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On April 03 2020 05:13 Mohdoo wrote: Right now, based on the Oregon models, I will be working from home though at least June. Probably until August. That's so wild. It has been 2 weeks and this might go on for 4 months? lmao. I think our culture will permanently change.
Yep; for the youngest generations too. Every US school should be closed/ sticking to online/remote teaching through the rest of this school year.. and then we'll see how things are after summer vacation.
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
China had a complete lock down for well over a month tho (going as far as locking people in their homes), the measures they took were more extreme than any other country.
We've tackled this issue multiple times in this thread already. As TT1 points out, it seems like North America and Europe were caught off guard because Asia (China, Singapore, South Korea etc.) took drastic measures very early so they were able to contain the virus and make it look like it wasn't a big threat. As a result, the response from rest of world has been far too slow as they underestimated the virus.
To the extent numbers are not accurate in countries, I'm sorry but this applies in EVERY country at the moment. Not sure how many people here will have access to Financial Times, but I link an article from today in any event: https://www.ft.com/content/44f4301e-b5f3-4434-a086-9a822ea72a71. There are articles like this covering many other countries in North America and Europe if you did any level of research.
"Sourced from death certificates, official figures for the period up to March 20 showed that 210 people died in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned by a doctor on the death certificate, compared with 170 recorded up to that date in hospitals, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 23.5 per cent gap between the two figures would increase “noticeably” in the days ahead, according to Nick Stripe, head of life events at the ONS, because with the current movement restrictions it would take longer than usual for people to notify register offices of deaths.
Only roughly half of the deaths on March 20 would have been notified to the statistics agency by five days later, for example, Mr Stripe said.
Mr Stripe stressed, however, that the discrepancy did not suggest any cover-up of deaths from coronavirus, but just that many people had died in the community rather than in hospital, where the daily government counts are taken."
In summary, yes all countries at the moment cannot be reporting accurately - there are more important things to be doing. If you somehow think China is covering this up any more than any other nation, that is just your personal bias. You are of course entitled to your opinion like everyone else, but it is just not a very informed opinion.
China's history of lying including on this exact pandemic, says otherwise. Along with all the articles about it, some I have already posted, they are not alone, they are in a group with a bunch of other countries purposely miss-reporting numbers. Which is different from the countries which simply cannot get enough tests done.
You my friend are the one with the bias.
On April 02 2020 09:16 stilt wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
It's crazy your rent against china doesn't get warning while it's obviously politically motivated. The source which implied that China lied with the 400 000 000 urns is Radio Free Asia directly funded by the american congress, what a joke, would not be the first time USA crafts international lies.
And China is a major power (which would surclass usa during this century hopefully) and a country with a culture way deeper than Disney, your ignorance and contempt for stuffs you don't understand is alarming.
Yes it is a super power, and yes it has deep culture. What is sad is that the current authoritarian government is robbing them of that culture, while actively destroying other parts of it it Uighar and Tibet. People who speak positively of the Chinese government are drinking some strong propaganda. They are all about enriching themselves at the cost of their own people. You don't need to colonize when you can just abuse your own people as free labour while you and your other despots get wildly rich.
And then since they have to keep the "honor" of China above the people they are misreporting data which in impeding the rest of the world from coming to the correct conclusion quickly.
Thank god that one doctor had the bravery to sacrifice himself for all of us, Dr. Li Wenliang is a true hero and it is disgusting that his government arrested him for " spreading rumors".
And it is embarrassing that even after shit like this people still defend this evil government that does not give two shits about its own people let alone everyone else. And if you are drinking the "China's socialist" koolaid I'm sorry but socialist countries are not run by a few billionaires, in fact if they were actually a socialist countries they would not have any. They are a Capitalism-run-muck dictatorship that the leadership was worried if word got out they might make less money.
Edit: in case that link isn't your flavour I'll add a bunch more.
If you think that China has a monopoly on a history of lying, then I can only say good luck to you and your world view.
We can both accuse each other of bias, but it boils down to:
- you think China is somehow worse than other countries (something which Western media tries very hard to push, except that Western media changes their target over the years (Koreans, Vietnamese, USSR, Middle East, now China)
- I happen to think that no government is particularly reliable. The world is driven by interests, and at the political level it is always going to be Machiavellian (particularly between the most powerful nations). To think that one country is "worse" than any other is naive.
You have linked a number of articles, but I invite you to go to Factcheck and you will see that the lies coming out of US politicians is hardly limited to "reporting lower numbers due to a lack of tests". I don't blame them for this, at least not any more than I blame any country/authority. The only thing I blame are people who are naive enough to believe one side or another.
User was warned for this post.
In the past I had generally respected the fact that despite being a website originally for video game news, this site generally had relatively neutral treatment of discussion. So it is quite disappointing to see that only one side of the discussion gets a warning.
There's actually a lot more information to share because I see there is very little on here about how and why Asia were very successful at controlling the virus. Western governments have behind the scenes done a lot more to speak with and understand how policies were implemented, unlike a lot of the media and public discussion.
From reactions from some people on this thread, I doubt my participation will be missed, but it's also a good reminder to myself to enjoy this site for what it is, which is first and foremost a website for video game competition news (at which it is very good).
The idea behind this thread is to avoid politics and focus on the virus itself. People stating their own experiences, what worked in a country etc... again without politics. Why people feel the need to keep bringing it back to China is beyond me since imo, we are not dealing with it properly at all in the west. Probably partially due to the media as well.
Anyways, in Canada, we've broken 9k+ and we are still rising. Pictures have shown people walking side by side in parks last week which got our PM mad. I'd rather we took China's approach of a full lockdown than what's going on now because it's going to keep spreading. There's a lot of people not considering others at times and it's terrible.
On that note, the US had the most deaths I've seen in a single day, 1k+ yesterday. If this continues for say, 2-3 months, that's easily 60-90k and that assumes it holds steady, but the question is how bad it'll get in 2 weeks time when more get infected and it keeps spreading. I can easily see millions dead...
I guess my issue here is that you're very pro lockdown, and say the west is handling it poorly. And then people end up getting warned who have different opinions from you.
I think the US is handling it better than any other country. The flu kills 250k to 500k people per year, while COVID is serious, the reaction is disproportionate. We move on with our lives while making easy changes to be more careful. Closing the country until a vaccine is no bueno in my books. When someone is 85 and they die, even if they are found to have COVID in their system, it's highly likely something else killed them.
If COVID ends up killing 3 million worldwide, that to me is a completely acceptable number for a shitty flu season, doesn't justify so many people not being able to make ends meet. When you do the analysis of overall benefit to people, I think the minor reaction results in much better results than such a big one.
I think you're presenting a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're dealing with.
1. COVID-19 has a substantially greater mortality rate than seasonal influenza.
"Mortality for COVID-19 appears higher than for influenza, especially seasonal influenza. While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%. However, mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care. "
2. Modern healthcare systems account for cases of seasonal influenza.
I'm not going to source the very obvious fact that hospitals in developed countries account for seasonal influenza when determining the necessary amount of beds, ICU beds, PPE etc...
3. Medical professionals can be vaccinated against seasonal influenza. The 'flu shot' tremendously lowers the demand for healthcare facilities.
We'll use 2017-2018 as it's recent and it was the worst influenza season since the H1N1 pandemic.
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2017–2018 season was high with an estimated 45 million people getting sick with influenza, 21 million people going to a health care provider, 810,000 hospitalizations, and 61,000 deaths from influenza
From the model, CDC estimates that influenza vaccination during the 2017–2018 influenza season prevented 6.2 million illnesses, 3.2 million medical visits, 91,000 hospitalizations and 5,700 deaths associated with influenza
The 'flu shot' also massively protects against the possible # of ICU cases as a result of the flu.
Among hospitalized influenza positives, influenza vaccination was associated with a 59% reduction in the odds of ICU admission (aOR = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.18–0.96) and with shorter ICU lengths of stay (LOS), but not with radiograph-confirmed pneumonia or GW hospital LOS.
The study looked at hospitalized flu patients during 2013-2014 and compared patients who had been vaccinated to those who had not. The observed benefits were greatest among people 65 years of age and older, which is notable because people in this age group are at increased risk of serious flu complications and have the highest hospitalization rate among all age groups.
The study found that vaccinated adults were 52-79% less likely to die than unvaccinated flu-hospitalized patients. In other words, an unvaccinated hospitalized flu patient was 2 to 5 times more likely to die than someone who had been vaccinated.
Additional benefits were observed in terms of reducing ICU admissions for several age groups. For example, vaccinated adults 18-49 years of age as well as adults 65 years of age and older hospitalized from flu were 37% less likely to be admitted to the ICU than those who were not vaccinated.
Now consider points 2. and 3. in conjunction while ignoring point 1. entirely.
- Modern healthcare systems are critically under-prepared to deal with a virus that is as virulent as seasonal influenza simultaneously with seasonal influenza.
- There is already a tremendous lack of PPE for healthcare professionals, furthermore there is an obvious lack of general ward (GW) and ICU beds already (goes for Canada too, as Ontario averages something like 97% hospital bed use over the year).
- There is no way for these healthcare professionals to semi-inoculate themselves, meaning that they are going to be tremendously more effected than they would be from the seasonal flu. Consider here that the viral load that a front-line medical worker will receive can be hundreds of times greater than the viral load of the average person who gets COVID-19.
- Assuming COVID-19 and seasonal influenza had the same exact ICU/GW/Mortality rate, we could already state that COVID-19 will be tremendously more damaging as there is no vaccination protection provided to those who need it most like front-line medical professionals. This means you can expect way more ICU beds and ventilators that will be prioritized for sick hospital staff because - "That woman is one of the most respected thoracic surgeons in the country. She's getting a ventilator before literally anyone else her age does".
- The loss of even 5% of front-line hospital staff would be irreconcilably bad. An increase in needed ICU beds by 10% is irrefutably a major crisis for any healthcare system. Both of these things occurring simultaneously is a fucking nightmare.
All of those points completely ignore point 1. which is that COVID-19 is irrefutably more dangerous than seasonal influenza, even if we were 'prepared' for it. All of the major strains on modern healthcare systems given by the above bullets assumed something that was at it's worst never beyond seasonal influenza.
You also need to consider that this doesn't just effect people who get COVID-19. People will still get cancer and need treatment, people will still get injured and go the hospital, people will still suffer strokes and heart attacks... These people will not be able to get access to the level of care they need because the hospital is overburdened with COVID-19 patients and understaffed because of a lack of PPE. How do you decide who gets to stay in an ICU bed? Is it the 26 year old with COVID-19 who was a radiology technician who likely needs a ventilator or is it the 41 year old parent of two kids under 10 who just suffered a heart attack and needs extreme amounts of attention?
You're suggesting that the worry about COVID-19 is how many 85 year olds it will kill. Trying to ignore your hypothetical, pseudoscience proclamation - that it must have been something else which caused this super-unique type of pneumonia which killed the patient.
This is not the worry. The worry is that COVID-19 will lead to our healthcare system being overburdened which means that people's family members will die from all sorts of things outside of COVID-19 as they were unable to get into a hospital. This will also extend to all sorts of weird things, like what do you do when little Timmy snaps his Tibia clean in half? Does he get timely treatment when hospitals are prioritizing trying to keep the patients in the over maximum capacity ICU from dying?
Your suggestion is that instead of trying to slow the spread of the virus, such that hospitals can avoid being over-burdened. We should entirely ignore reality, make non-scientific claims about how it's "just the flu", and let GW/ICU admissions jump by 300-500% in a period of 2-3 months while healthcare staff drops by 10-15% in the same time to essentially guarantee a collapse of the healthcare system.
On April 03 2020 05:13 Mohdoo wrote: Right now, based on the Oregon models, I will be working from home though at least June. Probably until August. That's so wild. It has been 2 weeks and this might go on for 4 months? lmao. I think our culture will permanently change.
Yep; for the youngest generations too. Every US school should be closed/ sticking to online/remote teaching through the rest of this school year.. and then we'll see how things are after summer vacation.
So I'm helping my team prepare to onboard a new set of co-op students in May. We're going to require them to have a personal computer for the first 2-3 weeks or so, (shouldn't be that long) until we can ship them an imaged laptop to work off of. All our training is already either virtual, or can be delivered virtually, but it's a lot different having an open-desk policy vs having them poke me on Teams whenever they need help. There's a lot of intrinsic processes that are difficult to document such as navigating around our portal etc. that are simple to explain in person, but hard to do so in person.
This is for reasonably educated (Middle of bachelor's) kids.
How the fuck do you teach a 5-8 year old kid virtually? In a classroom, you can teach a kid to raise their hand for help, teach a table cluster of kids at once in small groups and they learn off each other. Now it's going to be trying to expand lectures to 5-8 year olds.
On April 03 2020 04:40 Simberto wrote: I don't know how to react to the casual "3 million deaths is totally fine".
Well that would solve retirement issues and reduce unemployment, no ? :-) Yeah, it's ridiculous, there is no good way to react. It's the epitome of "fuck them all, don't stop my business, I don't care if my parents die."
Gonna go in with a stupid hot-take here...
Think about people whom are in their 20-30s right now, who's parents are between ~50-70.
When their parents were 20 they had extremely cheap education (relatively speaking to today), they had far deeper social safety nets, they had far higher wages (comparatively), far cheaper real estate (ability to own a home).
Their parents were influenced by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s when they were growing up and enjoyed the freedom and gaiety that came with young people beginning to undergo rapid liberation. Their parents were part of the largest voting bloc when they were very young, which gave them tremendous ability to participate in change.
These are the same parents whom after living it up in their youth choose to get more fiscally conservative in older age, and actively sought to dismantle the same safety nets that allowed for their trouble-free existence. These are the same parents who grew up with the hippie movement and then supported the 'war on drugs' and are the largest group of climate change deniers. Hell I remember countless times that I have personally heard someone over 50 say - "I don't give a shit about climate change. I'll be dead before it gets to us anyway".
The 20 year olds today? Have extremely expensive education, have far fewer social safety nets with far greater awareness of their non-existence, haven't seen wages increase in 40 years for individuals without a bachelor degree, have far greater real-estate costs tremendously limiting the possibility of ever owning a home.
The 20 year olds today don't have the population percentage to create change through voting that their parents did.
When you take all of those things into account, after being told countless times by morbidly obese uncles who in 2000 made double the average income expected from a bachelors degree in 2020 working an extremely low-skill labour job they got fresh out of highschool 45 years ago - "Even if climate change is real, I won't be affected by it so why would I care? HAHAHAHA". I can understand how the 'boomer' sentiment of 'me, me, me and if it's easy for me then maybe you', which they had no problem demonstrating in issues like climate change can inspire 20-30 year olds to have the exact same response to a serious thing (COVID-19) that doesn't directly affect them as much.
I would give Brad money for that post. Thank you for summarising everything.
Admittedly, another significant benefit of the lock down is the decreased number of everything else. People are less likely to injure themselves without work, get into car accidents without driving, or cough meningitis onto everyone else. Every extra bed counts at this point.
On April 03 2020 05:13 Mohdoo wrote: Right now, based on the Oregon models, I will be working from home though at least June. Probably until August. That's so wild. It has been 2 weeks and this might go on for 4 months? lmao. I think our culture will permanently change.
Yep; for the youngest generations too. Every US school should be closed/ sticking to online/remote teaching through the rest of this school year.. and then we'll see how things are after summer vacation.
So I'm helping my team prepare to onboard a new set of co-op students in May. We're going to require them to have a personal computer for the first 2-3 weeks or so, (shouldn't be that long) until we can ship them an imaged laptop to work off of. All our training is already either virtual, or can be delivered virtually, but it's a lot different having an open-desk policy vs having them poke me on Teams whenever they need help. There's a lot of intrinsic processes that are difficult to document such as navigating around our portal etc. that are simple to explain in person, but hard to do so in person.
This is for reasonably educated (Middle of bachelor's) kids.
How the fuck do you teach a 5-8 year old kid virtually? In a classroom, you can teach a kid to raise their hand for help, teach a table cluster of kids at once in small groups and they learn off each other. Now it's going to be trying to expand lectures to 5-8 year olds.
I've had success with one-on-one tutoring over Skype/ Zoom, even for elementary schoolers... instructional videos could work for some children as well, although in-person teaching and having the students collaborate in real life are way preferable.
On April 02 2020 17:58 Nouar wrote: A little tidbit about the USA : they bought "under the counter" directly at the plane a shipment of masks that was ordered and paid for, due to fly to France, paying 3 times the price and redirecting the plane towards the USA.
The info is coming directly from a (edit : two...) region president (more or less governor), complaining that while we have to pay shipments in 3 thirds, the US operatives are directly at the airport with cash, buying back shipments, depriving other countries. No comment.
Don't stop at the first mention of RT, what matters is what these governors answered, and they also told the same to 2 TV and radio stations, RMC and BFM TV. I'd still like some other kind of source, but you can't really get higher than these guys. The next level is the government and they are not the ones doing the buying for regions...
Jean Rottner, governor of the region grand est, has said on twitter that the masks he ordered have arrived in France.
So was it all a misunderstanding?
Well if it is a misunderstanding, that would be great. There is no doubt that these supplies are in high demand and the situation is pretty tough. France seized all masks produced inland, as did other countries, and thus seized masks that were built by a swedish company, bringing tensions between the governments for example. There are several examples of the same kind, some with Turkey as well.
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
China had a complete lock down for well over a month tho (going as far as locking people in their homes), the measures they took were more extreme than any other country.
We've tackled this issue multiple times in this thread already. As TT1 points out, it seems like North America and Europe were caught off guard because Asia (China, Singapore, South Korea etc.) took drastic measures very early so they were able to contain the virus and make it look like it wasn't a big threat. As a result, the response from rest of world has been far too slow as they underestimated the virus.
To the extent numbers are not accurate in countries, I'm sorry but this applies in EVERY country at the moment. Not sure how many people here will have access to Financial Times, but I link an article from today in any event: https://www.ft.com/content/44f4301e-b5f3-4434-a086-9a822ea72a71. There are articles like this covering many other countries in North America and Europe if you did any level of research.
"Sourced from death certificates, official figures for the period up to March 20 showed that 210 people died in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned by a doctor on the death certificate, compared with 170 recorded up to that date in hospitals, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 23.5 per cent gap between the two figures would increase “noticeably” in the days ahead, according to Nick Stripe, head of life events at the ONS, because with the current movement restrictions it would take longer than usual for people to notify register offices of deaths.
Only roughly half of the deaths on March 20 would have been notified to the statistics agency by five days later, for example, Mr Stripe said.
Mr Stripe stressed, however, that the discrepancy did not suggest any cover-up of deaths from coronavirus, but just that many people had died in the community rather than in hospital, where the daily government counts are taken."
In summary, yes all countries at the moment cannot be reporting accurately - there are more important things to be doing. If you somehow think China is covering this up any more than any other nation, that is just your personal bias. You are of course entitled to your opinion like everyone else, but it is just not a very informed opinion.
China's history of lying including on this exact pandemic, says otherwise. Along with all the articles about it, some I have already posted, they are not alone, they are in a group with a bunch of other countries purposely miss-reporting numbers. Which is different from the countries which simply cannot get enough tests done.
You my friend are the one with the bias.
On April 02 2020 09:16 stilt wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
It's crazy your rent against china doesn't get warning while it's obviously politically motivated. The source which implied that China lied with the 400 000 000 urns is Radio Free Asia directly funded by the american congress, what a joke, would not be the first time USA crafts international lies.
And China is a major power (which would surclass usa during this century hopefully) and a country with a culture way deeper than Disney, your ignorance and contempt for stuffs you don't understand is alarming.
Yes it is a super power, and yes it has deep culture. What is sad is that the current authoritarian government is robbing them of that culture, while actively destroying other parts of it it Uighar and Tibet. People who speak positively of the Chinese government are drinking some strong propaganda. They are all about enriching themselves at the cost of their own people. You don't need to colonize when you can just abuse your own people as free labour while you and your other despots get wildly rich.
And then since they have to keep the "honor" of China above the people they are misreporting data which in impeding the rest of the world from coming to the correct conclusion quickly.
Thank god that one doctor had the bravery to sacrifice himself for all of us, Dr. Li Wenliang is a true hero and it is disgusting that his government arrested him for " spreading rumors".
And it is embarrassing that even after shit like this people still defend this evil government that does not give two shits about its own people let alone everyone else. And if you are drinking the "China's socialist" koolaid I'm sorry but socialist countries are not run by a few billionaires, in fact if they were actually a socialist countries they would not have any. They are a Capitalism-run-muck dictatorship that the leadership was worried if word got out they might make less money.
Edit: in case that link isn't your flavour I'll add a bunch more.
If you think that China has a monopoly on a history of lying, then I can only say good luck to you and your world view.
We can both accuse each other of bias, but it boils down to:
- you think China is somehow worse than other countries (something which Western media tries very hard to push, except that Western media changes their target over the years (Koreans, Vietnamese, USSR, Middle East, now China)
- I happen to think that no government is particularly reliable. The world is driven by interests, and at the political level it is always going to be Machiavellian (particularly between the most powerful nations). To think that one country is "worse" than any other is naive.
You have linked a number of articles, but I invite you to go to Factcheck and you will see that the lies coming out of US politicians is hardly limited to "reporting lower numbers due to a lack of tests". I don't blame them for this, at least not any more than I blame any country/authority. The only thing I blame are people who are naive enough to believe one side or another.
User was warned for this post.
In the past I had generally respected the fact that despite being a website originally for video game news, this site generally had relatively neutral treatment of discussion. So it is quite disappointing to see that only one side of the discussion gets a warning.
There's actually a lot more information to share because I see there is very little on here about how and why Asia were very successful at controlling the virus. Western governments have behind the scenes done a lot more to speak with and understand how policies were implemented, unlike a lot of the media and public discussion.
From reactions from some people on this thread, I doubt my participation will be missed, but it's also a good reminder to myself to enjoy this site for what it is, which is first and foremost a website for video game competition news (at which it is very good).
The idea behind this thread is to avoid politics and focus on the virus itself. People stating their own experiences, what worked in a country etc... again without politics. Why people feel the need to keep bringing it back to China is beyond me since imo, we are not dealing with it properly at all in the west. Probably partially due to the media as well.
Anyways, in Canada, we've broken 9k+ and we are still rising. Pictures have shown people walking side by side in parks last week which got our PM mad. I'd rather we took China's approach of a full lockdown than what's going on now because it's going to keep spreading. There's a lot of people not considering others at times and it's terrible.
On that note, the US had the most deaths I've seen in a single day, 1k+ yesterday. If this continues for say, 2-3 months, that's easily 60-90k and that assumes it holds steady, but the question is how bad it'll get in 2 weeks time when more get infected and it keeps spreading. I can easily see millions dead...
I guess my issue here is that you're very pro lockdown, and say the west is handling it poorly. And then people end up getting warned who have different opinions from you.
I think the US is handling it better than any other country. The flu kills 250k to 500k people per year, while COVID is serious, the reaction is disproportionate. We move on with our lives while making easy changes to be more careful. Closing the country until a vaccine is no bueno in my books. When someone is 85 and they die, even if they are found to have COVID in their system, it's highly likely something else killed them.
If COVID ends up killing 3 million worldwide, that to me is a completely acceptable number for a shitty flu season, doesn't justify so many people not being able to make ends meet. When you do the analysis of overall benefit to people, I think the minor reaction results in much better results than such a big one.
Ok, let's quickly run a few numbers. The flu kills 250/500k *worldwide* per year. In France, there are approximately 2 to 6 million people who catch the flu each year. Out of these, around 10k die. Hospitals are not oversaturated and people can be treated.
Imagine if Covid gets the same amount of cases. Let's target the middle, with 4 million. 20% of those need to go to the hospital, 5% in ICU, 3% die. That would mean 800,000 people in the hospital in a few months, 200,000 in ICU (in France, we had around 6k ICU beds total). And 120,000 dead. Add to that the overloading of ICU beds, that's probably around another 100k dead. You already have more than 200k deaths *only in France*.
And the flu is seasonal. There is currently no proof that Covid is seasonal, which means it is not going to stop, until enough of the population has become immunised that is slows and stops spreading. It *seems* to spread a little bit slower in hotter countries, but that could be because their health systems are less developed and can't track it as well.
I'll take a commonly used target of 60% of the population before it stops spreading. If I take the same figures I took earlier, that brings us to 40M people, with AT LEAST 3% dead (not even accounting the ICU shortages, that would greatly increase the death toll as demonstrated by Italy these past few weeks.) That is >1M deathes, only for France.
I did this with a country well equiped in supplies and hospitals. There are 3 ICU beds in Central African Republic, for 4 million people. Do you want to guess a body count worldwide ? 3% of 7 billion people is 210million. Are you willing to bet 210million lives by taking only mild measures ?
I don't see how the US is handling it better though. 2 trillion debt taken (it's pretty much the only country that can do this kind of thing since dollar is the reference currency), 10M unemployed in 2 weeks, and still a larger increase in cases and deaths than all other countries, while it had more time to prepare. If you compare to Europe as a whole, the US is still rising higher, faster in cases and deaths.
Im not saying no response, just a more mild one. The flu has a minimal response from people, so I don't agree with those numbers exactly.
The coronavirus won't just disappear like you said, so at some point we need to return to normal. Right now we're just extending how long that will be, in addition to inconveniencing people more. I'm looking at it from a public economist perspective of for small probability deaths, you assign a value to a life, say 3 million given the age of the average death... And make sure your cost of containing it doesn't exceed the cost of the deaths. Right now the minor suffering of many exceeds the significant suffering of the few.
Per capita it's growing rather similar to most of Europe.
On April 03 2020 06:36 Firebolt145 wrote: I would give Brad money for that post. Thank you for summarising everything.
Admittedly, another significant benefit of the lock down is the decreased number of everything else. People are less likely to injure themselves without work, get into car accidents without driving, or cough meningitis onto everyone else. Every extra bed counts at this point.
Aye, solid post from auld Brad there. Welcome to TL
Speaking of lockdown vs not locking down, I’m not sure what things are like in everyone’s country, but what I’ve observed in the UK is people only started doing social distancing when we went up to the next level of lockdown.
Honestly it’s only the last week or so that people are really practicing it, people space out from me when I’m on my daily walk etc.
I think we could hypothetically revert the lockdown and people would largely stick to social distancing, but we needed the lockdown to get them to do so en masse, people weren’t voluntarily doing so until we upped the defcon level.
How has it been with everyone else’s places? Do my observations correlate with yours or have things been wildly different?
On April 03 2020 06:36 Firebolt145 wrote: I would give Brad money for that post. Thank you for summarising everything.
Admittedly, another significant benefit of the lock down is the decreased number of everything else. People are less likely to injure themselves without work, get into car accidents without driving, or cough meningitis onto everyone else. Every extra bed counts at this point.
Aye, solid post from auld Brad there. Welcome to TL
Speaking of lockdown vs not locking down, I’m not sure what things are like in everyone’s country, but what I’ve observed in the UK is people only started doing social distancing when we went up to the next level of lockdown.
Honestly it’s only the last week or so that people are really practicing it, people space out from me when I’m on my daily walk etc.
I think we could hypothetically revert the lockdown and people would largely stick to social distancing, but we needed the lockdown to get them to do so en masse, people weren’t voluntarily doing so until we upped the defcon level.
How has it been with everyone else’s places? Do my observations correlate with yours or have things been wildly different?
That's what I'm hoping too.
In Alberta it's been been progressively escalating, as government ups the seriousness level, people are less likely to shake hands, meet up, and in general be close around you. Hard to say what would happen if we loosen regulations, I think people would get a bit more complacent and not take it as seriously.
Someone explain to me please how Brad's post was good and not just a rehash of all the hateful crap other people have said about how tanking the economy is worse than letting a few million old people die? He's just more eloquent about it.
On April 03 2020 08:14 Acrofales wrote: Someone explain to me please how Brad's post was good and not just a rehash of all the hateful crap other people have said about how tanking the economy is worse than letting a few million old people die? He's just more eloquent about it.
I believe Firebolt was referring to his previous post
On April 03 2020 08:14 Acrofales wrote: Someone explain to me please how Brad's post was good and not just a rehash of all the hateful crap other people have said about how tanking the economy is worse than letting a few million old people die? He's just more eloquent about it.
EDIT: Oh I see where you're coming from now.
Given his earlier, detailed post in favour of restrictions, he's not really advocating for letting people die.
Imo the second post is a fairly accurate explanation of where the sentiment comes from. The boomer position on climate change is definitely a bit ironic right now.
On April 02 2020 17:58 Nouar wrote: A little tidbit about the USA : they bought "under the counter" directly at the plane a shipment of masks that was ordered and paid for, due to fly to France, paying 3 times the price and redirecting the plane towards the USA.
The info is coming directly from a (edit : two...) region president (more or less governor), complaining that while we have to pay shipments in 3 thirds, the US operatives are directly at the airport with cash, buying back shipments, depriving other countries. No comment.
Don't stop at the first mention of RT, what matters is what these governors answered, and they also told the same to 2 TV and radio stations, RMC and BFM TV. I'd still like some other kind of source, but you can't really get higher than these guys. The next level is the government and they are not the ones doing the buying for regions...
Jean Rottner, governor of the region grand est, has said on twitter that the masks he ordered have arrived in France.
Well if it is a misunderstanding, that would be great. There is no doubt that these supplies are in high demand and the situation is pretty tough. France seized all masks produced inland, as did other countries, and thus seized masks that were built by a swedish company, bringing tensions between the governments for example. There are several examples of the same kind, some with Turkey as well.
On April 03 2020 03:27 FiWiFaKi wrote:
On April 02 2020 14:30 BigFan wrote:
On April 02 2020 14:10 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 10:07 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 09:18 JimmiC wrote:
On April 02 2020 09:12 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 07:19 TT1 wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote: [quote]
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
China had a complete lock down for well over a month tho (going as far as locking people in their homes), the measures they took were more extreme than any other country.
We've tackled this issue multiple times in this thread already. As TT1 points out, it seems like North America and Europe were caught off guard because Asia (China, Singapore, South Korea etc.) took drastic measures very early so they were able to contain the virus and make it look like it wasn't a big threat. As a result, the response from rest of world has been far too slow as they underestimated the virus.
To the extent numbers are not accurate in countries, I'm sorry but this applies in EVERY country at the moment. Not sure how many people here will have access to Financial Times, but I link an article from today in any event: https://www.ft.com/content/44f4301e-b5f3-4434-a086-9a822ea72a71. There are articles like this covering many other countries in North America and Europe if you did any level of research.
"Sourced from death certificates, official figures for the period up to March 20 showed that 210 people died in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned by a doctor on the death certificate, compared with 170 recorded up to that date in hospitals, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 23.5 per cent gap between the two figures would increase “noticeably” in the days ahead, according to Nick Stripe, head of life events at the ONS, because with the current movement restrictions it would take longer than usual for people to notify register offices of deaths.
Only roughly half of the deaths on March 20 would have been notified to the statistics agency by five days later, for example, Mr Stripe said.
Mr Stripe stressed, however, that the discrepancy did not suggest any cover-up of deaths from coronavirus, but just that many people had died in the community rather than in hospital, where the daily government counts are taken."
In summary, yes all countries at the moment cannot be reporting accurately - there are more important things to be doing. If you somehow think China is covering this up any more than any other nation, that is just your personal bias. You are of course entitled to your opinion like everyone else, but it is just not a very informed opinion.
China's history of lying including on this exact pandemic, says otherwise. Along with all the articles about it, some I have already posted, they are not alone, they are in a group with a bunch of other countries purposely miss-reporting numbers. Which is different from the countries which simply cannot get enough tests done.
You my friend are the one with the bias.
On April 02 2020 09:16 stilt wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
It's crazy your rent against china doesn't get warning while it's obviously politically motivated. The source which implied that China lied with the 400 000 000 urns is Radio Free Asia directly funded by the american congress, what a joke, would not be the first time USA crafts international lies.
And China is a major power (which would surclass usa during this century hopefully) and a country with a culture way deeper than Disney, your ignorance and contempt for stuffs you don't understand is alarming.
Yes it is a super power, and yes it has deep culture. What is sad is that the current authoritarian government is robbing them of that culture, while actively destroying other parts of it it Uighar and Tibet. People who speak positively of the Chinese government are drinking some strong propaganda. They are all about enriching themselves at the cost of their own people. You don't need to colonize when you can just abuse your own people as free labour while you and your other despots get wildly rich.
And then since they have to keep the "honor" of China above the people they are misreporting data which in impeding the rest of the world from coming to the correct conclusion quickly.
Thank god that one doctor had the bravery to sacrifice himself for all of us, Dr. Li Wenliang is a true hero and it is disgusting that his government arrested him for " spreading rumors".
And it is embarrassing that even after shit like this people still defend this evil government that does not give two shits about its own people let alone everyone else. And if you are drinking the "China's socialist" koolaid I'm sorry but socialist countries are not run by a few billionaires, in fact if they were actually a socialist countries they would not have any. They are a Capitalism-run-muck dictatorship that the leadership was worried if word got out they might make less money.
Edit: in case that link isn't your flavour I'll add a bunch more.
If you think that China has a monopoly on a history of lying, then I can only say good luck to you and your world view.
We can both accuse each other of bias, but it boils down to:
- you think China is somehow worse than other countries (something which Western media tries very hard to push, except that Western media changes their target over the years (Koreans, Vietnamese, USSR, Middle East, now China)
- I happen to think that no government is particularly reliable. The world is driven by interests, and at the political level it is always going to be Machiavellian (particularly between the most powerful nations). To think that one country is "worse" than any other is naive.
You have linked a number of articles, but I invite you to go to Factcheck and you will see that the lies coming out of US politicians is hardly limited to "reporting lower numbers due to a lack of tests". I don't blame them for this, at least not any more than I blame any country/authority. The only thing I blame are people who are naive enough to believe one side or another.
User was warned for this post.
In the past I had generally respected the fact that despite being a website originally for video game news, this site generally had relatively neutral treatment of discussion. So it is quite disappointing to see that only one side of the discussion gets a warning.
There's actually a lot more information to share because I see there is very little on here about how and why Asia were very successful at controlling the virus. Western governments have behind the scenes done a lot more to speak with and understand how policies were implemented, unlike a lot of the media and public discussion.
From reactions from some people on this thread, I doubt my participation will be missed, but it's also a good reminder to myself to enjoy this site for what it is, which is first and foremost a website for video game competition news (at which it is very good).
The idea behind this thread is to avoid politics and focus on the virus itself. People stating their own experiences, what worked in a country etc... again without politics. Why people feel the need to keep bringing it back to China is beyond me since imo, we are not dealing with it properly at all in the west. Probably partially due to the media as well.
Anyways, in Canada, we've broken 9k+ and we are still rising. Pictures have shown people walking side by side in parks last week which got our PM mad. I'd rather we took China's approach of a full lockdown than what's going on now because it's going to keep spreading. There's a lot of people not considering others at times and it's terrible.
On that note, the US had the most deaths I've seen in a single day, 1k+ yesterday. If this continues for say, 2-3 months, that's easily 60-90k and that assumes it holds steady, but the question is how bad it'll get in 2 weeks time when more get infected and it keeps spreading. I can easily see millions dead...
I guess my issue here is that you're very pro lockdown, and say the west is handling it poorly. And then people end up getting warned who have different opinions from you.
I think the US is handling it better than any other country. The flu kills 250k to 500k people per year, while COVID is serious, the reaction is disproportionate. We move on with our lives while making easy changes to be more careful. Closing the country until a vaccine is no bueno in my books. When someone is 85 and they die, even if they are found to have COVID in their system, it's highly likely something else killed them.
If COVID ends up killing 3 million worldwide, that to me is a completely acceptable number for a shitty flu season, doesn't justify so many people not being able to make ends meet. When you do the analysis of overall benefit to people, I think the minor reaction results in much better results than such a big one.
Ok, let's quickly run a few numbers. The flu kills 250/500k *worldwide* per year. In France, there are approximately 2 to 6 million people who catch the flu each year. Out of these, around 10k die. Hospitals are not oversaturated and people can be treated.
Imagine if Covid gets the same amount of cases. Let's target the middle, with 4 million. 20% of those need to go to the hospital, 5% in ICU, 3% die. That would mean 800,000 people in the hospital in a few months, 200,000 in ICU (in France, we had around 6k ICU beds total). And 120,000 dead. Add to that the overloading of ICU beds, that's probably around another 100k dead. You already have more than 200k deaths *only in France*.
And the flu is seasonal. There is currently no proof that Covid is seasonal, which means it is not going to stop, until enough of the population has become immunised that is slows and stops spreading. It *seems* to spread a little bit slower in hotter countries, but that could be because their health systems are less developed and can't track it as well.
I'll take a commonly used target of 60% of the population before it stops spreading. If I take the same figures I took earlier, that brings us to 40M people, with AT LEAST 3% dead (not even accounting the ICU shortages, that would greatly increase the death toll as demonstrated by Italy these past few weeks.) That is >1M deathes, only for France.
I did this with a country well equiped in supplies and hospitals. There are 3 ICU beds in Central African Republic, for 4 million people. Do you want to guess a body count worldwide ? 3% of 7 billion people is 210million. Are you willing to bet 210million lives by taking only mild measures ?
I don't see how the US is handling it better though. 2 trillion debt taken (it's pretty much the only country that can do this kind of thing since dollar is the reference currency), 10M unemployed in 2 weeks, and still a larger increase in cases and deaths than all other countries, while it had more time to prepare. If you compare to Europe as a whole, the US is still rising higher, faster in cases and deaths.
Im not saying no response, just a more mild one. The flu has a minimal response from people, so I don't agree with those numbers exactly.
The coronavirus won't just disappear like you said, so at some point we need to return to normal. Right now we're just extending how long that will be, in addition to inconveniencing people more. I'm looking at it from a public economist perspective of for small probability deaths, you assign a value to a life, say 3 million given the age of the average death... And make sure your cost of containing it doesn't exceed the cost of the deaths. Right now the minor suffering of many exceeds the significant suffering of the few.
Per capita it's growing rather similar to most of Europe.
I think what your fight club calculation is missing (besides compassion) is that there will come a point when there are too many corpses and the people will revolt. I think the UK noticed this and Sweden will in about a week.
I am surprised we are 100 pages in and still getting flu comparisons. I do think it's worth weighing the economic ramifications of the lockdowns vs the potential loss of life. A lot of hospitals right now are actually operating below census, mine included. The Bay Area was one of the first areas in the entire country to start getting positive cases and we've had positive cruise ship passengers disembark into our hospitals. My asshole has been puckered for a whole month waiting for the descent into chaos and it still hasn't come. It would seem that the shelter-in-place orders have been super effective which begs the question are they too effective? Are we accomplishing anything here or are we just kicking the can down the road? What's the end game? Waiting for a vaccine? Hoping the warmer weather helps take it out? Developing herd immunity? If nobody is getting it now and developing antibodies then as a community we would be just as vulnerable in a few months than we are now. We're not flattening the curve, we're just kicking the curve down the road. Are we shutting down the economy and accomplishing nothing?
I'm pro-lockdown but the danger of social shutdown is real. As deadly as COVID-19 is, at one point the lockdown might kill more people than the virus itself; this is a real concern and not just some nonsensical wild idea.
The lockdown worked out for China, which was great, but I'm not sure how well it will work out in the US where the situation is already worse. Not that there's another choice, but...
On April 02 2020 17:58 Nouar wrote: A little tidbit about the USA : they bought "under the counter" directly at the plane a shipment of masks that was ordered and paid for, due to fly to France, paying 3 times the price and redirecting the plane towards the USA.
The info is coming directly from a (edit : two...) region president (more or less governor), complaining that while we have to pay shipments in 3 thirds, the US operatives are directly at the airport with cash, buying back shipments, depriving other countries. No comment.
Don't stop at the first mention of RT, what matters is what these governors answered, and they also told the same to 2 TV and radio stations, RMC and BFM TV. I'd still like some other kind of source, but you can't really get higher than these guys. The next level is the government and they are not the ones doing the buying for regions...
Jean Rottner, governor of the region grand est, has said on twitter that the masks he ordered have arrived in France.
Well if it is a misunderstanding, that would be great. There is no doubt that these supplies are in high demand and the situation is pretty tough. France seized all masks produced inland, as did other countries, and thus seized masks that were built by a swedish company, bringing tensions between the governments for example. There are several examples of the same kind, some with Turkey as well.
On April 03 2020 03:27 FiWiFaKi wrote:
On April 02 2020 14:30 BigFan wrote:
On April 02 2020 14:10 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 10:07 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 09:18 JimmiC wrote:
On April 02 2020 09:12 Sharkies wrote:
On April 02 2020 07:19 TT1 wrote: [quote]
China had a complete lock down for well over a month tho (going as far as locking people in their homes), the measures they took were more extreme than any other country.
We've tackled this issue multiple times in this thread already. As TT1 points out, it seems like North America and Europe were caught off guard because Asia (China, Singapore, South Korea etc.) took drastic measures very early so they were able to contain the virus and make it look like it wasn't a big threat. As a result, the response from rest of world has been far too slow as they underestimated the virus.
To the extent numbers are not accurate in countries, I'm sorry but this applies in EVERY country at the moment. Not sure how many people here will have access to Financial Times, but I link an article from today in any event: https://www.ft.com/content/44f4301e-b5f3-4434-a086-9a822ea72a71. There are articles like this covering many other countries in North America and Europe if you did any level of research.
"Sourced from death certificates, official figures for the period up to March 20 showed that 210 people died in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned by a doctor on the death certificate, compared with 170 recorded up to that date in hospitals, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 23.5 per cent gap between the two figures would increase “noticeably” in the days ahead, according to Nick Stripe, head of life events at the ONS, because with the current movement restrictions it would take longer than usual for people to notify register offices of deaths.
Only roughly half of the deaths on March 20 would have been notified to the statistics agency by five days later, for example, Mr Stripe said.
Mr Stripe stressed, however, that the discrepancy did not suggest any cover-up of deaths from coronavirus, but just that many people had died in the community rather than in hospital, where the daily government counts are taken."
In summary, yes all countries at the moment cannot be reporting accurately - there are more important things to be doing. If you somehow think China is covering this up any more than any other nation, that is just your personal bias. You are of course entitled to your opinion like everyone else, but it is just not a very informed opinion.
China's history of lying including on this exact pandemic, says otherwise. Along with all the articles about it, some I have already posted, they are not alone, they are in a group with a bunch of other countries purposely miss-reporting numbers. Which is different from the countries which simply cannot get enough tests done.
You my friend are the one with the bias.
On April 02 2020 09:16 stilt wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote: [quote]
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
It's crazy your rent against china doesn't get warning while it's obviously politically motivated. The source which implied that China lied with the 400 000 000 urns is Radio Free Asia directly funded by the american congress, what a joke, would not be the first time USA crafts international lies.
And China is a major power (which would surclass usa during this century hopefully) and a country with a culture way deeper than Disney, your ignorance and contempt for stuffs you don't understand is alarming.
Yes it is a super power, and yes it has deep culture. What is sad is that the current authoritarian government is robbing them of that culture, while actively destroying other parts of it it Uighar and Tibet. People who speak positively of the Chinese government are drinking some strong propaganda. They are all about enriching themselves at the cost of their own people. You don't need to colonize when you can just abuse your own people as free labour while you and your other despots get wildly rich.
And then since they have to keep the "honor" of China above the people they are misreporting data which in impeding the rest of the world from coming to the correct conclusion quickly.
Thank god that one doctor had the bravery to sacrifice himself for all of us, Dr. Li Wenliang is a true hero and it is disgusting that his government arrested him for " spreading rumors".
And it is embarrassing that even after shit like this people still defend this evil government that does not give two shits about its own people let alone everyone else. And if you are drinking the "China's socialist" koolaid I'm sorry but socialist countries are not run by a few billionaires, in fact if they were actually a socialist countries they would not have any. They are a Capitalism-run-muck dictatorship that the leadership was worried if word got out they might make less money.
Edit: in case that link isn't your flavour I'll add a bunch more.
If you think that China has a monopoly on a history of lying, then I can only say good luck to you and your world view.
We can both accuse each other of bias, but it boils down to:
- you think China is somehow worse than other countries (something which Western media tries very hard to push, except that Western media changes their target over the years (Koreans, Vietnamese, USSR, Middle East, now China)
- I happen to think that no government is particularly reliable. The world is driven by interests, and at the political level it is always going to be Machiavellian (particularly between the most powerful nations). To think that one country is "worse" than any other is naive.
You have linked a number of articles, but I invite you to go to Factcheck and you will see that the lies coming out of US politicians is hardly limited to "reporting lower numbers due to a lack of tests". I don't blame them for this, at least not any more than I blame any country/authority. The only thing I blame are people who are naive enough to believe one side or another.
User was warned for this post.
In the past I had generally respected the fact that despite being a website originally for video game news, this site generally had relatively neutral treatment of discussion. So it is quite disappointing to see that only one side of the discussion gets a warning.
There's actually a lot more information to share because I see there is very little on here about how and why Asia were very successful at controlling the virus. Western governments have behind the scenes done a lot more to speak with and understand how policies were implemented, unlike a lot of the media and public discussion.
From reactions from some people on this thread, I doubt my participation will be missed, but it's also a good reminder to myself to enjoy this site for what it is, which is first and foremost a website for video game competition news (at which it is very good).
The idea behind this thread is to avoid politics and focus on the virus itself. People stating their own experiences, what worked in a country etc... again without politics. Why people feel the need to keep bringing it back to China is beyond me since imo, we are not dealing with it properly at all in the west. Probably partially due to the media as well.
Anyways, in Canada, we've broken 9k+ and we are still rising. Pictures have shown people walking side by side in parks last week which got our PM mad. I'd rather we took China's approach of a full lockdown than what's going on now because it's going to keep spreading. There's a lot of people not considering others at times and it's terrible.
On that note, the US had the most deaths I've seen in a single day, 1k+ yesterday. If this continues for say, 2-3 months, that's easily 60-90k and that assumes it holds steady, but the question is how bad it'll get in 2 weeks time when more get infected and it keeps spreading. I can easily see millions dead...
I guess my issue here is that you're very pro lockdown, and say the west is handling it poorly. And then people end up getting warned who have different opinions from you.
I think the US is handling it better than any other country. The flu kills 250k to 500k people per year, while COVID is serious, the reaction is disproportionate. We move on with our lives while making easy changes to be more careful. Closing the country until a vaccine is no bueno in my books. When someone is 85 and they die, even if they are found to have COVID in their system, it's highly likely something else killed them.
If COVID ends up killing 3 million worldwide, that to me is a completely acceptable number for a shitty flu season, doesn't justify so many people not being able to make ends meet. When you do the analysis of overall benefit to people, I think the minor reaction results in much better results than such a big one.
Ok, let's quickly run a few numbers. The flu kills 250/500k *worldwide* per year. In France, there are approximately 2 to 6 million people who catch the flu each year. Out of these, around 10k die. Hospitals are not oversaturated and people can be treated.
Imagine if Covid gets the same amount of cases. Let's target the middle, with 4 million. 20% of those need to go to the hospital, 5% in ICU, 3% die. That would mean 800,000 people in the hospital in a few months, 200,000 in ICU (in France, we had around 6k ICU beds total). And 120,000 dead. Add to that the overloading of ICU beds, that's probably around another 100k dead. You already have more than 200k deaths *only in France*.
And the flu is seasonal. There is currently no proof that Covid is seasonal, which means it is not going to stop, until enough of the population has become immunised that is slows and stops spreading. It *seems* to spread a little bit slower in hotter countries, but that could be because their health systems are less developed and can't track it as well.
I'll take a commonly used target of 60% of the population before it stops spreading. If I take the same figures I took earlier, that brings us to 40M people, with AT LEAST 3% dead (not even accounting the ICU shortages, that would greatly increase the death toll as demonstrated by Italy these past few weeks.) That is >1M deathes, only for France.
I did this with a country well equiped in supplies and hospitals. There are 3 ICU beds in Central African Republic, for 4 million people. Do you want to guess a body count worldwide ? 3% of 7 billion people is 210million. Are you willing to bet 210million lives by taking only mild measures ?
I don't see how the US is handling it better though. 2 trillion debt taken (it's pretty much the only country that can do this kind of thing since dollar is the reference currency), 10M unemployed in 2 weeks, and still a larger increase in cases and deaths than all other countries, while it had more time to prepare. If you compare to Europe as a whole, the US is still rising higher, faster in cases and deaths.
Im not saying no response, just a more mild one. The flu has a minimal response from people, so I don't agree with those numbers exactly.
The coronavirus won't just disappear like you said, so at some point we need to return to normal. Right now we're just extending how long that will be, in addition to inconveniencing people more. I'm looking at it from a public economist perspective of for small probability deaths, you assign a value to a life, say 3 million given the age of the average death... And make sure your cost of containing it doesn't exceed the cost of the deaths. Right now the minor suffering of many exceeds the significant suffering of the few.
Per capita it's growing rather similar to most of Europe.
I think what your fight club calculation is missing (besides compassion) is that there will come a point when there are too many corpses and the people will revolt. I think the UK noticed this and Sweden will in about a week.
The sad thing is that a lockdown will probably lead to revolts much faster than any amount of corpses.
Speaking from my experience in China, most people were very supportive of the lockdown when it begun. By the time the lockdown was lifted in most parts of the country (which was about a full month later), people were already getting restless. Not sure how you can enforce a 3- or even 4-month lockdown in the US, where everyone has a gun and are generally less obedient.
On April 03 2020 11:24 BlackJack wrote: I am surprised we are 100 pages in and still getting flu comparisons. I do think it's worth weighing the economic ramifications of the lockdowns vs the potential loss of life. A lot of hospitals right now are actually operating below census, mine included. The Bay Area was one of the first areas in the entire country to start getting positive cases and we've had positive cruise ship passengers disembark into our hospitals. My asshole has been puckered for a whole month waiting for the descent into chaos and it still hasn't come. It would seem that the shelter-in-place orders have been super effective which begs the question are they too effective? Are we accomplishing anything here or are we just kicking the can down the road? What's the end game? Waiting for a vaccine? Hoping the warmer weather helps take it out? Developing herd immunity? If nobody is getting it now and developing antibodies then as a community we would be just as vulnerable in a few months than we are now. We're not flattening the curve, we're just kicking the curve down the road. Are we shutting down the economy and accomplishing nothing?
I think these are all very legit questions and we can only look at history to see how things fared regarding something like the 1918 flu. From my limited knowledge, a lot of places managed to flatten the curve but it came back stronger in the winter and millions died. I'll have to read more, but from my perspective, doing a full on lockdown from the start like China did would've saved us from this (quite likely) continuous shutdown because what's happening now is that we get several weeks of things shut down or closed then what? they keep adding another 1-2 week etc... indefinitely.
At what point do we consider that we "won" and things try to return back to as normal as possible? Presumably until a vaccine is out and it makes me wonder just how much collaboration is going on for that because I'm pretty sure with how much research there is going into this, it can be finished sooner than usual. I'm personally just as concerned for what happens after, in the winter months, compared to what is happening now because I've got a bad feeling about the whole thing in general, but that could just be me.
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
China had a complete lock down for well over a month tho (going as far as locking people in their homes), the measures they took were more extreme than any other country.
We've tackled this issue multiple times in this thread already. As TT1 points out, it seems like North America and Europe were caught off guard because Asia (China, Singapore, South Korea etc.) took drastic measures very early so they were able to contain the virus and make it look like it wasn't a big threat. As a result, the response from rest of world has been far too slow as they underestimated the virus.
To the extent numbers are not accurate in countries, I'm sorry but this applies in EVERY country at the moment. Not sure how many people here will have access to Financial Times, but I link an article from today in any event: https://www.ft.com/content/44f4301e-b5f3-4434-a086-9a822ea72a71. There are articles like this covering many other countries in North America and Europe if you did any level of research.
"Sourced from death certificates, official figures for the period up to March 20 showed that 210 people died in England and Wales with Covid-19 mentioned by a doctor on the death certificate, compared with 170 recorded up to that date in hospitals, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 23.5 per cent gap between the two figures would increase “noticeably” in the days ahead, according to Nick Stripe, head of life events at the ONS, because with the current movement restrictions it would take longer than usual for people to notify register offices of deaths.
Only roughly half of the deaths on March 20 would have been notified to the statistics agency by five days later, for example, Mr Stripe said.
Mr Stripe stressed, however, that the discrepancy did not suggest any cover-up of deaths from coronavirus, but just that many people had died in the community rather than in hospital, where the daily government counts are taken."
In summary, yes all countries at the moment cannot be reporting accurately - there are more important things to be doing. If you somehow think China is covering this up any more than any other nation, that is just your personal bias. You are of course entitled to your opinion like everyone else, but it is just not a very informed opinion.
China's history of lying including on this exact pandemic, says otherwise. Along with all the articles about it, some I have already posted, they are not alone, they are in a group with a bunch of other countries purposely miss-reporting numbers. Which is different from the countries which simply cannot get enough tests done.
You my friend are the one with the bias.
On April 02 2020 09:16 stilt wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:48 Mohdoo wrote:
On April 02 2020 06:42 Emnjay808 wrote: What are the main reasons for countries to hide numbers?
-poor data collection? -mislead other nations for w/e reason
I sincerely hope it’s the former
For China it is that they, desperately, more than anything, want to appear as though they are a legitimate world power rather than just a country with an insane amount of people.
It's crazy your rent against china doesn't get warning while it's obviously politically motivated. The source which implied that China lied with the 400 000 000 urns is Radio Free Asia directly funded by the american congress, what a joke, would not be the first time USA crafts international lies.
And China is a major power (which would surclass usa during this century hopefully) and a country with a culture way deeper than Disney, your ignorance and contempt for stuffs you don't understand is alarming.
Yes it is a super power, and yes it has deep culture. What is sad is that the current authoritarian government is robbing them of that culture, while actively destroying other parts of it it Uighar and Tibet. People who speak positively of the Chinese government are drinking some strong propaganda. They are all about enriching themselves at the cost of their own people. You don't need to colonize when you can just abuse your own people as free labour while you and your other despots get wildly rich.
And then since they have to keep the "honor" of China above the people they are misreporting data which in impeding the rest of the world from coming to the correct conclusion quickly.
Thank god that one doctor had the bravery to sacrifice himself for all of us, Dr. Li Wenliang is a true hero and it is disgusting that his government arrested him for " spreading rumors".
And it is embarrassing that even after shit like this people still defend this evil government that does not give two shits about its own people let alone everyone else. And if you are drinking the "China's socialist" koolaid I'm sorry but socialist countries are not run by a few billionaires, in fact if they were actually a socialist countries they would not have any. They are a Capitalism-run-muck dictatorship that the leadership was worried if word got out they might make less money.
Edit: in case that link isn't your flavour I'll add a bunch more.
If you think that China has a monopoly on a history of lying, then I can only say good luck to you and your world view.
We can both accuse each other of bias, but it boils down to:
- you think China is somehow worse than other countries (something which Western media tries very hard to push, except that Western media changes their target over the years (Koreans, Vietnamese, USSR, Middle East, now China)
- I happen to think that no government is particularly reliable. The world is driven by interests, and at the political level it is always going to be Machiavellian (particularly between the most powerful nations). To think that one country is "worse" than any other is naive.
You have linked a number of articles, but I invite you to go to Factcheck and you will see that the lies coming out of US politicians is hardly limited to "reporting lower numbers due to a lack of tests". I don't blame them for this, at least not any more than I blame any country/authority. The only thing I blame are people who are naive enough to believe one side or another.
User was warned for this post.
In the past I had generally respected the fact that despite being a website originally for video game news, this site generally had relatively neutral treatment of discussion. So it is quite disappointing to see that only one side of the discussion gets a warning.
There's actually a lot more information to share because I see there is very little on here about how and why Asia were very successful at controlling the virus. Western governments have behind the scenes done a lot more to speak with and understand how policies were implemented, unlike a lot of the media and public discussion.
From reactions from some people on this thread, I doubt my participation will be missed, but it's also a good reminder to myself to enjoy this site for what it is, which is first and foremost a website for video game competition news (at which it is very good).
The idea behind this thread is to avoid politics and focus on the virus itself. People stating their own experiences, what worked in a country etc... again without politics. Why people feel the need to keep bringing it back to China is beyond me since imo, we are not dealing with it properly at all in the west. Probably partially due to the media as well.
Anyways, in Canada, we've broken 9k+ and we are still rising. Pictures have shown people walking side by side in parks last week which got our PM mad. I'd rather we took China's approach of a full lockdown than what's going on now because it's going to keep spreading. There's a lot of people not considering others at times and it's terrible.
On that note, the US had the most deaths I've seen in a single day, 1k+ yesterday. If this continues for say, 2-3 months, that's easily 60-90k and that assumes it holds steady, but the question is how bad it'll get in 2 weeks time when more get infected and it keeps spreading. I can easily see millions dead...
I guess my issue here is that you're very pro lockdown, and say the west is handling it poorly. And then people end up getting warned who have different opinions from you.
I think the US is handling it better than any other country. The flu kills 250k to 500k people per year, while COVID is serious, the reaction is disproportionate. We move on with our lives while making easy changes to be more careful. Closing the country until a vaccine is no bueno in my books. When someone is 85 and they die, even if they are found to have COVID in their system, it's highly likely something else killed them.
If COVID ends up killing 3 million worldwide, that to me is a completely acceptable number for a shitty flu season, doesn't justify so many people not being able to make ends meet. When you do the analysis of overall benefit to people, I think the minor reaction results in much better results than such a big one.
I won't touch on the rest because several have already commented on how your flu comparison is not right in this case. As to the lockdown, yes, I'm pro-lockdown. It's better to bear 3-4 weeks of full lockdown than have them slowly lockdown the country over months. People are already starting to get restless and it's only been ~3 weeks in my province. Keep in mind that I'm referring to Canada specifically and not the US because as it stands, we are supposed to practice social distancing and personal hygiene which I agree with. But I've also had folks tell me that they are even starting to slowly limit amount of people in a household or how many people can even be in a car from what I hear. I don't know if that's true or only in certain places, but that's way too extreme if it's true and not some rumour.
I live in the west so yes, I feel like the west overall is handling it poorly. This is not a political statement unless you feel it is because I used the term west rofl. So let's rephrase, I feel like Canada, US and lots of EU countries handled it poorly so far which is why the number of infections and deaths are spiking. Italy's numbers are slightly down but they are still averaging like 700-800 deaths a day. Spain is very close behind in terms of overall infections and had more deaths yesterday than Italy. The US had a thousand the other day and close to a thousand yesterday. The UK and France seem to be following a similar curve because their deaths are going up, getting what, 400-500 or so or at least close. We have been lucky to avoid those high death counts so far in Canada, but if it starts hitting long term care homes and it has hit some already, there's going to be a lot of dead people. Likewise, we are still in an exponential curve and this next week will give an idea whether some of the measures taken have helped or not.
This post is just going to be a collection of various things I've read and seen over the past couple of days.
The US is up to 10 million lost jobs in the past two weeks based off pure unemployment numbers alone (meaning that the real number could be 15-20 million or more)
Fivethirtyeight has done some great articles on coronavirus, the economy, and statistical modeling recently.
On how much they suspect we'd be willing to pay (the number they come up with is 20 trillion - based on reducing a possible 2 million deaths).
Economists might not be able to say how much an individual person’s existence is worth, but they have figured out a way to calculate how much the average person is willing to pay to reduce the risk of death — which allows them to put a price tag on the collective value of saving one life. That figure, which currently hovers somewhere around $9 or $10 million, is known as the “value of statistical life,” and it’s the basis for all kinds of high-stakes decisions that involve tradeoffs between public safety and economic cost — from food and automobile regulations to our responses to climate change.
As cold-blooded as it might seem, several economists told me that, at least in theory, a pandemic is exactly the kind of situation this metric is designed to help with. “Essentially, we’re trying to figure out what our society is willing to pay to reduce the risk of mortality,” said W. Kip Viscusi, an economist at Vanderbilt University and one of the leading experts on these calculations. “In that sense, a pandemic isn’t so different from a terrorist attack or a pollutant that’s threatening to kill large numbers of people — it’s just happening very quickly and on a very large scale.”
Summary regarding death predictions and their wild range:
Basically, there's a huge degree of uncertainty.
In the dumbass corner :
Tucker Carlson earlier tonight was ranting about how terrible an idea it is to follow the advice of health professionals with regards to economic decisions because of the unemployment numbers. He's been one of the better voices on Fox News about COVID-19 until this, so it's a weird turn for him.
This matters because Carlson was supposedly one of the people who brought it to Trump's attention. He's also been credited as the person who told Trump that war with Iran over a downed, unmanned drone would be a terrible idea.
"Our leaders still seem far more afraid of a virus that probably kills fewer than 1% of those infected than the prospect of a third of all Americans losing their jobs."
(highly biased source, only linked for the video clip).
Note : This stance is incorrect. Not making those decisions early will result in a LARGER economic loss, in addition to a larger loss of life. The longer social distancing is delayed, the more stringent the restrictions will be for it to be effective.
For those who are doubtful: we'll be able to see social distancing's effect in real time in the next week, as some states have been very fast moving (like Ohio), while others only really decided it mattered a day or two ago (Florida and Georgia).
I've read suggestions that we may have to do it in waves. A 3-4 week letup, then going back into for the next month. That's the BEST case scenario. Too many people just aren't taking this seriously enough.