The article is basically saying "we're going to be fine if we continue implementing extreme social distancing measures".
In other words, if we stop panicking, and big hotspots don't implement extreme social distancing measures, we won't be fine.
A certain level of panic is required to enforce efficacy of these social distance programs, so it seems dangerous to spread this message less people begin to act out of self interest.
A certain level of taking life and death situations seriously and doing the next right thing towards controlling the situation is required, from everybody.
Looks like he got lucky predicting 80000 cases and that is reported cases. He predicted the actual people that got tested and positive. He also is another one of those that the flu is worse and not understanding the high severity of many of the Covid cases is the thing that is what is worrying a lot of the professionals. The last thing is that the economics involved that may not make things fine in 1-2 year period, you cannot restart an economy like a light switch.
I feel like the headline is somewhat irresponsible. The framing encourages a "don't worry, be happy" attitude. Reading the article, the message is more like "If we keep doing the right things, we will be fine."
The problem with such a headline is it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't need to make any effort whatsoever for things to "be fine." I think this is not a great signal to send.
Exactly: I've actually been somewhat alarmist early on about this virus, but I actually agree with the article. We've had to make some crazy sacrifices in the last 2 weeks, but now that we've done those, things are actually looking moderately optimistic:
Most of the US hopefully isn't going to become a "big Italy", besides a few unfortunate hotspots. Other areas will still see heavy infections, but likely without overwhelming the hospital systems, if we maintain at least some far more moderate social distancing measures for another year.
...I do worry about the Deep South, due to poverty and lack of leadership by governors in that area.
I am doing what I can to make resources available online. I've done this a long time. I'm encouraged to see a lot of online resources popping up in response to this.
My hope is that the most vulnerable areas will get some relief from local issues because of the availability of online resources.
I run a Citizen Planners subforum. I write a bit about making money online. Etc.
There's a lot of free information available online and the internet proved to be a hugely helpful thing for me when I was homeless. It's proving to be a big deal for helping people cope in the face of quarantines, etc.
I'm cautiously optimistic -- assuming we continue to take it seriously and don't decide it's time to dance in the streets and party like it's 1999.
I think the bigger issue that we'll need to address after we handle the case influx is how we'll go about achieving herd immunity.
I'm starting to think it might be wise to consider letting small, not-at-risk populations out with the intention of allowing the virus to spread in a fashion that wouldn't overwhelm the health systems. A controlled burn, if you will. I'd definitely join in to something like this.
Question to the virologists on HN: human cells have some limits on how many generations they can be copied, have there even been similar mechanisms observed in viruses?
Not a virologist but a (former) molecular biologist. Hayflick limit is largely controlled by telomeres; viruses do not have telomeres due to a different mechanism of replication.
I’m not a virologist, but I did pay attention in biology class fwiw.
Evolutionary, a virus that can only replicate a few times is a dead end. That’d be like mule, a viable life form, but one that cannot reproduce successfully.
Think about the mechanisms of cells with generation limits, I’d intuit that they preform functions related to morphogenisis (we only want this bone to be this long), and forcing evolutionary iteration by limiting the maximum age of a individual. I’d posit that extreme longevity is an affront to evolution.
I could be totally off my rocker with the second part, but I’d like to think that a basic knowledge of biology and an obsession with cellular automata might have given me a useful intuition.
I was thinking more along the lines of a virus that is able to reproduce indefinitely in one species, but after a species jump ends up being able to reproduce only a limited number of generations due to the copying mechanism being subtly different in the host cell of the new species. But you're right that from an evolutionary standpoint such a virus would be a dead end if it happened in any species.
It would very much depend on how - and if - the different ribosomes and other cell mechanisms responsible for copying the viruses RNA (or DNA in some cases) would deal with the virus.
The effect you'd see would be a species jump, followed by a very virulent episode fizzling out when the copy errors accumulated to the point that the copies would no longer be viable.
Key points missing from the headline: social distancing is necessary, PPE supplies must be sufficient, and healthcare system must not have broken down for us ‘to be fine’.
He predicted the Chinese cessation of outbreak correctly because China consistently implemented the lockdown plan across regions and had strict measures to make sure of compliance.
From what we see, few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. Some people’s behaviors and general lack of mask wearing don’t help. (I think Germany may eventually accomplish that. The 2-person-max meeting rule and relatively extensive testing should help.)
We must read professional epidemiologists, like Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, whose expertise is more relevant and who don’t have nearly as rosy a view on the epidemic. (Marc is also on Twitter.)
>few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon.
There's an expected lag, we saw that in the Wuhan lockdown. Beyond a certain density of infection though, maybe it just won't be effective enough.
Wuhan lockdown was Jan 23rd and cases continued to rise for some time after because there is an incubation period, and additional family (and maybe within apartment building?) infection.
Italy lockdown is just where they were Wuhan was on Feb 2nd or so, it didn't look like it was slowing down enough for them at that point, but then did.
The lagging effect is true. What we see is a snapshot to the past. However, most accounts suggest that the European 'lockdown', esp early days in Italy, is too lax.
The trajectory will bend down. Whether it's sufficient we'll see in a couple of weeks, but that might be too late.
If preventative measures aren't employed correctly, then eventually, most people are going to watch someone they know die. I reckon that experience will cause them to employ preventative measures immediately.
Let's imagine how this will play out for a minute....
Assuming 1 person knows 100 people, it would take 1 million deaths to seriously warn 100 million. And since it takes 3-4 weeks from infection to death, during which the warning still wouldn't be personally grave, and infections continue to spread. Thus, the population will be infected until herd immunity is sufficiently high (~60% of population if R0 is ~2.5). [1]
If hospitalization rate is 15% & Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is 1%, then 9%/0.6% of the population will be severely ill/die within 1-2 years, respectively, just from this one disease. One can do further arithmetic for a given country.
The 'solution' above is clearly unacceptable to the vast majority of people.
At the moment it's looking like France is doing better than Germany. Many Eastern European countries acted early too, and it looks to be working. Lots of graphs here: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/
The number of deaths and those in critical/severe conditions are better measures than the number of infections. The latter greatly depends on testing policy and availability.
Germany is doing better than most in Europe by the former measures.
South Korea also had a higher infection growth rate since they tested extensively. Because of that they can identify cases and contain the spread.
If what I've seen in the grocery stores of the bay area is representative of overall behavior in the US, we're screwed. People still have very little awareness of personal space and very few people were wearing masks. Unless people commit to actual social distancing, there's no way we're going to stop the spread.
It would help, I think, if such claims were supported in ways that didn't make them sound like conspiracy theories and fearmongering.
Perhaps you'd like to do so. If not, consider that this is a singularly bad time to be spreading misinformation, no matter how plausible you may find it. People are already frightened enough.
> Except China is clearly lying about having their outbreak contained. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for everyone to realize.
You have no data to back up your totally spurious allegations. Are you just outright speculating? If you're going to say something so bold, citations are necessary.
What we do know is this:
- Apple has re-opened their factories and all 42 Apple stores in all of China [1], and closed their Apple stores in the entire rest of the world [2]. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Apple would do this except in the face of evidence. What kind of PR nightmare do you think they'd be inviting if it was discovered they put lives at risk to placate the PRC?
- Tourist attractions and factories are re-opening. [3]
- The WHO said: "China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real." [4]
- I've no doubt this will be confirmed via observation of atmospheric release of nitrous oxides in short order.
Fine, if you don't want to believe China, Apple or the WHO (and soon NASA), you better have some data, otherwise it's just breathless unsubstantiated fear-mongering and conspiracy theories.
While I don’t believe the line that their new cases are at zero, I have a lot of contact with the Asian and Chinese supply chain and I can assure you that things are mostly back to normal with Chinese factories. So the situation in China is much improved at the very least.
Question from the cheap seats here : what causes a virus to "burn itself out" or fail to keep replicating? A lack of new hosts it can infect? Environmental details (heat, humidity)?
I am not a credible source on this, but I believe if we achieve heard immunity the virus burns itself out because it will eventually not find new hosts to infect. The virus has to keep finding new hosts, because otherwise the people infected will either get well and gain immunity or die. If enough people gain immunity then the virus can't spread anymore. Not everyone has to be become immune, just enough.
The problem is that for this virus, "just enough" immune people is about 60% of the population. If 1% of that 60% die, as will happen with COVID19, that's a lot of deaths.
The other alternative is social distancing, so you can reduce R0 (the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to) from something like 2.5-3 down to less than 1. Then it dies back by itself. This is what China and South Korea succeeded in doing.
Since this is hacker news, where is the Girardian analysis? This situation seems to call for it with the fear of outsiders and scapegoating. Hard to worry about mimetic contagion when there is a real contagion?
Readit News
In other words, if we stop panicking, and big hotspots don't implement extreme social distancing measures, we won't be fine.
A certain level of panic is required to enforce efficacy of these social distance programs, so it seems dangerous to spread this message less people begin to act out of self interest.
A certain level of taking life and death situations seriously and doing the next right thing towards controlling the situation is required, from everybody.
cf Anna, “The Next Right Thing” Frozen 2 https://youtu.be/p5B_EhxqAJo
Panic = people dying needlessly
The problem with such a headline is it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't need to make any effort whatsoever for things to "be fine." I think this is not a great signal to send.
Most of the US hopefully isn't going to become a "big Italy", besides a few unfortunate hotspots. Other areas will still see heavy infections, but likely without overwhelming the hospital systems, if we maintain at least some far more moderate social distancing measures for another year.
...I do worry about the Deep South, due to poverty and lack of leadership by governors in that area.
My hope is that the most vulnerable areas will get some relief from local issues because of the availability of online resources.
I run a Citizen Planners subforum. I write a bit about making money online. Etc.
There's a lot of free information available online and the internet proved to be a hugely helpful thing for me when I was homeless. It's proving to be a big deal for helping people cope in the face of quarantines, etc.
I'm cautiously optimistic -- assuming we continue to take it seriously and don't decide it's time to dance in the streets and party like it's 1999.
I think the bigger issue that we'll need to address after we handle the case influx is how we'll go about achieving herd immunity.
I'm starting to think it might be wise to consider letting small, not-at-risk populations out with the intention of allowing the virus to spread in a fashion that wouldn't overwhelm the health systems. A controlled burn, if you will. I'd definitely join in to something like this.
you can start now by volunteering to join the vaccine trials....
Question to the virologists on HN: human cells have some limits on how many generations they can be copied, have there even been similar mechanisms observed in viruses?
Evolutionary, a virus that can only replicate a few times is a dead end. That’d be like mule, a viable life form, but one that cannot reproduce successfully.
Think about the mechanisms of cells with generation limits, I’d intuit that they preform functions related to morphogenisis (we only want this bone to be this long), and forcing evolutionary iteration by limiting the maximum age of a individual. I’d posit that extreme longevity is an affront to evolution.
I could be totally off my rocker with the second part, but I’d like to think that a basic knowledge of biology and an obsession with cellular automata might have given me a useful intuition.
It would very much depend on how - and if - the different ribosomes and other cell mechanisms responsible for copying the viruses RNA (or DNA in some cases) would deal with the virus.
The effect you'd see would be a species jump, followed by a very virulent episode fizzling out when the copy errors accumulated to the point that the copies would no longer be viable.
He predicted the Chinese cessation of outbreak correctly because China consistently implemented the lockdown plan across regions and had strict measures to make sure of compliance.
From what we see, few western countries have bended the infection trajectory sufficiently to see the outbreak ending soon. Some people’s behaviors and general lack of mask wearing don’t help. (I think Germany may eventually accomplish that. The 2-person-max meeting rule and relatively extensive testing should help.)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
We must read professional epidemiologists, like Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, whose expertise is more relevant and who don’t have nearly as rosy a view on the epidemic. (Marc is also on Twitter.)
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/03/lipsitch-call-to-action
There's an expected lag, we saw that in the Wuhan lockdown. Beyond a certain density of infection though, maybe it just won't be effective enough.
Wuhan lockdown was Jan 23rd and cases continued to rise for some time after because there is an incubation period, and additional family (and maybe within apartment building?) infection.
Italy lockdown is just where they were Wuhan was on Feb 2nd or so, it didn't look like it was slowing down enough for them at that point, but then did.
The trajectory will bend down. Whether it's sufficient we'll see in a couple of weeks, but that might be too late.
Assuming 1 person knows 100 people, it would take 1 million deaths to seriously warn 100 million. And since it takes 3-4 weeks from infection to death, during which the warning still wouldn't be personally grave, and infections continue to spread. Thus, the population will be infected until herd immunity is sufficiently high (~60% of population if R0 is ~2.5). [1]
If hospitalization rate is 15% & Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is 1%, then 9%/0.6% of the population will be severely ill/die within 1-2 years, respectively, just from this one disease. One can do further arithmetic for a given country.
The 'solution' above is clearly unacceptable to the vast majority of people.
[1] Herd immunity threshold Vc= 1 - 1/R0, where R0 is basic reproduction number of a disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics
Germany is doing better than most in Europe by the former measures.
South Korea also had a higher infection growth rate since they tested extensively. Because of that they can identify cases and contain the spread.
Deleted Comment
Perhaps you'd like to do so. If not, consider that this is a singularly bad time to be spreading misinformation, no matter how plausible you may find it. People are already frightened enough.
You have no data to back up your totally spurious allegations. Are you just outright speculating? If you're going to say something so bold, citations are necessary.
What we do know is this:
- Apple has re-opened their factories and all 42 Apple stores in all of China [1], and closed their Apple stores in the entire rest of the world [2]. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Apple would do this except in the face of evidence. What kind of PR nightmare do you think they'd be inviting if it was discovered they put lives at risk to placate the PRC?
- Tourist attractions and factories are re-opening. [3]
- The WHO said: "China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real." [4]
- I've no doubt this will be confirmed via observation of atmospheric release of nitrous oxides in short order.
Fine, if you don't want to believe China, Apple or the WHO (and soon NASA), you better have some data, otherwise it's just breathless unsubstantiated fear-mongering and conspiracy theories.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/13/21177964/apple-stores-chi...
[2] https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/apple-extends-coronavirus-trig...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2020/03/21/no-new-...
[4] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...
If anyone truly knows I'd like to hear it.
The other alternative is social distancing, so you can reduce R0 (the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to) from something like 2.5-3 down to less than 1. Then it dies back by itself. This is what China and South Korea succeeded in doing.