
Coronavirus: A draft decree to 'quarantine 10 million people' in Lombardy - smacktoward
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51787238
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thalassos
This is only a badly embossed law proposal, which has not been approved yet.
Its release to the news, is a huge mistake and it is aleeady causing havok all
across the country. People are hoarding trains to go away from the supposed
red zones undoubtfully spreading even further the virus.

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justinzollars
Seems reasonable to implement cancelations of movies, public gatherings,
weddings, funerals etc. The best we can do is slow it down until there is a
vaccine.

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danharaj
At this point new cases in China are declining. They may have misstepped
seriously at first but their heavy handed response seems to be working out
now.

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nkkollaw
You mean hiding the numbers..?

If not, it's just hard to believe.

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joshuamorton
If they're hiding the numbers, they're doing it across the board: infectious
disease case numbers across the board are down, not just corona. This is true
in China and in South Korea.

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nkkollaw
Let's hope so!

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fbn79
I'm from North Italy. I have read news about the definitive law and it's not a
quarantine. It s a limited mobility act. It tell that you cannot exit or enter
designated zones with many many exceptions... (you can if are returning to
your home, you are doing it for job, if there is some kind of valid reason an
so on...) With all this exceptions (practically impossible to checks on the
real field) the law can be seen as only a raccomandation (and a political
move) to travel only for necessity and not for entertainment.

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csomar
This looks like a deja vu: Government doesn't seem to be alarmed by some
virus/disease. People start getting sick. Government takes some light measure
/ trivialize the whole thing. Lots of people start getting sick / dying.
Government implement a military lock-down.

Italy seems to be going on the same track of China. It's interesting that the
rest of the world doesn't look very alarmed about these situations.

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knzhou
If you shift the curves over and account for population, Italy's actually
about a week behind China in locking things down.

The sad thing is that even after locking everything down, you expect case
numbers to continue to rise by ~100x (which is what happened in Hubei), as
people get past the incubation period, infect the people they're living with,
medical workers fall sick, and so on. So the only right time to impose a
lockdown is before it looks like a problem at all, which is politically
impossible to pull off.

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rambojazz
They are very clearly trying to balance public health with economic losses.

It certainly doesn't help that Milan citizens are ignoring restrictive
measures, bars are offering free drinks to "restart the normal life", and
companies are attacking the government for the lack of profits because "it's
just a flu". Meanwhile hospitals are getting swamped and are calling for
selection of who should or should not have access to ICU.

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tosh
# of confirmed cases in Italy on 20th of February: 3

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Italy)

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imustbeevil
> As of 7 March 2020, there have been 5,883 confirmed cases, 233 deaths, and
> 589 recoveries in Italy.

Why choose February 20th?

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nkkollaw
I think he meant that just a few weeks ago there were no cases, now there are
5000

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michaelyoshika
Unbelievable. Does Italian government have right to lock down a whole area?
Will this happen in the US?

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bpodgursky
It would be much harder to do this in the US because of the First Amendment
enshrined right to assembly.

I mean, the CDC can try, but there will be an immediate stay on the rule by
some court or another, and the Supreme Court is EXTREMELY unlikely to lift
that stay, unless we're in an absolute apocalyptic crisis.

* upon further research, the main support for freedom of travel is under the Privileges and Immunities Clause [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law), but doesn't really matter, it's precedent either way.

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enitihas
Does the US not have any emergency clause? If it is truly needed, I think even
the US would be able to do it.

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dukoid
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_States)

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sm4rk0
It's 16 million now.

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AncientTree
This is an extreme overreaction for a disease which is only fatal to the
elderly:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/feg5st/average_age_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/feg5st/average_age_of_covid19_deaths_in_italy/)

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dang
Please don't do this "only the elderly" thing here. It's already a flamewar
trope.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

