Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now - <AUTHOR> https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/ <comment><USER2> The article becomes much less edgy if you know what the authorities are actually saying. For example, the American CDC, in USA Today[1]:

"Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Friday that U.S. health officials are preparing for the coronavirus to become a pandemic."

"'We're not seeing community spread here in the United States, yet, but it's very possible, even likely, that it may eventually happen," she said. "Our goal continues to be slowing the introduction of the virus into the U.S. This buys us more time to prepare communities for more cases and possibly sustained spread.'"

Sooooo... today's edgy "the media and authorities are keeping us in the dark" blog post got scooped two days ago by the CDC and USA Today.

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronav...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/02/21/coronavirus- who-contain-outbreak-iran-deaths-south-korea-cases/4829278002/)

<comment><USER3> Following a few comments from experts in the field and looking at some of the data being presented, it's fairly obvious this pandemic case was reasonably high. There are of course lots of unknowns models used can't account for but that's no reason to discard the potential risk entirely.

Keep in mind, many of these decisions to avoid "pandemic" talk try to take most holistic views in regards to public safety/health. There is a lot of consideration regarding deaths cause by panic actions which are often estimated/modeled as well and if panic related deaths and side effects are higher than a current actual threat, it's often viewed that the best course of action is to suppress panic until warranted.

So lack of pandemic talk doesn't inherently mean there is a legitimate reason _not to_ panic, just that you're being given limited information. At the same time you shouldn't assume experts, the media, etc. are somehow mass conspiring against your health/safety. Assessments are probably reasonable to follow.

The best course of action is to also take a holistic look at situations independent of these groups and make your own rational assessment of risks and impact.

If you don't already have some non-perishable food supplies, you should have completely irrespective of this specific recent viral outbreak--its basic preparedness for emergencies.

Some basic preparedness (I'm not talking bunkers and 2 year food cache craziness) are warranted in general for unpredictable disaster cases so these situations are good reminders for people to check their pantry for food, etc. just in case something awful was to happen, those supplies can help significantly.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the tip!

Since I hadn't lived thru anything that threatened my society, I never believed in stocking up on non-perishables.

However, the fact that I'm living thru a potential pandemic convinces me that we as a race aren't nearly as resilient as our modern amenities and high QoL suggest.

<comment><USER5> News you can use: you're living through _multiple pandemics_ , all the time.

There's a flu pandemic (several, actually), that are far more immediately threatening to you than this virus. Society has not yet fallen.

<comment><USER6> Does this have a very different fatality rate that the flu does?

Also many at-risk patients are vaccinated against the flu.

Besides, even if you are likely to survive and all, it's still wise to plan for everybody else to panic ;)

<comment><USER5> The fatality rate is on par with the flu, except in older patients (over 60) where it is _currently_ higher.

Ironic that you should bring up flu vaccination...despite the risk of death from flu being the average person's greater concern (by far), we still have to beg people to get vaccinated, and the rates are low.

I'd wager that most of the folks fear-mongering about covid-19 on this thread haven't had a flu shot this year.

<comment><USER7> This is absolutely false. You're comparing the coronavirus fatality rate for young and healthy people to the _overall_ flu fatality rate. Try comparing the fatality rate of 20-40 year olds only between each virus and then get back to us on how they're comparable.

Also, I'm kind of horrified at how indifferent you are across many comments to the prospect of tens of millions of elderly and sick people dying. Just because you're young and healthy, no one should be very concerned about this?

<comment><USER5> According to the most recent paper from CCDC, under age 40, the current estimate of fatality rate is 0.4%. Between 50-59, 1.3%.

For those with no pre-existing medical conditions, 0.9%:

[http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...](http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51)

Death rates for flu vary widely by age, race and location, but these numbers are not out of the ordinary for influenza.

I'm not "indifferent", I'm calmly assessing relative risks. You, on the other hand, are simply spreading FUD. Go breathe into a bag.

<comment><USER7> Fatality rate in US for 18-49 is 0.02%. Source:

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm)

So using your most optimistic number of 0.4%, that's a fatality rate 20x as high.

And again, you have many comments downplaying the significance of this virus based on your own assessment that it kills young and healthy people at acceptably low rates. What about the billions of people who are older, sick, or have the misfortune of being born in a country without access to decent medical care? Pretty easy to calmly assess relative risks to _other_ people, especially if you get them wrong by a factor of 2000%.

<comment><USER5> I am concerned about other people. It has no bearing on my advice to you, which is that unless you are old or sick, you should stop posting misinformation to HN, and go breathe into a bag in a dim room.

Maybe play some relaxing music and light a candle. (Be careful, though: you're many hundreds of times more likely to start a fire with the candle than die from covid!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before you propagate this information and take action, read this post about the psychology of fear mongering, and ask yourself if you identify with it.

1\. Do you tend to mistrust authority?

2\. Do you feel powerless to control the course of your life?

3\. Do you feel like you have special information and insight the rest of us do not?

4\. Do you feel comfort when thinking about the end of the world because once it happens, you will be prepared and validated?

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychology- reveals-the-comforts-of-the-apocalypse/)

<comment><USER9> This seems to just be a set of general steps for the dominant culture to downplay dissenters or individuals for whom the system isn't working. It doesn't tell you anything about if the system is actually working or not, or if those individuals are right or wrong. Anyone who disagrees with the system will probably go through similar feelings (maybe not point 4).

You could put yourself in the position of someone who grew up poor and disillusioned as part of a visible minority in a US city, or a Hong Kong protestor, or almost any other anti-hedgemony protestor and they'd check the first three boxes. Are they wrong or is the system wrong? Nothing in this list helps determine that.

<comment><USER10> Astute observation. 1 and 2 apply to marginalized communities but 3 and 4 do not.

<comment><USER9> I think you see point 3 come through in the discussions talking about privilege and lived experience.

It's a natural step after point 1 or 2 where the dominant group rebuts with "well it works for me, so it should work for you", and the minority group provides their theories as to what results in them having a different outcome.

<comment><USER10> >I think you see point 3 come through in the discussions talking about privilege and lived experience.

That's not the kind secret information preppers and conspiracy theorists lay claim to

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The premise of this article is that we should essentially press the "panic button" now, to get people through the shock of preparing for a pandemic while we know it's safe to do so.

> Suggesting things people can do to prepare for a possible hard time to come > doesn't just get them better prepared logistically. It also helps get them > better prepared emotionally. It helps get them through the Oh My God (OMG) > moment everyone needs to have, and needs to get through, preferably without > being accused of hysteria.

> It is better to get through this OMG moment now rather than later.

The preparedness tips in the article are generic enough, but worth skimming. Basically:

\- Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it

\- A couple months of non-perishable food storage is a good idea

\- Practice band washing and avoid touching your face.

\- Cross train employees at work to minimize the impact of absences.

<comment><USER12> > \- Get extra prescription medicine now if you might need it

I hate this advice. It's not "wrong," in the sense that technically it would be a good thing to do, but it's also so wrong that it transcends categories of right and wrong.

Your refill schedule will not allow you to get extra prescription meds early. And if it did, your insurance wouldn't pay for it - which means paying sticker price, which means ... well, depends on the med, right? I used to take an antacid that had a sticker price of about 800/mo.

For almost anyone, "stock up on an extra month of prescription meds" isn't a thing. It's just not a choice. For it to /be/ a thing, someone actually needs to write a law stating something like "once per calendar year, a physician can write an extra parallel prescription for a supply of medications not exceeding three months, and insurers must pay for it," or somesuch.

Until that happens, I don't even know what to /do/ with that kind of "advice."

<comment><USER13> > Until that happens, I don't even know what to /do/ with that kind of > "advice."

My wife asked once, and was told that 3 month supply prescriptions are common for people that use mail order pharmacies, and was happy to write one. Insurance covered it too, since the refill schedule was every 3 months -- it comes out to the same cost in the end.

<comment><USER14> Again, that depends on the med. Your monthly allergy prescription? Sure! Your oxy Rx? No way. My spouse and I are on some meds (not oxy) that they absolutely would not refill for 3 months at a time. My other meds do come in 3 month prescriptions from a mail order pharmacy.

<comment><USER15> Yep, I'm on a medication that is commonly abused so they only allow 30 day prescriptions, and you can't pay with cash, it has to go through insurance.

<comment><USER16> I imagine such medications must be very important to take as prescribed, but the only other option I can think of is one day out of every two/three/four weeks, take less of it so that you can save it and slowly stockpile it.

<comment><USER15> It's an ADHD medication, so there's no health risk associated with not taking it, they're just really strict about the amount given out at once because they don't want people getting a 90 day supply and selling it. Sometimes I won't take it on weekends to keep some extra just in case I might not be able to get a prescription filled on time due to no doctor appointments being available, or the pharmacies being out of stock for a few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is one case where it's worth overreacting to. Biological epidemics are the only thing that has had the capacity to kill >50 million people in a year. In my risk classification hierarchy I put pandemics above nuclear war and wayyyy above terrorism. Yet we've spent trillions on the war on terror the past 20 years while there's no coordinated plan in the U.S. for this yet. If there's even a 2% chance of this going pandemic in the U.S. we should be allocating at least a billion with apolitical expert driven policy implementations to prevent spread.

My jaw dropped when I read that the State Dept allowed infected Americans to fly with uninfected persons to the U.S. from Japan against the express recommendations of the CDC. This is what we're dealing with and I'm not optimistic.

<comment><USER18> The plans the US already has for a flu pandemic should mostly carry over, no? COVID is probably worse than the seasonal flu, but it's not outside the reasonable range of what a flu pandemic could do.

<comment><USER19> Do 29 year old doctors typically die from the flu?

<comment><USER20> Typically not. But that's not how this stuff works. It is bell curves all the way. So your old, very young and vulnerable people will make up the bulk of those that die but there will be plenty of regular people in the prime of their life that will die as well.

<comment><USER21> The 1918 flu particularly affected 20-40 year old healthy people.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-did-1918-flu- kill...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-did-1918-flu-kill-so-many- otherwise-healthy-young-adults-180967178/)

<comment><USER20> That was an anomaly in many other ways too. Keep in mind that a good chunk of the world was still recovering from WWI. Being exposed to some other disease earlier in life can give a similar effect to vaccination.

This is one of the reasons why HIV spread was not as bad as it could have been in Western Europe where exposure to a disease still gave some benefits many centuries later:

[https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.h...](https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-15.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a lot of panicky misinformation out there, the WHO is calling it an "infodemic"!

This Wikipedia article is doing a respectable job tracking some of the conspiracy theories and falsehoods:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_related_to_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak)

Wikipedia also has a good summary of the overall state of things:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_ou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak)

<comment><USER20> The way outlets such as The New York Post deal with this is absolutely irresponsible. They keep on re-posting total garbage that has been debunked multiple times and Google isn't helping by linking to it.

This is also worth keeping an eye on:

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations- confirme...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed- cases.html#map)

<comment><USER23> Perhaps they should be sued.

<comment><USER20> It's owned by Murdoch and faithfully trumpets the party line:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post#Influence)

Good luck suing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.ready.gov/pandemic](https://www.ready.gov/pandemic)

Basic things the US gov recommends in the case of a pandemic.

I personally went out and got 2 weeks of supplies last night.

<comment><USER25> > 2 weeks

What a noob

Seriouslu though, if it strikes it'd be at least for a few months.

<comment><USER24> I don't think the idea is to be sustainable for 2 weeks, it's to mitigate the stress on the supply line by staggering demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lack of testing and testing capacity in the US is deeply alarming. They've only run 500 tests so far and criteria still require the patient to have recently traveled from Hubei! By comparison South Korea is running thousands of tests per day, which is why it is picking up so many cases. Absolutely unforgivable complacency and lack of transparency from CDC.

There is almost certainly community spreading in the US that is going undetected.

Once local cases finally start getting reported and tested in the US, there will be panic and a lot of the same irrational hoarding behavior and shortages observed elsewhere. It would be better if the CDC mentally prepared and educated the public for what is to come. Normalcy bias is very real, and people here are still culturally not ready for this reality..

Edit: Some background for the above comments:

Epidemiologist at Harvard/ Brigham and Women's responsible for virology testing there: [https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/12315038051598131...](https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1231503805159813121)

"Reminder: As of today (Feb 23), the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it."

"Now >10 days since CDC recalled kits w still no explanation for failure. Failure to share what went wrong hinders progress by all labs nationwide. Expeditious sharing of information is a must during epidemics. We say this to China and CDC should practice as well."

"Without more information, public health labs & well resourced hospital labs setting up CDC published assay in-house are held at complete standstill, unable to prepare for what will inevitably be concern for local transmission."

"Without rapid diagnostics ready to go, healthcare infrastructure may become rapidly inundated, even if cases turn out all negative - an abundance of caution will require quarantines until test rules out a case. Any backlog can quickly hamper hospitals."

"Additionally, recommendations for testing continue to tie in to recent travel to China or some contact. With cases in at least 28 countries, and local transmission increasing, testing and surveillance nationally must move forward"

"We cannot know if there is coronavirus here in US if we are not testing. We must get the US up to speed for diagnostics and we need expeditious information sharing from @CDC to the lab testing community here and abroad."

<comment><USER11> Do you have a source for this analysis? Or for the numbers?

Generally, the CDC is quite good at their jobs. If you think they're shrugging their shoulders right now and being lazy or complacent about something, you've probably misunderstood part of the story.

It's virtually tradition for Internet comment sections to fill with overconfident armchair experts who claim to know better than the professionals as well as the general public in these cases of outbreak. The arguments usually hinge on one or two "gotcha" statistics that they think are evidence of a larger problem. IMO, it's not helpful. Let's focus on actionable tips like this article instead of armchair criticisms of professionals based on unsourced information.

<comment><USER26> There has been concern on this point from epidemiologists and public health professionals for some time:

Director of Johns Hopkins School of public health, health security program: [https://twitter.com/t_inglesby/status/1231363420907343873](https://twitter.com/t_inglesby/status/1231363420907343873)

Dean of Nebraska's college of public health: [https://twitter.com/unmc_drkhan/status/1231284337435381761](https://twitter.com/unmc_drkhan/status/1231284337435381761)

Sentinel testing of ILIs (influenza like illnesses testing negative for the flu) in major metros was to have begun at least a week ago. But now delayed for some unknown period of time due to reagent failure on the PCR test kits.

For further context, BC in Canada has alone managed to run more tests than the entire US as currently reported. We have 60x the population and more travelers from the source region in the key Dec/Jan time frame. If we wait till the severe ARDS cases show up like in Iran and Italy it's already out in the community and causes unnecessary panic.

As the person in charge of viral testing at Brigham and Women's / Harvard med just tweeted today: " Reminder: As of today (Feb 23), the US remains extremely limited in #COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs have @CDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it."

" Now >10 days since CDC recalled kits w still no explanation for failure. Failure to share what went wrong hinders progress by all labs nationwide. Expeditious sharing of information is a must during epidemics. We say this to China and CDC should practice as well."

"As someone responsible for overseeing virology diagnostics at our hospital @harvardmed @BrighamWomens - the need for clarity and quick turnaround is paramount to keep the hospital running smoothly in event of local transmission. So far, process from CDC leaves much to be desired"

[https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/12315038051598131...](https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1231503805159813121)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the preparation list, scaling ICU is most needed.

A lot of people survived thank to intensive care units. There might not be enough to cope with the peak

<comment><USER20> That 'might' is probably safely replace with 'are'. No country - even the richest - is prepared to deal with this many ICU cases. For instance in the UK (which has a very good healthcare system) there are about 6k ICU beds on a population of ~65 million.

And then there is the risk of having ICU personnel become infected themselves. This is not a trivial challenge.

<comment><USER28> In this case, I guess we have to just trust the people that go through the most competitive and intellectually demanding decade of school and professional training on the planet. They have the benefit of being on the front lines themselves, with the lives of themselves and their coworkers at risk.

edit: if it helps avoid distractions, let me say it is obviously not a "benefit" and medical professionals are underappreciated heroes. They deal with infections disease every day, sometimes far more dangerous than covid-19. For them, the danger and planning isn't hypothetical like it is for a vast majority of the commenters here. I trust the medical community to plan for this appropriately more that I trust any other group of professionals.

<comment><USER20> That's not a benefit. And given that these people will try to do their jobs even when under=equipped and understaffed they are paid too little to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is a video which compares that to other causes of deaths and other "pandemics":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU)

Please stop threating the virus as if we would all die.

The things you have in the article should be the things you should do anyway:

-No touching your face, is something you should stop anyway, as the flu will also kill you if you have bad luck and it is the same problem

-Having certain things prepared in case there is a local emergency is a good idea anyway, but the recommandation at least in austria is about 10-14 days, so I hope most of the people already have that.

-Supply chains won't break down because of such a virus, just as it didn't because of the swineflu and other things.

-If supply chains break down, we have more than the coronavirus to worry about.

edit:

Pressed submit to soon

<comment><USER20> No, we won't all die. But the impact will be substantial if the infections are not brought under control.

Just like not everybody dies from many other diseases such as the flu. The difference here is that it also hits hard on otherwise healthy people and that healthcare workers are very much exposed to infection. If that front line does not hold it can get worse rapidly.

Western countries with good medicine and infrastructure in place stand a chance of riding this out with just (possibly substantial) economic impact. Poor countries are in for a rough ride. Check out what is happening in Iran right now (which your linked video conveniently leaves out, possibly because it does not fit their narrative).

Mortality rates around 2-5% for a pandemic are nothing to sneeze at, infection rates in close proximity are very high making it hard to care for those that are showing symptoms and put high density population centers at serious risk.

<comment><USER29> You can't controll infections.

You can try to fasttrack vaccinies, but you can't really stop a virus with such a transmission way from spreading.

That is a problem but it is nothing new.

Every few years we will have new diseases and unfortunately they will spread and kill people.

The flu does that yearly.

Does that suck? Yes

Will it mean the end of the world or have a high impact on countries that have a robust healtcare system? No

<comment><USER20> > You can't controll infections.

No, but you can try to slow down the rate of infection to avoid overloading the healthcare system.

> You can try to fasttrack vaccinies, but you can't really stop a virus with > such a transmission way from spreading.

Agreed.

> That is a problem but it is nothing new.

It certainly isn't anything new. But if the past is a guide here than the impact can be substantial.

> Every few years we will have new diseases and unfortunately they will spread > and kill people.

We do. But most of those do not have this combined potential of spreading a-symptomatic; long incubation time and relatively high mortality. That makes this one more serious than for instance SARS and MERS, the impact of which was already substantial.

> The flu does that yearly.

If you want to compare what is happening now to the seasonal flu then you are probably not equipped to evaluate the risks. The flu predominantly affects those that are already weakened and it tends to kill people who would have been dead soon anyway. This virus is _nothing_ like that.

> Will it mean the end of the world or have a high impact on countries that > have a robust healtcare system? No

It won't mean the end of the world but it likely _will_ have high impact on countries with robust healthcare systems because (1) the economies of those countries depend on everybody being free to move around and interact with each other, something which anti-spreading measures will affect and (2) even the most wealthy countries with robust healthcare systems have limited healthcare capacity, typically on the order of 1 ICU bed per 10000 people. Assuming you can staff them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the WHO not declaring a pandemic is mostly wishful thinking on their part, the longer they wait the bigger the impact to the system. There are now 30 countries with known infections, a large number with likely undetected cases due to lack of local infrastructure. Impact to the economy and general panic are on the one side of the scale, there is still only a very small chance that they will be able to contain this.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well. Infection rate is going down already. Death rate is starting to slow down. Death rate was never higher than a common flu. Healing rate is increasing drastically, many heal without medical needs.

So, should we really talk about a pandemic? A flu pandemic? Or has the virus changed in the last few days and I've missed it?

<comment><USER20> Infection rate in China is going down and the way they keep changing their criteria makes it hard to find continuity in the numbers. Elsewhere it is still rising.

<comment><USER30> Actually the changes in China are the reason why the number increased from 40k+ to 60k+ wasn't it?

<comment><USER20> That caused the jump. But those cases were there all along, just not reported. Now they have - again - changed the criteria and made them more stringent resulting in an apparent drop in the number of cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> To those commenting about infection rate going down:

Do you take into account that China relaxed the requirements for diagnosing a case many days ago, and then made them strict again a couple of days ago? That's one sucky move that makes thing seem like they're slowing down. Or so you just look at graph and think everything is fine? Or is everything actually improving even taking the reporting changes into account?

<comment><USER32> Got any sources for these claims?

<comment><USER31> It's well documented in various day to day coverage feeds. The one I'm thinking about is CNN. I'm pretty sure its public information disseminated by China.

Edit: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_20...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainland_China_during_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related- stig...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stigma.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Recommendations for what individuals can do are buried but very practical:

* Try to get a few extra months' worth of prescription meds, if possible.

* Think through now how we will take care of sick family members while trying not to get infected. Cross-train key staff at work so one person's absence won't derail our organization's ability to function.

* Practice touching our faces less. So how about a face-counter app like the step-counters so many of us use?

* Replace handshakes with elbow-bumps (the "Ebola handshake").

* Start building harm-reduction habits like pushing elevator buttons with a knuckle instead of a fingertip.

<comment><USER35> Is hand saniziter any good, for when you touched the wrong places?

<comment><USER36> Yes. Alcohol is sufficient, antibiotic treatments are useless against viruses.

Wet wipes may also be convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We will see. The graphs of numbers of confirmed infected all seem to be bending down, but of course there's the possibility of biases like unreleased numbers and incomplete testing. I guess we will know in a few weeks which direction it is going to go.

That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why most people should panic more than they do about flu season. Obviously it is a serious concern, but I think on the extremes there is a bit more alarmism than is warranted. Of course, those same sensational articles are going to be the ones that get upvoted on social media sites like this one. I remember when the avian influenza scare was on how many end of the world articles there were. Not that it wasn't a pressing concern but it seems like these types of situations capture the public's imagination and fears a little more than is justified by the facts on the ground.

Also keep in mind that this message is coming from a "risk communication expert" who probably gets more exposure and therefore more business the more extreme their predictions are. Are they actually privy to any information or knowledge the other experts aren't aware of? Do they have any skin in the game at all when they make this prediction? Consider the source is all I'm saying.

<comment><USER38> > That being said, with death being so rare among the young, I don't see why > most people should panic more than they do about flu season.

This is my thoughts why Covid-19 is much more dangerous than seasonal flu: first it is much more virulent, and hard to detect, many of the infections in Korea were due to one 61 years old woman alone. Secondly the mortality rate is higher too, estimated at 2-3%, with the serious cases at around 10% (please correct me if I am wrong). Those two above combined means if left unchecked, Covid-19 can easily overload our medical system, as what is happening in Wuhan*. So I will most likely won't perish or suffer any long term health problems from Covid-19, but our society as a whole might be devastated if we can't contain it. There is no need to succumb to irrational fear (like what's happening some countries), but we should all be prepared.

Actually I am worried about Iran, the embargo from America means their medical system are lacking all essentials. That's why they have so many deaths, second only yo China.

<comment><USER18> The mortality rate for hospitalized flu patients in the US is about 10%. Mortality rates of categories like "serious cases" depend on a bunch of arbitrary and unverifiable assumptions, so I don't think this proves the coronavirus is bad or isn't bad, but 10% isn't as high of a number as I think you're intuitively expecting.

<comment><USER39> The mortality rate for hospitalized corona virus patients is closer to 50%

<comment><USER37> Source? That doesn't match anything I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This article does not read like cogent CDC advice. It seems written in a more page-6 OP-ED style. Not sure this is the perspective we need.

</comment><comment><USER41> At the risk of going full doomsday mode (and besides stockpiling on food and masks) - lets say pandemic happens and some useful meds/vitamins do go out of stock - is there any advice what those are i.e. what kind of meds/vitamins would be practical to buy right now to help fight/slow COVID-19/infection in the future?

<comment><USER42> No, just food and meds for fever. I'm actually concerned there will be a shortage of food just because everybody is stocking up at a sudden panic, not necessarily because we actually end up with a huge pandemic (which might or might not happen at a later point in time). So for the first time in my life I'm thinking about actually doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > ... In most countries ... ordinary citizens have not been asked to prepare. > Instead, they have been led to expect that their governments will keep the > virus from their doors.

This will be a painful but necessary shift. Realizing there's no way to stop the spread of coronavirus from "over there" to "over here," the best move individuals and groups can take is to forego large gatherings:

> ... the switch to measures like canceling mass events designed to keep us > from infecting each other.

How long this will take is anybody's guess. But any organization still planning a conference of more than a few dozen people should really stop and consider the wisdom of that plan at this point.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fear-mongering aside, the article basically says "have some masks and be prepared for supply disruptions of critical things (medicine in particular)" which seems like generally a good idea? Maybe that's just the Boy Scout "be prepared" in me, but that feels like a low cost way to insulate yourself from the unexpected (pandemic or otherwise).

I really enjoy "Doomsday prepping for less crazy folk", where this is discussed: [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#4.7)

</comment><comment><USER45> Sounds like the word "Pandemic" is getting the "AI" treatment: A lot of people have heard of it in the movies, the movies make it seem like if this word applies to your situation is an end of times scenario and people should be panicking and worrying.

I don't think that's what the CDC and others want to get across. Much like (most) AI researchers and partitioners trying to downplay the fear mongering.

As a species we really seem to love Existential crises.

</comment><comment><USER46> This might sound tasteless but...

What's the probable impact of such pandemy on the stock market?

Any low hanging fruit to invest on? Any category of assets to stay away from?

<comment><USER20> Travel stocks and travel related stocks down, health related stocks up would be my first guess.

<comment><USER47> Not health insurance though, they could be in for massive liabilities should a lot of people start contracting.

<comment><USER20> Correct, I was thinking of Pharmaceuticals, should have been more precise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> For those uncertain of how to treat this information, these are the razors I've used on myself the past few weeks:

[https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368](https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=368) [https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382](https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws?t=1382)

</comment><comment><USER49> PSA: spreading FUD and panic isn't helping anyone. The common flu is a "pandemic" every year, so should we freak out and buy 1000 kg of wheat while inconsistently not having any means of food production? Don't act out of fear; act out of reason, honesty and proportionality.

<comment><USER6> To be fair the common flu has a fatality rate around 0.01%, sars-cov-2 is around 2%.

(Not sure there is much we can do in the long run though)

<comment><USER50> Does it though? COVID-19 may actually have a much lower fatality rate as we are only getting reports of people that get symptoms, maybe that's only 10% of infections, maybe even less.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, it could also be higher..

Wishful thinking doesn't really make it so :) (Even though I really wish it did)

Whether it matters in practice I don't know.. how much can we really do ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The WHO knows this and the pandamic button is also a early signal, they don't press it when is "too late". They have protocol and procedures after they declare it, and doing it too early will probably mess it up and cause confusion. This guy is living in his own world.

</comment><comment><USER52> Earlier in the week I went to large university library. There were at least 5 people there severely coughing. Everyone else was sitting around like it was perfectly natural, no masks, no attempts at containment or isolation.

Yes, we're in cold and flu season, so it could be just ordinary cold and flu (which is bad enough, as the flu kills lots of people as is, so spreading it is irresponsible at best), but the US is hardly doing any testing, so for all we know it could also be COVID-19.

The amount of complacency around the US right now is stunning. People are just burying their heads in the sand and acting like it couldn't happen to them, relying on the media or government to tell them when to take it seriously, and both the mainstream media and the government flat failing to get people to prepare or take any measures to slow down the spread of this disease apart from telling them to wash their hands.

The numbers coming out of China are not reliable, but given the numbers we do have (including non-China cases) it seems COVID-19 (aka SARS2) is far worse than the regular flu (for which at least we have a vaccine, though not nearly enough people take it).

We should be doing everything we can to slow the spread of this disease, to buy some time for medicine to study it and come up with treatments, but instead outside of countries that are already obviously seriously affected people are acting like it doesn't exist.

That kind of complacency provides the perfect breeding ground for this disease.

For those of you who want to keep a closer watch on what's going on, see:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/](https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/) (more lax moderation)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/](https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/) (more strict moderation)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/](https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/) (science-oriented news and discussion)

</comment><comment><USER53> Give me the numbers.

People panic over everything imaginable. The only defense is logic. (which unfortunately is only a slow and long term defense)

At this point I feel I am more likely to win the lottery and get struck my lightning twice before I get this virus. And even then, what is the death rate for healthy adults?

It's amazing how easily people freak out these days.

<comment><USER20> At this point, yes. But that's not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is what will happen over the next couple of weeks/months and to what degree we can avoid community spreading once the virus achieves a foothold, which - sorry - at this point is mostly a matter of time.

Containment can be done early on and if done effectively can get you back into your 'no need to worry' mode. But once containment has failed you are in different territory and will have to play a much more complex game with more substantial impact.

So your present day chances of contracting this in the next 24 hours are looking pretty good but your chances of contracting this in the next couple of months are substantially better than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning even once. Unless you live the life of a hermit.

A vaccine would be quite handy, but we do not have one - yet , though that race is on - and even if we had it you still need to make it in quantity to be effective. A virus doesn't particularly care about whether you are able to think logically or not. It cares about contact between people and not killing its host too quickly. That way it improves its chances of spreading its genetic code.

<comment><USER53> There is a lot I can do for my family and friends about helping them not be _irrationally_ afraid.

Eliminating irrational fear is valuable. Spreading undue panic is reprehensible.

What are the numbers? What is the risk equation? If we avoid these, then we are not speaking from knowledge but simply guessing and editorializing. Which tends towards panic, not rationality.

<comment><USER20> Eliminating irrational fear is very valuable. But there is also something to be said for being _rationally_ afraid: to try to put boundaries on how scary this thing really is and what the likely impact will be.

Undue panic is 'we are all going to die, the end is neigh' kind of bs.

But a measured response could easily be that it would be better to reduce travel if you do not really have to, avoid concentrations of people and so on.

The numbers that we know so far are impressive enough that I believe those measures are warranted. 1-2% mortality, aerosolized infection confirmed, tactile infection confirmed, reasonably long incubation time, tests appear unreliable, virus now present in 25+ countries, with serious outbreaks in several of those. This is no longer in 'common flu' territory, nor is it in 'black plague' territory. Let's hope it stays that way and can be pushed back into the bottle again or that a vaccine is developed fast enough and produced in quantity enough that the bulk effects can be reduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > One horrible effect of this continued "stop the pandemic" daydream > masquerading as a policy goal: It is driving counter-productive and outrage- > inducing measures by many countries against travelers from other countries, > even their own citizens back from other countries. But possibly more > horrible: The messaging is driving resources toward "stopping," and away > from the main potential benefit of containment – slowing the spread of the > pandemic and thereby buying a little more time to prepare for what's coming.

I don't get this part of the article at all. What's exactly counter-productive about not allowing civilian travellers from affected provinces? That seems like the best method to slow the spread to me. The longer we can keep it away from anybody, the better, because the more time we have to come up with a vaccine or alternative ways to combat the disease.

It's definitely possible that covid-19 will eventually reach all parts of the globe, but we should try everything possible to not let it reach those parts before we have come up with a vaccine.

<comment><USER29> Closing borders isn't easy.

Most of the time there are still ways you can cross, so instead of having known routes where you can test and treat accordingly, you have an unknown number of people crossing the border on unknown points and spreading the virus in unknown regions.

<comment><USER36> The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1\. Once this is done, eventually, _inevitably_ , the epidemic will burn out.

Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die.

But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out.

Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only _sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission_.

Of which, strong, effective, and widespread travel restrictions _within or from epidemic zones_ are a very sensible tool.

<comment><USER20> Excellent comment and too bad it is this far down the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> tldr; use "ebola" elbow bumps instead of handshakes, don't touch your face, there should be an app to count the # of times you touch your face, tell your friends not to touch their face when they touch their face. Did I mention not to touch your face?

</comment><comment><USER55> what is happening with antivirals, why should these take years in crisis/pandemic situations? Would govts rather see mass hysteria and huge hit to economies rather than trying new vaccines?

</comment><comment><USER56> As Hacker News is usually full of people that can provide good advice: What should I personally do to prepare? I'm living alone and have the ability to work remotely once the virus starts spreading here.

My guess is mostly stocking up on food, which I've planned to do for a long time - sounds like a good motivation to finally prepare a list and get shopping.

Should I bother with a N95 mask? I already have surgical masks that I used last year when I got a cold, but FWIU they only help protecting others when you're already sick. I can spare the money for a N95 mask even if I don't end up using it, but I'm not sure it'll actually help.

Touching your face less and using knuckles to touch buttons as well as washing your hands more often are things I'm already working on. I guess I'll start carrying hand sanitizer when leaving the house.

What else can/should I do?

<comment> dis-sys I have:

1\. n95 masks, e.g. 50 of them. technically, each mask can only last several hours

2\. UVC light for cleaning up used n95 masks so they can last a few days each

3\. protective eyeglasses if you need to visit hospital for any reason in the next few months

4\. ethanol (not for your masks)

5\. medical gloves

<comment><USER57> Unless you are doing work that involves lots of tiny particulate matter (and even if you do), I think 50 n95 masks is pretty darn excessive. Most people don't even wear them correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> There's a lot of randomness in life

</comment><comment><USER59> I loathe these kinds of clickbait headlines with all my being and will not give them my click under any circumstances. I can only imagine the writer twisting his/her nipples in expectation of all the extra traffic he/she will get from Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER60> The biggest question to me is: do you _really_ believe there are no cases in Indonesia? Does that make sense?

Because if there are in fact dozens of people infected in Indonesia, and we don't know about it, containment is over. Based on the apparent transmissibility and incubation period, I don't see how to come back from that.

<comment><USER61> it is weird. but anecdotally it seems like tropical climes less hard hit. India?

low numbers could just be measuring detection ability instead of actual rates.

<comment><USER20> There is an aspect with these viruses that is temperature sensitive that makes them favor colder regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you're a virus researcher, every outbreak looks like a pandemic. The facts on the ground don't match the pandemic conclusion. There were two cases in all of Santa Clara County a few weeks ago, now there is one case.

<comment><USER63> Got a link for that?

<comment><USER62> [https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel- co...](https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel- coronavirus/Pages/home.aspx)

<comment><USER63> Cheers!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Throttles Its Videos on AT&T, Verizon Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-throttles-its-videos-on-at-t-verizon-phones-1458857424 <comment><USER2> I'm with Netflix on this one, I think people would be far more pissed to see a $500 bill from AT&T or Verizon... I'm still angry about an AT&T billing error from 15 years ago, that I wouldn't consider them again to this day... I can only imagine what they'd do to someone going over their cap... same for Verizon.

Beyond that, I don't need 1080p on a 4-6" screen. That said, I think Netflix should probably mention that they have detected a mobile device on CARRIER_NAME and are throttling to protect their bandwidth cap.</comment>


OFFSystem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFFSystem <comment><USER3> I'll agree that copyright has gone haywire as much as the next guy, but this seems to be the exact kind of defense strategy that will archieve nothing but annoy the judge.

The project seems to be based on the assumption that copyright really protects particular sequences of bytes - and that therefore, if you can sufficiently change the representation of a protected work, you're off the hook.

IANAL, but that seems far from the intentions of copyright.

The 4'33 case [0] comes to mind, where a work of nothing but silence was protected. From what I understood, in that case, the actual _contents_ of the work didn't matter a lot (it was all just silence after all) - but what _did_ matter was whether or not someone was consciously using this piece as a base for their own work.

My understanding is that copyright bans the _act_ of using a protected work in an unauthorized manner. By that logic, it doesn't matter how an illegal copy is represented if the data is used with the intention of sharing an illegal copy.

[0] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2276621.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2276621.stm)

<comment><USER4> A classic analogy for explaining the difference: [https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

<comment><USER5> Came here to post that link.

In a nutshell, we programmers tend to like to think that we can use technical means to show that copyright is fundamentally nonsensical / inconsistent / imperfect, as though copyright were a mathematical proof and providing a counter-example would somehow make it go away. This is fundamentally missing the point.

<comment><USER5> Poignant excerpt:

I think Colour is what the designers of Monolith are trying to challenge, although I'm afraid I think their understanding of the issues is superficial on both the legal and computer-science sides. The idea of Monolith is that it will mathematically combine two files with the exclusive-or operation. You take a file to which someone claims copyright, mix it up with a public file, and then the result, which is mixed-up garbage supposedly containing no information, is supposedly free of copyright claims even though someone else can later undo the mixing operation and produce a copy of the copyright- encumbered file you started with. Oh, happy day! The lawyers will just have to all go away now, because we've demonstrated the absurdity of intellectual property!

The fallacy of Monolith is that it's playing fast and loose with Colour, attempting to use legal rules one moment and math rules another moment as convenient. When you have a copyrighted file at the start, that file clearly has the "covered by copyright" Colour, and you're not cleared for it, Citizen. When it's scrambled by Monolith, the claim is that the resulting file has no Colour - how could it have the copyright Colour? It's just random bits! Then when it's descrambled, it still can't have the copyright Colour because it came from public inputs. The problem is that there are two conflicting sets of rules there. Under the lawyer's rules, Colour is not a mathematical function of the bits that you can determine by examining the bits. It matters where the bits came from. The scrambled file still has the copyright Colour because it came from the copyrighted input file. It doesn't matter that it looks like, or maybe even is bit-for-bit identical with, some other file that you could get from a random number generator. It happens that you didn't get it from a random number generator. You got it from copyrighted material; it is copyrighted. The randomly-generated file, even if bit-for-bit identical, would have a different Colour. The Colour inherits through all scrambling and descrambling operations and you're distributing a copyrighted work, you Commie Mutant Traitor.

<comment><USER6> If all that mattered were the bits, then wouldn't it be sufficient to just re- encode a video? All the bits are different now...

It seems to me that changing the bits only helps to avoid detection. Not to avoid the legal issues.

<comment><USER5> It wouldn't be just an equality check on the bits anyway, rather some kind of theoretical function over the bits. For example, is this JPG image a copyrighted image? Perhaps my function would be:

        - take the source image, reduce it to a 10px by 10px grid
        - take the image in question, reduce it to a 10px by 10px grid
        - for each pixel, calculate the deviation between the source pixel and the candidate pixel
        - if the sum of the squares of the deviation is smaller than some threshold, output true.

The point is that no matter how clever a function you make, it cannot capture the notion of where the bits _came from_ and can only capture information about what the bits _are_. Computers care about the latter. All these clever schemes care about the latter. Copyright law cares about the former.

From a copyright law perspective, the notion that you might have two files on your computer whose bits are completely identical in every way, but only one of which you are legally permitted to copy, is perfectly reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you really think the copyright laywers who get paid tons of money to professionally bust stupid schemes like this wouldn't instantly tear it to shreds then oh boy do I have a bridge to sell you.

This stuff honestly reminds me of "soverign citizens"

"I'm doing something illegal but AH HA if I make use of this _weird technicality_ or _magical legal incantation_ it's not actually illegal! Haha!!"

<comment><USER8> > No block can be copyrighted without logical contradictions, because blocks > used for re-assembling a source file block are re-used for re-assembly of > other source file blocks. It is undecidable who would have copyright on a > block, which has several meanings. Everyone would have copyright on > everything.

That's a hopelessly naive, almost sovcit-level take on law. The lawyers and judges will not give an iota of a fuck for this argument. The facts are, someone uploaded a copyrighted work to the system. Someone else downloaded it out of the system.

The classic "What Colour are your bits" is relevant here:

[https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

<comment><USER9> _> The classic "What Colour are your bits" is relevant here:_

I agree this article is relevant, but perhaps not in the way you meant.

To me, the point of the article is that you can't tell what Colour bits are by looking at the bits. The OFFSystem can be viewed as a way of illustrating this point (though that probably wasn't what its designers intended). But the law wants to insist that you _can_ tell what Colour bits are by looking at the bits--as the article says, that's basically what DRM and other such systems try to do. But it can't be done.

To me, that means that the law needs to change--as it has changed in the past when technology changes in a way that invalidates assumptions that the law previously made. It looks to me like the main thing that is preventing the law from simply changing in a common sense way to accommodate the technological change of computers is that there are large corporations who make a lot of money by owning copyrights. I personally don't have a lot of sympathy for those corporations since their business model has nothing whatever to do with compensating the actual creators of the works whose copyrights they own.

<comment><USER10> >But the law wants to insist that you can tell what Colour bits are by looking at the bits

What makes you say that? I would expect that the law (or the judge enforcing it) cares more about the reasons people use the software and what they get out of it in the end than about the specific bit strings. The OFFSystem is clearly software for storing and retrieving files or media; it's built for that use and everyone using it is using it for that. How it accomplishes that internally isn't significant.

Do you think any cases would or should be overturned if it were revealed that, unknown to anyone at the time, a popular torrent program actually worked like OFFSystem, or hell, worked by magic without actually physically sending data between users as long as someone was concurrently doing the seeding-the-file ritual? -- I think this line of argument is strongly related to the argument that it's still murder if instead of shooting someone, you intentionally kill them by using a rube goldberg machine or by placing a land-mine that the victim triggers or by using a magic gun that erases whoever you aim it at. Intentions and results matter to the law. I think this makes technically- minded people squeamish because intentions are a lot harder to prove and are easier to mess up than questions of plainer physical facts, but to ignore them is too gameable.

The OFFSystem only sounds interesting because it's transforming the data for no other reason than to try to be a legal loophole, but strangely we'd never even consider the idea that software that transforms data for a reason (like zip archivers, https encryption, or re-encoding) would work as a similar legal loophole. I think the concept of a data transformation for no other purpose other than to try to be a legal loophole just manages to surprise people enough to think that it might work.

<comment><USER9> _> What makes you say that?_

The article says so, at least implicitly, in passages like this one:

        What we are doing with rights management information
        is simulating Colour in a computer-sciencey way. But
        lawyers will seize on the possibility of doing this
        kind of simulation and say, "See!  You admit it! You
        can recognize the Colour of bits after all!" and then
        conclude from there that all the other rules they want
        to make (such as "Red Troubleshooters may not walk
        down Orange hallways") are meaningful in the computer
        science realm.

My view of the typical legal attitude towards DRM schemes and the like is similar.

 _> I would expect that the law (or the judge enforcing it) cares more about the reasons people use the software and what they get out of it in the end than about the specific bit strings._

The law is also supposed to care about the people who _created_ the bits in the first place--after all, the purpose of copyright law is to encourage _creation_ of works. But the law as it is actually practiced does not do this at all; the parties it most consistently favors are, as I said, large corporations whose business model does _not_ include fair compensation to the original creators.

I agree that, viewed as an actual legal strategy within the context of our current legal system, OFFSystem is daft. No court is going to agree with the legal interpretation that the creators of OFFSystem claim to be using. But I view that aspect as simply an illustration of the fact that you can't fight legal mumbo jumbo with more legal mumbo jumbo. The proper response to draconian legal doctrines with regard to DRM is to remind the legal system what it is actually supposed to be doing, and to refuse to accept the arguments that DRM proponents offer in the framework of copyright law, which basically amount to saying that they have exactly the same rights as the actual creators of the content, even though their business model treats those creators as expendable cogs in a machine. That's what I mean when I say the law needs to change: it needs to stop taking the claims made by large corporations promoting DRM and the like as presumptively valid, simply because they have maneuvered themselves into a position where they can show a piece of paper saying they "own" the copyrighted content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems pretty easily defeatable: an adversary just needs to track the timestamps of various blocks, and the last one that gets created is the "real" one. The stuff about copyright seems pretty dumb, obviously the most recent block is the interesting one, that you've just "encrypted" with the previous blocks. Also, even without doing any tracking, you can narrow down the uploader to a set of at most N people, where N is the number of blocks (which presumably can't be too big for performance reasons).

<comment><USER12> The copyright stuff is bunk, but their defense isn't (just) what you've said but rather that a single block is used to decrypt multiple files so their defense is that no one copyright owner owns the block in question. Which of course is BS since any part of a component derived from illegally sourced copyrighted materials renders the entire derived work in violation (eg a mixtape with one improperly sourced song or twenty is just as "fair game" for a lawsuit).

<comment><USER13> As mentioned elsewhere, it is difficult to prove where any block in OFF was derived. So while a block is used to rebuild a copyrighted work, the block itself can't be subject to copyright, or more so, could have been generated by a freely available work and so has no ties to the copyrighted work.

It seems like building a dictionary and then a system to rebuild books by combining fragments (words) from the dictionary. The book can be copyrighted, but the words couldn't be. Even if the word was coined in the book and submitted to the dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know, following that logic it would be impossible to claim copyright over an encrypted file as it's basically also just a very large random number, even if I can reassemble the original file if I have access to the cryptographic key. I think you could probably share the encrypted file on the web if you don't share the key, as no one can know what the file contains (assuming the cryptographic method is secure). Together with the key this data will become copyrightable though as there is an easy way for any user to re- assemble it on his/her computer.

So I'd say downloading individual randomized blocks is probably not problematic and akin to downloading an encrypted file without having access to the key. Downloading the URL that points to the descriptor list might be problematic though, as this will allow you to "decrypt" the other blocks.

<comment><USER15> I think the distinction this protocol makes is that by using XOR as the "encryption" method, given any input block you can choose a "key" to decrypt with to produce any other output block. A block in isolation provides zero information to the downloader. I think it could be argued that it is the knowledge of which blocks to combine is where the actual data is being stored, and maybe that's where the copyright owners could stake a claim.

<comment><USER16> So does that mean if I store child porn on AWS I don't technically own it since it's somewhere in the virtual cloud?

The only way I could access it is through that weird SSH key that doesn't contain any videos in it.

<comment><USER15> I don't think we are in any disagreement that whoever is uploading the data "owns" the data. The interesting idea is that the entity storing the bytes has 0 information about the data they represent, in the information theoretic sense, since they can decrypt the data to any value by choosing a sufficient key. This is not true for most other encryption schemes where the encrypted data has enough structure to it that theoretically it could be retrieved without the key, although the whole point of the encryption is that this isn't a practical undertaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It poses the following question as its defense: if a file is broken down into blocks and a single block is used to recompose two or more different files but is itself unique from any of the actual components of either of the two files, then no one can claim copyright to it.

I don't think that works the way they think it does, though. Just imagine analog data instead of digital, and take two copyrighted works, break them down into blocks, mix them together with some randomizers, and what do you get? A work _derived_ from multiple copyrighted sources. No one needs to "own" the entirety of the source, if any part of it is derived from copyrighted materials in a way that isn't exempted via eg fair use, then the entirety of the resulting work is in violation and is fair game for lawsuits, etc.

Simply moving this to the digital domain from analog doesn't change the logic, does it?

<comment><USER17> A simple example may be dubbing two songs on top of each other. Then you can subtract one of the songs to recover the other. Obviously the double-song is a derivative work of both.

<comment><USER18> The point is that using their algorithm, you can't prove that a block of data is derived from an existing work.

<comment><USER19> Doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you used a key with intent to decrypt such data and extract the original work.

Courts don't operate on technicalities. The intent is pretty much all that matters, as long as you prove that someone intended to pirate stuff, doesn't matter what rube goldberg machine they use to actually pull it off.

Schemes like this have been tried since the 1800s, perhaps far longer, where someone smugly announces "well technically I didn't defraud them, your honor" and gets sent straight into prison.

<comment><USER20> > Courts don't operate on technicalities. The intent is pretty much all that > matters, as long as you prove that someone intended to pirate stuff, doesn't > matter what rube goldberg machine they use to actually pull it off.

You are absolutely right.

This is what enabled prosecuting the founders of the pirate bay, among other things.

The fact that files are hosted elsewhere, mangled, encrypted, cut in pieces is entirely irrelevant to the court.

Hoping that a technicality gets you off the hook is exercise in shortsightedness.

<comment><USER18> The point is that courts can't prove anything based on the information they get from the network.

This is in contrast to e.g. bittorrent where every seeder is in direct violation and provably so.

<comment><USER19> The same thing that takes down bittorrent users will take down this too: the network log of you typing "Pink Floyd" into OFFsystem's search bar.

This is technobabble theater by people who do not understand law nor courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Last project activity: 5 years ago ...

Sad, because it looked promising.

However, this part seems weak:

> If the OFF-internal search function is used, search terms are untraceable to > its originator, because the search request is forwarded to the next node and > its results back to that node instead of directly to the originator. It is > thus not possible to decide whether a node is the originating node or a node > doing a search request on behalf of another node.

Being an accomplice in a crime is also a crime.

<comment><USER21> The whole thing is technically interesting but legally not at all impressive or interesting. It's almost like this was built by engineers that tried to solve a legal problem based on a view of the law informed by prime time legal television shows.

<comment><USER18> Except that they make it impossible to tell _who_ to sue. And that's the clever part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is interesting. I am not versed enough in law to opine on whether the actual uploading/download itself would be considered legal or illegal - <USER2> are many very strong opinions here on many aspects, and none with a legal argument more convincing than "I believe if a judge looked at it they would ..."

However, I would describe it differently: This is a "denial of information" (sort of a "denial of service") attack on the legal process. In order to actually sue, you need to have to make a more-than-good faith effort to discover _who it is that wronged you and needs to make you whole_ \- and, unlike torrents or emule or whatever kids are using these days, OFFSystem makes _that_ part hard to discover or prove beyond reasonable doubt - especially if the descriptor block is transferred out of band.

This is somewhat similar to shell games played by many legal "villains" such as patent trolls: You encapsulate company ownership through various jurisdictions (e.g. company A in the UK is wholly owned by company B in NL, which is owned by company C in the US, which is owned by company D in Russia, etc.); it is incredibly cheap to set up (a few thousand US$), and incredibly hard to unravel (tens to hundrends of thousands of US$). If you are trying to target such a company - e.g., to countersue, you realize you have no idea who to sue - you have an opaque company A, and not much to go on.

Courts e.g. in germany, have ruled that IP address is not a good enough identifier to sue a person for copyright infringement unless you have other supporting data. It's not directly comparable, but indicates that OFFSystem might provide a defense, practically (can't figure out who to sue) and maybe even legally (not sufficient proof), depending on jurisdiction.

It's the intent that matters in many cases, but burden of proof also matters. I think it is philosophically a very interesting question and far from clear cut.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is nonsense IMHO. This is just an encoding scheme to encode data. Just because blocks used by the encoding scheme are cached and reused for other data does not mean that they're not used to represent this data. If the data downloaded is copyrighted work, then copyright applies. Are copyright laws specific as to the technical method in which reproducing copyrighted material without authorization counts as a violation, or is the method irrelevant?

If the method is irrelevant, then yes, using this scheme to copy copyrighted material is copyright infringement.

If it is relevant, then there's nothing special about this scheme at all except that it is different than the specific methods outlined in the law.

</comment><comment><USER24> This reminds be a bit of Dagster: [https://core.ac.uk/display/22569796](https://core.ac.uk/display/22569796)

</comment><comment><USER16> For multiple rounds of XOR for encryption and a reused one-time-pad it would not be so hard to reproduce the files if needed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fix the brand then I'll consider using it.

</comment><comment><USER26> If this caught on, the mpaa and riaa lawyers are going to be out of jobs.</comment>