Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/government-act-corona-covid-19/ <comment><USER3> I think this theory gives _way_ too much credit to governmental competence. I think Yes Minister's Four Stage Strategy is a much more accurate assessment:

 _Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis:_

 _In stage one we say nothing is going to happen._

 _Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it._

 _In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there 's nothing we can do._

 _Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it 's too late now._

[https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak](https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak)

<comment><USER4> Sounds like climate change denial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing.

Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home.

I'm not saying this is bad, I just think such recommendations and articles should come from people that have more experience with modeling such epidemics.

Fitting a dataset with an exponential function is easy, it just doesn't tell us much beyond the current growth rate. It's also a bit ridiculous to judge how bad the situation is in a given country without accounting for differences like the number of tests that are done and the overall population of these countries.

<comment><USER6> It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day, forming the very foundation of the discussion and policy around the virus.

I know of a certain company whose entire purpose is building and selling a product that lets you plug in equations of complex, dynamic systems and play with the models to understand and predict things. Like serious, industrial- grade stuff that's used to design chemical plants. They could easily get a virologist on call and model the spread more sensibly, or even individual countries in detail, and release that - which would give a basis for people to discuss what to do and when in a much better way that's happening now. They'd probably also save themselves a year's worth of marketing expenses. But I don't see them, or any of their competitors doing anything like this.

I'm thoroughly disappointed. Is the ArcGIS dashboard from John Hopkins University _really_ the best our civilization has to offer in terms of informing people and evidence-based discussions? Because while I want to believe that our politicians have more sophisticated tools available, I'm pretty sure they're just looking at the same dashboards and same news stories as we do.

<comment><USER7> The trouble is that pretty much all of the data is garbage quality, and if you feed garbage into a computer you of course just get garbage out. The figures from Wuhan are particularly bad, probably just a function of their testing ramp-up until _well_ after the peak, and the ones from Italy might not be much better. (The other problem is that China has taken the position that their numbers are an exact description of reality and their approach is a model for the rest of the world to follow, basically for domestic political reasons, and the WHO seems to be eagerly regurgitating this to the many people who'll listen.)

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't necessarily call the data "garbage" but the numbers are definitely _soft_.

But soft numbers are a common issue with many areas of public health. In particular, analysis of the current pandemic suffers from both a "numerator" and "denominator" problem ([http://conflict.lshtm.ac.uk/page_83.htm](http://conflict.lshtm.ac.uk/page_83.htm))

I think many of us are accustomed to getting high-quality stats when studying a process. But that's often not possible with a fast-moving public health issue.

I think you have to acknowledge the limitations of the data, but it can still be helpful.

The thing I _don't_ like about the JHU dashboard is that it doesn't really let you slice the data in interesting ways. For example, I'd like to be able to click on a country or state/province and see temporal data. This doesn't seem like it would be that difficult, but maybe I'm naive.

<comment><USER9> I've tried doing some stuff with the Italian data but got a similar roadblock. For example, I'd be interested in knowing, among the ICU cases, if these cases were new (people arrived in the ICU with a diagnosis) or a worsening of the already existing patients (perhaps in sub-intensive care earlier).

It would help forming an idea on how the current situation (in addition to the new cases) is going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't seem very well thought out. The economic cost of the first scenario (numerous deaths in peak period) would likely be the highest with the impact both on workforce and market sentiment. The impact of long tail scenarios lower because death toll would not be just redistributed but also reduced by likely an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER11> No it's not. It's just one guy making up random shit on a blog and is pretending that governments think like him.

The reality is probably closer to the fact that there isn't anything governments can do about it. They can try to shut down the borders of the country, but that is going to a lot worse and probably won't stop it anyways.

Just because governments can do something and do do something doesn't mean that that something is meaningful or will have a positive impact.

Many things are just outside of their control.

<comment><USER12> Denmark did close every school and most administrations. France did not.

Many decisions can be taken, but are not (for various reasons). Most experts recommend to limit contacts rather than closing down borders, and no one is pretending to stop the virus but they all should try to flatten the curve. You don't seem to pay attention to the current situation.

<comment><USER13> France has 11x Denmark's population and 4x it's confirmed cases, so it seems like doing nothing worked better.

<comment><USER14> Denmark's case number has increased far more than that of other countries in recent days. They probably had to act as they'd overtake Italy in less than a week with cases/capita if growth continues like that.

<comment><USER15> The case #'s only go up if you test more people. In Ohio for instance they are only testing very few people and there is now evidence of community spread because the 4th person confirmed had no known contact but you basically need to be in intensive car to get tested or have an obvious connection. So the case # in and of themselves could vary based upon testing criteria. Not sure if they have the same standards in Denmark vs France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is just not correct. Governments are acting on this throughout the world. Don't conflate governments with politicians. For well-functioning states, state agencies are dealing with this through well-established protocols that don't need political clearence. This means that the countries where politicians are the most visible and calling for action could very well be the ones that have prepared the least.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. In many countries it's down to the city or county to act and federal government can only take over as last resort. We're not there yet. Not all cities are equipped equally and it's frustrating that they don't have a common policy but they all seem to act. For them that's also the first time they are confronted with a pandemic and there's a lot at stake. Under these circumstances, I'm actually somewhat surprised how quickly certain policies are enacted around the globe. A week ago, banning large public events was a novelty, now they're basically banned in most of Europe and parts of the US.

The quarantine in Italy seemed extreme a week ago, now several countries are heading towards the same measures.

In democracies, curtailing peoples' rights is always tricky, it's the first time I've seen bureaucrats take away individual rights daily without backtracking on decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing.

1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected

2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted out

3) pandemic, no action -> government was "wrong", caused loss of lives and damaged the economy -> voted out

4) pandemic, action - this is the trickiest scenario, so let's consider two options:

4a) pandemic, action, it works -> government was "right", saved lives, spared the economy -> reelected

4b) pandemic, action, doesn't work -> government was "wrong", their actions failed, they're incompetent -> voted out

There's two winning scenarios, (1) and (4a), but the problem is that (4a) has vanishingly small probability of success... with little information available about the virus, and rampant globalization, it's hard to know what action makes sense, is correct and viable... Case in point is Italy, which _did_ act _in time_ (they banned flights from China 2 weeks before the outbreak), but _still_ failed (i.e. their action was "correct" but not "correct enough") because their _neighboring_ countries (e.g. Germany - not technically a neighbor but within Schengen Zone) failed to act.

So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.

<comment><USER18> > So, politicians choose (1), no action, as the most likely winning scenario.

I'm from Belgium myself, so I can chime in.

Our minister of health is a docter herself, and is advised by a panel of experts including a professor of virology. They know very well what they are doing with the current 400 known infections.

Closing schools makes no sense currently because of following factors:

\- kids are not the main factor in spreading the virus, as seen in other countries.

\- Putting kids with their grandparents is probaly worse for death toll compared to keeping them in schools.

Look at the exponential growth curve of for example Denmark [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Denmark)

And compare that to the pretty linear growth curve of Belgium [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Belgium)

So please stop treating this as game theory. Our country is doing the best thing in this situation.

Edit: denmark link and rude language

<comment><USER19> > kids are not the main factor in spreading the virus, as seen in other > countries.

Why did Japan close down schools, do they know something which Belgium does not or did Japan make a mistake by closing down schools.

<comment><USER20> There's always uncertainty. In societies where you have fewer mothers of young children working, economic cost of closing schools is lower.

All said I agree with GP that existing evidence suggests kids aren't a driver of the pandemic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Had an interesting thought earlier. Seeing as a majority of deaths are in the range 60 years and above, and very little of the casualties affect younger (working) people, from the governments POV the virus will do well to decrease the disproportionate number of older pension receivers and nursing home residents in comparison with the dwindling number of young people working and paying taxes.

In other words, the government probably realizes that despite the grim reality, their POV may be that the virus will have a net positive effect on the economy and also accommodation affordability for the younger generation.

<comment><USER22> You assume that the government cares about expenditures. Old people vote. So it would be in your best interest to keep the people that voted you into office alive.

<comment><USER23> I second this. Because of this I don't understand why the German government is not acting more drastically in terms of isolating old people. Especially the current CDU/CSU/SPD leadership was largely voted by the elderly.

Sources:

[https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und- fakten/bundestags...](https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und- fakten/bundestagswahlen/279740/waehlerstimmen) (Zweitstimmenergebnis)

[https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/parteien-in- deutschla...](https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/parteien-in- deutschland/zahlen-und-fakten/140358/soziale-zusammensetzung)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last Sunday it was 8th of March, International Women's Day, and the current spanish government has appropriated it to the point that women from other political parties are not welcomed in the protests that happen that day.

When gatherings of people started to be canceled all around the world, the government kept going ahead with the plans because this is a key event for their agenda.

The very next day, they acknowledged that the virus is out of control in several regions in Spain, started to take very aggressive measures that are only increasing each day.

Today, it has been announced that Irene Montero, head of the women rights ministry, that lead the main protest that day, has tested positive for coronavirus.

Stupidity at its finest

<comment><USER25> The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve.

It's a simple projection from voter space to elected space. As a former pol.sci. student/researcher, I've grown disillusioned by the fact that representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended — the projection is flawed with regards to the conduct of affairs.

I don't know why:

\- might be that voting is skewed by marketing (permanent campaign) money, government is too corrupt and establishment too entrenched, the "conspiracy hidden in plain sight / normalcy" idea;

\- could be that democracy simply doesn't work as a system, or maybe not _anymore_ , because the "average" is somehow not good enough — that was certainly not my belief, not for a decade, but I had to come to terms: it's a question worth asking, I assure you. Just considering the quality of information and the noise/signal ratio throws a huge wrench in the mechanics of any sane decision-making process...

\- ... (many more hypotheses)

Regardless, this may help us craft the next-new-better political system, which might or might not be a regime of increased freedom compared to now (my guess: much more in some domains, much less in others, and not everyone will like the distribution).

I mean, look where we are. We had 15 years to get ready for such an event since coronavirus of the 2000's — tons of reports and words of good will. _"Guys, we 're not ready for a massive outbreak!"_ — everybody and their Bill Gates said so! But alas, the political fantasy kept going and it's all been just words. It wasn't that hard to stockpile masks and various supplies for when the day comes...

It's a sad day in history when we must face the consequences of our choices, but it's like a cycle... We get too complacent and something slams us, again and again and again (give it 3-4 generations apart to "forget", it's as if written language doesn't exist).

I'm jaded at the irony of our collective behavior, and sad for all those who will suffer and leave. Hopefully this will be a painful but learning experience that will last. I'm sad to report that it almost exclusively takes real pain, real hurt for societies to learn anything meaningfully in the face of history, of evolution. So, here we are, destiny.

<comment><USER19> > representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer > works as intended

What is your solution, almost all dictators are not benevolent.

<comment><USER25> That's true and I'm certainly not advocating for dictatorship. There is a vast space of possible regimes and political systems in between total freedom and total slavery, though... ;-)

Look, I won't pretend having "the" solution because it doesn't exist until we actually implement something, then iterate our way into a more-or-less final form that works. That's how we went from absolute monarchy to representative democracy, but if you trace the roots of that process, you've got a solid century of experimentation and much, much thinking (pretty much all the great names you know from 15th-16th-17th century were on some side of that equation, informed the discussion and ultimate "object", regime, that appeared).

So what will it be? Well I could write some anticipation sci-fi to suggest possibilities that are non-dystopian (well, not so much that it's unbearable) and come with a ton of benefits, and obviously some drawbacks / limits / undesirable side effects to be managed, adjusted.

The question is what the political will of the People actually wants— it's a question we each have to answer for ourselves —and what is possible, without breaking the machine, what will be desired, refused or simply ignored by 'elites' who, like it or not, have the fuel to make-or-break such _' evolution'_. Now add an _' r'_ to the word and you increase the range of possibilities, but risk as well.

Here is my personal feeling: I think such events as COVID-19 will spark the kind of seed that eventually grows to fundamental political change; I however think we're still half a generation away from that — give time for Millenials 1982-1999 to rise to power, as they have the right mix of "values" (philosophy, circumstantial world experience / view, etc) to move beyond the systems that govern us today — and have for 70 ±10 years already!

I had a hunch post 9/11 that this century would see regimes evolve either towards more political freedom (towards more direct democracy) or towards a more authoritarian form of society (wherein social peace is obtained at the cost of some freedoms). It turns out that I was wrong, it wasn't either/or but both combined in a weird way: political freedom was gained but used to promote clowns to power ( _#all.over.the.world.the.2010s.are.insane.historically_ ) instead of e.g. tackling massive, pressing or idealistic projects (people be lazy, rite). Whereas _actual_ sovereignty (the one you learn in constitutional law, the real kind of political power) definitely shifted towards authoritarianism under various disguises — populism is one form, China's and Russia's "restoration" of authoritarian federal powers is another, and some self-proclaimed SWJs may not be far either, in their own "inclusive" way (kinda like dictatures are all "Democratic Republic").

What this tells me (I've long studied that evolution but again it's really just my personal view) is that societies are simply not mature for the new "space of possibilities" (think positive variables, opportunities e.g. via tech, think also negative variables, constrains of climate and viruses for instance). It's just too much power, too early, so we basically just F it up like kids with a problem a tad too big for them.

But that's history. We do things and then we figure out how to deal with them, there's no reversing that causality. Hopefully we won't ravage ourselves and this Earth in the 20-60 years it'll take to adapt to this rather sudden paradigm change — think 1980-today, that's just 40 years ffs, and think of the mindset _then_ and _now_... And you kinda need "natives" of an era to meaningfully internalize its reality, process the whole damn thing in "system 1" like human beings do, and eventually sometime between 20 and 80 figure out ways to make life better. Rinse and repeat with their newborn grand-children to solve the _new_ thing that's arrived by then.

As for what that will actually look like, your guess is as good as mine. I'm partial to freedom personally, but I think it's worth choosing your battles, too. That's when it becomes political thus where we stop: a good regime doesn't favor "opinions" but rather the expression thereof, in a healthy and productive manner (able to reach decision; ideally promoting some degree of consensus, kept in check by some other legitimated power, etc).

Just know that, when we want to, it's relatively doable to write a rather good constitution (and we have, many times throughout the last century). The real tricky issue is not to technically implement the ideas, the hard part is what ideas, what system you actually want to create. Again, many possibilities, some of which were abandoned by history but are now possible because modern tech (notably complex voting systems that yield much better representation of opinions and hierarchies in complex, multi-dimensional systems, e.g. to distribute might and resources between cities, or agencies, or any such module. There's about 1 century of great science that we're barely using for the benefit of the public, troves of innovation in the political realm. Just so much apathy for change in those who man these offices).

(It's honestly a fascinating topic of inquiry if you like systems, puzzles, cybernetics (different name for systems theory), all things mechanical in nature that must work with a "real-world" chaotic human environment.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Denmark did act yesterday evening & today:

\- events with more than 100 people forbidden.

\- all schools will close

\- all non-critical employees must stay home.

\- all private employees off-job as much as possible.

\- stay in your home.

\- don't travel to [many] countries, more restricts will come.

\- All indoor cultural institutions, libraries, leisure facilities, etc. are closed.

And today they made a temporary law which will sunset 1 year from now (the law is only in effect for 1 year):

\- ability to force people to be tested and put into isolation

\- enter homes without warrant when occupant is suspected to be infected.

\- much expanded ability to forbid events and collection of people (Note: the permission to assemble is just as fundamental culturally to Danish people as freedom-of-speech is to USA).

\- ability to forbid/restrict use of transportation (likely number of passengers in buses, trains)

\- suspension of "free choice" of hospitals and quarantee of treatment within some time frame (we have "socialized medicin" where we have a right to treatment within a given time frame)

\- allow temporary suspension of other laws if deemed necessary

 _Why did this happend now:_ They were told yesterday that Northern Italy no longer has enough resources in their health care system and that there are now official guidelines for whom to treat and whom to let die: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who- gets-h...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets- hospital-bed/607807/)

Italy is close and "one of us".

<comment><USER27> Denmark's situation is very unusual. This graph gives an idea of where Denmark lies relative to Italy:

[http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu- norm2.png](http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/tmp/covid-eu-norm2.png)

This is actual case data, plotted with the time offsets shown in the key.

No other country had a ramp-up like that. Right now, Denmark is 5-6 days behind Italy in terms of cases per million inhabitants, and the incubation period is about that time. Really pleased to see some quick decision making on the part of the Danish government.

<comment><USER28> Maybe it is quick decision making, but the list of decisions is questionable. This one the most:

> _events with more than 100 people forbidden._

Which still allows rapid infections of relatively large groups of people.

In Italy you can't even walk outside without a valid reason (buying groceries, medical emergency, solo exercising).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The graph this blog draws _doesn 't_ work that way. The whole point of not overloading the medical system - and definitely not getting it at 100% capacity, is that once you're at capacity, it's not just COVID-19 treatment which stops (which means, all those people who would otherwise survive die) - it's all treatment.

Get appendicitis? Routine surgery, can be done in a few hours. And will definitely kill you without treatment. Break a bone? Car crash? Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off respiratory support.

The cost of overburdening the healthcare system is not some calculation of a nuisance amount of citizen death over a time period - it's a whole bunch of people who otherwise live full and productive lives, instead stop existing.

What happens when you go above that dotted line is not the continuation of a predictable trend, it is a chaotic bifurcation in behavior which does not have predictable secondary effects. The COVID-19 case load follows that shape. The deaths and long-term health problems _do not_.

<comment><USER30> > Treating you in emergency now might involve kicking someone else off > respiratory support.

This has been my standard reply to the "It's just a flu" concept for some time now.

Aside from all this, it's incredible how difficult it is for people to think about this using all the info available (long onset of symptoms, asymptomatic spread, high % of hospitalizations / intensive care, etc) plus thinking in the long term.

I know the generalized idea is no face masks if you don't have symptoms, but if we all used them it might have a good effect on curving the spread.

Unfortunately, western cultures associate face mask with sickness, and are frowned upon.

<comment><USER31> I think we're out of N95 masks in the U.S. and we have to wait a month or so to get them from China.

<comment><USER32> 3M is retooling their US factories. They should be producing by now.

<comment><USER31> There also is a factory in Georgia that makes them. They probably are working three shifts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Or perhaps our government is acting and handling the threat, just not in a way mass hysteria on Twitter demands. Knee jerk reaction usually ends up in theater, not proper containment.

(Then again, my government isn't the Belgian government.)

<comment><USER34> So to you would consider what's been done so far by the US federal government not theater?

<comment><USER35> The US is doing particularly badly (and going for nonsensical solutions; note the most recent one). Various Asian and European states are being much more aggressive. Some US states are also doing the best they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi I think Hanlon's razor applies here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

I'm in Spain, one of the countries that is doing way too little, way too late. When I see the measures and statements from our politicians, I don't see a machiavellian plan, I see stupidity. In fact, a prominent member of the government has been infected after attending feminist demonstrations on March 8 that anyone reasonably informed and intelligent knew shouldn't have been held in the first place, others also attended and could follow. If they were such diabolical masterminds, I doubt they would have done that...

<comment><USER36> Except there's not necessarily any malice exposed by this explanation.

To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. For example, in the UK austerity is blamed for tens of thousands of deaths (some people say 130,000, others 30,000). The unpalatable fact is that trade-offs need to be made when deciding how to tackle this.

In the case of covid-19 I don't envy anyone who has to make these decisions, due to the exponential nature of infection spread making small changes in measures potentially have big results. We are all in uncharted territory. Hopefully the examples of countries such as Italy will help decision makers get it right, or perhaps more importantly will influence peoples' behaviour to reduce transmission.

Also, I think he's wrong about the Y axis equalling "deaths" \- the point is to keep cases manageable by the health system, which minimises deaths. Dragging things out doesn't necessarily improve outcomes for at-risk people.

<comment><USER37> >To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly.

This is also the main argument against taking dramatic action to combat climate change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Far more enlightening than reading some inexpert web log with wobbly hand- drawn graphs with unmarked axes is to read the actual after-the-fact analyses of the measures taken against the 1918 Influenza pandemic. People learned from history, what actually did not work. It influenced what they did the next time around, in the 1920s.

Don't read some Belgian web developer's web log.

Read the likes of _Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary_ published by the National Academies Press in 2007 (ISBN 9780309107693 [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54167/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54167/)).

Read _"Destroyer and Teacher": Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic_ (Nancy Tomes. Public Health Rep. 2010. 125(Suppl 3) 48–62. PMC2862334. PMID 20568568. [https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S308](https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00333549101250S308) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/))

Tomes is particularly enlightening on the internal conflicts between government public heath departments.

</comment><comment><USER39> First: SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- CoronaVirus-2. COVID-19 is COronaVIrus Disease-2019 which is the disease caused by CoV-2.

Second: Flattening the curve isn't about shortening any duration.

The Y axis is the number of infected.

In the Red Line scenario, like packets overflowing a buffer, _patients above the dashed line will (have to) be medically neglected._ Rest assured, our immune system will eventually gain the upper hand, the virus will eventually decides its job done, red line settles, we'll congratulate the lucky few who won scarce beds at surviving hospitals, as well as those who treated themselves next to remains of deceased hospital staffs. Then we will assemble at rubble of our cities and start walking towards the former glory of human civilization up until 2020(hyper exaggeration).

The Blue Line, "Flattening the curve", lets us avoid that apocalyptic situation: by boldly suppressing infection early on and spreading it out to a longer duration, ignoring economical disaster ensuing, _no patient will be left behind_. The hope is that by allowing every patients to be semi- adequately treated WHEN infected(not IF infected), total population of alive and recovered combined at the end of this pandemic at maybe late 2022 or so is going to be far better than the Red Line scenario. So we'd want to flatten the curve.

Green, is just a pipe dream. Makes no sense. If that's possible we might as well get production back up full over in China.

I think there's an important, sub-vocally communicated notion: the containment had failed long ago, and there is an ongoing pandemic. Many stays asymptomatic, some experience manageable illness, some would need to stay at ICUs, around 0.5-1% life will be lost, but we will all(~70%) get infected. Ideas that requires or aims at containing infection or isolating infected few are useless. We must all accept that almost all of us are situationally required to "schedule" an infection, and fortunately, exact time, place or severity of it is left to our discretion.

We must be aware of these facts, and must use it to our maximum advantage, starting from washing hands often.

<comment><USER40> Since it seems deadlier than the common flu at the moment, I personally would prefer to "schedule" my infection by waiting for a vaccine.

I'm in Latin America where it isn't spreading as fast (my best guess is warm weather), and I'm planning to wait it out until it's warmer in the northern hemisphere or a vaccine comes out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When is too late to act? Clearly Italy acted too late. I've been plotting the actual case data, in an attempt to get some idea of where countries lie with respect to Italy:

[https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760](https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237781162153717760)

These are not strictly predictions, but they give some idea of what will happen if we act in a similar way to Italy. Note that there's a 6 to 10 day lag in the stats (~6 days incubation, up to 4 days testing, at least in the UK right now). Without isolation measures, we're seeing 33% per day increase rates. If we wait until we can measure the scale of the problem, it's likely to be too late to prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think there's a simpler explanation which is that governments are comprised of people, and people are — to borrow a phrase — predictably irrational. We consistently prioritize the short term over the long term.

Take Climate Change. There's no shortage of brilliant scientists who have warned us of the long term costs (in human toll and wealth) of inaction. Yet we wait.

Unfortunately, scientists are not the ones flying the plane, so to speak. There are brilliant epidemiologists here in the United States. What are their recommendations behind closed doors? Classified. We don't know. We do know the opinions of the ones who are free to speak their minds, and they have been warning us to be proactive. For years, before this crisis, actually.

The rest of us are sitting in the back of the plane, uncomfortably contemplating whether the pilots have perhaps made a fatal error in their judgement. It happens. Now we wait.

To quote Carl Sagan:

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness"

</comment><comment><USER42> This is all dumb. saying this is unstoppable is a misconception. China reduced cases. South Korea and Singapore and Hong Kong and Taiwan have it under control. This is a statistics game, if you manage to reduce infection rate below 1 you win. the faster you respond, less time it takes. it's also clear, that if you could respond patient 0, that would be ideal, and you can prove by induction from here it's always better to act sooner. There is no reason whatsoever that makes it better to stop the spread after it reached 1000 people versus when it reached 10. What works when you have 1000 cases works just as well for 10.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Here in Belgium though … we're doing nothing. No government-based sanctions.

That's because Belgium has no government to put sanctions into place.

<comment><USER44> What?

<comment><USER43> After the last elections on 26 May 2019, the winnings parties have been unable to form a coalition, so there is no real cabinet at the moment which has the power to do the things that need to be done.

<comment><USER45> We do have a government though (quite a few of them even, but the federal government is the one that matters here) with all the power needed to do whatever it deems necessary.

And the federal government has said that indoor meetings with more than 1000 persons are "not recommended". The Brussels government has cancelled those, the Walloon cities don't have events of more than 1000 persons planned in the near future, and the Antwerp government seems to be using the whole thing as an opportunity to criticize and reject any responsibility on the federal government without taking any decision (as far as I know, the Simple Minds concert hasn't been cancelled yet, and is supposed to have a lot more than 1000 people).

There are actually a lot of governments which each have the power to do things. I personally think that the only reason they don't do anything useful is pure incompetence, irresponsibility and political calculations.

<comment><USER43> > We do have a government though (quite a few of them even, but the federal > government is the one that matters here) with all the power needed to do > whatever it deems necessary.

Really? Because I seem to have read that budget deficit is getting out of hand because there is no federal government to fix it.

Also, yeah, fair enough. There are a handful of other governments that technically could take a decision, but as you said: it's easy to say: "well, this is a federal decision, so we won't do anything".

<comment><USER45> Budget is one of those things that cannot be voted by the current affairs government so they just keep renewing the last budget allowances from the last actual government, as far as I understand (I don't know if it's a legal requirement, or just a custom). Don't take my word for it though, I'm definitely not an expert on Belgian politics.

But the coronavirus crisis is definitely a _current affair_ , and the current government has free reign to do anything it deems necessary about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Why aren't we going for green though, that seems even better?

Because we want to avoid Covid-19 becoming a recurrent winter illness like other coughs and colds and flu. Those already cause considerable pressure on healthcare systems, and adding annual covid-19 season on top would be pretty rough.

<comment><USER47> Yes! We don't want to flatted the curve so much that it extends into winter, because then we compound other seasonal illnesses like the flu, and the pressure on the health service is back above the red line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Let's start with one fundamental assertion that I feel is missing in many of the discussions in this thread: There is no "the government". In most countries "government" is a collection of agencies, staffed by individuals, not completely in sync on all levels (micro, meso, macro).

You see that playing out when measures on one level (most prominently medical advise) are not in line with broader approaches to managing events, groups, tourism and travel. We all notice the disconnect, and some might think of 'dark conspiracies'. There are none (rule of the most kind interpretation). It's the dispersion of institutions in action.

Another one is my assertion, as a former public servant with friends in places that /should know/, that there is no structured economic analysis of possible outcomes of various scenarios of intervention. There are no models, there is no time, there is not enough collaboration between agencies. On the one hand you have the medical staff and agencies doing what they can where they can on a medical level, on the other hand you have bureaucrats making decisions with limited information and way more limited understanding. Politicians probably get in the way more than they support.

My thought: Governments are acting. They are just not acting in a way that we, the public, can understand is internally consistent. That's because the acts aren't internally consistent. That is due to the fact that governement is made up of institutions with different levels of understanding, information, scope and time to act.

In a pandemic, this is all very unfortunate and a more singlehanded style of governement could help. China got it quite right after an initial denial. Nobody in the West is equipped to both think about and act on China-style measures. In normal situation our distributed model of application of knowledge (Hayek) is more efficient. Most we can hope for is rapid learning in our institutions and the fact that a whole lot of capital, both human and monetary, is available for solving this crisis.

I'm quite in a shock (my province is in partial quarantine) with what's happening, but _if_ the world economy proofs resiliant to this shock on a say 2-yr horizon, I'm quite bullish on how strong and adaptable our institutions are and see more hope for f.e. tackling climate change than before.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's almost tautologically true that the cost of closures are considered in the decision-making process. This "article" tries to portrait this entirely obvious fact as some sort of sinister conspiracy, with cargo-cult charts to appeal all scientify.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ethics aside, more fatalities will cause the bigger economical impact as well due to the lower amount of consumers, the lower consumption rate of the survivors (they will lose their close people, relatives, friends), will increase the long-term burden to the public health due to increased depression levels, lower immunity levels, and so on. Moreover, the political damage of the governance system, including healthcare. It's sick that people look just to the first-order effects but completely forget about second-order ones.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just a little thought experiment: If the current wisdom is actually that almost everyone will be infected eventually, wouldn't it (ignoring any ethical issues) be wiser to deliberately infect medical personnel as soon as possible, so the 5-10% of infected that need IC treatment can actually get it, before the medical system is overrun by the infected general population. In a few weeks, all doctors are immune (or deceased) so that they are much better prepared when the number of cases in the general public explodes

<comment><USER52> Potentially, yes. But, only if by being infected, it would mean you were now immune, which isn't the case with covid-19. Reinfections have happened.

<comment><USER4> Is there any evidence of that at scale or is it just the odd anecdote?

<comment><USER53> I have not seen any evidence either way. At this point it is too early to have any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The more I see and hear about coronavirus, its origins and the knock on effects it has on the economy and society I can only hope that this becomes our 'come to Jesus' moment (figuratively speaking).

This pandemic started because too many people are living together in close proximity, eeking out a living by literally catching and eating any living thing they can.

The economic effects are due to an unforgiving system that takes pride in an 'eat what you kill' culture and a 'winner take all' model of enterprise. As a consequence, there are a LOT of businesses running on thin margins and making just enough to cover costs each month.

Even one month of things going to zero will ruin a whole host of restaurants, sole proprietors, real estate speculators, and on down the chain. I hope I'm wrong, but this kind of instant systematic reduction in the economy feels unprecedented within the last 50+ years.

There are so many knock on effects of all this - people will be unemployed with limited opportunities at best. They'll potentially lose their healthcare, and in the worst cases their homes. Schools are closing around the country, and they won't have lunch programs running which means a lot of kids are likely to go without adequate food.

We need to fix (or create) safety nets in our country (and indeed the world), so when things like this happen we can all chip in to cover each other. Basic healthcare, affordable or public housing, eviction protections, food programs. These aren't radical ideas, these are the only way forward.

</comment><comment><USER55> I like how cost is modelled as linear with time here and independent of deaths.

Surely, cost is the area under the curve of the original graph. Massive strain on our systems doesn't come for free.

</comment><comment><USER56> I see how the struggle for economic reasons, but I have too little faith in them being smart enough for that plan and doubt they have good enough data scraping by the max capacity line so closely with confidence.

Even the graph in the article is weird, why is there a sharp limit at max capacity in the T2 curve? the virus doesn't care about max capacity....

<comment><USER57> Yeah, no. Nice hyperactive imagination to find any plausible justification for inaction.

The intuitive impulse is there (trade off hospitals getting "creamed" vs. shutting down economy), but the implementation isn't realistic, so with the incubation period and lag in testing, all governments act too late. It's an impossible control problem.

On the other hand, maybe the right time to act _is_ to watch your stock market. It's a forward predictor. When it starts to tank, go all out.

<comment><USER56> it does tank already, no? (sorry for the german link, just literally what I have open in the next tab)

[https://www.onvista.de/etf/VANGUARD-FTSE-ALL-WORLD-UCITS- ETF...](https://www.onvista.de/etf/VANGUARD-FTSE-ALL-WORLD-UCITS-ETF-USD-DIS- ETF-IE00B3RBWM25)

<comment><USER57> At least the US seems to have waited for the markets to signal, not epidemiology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> A couple of other factors:

Governments don't seem to be able to act based on non-local information. Once the hospitals fill up _here_ , then action is taken. Hospitals filling up somewhere else causes no action.

There appears to be concerted disinformation operation underway, using the same outlets used for politics. I live in a "red" part of the US and can see comments from people on local TV news posts, and I talk to other local people. It's pretty clear there is lots of false information being propagated: comments like "Media stop overblowing this", "it's just the flu", "we can still shake hands here, it's a long way away" (that was a teacher at last night's parent teacher meetings). If the population don't have a realistic view of the situation then how can government take the necessary steps?

</comment><comment><USER59> "Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story problem. If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 50 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall? You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall."

</comment><comment><USER60> Here is a discussion of some of the numbers and models. It's in German but I guess deepL should give a reasonable translation. One part of an answer that I extract from this article is that it's complicated. People do have more sophisticated models (see some of the ones mentioned in the article), the issue is these require more parameter inputs with significant uncertainties (we really don't have enough information on the virus yet). if some government would come out and say this is the model we are using you would immediately have lots of discussion about the validity and how everything would be easy peasy if we just change this parameter. Another aspect is probably that accurate modelling is not the primary focus right now.

<comment><USER60> Sorry missed to paste the link: [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen- bitte-3-4-Cor...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen- bitte-3-4-Coronavirus-Fallsterblichkeit-False-Number-4679338.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's ridiculous to imagine governments are doing the best thing possible and then try to decode their actions from our inferior standpoint, like if they were full of wisdom we just don't understand -- more likely doing the worst thing possible and we are the victims.

</comment><comment><USER62> This looks like false conclusions from oversimplifying the death ratio above health care saturation.

You can't just change the axis labels because the death ratio depends non- linearly on infection ratio above the threshold.

Are we willing to take the risk when we don't know the consequences?

</comment><comment><USER63> This is just so completely wrong.

He just relabelled the curves for no apparent reason!

To make it clear: The vertical axis should not be number of deaths. While the number infected remains below the health system capacity the number of deaths should remain relatively low. But once it hits capacity there is a step function that ratchets it up.

And the horizontal axis isn't cost at all. The green line shows something that is within the normal capacity of the health system. There aren't additional costs and so should be relatively cheap.

And the green curve is great - everyone would like that - that's the normal Flu. The Blue curve is the maximum we can sustain without overwhelming the health system.

</comment><comment><USER64> I don't know who the author of this blog is, but this was sincerely the least insightful article that I've ever read. Kindergarten level, crayon drawn graphs were representative of their insight.

</comment><comment><USER31> What I see is that the impetus to action starts from below and works up.

New York City declared a state of emergency first, then the state. I guess the U.S. is in a state of emergency because it is shutting down flights. For a while people were accusing WHO of inaction, finally WHO declares a pandemic and they start accusing other people of inaction.

The structure is that an outbreak creates a crisis in one spot even though others are currently unaffected.

</comment><comment><USER65> While it's true our federal government hasn't issued orders but only advice the local and provincial authorities have the power to prevent some things from happening. And they are using it: some classes or schools are getting shut down, some away trips are being cancelled.

But I agree, everything's fine in Belgium :D. The virus is likely to have taken a detour to avoid Belgium, like the Chernobyl cloud did.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've read a lot of dumb COVID-19 takes, and this has to be in the top 10.

Disregard the wishful thinking, psychopath level lack of empathy and poor graphing. The problem with this is the lack of any actual model or incorporation of any variables that disagree with it. Things like confidence, certainty, the value of all those parents & grandparents.

I'm chalking this one down to ostrich syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER67> The action that any government should take now is find a cure for the virus. Collectively pool resources, bring up the brightest minds in health sciences and devise a way to remove the virus from the equation. The fact that despite lockdown and other government actions and the virus is still spreading just mean that all this measures would become nil at some point.

<comment><USER68> I had the impression they are doing so. All the measures taken now aim at flattening the curve. Which spreads cases out to prevent ICU beds and hospitals from being overwhelmed. This helps to keep the hard cases alive and buys time.

Which might also explain why countries act differently, the max threshold for the respective medical system is different. As are projections of the spread. But I don't think we have to believe governments aren't analyzing the development daily at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This the type of analysis that comes from people who spend most of their lives analyzing data. If you were to go into the offices of the elected and the offices of the government, you would generally find the same thing:

The actions they are taking are based on what they feel will serve them best.

This should be the first assumption in the analysis.

</comment><comment><USER70> This article describes how to approach the problem to minimize economic cost by keeping under control the number of deaths.

Which would be how a company think, I'm pretty sure governments don't think like that

Most presidents want to be elected at the next election and this is probably the main thing they are trying to optimize right now

</comment><comment><USER71> It depends, a lot of european countries right now are banning events that have more than 1000 people, schools are closing down and simmilar places. Technically, they need to push the agenda even further as everyone should buy more so that the economy would not collapse as it is already near that

</comment><comment><USER72> This presupposes rational action on behalf of those in power, which I don't think is a correct premise.

</comment><comment><USER73> This all assumes that executive level government functions rationally and in the long-term national interest. Which is _normally_ the case, but this is an abnormal decade.

Let me be extremely cynical (at risk of down-voting) about the current US administration's motives:

Consider Trump's just-announced travel ban on the EU-26. It misses out the UK and Ireland, despite COVID-19 having a toe-hold in those countries ... but the UK and Ireland have Trump-branded golf courses! A ban on travel from UK and IE would hurt their viability, so it was quietly omitted.

Meanwhile, the Trump hotel chain is being hit as badly as anyone else in the hospitality trade by fears of a pandemic, and revenue of his hotels in Florida is driven by spring break traffic. So he's downplaying anything that might reduce vacation travel at spring break.

Denying that COVID-19 is anything to worry about is _personally advantageous for Donald Trump_ as a hotel magnate, because it protects his investments. It's disadvantageous for the USA as a whole, but where do his priorities lie?

<comment><USER74> His travel ban was for schengen EUrope countries, many refer to them as Europe, when they are only part of it. Much the same way that some think the UK is leaving Europe and fail to grasp the difference of economic areas and tectonic plates.

<comment><USER73> It's being reported here (the UK) as "anyone who has visited or trsvelled through a Schengen zone country in the past 14 days".

Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus- ou...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-outbreak-us- trump-latest)

<comment><USER74> Yip, I read that elsewhere as well.

Honestly should of just said, all air travel. How the thing spread to other countries in the first place.

Still, I'd be supprised if London don't end up with quarantine zones before the month is up. Going by how it has patterned in countries that have had to move from containment onto delay. Then it's not a case of if, but when.

<comment><USER74> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51857856](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51857856)

Does appear that the transition from containment into delay has just started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I know this sounds like a lame joke, but it is not. The true reason why Belgium is not doing anything, is because they can't form a government, let alone take these kind of coordinated measures.

</comment><comment><USER76> At this point, the writing for the USA is on the wall: either institute a national quarantine policy, or face a mass die off of hundreds of thousands of the elderly in the next couple months.

We need to start the national quarantine _before_ things blow up to Italy and Wuhan level proportions. Yes, it will be extremely costly. But riding on imaginary hopes that the virus will just disappear for no real reason is extraordinarily irresponsible.

The details of what it looks like will take time to figure out--it will be a complicated collaboration between the federal, state, and local authorities, with the justice system and health sectors being deeply involved. That's reason to start figuring those details out now, and not two weeks from now.

Donald Trump was elected because he said he was a risk taker willing to do what needs to be done despite criticism from everyone. A national quarantine is needed now, and we need bold action to get it started. This is his moment to make a difference.

<comment><USER77> The US has already started mass quarantine.

Hospitals will only allow visitors if they are over 16 and a primary caregiver (ie spouse), and even they are screened before being allowed in. Nursing homes are limiting visitors, both who can come, and where they can go. Companies are halting non-essential travel.

It isn't as drastic as you might think it should be, but it is significant at limiting risk for the most vulnerable.

Most of the above is running plans that have been in place for a long time (far longer than Trump), walking the line between overreacting and things getting out of control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> There just waiting for the death count to jump so they won't be blamed for taking radical action that will hurt the economy.

The deaths are the cover they need, so action will come in the next few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER79> How long is the pandemic expected to last? What are the furthest out conferences that have been (or should be) canceled? How is the end of a pandemic even defined?

</comment><comment><USER80> The headline of the actual post is:

> Why your government isn't acting on the Corona/COVID-19 threat

Maybe we could correct this weird Indian grammar seen in the current headline on HN?

</comment><comment><USER81> Or government is acting according to the threat it poses. It has been three months now since it has moved globally. Likely longer actually. This isn't a plague killing everyone in its wake. It is the newest Y2k, 2012, Bird Flu, or Global warming hysteria push by governments and the media. Look at news from China, they are using it to be more in control except now with support. This going to blow over with little interuptions due to the virus itself. I bet more deaths arise from lack of service due to people inundating the ERs with negative cases than the virus causes.

</comment><comment><USER82> Well at least Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria are closing down the borders, cancelling schools and kindergartens etc.

</comment><comment><USER83> Nice analysis, although there is no evidence that the economic impact is as described in the chart (#deaths/cost)

</comment><comment><USER84> What's with the random question mark added to the title? At least reword it so it's grammatically correct.

</comment><comment><USER85> Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we _can_ do.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is just one guy thinking that government know what they are doing and that they are "fine". I have read other delusional thinking on Reddit along the lines of "Trump seems to be so confidant, this must be a bio-attack on China/Iran and somehow the virus is not going to spread in the USA". This was before the virus spreading to Italy and Iran/China being the only countries with breakouts.

This kind of delusional thinking is not very different from religion and believing in God. People who believe in God, when they are found in hard situations, will think that _somehow_ god (the savior) will come for their rescue. Apparently, people who do not believe in God will think that somehow the universe/government or whatever will come to their rescue.

The issue is that people holding power/government seems to be, eh, usual folks. They are still operating with a normal brain which when confronted with abnormal situations that it can't handle will just imagine that stuff is going to return to normal.

Bill Gates has already warned about something close to the Coronavirus and that we are very far from being ready. Nobody was listening and my guess is the change is going to happen through natural selection.

</comment><comment><USER87> They are in some places. In Spain gatherings of over 1000 people have been banned.

</comment><comment><USER88> Finally actions are taken by the mentioned country (Belgium)

</comment><comment><USER89> Halt air travel, reduce large gatherings, let people live their lives knowing that:

1) Test kits are not helpful because of their high false positive rates.

2) The goal of these activities is to slow the spread, because it is not possible to stop.

3) Slowing the spread gives vaccine developers more time

</comment><comment><USER90> Game of Chicken

</comment><comment><USER91> So I encourage people to go watch the Joe Rogan podcast on this [1]. A few snippets:

\- He describes this as more like a "winter" than a "blizzard" in that this is going to go on for months;

\- No one really knows what the mortality rate is but it's become clear there are certain risk factors eg the fatality rate among people over 70 in China is about 3x for men than women but men are much more likely to smoke than women in China in this age group.

\- Keeping schools closed is a mixed bag. For one, kids below 9 or so don't seem to get sick or die. In China only 2% of cases are under age 19. There are other diseases like this (eg Hepatitis-A). If you keep kids home, some people will lose their jobs or simply be unable to work as they take care of those children. Some of those people will be health care professionals. The lack of those will likely kill people;

\- It's unclear yet what other risk factors (other than age and smoking) there are. Obesity in the developed world is a big cause for concern as this unfolds. A stat quoted is that 45% of people in the US aged 45 and older are obese or severely obese;

\- It's largely a question of when not if you'll get this;

\- It's a myth that we'll have a vaccine before ~18 months. You can't rush this. It's like trying to rush a pregnancy.

\- Italy is a window to how most places will be in ~3 weeks;

\- We, as a society, have a short attention span. We could've developed a vaccine for coronaviruses after previous outbreaks (SARS/MERS) but there seemed to be no appetite for that when they faded;

\- Disruptions to the supply chain are likely to be the biggest problem. We don't stockpile anything and we're dependent on China for a lot of medical equipment (eg respirators) and a bunch of essential medicines, some of which people will die if they don't receive.

The guest here (Michael Osterholm) is an expert on infectious diseases and the author of _Deadliest Enemies_ [2].

I can't speak to the reaction of different governments. It's no surprise there's variance. This probably comes down to just 1 or 2 personalities.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Enemy-Against-Killer- Germs-...](https://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Enemy-Against-Killer-Germs- ebook/dp/B01HZFB5EW/)

</comment><comment><USER92> >The deathtoll would be immense.

Would it though?

</comment><comment><USER93> I think HN should enact stronger Coronavirus-related moderation like Reddit has. This is a bad post from a software engineer (not a health professional) and it offers an amateur analysis without even providing a real suggestion. What benefit does this provide in a crisis?

<comment><USER94> posts from health professionals can be even worse. this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites (who think they can fine-tune an epidemic)

<comment><USER95> "this one was not too bad at explaining the thinking of ruling elites"

By inventing a completely unsupported rationalization/conspiracy theory?

"Ruling elites" are not omnipotent, and paradoxically most are in the most vulnerable demographic. And as others said, it is a situation where one can be damned regardless of which way they act.

In the case of strong containment/quarantines, unless you're willing to completely close the borders indefinitely at this point it is futile doing maximum containment: it's past the point where you can stop it, as the world managed to do with SARS and MERS.

At this point every government is vulnerable to every other government, and further vulnerable to the possibility that there are super-carriers spreading it. And FWIW, a number of countries have a done a very good job of managing it, but again it isn't a closed-loop.

<comment><USER94> French President Macron seems to be doing what this post is writing: trying to fine-tune the spread, and find a balance between economy and health, with proportional measures

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> They don't act because they don't care. It's people dying, and their eyes are focused on purely economic metrics, not the well-being of the population or its survival. In the particular case of Europe, this is not the first thread that is totally discarded by the ruling elite, it's the usual way of acting. It's more visible with the virus because the timescale is shorter, but fundamentally there is no difference with how some other important threats are handled (for instance, see how the current acts of war from Turkey against Greece are handled by France and Germany).

<comment><USER87> If its only economic factors, don't you think that having an active workforce would make more sense to them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> TLDR: It's cheapest to let old people die, so that the young can continue working.

A very cruel view on humanity, but I would be surprised if these thoughts hadn't crossed our politicians minds.

Also, many initiatives by young people (e.g. limiting climate change, re- structuring society to be more equal-opportunity) are being blocked by old people who wish to preserve the status quo. So there is a general dislike by young people - those mostly unaffected by Covid - against the elderly - <USER2> most likely to die from Covid.

And for many years, there have been heated discussions about whether it is fair to force an ever smaller number of young people to pay for an ever growing number of old people, even if those old people directly undermine the young people's livelihood, for example by driving up rental prices or by voting to stop free education (which they themselves benefited from, when young).

So you could probably even win some young votes with a platform of "let's sacrifice the unneeded grumpy grandmas for the greater good".

<comment><USER98> If you do that in the US you'd lose 60% of politicians and 90% of presidential candidates.

<comment><USER97> Which, in the eyes of young people, might not be that bad.</comment></comment></comment>


SEED Engineering – Our Stack (YC W15) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@seed/seed-engineering-our-stack-f72a9079a6b8

<comment><AUTHOR> SEED is a new online bank for small business. We've written about our approach to engineering and the tech we use in our latest blog post. Check it out, and if you have any questions for us we'll be here all day.</comment>


GitHub can delete all issues, comments, and repositories - <AUTHOR> One of our contributors, catamphetamine (https://github.com/catamphetamine), who has created several open-source repositories we depend on and has submitted a lot of useful information in tickets, has been blocked from GitHub. When GitHub blocks a user, it also seems to destroy every comment, issue, and repository that they have ever created (ever), which means that you lose a lot of use full information. I love GitHub, but I can't afford to lose access to that level of knowledge. Does anyone have a way to backup your tickets or have a safer alternative to GitHub? Also is there any way to get all this information back? <comment> java-man Don't use GitHub, use something else where you maintain a reasonable level of control.

Back it up to the storage you own.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks @oseibonsu. On March 9th, 2020, GitHub has banned my account without any notice for an unknown reason. I found out about that only when people started sending me emails telling me that my hosted libraries have stopped working and asking me why did I delete my GitHub account (which I didn't). Apparently, for any person other than me, when navigating to any of my libraries' page, GitHub simply displayed a "404 Not found" page. Not even a "user account suspended" page — nothing. Just as if the person didn't exist, and all their libraries too. GitHub, if you're banning someone then at least have some balls to publicly admit it. The ban resulted in at least tens of thousands of people using my libraries not being able to access the source codes, not being able to report bugs or seek assistance when they're stuck. Some of my libraries also relied on "GitHub Pages" for hosting "static" assets (for example, country flag icons), and those have stopped working properly as a result. The only hint from GitHub was when I navigated to their website and (only for me) it showed a notification at the top saying: "Your account has been flagged. Because of that, your profile is hidden from the public. If you believe this is a mistake, contact support to have your account status reviewed". I've sent a support request to GitHub, Inc. as soon as I found out about the issue (Ticket ID: 594578).What could possibly be the reason of the ban? Maybe one of my repos contained a mysterious "blacklisted" word? Or maybe I've accidentally called someone a moron on the internet (happens to anyone)? Does it really justify silently wiping a bunch of useful open-source projects hundreds of thousands of people rely on in production? This incident should teach us all that corporations are still corporations, even when proclaimed the heart of open source, even when they've played a huge role in growing the open source community to its current state.The main focus of every corporation are good "public relations" image and silky-smooth operation. This giant machine can be your best friend as long as you don't stand in its way and are good for its business. But if you happen to get in the way, it can simply screw you over and won't even notice.

References:

* [The Schism at the Heart of the Open-Source Movement]([https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/ice-contract-github-sparks-developer-protests/604339/))

* [Why use GitGud.io?]([https://twitter.com/GitGudGG/status/1004164620230144001](https://twitter.com/GitGudGG/status/1004164620230144001))

* [Github Nukes Repository Over Use Of The Word 'Retard']([https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/githu...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/github-nukes-repository-over-use-word-retard.shtml)) * [Which GitHub alternatives/VCS service providers should you use if you value your right to free speech? Some disrecommendations and recommendations.]([https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/comments/3ihuqf/whi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MozillaInAction/comments/3ihuqf/which_github_alternativesvcs_service_providers/))

* (caution: some people may find the following article offensive, but I've included it to preserve the "diversity" of opinions) [GitHub Hires Notorious Social Justice Warrior to Work on 'Anti-Harassment']([https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/25/github-hires-notor...](https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/25/github-hires-notorious-social-justice-warrior-to-work-on-anti-harassment/)). [@CoralineAda: "Transphobic maintainer should be removed from project"]([https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)). * [GitHub blocks developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea for political reasons]([https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/)).

* [GitHub "shadowbans" GoodbyeDPI repo]([https://habr.com/ru/post/447902/](https://habr.com/ru/post/447902/)) (in Russian).

<comment><USER2> I've decided to format this text in a more reader-friendly way and posted it on Medium: [https://medium.com/@catamphetamine/how-github-blocked-me- and...](https://medium.com/@catamphetamine/how-github-blocked-me-and-all-my- libraries-c32c61f061d3?sk=f062411abf4bf2ff8c749050cf71854b)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why were they blocked?</comment>


I Wish Nest Did More Than Thermostats - <AUTHOR> http://www.jorgecastro.org/2013/05/03/i-wish-nest-did-more-than-thermostats/

<comment><USER2> Myself and a friend looked in to doing this for sprinkler timers. The aim was to simplify the interface to a large degree and allow for configuration via a browser or mobile device.

As it turns out there is a patent on sprinkler timers with embedded web servers. The owner of the patent has posted hostile messages threatening legal action on any public facing website that posts about the handful of consumer products that might infringe on their patent.

Here is a link to the patent: <http://www.google.com/patents/US7010396>

<comment><USER3> This makes me sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like kind of a silly. The Ubuntu panel he shows there is simple because programmers have hidden all the complexity. Whoever installed the sprinkler system hid the complexity too - they closed the door on the sprinkler control panel. If you wanted it to be simple, you should have left the door closed. You don't need to adjust it. It should have been programmed by the installer to account for _seasonal_ rainfall. Day-to-day rain does not matter _at all_ to your sprinkler programming.

If you want to poke around (literally) under the hood, you don't get to complain about complexity.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that poking around under the hood shouldn't be necessary. If the sprinkler system worked well enough without ever needing to open the hood, then everything's fine. But it looks like that's not the case.

<comment><USER4> Not only is it unnecessary to poke around under the hood, it's bad. If you're changing your sprinkler configuration, you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to set the schedule and never touch it again. Changing the schedule (because of rain or weather) is not as good for your lawn as just leaving everything alone. The only control you should ever be touching is the master shutoff valve. Your sprinkler isn't supposed to care about daily rainfall, because that doesn't matter in lawn care.

The _only_ problem with the sprinkler in the article is that the internal clock is set wrong, and you can be pretty sure that the reason the internal clock is wrong is because the author tried to tweak things. Don't do that, and the problems go away.

<comment><USER6> _If you're changing your sprinkler configuration, you're doing it wrong._

Or your lawn is dying because there hasn't been enough rain. Or your lawn is dying because there's been too much rain. Or you're resodding a part of your lawn. Or you're removing part of your lawn to put in a garden. Or you've started using rainbarrels to naturally irrigate your backyard. Or your city has changed which days you can water your lawn on.

 _you can be pretty sure that the reason the internal clock is wrong is because the author tried to tweak things._

It could also be because the power went out or because of Daylight Saving Time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nest folks, once you are happy with your thermostat product please pivot to water heaters. There is no reason why I heat the water in the tank up throughout the night. I think that my household demand for hot water is fairly predictable with spikes in the morning for showering and in the evening for dishes and laundry.

<comment><USER8> In general, there's a good reason for heating the water overnight: electricity is often cheaper at night, and (on a national level) it means that electricity demand is spread more evenly over the whole 24 hours.

<comment><USER9> This is a good idea, but are you by chance located outside the US? Every water heater I've personally encountered in North America has been powered by natural gas. Even so, it only takes an hour or so to fully replenish the hot water, so it still makes sense to allow the water to cool down between, say, midnight and 5am.

<comment><USER10> Huge swaths of the U.S. simply don't have natural gas. The township that I used to live in explicitly stated in their planning that they did not intend to run gas lines.

My current place doesn't have gas either...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "For bonus points it would also check Google Maps and compare how green my lawn is to my neighbors"

How's that going to work when the imagery isn't real time?

<comment><USER12> Alternatively, it could check what neighbours' sprinkler systems are set to, and recommend the median or mean (or maybe just the max of immediately adjacent neighbours).

He's just making a wishlist of features; the particular method of implementation doesn't have to match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have an Ecobee thermostat in my condo, which I am currently in the process of selling. Young people are usually pretty excited about seeing it in action, but older people are actually turned off. My guess is they see it as another complicated VCR that they can't program, and so, it's actually a negative.

Even the Nest, with it's simple dial would probably scare them, because smart things scare stupid people.

When I tell them that it's an Internet enabled thermostat, they must immediately think, "OMG CHINA HAXORS GUNNA STEAL MY THERMOSTAT MHZ" because that's what the scare-monger media has been telling them over the last six months.

<comment><USER14> That thing looks like a nightmare. I don't blame them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is where Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) with web tech (ideally) and/or Apps (practically) could shine: the sprinkler system could vend a much better software UI to our smartphones than the hardware UI it's currently offering.

<comment><USER14> I can't stand UI controllers for physical stuff:

1\. When you want to change some parameter of the physical thing, you have to know where your phone is. You can't just _go there_.

2\. You need to take your phone out of your pocket, navigate to the icon, press it, wait, probably tap a button or two, then slide your fingers along a smooth surface in some sort of complex pattern. Meanwhile, you could have walked downstairs and turned a dial, which you can actually feel with your fingers and you don't need to look at.

Nest makes big awesome dials. I too wish more startups with good designers would find some way to displace common hardware controls that are unfamiliar and complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An irrigation system is far more complicated than a thermostat however there are already strong contenders in this space. I use a Cyber-Rain[1] controller which adjusts based on humidity, temperature and forecast along with details provided during setup such as sprinkler types, soil types, grade and more. When your system has a flow sensor the controller will even shut down the system in the event of a broken head and send an email instead of letting hundreds of gallons of water run down the street.

[1]<http://cyber-rain.com>

</comment><comment><USER17> We're working on it.

<https://github.com/makilian/Mist>

<comment><USER18> Any more info you can share? I'm very interested in something like this.

<comment><USER17> Yes. I few friends and I have been working on this for a few months as a school project. We're done with school now, but we may still continue the project. So far we have been more focused on the mathematics and the software and less focused on the product because the project was for school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have used those exact sprinkler system controls and can attest that they are absolutely terrible.

</comment><comment><USER20> They will, once they feel that their thermostat is satisfactory enough.

</comment><comment><USER21> Glad to hear Nest is still around. Last I heard, they were getting the thermonuclear treatment from Honeywell's patent attorneys. Was that resolved recently?

</comment><comment><USER22> I've had this exact same thought. The other area is pools. Turning on the pool heater and pump via wifi, or turning the hot tub on as I leave from work.

</comment><comment><USER23> I find these guys very interesting <http://irrigationcaddy.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> This appears to be the manual for that sprinkler controller: <http://www.rainbird.com/documents/turf/man_ESPModular.pdf>

Setting the time doesn't appear to be too painful.

<comment><USER25> His point stands: if you need a manual to set the time, then the UI is poorly designed. Period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Agreed. But specifically for lawns, I actually wish someone makes much cheaper artificial turfs. Good for aesthetics, better for the environment.. saves hassle time money and water.

<comment><USER27> This can't be all that far away. At the size of a baseball field, I'm told it's a no-brainer to go turf at this point.

I don't actually know the prices, I'm trusting the college coaches who have mentioned this to me over the last several years (I umpire on the side). One has been on artificial turf for three years, another put turf in this year, and the rest want them.

<comment><USER28> The usage patterns of a baseball field and a lawn at one's house are generally not going to be very similar, so it doesn't necessarily follow that what's cheaper for one is cheaper for the other. (I have no idea how the prices actually compare.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Personally, I don't want Nest; I'd prefer coherent locally accessible APIs for monitoring and control.</comment>


A Courting Peacock Can Shake Its Partner's Head From Afar - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/peacock-crests-are-vibration-sensors/578656/ <comment><USER2> If they get the funding for this from the government we'll be hearing about it from some overzealous spending hawk congress person next EOY.</comment>


Show HN: The customer service guide for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.paweljaniak.co.za/customer-service-ebook?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=hn

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I've put together a short, free guide on customer service that aims to be a reference point and reminder for small teams to keep their customer service standards high. It covers quite a few of the fundamentals of getting your business up to speed on delivering good customer service.

It's aimed at startup teams, solo entrepreneurs and smaller businesses.

For those of you that are going to nag about having to subscribe to get the ebook, here's the direct link:

[http://paweljaniak.co.za/assets/custserv.pdf](http://paweljaniak.co.za/assets/custserv.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for putting up the direct link. I think you might be more successful in getting people to sign up if they know what is inside the guide. Maybe have a short excerpt from the book on the landing page so people can see what they might be getting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea!</comment></comment></comment>


We are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2020/03/upcoming-chrome-releases.html <comment><USER2> Without knowing much about the team I really doubt this has much to do with remote work. It seems like a smart move to take pressure off team deliverables in general right now for a host of reasons.

<comment><USER3> Local schools are leaning heavily on chromebooks. They have checked them out to students without computers. Adding an os update to this would contribute to the chaos.

<comment><USER4> OS updates on ChromeOS are seamless and mostly go unnoticed by the user, FWIW.

<comment><USER5> Except when they move the launch bar from here to there or hide scrollbars or make any of a million other changes that cause your screen to no longer resemble the screenshot you're trying to learn from.

<comment><USER3> I updated a couple weeks ago and every tab was discarded when I tabbed away, reloaded when I tabbed back. It's better now. I can only imagine the problems that would cause for a school with a couple hundred of these checked out.

<comment><USER6> install session buddy from the chrome web store. it saves your tabs automatically, & even restores sessions containing a mix of tabs & web "apps" accordingly.

<comment><USER7> The only reason this is needed is because something was messed up with the core functionality. Same thing could happen with an API.

The focus on stability for now makes sense with a lot of people going remote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2020: the year that did not exist

<comment><USER9> I joked with my friend a few weeks ago that B.C. would stand for before Corona/Covid. Unfortunately, it looks like it's not as much of a joke and the impacts of it are only starting to become clear, I hope we can learn from it so if there's another pandemic we can react much faster.

<comment><USER10> That is a good joke :) I will steal that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google Play Store app publishing is delayed as well. Currently the message says:

"Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are currently experiencing longer than usual review times. Please expect review times of 7 days or longer."

<comment><USER12> I wonder how this will impact educational apps that are trying to get last minute features for use in environments with a teacher. I know drops is trying to roll out an update at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 2020 has been cancelled. A false start to the new decade.

<comment><USER14> Guess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument.

<comment><USER15> 2010?

<comment><USER16> > Guess the "decades run from 1 to 10, not 0 to 9" people won that argument.

Like: the twenties run from 2021 to 2030, not from 2020 to 2029.

Because the year after 1 BC is 1 AD. There is no year zero. This is one of the weird things of our calendar. More about that see Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero).

So, the first millennium is from 1 to 1000, the second from 1001 to 2000 and the third from 2001 to 3000. And the twenties being the third decade start with the year 2021, and so on.

The comment is just snarky, because people have a mess with dates. Usually people start counting with one, even if mathematically starting with zero would make more sense. But hey, they make an exception for millennia, centuries and decades. They start with zero. Bravo!

In a sense this is funny. People don't usually start counting with zero. Of all things they do this for decades, however for once this is not ... applicable? useful? right?

<comment><USER14> Not snarky at all - an attempt at an humorous aside. I thought about trying to tie it to Lua / Erlang / Julia coders vs. C / .NET / Java etc., but thought that a bit of a stretch. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> More on this: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and- chrom...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-pauses-chrome-and-chrome-os- releases-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/)

Apparently they released some blog posts yesterday but changed their mind

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope that Google and other companies will encourage remote teams and divisions after this event. Having the ability for some teams to primarily work from home might provide some hermetic guarantee of continued development and liveness during a time of crisis.

<comment><USER19> I don't think this is similar to normal remote work though. Schools are closed, so people can't work on home in isolation. On top of that people must be anxious. When people are worried about lots of other stuff their output may not be the same.

Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.

<comment><USER20> > Even basecamp, which is highly remote, postponed their email service launch.

I'm sure the added stress didn't help, but I would imagine it's more related to marketing. Do you really want to launch a new product at this time of uncertainty?

<comment><USER19> Considering that it was an email service, focused on making async communication better, one would think right now might be a pretty good time when a large number of people are working from home.

<comment><USER2> strategically perhaps, but the optics on that are so awful. I'd argue it's the wrong thing to do if you thought you'd be more profitable in a crisis.

<comment><USER19> It's not about being profitable. They could even maybe launch it below cost and that might help people even if it costs them. The parent talked about marketing. And people using something and benefitting from it, and then recommending to others is probably one of the best forms of it.

The optics are bad if you try to profit unreasonably. Launching something to help people become more productive, and making reasonable money out of it doesn't have bad optics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder, if people just stopped working or moved on some covid related project?

<comment><USER22> I'm sure that's part of it but going remote also introduces a ton a workflow impediments as the team adjusts.

<comment><USER23> There are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at google. I'd imagine a lot of testing is done by people who aren't FTEs.

disclaimer: I am a Googler, but know nothing about how the Chrome team operates

<comment><USER24> > There are a lot of obstacles for temps/contractors to gain remote access at > google.

I thought that Google were all-in on BeyondCorp, which doesn't require a secure perimetre. Did they not actually convert everything, or is it still in progress?

(edit: removed a non-constructive suggestion)

<comment><USER25> BeyondCorp gives you basic access to unprotected things on the network (intranet, google apps, etc), but not to secure systems, source code, etc.

<comment><USER26> Out of curiosity, how does that work? VPN? Remote desktop? Both?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Finally, good news.

</comment><comment><USER28> Remote work now is likely lower in productivity than normal-times WFH. If a software company cannot adjust to remote delivery, albeit at lower than normal productivity, the rest of the economy has no hope.

I don't understand Google's decision here - I wish they simply predicted a longer than normal release cadence, versus none at all

<comment><USER29> Perhaps because some testing needs to be done on physical devices in a real lab?

"Please test this build of Chrome on these 1000 various models of android phones" sounds kinda hard to automate.

Even if you had automated it, you'd probably still need someone in the office to poke hardware that locked up, etc.

<comment><USER30> I don't know what Google use, but a friend worked on a system some years ago that used a robotic "finger" to press on a phone touchscreen, for testing. This was for a mobile phone company (pre-Android/iPhone) to check their OS worked.

I wouldn't be surprised if even the best of those systems requires some human supervision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are there any known security loopholes in the issues pipeline that are yet to be addressed?

I'm interested in knowing if halting updates for a browser mean much to real world users?

<comment><USER32> It sounds like they're still pushing security updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. We will still be pushing critical updates.</comment></comment></comment>