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Comment by muyuan | Hacker News Reader

I am a Chinese living in Bay Area. What's described by the Italian doctor was exactly like the situation in Wuhan right after the lockdown for the first 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately, I think it will hit Italy harder this time, China locked down Wuhan but every other provinces send in supplies and doctors to help, just building new hospitals is not enough, and I don't see France/Germany doing the same to Italy. The US response so far feels very much like what I saw early Jan in China, the government kept assuring the public everything is in control and risk is very low. One could argue it's either cover up or they simply didn't know, I think it's a combination of both. But I really cannot understand why US is handling it this way after seeing what happened in Wuhan and now Italy, it almost feels like Trump has some secret weapons ready to save the day. You would think that, since most of the leaders are in a high risk demographic and spend large chunk of their time shaking hands with strangers, they would be more vigilant

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I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster.

Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future.

I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle.

What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."

I'm feeling the same. I just started becoming concerned on Friday, and trying to keep up on accurate news. Do you, or anyone else in the US know how to help raise public awareness for prevention, preparedness for the worse, or lessening the impact on healthcare systems and communities? I feel like this needs its own thread, or platform for collaboration. I'm worried that without wider availability of testing, we're already fucked and that quarantine = police state.

good luck with that. you think it would be possible for people to look at china and italy and realize the same thing is now happening here in the US. but large percentage populace has already been fed multiple contradictory narratives and have convinced themselves it's "just the flu" as it's the most convenient reality. your "science" is fairly useless in combatting ignorance, arrogance and selfishness. but regardless i hope you do try.

Combatting selfischness is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, news outlets are to bussy spreading panic to adress the actual risks of hording stuff fromm food over medical PTE to toilett paper.

> If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

Nails it. You could be so good at your job that people think your job isn’t even necessary; or you could be putting out fires caused by your incompetence all day every day and people think you’re a hero.

Trump isn’t looking like a hero.

He is to his base. For now.

His base is, however, going to be disproportionately impacted by this virus.

Why would you think that? The virus is going to hit way harder in dense cities than in rural areas, and cities heavily lean towards the left

It's most deadly to older people.

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

I think this is exactly what's happening. It's an extension of the way individuals feel -- no one wants to be seen preparing too early, because people might think they're silly.

obligatory xkcd

https://xkcd.com/2278/

If you're disappointed in the American government on this, you haven't been paying attention for the past two years. They are handling this crisis exactly as they showed us they would.

> If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle.

This need not be this case. Any authorities who take action to shut down social contact now, before they turn into Italy, will be praised several months hence for being forward thinking because it will be clear what happened in every jurisdiction where they didn't shut down social contact, i.e. absolute catastrophe.

> What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."

The election season is in full swing and you should have the opportunity to vote on how well you think the crisis has been handled by November.

What I want though is a report that explains what incorrect actions the government took and the proximate and ultimate causes for those reactions. I want the causes addressed so we'll do better in the future.

Example: Why didn't we start testing with 100x or 1000x the number of tests? Maybe the reason is regulation on independent labs doing their own tests. Maybe there wasn't enough money banked up at the CDC such that, when a pandemic it's recognized, we can't immediately start mass producing tests.

The point is, I want it documented and explained what the failures were so that future people handling future disease outbreaks will perform better or at least not make the same mistakes. Further, a practice of exploring major mistakes would help motivate government bureaucrats to avoid making them. There should be a potential political cost to be dramatically wrong in vital scenarios.

How do you start testing with 100x the number of tests? You have to figure out how to make a test this takes time in itself. The disease is only a few months old so it isn't like there was time to prepare. This is a very hard supply management problem. Don't forget to account for tests that fail quality control, something that happens but can't be predicted.

South Korea has done almost 4k tests per million people. Guangdong in China has done 3k per million. The US has done 5 tests per million. That's three orders of magnitude worse than China or South Korea. Explanations like "This is a hard problem" or "There wasn't enough time" are simply unacceptable given that other countries are doing dramatically better.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19...

Well, cutting funding and firing staff from the CDC can't have helped. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

While I don't agree with the US's lackluster response, bear in mind there's other repercussions besides "just political". The quarantines and shutdowns will almost certainly destroy a lot of people's livelihoods. From people that aren't getting paid so can't pay their bills, to small business owners that will lose their businesses because they can't pay their bills. The effects of even a 1 week shut down can expect to be massive, and impact exactly the people who are already most struggling financially.

It will happen sooner or later so the number of people quarantined will just grow the longer you wait.

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

Yep. People do this with Y2K, for example. "Nothing happened, what an overreaction!"

Nothing happened because an enormous amount of work was done in advance, but people don't see that side of it as it's reasonably hidden.

Don't think we know why "nothing happened". I think the remediation was generally worth doing, but that's just a guess. There is no final reveal that tells you whether or not it was. We'll never really know.

There were a lot of small scale reveals. I worked in a lab in 1997 that turned the clock on some machines forward and watched what happened. We then told all customers this machine hasn't been made since 1975: it breaks and we won't update it - they responding by setting the clock back. We spent a lot more time testing (and fixing) the then current replacements.

Though to be fair, most of the media predicted bad outcomes were completely unrealistic and wouldn't have happened even if no effort was put into mitigation.

It's not just the US though, you have other countries in Europe handling this abysmally like The Netherlands. Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage despite multiple cases in Singapore being traced back to Indonesian travel (including one rich Indonesian who couldn't find anyone to treat them in Indonesia so deliberately flew to Singapore on a private plane to get healthcare).

>Indonesia is still in the "pray to make it go away" stage

This is true until last Thursday, but now the government had acknowledged at least 19 confirmed cases. Still super late though.

Yeah, but if multiple Singaporeans who are spending just a few days in Indonesia are coming back with COVID, it's obviously not 19 cases. Indonesia is where Iran was just a few weeks ago.

To be clear, I don't believe the following (Hanlon's razor, etc), but it would make a good dystopian/thriller:

As some point one might consider if governments see COVID-19 as an opportunity to "cull the herd". Japan and Italy have the two largest aging populations of any countries. The US has a large number of citizens with COVID-19 comorbidities.

I'm not sure if the long term savings on entitlements and health care costs would outweigh the short term economic damage, though.

Pretty much by definition in countries with large populations of old people, the current governments largely rely on the vote of those old people to stay in power. This makes the cull-the-herd theory rather unlikely in my opinion. I think simple incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

Also, many of the politician are old themselves. Being in public all the same, the are really vulnerable.

I'll give you a different basis for a conspiracy theory:

China got COVID-19 first. And got over it first. US and Europe are going to be devastated by it. I'm guessing Russia will fare no better. In the aftermath, who's going to be on top on the global scene?

What's the conspiracy?

China didn't get over COVID-19. They're still seeing double-digit deaths daily and new infections. They're going to see recurring new networks and pockets appear repeatedly. Endlessly if the virus has endured in other countries. They aren't coming out on top of this, especially given the absolutely enormous GDP damage they've already endured.

It’s extremely far-fetched, but I think the implication is either China engineered the virus or at least allowed it to spread, either because they already have a vaccine/treatment, or at least know they can control spread among their population better than other superpowers. Not to mention the power they wield by being the world’s supply chain.

In the tabletop exercise performed at Johns Hopkins just a few months ago, the world didn't fare so well. Even though some countries initially control it, it continues to spread and be reintroduced, ultimately leading to 65 million deaths worldwide: http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.htm...

A chilling, and somewhat likely simulation.

Chilling indeed - but we do have a weapon against that new virus: global lockdown for n weeks to fully eradicate it.

The possible death of nn millions of people is way worse than a global lockdown for a couple of weeks/months.

What makes you assume that the economic output of these old people, on total, is negative? They might be holding/running investments, collected massive knowledge along their careers or have enough savings and are making money for the private healthcare system.

If they go away, we might lose on the knowledge or their investments might stop working and the new youth might not manage it any better. So a total loss of society.

Holding/running investments -- investments would be passed to beneficiaries, who should have longer time horizons

Massive knowledge -- retired and not using it

Making money for the healthcare system -- fundamental life science advances could be lost or slowed down, but most healthcare spending is pure consumption, the labor could be better deployed to something more productive

Going with the abysmal handing theory. What concrete steps should, in your regard, be taken to contain the virus from spreading? How would these steps contribute to contain the virus and how would the be implemented without causing disproportional damage elsewhere?

Just saying the situation is handled badly is easy. Just like being a better football coach after a big game. There is a german saying that everytime the national soccer team looses Germany has 81 million national soccer trainers. Providing better solutions is the hrd part, almost as hard a judging why exactly current solutions are not sufficiet.

Quarantine a whole neighbourhood when a case is found, keep it locked down until everyone has tested negative for two weeks.

Drive-through testing where everybody with any symptoms can get themselves tested.

A good public education campaign with calm TV documentaries that show the facts of what was going on in Wuhan and is now going on in Italy, and explains why these actions need to be taken.

So basically a measured, fact based response to it. Sounds good if you ask me! Especially the education campaign is thoroughly missed at the moment.

I'm hoping TV crews get into Lombardy hospitals and show the West what is happening there, it might get people to take this seriously. But then someone needs to also give them clear instructions or it will just be panic.

That brings me back to my core question. What are people not taking serious about it? I get it that some people a scred and feel better when other share tht feeling, and they get external confirmation from th outside. But does this actually do any good? I don't think so.

We know what is happening there, no TV crew needed.

Report by an italien doctor from Bergamo: https://www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/bergamo-citta/con-le-nos...

Translated to english: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html

I know that. But a TV documentary would reach far more people, especially in the demographic most at risk.

Just letting you know that the measured, fact based response has been abandonned in some european countries as it simply does not scale/is not feasible after widespread community spreading is happening.

The only next step is large scale lock downs.

The USA is a disaster waiting to happen. I've lived through a disease outbreak that required lockdown/curfews in another country and I don't think the US is logistically or culturally prepared.

I don't want to go into longer detail as it will be subjective and seem political, but I'm expecting things to Get Weird.

I do agree, it will be a disaster in Europe but the US will be even worse, absolutely nothing is prepared for that.

Now if you think about the US even worse, what are you thinking about under-developped nations? Africa?

That's a good point, I can't say anything about Africa right now. It seems the virus hasn't affected the continent too much for now, it's difficult to say why, maybe bad conditions for the virus, luck or just a lack of testing (that's what I fear).

No clue. Given the way it seems to be more deadly for older people or those with comorbidities African countries may not have as big a % of the population at risk, plus it might not travel as fast there as there is less commercial and discretionary travel. But it's easy to think of other factors which would make it far worse.

Doesn't Africa at least have the benefit of being a warmer continent, with the current claims of the virus preferring milder, wet climates? Or has that last statement been debunked yet?

They didn't believe what happened in Wuhan would happen to them, mostly because of racist superiority I think. Surely our hospitals must be better than China's, we are healthier, et cetera.

And people distrust anything coming out of China's government so they simultaneously think China covered up a lot and there were way more dead, and they exaggerated how bad the virus is...

> it almost feels like Trump has some secret weapons ready to save the day. You would think that, since most of the leaders are in a high risk demographic and spend large chunk of their time shaking hands with strangers, they would be more vigilant

He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection.

There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show.

> He's behaving entirely consistently with how he always has: deny everything, project perfection.

> There's no signal here of a secret weapon, it's a complete shit show.

Can't really disagree, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with the way people in the US are talking about the response now. Was the US MSM not spending all of January and February telling us "calm down, you know the common flu kills WAY more people than this thing and we don't freak out about it!" and complaining how Trump's proposed Chinese traveler ban was both a) racist and b) would have little to no effect?

The vast majority of people don't have an intuitive understanding of exponential growth.

People not trained well in math and science don't even have/know the tools to help them understand it analytically.

We need (much) better math education for people studying all majors.

One of our older neighbors are inviting everyone on the nextdoor app to go to their house for movie night to prove that this is just a flu. The entire thread is people making fun of covid19 and how they are angry their retirement accounts are getting hit.

I wish I was making this up.

Geez, what part of the country if you don't mind me asking? Arrogance, ignorance, and disinformation is literally going to kill us. Thanks for sharing that.

Bay Area, CA

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'm not surprised. What movie? ;)

"there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated" - NOFX

The whole song is disturbingly accurate/prophetic.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsaretakingover.htm...

I'm completely unsurprised by what you're describing. I observed similarly disturbing behavior waiting in line @ Home Depot the other day. A customer was excited to find they had hand sanitizer in stock, and another customer told him there's a whole aisle full of the stuff and that all the covid stuff is fake news which devolved into nonsensical madness between yokels I had to just walk away from. Of course our Home Depot had some in stock, we're in rural bumblefuck middle of nowhere. Our stores only run out of things when the employees forget to do their jobs.

The last sentence applies to all stores, so. Unless people freak out and stock up for the apocalypse, in which case resupply might take a couple of days.

Yeah it's crazy. I suggested in the thread that they should take this a little more seriously and was immediately attacked for being a doom mongering idiot.

Oh well, I tried.

Darwin will solve this irresponsibly stupid behavior. Causing a lot of collateral damage unfortunately.

No, old people have likely already re-produced, and will not be prevented from reproducing if they die now.

I have to concede you're partly right. Darwin will solve more than you think though:

- Some old irresponsibly stupid males are still sexually active. Darwin would stop them reproducing.

- The old irresponsibly stupid neighbour is still a magnet for younger, sexually reproductive irresponsibly stupid people, probably more so than for others.

Please live "social darwinism" to 4chan.

Ignorance is not transmitted genetically.

It might help telling him that in some regions of northern Italy, patients over 65 with arrests are not assessed any longer and are not treated in an ICU, they are left to die.

I wish I was making this up.

Edit: Source added.

https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...

The whole “people don’t understand exponential growth” thing isn’t a very good explanation, considering that it applies to any contagious disease for which every person tends to infect some constant number of other people.

Which there are few in circulation, thanks to vaccines among other reasons (which lower effective transmission rate), so most people haven't really experienced it working. Somebody mentioned noroviruses the other day as probably the closest relevant thing people may have experienced - let someone with one loose on a cruise ship, and shit literally hits the fan very fast.

You talk about the MSM as if it was a thing, and not a term of propaganda. It may explain the confusion.

You seriously don't think that modern news outlets don't have a consistent, left-leaning, anti-Trump agenda?

Perhaps you've been drinking too much of their coolaid.

"Mainstream media" was a term long before people on the right started complaining about it.

Mainstream media tends to target their audience. Their audience is Americans who by popular vote are left of the government on average, and a higher percentage of them that live in cities, which adds to the left bias yet again. So no big surprise that most of the big MSM outlets appear left-leaning if you personally are right of center at all.

That doesn't mean Trump is doing a good job.

Mainstream media has a blinkered center-right bias that on CNN and MSNBC rewards the center-right democratic party and punches left. They don't care about the well being of the population, only about selling ads and preventing reform. On Fox, it's borderline fascist, actually fascist if you think about immigration and the concentration camps.

I don't actually know why the ruling class in the US is taking this so easy. There's some kind of brain disorder they have that is located between American exceptionalism, raw stupidity, and a complete disregard for the welfare of the people. I hope they all shake hands with a COVID patient like they did at CPAC.

People don't realize that FoxNews IS mainstream media. They're the #1 news channel...

Yeah, the only major conservative cable outlet. Against CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CBS, NPR...Not to mention almost every major web source.

People know full well that Fox is part of the MSM, but regardless of which way you lean, there's no question that the deck is stacked against conservative viewpoints.

No, I think that some news outlets do have that and some do not. Do you think that every modern news outlet has a consistent, left-leaning, anti-Trump agenda?

The MSM means the stuff every local tv news outlet repeats word for word verbatim:

Conan O'Brien has some great segments on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM8L7bdwVaA

They also do this for serious political stuff, repeating the same phrases over and over again, but posting those video compilations would just invite downvotes.

I don't remember much opposition to that order and I can't find any now.

You must not have been paying much attention then.

> The Trump administration’s quarantine and travel ban in response to the Wuhan coronavirus could undercut international efforts to fight the outbreak by antagonizing Chinese leaders, as well as stigmatizing people of Asian descent, according to a growing chorus of public health experts and lawmakers.[0]

> The Trump administration’s decision to severely restrict travel from China to the US and to implement a mass quarantine, the first in the US in more than 50 years, could be an overreaction that causes unnecessary fear and weakens the global response[1]

I can provide more if you’re not convinced that, just like every single other thing Trump does, right or wrong, he was attacked for actions related to the Coronavirus earlier this year...

0: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quarati...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/04/coronavirus-...

Yes, and this is a huge problem. Countries like Singapore which have managed to control the coronavirus have done so using travel restrictions much stricter than the US ones. The Washington Post found a solution to this though. They ran an op-ed "Coronavirus testing might have stopped it early. Now it's too late." pointing to Singapore's success as proof the coronavirus could've been contained, but completely omitting any mention of its use of border controls and pinning it entirely on aggressive testing. This went viral on social media, turning Singapore's success into a confirmation of people's existing belief seeded by the media that Trump's obsession with travel restrictions had screwed up the US coronavirus response.

Every news article on any policy change will include some characterization of what the opposition to it is saying.

It just turned out that being wrong was a political universal... when you have two parties that are completely set on disagreeing on a matter of fact, then it's guaranteed that at least one will have it wrong, at any given time. This doesn't change the fact that Trump is currently being more wrong.

The two statements don’t need be false or contradict the fact that it was mishandled.

A flight ban simply makes traceability harder, as people reroute through multiple hops. Victimizing Chinese communities is bad and will only make things worse (as people start hiding from authorities). And in the end, the virus was in Germany already in January, according to the tracing, so focusing on China would have helped little.

BUT

they could have mandated self-isolation for two weeks for all flight passengers disembarking, regardless of provenience. You get a tourism hit but slow down infection rates substantially.

They could have ensured better procedure for care in death. Those elderly people dying in high number right now, have probably infected hundreds of others already; they should have been tested weeks ago, and handled as infection carriers.

They could have prepared temporary field hospitals to spike capacity like the Chinese were forced to do. Chances are they will need them anyway, might as well do it advance than later under pressure.

They could have started shutting down large gatherings and prepare for curfew measures.

They’ve done none of that - and I say “they” as in US administration, UK administration, Australia (where they’ll even host a F1 GP with crowds this weekend!), France etc... They all hoped it would go away “on its own” like SARS did. Sadly, SARS was a lucky strike, this is the real deal.

Italy is following China's lead. It has been harder to change social behavior here. But it will change due to the severity of the situation. The lag in response will definitely make things more severe. But the climate may help, assuming warmer temperatures reduce transmission.

Trump's performance so far is a massive disappointment to say the least, and more of a parody even by Trump's standard.

I am not sure what he is doing is even remotely serving himself that well either. Addressing the Coronavirus upfront is the only way to cheer up the market right now. Did he really think he can just fight this virus with speech or tweets?

This is bothering me no end, and severely impact my confidence in US itself overall. Damn it, this is a full on crisis, the shit is about to hit the fan so hard.

[sarcasm] Because the virus is fake news:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370273563148697...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12370245512943820...

I'm amazed not only at these affirmations, but at the likes they get. Incredible.

Wow. I actively avoid reading Trumps tweets, it seems everytime I run across them eventually, it's so much worse.

I don't have this impression. Many nations are trying to find a cure or a vaccine.

Nobody knows the long term development of this virus. You could lock up everything, the economy collapses and it would hurt people even more than the virus might have. It is a gamble at this point.

Political games come into play if people demand answers that nobody can give. If some presume to be able to do that, they are lying to your face.

If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably.

For people who lost loved ones it was a catastrophe, for other part of the normal life risk. Any publicly uttered judgement has to keep that in mind, so it will always be relative. Some are more forthcoming, but probably not public officials.

Of course the virus is not under control, how could it be? I would prefer measures to reduce its spread, but that is basically intuition and listening to some doctors with the knowledge that it just buys time.

Anyone using this crisis for political points doesn't really win any cookies with me personally, on the contrary.

The incentive to cover something up is just a reflex to save face. I don't like covering something up. There is a risk of disproportionate overreaction, but I think a bad information policy reinforces this. If they covered something up, it must be really bad, right?

> If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably.

More like few millions in US alone, based on what happened in Italy which is more representative than China. Italy has >4% mortality rate last time I checked. And we talk about very well equipped and highly rated healthcare. I can't imagine this not having brutal effects on global economy.

Another point - unless we have proper fully working cure / vaccine, this ain't going anywhere. June ain't some magical time when virus decides to roll back because enough is enough. Southern hemisphere will keep the virus going on through our summer, so it will come back in autumn.

An additional point - this might be early to judge but it seems immunity is not gained after recovery, so re-infection is probable.

There are more points, like its high infection rate etc.

This is completely debased. You don't have reliable info on recoveries, infections or death rate. Currently around <3000 people died in China to my info and yes, that number will increase unfortunately. While I think you should take it seriously, it is another thing to predict millions of dead people. It is a respiratory disease and yes, those can kill you.

> so re-infection is probable.

I have the info the virus is not inclined to mutate. But it is just too early to tell.

The lack of mutation is both good and bad. It means the virus is less likely to get worse, but also means the virus is less likely to mutate to a less lethal form that would likely still provide some immunity to the more lethal one. On the brightest side, it may mean that we're not going to see waves of new infection each year like we do from influenza.

> And we talk about very well equipped and highly rated healthcare.

We also talk about a country in which 20%+ of the population is over 65 years old [0], compare that to China (11%) [1]

[0] https://www.indexmundi.com/italy/demographics_profile.html

[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/china/demographics_profile.html

Trump is indifferent to the suffering to come, and doesn’t feel it will touch him. He welcomes chaos, because it provides opportunity for personal enrichment.

“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have a, you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great,”

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/country-goes-hell-2014-vide...

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