
Covid-19 is now officially a pandemic, WHO says - tmlee
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/11/814474930/coronavirus-covid-19-is-now-officially-a-pandemic-who-says
======
theseadroid
Hey HN, in light of the current situation and the potential ordeal in the
coming weeks, may I ask you instead of blaming whoever, let's find some
solutions to help people?

As a Chinese, I read first hand materials from Chinese social media and
friends on what life is like in a lockdown area. People there depends on
deliveries for groceries and medicine, and occasionally restaurants take-outs.
All those services, and a bunch of other services for small businesses are
possible because of Wechat. Wechat is obviously not a popular option here in
N.A. Is there something we can do to help both the people buy whatever they
need via delivery and help local businesses?

In Wuhan when the entire family had to be isolated, no one was left to take
care of family pets. I heard there's volunteer groups to take them but their
capacities were very limited due to the short notice for them to take on such
responsibilities. Can we be more prepared and maybe find a
technology(-assisted) solution to this before it becomes a huge issue? I feel
this will be an issue sooner rather than later because in N.A. it appears the
current policy for mild cases is self-isolating, which will very likely infect
the entire family.

Also in Wuhan during the lockdown many people felt so lonely, especially the
older generation who can't use the internet effectively to stay connected to
their families/rest of the world. Can we find ways to help people prepare for
it psychologically? A lot of people will break medical suggested self-
isolation because of the eagerness to stay connected to certain people/group.
Instead of blaming them, can we help them find ways to stay connected yet in
isolation?

I'm sure there are more things the mighty HN crowd can do to help others
overcome this difficult time. Let's give it a try?

~~~
mrb
I hate to suggest that but the only short-term solution that seems to work is
_large-scale_ extreme response measures, just like China.

Here is evidence why it works: new cases/day decreasing dramatically since
February:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESywcEKUwAADhcQ?format=png&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESywcEKUwAADhcQ?format=png&name=large)

What China did is a complete shutdown and isolation of whole cities,
cancellation of public gatherings, prohibition of attendance at school and
work, massive mobilization of health and public health personnel as well as
military medical units, and rapid construction of entire hospitals.

Wuhan, Iran, Italy have shown us that the health care system simply collapses
under the huge number of patients needing hospitalization (20% of infected.)
So mobilizing healthcare workers, springing up new "hospitals", and limiting
spread with extreme responses is the way to go.

Unfortunately I predict that western governments are going to be less likely
to suggest, deploy, and enforce such massive quarantines. Quarantines impede
on civil liberties, and people in the West are very protective of freedom and
liberties. I think the average American will NOT be okay with his government
telling him he is only authorized to exit his house to go shopping once a
week...

~~~
andrewla
Why do people point to the China response as being a model response, as though
that is easily seen. China has had an order of magnitude more deaths and
instances than any other country. While you can point to many factors showing
why it is disingenuous to look at those raw numbers without context, it seems
to me that the burden of proof is on the other side, to show that the China
model is actually effective, because naively it looks like it didn't work out
too well.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Because China is a good month ahead of the rest of the world, and is much
denser populated in the cities (which are also much larger than ours).

The initial cover up didn't help either. Once they instated the lockdown, they
could test the backlog of people. That took quitea while. But now the spread
has pretty much stopped, while everywhere else on this planet it increases day
by day.

After the initial cover-up got public, the West couldn't get enough of
reporting about it, and how this is the reason it could spread so fast, how
irresponsible it was, and how it's typical for evil China. Now we have that
virus here, plus two month of knowledge about it, and we're still mostly being
reactive instead of proactive. In China's defense, when they tried to cover it
up, much less was known about the disease, like it's asymptomatic spread. Now
the cards are on the table and we're being ignorant, as if ignoring a problem
makes it go away. But hey, when things are getting really really ugly for us,
we can still go back to blaming China for their initial cover-up.

Watch Italy closely the next days, and compare it to China when they were at a
similar stage. It will tell you what's to come in your country too. Another
thing that's suspicious about Italy is the high CFR of around 6%. It most
likely means they're not doing enough testing, only the severe cases, so the
rest wanders around the country happily spreading it further.

~~~
joe_the_user
Absolutely this summarizes the situation.

It's worth noting that South Korea also was able to engage in such mass
mobilization. Moreover, if the trends continue for a few weeks, China's not
going to have an order of magnitude more death anymore.

Italy's high CFR sounds like a health care that's broken far _more_ than the
Chinese health care system, a system which essentially isn't taking any
specific extreme measures (which would be building more hospitals, importing
more health care workers, etc).

~~~
selectodude
Italy also has a demographic curve skewed _heavily_ older than most other
nations. Italy is the 2nd oldest country on earth after Japan.

~~~
dmix
And 89% of Italy's fatal cases are people >70yrs old.

~~~
shadowprofile77
If you don't mind, Where did you find this information? I've been searching
for a breakdown of all fatalities so far by age group (raw numbers, not just
average percentages) and could not find it.

~~~
jurassic
It was covered in the WSJ earlier this week:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/italy-with-elderly-
population-h...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/italy-with-elderly-population-
has-worlds-highest-death-rate-from-virus-11583785086)

~~~
shadowprofile77
Thank you to all three of you for these.

------
mrleiter
Here in Austria the government forbade any indoor gatherings of >100 people
(outdoor >500), all universities and colleges are closed (except
administration and research), including libraries and also museums. All
schools and kindergartens will gradually close coming monday. That's more than
1.5m students/pupils against a total population of 8.8m. Nurses and doctors
are being honed in from retirement. We completely locked down our borders to
Italy. This is all very unprecedented.

~~~
danlugo92
Makes the conspiracy theorist inside me think why are the governments are
overreacting... Are they testing their reach for a future false flag?

~~~
enumjorge
Overreacting? Did you miss the headline of the thread you’re commenting on?
This is officially a pandemic. And instead of reading that and thinking “wow,
this needs to be addressed with serious action” you instead thought that
hundreds of governments across the world are working in tandem to make it
easier to raise false flags in the future. Yikes.

~~~
harrier
Over 49 thousand people die from Pneumonia every year in the United States[1].
Under 5 thousand have died globally from COVID-2019[2]. Does this information
change your perspective?

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

[2] [https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situati...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situation-
reports/20200311-sitrep-51-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=1ba62e57_4)

~~~
pixl97
No, not at all. Because covid is just in the earily stages of spreading. At
it's best it will kill far more than 50k this year alone and become endemic so
it continues to kill at many on top of flu. At its worst it stands to kill a
lot more.

~~~
harrier
The number of cases in China was been steady for around a week. If we
extrapolate from Hubei that should give a decent picture. Around 0.1% of their
population were diagnosed with covid and of those diagnosed around 4% died. If
we apply the same rates to the United States (328 million * .001 * .04) we get
12,960 deaths. Keep in mind that is somewhat of a worse case scenario. In
Henan province the fatality rate is less than half of what it was in Hubei,
1.6%.

~~~
PeterisP
It's not a "worse case scenario", it's successful containment through quite
strict quarantine measures. Since neither USA nor Italy are taking measures
remotely comparable to what Hubei or Henan did when they had a similar amount
of spread, we should expect these countries to have a much larger spread than
Hubei did, it's really not reasonable to assume that they would be able to
limit this to "around 0.1% of their population were diagnosed with covid" \-
it's plausible that more than half of the population could get it, and leaders
of many western countries have acknowledged that.

~~~
harrier
The population density of Hubei is over 9x that of the United States, the
quality of care is better in the United States, and there was basically no
action taken for the first 2 months of the outbreak.

"it's plausible that more than half of the population could get it, and
leaders of many western countries have acknowledged that."

Will there ever be apologies for spreading mass hysteria?

~~~
PeterisP
Will there ever be apologies for downplaying justified warnings and saying
"it's just the flu" with dire consequences?

E.g. in a recent turnabout Vice President Mike Pence said today that there has
been “irresponsible rhetoric” from people who have downplayed the seriousness
of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

~~~
harrier
Will if Mike Pence says it, then it must be true.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

------
beamatronic
Curious if anyone has tried to look on the bright side, and see where humanity
will be in the long run.

1\. Will take infectious disease more seriously

2\. Will build out health care infrastructure to guard against future
occurrences

3\. Personal sanitation will be improved

4\. People less likely to take risky behaviors like getting together in huge
groups

edit: formatting

~~~
LeoNatan25
Did this happen after SARS and MERS outbreaks?

Did this happen after Ebola outbreak?

Did this happen after Zika outbreak?

Don't get your hopes up.

~~~
yitianjian
There were changes after SARS that led to better containment and reporting
measures in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.

Sure, the initial cases were clearly messed up, but it has mostly been
contained in Hong Kong and Singapore. And with the way this disease has
progressed, I would bet many countries are going to overtake China in case
counts.

~~~
Fragoel2
I second what you said and I add that these outbreaks did not have such a
massive impact on the western world

------
eagsalazar2
Crazy line of thinking:

I keep reading that because of how insanely transmissible covid is, this
doesn't end until enough people have already had it that there just aren't
that many people around you to infect anymore. It's been described as "trying
to stop the wind". We can maybe slow it down but not stop it, and in the US
since our response has been so weak, we especially shouldn't hope to stop it
unless we're willing to totally isolate our entire families.

At the same time we're hearing that Italian hospitals are completely
overwhelmed to where they are having to "choose who to let die" vs providing
acute treatment.

So... (1) is it fair to say that focusing on prevention is pointless and we
should just focus on survival which is largely about staying healthy and
receiving care and therefore (2) (this is the crazy part) does it actually
make sense to get it _now_ before hospitals are overwhelmed and you might be
unlucky enough to be sick with something else. Basically choose the most
opportune survivable situation to get it versus letting the virus and bad luck
pick when you have to fight this battle?

My gut tells me a bunch of people are going to crap all over this question but
I'm not coming up with good counter-arguments off the top of my head.

(one other point, I live in SF, a large dense city, and I have two little kids
that get everything so I'm maybe more fatalistic about the idea that I and my
family will eventually get it either way)

~~~
austincheney
Not exactly.

Looking at Italy as a case study we need to limit the spread of this virus
only for the reason of reducing stress on the medical industry at any given
single moment while accepting everyone is likely to encounter this thing
eventually. Aside from slowing the rate of transmission the guidance, from the
medical experts, says to treat this no differently than the flu. The reality
is that this virus will be everywhere because it is at least as transmissible
as the flu but with more benign symptoms and a longer incubation period. The
incubation period for the flu is generally 5-7 days but the early data from
China was suggesting an incubation period of 10-14 days for corvid19. Both of
those numbers are variable upon a given snapshot and environmental factors.

On the other hand the earlier people encounter this thing means the earlier a
population can build the necessary mass immunity resistance.

~~~
eagsalazar2
That's a good point and highlights a possible misalignment of interests
between individuals and the community: _me_ intentionally getting it now,
before there are many cases might help me and my family but speeding up spread
by doing so might increase the size of the peak for everyone else.

Related question: when I imagine the spread I feel like fast moving spread
will burn itself out more quickly _and completely_. But if it slows down too
much, might it become like the flu where if only 1/3 of the people get it in a
given year we never hit that critical point where everyone is immune and it
peters out within a season, giving it time to mutate and keep reinfecting
populations year after year much like the flu does?

~~~
xur17
> me intentionally getting it now, before there are many cases might help me
> and my family but speeding up spread by doing so might increase the size of
> the peak for everyone else.

It's also possible that we'll identify antiviral treatments, etc that will
reduce the impact on our health system / death rate (in which case getting it
later would be better).

------
anikan_vader
The problem with pandemics is that they tend to grow exponentially. What
people often forget about exponential growth is that it's actually very slow
around t = 0.

~~~
hprotagonist
that is true. what is also true is that nature abhors a naked exponential
nearly as much as she abhors a naked singularity.

it's nearly always a sigmoid in disguise.

What we are trying our damndest to control is the carrying capacity.

~~~
WilliamEdward
obviously its not going to be exponential forever, no one believes that. The
more people get infected, the less people there are to infect. This is
obvious. The problem is no one knows where the inflection point is yet, and it
depends entirely on how countries react to the illness.

------
plainOldText
Anyone following the social media and the news would’ve called the pandemic
weeks ago.

I hope this will make people realize that we need to abolish centralized
institutions in our highly complex world. They are single points of failure
which introduce significant systemic risks.

CDC also dropped the ball on this one. In Washington state local authorities
discovered the outbreak only because they defied federal regulators.

We need better organization at the local level, and we need it now.

~~~
allovernow
>I hope this will make people realize that we need to abolish centralized
institutions in our highly complex world.

While I too favor decentralization, what we really need to do is return merit
to our institutions. We need a social climate that encourages Pattons and
Churchills and the like. Unfortunately to return to such a time of competent
leadership (not just in government, but society at large) would require
undoing decades of propaganda that convinced some two generations of children
that we all have equal ability and any of us can do anything. The dangerous
downside of giving everyone a trophy across society is that now people have
grown up less able to judge competence and merit in others.

~~~
atq2119
It's funny how in those political discussions, comments often say more about
the commenter.

For example, _I_ would argue that the "propaganda" that anybody can do
anything isn't that old yet. On the other hand, certain political groups have
been sabotaging government leadership for so long - by claiming that
government is always incapable - that there's just no good leadership left in
many places and it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

------
yumraj
Hopefully the school districts will now close.

Parents from every school districts in the Bay Area have collected thousands
of signatures to close, but the _politicians_ are not doing their job.

I was on call with Santa Clara county hotline and the school district and the
standard answer I got was: Oh, the kids are at low risk and the numbers are
low so we're not closing yet.

What they don't realize is that the kids can still be carriers and many
teachers and parents are in the danger zone (age or underlying conditions)

~~~
jlisam13
I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Michael Osterholm and he gave an
interesting perspective. He said that most nurses who have children will
suffer if kids have to be sent home. They most likely don't have people that
can help take care of their children while they are supporting the influx of
patients. Moreover, many children rely on school provided meals so sending
them home will be very tough on the families.

~~~
yumraj
Don't remember where I read, but some district or something has proposed (or
implemented) an option where kids are able to get lunch/breakfast and take it
with them without needing to attend school.

It does not solve the nurse issue, which perhaps as a community we need to
solve. Perhaps limited opening of school monitored by younger healthier
teachers/PTA reps.

------
claytongulick
There are a lot of folks on here asserting facts that are not supported by
evidence.

The actual facts are this: we don't know what the CFR (case fatality rate) is.
CFR is very difficult to accurately calculate, and varies widely with age,
location, health conditions and even biological sex (so far, this seems to
affect men a bit worse than women). The "2-3%" mortality rate that's being
tossed around as fact, is most likely wildly inaccurate.

We don't know what the mutation rate is. Viruses tend to become _less_ lethal
over time, because the fatal strains kill the host and don't spread as well,
which puts evolutionary pressure on the virus to become milder. Will that
happen in this case? We don't know.

We don't know what the appropriate government response is. It's somewhere
between welding people into their houses and doing nothing. Which is to say,
who knows? Go overboard and everyone criticizes the government for crying wolf
and wasting funds. Too little, and everyone criticizes the government for
standing by and letting people die. It's a very difficult balance to strike,
and I have a lot of sympathy for the folks who are in the position of making
these decisions. They'll invariably get some wrong. Hopefully not too many.

IMHO, the best resource to learn about what we _do know_ is the comprehensive
Ars Technica article[1], which is frequently updated.

I would like to suggest a) that folks stop claiming mortality rates in a
panicky tone - because _we don 't know_. and b) that everyone who is reading
folks claiming mortality rates and the upcoming apocalypse - reserve judgement
until we have more information.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-
compr...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-
comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/)

~~~
jmkni
+1 for that Ars Technica article, been following the updates as well.

------
jennyyang
What sort of effect will this have on contracts that have Force Majeure
clauses? That's a big unknown to me that could have a big recessionary effect.

~~~
Hongwei
Somewhat related - pandemic bonds will now pay out towards relief efforts and
investors will lose their money.

Matt Levine does some analysis here:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/the-
fi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/the-fintechs-are-
banks-now)

~~~
alexpotato
Interesting history on catastrophe bonds in general:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.html)

------
wh-uws
Here's my question. As a technical community here.

How can we help?

i.e. I'm hearing about things like the ways for hospitals to report numbers to
the CDC having just been set up.

This seems likely something any local technical person could help tackle.

Is there a place to go to find out how to help in any way possible?

~~~
SamuelAdams
For people embedded in companies: make sure your company can work remotely.
Buy more VPN licences, update firewalls to handle the traffic, find meeting /
conferencing software, whatever else you need to do to keep people working
outside of the office.

For really big tech companies (FAANG), improve data analytics for automated
reporting of health data to government agencies (CDC, FDA, etc). Google Flu
Trends [1] is a great example of this. Basically google combines common
symptom queries with geolocation data to track diseases in near-real time
across a region. I first read about this in Datacalysm (Christian Rudder) and
it's a fascinating thing.

For individuals: maybe make some cool graphs or ways of analyzing the publicly
available COVID-19 data? There's a lot of misinformation going around and
helping to curb that with real data will help the whole fear thing. For
example [2]: people are saying to donate blood to get tested for COVID-19 "for
free" but the test itself is a swab, not a blood pull.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Flu_Trends)

[2]:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/fguxil/...](https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/fguxil/coronavirus_loophole/)

~~~
Jommi
Not sure if you read this: [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-
failure-google-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-
google-flu-trends/)

------
victorlin
I've been watching COVID-19 very closely since 2019 Dec it, I also witnessed
how WHO responses to this Pandemic. If you were me, you will notice that WHO
tried very hard to please China, rather than taking people's health into
consideration. Many things they did:

\- Advice not to ban flight to China after China locked down hubei lockdown
(yes, many country trust WHO, like Japan and Korea)

\- Met and praised Xi many times, admire how wonderful they did

\- Keep down playing how serious the problem can be, and didn't advice any
action

And recently, China suddenly donate $20M to WHO

[https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-
china-t...](https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-china-to-
donate-20-million-to-who-to-fight-coronavirus-report-2191858)

For more details, please watch this video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8)

~~~
james-mcelwain
This kind of Sinophobia is so unwarranted -- China has done the best to
control this disease outside of maybe S. Korea.

~~~
president
I think most people can agree that no one country has done a stellar job
(including the US) to contain and mitigate the virus but given that China was
the first to be hit, it gets a larger share of the blame for letting it spread
to the rest of the world. If you look at the timeline of the events that
transpired in China since December [1], it shows a clear pattern of ignorance
and favoring politics over public health. You know things have gone completely
wrong when you decide to arrest doctors that have called out the disease.
Anybody that says "China has done the best to control this disease" is either
a CCP shill or massively uninformed or misled by propaganda. Remember, the
only news we get out of China comes from state-sanctioned media.

[1]
[https://wuhanmemo.com/?page_id=230929](https://wuhanmemo.com/?page_id=230929)

~~~
robocat
> no one country has done a stellar job

Taiwan have done a stellar job. Pre-prepared, acted quickly (starting on 31st
of Dec), and have got the results to show they were doing it right. For more
information, see:
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762689](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762689)

Edit: This also shows up the lie that China’s suppression of information was
the critical factor in delaying everyone’s actions: Taiwan had the information
and acted, it is just that other countries chose not to _act_ on the
information they had. Li Wenliang (one of the whistleblower doctors) on 30
December he “sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to
wear protective clothing to avoid infection. Four days later he was summoned
to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter.”

~~~
guerrilla
Hows South Korea doing? I saw they did a lot of tests compared to the rest of
us.

~~~
csnover
They seem to be getting things under control. [0]

[0]
[https://mackuba.eu/corona/#south_korea](https://mackuba.eu/corona/#south_korea)

------
aresant
What are HNers doing with elementary age school kids in CA / Bay Area? Seems
inevitable that we are heading towards school closures en mass - reasonable to
get an early start?

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I hope our over-pressured Bay Area children get a month respite from their
usual schedule to just be children, and not anything else.

------
throwaway8291
I leave this here for future reference: if we paint a worst case scenario, by
the end of summer 2020, we may have 1M+ casualties in Germany alone.

It's hard to assess the global consequences of hundreds of thousands of flats
getting vacant (increasing real estate supply in an overvalued market), labor
shortages (which is high even today) and economic output reduction and the all
the societal costs.

The only positive thing I see is an event, that unites the whole world - you
will be able to relate to strangers - and this is actually a very good thing.

~~~
usuallymatt
Why would hundreds of thousands of flats be vacant? 1M+ infections won't
translate to hundreds and thousands of deaths.

~~~
jxub
A small increase in supply available, even if it's not a large absulute number
will probably lead to a proportionally bigger dip in prices as tenants or
prospective buyers might have other options, especially in very bubbly markets
with high competition (correct me if this line of reasoning is wrong).

------
bronzeage
What people don't understand is that this can be stoppped so much faster if we
just learn from china and do everything we can from the first moment. Gradual
escalation of measures is useless.

------
xchip
Most insurances don't cover pandemics, so guess who is benefited by this ;)

~~~
m0zg
As of a few days ago they cover coronavirus specifically:
[https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486816-pence-major-
hea...](https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486816-pence-major-health-
insurers-have-agreed-to-waive-copays-for-coronavirus)

Quote: "all the insurance companies here, either today, or before today, have
agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing, and extend coverage for
coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans"

~~~
SkyPuncher
I think this comes with a big asterisk.

As far as I can tell, there was a lot of room for caveats in that statement.
In particular, it was scoped to companies they met with.

~~~
m0zg
You should see the list. I've been living in the US for ~21 years now, and at
no point I had coverage from a company _not_ on that list. I'm also pretty
sure the rest will also get their balls stepped on, this being the election
year and all.

------
anigbrowl
It's worth noting that the US test situation is still going to be held up for
a while due to a shortage of lab chemicals:
[https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/coronavirus-
testing...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/coronavirus-testing-lab-
materials-shortage-125212)

------
finaliteration
Even though I rationally know it’s the right thing to do, I’m terrified about
my daughter’s school closing and her and other students severely falling
behind academically. I can work from home and watch her, but my spouse and I
are not AT ALL equipped to home school her for a lengthy period of time. She
is not a good self-learner and already struggles in some areas.

How should we be preparing for that? How are other people doing it who have to
keep their children home and away from educational resources and teachers?

Edit: I’m getting mixed reactions to this. I’m not at all saying academics are
more important than slowing the spread of the virus. But I see many comments
calling for a complete shutdown of schools and very few saying that for many
parents this is a legitimate source of hardship and anxiety, even if it’s the
right thing to do.

~~~
Blahah
Honestly this is the last thing I'd be worrying about. A child can skip 6
months to a year of school and have almost no negative effects on their life
outcomes. If they get sick and die, or their close family members do, they
will definitely have negative effects on their outcomes.

There are tons of resources and communities for homeschooling on the internet.
Happy to help point you to stuff if needed, but please prioritise health over
potential educational slowdown.

~~~
finaliteration
> _please prioritise health over potential educational slowdown_

My apologies - I didn’t at all mean to make it seem like I was downplaying the
public health aspect. I fully understand this is likely what’s necessary and
that public health comes first. That being said, it is a source of anxiety for
me as someone who values academics because, for me, it was a path to a better
life.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Few weeks or even months of lost school - especially at an early age - is
something that can be compensated for somewhat easily. Schools are _very_
inefficient at teaching. You'll help her a bit, ensure she does some focused
learning, and she'll be fine.

------
LeoTinnitus
My college just basically closed and hour ago saying everything is online now
after spring break. Kinda nice for my easy classes. Sucks for my harder ones
though.

~~~
impendia
Speaking as a college professor:

Read your textbook, do homework exercises, and (above all) _feel free to
contact your professors and ask them for help_. That is what they are paid to
do!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Underrated advice. I'd get 10x as much benefit from my undergraduate studies
than I did if anyone got it through my head that the academic staff will help
you with the stuff that was in the class - and more importantly, they're _very
happy_ to tell you everything about their field of research.

------
d4mi3n
Cross posting this from the other Pandemic thread since I thought it was
interesting:

> d4mi3n

> What happens when the WHO classifies a pandemic? I imagine a number of
> processes and procedures come into effect--anybody know what they are?

> Hongwei

> My limited understanding understanding is that it automatically releases
> funding (from the WHO and other bodies) to help with the crisis. It should
> also trigger some catastrophe and pandemic bond clauses, meaning investors
> who bought these bonds will lose their money as it now goes towards relief
> funding.

Full thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547349)

~~~
mkagenius
> is that it automatically releases funding

I was listening it live and they said its just a classification, they are
already doing what they should be doing, the classification changes nothing.

------
mrb
16 days ago I wrote:

" _The reason the WHO is not declaring the coronavirus a "pandemic" is likely
to avoid causing a panic at this point. They will only use the P-word once it
is clear to everyone that it is one._"
[https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1232094407584710656](https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1232094407584710656)
I was criticized for being "alarmist." But I was right. It was obvious to
those of us who did the research (100+ hours reading peer-reviewed articles)
that it was going to turn into a very big deal.

~~~
amalter
I browsed Reddit for 30 minutes a day and concluded the same thing. Don't
congratulate yourself too much, it was blindingly obvious.

For all the things that Reddit gets wrong, early-January r/cornavirus was
pretty much spot on the money.

------
SubiculumCode
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22538779)

Might be useful in case you or loved ones get infected.

------
nodamage
I wonder if the internet "experts" here (and on other forums) who declared two
weeks ago that "this is just overblown media hysteria and no more dangerous
than the flu" will retract their claims now that the WHO has declared a
pandemic? Or will they continue to bury their heads in the sand because denial
is easier than acknowledging the seriousness of the situation?

------
cm2187
Pointing to the last Sam Harris podcast [1]. He interviewed an infectious
disease specialist, who like several other infectious disease specialists I
heard before, isn't particularly concerned by this event. It is serious, but
not alarming.

I should note that Sam Harris is rather on the worried side of the spectrum
(and felt compelled to add a disclaimer at the begining).

[1] [https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-
pandemic/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/)

------
aty268
Please keep in mind I might be wrong, I just want to understand things outside
of the hype.

So I don't buy all the hype, can somebody tell me why i'm wrong? I keep
hearing claims from brilliant people that 50-80% of the population could
easily be infected.

Exponential growth is obviously the answer, and is occurring because the
median person is infecting more than one other person, which right now is
coming from people not knowing they have the virus and not worrying about
getting the virus. This will change as more people become infected. Assuming
even the most BASIC of measures are taken, (people washing their hands, not
going to crowded areas often, not travelling etc.) this will probably stop
exponential growth.

In China, 5 people have been infected for every 100,000 citizens, and the
virus isn't exponentially growing anymore. But fine, maybe they took good
measures.

In Italy, it's closer to 20 people per 100,000. Fine, four times as high, but
still a TINY portion of the population. If you assume that their graph will
ever look anything like China's, there is no way in hell more than 1% of the
population will be infected. It probably won't come within two orders of
magnitude.

In what god forsaken situation could even 1% of the US get the Coronavirus?

Even without government intervention, as cases increase people will start
taking this more seriously and the exponential growth will stop. Even if you
don't have symptoms but have the virus, you aren't going to that concert or
that vacation because you don't want to catch the virus from someone else. As
long as you at most infect 1 other person, the exponential growth stops. This
will happen way before 1% of the population is infected.

EDIT: I'm incorrect in the idea that people shouldn't worry about it, you
should, but I believe that worrying about it will be enough to stop the
exponential growth.

~~~
greedo
Because the virus can propagate asymptomatically. And even in the best
performing countries, only symptomatic people are being tested.

~~~
aty268
Of course, that is the explanation for the exponential growth in the early
stages. US citizens don't care right now. Once the virus grows, people will
start being more careful, whether they have symptoms or not, because they
don't want to get the virus. This along with some government intervention and
businesses closing shop will destroy the exponential growth, as we see with
China and will soon see with Italy.

------
pauljurczak
It seems to me that WHO waited for the stock market to tumble down first,
before declaring this pandemic. This way, WHO may avoid getting blamed for the
end of the bull market.

------
aazaa
Does anyone have a list of previous pandemic declarations and year?

~~~
JohnFen
I always hate linking to wikipedia, but it's the best such list I could find:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics)

~~~
bairrd
May I ask why you hate linking to wikipedia?

~~~
JohnFen
Because tend I assume that people have already checked Wikipedia, so the link
may not give them what they were looking for.

~~~
kortilla
Never assume that. People rarely even read the article they comment on.

------
mensetmanusman
I just learned that testing kits are wrong almost 30% of the time, that means
they are more likely to contribute to misinformation than not.

Therefore, just wait for it to happen?

------
marcinjachymiak
FYI for anyone else who was wondering, the WHO declaration has no impact on
whether or not pandemic bonds default.

------
antaviana
Possibly a big relief for insurance companies as life insurances typically
have exclusions for a pandemic.

------
dznodes
Where is the site for noob preppers to adopt best-prep practices in
anticipation for covid-19?

------
jdkee
The US is likely about 11 to 14 days behind Italy in terms of medical
infrastructure collapse.

~~~
sp332
We're that many days behind in raw case numbers. We have a lot more capacity
than Italy overall, and our larger hospitals are prepped for mass shootings
which means they have procedures in place for a sudden influx of patients who
need ventilators.

Story from a couple years back about that last point:
[https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-
las-...](https://epmonthly.com/article/not-heroes-wear-capes-one-las-vegas-ed-
saved-hundreds-lives-worst-mass-shooting-u-s-history/)

~~~
onionjake
> What he came up with was that if you have two people who are roughly the
> same size and tidal volume, you can just double the tidal volume and stick
> them on Y tubing on one ventilator.

Would this help increase the number of covid-19 patients that could be
treated? Or do they not require ventilators? I wonder if the study they
mentioned about it was ever completed?

~~~
sp332
Super late update: I found at least a pilot study that shows that the
technique is promising. There's also some evidence that this is being used in
the current crisis but I don't know how reliable these sources are:
[https://twitter.com/alandrummond2/status/1240008793167192066](https://twitter.com/alandrummond2/status/1240008793167192066)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY)

------
sequoia
As a US citizen very familiar with the US healthcare system, I'm very glad to
be living in Canada during this epidemic where _everyone_ has a Go To The
Doctor Free card, literally. At times I am a bit surprised how readily
Canadians will go to the doctor because they "woke up with a headache/back is
hurting/eyes are red and itchy." Coming from the US it would _never_ occur to
me to go to the doctor for such "minor" complaints (to be honest, in the US I
didn't go to the doc unless I was worried about immediate mortal peril or had
an extremely long-running complaint, it's just too much trouble & they rarely
help).

In this scenario, I think it's fantastic that Canadians are so quick to go to
the doctor, and that everyone can do it on-demand. It means we're more likely
here to catch more cases early & hopefully slow the spread. In the US, who is
going to go to the doctor just because they have flu-like symptoms? And pay
the 20, 50, 75, ?? dollar copay, wait in the line, then spend hours fighting
with insurance later when they refuse to cover it? Yeah right. "May as well
stay home," and this is going to cause tons more cases to go undetected &
spread.

Canada is not perfectly prepared & is definitely making missteps (parade is
still on in Toronto this weekend) but I predict the universal healthcare
system will make the impact night & day different from USA.

~~~
geddy
Honest question - what kind of capacity can possibly be supported during a
pandemic when people already go to the doctor for (seemingly) trivial reasons?

I see the benefits here, don't get me wrong, but I can't imagine the waiting
rooms when people go to the doctor with actual emergencies.

~~~
sequoia
I'm not sure, but I can say anecdotally that I spend less time waiting for a
same-day appointment or drop-in here in Canada than I did in the US when
making an appointment in advance with my PCP at my regular doctor's office. So
the deterrent effects of private pay & shitty insurance bureaucracy didn't
seem to reduce wait times in my area of the USA.

------
echelon
By delaying the "pandemic" designation, the WHO has inadvertently cost more
lives. They will strongly need to reevaluate their role and policies going
forward, because this was a monumental process and leadership failure.

The messaging from the media (who are laypersons) and the politicians (who are
economically motivated laypersons) has been that this is "just the flu". Weak
messaging from both the WHO and the CDC has only reinforced this in the
public's perception.

The WHO should have taken the decisive move to encourage greater caution by
employing the "pandemic" label. That label comes with real power. While there
is danger in crying wolf, it was evident months ago from the growth rate of
the virus and the lack of quarantine procedures being put in place that this
virus would reach the pandemic stage.

If the role of the WHO is to stave off pandemics and not just to monitor them,
then elevating the risk profile of the virus should have been a top priority.
Since people look to the WHO for guidance, their actions have direct impact to
sequestration and bringing the outbreak under control.

Both the WHO and the CDC were too afraid to take early action. Their wait and
see approach will ultimately result in more human deaths and suffering.

~~~
abstractbarista
From the death %, symptoms, and recovery stats, it really is mostly "just the
flu".

If you are otherwise healthy, this is like getting a cold with a fever for a
week, then feeling better.

Sure, call it a pandemic, because it is worldwide. But honestly it's just not
that remarkable. This isn't some godly virus with 25% death rates!

~~~
JulianMorrison
80-something percent of the time yes. The remainder is divided between "you
need hospital, but will be fine" and "serious intensive care needed".

The trouble is that (1) the people who need hospital to be fine _need
hospital_. They won't be fine if it isn't there, and (2) by being a selfish
ass and treating it like just the flu, when it's a disease that grows
exponentially in a no-immunity population, people are amplifying the speed and
height of the peak, which means not enough hospital places.

If you get a situation where effectively nobody who _needs hospital_ can get
it - then those 20-ish percent _just drop dead_. And then there's your godly
death rate.

~~~
abstractbarista
It's not selfish to treat something like the flu. This means I wash my hands,
get vaccinated yearly, and take other common-sense precautions. That's not
"being an ass", it's being rational.

~~~
rsynnott
And which vaccine were you considering getting for this, precisely?

That's part of the problem; even if it was "just like the flu" (it is not; in
particular the percentage of cases requiring advanced medical treatment is
much higher, which will lead to a rise in mortality as that treatment is
oversubscribed), the flu would be pretty scary if the annual vaccine didn't
exist.

~~~
abstractbarista
And isn't it amazing how many people neglect to get the flu vaccine (even when
they can afford it - I don't look down on those who can't)?

The flu is actually quite scary - they are the frog in hot water.

~~~
ionwake
are you talking to yourself?

------
JdeBP
Duplicates via different news services:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547345)

------
rronalddas
So no summer Olympics I guess

------
hodder
Reminds me of Moody's after Lehman. Very timely warning!

------
xchip
This are great news for many insurance companies because if you get sick the
won't need to cover your expenses. Stay safe!

~~~
chrxr
Not true at least for many Blue Cross Blue Shield areas:
[https://home.bluecrossma.com/coronavirus](https://home.bluecrossma.com/coronavirus)

------
app4soft
WHO is who says that.

------
deadalus
Since Covid-19 is now a Pandemic, my Health Insurance provider will no longer
provide treatment to me for free :-(

~~~
tribaal
Wait, what?

I'm not familiar with how the US system works but that seems... strange. Why
would the WHO declaring it a pandemic affect your coverage?

~~~
alexpotato
I would imagine it's similar to all insurance: there are events outside the
scope of your agreement with the insurance company for coverage.

For example, your home insurance would cover your house burning down but might
have a clause along the lines of "if the whole town burns down, we will not
cover you."

I'm guessing some health insurance plans have a similar clause of "if there is
a WHO declared pandemic, we won't cover you".

The fire example from a real historical event: a German city burned to the
ground and put multiple insurance firms out of business. This led to the
development of "re-insurance" aka insurance firms that insure other insurance
firms.

For an interesting take on the above plus catastrophe bonds in general
(mentioned in another comment) I highly recommend this article by Michael
Lewis:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26neworleans-t.html)

EDIT: changed "would have" to "might have a clause"

~~~
nvahalik
> For example, your home insurance would cover your house burning down but
> would have a clause along the lines of "if the whole town burns down, we
> will not cover you."

This isn't true. Insurance companies can and do regularly cover people in
areas where massive destruction occurs within a particular area (e.g.
hurricanes). This is why some companies no longer write policies in certain
areas: their risk managers usually require them to "spread out risk" and so
they write some stuff in some areas and then they may stop and lower rates
elsewhere which are deemed "lower risk".

EDITED: Actually, some companies will even cover you in some pretty extreme
circumstances, but this is stuff you have to pay for extra and isn't usually
included on most policies.

At any rate, what _is_ true is that most insurance companies won't cover you
based upon the cause of something: e.g. if your house is burned down due to a
riot "civil unrest" or because of something like war, it will not cover you.
If your house floods because a pipe bursts, then it is OK. If water comes up
from the ground (i.e. a _real_ flood) then it will not cover you because it
looks not only at what happened but how it happened.

~~~
alexpotato
We are both correct in that they can do all/some/none of the below:

1\. Structure their agreements so that some things are covered and others are
not e.g. suicide is sometimes NOT covered for life insurance

2\. Choose not to cover certain areas e.g. there were insurance firms choosing
not to cover Staten Island even pre-Sandy

3\. Set their rates at high levels to discourage people e.g. this happened in
my old town house where there were too many claims based around water heaters
leaking

Funny side story: I remember reading a book about the British Special Forces
(S.A.S.) and there was a note that said only Lloyd's of London was willing to
insure them due to the high risk of injuries from their line of work.

Funny side story #2:

One of my family members had a friend who was apparently a crazy driver. He
drove a delivery truck so a bunch of the driver's friend (including my family
member) took out a life insurance policy on him (driver). I didn't even
realize you could do this but apparently you can.

In the end, turned out that the driver outlived all of the people who were on
the policy!

~~~
SilasX
>One of my family members had a friend who was apparently a crazy driver. He
drove a delivery truck so a bunch of the driver's friend (including my family
member) took out a life insurance policy on him (driver). I didn't even
realize you could do this but apparently you can.

It's generally restricted, since it can incentivize killing them to collect
the money. To life-insure anybody you have to convince the insurer that you
have an "insurable interest" in their life. That's easy if they're a
breadwinner/caretaker in your family, and you could also show it if they were
e.g. critical to your business (edit: or had lent them money). I'd be
interested to know what the justification was in that case.

Insurers really try to make sure that the payout isn't so high that you want
the insured event to happen ("moral hazard").

~~~
alexpotato
> I'd be interested to know what the justification was in that case.

I should have pointed out that this was back in the mid-1950s when regulations
were probably a lot more lax than they are today.

~~~
SilasX
Hm, I think the "insurable interest" check is more of a standard practice to
protect against being exploited by criminals and less of an "oh man, we'd love
to do that but for those pesky regulations". Still, if I had to guess, I'd say
it's that they don't look too closely if it's a close-enough family member
that has a job.

------
linsomniac
Yesterday I had the sudden realization that the US Republican Party is likely
to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, but also seems to be avoiding
taking precautions to prevent the spread.

Mortality and impacts seem to hit people over 50 the hardest, and that is
where a majority of the Republican supporters come from.

It would be a curious footnote to have COVID-19 swing an election.

~~~
lacker
The average Republican is 50 and the average Democrat is 47. I don’t think
there will be a huge difference in coronavirus impact.

Source: [https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-
demogra...](https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-
republicans/)

~~~
silvestrov
It's not the average that's important, it is the percentage above 70 and 80
years that is the important factor.

------
vkaku
The WHO did not call it early enough, due to political pressure. I don't trust
them.

------
anticensor
They mean that _SARS type 2_ is a pandemic. COVID-19 looks like a JIRA ticket
to me.

~~~
xenonite
The virus is called "SARS-Cov2", the disease is called "COVID-19".

~~~
anticensor
The disease should be called SARS type 2, because the virus is called SARS-
CoV-2.

------
atombender
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22547223)

~~~
swasheck
I prefer the non-paywall npr site so I hope that this one stays up

~~~
atombender
Sure. When the admins merge dupes, they consider what the best link is and
reparent the comments, which has now happened. Now thread had more upvotes and
comments.

------
Aaronstotle
WHO is a complete joke, from praising China's lack of a response as ground-
breaking and refusing to label this thing as a Pandemic until now. Trust in
institutions is at an all time low because these institutions perform so
poorly that most people dismiss them entirely (even if the advice is sound). I
hope the world will learn it's lessons from this outbreak, so at least we can
react faster next time.

------
fear91
This should have been done way earlier. WHO's excuse of not declaring it
before was that it didn't reach Antarctica yet... which is ridiculous.

Had they raised alarm early on, more countries would have enforced proper
procedures (look at South Korea). Instead, the thing spread around and starts
impacting economy.

To me, WHO lost all credibility.

~~~
warent
Following organized, rational procedure is exactly what is needed in times of
widespread panic. If the WHO based their decisions such as this one on
emotions like fear or intuition then they really would be damaging their
credibility. Let's be honest, if countries hadn't been enforcing proper
procedures to this point, how likely is it that a label by the WHO would make
that much of an impact to governments?

~~~
echelon
They didn't base their decision on the observed growth curve. Anyone looking
at the data could have called this a pandemic the moment it left Asia.

The WHO and CDC botched this. Because of their messaging a lot of people (the
majority of people!) didn't take this virus seriously, and that is going to
result in real human lives lost.

~~~
baggy_trough
Millions of them, in fact.

------
riyadparvez
In preparation of stopping next pandemic, maybe we should have an
international agreement like Paris climate change agreement. Like climate
change and nuclear weapons this is an existential risk.

Yes, outbreak of zootonic diseases is still possible through widely consumed
firm animals (chickens, pigs, or cows). But we can dramatically reduce the
risk of next pandemic if we stop eating exotic wild animals like bats, which
is not hard to give up. We may have been able to stop outbreak of COVID-19 on
the first place if we had learned our lessons from SARS outbreak and stopping
eating exotics animals.

EDIT: bat was used as an example. You can replace any exotic animals in place
of bats, the point still stands. This video touches on the topic of outbreak
of coronavirus:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54)

~~~
oppositelock
Is there any evidence whatsoever that the current coronavirus outbreak was due
to eating exotic animals.

Yes, the press has reported that a market in Wuhan sold exotic animals, but it
seems this is uncorroborated, and after asking an acquaintance in Wuhan about
it, I was told it's fake news, and that said market sells farmed animals as
far as she's ever seen.

~~~
gdubs
Animals are absolutely a primary vector for infectious disease. No, there's no
definitive evidence as of yet of patient 0, though the cluster of early cases
in China had strong connections to the wet market in Wuhan. It's not
necessarily the eating of the animals directly, but indirectly – because wild
animals are kept stressed, in cages, next to other domesticated animals and
people.

Even with conventional animal agriculture, things like bird flu and swine flu
are a serious threat.

------
stakkur
[EDIT] I greatly misjudged this audience. Fear is everywhere, but (at least)
so is data.

WHO 10 March report: [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/)

~~~
magduf
>80% of all cases are still in China.

That's impossible to know. We have no idea how many cases there are in the US,
because we're not doing a significant amount of testing here, because our
government is incompetent and unprepared for this.

~~~
lolc
True. And we don't care about the number of cases anyway. We care about the
growth. Assuming China has been ramping up its testing efforts, that gives us
a clear picture of the spread in China. Especially compared to countries with
slow-to-start, spotty testing.

It seems to me that the U.S. government would prefer for cases to not be
tested. Whatever medical competence there is appears to be sidelined by other
interests.

