Hacker News Reader

nn35on Anders Tegnell defends Sweden's virus approach

Japan definitely did not do test and trace.

Japan did 90%+ mask coverage.

nn35on Anders Tegnell defends Sweden's virus approach

Masks seem significantly more important than tests.

Hard to make the argument that testing is of primary importance considering Japan did almost none and still didn't see a significant outbreak.

nn35on Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down stay-at-home order that closed businesses

Would you still think it was judicial activism if it had the opposite effect on policy?

If "emergency" is vaguely defined, it seems completely within the purview of the courts to clarify it.

Nice summary btw.

nn35on 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people

Marginal Revolution is more interesting than HN precisely because "X is widely believed, therefore X is true" doesn't fly as a line of argument over there.

Although of course they do lack civility.

nn35on A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall

Take a gap year and do what, exactly? Sitting around your parents' house for a year is probably worse than getting the coronavirus, for an 18 year old. Maybe much worse.

nn35on Whole Foods employees are staging a nationwide 'sick-out'

We don't know the hospitalization rate. That site counts confirmed cases; epidemiologists seem to think total cases are greater by a factor of at least 10x. It also doesn't break out by age group.

Taken together, these considerations imply hospitalization rate for < 40yo should be far below the 10-20% figure. (On the flip side, many of the currently infected who have not yet been hospitalized will be hospitalized in the future.)

I don't know the hospitalization rate for < 40yo, but the death rate is thought to be around 0.1%. It would be very surprising if the hospitalization rate were more than a couple percent.

nn35on Whole Foods employees are staging a nationwide 'sick-out'

It does not seem remotely workable to me to shut down every grocery store in America with a positive COVID test among their staff.

If you want to argue for less extreme measures, I will probably support them.

nn35on Whole Foods employees are staging a nationwide 'sick-out'

-Immediate shutdown of any location where a worker tests positive for COVID-19.

This seems likely to shut down the majority of Whole Foods stores in short order. An unreasonable request, IMO. Grocery stores are genuinely essential to society and the death rate for < 40yo is very small. Put some masks on them and keep working.

I do think high-risk employees should basically be allowed to stay home, though.

nn35on Handbook of Covid-19 Prevention and Treatment from Hospital with 0% fatality [pdf]

What kind of info? Would love to know more.

nn35on Potential false-positive rate among the 'asymptomatic infected individuals'

Are you confused or am I misreading your comment? The result is that 80% of positives are false positives, not that 80% of all tests are false positives. (IMO it is still fishy.)

nn35on Potential false-positive rate among the 'asymptomatic infected individuals'

How did they estimate this? If anybody can read the actual paper, I’d love to know.

If false positives dominate true positives then you’d expect total positives to depend primarily on number of tests given, right? Which sounds wrong to me, but I’d be interested in hearing other thoughts.