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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Why put the goal at flattening, instead of just killing it completely? If you observably flatten the curve, you're already almost all of the way to get R_0 to below 1. Why not just go all the way? The Chinese seem to have managed it, why aim at anything less?

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>Why put the goal at flattening, instead of just killing it completely?

Because the American government does not have the state capacity to carry out necessary measures and the American population doesn't have the discipline to listen.

Same is probably true for a bunch of other countries and failed states, I don't even want to know how many people in iran are actually infected at this point.

When/if news crews start reporting that patients over 65 are not assessed by a doctor because there isn't enough doctors. And we see videos of crowded hospitals where people die because of insufficient care.

Maybe then, people will stop going out.

South Korea is also close to managing this outbreak:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_S...

The US should immediately adopt measures used in South Korea.

Because the Chinese approach by now would requires forced quarantine of the majority of the world for months.

Sure, but anything less won't make much of a dent. That's my point: to observably flatten the curve, you need to go almost all the way there of killing it altogether. The "flat curve" region of R_0 is just very, very small.

> That's my point: to observably flatten the curve, you need to go almost all the way there of killing it altogether.

no, you don't. killing it completely would (hand-waving) require taking R0 < 1, and holding it there indefinitely.

any reduction in R0 at all will flatten the curve, at least a bit. and small changes in the rate of growth can have a huge impact when you're dealing with (even temporarily) exponential growth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg

Because almost everyone I talk to in person doesn't even seem to understand that this is happening. They're certainly not going to be receptive to a total lockdown until they start hearing second degree contacts are dying.

Framing it like this anticipates the silly but common fatalist argument "that everyone will be infected" or "there is little an individual can do". The more nuanced point is that it won't come to a dead stop. The curve graph also highlights the importance of individual action in taking strain of the healthcare system.

Which R0 do you mean? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3157160/

The incubation time is too long and too random.

The only option is to delay the spread and inject people with a deactivated carona vaccine as soon as possible, which should stop half the population from getting it, and reduced lethality for those who do get it.

Chinese haven't killed it at all. As soon as they lift the quarantine it'll get reimported from elsewhere in the world. Eradicating a disease requires worldwide cooperation, which hasn't been in evidence at all this outbreak. Just look at how stubborn measles and polio have been, despite both having inexpensive vaccines and only human hosts.

We would love to kill it, but that's not really an option right now. To kill it we either need a vaccine or to quarantine every single person 24/7 because we don't know who has it. We don't have a vaccine yet and the other option would completely kill all economic activity. More people would die from lack of access to food, water, and emergency services.

>More people would die from lack of access to food, water, and emergency services.

Any proof for that, I guess based on China?

Because, between the lines, the level of top down, military like action and trampling of civil rights that is possible in China is likely not possible here without sparking a civil war - making the whole situation worse.

We'll have to see how its gonna play out in Italy after their lockdown.

"The constitution isn't a suicide pact" is the exact wording used by Lincoln to defend suspending Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. The same exact line was used to defend Kormatsu vs United States (Japanese Internment, which is still fully legal to execute in 2020 per Trump v Hawaii)

If shit gets bad, the courts will rubber stamp literally anything done in the name of national security. I fully expect constitutional rights to be thrown out the window temporarily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

US courts have consistently ruled in favor of public health measures during emergencies that arguably violate civil liberties.

It would cause disorganized resistance and economic breakdown, but not civil war, tbh.

>disorganized resistance and economic breakdown

Even worse, imagine all the thing we have to do to get back to our baseline economy. A civil war would be very quick

Well I'm just talking a few Waco Texas, nothing too apocalyptic on the insurrectionary front. If the government learned how to stimulate the economy for real, and starting doing some all the deferred infrastructure work, I'm sure it could lift us out of the economic woes the quarantine created. It would would just take some time to figure it out, the US governments are all brawn no brains right now, but things ran decently well in WWII so we'd get there after a while.

I'm not saying this is good, I'm saying if you don't like a huge state intervention, don't pat yourself on the back saying it would go miserably enough to make the government change its mind.

Chinese are certainly lying about numbers, and even if they aren't, they can't possibly return to work (which they're also lying about) and simultaneously be containing this bug.

At best, even if they're telling the truth about numbers, the moment that they stop lying about economic activity and actually bring workers back to work, than their case numbers will go back up again.

Interesting article in the NY Times that disputes this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/coronavirus-china-...

(can use reader mode to bypass paywall)

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that either 1. The Chinese will go to great lengths to show evidence that "things are the way we say they are" in much the same way that North Korea does with American tourists.

The less likely scenario in my mind 2. is that the claims of the WHO being compromised by China are true. This article doesn't do much for me to dispel those concerns given that it's a prominent WHO doctor who penned your linked article.

Maybe I'm totally wrong and China is telling the truth, but that sort of intuition when applied to basically any other part of economic activity with the Chinese is just blatantly wrong (just ask people who work with Chinese suppliers about how crappy their "save face" system is re: trying to get a straight answer about any problems)

The fact that China is sending ventilators to Italy gives me some confidence that they really do have the virus under control for now.

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