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Comment by atleta | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't call it a psychosis, because in this case people are right. If you look at the numbers [1] it went 10x in 10 days in Italy. Despite the counter measures. Now it's only 7.3k if the efficiency of the counter measures don't increase, it will be 73k in 10 days, 730k in 20 and probably 7M in a month. With 20% requiring hospitalization. Which simply cannot be managed at this scale. (Probably not even at the 730k mark.)

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

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The hospitalisation part really is key here. At this point stopping it really isn't on the cards. We need to slow it enough that hospitals can keep up.

7M people catching it next month, vs 7M people catching it over the span of a year, are two very different 7M's. The rate is far more problematic than the actual number.

Why does everyone keep saying stopping it is impossible. It is literally happening in front of us in China.

There aren't many countries with the capabilities of China in that regard. Though ones that get out front much earlier (SKorea, Japan mostly so far, Vietnam) seem to be doing alright

Honestly I think stopping this thing is a huge challenge. But I think it is a challenge most countries are up to, once they care about it enough. But it seems like no one is very good at responding to this virus before it becomes a crisis.

Honestly we are more careful with cattle and pets, than with people. It's going to be hard to change the entitled attitudes. Nobody can stop me from visiting anywhere I want!

It's going to be hard but if Italy is any guide we will manage it after it becomes a catastrophe.

Trouble is, once its a catastrophe, its too late to put the cat back in the bag?

Why do we keep circling back to this? It is/was a catastrophe in Wuhan, and the cat is reluctantly being forced back into the bag. By existence, it is not too late. See my earlier comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22532892

Because its here in my town now. Not really 'back in the bag'. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but the US total went up 50% yesterday.

And yeah Wuhan says they've got it under control. We'll see.

yes, but it seems like that strict of measures are necessary to bring it rapidly to heel. Different countries can go different ways (japan and skorea doing nicely just keeping the curve nice and flat so far) but US has no socialized anything, poor federal govt response so far, inability of people to take time off work etc...not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that if we're gonna have a nice little quantitative lesson in a year of which societies responded well and which ones didn't, I'm kinda pissed to be in the "don't be them" experimental group

I don't feel it was transmitted 10x in ten days. Those people were already infected. Otherwise, you'd have to wait a couple weeks for them to become symptomatic to know to test them. (Unless they are testing everybody, and the 10x included people that weren't symptomatic).

You are right, they were infected a few days before (I think 6.6 on average). But still, the growth was 10x in ten days as you can see on the graphs. It's just that the measurements are always a few days behind the real numbers. In other words, there is a delay in the system, but it does not change the shape of the graph, it simply shifts it right (towards the future) on the time axis.

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