerned about is the people's reaction and the economic effects which seem unprecedented (at least in recent decades). This has a much larger impact than the virus itself. Why is the effect so big compared to other pandemics? Is it because of the way infections and deaths are tracked (which might have some influence on the initial perception)? Is it social media and its newly-gained influence on policy? Or because it primarily affects aged population, which makes up a large share of the influential electorate and policy makers?

We will see how this entire issue will be treated in a year. I presume that even if it still prevalent, it will normalize in the eyes of the public and everyone will move on with their lives. And that point we will also have corrected and more accurate numbers and statistics, just like with every other outbreak.

>This has a much larger impact than the virus itself.

That's only because we're considering one branch in the multiverse though, right? If we get in our time machine and imagine that we didn't have the "mass-panic", then presumably the impact of the virus would therefore be much worse.

>Why is the effect so big compared to other pandemics?

Compared to the 1918 flu you mean? I guess I'm not sure what other pandemic we have had recently to compare with.

There aren't enough hospital beds available to treat everyone at the same time. There will be far far more deaths if you just let it run wild instead of slowing the spread.

If overreaction is the problem, do you not think that letting the pandemic get worse, before we act, will trigger an even bigger overreaction?

I call it an overreaction precisely because I see no evidence of a really grave pandemic.

seems pretty grave to me:

"From a well respected friend and intensivist/A&E consultant who is currently in northern Italy:"

"Patients above 65 or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU, I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed."

https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714408985596313...

Individual risk is low, systemic risk is high. With the current the current numbers, the hospitalization rate is over 5% (critical cases). If the infection reaches 10% of the US population, it will require 1.5M hospital beds. Currently there are around 1M, at +60% occupancy.

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