[Nursie]

There are test kits in the UK, but the same policy applies.

Why?

Because it no longer matters, the containment effort for individual cases is now over. Now we move on to more mass actions to delay and slow the peak of the epidemic - anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

[earthtourist]

"the containment effort for individual cases is now over"

Most countries didn't even attempt containment, as far as I can tell. Leaders seem to have surrendered to mass infection at the opening of the battle.

It seems pathetic and criminally negligent. It's an intentional trade of hundreds of thousands of lives (potentially millions) in exchange for some unpredictable economic gain. This could conceivably make sense if an uncontained financial crisis would lead to even more human suffering than an uncontained infection.

But it seems that we're likely to end up paying in a massive number of lives and a massive amount of money. When an aggressive containment strategy might have cost us primarily in terms of money.

[stefan_]

I had a tweet from Flightradar24 show up on my timeline earlier:

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1238102765081186306...

It kinda hit me immediately why this whole containment thing wasn't really working out. And this was March 12! How on earth do we tell people to not go outside, but months after it all started there are still thousands of airplanes flying.

Honorary mention for the countries that sent military transport airplanes to rescue 100 citizens from China like an asteroid was about to hit it and kept them in barracks for weeks, but have this kind of air traffic streaming in.

[earthtourist]

Yeah, it explains why the testing isn't happening as well. Why bother doing surveillance testing if you've already surrendered to a 70% infection rate?

There's no point. Better to just let people come to the hospital if they absolutely need to, rather than risk people coming to the ER just because they tested positive.

It is possible that Italy has made a mistake in doing as many tests as they have. I'm not sure what the numbers are but it could be that the addition of infected-but-not-seriously-ill patients is a major problem.

So maybe this anti-surveillance testing approach does make sense once you've conceded the battle to contain the infection.

[jpster]

Following your line of thought, giving people easy ways to self-diagnose as quickly as possible is critical. Can we at least deliver flu & cold medicine to as many people as humanly possible? For free? So that they can, themselves, eliminate Covid19 as a possible cause.

That will help flatten the curve.

In concert, universal healthcare at point of service is a must.

As is propping up the people via direct material aid. Food. Rent money. Paid sick leave.

I thought I heard Trump say that interest on federal student loans would be “waived”. Did he mean forgive or defer? I don’t know if it’s at all true because he is a compulsive liar.

If it is true, great. But insufficient.

What we also need is a debt jubilee and infra & public investments that are truly net-positive for the neediest.

This will lead to inflation. Which by the way will be sorely needed. And by every affected country. I’m curious about the MMT community‘s point of view on this.

[s-]

Keep in mind a lot of those flights are flying empty due to use it or loose it rules.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-some-airlines-ar...

[indecisive_user]

>anyone with symptoms to self isolate for a week, regardless of positive test.

In an ideal world we would already be doing this. I know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling.

I don't get it.

If your employer encourages you to work from home when you're sick, and you're actually sick, please work from home! No one wants to catch your disease, whether it's Coronavirus or "just" the common cold.

[cc81]

This is a special case of course and I work for a company where we are told to work from home right now regardless of symptoms or not.

However when it comes to the common cold that is something that will be going of for weeks and return several times for some people, just the light symptoms. No fever but some coughing and sneezing.

For some job roles and in some companies with good culture it works great to work home but for a lot you cannot really be home for like 6 weeks every winter because you are missing out too much or are not effective enough.

[indecisive_user]

I disagree that the solution to "missing out too much" when you're sick is to go to work anyway and risk infecting co-workers.

According to the CDC, the average adult gets the common cold 2-3 times per year with symptoms lasting 7-10 days[1]. So it's more like 2-4 weeks per year, but I would imagine that number would decrease if you didn't have people coming into work sick in the first place (again, I recognize not every job will allow for this). Hong Kong's flu season apparently ended early this year due to the self isolation of sick people[2].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ad7ae6b4-5eab-11ea-b0ab-339c2307b...

[Barrin92]

> know that some people have to show up to work even if they're sick, but even at my job where we have unlimited sick leave, and are encouraged to use it, people still show up coughing and sniffling.

yes, the 'overzealous hero employee' archetype is very real. The Coronavirus aside I just wish this would generally become socially unacceptable. Not just during a pandemic but in general sacrificing health or sleep or some reasonable balance of life for work should not be celebrated.

[jpster]

I agree but there are millions who literally cannot afford to stay home — or they risk making rent and buying food. We must solve this problem at once. Pandemics aren’t gonna go anyway.

[elihu]

I suppose limitations on testing are going to make the official numbers less useful going forward, not that they were taken as anything but a very rough lower bound so far.

I mean, the Johns Hopkins map shows 13 infections in Ohio, and you have the director of the Ohio Department of Health saying it's 100,000. How do we know if either are anywhere close to right?

Presumably when things get bad it'll be impossible to hide it, as the hospitals will be over capacity. That's already happened in Wuhan and China, and probably Iran and some other places as well.

It would be nice if we had some sort of indication of where a particular region is on the scale from "hardly anyone has this yet" to "we're experiencing rampant community spread" that's more trustworthy/accurate than the official numbers.

[jpster]

>It would be nice [...]

Here is data where “Total” is meant to represent the number tested. Ideally we would see this also represented as a percentage of the local population.

https://covidtracking.com/notes/

[apabepa]

I agree with this comment. I see it as pragmatic thinking not to test people at this point. It is a special situation, if you show any symptom of sickness just stay at home, it should be a no-brainer. What if you cough in public? Will you shout "IT IS JUST A COMMON COLD" and people will feel safe? Actually people who "just have a bit of a cold" should stay at home in normal circumstances too in my opinion. It might be OK for you to have a runny nose but some other poor guy might catch your cold and get it worse because of bad immune system. Its comes down to individualistic vs collectivist thinking and now might be the time to think about the greater good.

[2snakes]

OTOH this will likely have 60-80% penetration so we should all get used to people coughing, and be kind while distancing.