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Comment by RobertRoberts | Hacker News Reader

Common sense needs to prevail over mania, numbers over hyperbole and science over conjecture. But even then, this is hard if our data is collected poorly and then poorly disseminated.

So what is the answer then? Maybe a strengthening of resolve against all forms of panic?

Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic?

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This line of thinking is backwards. Usually the problems that we don't solve are the ones where we should have taken stronger measures (i.e, "panicked") earlier instead of waiting for evidence of a threat.

We did listen to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over Y2K bug and a lot of money was spent on it before January 1st, 2000, so that got solved swiftly. On the other hand:

- Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") over the excess of the dot-com era, we wouldn't have pets.com and WebVan.

- Had we listened to the ones crying (i.e, "panicking") about the mortgage crisis, we wouldn't have gone through the 2008 recession.

- Had we listened to the ones warning about the need of controlling flights to China in January (i.e, "panicking"), half of Europe wouldn't be in lockdown.

Italy was one of the first countries to ban flights from China. Fat lot of good it did. But I agree that there should have been a stronger reaction, in terms of testing / tracing / isolating.

It did after it was already infected, by then they should've reduced the mobility of the people, close the football games, etc - which they didn't and led to people from Valencia going to Milan for the match, getting infected and spreading the thing faster still in Spain.

No "panic" enough.

Every circumstance you mentioned was not "solved" with panic, but was solved with thoughtful and persitant action.

If you are proposing the only way to "thoughtful and persistent action" is by being induced by panic. Then I would appreciate your evidence of this.

For example the 2038 problem is more serious that Y2k. My actions today (as soon as I found out about it) was to alter all current and future systems and plan to alter all current systems in place in the near future.

No panic needed to take this action.

Do you believe the only way to motivate people is to panic them? Do you not see a long term down side to this approach?

That's not the point being made. Panic was not what was done or suggested, it was the dismissive tone that such concerns were met with by Critics. GP's point was that the claims it was panic were wrong and harmful, not the quote unquote "panic".

Yes, and not just the dismissive tone. Even worse is the fact that the "we need more data" crowd mistakes Absence of Evidence for Evidence of Absence - as in "I will only wear the seat-belt after I witness a car-crash in front of me".

My point is that what you call "panic" is not really panic.

It is not panic to leave a building as fast as you can when a fire alarm rings - even if we don't know what caused the alarm to ring in the first place. I don't care about "numbers over hyperbole" or "science vs conjecture", I leave the building and assume that I am at risk by staying inside.

Likewise, it is not "panic" to propose that we err on the side of precaution and take measures that could contain an epidemic of uncertain risk and dangers, instead of adopting a "wait-and-see" attitude that might be fatal. Chinese doctors wanted to ring the alarm in November and were silenced by the Communist Party. When we got to December/early January and even the Party couldn't hide it anymore, we should've taken that more seriously and started to look for the "way out of the building", even if we didn't know yet how big is the fire/what caused it/who started it/etc.

Another example that people seem to have basically forgotten about is the ozone hole. That could have been extremely nasty, had action not been taken.

Does 'panic' mean 'reacting to a problem with a severity of response that is proportionate to how big of a problem it will be in the future, rather than how big of a problem it is now'?

Probably many problems have been solved by this.

Bah, proper statistics on Chinese data showed this was going to be really bad in January. Nobody lifted a finger then other than quarantine, which already was known to be insufficient based on initial Chinese epidemiology.

(When the curve was way past SARS-CoV-1 outbreak.)

Correct data-driven measures have been taken somewhat too late.

The definition of panic is: "A sudden, overpowering feeling of fear, often affecting many people at once. synonym: fear."

The reason we don't panic about the number 1 killer of Americans is because we are rational about it. We've researched and considered the cause and results carefully.

The solution to something that causes fear is not more fear is it?

The craziest stat I heard today was on my local news, and it was about COVID19 in the county, Davidson County (Nashville, TN,) they said of all the active cases in the county only 2 had been hospitalized. That's out of 163. The others were sent home to be quarantined and medicated. I was floored. Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information. Hospitalization rates should be one of the main stats being shared, imo.

It doesn't seem like hospitalization rates are being as consistently tracked. Or if they are, not disseminated. My state's official page tracks changes daily, but doesn't include hospitalizations.

There are countries that do report:

"17 March: the total number of cases was 1705, of which 314 patients had been admitted to the hospital"

That was week ago, now it's 1230 people in the hospital, or 4 times more. So I expect 5000 at the end of the next week in the Netherlands. The growth of the infection by the novel virus is exponential, until strong enough measures start to work, and the Netherlands wasn't (due to the politicians) ready to seriously enforce them.

So it's around 20%, once one has more than a few cases. And that's far from being a small percentage.

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

hospitalization rates are being shared. IIRC, they are generally around 20% of confirmed cases, but the testing rate is low here so hard to know the true numbers

The testing rate is low almost everywhere. The mass testing done in the Italian town Vò suggests that 50-75% of infections are asymptomatic (but still contagious). This matches the findings from the cruise ship "Diamond Princess".

Also note that the populations of both the cruise ship and Vò skew quite a bit older than the world average, and younger people are more likely to be asymptomatic (AFAIK we still don't know how more likely)

> Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information. Hospitalization rates should be one of the main stats being shared, imo.

Because it’s in the neighborhood of 15% worst case needing hospitalization. You’ve already got enough people blowing off quarantine measures, so no one is terribly eager to share that of the people who DO get the virus, 85% don’t require hospitalization. I get the reasoning from a public policy perspective, but I agree that information should be made a bit more easily accessible.

> Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information.

Because it's only 163, and data of an unknown quality.

In Iowa the Department of Health is reporting over 2100 negative tests (we are currently only testing patients who come into the hospital or already admitted) and 105 confirmed cases. Obviously a much smaller population size than other areas.

Sure but most of those are new cases. Do you have any idea what happened with those cases two weeks later or even if it's been two or three weeks for the cases? You'd only expect that 16-32 would require hospitalization in any case. But on the other hand, you can expect 326 visible or invisible cases the next week and gradually things get difficult, if the trend that's been documented continues.

I can see that, but I also can see that this could give us insight into the virus as it spreads throughout the population. Like, what if it is mutating, becoming weaker/stronger, hospitalization rates would give us insight into that.

Hospitalization rate is a function of age; if the 163 infected are young, you would expect a hospitalization rate of near zero.

> Why are stats like that not shared?

They are being shared daily.

That doesn't seem abnormal? The majority of cases don't need hospitalisation. Some countries have hospitalised most cases while numbers are small, but mostly as a precaution, and they'll be kicked out once numbers rise. I thought that was fairly well known.

So far. How many of those will need hospital care in the next few weeks?

What we need is more data. What is the % of Covid-19 cases that require hospitalization (and are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to?) ? Is it 20x that of flu or 2x? We need random testing throughout the population to know true mortality rate and herd immunity.

We have the data we need. We know how fast it grows, we know how bad it is. It's at least order of magnitude (as in, surely ten times) worse than flu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...

As shown, in Italy there were 55 times more deaths per week (two weeks already) than the peek during the flu season. And it continues to grow.

> are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need to?

Surely no. In Italy, it is known that even the people who should go to hospitals can't be all admitted because the number of cases grows exponentially and fast, when uncontrolled. No limited resources could handle that.

People already die because the hospitals are too full.

Additionally, all people who are checked but than estimated to be able to survive without the hospital are advised to stay at home. But some of those still get sicker and die at home. That happens, infrequently for now, even in other European countries.

The reason people are admitted to hospitals is that they have so big problems breathing that they either immediately or at least soon have to be connected to the breathing machines. Which nobody would ever do to a healthy enough person, it's to save the life.

That's what are ICU on the graph above "intensive care units" -- the number of beds in typically small parts of hospitals where typically small number of people has to be connected to the machines to help them survive. Now the demand for those is huge.

And even 30-year old doctors get to have to be treated so:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11226440/three-junior-doctors-...

Consider this, if the news reported "Old people with pre-existing conditions should quarantine themselves because a deadly virus may kill them", that would be rational advice based on data.

Instead, the entire economy has been shut down, and the solution? Test everyone regardless of risk or value of testing. This is not rational, and many scientists and doctors are saying this.

Doctors and nurses should be tested regularly as they are more susceptible to contraction do to proximity, and the elderly or those in contact with areas of high infection or high risk of fatality.

Poorly reported sensationalism in the news needs a proper counter balance. And society needs something to overcome their power to induce irrational panic so easily.

What harm is there in testing everyone?

If it can be done cheaply and easily while preventing additional infections, no harm at all. In fact, testing as many people as possible to isolate carriers is, I believe, the single best way to handle this crisis. It's not doable at this point, although hopefully we'll get there.

> Instead, the entire economy has been shut down, and the solution?

The hospitals are being overrun.

Your whole comments just reads like you're upset that you can't go out with your friends anymore. "Why should I have to stay at home, its the old people that are in danger, they should have to stay home."

The hospitals are being overrun. That means that if left unchecked the virus overwhelms healthcare. Just yesterday we've hospitalized people in their 30s and 40s here. It's not just the old people who need intensive care. It seems to be its the old people who die even with intensive care.

They are being overrun with panic of the citizenry in the U.S. so far - not with people needing hospital care. At least so says my E.R. doctor sister.

At the moment, but the spread is exponential, and the U.S. in not an exception. It's just a matter of N days, where N is not a too big number. Everybody can do his own math, provided he understands the math enough.

But be aware of anybody who hasn't done the math. He simply doesn't know what he talks about.

>The hospitals are being overrun.

Which hospitals in the US are being overrun by Covid cases? Close friend works at a large hospital just north of Sacramento (near the first Covid death in California)... not a single Covid patient in their hospital. Heard a guy from NYU Lagone on the radio earlier - said they're nowhere near capacity. I'm not saying this isn't serious, but a lot of the rhetoric is alarmism with no basis in fact at this point.

"Were not overwhelmed yet so its fine"

Cases are still growing exponentially. The hospitals in Italy are being overrun. They were being overrun in China.

We do not have all the data we need. Just for starters, we don't know why the situation is so much worse in Italy than in Japan.

> we don't know why the situation is so much worse in Italy than in Japan.

So... because we don't know why just Asian countries are better than Western in controlling the outbreak, the Western countries should just... do nothing to control the outbreak?

In spite already being in disadvantage?

And having the examples that we know worked?

Seriously?

> Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic?

What does that mean? "Panic" is not a strategy, it's an instinctive response to fear.

>Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic?

Surely there's a historical figure who at some point fled in panic. Having survived, they then changed the world.

If you're having an asthma attack, running outside in a panic might get you away from the airborne allergen.

All the training I learned in boy scouts, heard from survivalist, people who have survived outrageous circumstances by their own choosing and actions did not attribute their success to panic, but the opposite, keeping a clear head.

It's likely we can find stories of people panicing and surviving, sure. But can a paniced person (one overwhelmed with intoxicating fear) help others? No.

A drowning person will also drown their own lifeguard to attempt to save themselves. This is a well established fact that all trained lifeguards know.

Panic causes irrational and often self destructive choices. And often hurt others.

I absolutely agree that panic has only narrow uses.

Epidemiologists were producing numbers, papers, estimates from the december and continue to produce them. But somehow these don't count?

What is panic and why do you think this is a panic? If anything, the lack of concern by policy makers and the public has turned this into a catastrophe. If they had “panicked” three months ago, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.

Unfortunately, if we had panicked 3 months ago and prevented all of this, we'd never know it. People would just look and say, "see it was no big deal, we panicked for nothing".

Some historians attribute the French Revolution at least partly to a mass hysteria of the idea that aristocrats were planning on starving the populace during a grain shortage. And feudalism was abolished as a result.

Other countries managed to abolish feudalism without quite so many mass executions or consequent authoritarian strongmen plunging their continents into devastating series of wars.

... often just because rulers were so scared by the French experience, that they caved at the first demand for better forms of government.

In a similar way, a lot of worker rights gained in the XX century were introduced only because elites were utterly scared by the Soviet experience.

Sometimes it helps to have a reference, so to speak.

Speaking of which, before the revolution in which Soviets came to power, we had serfdom in russia - basically our version of a feudal system

Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861.

Eh... _kind of_. It was abolished in such a way that in practice it kept more or less functioning for a very long time afterwards.

If you mean that peasants still had to rely on the land owned by somebody else to survive, then yes. But this had been the case in every country that had serfdom and abolished it, usually until industrialization funneled all those peasants into the cities.

But serfdom is a lot more than that - it's literally treating people as slaves, selling them etc. That part was decisively abolished.

By 1917, when the Revolution happened, peasants' primary concern was access to and control of the land, not personal freedom.

As I understand it, many emancipated serfs and their descendants were still paying off a substantial tax intended to compensate landowners into the 20th century, often by working for the same landowners. It was clearly an improvement over serfdom, but likely a worse situation than contemporary peasants elsewhere.

But didn't the French revolution have highly intellectual leaders that sought to create an entirely new government?

I doubt they decided their rules of law while feeling panic. It was likely done over a long period of time with careful thought and consideration.

That ‘careful thought and consideration’ let to the Reign of Terror.

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

The road to hell, & etc.

This "Reign of Terror" (La Terreur) is becoming highly controversial amongst academic historians. Don't believe everything on wikipedia, even if it fits your views.

Furret and Soboul are most likely the cause of those, but better, or at least more descriptivist/scientific historians like https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Biard or https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Cl%C3%A9ment_Martin are probably closer to the truth.

I'm not saying that Furret is a bad historian: he is the reason why we can be closer to the truth, now. By disproving some of the marxist interpretation claims and advancing his own interpretation, he allowed younger historian to do the same to his own, finding proofs through legislative archives that some "French revolution facts" were not really facts, and especially, the legend about the assembly: "La Terreur est a l'ordre du jour".

French textbook still have not been updated, and neither was wikipedia :/

Sorry, i'm an history nerd.

What do you mean by “common sense”?

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