[pezo1919]

Sorry for not being upbeat!

I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it. Why do we have to wait until every city gets infected? Why we can't stop travelling? Eventually, when it spreads to a city, the quarantine must be the only way... but why we aren't preventing that ourselves? The politicians does not really seem to care (in the bunkers)? Individual, consumer society with no interest and without resources, civil routine and real impact to the events is crazy to me. Even a couple of days ago WHO was thinking about restarting the flights to China. It's just WTF to me.

In last days I can't even read any tech/HN news because it's not news to me compared to this unsolved terrible situation. I don't even understand how this topic is not more visible here in HN and on other places. We need to do something.

[_-___________-_]

I think it's pretty clear that many people do care about it very much. Imposing travel restrictions, cancelling flights to major trading partners, etc, has a very significant cost and isn't taken lightly. I've heard many people say things along the lines of "it's just the economy, our health is more important" lately, but peoples' livelihoods literally depend on the economy.

Say for example that your family operates a tiny tourism-related business in South East Asia. A prolonged shutdown of travel between China and your country could literally drive you into poverty, given how dependent some countries in the region have become on inbound tourism from China. Given your extremely remote chances of catching the virus, the risk of losing your entire family income is a much more significant risk to your health.

Because of this, it's important to be balanced in thought and decisions, and not just panic because of what could happen. Where there is evidence to support restrictions, keep them in place. Where there is not, remove them.

Outside of China this issue still remains far less serious than many other health-related risks. The "we need to do something" (anything!) mindset is actively harmful.

[pezo1919]

Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions.

Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks. The question is: do we want to solve the problem now, or we want to postpone the solution for later. There won't be "deus ex machina" which just makes it disappear. Many people will die if we're going to ignore the existing facts and make fun of the situation with these stupid heat scans checks which do prevent nothing on the long term based on existing experiences.

What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".

[_-___________-_]

> Even with the existing restrictions the virus spreads. Spread leads to quarantine as we've seen in many chinese cases. I don't see why should we hope for the better with less restrictions.

If we can identify which restrictions are helping, and which are not, then we can remove the ones that are not. The point of my comment above is that the restrictions come with their own costs, in some cases severe.

> Not being a huge problem outside of China is a fact for NOW. Does not mean it won't happen in weeks.

It doesn't mean it will, either. We should be approaching this in a rational, evidence-based way, not just waving our hands and saying "many people will die" with no evidence.

> What I see is because noone wants panic it prevents us calling the right moves. Because its "panicky".

If you believe you have a better idea what the "right moves" are than experts who have spent their careers studying these events and preparing for them, then by all means step up. But you should expect to be asked for evidence for your claims. Panic is a significant cost on its own.

[ryanwaggoner]

If you believe you have a better idea what the "right moves" are than experts who have spent their careers studying these events and preparing for them, then by all means step up. But you should expect to be asked for evidence for your claims. Panic is a significant cost on its own.

I think this is unfair on two fronts.

First, labeling it as “panic” is just dismissive. What constitutes panic vs. what is responding rapidly and vigorously to a critical emergency is in the eye of the beholder.

Secondly, it’s possible to trust the experts and also think that the proper measures are not being taken. The experts are the epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, public health officials, etc. who are working on this outbreak, and they seem pretty damn concerned. I’ve read very few statements that suggest this is likely to blow over, and many more that show a widespread opinion among the experts that containment is unlikely and that this is very serious. But the experts don’t run the world, politicians and bureaucrats and business leaders do. And they have different interests and incentives. There are also likely discussions behind the scenes that we don’t know about. The WHO could be urging countries to shut down all air travel but leaders are reluctant to do so for fear of the political backlash.

All you have to do is look at how China treated the doctors who reported on this back in December to see how “trust the people in charge” is not the same as “trust the experts”. If China had clamped down on this six weeks earlier than they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

[_-___________-_]

> First, labeling it as “panic” is just dismissive. What constitutes panic vs. what is responding rapidly and vigorously to a critical emergency is in the eye of the beholder.

It can be both. The actions of individual citizens in Singapore, HK and other countries with a small number of cases certainly seem to be panic: buying more instant noodles than they could eat in a year, buying every toilet paper roll available, buying so many face masks that rations are introduced, and so on. Some government actions also appear to be going beyond what is necessary to respond; for example banning travel from country A to country B, when country A has fewer cases than country B itself.

> Secondly, it’s possible to trust the experts and also think that the proper measures are not being taken. The experts are the epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, public health officials, etc. who are working on this outbreak, and they seem pretty damn concerned. I’ve read very few statements that suggest this is likely to blow over, and many more that show a widespread opinion among the experts that containment is unlikely and that this is very serious. But the experts don’t run the world, politicians and bureaucrats and business leaders do. And they have different interests and incentives. There are also likely discussions behind the scenes that we don’t know about. The WHO could be urging countries to shut down all air travel but leaders are reluctant to do so for fear of the political backlash.

The WHO, in fact, has mostly suggested a more measured approach to air travel restrictions than what many governments have decided to take. Most of the expert opinions I've read have presented a number of different paths this could take, and suggested a lot of uncertainty as to the likelihood of each. This is sensible. Meanwhile, most of the forum posts and comments that I've read have strongly emphasised the worst possible cases, and continued to do so as the worst path that previously could have happened (which they were implying was a virtual certainty), didn't.

> All you have to do is look at how China treated the doctors who reported on this back in December to see how “trust the people in charge” is not the same as “trust the experts”.

I'd be the last person to suggest trusting China's leadership, but neither am I inclined to assume that the measures taken by other governments in response to this are entirely based on expert advice or even entirely for health-related reasons.

> If China had clamped down on this six weeks earlier than they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Maybe.

[pezo1919]

"Evidence-based way"

At this point I am not sure what is evidence for you. Do you need a mathematical paper on it with the conclusion of irreversible damage?

The experience is that it is still spreading. Yesterdays numbers < todays numbers out of China. Why is it not enough evidence? To me your argument is like we have to ruin all the possible ways we can so we can find out which is the least terrible way to do it.

We can't afford that!

[_-___________-_]

I am saying that we should take a measured approach to everything and not panic and take extreme measures because of what "could" happen. Economic damage can destroy lives too, though probably not yours or mine. I think I'll stop engaging at this point, because we seem to be talking past each other.

[goatinaboat]

I am wondering why the world still does not seem to care about it.

Let me flip that question around and ask, what difference would it make? What can you as an individual do, that you are not already doing, when the totalitarian government of the most populous nation on Earth is determined to downplay it?

It’s not indifference, it’s resignation.

[emiliobumachar]

How often do you want to do that worldwide travel shutdown? We got through SARS and Ebola without one. At the height of each, without the benefit of hindsight, did you consider them less serious then this one?

[rwallace]

I have advocated a worldwide travel shutdown exactly twice in my life: SARS, and now. SARS was a damn close call; it was stopped by proactive measures of contact tracing and quarantine (i.e. you quarantine, forcibly if need be, not only each sick person, but everyone they came into contact with); had it not been stopped, the death toll would've hit nine digits. This one looks about equally serious, and has clearly not been stopped.

[ryanwaggoner]

“We were completely fine the last time we played Russian roulette, and now you want us to stop playing?!”

[lm28469]

> Why we can't stop travelling?

Way too many things/people depend on traveling. You can't stop the world for such a small thing. We should take precautions, probably more than what we do now, but stopping the world isn't going to work.

Don't fall for the fear mongering too, it kills less than the flu: https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2019... and has a death rate of 2%. It's serious but not end of the world serious.

[ryanwaggoner]

It kills fewer total than the flu right now, but that’s a specious comparison. The flu infects orders of magnitude more every year. If this becomes as widespread as the flu and kills 2% (20-50x as many as the flu) and puts another 10-20% in the hospital, it’ll be total global pandemonium. Healthcare systems will collapse, supply chains will collapse, economic depressions, etc. “Only 2%” sounds so benign, but that’s a huge number of people, and having many more in the healthcare system means that deaths from all other causes will go up too. Widespread panic and shortages, etc. This has been studied. As I recall, it takes about 3% of the population needing medical care before the system collapses.

We’d survive but it wouldn’t be pretty. I really doubt that’ll happen here, but this is a serious risk.

[lm28469]

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/flu_pneumonia_mort...

Let's panic when it's time to panic, in the meantime it's business as usual. You add "virus" and "china" in the same sentence and people start to lose their shit way to easily. We had worse before, we'll be just fine.