Ask HN: Are we overreacting to coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> Source [1]. Note that I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories so I will focus only on non-political information. I hope someone one the field can fact-check the information presented and correct any interpretation mistakes on my part:<p>- The test that is currently used was not extensively validated and quickly accepted by WHO due to urgency. This raises the following questions:
  - Is it possible that we are seeing false positives, where people with flu-like symptoms are wrongly identified as having SARS-CoV-2?
  - Are we certain that the test is implemented correctly everywhere?<p>- To find infection/death rates, are we doing tests on the whole population, or only on certain groups, such as people that went to hospitals feeling cold symptoms?<p>- Is it possible that infection rates are higher than normal because more people are going to hospitals (due to widespread panic), and thus get infected more easily than if they had treated common cold symptoms at home?<p>- Are the flu deaths increasing because of the coronavirus? Consider this:
  - In Germany, between 20000 and 30000 people die yearly from flu, mostly on winter.
  - Assume that in previous years we tested all seriously ill patients for coronavirus (which didn't happen). In this scenario, where we tested everyone, it is expected that between 2000 and 3000 of the dead would also have a coronavirus (which doesn't imply they died because of coronavirus).
  - Due to panic, more people are filling the hospital beds, possibly leaving the really sick without proper care, thus increasing deaths.
  - In Germany, there are currently 33 deaths attributed to coronavirus, nowhere near the expected number. Note that Germany has considerably more hospital beds than Italy [2].<p>[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_AyuhbnPOI<p>[2] https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/flattening-the-coronavirus-curve-is-not-enough/ <comment><USER3> Early last week, one of the hospitals near me (NYC) had zero confirmed cases but a couple of people who were exhibiting Covid-like symptoms bad enough they required hospitalization.

On Thursday of last week, this hospital had their first several confirmed positive cases. Keep in mind that in the early days of this, the criteria for testing in the US has been "you are already very sick and you require hospitalization for something with similar symptoms"

On Tuesday of this week, as tests became more available, that hospital had ~20 suspected and confirmed cases.

On Wednesday they were at 22 confirmed cases and 22 suspected cases where people are sick enough to require hospitalization but test results haven't come back yet.

Last week, the hospital was dealing with normal load and on standby should this become a problem. In the space of a little over a week, they now have a floor devoted to patients who are a) sick enough to require hospitalization and b) have tested positive and another floor devoted to patients who are a) sick enough to require hospitalization and b) are presumed to have this based on symptoms presented, pending test results.

It's just one facility, but I personally cannot look at a single hospital that had zero known cases last week, which now has two floors devoted to active cases this week and comfort myself with, "It's fine, this is just the flu."

<comment><USER4> This guy knows what's up. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm from Spain, one of the most exposed countries right now. At first you see this as something distant, something that was happening in China as Ebola was happening years ago on Africa.

It can't touch me.

A few days ago the state of alarm began over here. Remain at home, minimal movement (just to go for groceries, pharma, the rest of retail businesses are closed now). It felt closer, but still you feel safe. You're at home, theoretically isolated.

And then you start hearing that people near you got sick and even die. One friend's father died a couple days ago. Other relative has been confirmed with covid-19 yesterday. More cases coming everyday. They are no longer points in a chart. These are your people.

We are not overreacting. We reacted late.

Take care.

<comment><USER6> This whole crisis is a test of healthcare systems.

Germany got hit very hard with infections, but also has a really low fatality count. Spain only got 8% more infections but over a maginitude more deaths

Edit: Spain also has only half of the population of Germany, so it's probably more like 16% more infections in relation to population.

<comment><USER7> It's a test of our healthcare systems that they can't possibly pass unless our government and society pass their tests. Any country that fails to get the general public sufficiently onboard to flatten the curve _will_ massively overload their healthcare system no matter how great that healthcare system is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No. Very simply, an extreme response is required here. The most recent UCL study demonstrates that given everything we know about the virus, extreme social distancing may not even be enough [1]. Worse, if we are successful, it will look like we overreacted because the nature of exponential spread is that if you act when you're on the steep part of the curve you're too late. If you act beforehand, you never get to the steep part.

The test, while developed quickly, isn't likely showing lots of false positives. The nature of these tests is that they're not too hard to quality control. You know what they're looking for (a particular set of RNA sequences) so positive and negative controls are easy to make. In fact that's why the CDC test was rejected initially, there was a clear issue with the controls.

For hospital beds, people don't just randomly end up in the ICU. Italian ICU capacity is completely overwhelmed, if not this virus, why?

That said, hoarding groceries is counterproductive and an overreaction. Otherwise, absolutely not, this is a terrible virus, we need to be careful.

[1] [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease- ana...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news --wuhan-coronavirus/)

EDIT: Typo

<comment><USER9> _Italian ICU capacity is completely overwhelmed, if not this virus, why?_

Being a truly evil Devil's advocate for a moment:

1\. Because it's not actually overwhelmed. See this discussion from 2 days ago about a Reuters report where the head of ICU for Lombardy says nobody has been turned away due to lack of beds: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605144)

2\. Because ICU demand expands to meet available capacity as nobody wants to switch off life support and modern medicine always gives one more intervention to try. Thus doctors are always describing their hospitals as overwhelmed the moment demand increases even a little bit.

Hospitals being described as overloaded, patients being treated in tents and doctors describing their wards as strained/at the edge of disaster/etc is not something unique to COVID-19. Here is the same thing happening in 2018 in the USA:

[https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu- patie...](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/)

Here are some quotes. Remember, all this was Jan 2018 but it sounds like it could have been written yesterday.

 _The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent- care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures_

 _" We are pretty much at capacity"_

 _Tallia says his hospital is "managing, but just barely," at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital's urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available_

 _The story is similar in Alabama, which declared a state of emergency last week in response_

 _In California, which has been particularly hard hit by this season's flu, several hospitals have set up large "surge tents" outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat flu patients_

 _Nurses are being "pulled from all floors to care for them, " ... "Many nurses have also become sick, however, so the staff is also short-handed."_

 _" More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure from the flu and other rampant upper respiratory infections"_

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279685/Californi...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279685/California- hospitals-looks-like-flu-war-zone.html)

 _Flu drives hospitals into 'war zone' conditions: Tents on the street in California, 'state of emergency' in Alabama, and Boston is using GATORADE to plug shortage of IV drips_

Remember - all that was in 2018. The world didn't end. The exact same terms and language are being used now.

Now, I'm not saying this case is the same as flu of 2018 in the USA. Clearly, there are critical differences and this one _is_ much more serious. But how much more serious is being muddled by the fact that our data is all useless and so people fall back on testimony from doctors, which sounds extremely dramatic, but there's a history of describing tough flu seasons in exactly the same way.

In a way it makes sense. ICU capacity is expensive. It'd be weird to have lots sitting idle all the time, unused, whilst other people were being switched off life support.

<comment><USER10> Thank your god you don't live in Bergamo (Italy) [1] right now and stop writing about things you don't know, you are just disrespectful to those who know better who won't write you here because they are either busy 14h/day saving lives or just trying to survive.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/video-tour-coronavirus- icu-w...](https://www.businessinsider.com/video-tour-coronavirus-icu-ward- bergamo-italy-worst-apocalyptic-2020-3?IR=T)

<comment><USER9> I live a few hours from Bergamo. I'm writing these things anyway. Please don't try and shut people down who are posting factual information by claiming it's "disrespectful" \- disrespectful to whom? The medics I quoted?

The Business Insider article you link to is saying exactly the same things as the articles I cite about what happened in the USA in 2018: makeshift wards, extraordinary measures, more and more patients needing ventilation. That's what it looks like when a lot of patients turn up sick with pneumonia at once.

Videos are dramatic but not enough to understand what's going on by themselves. You realise that, I hope?

<comment><USER10> You confirm you are completely oblivious to what is happening around you, good for you. Even visual proof is not enough. Enjoy your "hospitals are not at full capacity" fairy tale, maybe you are lucky enough to not need to find an hospital. If you knew at least one person in the first line you would know better. But please do keep reading your comorting fairy tales if that helps you.

<comment><USER9> You're reacting emotionally when what the world needs is cold rationalism.

As of Wednesday afternoon this week, Italian hospitals were not yet at the point of turning people away:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/italys-death-rate-reaches- re...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/italys-death-rate-reaches-record-high- hospitals-in-lombardy-struggle.html)

 _Medical facilities in Lombardy will "soon" be unable to help new coronavirus cases, regional Gov. Attilio Fontana said Wednesday, as he urged everyone to stay at home._

That was based on a quick search of English-language material. Perhaps there's a more recent update from the last 48 hours where things have changed - I'd love more recent info. But at the moment I'm seeing a lot of people who clearly believe hospitals are turning people away en-masse already, and yet I keep finding news stories where it's being officially denied by the relevant health authorities. Are they all oblivious, living in a fairy tale too? If so, isn't that a shocking scandal that needs to be talked about right now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regarding your question about if we might accidentally test for flu or other, already existing corona virii:

This was a topic of discussion in yesterday's talk [1] with Dr. Drosten, a virologist who played an important part in the development of the currently used PCR test. He said that there were extensive studies done with hundreds of samples from both flu patients and patients infected with other corona virii and none returned a positive result. The only other positive results were from corona virii that are special to certain animals (bats, some cows IIRC), but none of those are present in humans. So the accuracy of our current PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 seems to be extremely high.

[1] (transcript in German) [https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/16-Coronavirus-Update- Wi...](https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/16-Coronavirus-Update-Wir-brauchen- Abkuerzungen-bei-der-Impfstoffzulassung,podcastcoronavirus140.html)

Here's a quick (and slightly condensed) translation of the relevant parts: "There was a big validation study [for the PCR test]. We tested with a big number of patient samples from patients with flu/cold diseases and other corona viruses. Not once did we get a false positive. [...] It is true though that [the current PCR test] would yield positive results against the old SARS corona virus, but that hasn't been confirmed in a human for 16 years. And theoretically, the test would give a positive result on some bat corona viruses, but they do not affect humans."

<comment><USER12> It's easy to get a low rate of false positives: Just always report no virus found.

So, we care about both false positives and false negatives. Dr. Brix said as much recently.

<comment><USER13> Prof. Drosten is the chief virologist at Berlin Charité.

I'm confident that somewhere in his medical education the concept of false negatives came up, and I'm also certain that he doesn't word his answers in an interview for the general public to the standards of the nitpicking HN population.

<comment><USER9> That's a bit weak though. Right now what the world needs more than anything is precise, clear, accurate information. It's really hard to do that, I got called on making a vaguely worded and misleading statement here on HN just the other day. But then again it's not my job to make such statements. When it is, I take more care than I do in this little box.

Why can't we ask for more?

<comment><USER12> > Right now what the world needs more than anything is precise, clear, > accurate information.

Right: Among the things we need, good data is a biggie.

Part of that is what I've been addressing here: Test _quality_ , especially for test results reported by the news media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, so far judging by deaths / cases on plague.com, we're looking at 4% fatality rate. The average seasonal flu fatality rate is 0.1%. The mortality rate for H1N1 was 0.02%. For Ebola, the average mortality rate is around 50%.

China severely restricted travel and managed to keep the infection rate around 0.008% of their population. We're still in the early stages in the US, with about 0.00269% of the population infected.

In the US, about 8% of the population gets the seasonal flu every year on average. That's about 28 million people. Take 4% of that 28 million people and we'd be looking at 1.12 million people dying from the flu every year if it had the same 4% mortality rate that Covid19 has.

So sheltering in place to limit transmission and keep the number of cases low could save many, many lives.

None of the above estimates take into account the risk we run of running out of hospital beds and ventilators. That would increase the mortality rate.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for explaining.

Any idea what the mortality increase would be?

<comment><USER16> 10-15% of cases require hospitalization. The US has hospital beds for about 0.2% of the population, so possibly 10% or higher mortality rate.

<comment><USER17> To piggy back.. this gets really bad because you have the question: "How many people need critical care per year, or in a given month". Now, how many of these people die if there IS no critical care to give? No room in the inn so to speak?

I'm sure they're working on jerryrigged work arounds like using schools and hotels, but still it's not the same as a real ICU... plus it's highly possible a lot of these people could come in with a heart attack or a car crash and get COVID19, and die from the virus when their other injuries they would've survived, or they might've even survived COVID19 by itself without the extra ailments.

Not to mention, it's possible all other patients in hospital could end up w/ it if it's not contained well, and again same thing as above.

What about immune compromised patients, like Cancer patients who need chemo... they could have to postpone treatment (not enough staff to administer) which could cause them to die..or they could show up, get infected and die within 2 weeks from COVID19 + already weakened immune system....

How many people feel safe breaking quarantine to go give blood? We're having a major blood shortage right now. They say it's safe to give, but pretty sure if someone else was there or if the blood drawers are infected you'll come home with it... There's no way they can guarantee you won't... So if the blood shortage continues to worsen, how many lives will that kill as a result...

I mean you could go further and say some might starve, but I don't think we're at that yet... but it's a possibility esp. w/ panic buying and supply chain woes... but I think not till summer. There's going to be a major issue with migratory workers who work on farms..so we might be short on crops and farm goods this year.

Also according to scientists we need to social distance for an entire year at the least... This could cause a lot of depression, anxiety, and suicide too.

<comment><USER15> That's a good point. I think the recently recovered corona patients have a duty to give blood for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Depends on which "we":

The members of my community that got into a brawl over toilet paper at Costco: Yes

The members of my family who have been sending funny videos of each other because we're all stuck at home with kids: No

The members of my local gaming group that make sure to wipe down the table and wash our hands before we play: No

...

Basically, I think it is a mixed bag. Yes, we should be cautious and mindful. I agree that we don't usually put things in their proper perspective when assessing threats.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes. The biggest issue is that we lack any idea regarding how infected the population currently is, or was. We don't know if 25% of all Americans have had a minor infection at this point and are less vulnerable. We don't know how it hung around Washington State undetected for six weeks.

On the one hand, when dealing with the risks associated with a pandemic it is wise to error on the side of caution, but as we go through this we learn more and more how little we knew when we launched this panic campaign.

Until we have a reasonable sampling the entire population, claiming this is the doomsday virus is incredibly dangerous. Shutting down the economy is incredibly dangerous considering our lack of knowledge about this virus.

Incomplete information has spread like absolute wildfire on the internet, and closures and overreactions fell like dominos as worst case scenarios were leaked without context. It is maddening

<comment><USER4> You will likely regret saying this in about 5 days. It's already way too much. Call anyone in NYC if they know of a first hand case. NYC is tracking toward Italy more so than parts of China.

<comment><USER19> I work with, have family and have friends in NYC. A lot of the problems in NYC are due to the restrictions on every day life, not the virus. Don't confused the virus with the draconian restrictions we put in place. The latter are having a much larger influence.

<comment><USER20> Those restrictions are a symptom of the virus too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It depends - if we think nothing is off the table - including isolating older people or doing war-time like strategies, then maybe we are overreacting.

But if the only cases we consider are traditionnal approaches - confinment vs doing basically nothing, then the short answer must be no - if anything, we are underreacting (by we, I assume you mean the West - EU and US).

I've tried to be smart about the numbers, which are definitely not rock solid now, but just look at what happened in places that tried to underreact - <USER2> (not their fault), Lombardy. Have you ever seen military trucks coming into a city, during peace time, to move coffins out ? Here you go: [https://twitter.com/guidosalva/status/1240555847849312256?s=...](https://twitter.com/guidosalva/status/1240555847849312256?s=20)

We can argue as long as we want about age structure etc, but this kind of horror, definitely never happens unless there is something extremely unusual (and deadly) happening.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a problem that seems to be a lot like climate change:

It will be hard to objectively tell if we overreacted, because the actions taken cause a lower impact than predicted.

But on the other hand, it will be pretty easy to tell if we underreacted: a catastrophe worse than projected would mean we didn't take enough action.

It's so easy to be skeptical when the data is inconsistent - but it's important to be open to new information and work to protect your community to the best of your knowledge and ability.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, it's hard to call anything an overreaction when a "proper" reaction will in hindsight _look_ like an overreaction simply because it was effective.

<comment><USER24> As exactly happened with Y2K

<comment><USER25> There are many Y2K deniers, even though people that have actually seen the code says it would have crashed and burned without all the hard work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Overall I would have to say absolutely, yes. The number of infections doesn't justify this level of panic, let alone the number of deaths. I realise there is an element of "prevention" here, but far, far more people die of very common things (flu, traffic accidents, smoking-related conditions, being overweight, etc.) in the US alone every year, some of which are also 100% preventable, than have died worldwide of coronavirus. Do we shut down borders because of a flu outbreak? No, it's just expected. The same can be said for any of the dozens of leading causes of death that exist in poverty-stricken countries where things like water contamination causing diarrhea kill more people than we could possibly imagine dying in the US.

I'm not saying that there haven't been some good things to come out of this situation - people working from home and thereby saving gas, limiting pollution, etc.; increased awareness of basic cleanliness practices, particularly in some countries that are quite noticeably less fastidious than the US generally is; actual tests of some of our response mechanisms (I mean, you don't trust your backups unless you've used them...) - but the extraordinary response of basically shutting down Europe is so far and away over the top...

I don't pretend to understand _why_ people have freaked out like this, but I suspect it's pretty much in line with why they freak out about anything: they've been programmed to wait for the "next big thing" that is going to kill us all by news, TV, movies; the news has, as usual, plastered everything across the "front page" on a constant basis, essentially "hyping" it up; and probably that on some deep psychological level we've all gotten a little overwhelmed with technological advances and how quickly the world has become a global market that is "always on", so we were unintentionally waiting for some way to pull back and deal with ourselves for a while.

<comment><USER27> > far, far more people die of very common things

More people die of those things _in a year_ than have died of COVID-19 _so far_ but that's the wrong comparison. There's real science and math behind predictions of a much higher toll which would make the comparison look very different.

There's also an aspect of who has control over outcomes. People can protect _themselves_ from various ills by eating right, exercising, not smoking, etc. There's no connection to other people's actions or outcomes. With communicable disease, the person who's not worried about their own outcome can cause the literal death of other people who had no choice about being born with certain medical conditions that made them more susceptible. You might feel you're Living Right and you're at no risk yourself, but - as has been pointed out many times but apparently not enough - It's Not Just About You. Your actions are connected to others' outcomes. There's a _social_ responsibility to avoid becoming a vector for infection.

<comment><USER26> I agree that we're not looking at a year's worth of data, but that was also kind of the point... we're not looking at a year's worth of data.

If 97 people have died in the US so far... you've got a _long_ way to go, even looking at an exponential growth rate, to even approach the top 10 causes of death in the US. According to the CDC 47,000 people killed themselves in 2017 [1], and that's #10. Also 100% preventable.

You also have control over your own susceptibility and spread of something like the flu or the common cold, but no one in the US ever wears a mask to prevent that (though in other countries that is a common sight).

1: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm)

Edit: It wasn't 8 people who have died, it was 97 according to the CDC. My bad.

<comment><USER27> > even looking at an exponential growth rate,

Do you know how exponential growth works? The exponent matters. A lot. There's a big difference between 1% growth per week and 10% growth every day. According to the actual math and models being used by epidemiologists, over four million people could need ICU-level care for COVID-19.

[https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200317.45791...](https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200317.457910/full/)

Since we don't have anywhere near that many ICU beds, and there's an even more acute shortage of ventilators, a high percentage of those people wouldn't get the care they need and would therefore die - eclipsing even heart disease in the list you cite. So no, measures to reduce that exponent are not unreasonable. We need to reduce both the number of contacts people have per day and the likelihood that each contact will lead to infection. Please study some math beyond what you've only partially remembered from grade school.

> You also have control over your own susceptibility and spread of something > like the flu or the common cold

Those are far less likely to reach a level where they require hospitalization, let alone ICU-level care. Yes, they're preventable (not 100% BTW), but there's no danger of affecting others by increasing strain on scarce hospital resources, so it's not a very constructive comparison.

<comment><USER28> It's amazing how many epidemiologist don't understand the difference between exponential and polynomial growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can only speak from 'our' perspective here in Sweden so don't shoot if you don't agree but... in general I think people under-react rather than over- react when it comes to handling the oncoming epidemic. The main problem is that the disease is already causing an overload on the health care system in parts of the country while the epidemic has just gotten started. If left unchecked it will peak in about 2.5 months when close to half a million people will likely be in need of hospitalisation with about 150.000 of them in need of critical care. About 40.000 people will die given a mortality of 0.7% (as measured in Korea) and a 70% fraction of the population being infected.

There are 520 IC places in the whole of Sweden.

Even if these numbers are overstated by a factor 10 - which is possible although the SEIR-model gives even higher numbers (800.000 hospitalised, 200.000 in need of critical care) - it is clear that those in need of critical care will most likely not get the help they need leading to an increased mortality.

For a single individual the disease does not seem to be as large a threat as it is being made out to be by some. For a society unused to see people die from infectious disease it stands to be devastating. Either society will have to accept that infectious disease can and will kill people when it is allowed free reign or we'll have to do our best to make sure the limit the amount of suffering due to loss of life, loss of quality of life, loss of income, employment, economic potential and other factors as much as possible.

What is needed now is a comprehensive testing effort to find out how far the infection has spread over the country. If it turns out a sizeable part of the population already carries antibodies against SARS-CoV2 it will be clear that the disease is not as much of a threat as it seems to be. Comprehensive testing will also allow for the early isolation of infected people and will help in limiting the load on the health care system.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't have the background to answer your questions, but even if I steelman and assume the worst outcome here (issues with the test, issues with epidemiology, that we're crowding out hospitals, that we're infecting via hospitals), I would argue that we are still not overreacting:

In the original outbreak of wuhan, there could not have been overpreparation because there was no preparation, the outbreak simply happened. So, we should look at wuhan pre-citywide-quarantine to get a feel for what it would look like if we chose to not "overreact", as originally there was no real "test" being administered, cases were diagnosed by CT scans of lungs for pneumonia, and there were not extreme imposed social distancing or population-wide quarantine.

So, any issues we might have in the west, should not apply to the original outbreak in wuhan. And in wuhan the casualties of the outbreak were on the order of 1-5% (i think estimates varied a lot for some of the reasons you list). In any case, it overloaded hospitals and a lot of people died.

If the infection reaches a broader population (the 'underreaction' scenario), it suffices to say the death rate will be a MINIMUM of 1-5%, as obviously the situation would be even worse with a large percentage of the population sick. This would continue until the population reaches herd immunity, estimated 30-60% of population infected.

Thus, we can conclude 1-5% of that 30-60% of the infected population would die, which in america ranges from about 1 million to nearly 10 million deaths. This is far far far greater than the yearly flu outbreak. And that's assuming that the rapid spread of the disease doesn't cause secondary effects through deteriorating supply chains (who staffs grocery stores if 60% of the population is home? who drives trucks to keep supply chains going? who works the amazon fulfillment center?)

Thus, I would conclude that the penalties for unabated spread of the disease are _so horrific_ that the only reasonable response is something that looks like an overreaction: extreme social distancing, shutting down cities aside from vital functions, etc.

Because atleast our groceries stores operate and our supply chains are running.

<comment><USER9> 1% to 5% of _what_? This is the kind of statement that raises suspicions of over-reaction.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/wuhan- coronavirus-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/wuhan-coronavirus- deaths.html)

As of yesterday the best data suggests a 1% fatality rate amongst confirmed cases in Wuhan. Wuhan has 2169 confirmed deaths in a population of 11 million, so if we speak of the casuality rate for the population it would be 0.019%. Is that a lot? Well, it's the sort of level that's lost in the noise of regular influenza.

 _Thus, we can conclude 1-5% of that 30-60% of the infected population would die_

No, we can't conclude that. You're taking a death rate of a very selectively chosen sample and then projecting it onto the entire population, which isn't statistically valid. People keep making basic logic errors like this one, which is what triggers questions like the OPs about possible over-reactions.

All the data we have is useless. Not a single stat has a level of accuracy that would normally be accepted for scientific use. We don't know what the infection rate is, which means we don't know how many people get sick and die, we don't know even what the mortality rate is because in fact we don't even have a globally agreed definition of COVID-19 mortality.

Italy examined their own death records and discovered that of all deaths marked as caused by CV, only 2 appeared to have no pre-existing or underlying health conditions. If that's true then SARS-CoV-2 is sort of like HIV. That makes it very hard to establish precise definitions. If someone has been battling a severe health problem for months, is very likely to die anyway, they die, and then their blood showed they got SARS-CoV-2 two days before dying - what was the cause of death? Health systems don't agree on how to answer this question which makes comparing numbers between locations very tricky. This is being floated as a possible explanation for the divergent death rates between Germany and Italy.

 _who staffs grocery stores if 60% of the population is home?_

Here you're not using temporal reasoning. Why would 60% of the population be at home simultaneously except via forced government fiat? Even if you assume everyone has to stay at home until they get the disease (worst case scenario, not implemented anywhere) people don't all get sick instantaneously, and once recovered people can go back to work as they aren't a threat to anyone. Most people recover within a week. So, to ask a question about how many people will be out of the workforce requires discussion of timeframes and curve slopes.

Something to be aware of is that the "60-70% of the population will get it" figures are based on a form of modelling that assumes everyone in the population interacts with everyone else. That simplifies the maths but clearly isn't close to being true.

 _Thus, I would conclude that the penalties for unabated spread of the disease are so horrific that the only reasonable response is something that looks like an overreaction_

And yet your post contains statistical and logical errors, which is why the number of people questioning that sort of conclusion is going to be non- trivial for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not really sure if we're overreacting. But it sure seems like we are entering this endeavor completely without a plan. We're not going to be able to stockpile food and furlough half the economy forever, and as soon as we start coming out of hibernation, spread will just ramp right back up again.

I think the lack of leadership and foresight will likely cause thousands to lose their lives and trillions in economic damage.

</comment><comment><USER32> >Are the flu deaths increasing because of the coronavirus?

In Japan influenza rates went way down because of the threat of coronavirus. [1] It might actually save lives assuming it's contained at some point.

[1] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/21/national/influe...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/21/national/influenza- wave-drastically-wanes-japan-amid-spread-coronavirus/)

</comment><comment><USER33> 1\. In the US, we test twice, and only with two positives do we say a person is confirmed to have COVID-19. Before that, we say "probable COVID-19." So is it used correctly everywhere? Impossible to say. In the US, yes it is.

2\. In Korea, yes. In the US, no. Other places, mostly no.

3\. Unlikely. We have a bigger issue with people _not_ going to hospitals, and therefore spreading the disease. Korea went from 30 cases to 8000 cases because of one such person. [0]

4\. More likely is that flu deaths will decrease because people are taking precautions that they normally do not. We should take flu much more seriously than we do, and the same precautions we take against COVID-19 are effective against flu.

Overall, you seem to be focused on hospitals, but here in the US, that's just not something people rush to, due to expense. Here in the US, at least, we are not overreacting. It may not be possible to overreact! What I mean is: If we have exactly the right level of reaction, it will look like overreaction in hindsight, so we can't even know whether we overreacted.

[0] [https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA- CLUSTER...](https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA- CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Says

"Note that I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories so I will focus only on non-political information."

Spreads youtube Video of a guy who didn't even realize that he made an impostor his second in command leading a public health office in Germany.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel)

Article: Why Wolfgang Wodarg's Statements have little to do with science. By a well respected fact checking and investigative journalism group.

[https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/hintergrund/2020/03/18/cor...](https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/hintergrund/2020/03/18/coronavirus- warum-die-aussagen-von-wolfgang-wodarg-wenig-mit-wissenschaft-zu-tun-haben) ( Translate with Google Translate )

OP is a great example of how a disinformation campaign by conspiracy theorists works. They make you believe they have credible sources you can rely on they base their arguments on until you start digging and find out the stuff above and that this is the same guy who voted against a Child Predator law in Germany and is heavily politically and financially involved in spreading the bullshit he does.

<comment><USER9> _this is the same guy who voted against a Child Predator law in Germany_

What does that have to do with anything? It's really better to leave stuff like that out if you're attacking someone's credibility. Bringing in unrelated political points phrased on obviously inflammatory ways just makes it sound like you're got a partisan axe to grind and would criticise the guy no matter what he did.

<comment><USER34> The OP was talking about non-political opinion of said "Expert". But everything said "Expert" did in the past was politically motivated, including voting against a Child Predator law to generate attention for himself and to promote his other weird thesis, like the "Fake pandemic" stuff.

In no way, form or shape did I say he voted against it because he's a child predator. It was to show that he is a politician that is frequently trying to generate controversy to push his personal "Fake Pandemic" agenda.

So of course it has to do something with the topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I mean, _some_ people are overreacting about _some_ aspects of this, but the main thing is:

\- the fatality rate for covid is high. People make a valid point about how we don't know the "actual" (unbiased) fatality rate, that may be hard to estimate, but at this point it's more or less irrelevant —- we already know for a fact that it is high enough to overwhelm the healthcare system, as is _already happening_ elsewhere. We're not going to wake up one day and say "oh oops, the fatality rate is only 0.03%, oopsies sorry everyone go back to work", it's already past that point.

\- because it will overwhelm our healthcare system, countries have no choice but to impose extreme measures to slow the spread, which will have huge economic effects depending on how long we can stand doing this. Ideally until there is a solution to the problem of inundated hospitals, whatever that looks like, and however long that takes.

\- people hoarding resources or thinking this is the apocalypse are likely overreacting. People are panicking, which will slowly stop once people adjust to their new temporary reality, but whether people are "overreacting" has a different answer for every person.

\- the impact on the economy is going to be severe, even with trillions of dollars in stimulus. The restaurant/entertainment industries are trillions of dollars in size, so this will hurt (it is already hurting) and it will put many people out of business.

So....it depends on exactly what you mean by overreacting. If people who are really ok are filling hospital beds, then once things get bad they will be sidelined in favor of serious cases. So for now I don't see how that's an issue but maybe it is?

In summary: panic is usually the wrong response to anything but this is incredibly serious...

<comment><USER15> I'm not so sure about the out of business part of it. Temporary closing sure.

They may have to take on additional debt to get started again, but there will be huge demand once restrictions are lifted.

<comment><USER35> Yea agree about a demand surge when this is over, but I don't think most businesses will be able to weather this well. Margins are usually pretty tight. A business already struggling will simply close rather than take out more debt amounting to the cost of months of revenue that they will have to figure out how to repay (even when rates are very low). It will hurt and it will hurt big time if this goes on for longer. So politicians are faced with an impossible choice: tank the economy with social restrictions or don't and millions of people die and the hospitals are overrun, which will likely have its own economic impact.

That's a ramble, but basically I sincerely hope your optimism is correct here, but I am much more pessimistic. I think we will get through this but at a huge economic cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The answer to your question is almost certainly, "yes". Any look at the grocery stores will confirm this.

Unfortunately, exactly in which ways we are overreacting, is trickier. It is possible for us to be overreacting, but Covid-19 still to be a serious problem.

One could also argue that, since we lose 25-60,000 people a year to flu in the U.S. alone, we were underreacting before. If we lost 25,000 people to a new threat, we would consider that appalling. It may be that we are overreacting to this because it's a new threat, but perhaps we were underreacting before?

Probably, it is some of both.

<comment><USER37> But if the fatality rate is 20 times higher than the flu (I don't know), and if deaths due to the flu were 50,000 per year, then there could be 1,000,000 deaths due to this disease.

Maybe the appropriate reaction to 1,000,000 deaths is different than the appropriate reaction to 25,000 deaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nobody is immune to this from before. Everyone might contract this at the same time.

We don't know exactly what this is, or what it may become. The infection rates are much higher than flu.

Most countries aren't as prepared as some Asian countries that've had to deal with such situations before.

After short time with exponential spread, countries will shut down anyway, and then it's too late to avoid becoming Italy.

It's prudent to stop or slow this down, until we've had time to prepare and learn more about the disease.

Nobody knows anything for sure in this situation.

We should've already prepared for this eventuality anyway.

</comment><comment><USER39> Italy has a much better healthcare system than the US, and they had about 500 people die today. The US is going to be really hit hard.

I've read some of the literature on modeling the outbreak. In 45 days, the US will have no ICU beds available, basically no emergency healthcare available as it will be completely overwhelmed, and anywhere from 1-10 million will die over the successive pandemic waves within the next 18-24 months. Vaccine/s, prophylaxes and treatment protocols, in large numbers, are essential.

One of the largest dangers will be the premature reopening and lifting of shelter orders because the virus will not magically go away, and then people will abandon sensible precautions and cause a new pandemic wave that will kill untold thousands. Complacency and irresponsibility will kill many people.

Also, the Spring Break kids and the governor in Florida are beyond ignorant, they're reckless, selfish and liabilities to everyone else. One coastal Florida county's health department wasn't testing ILI patients to avoid coronavirus statistics, and preventing doctors from testing patients.

This isn't something to underestimate, because to do so would gamble your and your family's lives. Furthermore, young people are by far the greatest spreaders and also at risk for developing critical symptoms.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh There is no black or white answer to this. It depends mostly on the number of deaths a given government is OK to tolerate. It seems China, South Korea & European countries decided to have the least possible deaths.

Now what would be the number of fatalities if we'd let things go? For the reasons you mentioned the fatality rate is very hard to even estimate.

Italy had 4000 deaths due to Covid-19 in 4 weeks which is bad enough. As a comparison France had 8100 death due to flu during the 2018-19 winter, and 30000 deaths in 2 weeks due to a heat wave in 2003. Would the Covid-19 overrun those figures with no containment measures. My estimation is that it would.

For Germany: it turns out the virus has currently spread between younger people, explaining the low number of fatality for now. Maybe there are more cautious as well.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've found this thread useful in trying to answer this very question:

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html)

<comment><USER41> That study is actually quite myopic, and focuses entirely on non- pharmapseutical treatment. It specifucally ignores most of the findings we have now:

      - 25-50% infected show no symptoms
      - herd immunity is ignored
      - Non-vaccine treatments are ignored
      - Reinfection is assumed, yet we have no data yet because there havent been any reinfections yet
      - It flatly assumes full quarantine is possible at home

Definitely read the study and weigh your own data and conclusions with these points in mind rather than using his summary.

This guy just got scared from it, but he's just a social science historian, not a doctor or microbiologist.

<comment><USER9> The Imperial 'study' has other problems too. It assumes NHS capacity is absolutely constant and won't change at all, not even in an entire year. Yet apparently the NHS already doubled the number of available beds.

What kind of study assumes capacity won't change at all in response to the sort of actions now being seen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can somebody with field expertise explain this to me:

The mortality rate is said to be between 3 and 5%. Experts are also saying that it does not draw an accurate picture of the situation because people aren't being tested nearly as much as should be required.

So the question then becomes, why aren't we ramping up tests among the general population to get a better idea of who to prioritise ? Surely if we know who needs urgent treatment and who doesn't we don't have to freeze the whole economy and put everyone in lockdown ?

What am I missing ? Am I being too naive ?

<comment><USER43> We don't have enough biochemical reagents and kits to scale up the test. That's why you need the private companies to come online. Testing capacity should increase in the next 2 weeks though so maybe then they will get the economy moving again. Jack Ma is personally sending over 500k test kits but I am not sure if they are FDA approved etc... or when they will arrive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> it's a bad model to think of measures responding to covid as scalars. they have magnitude and direction.

everything below is me spitballing -- weakly held:

my thinking is that we should err on the side of caution, which means that if anything, in terms of flattening the curve, we haven't done enough, yet, but there is also that any it takes ~1-2 weeks to see the effects of any one action. once the curve is flattening, i think we ought to relax on this front as to minimize the economic damage.

in terms of structural changes to medical system (think FDA approvals), i think that we're also under-reacting, but i don't know enough to really say.

in terms of stimulating the economy, i think we've also under-reacted so far, though the latest bills look a bit promising on this front and i think if they pass they are of about the right magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER45> Currently CFR for 20-44 year olds is less than 1%, but the troubling bit is up to 20% will need hospitalization, and what if the hospitals are full?

"A new CDC analysis of more than 2,400 cases of COVID-19 that have occurred in the United States in the last month shows that between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 people between the ages of 20 and 44 in the sample of those who are confirmed cases require hospitalization"

[https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/488325-cdc-data- show-c...](https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/488325-cdc-data-show- coronavirus-poses-serious-risk-for-younger-people)

<comment><USER46> I think you might have read that wrong. Article says 1 in 5 for those between 45 and 65

"The early estimates show that a fifth to a third of those between the ages of 45 and 65 who contract the disease are hospitalized."

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Epidemiology and virology are serious sciences. This stuff has been studied, and studies confirmed in the real world, for a very long time now. If those guys are worried, Imma gonna shelter in place and do my best to follow other recommendations. But that's only part of the real problem, which is that our modern society is a house of cards that depends on every part working well, and even then it breaks down all the time. Whatcha gonna do when most parts break down? I guess we're going to find out. I don't think it will be full-on Mad Max (or rather I hope not). But wishful thinking ain't gonna cut it.

</comment><comment><USER48> It will be hard to tell if we're overreacting if we respond correctly, I think. The exponential nature of it means being earlier is _much_ better with all countermeasures (social distancing, mass testing, vaccines) and any success that slows the rate of growth will make it seem many orders of magnitude smaller than it was. So if the US tops out at 20K deaths for Covid-19 it will look more like the flu in size, but in reality the smaller total was caused by the extraordinary measures being taken.

As for hospitals and increased infection rates, here in Seattle I've heard that people are calling ahead and arranging where to go. They are also waiting in their cars while being checked into hospitals so they don't even use public waiting areas. Pretty smart, and definitely not a panicked response!

</comment><comment><USER49> What I find concerning is that in Germany at least one expert gets put into one basket with Conspiracy Theorists, who just says: "From looking at the numbers, we don't yet see anything out of the ordinary compared to other years." Although he's probably correct.

</comment><comment><USER50> No. In the US alone more people may die from covid19 than from any other single event ever. Global deaths may exceed world war 2. For young healthy people, yes, things will be fine, but we are looking at millions dying well before their time.

In Italy death rates are 5x beyond normal. They are not even able to bury all the bodies at this time the mortality rate is so high.

Angela Merkel, who rarely gives speeches, has said this is the greatest challenge to Germany since the second world war. And Germany has been through a lot.

Look, even Donald Trump, who has every economic and political incentive to downplay this is calling this a catastrophe.

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html)

[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/angela-merkel- nails-...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/angela-merkel-nails- coronavirus-speech-unlike-trump.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/generation- has...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/generation-has-died- italian-province-struggles-bury-coronavirus-dead)

<comment><USER26> Umm, no? According to the CDC, 83,500 people died of diabetes in 2017 [1], and that's not even remotely the top cause (heart disease at almost 650k).

According to the last stats I saw, 8 people have died in the US of corona so far... [2]

[1]: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm) [2]: [https://liveupdate.world/coronavirus/m/en/](https://liveupdate.world/coronavirus/m/en/)

Edit: I'm not going to bother responding to all the edits, though at the moment they haven't proven anything different. Edit 2: It was pointed out that the source I used for the "8 deaths" was incorrect - it was 8 new deaths, there have been 97 total according to the CDC. My bad, but I think my point still stands regardless.

<comment><USER33> Odd how you switch from the reputable CDC to whatever "liveupdate.world" is. There have been 97[0] reported COVID-19 deaths in the US as of yesterday.

That said, "all causes ever" is ridiculous. Even worst-cases scenarios[1] put COVID-19 as the potential third cause of death in the US.

UPDATE: I think you weren't reading your own source well. There are +10 "new deaths" since an unspecified time, but that site is reporting 160 deaths overall.[2] I don't know how that's sourced, though, so I would be leery of trusting it, even though it makes a stronger case than the CDC.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- updates/case...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- updates/cases-in-us.html)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/16/upshot/corona...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/16/upshot/coronavirus- best-worst-death-toll-scenario.html)

[2] [https://liveupdate.world/coronavirus/p/en/official-corona- vi...](https://liveupdate.world/coronavirus/p/en/official-corona-virus-totals- in-usa/?t=1584630062)

<comment><USER26> liveupdate.world was posted on HN a couple of days ago. The numbers of cases have been accurate according to the other sources I've checked, but I admit I have not really evaluated the number of deaths because the country I live in right now hasn't had any. That is my mistake, thanks for pointing it out.

That said, comparing actual numbers against a "worst-case scenario" is also apples and oranges. 97 people in a country of somewhere between 325 and 330 million people... if my admittedly poor math skills are correct, that is about 0.00002%. Yes, that's in roughly a month, but even exponentially it _could_ be worse than cancer, but there is no evidence to suggest it _will_ be thus far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Have you seen the foto of the convoy of military trucks with corpses out of Bergamo, Italy?

</comment><comment><USER17> I think if anything...we're under-reacting. Which is why we'er over-reacting now...trying to stop a dam AFTER it's blown to shreds, instead of stopping the bomb before it went off.

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, with Madrid hospitals very near of collapsing and a death tool around 1000 persons, I think that I can say that we aren't overreacting.

<comment><USER42> but how do these numbers compare to general flu fatality rates ?

<comment><USER53> Why do people keep wanting to compare this to the flu? It's a completely random choice of comparison. Flu is caused by the influenza virus, COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CV2 virus - a coronavirus closely related to the SARS-CV virus that caused SARS.

I guess if you are politically motivated then choosing a random non-scary disease like Flu to compare it to makes sense, but one might as well (perhaps with more justification) compare it to SARS and than panic and say "OMG it's already killed way more people than SARS!".

Rather than comparing COVID-19 to anything else, what really makes sense is to listen to the infectious disease experts (not politicians), and follow what's happening in other countries.

<comment><USER42> It does not change the fact that there are other viruses which are far more deadly than SARS-CV2.

Should we go into full lockdown everytime there's an outbreak ? This is a very legitimate question to ask.

<comment><USER53> That depends on what you mean by deadly .. percentage of deaths among people to get it, or absolute number of people who are likely to die from it.

SARS-CV2 may not have the % kill rate of SARS-CV1, or other nasties like Ebola, etc, but it has potential to kill a LOT of people due to it's specific nature:

\- Many infected people are asymptomatic, so spread it unknowingly

\- It has a fairly long incubation period, so even those that _will_ show symptoms (allowing them to be isolated) don't initially

\- Symptoms may be mild and confused with those of other diseases (such as flu!), resulting in failure to diagnose, hence allowing spread

\- The percentage death rate appears nothing to be complacent about. The Princess Diamond "experiment" (with 100% testing) indicates about a 1% death rate (10x that of flu), while in Italy it's running at about 10% of detected cases.

\- This is a novel virus to which we have no immunity. If it's still around next year things may be better (and better yet if we have a vaccine), but this year it'll be bad if not managed

Apparently what caused Trump to eventually take this seriously was an Imperial College, UK report indicating that "do nothing" would result in a couple of million deaths in USA.

Of course it's a legitimate question to ask if the cure is worse than the disease, but it's both politically and morally impossible not to act when you _know_ you could save millions of lives.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-us- uk...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-us-uk-trump- boris-johnson-covid-19-response-science-paper-a9407946.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Yes, absolutely.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohO8eAwi_po](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ohO8eAwi_po)

<comment><USER55> You're posting a video by a guy (Ben Swann) who deals in 9/11 and Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, and who is an anti-CDC antivaxxer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Why is Italy's curve not like South Korea? They under-reacted. We'll know who under reacted based on the curves.

</comment><comment><USER57> 'If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing.'

-Dr. Anthony Fauci

</comment><comment><USER58> The thing about over-reacting is that you never think you are over-reacting.

</comment><comment><USER59> Like anything as complex as a pandemic the answer is, it depends.

Are we overreacting? That depends on what your definition is on how to react to a pandemic. On one hand we don't freak out over influenza in the same way.

Let's look at it this way: Influenza('19-'20) has a projected hospitalization:death ratio between 3.2% and 15%[1].

hospitalizations: 370,000 – 670,000 deaths: 22,000 – 55,000

COVID-19: \- As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the United States \- 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized[2] \- 108 (21%) deaths from COVID have occurred in the US[3]

This means about 21% of those who are hospitalized in the US have died from COVID.

It's not only significant, but significantly higher than influenza.

We should be reacting to this: social distancing, monitoring symptoms and avoiding the ER and visiting doctors unless we have an emergency.

Those are things everyone can work to do although there are some folks who can't distance themselves socially(doctors, firefighters, restaurant workers, etc) and it's important the rest of us do our best to support them.

Just like some folks are allergic to vaccines, it's critical those of us that are able to get vaccines to protect those with compromised immune systems or that are unable to get the vaccine.

In short: We're not overreacting, if anything the data shows we're underreacting.

[1] - [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in- season-e...](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season- estimates.htm) [2] - [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm) [3] - [https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-disease- cov...](https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-disease- covid-19-latest-news-2020-03-17/)

</comment><comment><USER60> Does having more toilet paper than usual help during a virus outbreak? no. Are we overreacting? yes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this post flagged?

<comment><USER61> Because it's just a series of loaded questions. If you have already drawn conclusions then why ask the question in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please quote me where I'm drawing conclusions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wondered about such things and just looked into the subject.

In simple terms, here in the US, we only have a little data. E.g., apparently a big fraction of the data we have closely relevant to these questions is in a US CDC report

"Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — United States, February 12–March 16, 2020"

that is, to essentially the present and only 4 days more than a month.

Can see the report with a lot of words with actual numerical values at

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm)

and, then, can see their graph of hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths by age in Figure 2 at

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F1_down](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F1_down)

For how many people are _infected_ , tough to know before we test a good simple random sample with a good test. From some of what Dr. Brix said recently, our test(s) "amplifies* the genetic code and sequences that.

If I understand correctly, the _amplification_ is via the PCR where From Google,

"Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method widely used in molecular biology to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specific DNA sample allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it to a large enough amount to study in detail. PCR was invented in 1983 by Kary Mullis."

So, the test is not trivial, is some microbiology that, say, before 1983 would have seems impossible.

Next Dr. Brix has indicated that the US is very careful about the rates of false positives and false negatives of the tests they use.

Still, for now, apparently we don't know how many people in the US are (or have been) infected.

But from the CDC data above, we have some okay data (numbers are still small for accurate statistical estimates) by age of the fraction of hospital admissions with the virus that got into an ICU and then the fraction that died.

Considering the US population over 65, how big is that?

Uh, from Google search

"US population over 65"

get

"49.2 million

In the United States, the population age 65 and over numbered 49.2 million in 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available). They represented 15.2% of the population, about one in every seven Americans."

So, the US has to try hard to stop the spread of the virus or, ballpark, the US is looking at about 50 million citizens (a) nearly all of whom would get the virus and (b) a significant fraction of whom would die if they are like the people in the data who got the virus and were admitted to a hospital.

Net, bottom line, if extrapolate from that CDC data, then the US has to be careful or a _lot_ of people over 65 could die:

In more detail, from the reference with the words,

"This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged =85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged =19 years."

Or, it could be > 3% dead of people over 65.

So, 3% dead of 50 million would be 1.5 million. If want to use the 10% number in the CDC text, then that would be 5 million dead.

So, hurry up step #1 is to slow the spread of the virus by a lot of social distancing and hand washing.

Hurry up step #2 is look for cures by (a) trying old drugs to see if any are effective against the virus, (b) get some antibodies from some people already cured from the virus and see if those antibodies can be the basis of a cure, (c) starting with the microbiology, e.g., the molecular geometry, of part of the virus, try to construct an antibody.

Step #3 -- ASAP get a safe and effective vaccine and give nearly everyone a shot.

In case #1 to #3 happen too slowly, do #4, get hospitals ready for lots more patients.

Unlike some other diseases, some good news about this virus is that everyone who gets the virus can transmit it for only a few weeks.

So, in simple terms, if the world would be 100% effective at social distancing for a few weeks, then the world would be free of the virus! And if the world is close to 100% effective, then the world will still be free of the virus _soon_!

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes, we could have mandated gloves masks and sanitizer for schools and food service, etc, implemented temperature taking for airports, schools, etc, but due to the total vacuum of any leadership or policy, we reverted to panic mode.

</comment><comment><USER62> Yes we are. I want you to keep this fact in mind: We don't know how many people are infected. We only the number from people who go in to get checked. For all you know there's a ton of people with a slight flu that are now fine. My son and myself had a pretty rough cough and fever Feb 30. Could that have been the chinese virus? We don't know. Extrapolate.

Based on everything I've read there's two schools of thought:

1\. Let the virus take hold. Save the economy, let God sort out the vulnerable.

2\. Quarantine and contain. Save the vulnerable, life-support the economy until the virus dies out.

US and others are doing #2.

England is doing #1.

We'll see how that plays out.

<comment><USER63> I feel offended as a Chinese when you call it 'Chinese virus'.

I think you were blaming Chinese people for whatever reason, even you didn't mean to.

You don't want to lose your family or friends, or suffering in economic recession.

We don't want it too.

<comment><USER62> That's ridiculous, we call it the chinese virus just like the spanish flu was called "spanish flu". It's called that because of it's place of origin.

<comment><USER53> I'm not sure anyone knows where the "Spanish" Flu originated, but it may in fact have the US. It was certainly spread by US troops. The only reason it is called "Spanish" Flu is because it happened during WW I and neutral Spain was the only country reporting it in the press, as opposed to US, UK, etc which were censoring the news so as not to look weak during wartime.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bespoke software, and a really simple RSS aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://routley.io/posts/bespoke-software-rss-aggregator/ <comment><USER2> I have to admit (with a bit of shame, as a Free Software fan) that most of the software I write on a personal basis is like this: bespoke & unpublished. It's just too damn work for what I expect to be a pretty small audience.

For example, I have a small cron script that emails me today's showtimes for my local film museum (which shows old films on a large screen) along with the predicted score from Criticker.

It would be cool if there was some very easy way (I'm lazy!) of letting a non- techie benefit from this, without me having to deal with a publicly available server, storing their Criticker credentials, etc.

I guess the easiest way would be a Chrome extension, but I'm not a fan of the whole app store part, plus I don't want to have to rewrite in JS. And that still leaves mobile users in the cold, which is dumb.

<comment><USER3> Basically, we'd like everyone to run their own server where they could add your process as a unit, rather than you running a server for everyone.

I guess this might have been very useful as a Huginn module. Maybe Urbit matures to be a functional version of this. The problem is that today's computing culture grooms people to be dependent on others' servers/services, rather than being in control of one machine of theirs.

<comment><USER2> I mean, sure, I'd like everyone to run their own server. But in this case I don't think you'd even need it, a scheduled task in a regular client machine (smartphone/laptop/etc) would be enough. There just isn't an easy way for me to turn my script into something that a smartphone can use, without building a full-fledged app.

<comment><USER4> Windows 8.1 (both phone and desktop) briefly supported Live Tiles driven by refresh/pull of a tiny bit of metadata you could easily add to the HEAD section of a webpage. If a user bookmarked that page to their Start Screen, Windows would poll that page every so often (IIRC as often as once every 30 minutes) and the user would see the notification eventually. It was a neat way to run very basic scheduled tasks. [1]

I wish something similar had become more common. I understand why all the platforms are focused on push notifications rather than pull notifications, but it's so much easier to write a bit of HTML/XML templating than to write anything with a PWA ServiceWorker and the Push Notifications API.

[1] The one app I built during that brief time was to poll NaNoWriMo for count API updates. It's a really simple app and was easy to customize with just an old school HTML method="GET" form. [https://github.com/WorldMaker/NaNoWriMoAtGlance/](https://github.com/WorldMaker/NaNoWriMoAtGlance/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh neat! Coincidental timing for me too seeing this as I'm procrastinating finishing up my own similar thing but built on totally different infrastructure (Ruby, Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, so far..) and for a different set of feeds (several hundred tech engineering blogs). GitHub Actions is something I did consider, but I'm trying to go AWS for everything recently to learn the ecosystem more. (The initial results of my own experiment are at [http://engblogs.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/index.html](http://engblogs.s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/index.html) but it's going to become a 'proper' site as part of the next step.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice domain name, it's your last name, but I had assumed it was a company that did some kind of routing :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice idea, but it feels like this itself should produce an RSS feed so that others can benefit from your collection - for the same reason you yourself use RSS.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's another barebones reader from 2018: [https://leancrew.com/all- this/2018/02/my-feed-reading-system...](https://leancrew.com/all- this/2018/02/my-feed-reading-system/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Thrilled to see this, and I already forked and am using it. This is exactly what I've been looking for.</comment>


Apple iPhone A Bittersweet Taste For Verizon - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/01/04/apple-iphone-a-bittersweet-taste-for-verizon/ <comment><USER2> Very little content here. It appears carriers somehow make less money on iPhone hardware vs. Android hardware (maybe).

The last bit seems like a thinly veiled pitch for his investment newsletter and "skillz".</comment>


Whoever did this at Apple, I tip my hat to you - <AUTHOR> http://www.istartedsomething.com/20140911/optimising-for-the-0-33/

<comment> xavierxf- Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the example the author gives about changing subway to train looks to be a conversation via text.

Does that mean Apple is actually changing the content of your texts? Does that mean that it changes what displays on the receiver's screen based on their locale?</comment>


Ancient Earth Globe - <AUTHOR> https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#240 <comment><USER2> A Show HN with comments by the author:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770)

</comment><comment><USER3> Grass appeared 35 million years ago? At the same time as the first primates? And flowers 120 million years ago? After dinosaurs appeared (220 million years ago)? My mind is blown. What did landscapes look like?

<comment><USER4> What's really amazing is to think that it was only after grasses started taking over that very large land mammals could evolve on the vast marshy plains of North America and over 5 million years or so as sea levels rose due climate change become whales and other cetaceans. I wonder if humans will do the same, albeit in much less nutritious oceans that we are busily acidifying.

<comment><USER5> We don't need to evolve much in the way of new adaptations anymore, we have technology. That's how come we can colonise environments from the frozen tundra, to tropical jungles, to the harshest deserts, and now even the vacuum of space.

<comment><USER6> Humans didn't need much technology to live in deserts and tundras. But what if they run out of earth metals to cycle? What if they can't build sustainable energy sources? Our top modern "tech" lasts a couple of hundreds of years before totally collapsing. Humans will eventually go back to simpler tools, be it 10 million years or 100. I give it a couple of hundred thousand.

<comment><USER5> We've essentially built the entire modern world in a bit over a century. The only way we'll run out of metals to recycle is if we shoot it all out into space. Otherwise it'll still be here in one form or another. I am concerned about the long term sustainability of our current phase of civilisation. I think our current way of life is largely doomed, but we will develop new ways of life.

Tens of millions of years is a long time. Who knows?

<comment><USER6> We live in a mildly corrosive atmosphere, doesn't help with the whole metallurgy venture. Recycling goes a long way, but it will eventually be over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good seeing Ian's work here!

[http://www.ianww.com/](http://www.ianww.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Sort of off-topic: I love looking at images of how the Earth's continents have shifted and moved over time. They provide a lot of inspiration for me when making homemade maps for my D&D games. Whatever nature has done makes for much more compelling and believable maps than what I can make on my own!

My latest map is based on a rotated view of what Pangaea Proxima will (probably) look like in a few million years. Looks pretty neat and provides a lot of inspiration.

<comment><USER9> Aren't generators really good now ? I was under the impression they really did improve over the last years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Super cool stuff. If the author has time, it would be even possible to derive the major climate zones at that time using large scale features like latitude, mountains, etc.

Here's a nice reconstruction of what Pangea looked like (200m years ago) [https://youtu.be/VKq0pr4rbRs](https://youtu.be/VKq0pr4rbRs)

</comment><comment><USER11> Things escalated pretty quickly between first flowers and fist primates

</comment><comment><USER12> Very impressive, what is a good resource for an interested layman to learn more about earth science and deep time?

<comment><USER13> John McPhee: Annals of the former world, Simon Winchester: The Map that Changed the World, Lutgens et al.: Essentials of Geology

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.scotese.com/](http://www.scotese.com/)

[https://vimeo.com/315907106](https://vimeo.com/315907106) DeepTimeMaps_Animation_Mollweide_Sample

</comment><comment><USER15> This is so awesome, I just wish it could go back even further to 1 billion, 2 billion, ... years ago! If we know enough about the Earth's history and tectonics to depict it...

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised that it doesn't go forward any. East Africa is on the move, and the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas are getting walled off.

</comment></comment><comment> tekcyb-org I don't understand how land masses the size of africa detaches. The map shows africa attached to the US, but this doesn't make sense. I can understand water levels changing, exposing new areas that might have been underwater, drying up and turning into land masses, as well as areas that were previously land, becoming filled with water.

<comment><USER17> It's a fantastic question this stuff isn't intuitive.

[http://mapdesign.icaci.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/atlant...](http://mapdesign.icaci.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/atlantic_lg.jpg)

Consider this model: the Earth is like a puzzle. Its crust is made up of a bunch of pieces that all fit together. But those pieces aren't unchanging. They all sit on top of a huge soft sludgey core called the mantle. And they want to slowly (slooooooowly) slide around.

At each boundary between pieces one of three things can happen:

\- they slide against each other

\- they diverge from each other

\- they press into each other, often one going under the other, sometimes one pushing the other.

A continent can move, oh so slowly, over millions of years through a combination of shifting along with other plates, or having one side of its plate grow (move away and have the new gap filled with the molten plasticy goo underneath), while the other side pushes away a plate or disappears underneath the other plate.

The map I linked shows a massive stretch mark of the Earth in the Atlantic Ocean. This is one striking piece of evidence that the above effects have been happening over a long long time. It's basically the boundary between a few plates. And it shows all this brand new ocean floor that came flowing up from under the crust (then cooled and got hard) when a gap was created because they separated apart.

<comment> tekcyb-org Wow thank you for the explanation and that picture you provided makes it very clear as well. I did not realize that the world was divided into plates.

<comment><USER18> There's a BBC documentary on this that's now around 25 years old, called Earth Story ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Story)). It describes not only what we know, but how we know it. As documentaries go, it's rather in-depth but easily digestible.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the suggestion, it sounds really interesting based on some YouTube comments. Just ordered it used from the UK, first time I'll be watching an actual DVD since... years. I think I do have a DVD drive somewhere in storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Brilliant to see where some land masses stay relatively intact and how little they've changed. Newfoundland and Labrador in today's Eastern Canada stand out to me. I really want to those weathered ancient mountains some day.

<comment><USER18> What amazed me most is the relative short (recent) period in which the Himalayas formed. India split from Madagascar relavively recently, the speed with which it collided with asia must have been huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I could instantly recognize the map as work of Christopher R. Scotese. Has there been other work to create paleo maps or was this work from 2000 and prior so definitive nobody has felt the need?

</comment><comment><USER22> That whole site is pretty neat. So many dinosaurs!

</comment><comment><USER23> How can you make it stop spinning?

<comment><USER24> Some serious interplanetary engineering, likely involving Fusion Candles on Jupiter to gather materials and fuel. Then a constant bombardment of Earth from the right angle should stop the spinning, eventually.

<comment><USER25> I wonder if it could be done with nothing more than "solar sails" at ground level, aimed so they reflect the sunrise and push back against rotation, but exert no directional force the rest of the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish there was a way to overlay all major cities.

</comment><comment><USER27> Amazing! I wish it didn't end in the present.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of my favourite earth's 3D visualisation

</comment><comment><USER29> pretty awesome

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool</comment>


Kiva.org: So sucessful it has run out of projects to fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27wwln-consumed-t.html?ex=1359003600&en=dd1972325bacc1e3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I am absolutely stunned by the percentage delinquency for these loans. After going through the site for a while, I can't find a single loan that has been defaulted or delayed.

I don't understand why a paraguayan store owner would need $1075 to stock her store ([http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about...](http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=34023)), but it certainly seems like these kinds of investments are kick-starting entrepreneurial activity in places where it was traditionally impossible or exceedingly difficult.

I think Kiva is my favorite new business because it truly does raise the social welfare of the world while also being a startup.

<comment><USER3> Anybody interested in social entrepreneurship should definitely read this book: <http://www.howtochangetheworld.org/>

I read bout Kiva, Ashoka, and the Grameen bank a few years back (which was the basis for micro-loans and its inventor won a nobel prize).

An excellent read to show how innovative minds (read: startups) are changing the world

<comment><USER4> "The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid" is excellent too: [http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Pub...](http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> when I was there few months ago, most of the individual borrowers were apparently listed by just a few none profit organizations. it made it look fake. So you would see similar borrowers from few particular regions. I guess it really isn't micro lending when an organization puts up a list of who would benefit. that's still ok. just a sense of false advertising i think. I am loosing some trust in them and something just doesn't feel right. maybe I am wrong but I hope someone comes up with a better system or other types. micro lending is great system indeed.

</comment><comment><USER6> "The default rate to date is 0.16 percent."

Stunning.

Compare that to the ho-hum attitude many Americans have toward credit responsibility.

I'd ask what's happened to our country, but I'm afraid you guys might actually answer.

<comment><USER7> > Compare that to the ho-hum attitude many Americans have toward credit > responsibility.

So these third world countries are so _successful_ because their businesses don't take any risks?

<comment><USER8> Just to add a something... you're also talking about a potential life changing opportunity. When was the last time you used your credit card and felt like it would change your life? If it did change your life for the better you would probably want to give back to the system, no?

I think most people would... It has nothing to do with being american, it's the conditions these people are living in that make them appreciate the help.

<comment><USER7> Is this a counterpoint to my comment?

<comment><USER8> No, not exactly... I was trying to add that the borrowing being done on kiva is not the same as the "ho-hum" loans being taken out by "americans".

If someone really helps you get ahead then it's likely you will want to repay them and I think that's what you can see happening at kiva. It's not a big home loan or a credit card... it's a chance to really help improve their lives.

You should man up and repost the comment you made and then deleted...

<comment><USER7> I've used a credit card to invest small amounts into my life and make it a lot better. Whether it helped me or not doesn't really affect whether I want to repay it though. I don't quite understand that.

The only ho-hum loans that I've seen people take out is 100k to 150k school loans for useless schools.

<comment><USER9> I think the point he was trying to make is that the average American is so far ahead, financially, of people in third world countries that we take for granted the availability of money and credit. There are people starving to death over there because they don't have the money or means to feed themselves. They can't get jobs because there aren't any companies. People who might want to own a company can't do that because there is no one to lend them the capital to get started. They're in an impossible situation that's difficult for us to understand because we're so far removed from it.

So, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, some company comes along and says to all of these people, "Hey everyone, we'll loan you the money you need to start a business so you can live", the people are offered an opportunity to change their lives to such an extreme degree that they're willing to do whatever it takes to get the money and pay it back. Here, in the Western world, if you start a business, fail, and lose half a million dollars, you can brush it off and try again with a different idea and investor. Granted, it might take you a while to find someone else who is willing to put the capital up, but you can. Over there, they can't. They have only one shot, so they take it and do the absolute best they can because it is an opportunity that will only come once.

With that in mind, nearly every loan in the Western world can be taken with a ho-hum attitude becuase the opportunity will present itself again. That just isn't the case for those people.

<comment><USER8> Yes and thanks for taking the time to write this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Too bad they don't fund American startups...

<comment><USER11> Why not set up a kiva-like site for American startups? Oh, hang on - Kiva has virtually no defaulters on its loans, so maybe scrap that idea.

<comment><USER12> The closest you have is www.prosper.com, which has much higher interest rates, default rates, and a maximum loan that is too low for most startups.

<comment><USER10> You can't get started on $25,000?

<comment><USER12> Oh, I got started on less. Strike what I said, at least for most of us following the Paul Graham school of startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How high is there overhead?</comment>


Computation in Physical Systems - <AUTHOR> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computation-physicalsystems/ <comment><USER3> I have had thoughts about how we attach meaning to symbols in computers (our designed computational systems), and how a physical system like a landslide, or accretion disk or something could accidentally assume forms and computation-like behaviours which we could attach symbolic meaning to, yet mostly do not /can not as we are not watching.

With such a vision there is strong ambiguity in the world over what is potentially symbolically meaningful to someone, the meanings things can carry, and the stories their symbols can follow. I think that essential ambiguity of interpretation, of the apparent orders and symbols in the world, makes nonsense of the popular idea that we may ourselves be certain sophisticated symbolic constructs in an advanced simulation.

Sorry for this but I am in the middle of doing something else and have only skimmed this paper but it looks tantalisingly relevant...

<comment><USER4> What you are thinking of is semiotics, the study of how we attach meanings to things. If a landslide assumes a form to which we attach a meaning, Augustine would say that's a natural sign.

For example, when something burns, a natural sign forms which we call smoke, and the meaning we attach to the sign is that there is a fire.

<comment><USER5> I don't thing that is what he is referring to. He is talking amount symbols as in computational manipulation of symbols to achieve information processing, not symbols as in a deeper meaning for something.

<comment><USER3> Shame I missed this thread. I do wonder about all aspects of symbols, how to differentiate shallow, deep or even consciously 'realised' symbols. Im wondering how things can be accidentally symbolic, with or without someone to observe the apparent symbolism. I feel there is something special about conciousness and there seems to be a popular view that conciousness is an accident of the universe or of any sufficiently detailed symulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have often wondered how philosphers treat the apparent "dualism" of logicial or theoretical computational systems and their physical embodiments - <USER2> for posting!

<comment><USER6> Hypercomputers:

 _" Perhaps the best known proposal for a hypercomputer is due to Mark Hogarth (1994, 2004), who developed an idea of Itamar Pitowsky (1990). Relativistic hypercomputers exploit the properties of a special kind of spacetime called Malament-Hogarth spacetime, which is physically possible in the sense of constituting a solution to Einstein's field equations for General Relativity. Malament-Hogarth spacetimes contain regions with an infinite time-like trajectory λ that can be circumvented by a finite time-like trajectory γ. In other words, λ and γ have a common origin, and there is a spacetime point p on γ such that λ, even though it is infinite, lies entirely in p's chronological past. If an observer launches a Turing machine along λ and then travels along γ she may, within finite time, find herself in the future of an infinitely long computation performed by the Turing machine. If the Turing machine is able to send signals to the observer, the observer would be able to know the outcome of a potentially infinitely long computation, thereby having computational means more powerful than (ordinary) Turing machines. For instance, an observer may be able to obtain the results of an arbitrary instance of the halting function for Turing machines.

Constructing and using a relativistic hypercomputer is a nontrivial affair."_

<comment><USER7> This of course ignores the problem of energy and entropy. Computation takes energy and generates entropy. An infinity long computation would require infinite energy and would generate an infinite amount of entropy.

Interesting concept, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/505/](https://xkcd.com/505/)</comment>


Living with Your Desk Mates - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/realestate/living-with-your-desk-mates.html <comment><USER3> US increasingly sounds like another planet. Live here has been back to mostly normal (masks and distancing aside). From the article they've got an office in Paris, if I were them I'd be looking into getting a work Visa or something instead of repeating the same thing later this year.

<comment><USER4> No, they went to Paris on a work trip. The inn they are renting is in Connecticut. And quite expensive...

<comment><USER5> The article does say they went "to the company's Paris office". I'm not sure France will hand out work visas to Americans who would rather not work in the US, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When the pandemic first hit, we started looking at Sina Weibo tweets to try to make sense of how people in China were dealing with the quarantine.

People hated remote work with a passion. They hated not having set working hours and having to dealing with family distractions while they worked.

Most of all, they hated the social isolation.

I haven't noticed as much distress outside of China, but let's be honest, people are social animals and like being around each other.

I don't see anything wrong with what they did. Aside from how much the monthly rental cost ($2.4K per person per room!?), this was a perfectly acceptable if somewhat unusual response to a very unusual event.

<comment><USER7> What's a good source of chinese quarantine comedy? I briefly tried looking for a chinese equivalent to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEPFJh4A9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEPFJh4A9M) but my hanzi search is weak.

(maybe less distress because our "lockdowns" were less strict? Locally we were encouraged to go outside, etc. just to avoid travel and keep distance from others. Didn't even really do masks, those have come in with the second wave.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I expect it to become significantly less fun the moment one of them gets fired / lags behind the others on work performance / gets into a long term relationship and wants to move out and suddenly finds out they're not one of the guys anymore

</comment><comment><USER9> Glad it worked out for them! I left NYC recently because my lease ended - <USER2> people I knew in the city also left and are living with their parents for the time being (I'm in my early 20's for reference).

My friends and I have discussed the renting AirBnB / VRBO as well. Seems like the perfect chance to do it! Although, I'd probably pick a spot with more hiking (Utah? Colorado?)

</comment><comment><USER10> i.e. a 'quaranteam' [https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-to-know- before-y...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-to-know-before-you- consider-quaranteaming)

</comment><comment><USER11> I know NYC lawyers in their late 20s who are leaving their leases in the city entirely while continuing to work remotely. Rent is so absurd there, and most benefits of being in the city have been nullified by indoor isolation anyway. As office work eventually starts to spin up they plan to fly back as needed. Apparently multiple round trip flights per week is still much cheaper than living there.

I'm very interested to see how many will try to sustain this after the pandemic ends. There has historically been massive resistance to remote work at law firms.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meanwhile I've just purchased a couple PAPRs and twenty-five pounds of pasta. Wish I could live on the cover of Lands' End.

</comment><comment> ur-whale [http://archive.is/bmsDq](http://archive.is/bmsDq)

</comment><comment><USER13> Doing this with housemate + some friends for a week. We figure its going to be unlikely we will ever be able to just go somewhere to work like this for a while (if in person comes back/covid lockdowns get worse again), so taking advantage. Why not now that we have the opportunity?

</comment><comment><USER14> What am I supposed to take away from this story? I'm glad that these adults are having such a transformative experience living in Connecticut with roommates, but it's hard to imagine thinking a story like this should be in the NYTimes.</comment>


Finally, A Use for Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html <comment><USER2> What an excellent piece of writing. One of the best snippets of characterization I've seen on the Internet is awhile:

 _We gave the man a nod and "Hey" as we walked to our table and were soon whispering back and forth like 12 year old girls at the 7th grade dance.

"You go talk to him" I said, while tugging nervously on my dress. "No, you go talk to him" Sean replied while flipping his hair._

\</comment><comment>--

 _"He ordered like 20 dollars worth of food" the kid stammered out, obviously thrilled to be talking about it, "And he left me a 160 dollar tip. Then he asked for a Sprite and gave me forty bucks for it."_

On a side note, I've sometimes wondered how much celebrities' aptness to tip their servers is correlated to their being recognized.</comment>


Blackberry's Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/06/30/blackberrys-future/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the "developer community energized"?

<comment><USER2> not so much. I have the BB SDK, but it's ugly, because every time there is a new BlackBerry Phone they obsolete the old API. Stupid, stupid move.

Hah, they even have a Certification Program, find them, go to them, do a test, pass, PAY, leave with a paper. What would you expect from a classical business oriented company without vision, innovation and gut.

They should pay YOU to do the test when you pass, they have a much higher need for developers than we need them.

<comment><USER3> They need the core applications more than they need random developers creating led notifications and keyboards.

My assumption is their target market is corporate. They need Citrix, Cisco, Remote Desktop support, banking applications and Bloomberg.

Edit: they did try to get developers to port their apps by floating a free z10 for them, oddly enough none of those apps are configured for the q10 their flagship phone currently. Also for end users such as myself the android ports work to a degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When Blackberry was on top of the world it was economically plausible for them to have their own OS kernel and userland. But the critical mass to support that is very high, and Blackberry may not have that any more.

Blackberry OS also does not have a managed language runtime. It's not an app runtime that's going to attract developers for innovative capabilities or ease of development.

Blackberry does have a messaging and email infrastructure, but the compelling reasons to use it are mostly obsolete and uncompelling to new customers.

Lastly, Blackberry used to be the cheaper "junior" smartphone. But Nokia is somehow selling a Lumia for an all-up price of $149, unsubsidized, in t-Mobile shops, which makes it the cheapest way to get on a cheap T-Mo smartphone plan.

I think they are done. I don't see a way back.</comment>