
Tell HN: My MD says that Europe is not preparing for containment but pandemic - eveningcoffee
I had doctor visit on Friday and naturally I cried about the situation and requested why not enough is being done to contain the virus in Europe.<p>It was explained to me that a lot is being done but nobody is preparing for containment but for pandemic.<p>I do not know how much of this is true but it would explain the delayed reaction. They have just given up and consider the containment (politically?) impossible.<p>It is also possible that a media campaign has started to condition people to accept this https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.corriere.it&#x2F;salute&#x2F;malattie_infettive&#x2F;20_marzo_05&#x2F;chi-sono-morti-positivi-coronavirus-italia-787076ba-5f18-11ea-bf24-0daffe9dc780.shtml (if you know about more such articles then please reference in comments).<p>To my surprise, my doctor&#x27;s personal opinion also aligns with this sentiment that it is OK when old people die.<p>I am sharing this because it has helped me to better cope with the situation mentally.<p>I am upset that the human life is not valued but I do not have to pull my hair out while seeing nothing meaningful being done.
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nostrademons
Containment was already impossible when news first broke in the west in late
January. At that point the virus had already escaped not just Wuhan, but
China. With airborne spread, r0 of 3-5, asymptomatic carriers, and ~2 weeks
between infection and when it becomes severe enough to warrant medical
treatment, it's virtually impossible to trace all infections. All it takes is
one getting through screening and you have a massive epidemic - that seems to
be what happened in Italy. Epidemiologists have estimated that it's been
circulating in the Seattle area since at least mid-January - that was about 10
days _before_ any news of it hit Western media.

For some reason people tend not to react well when told "You will get it.
Guaranteed. There's nothing you can do about it. If you're young and healthy
you have about a 1 in 500 chance of dying from it; if you're old and sick it
could be as much as 1 in 4." It may not be that your doctor thinks it's OK
when old people die, just that it's inevitable, and it's not worth worrying
about inevitable things.

~~~
eveningcoffee
I think if people really think that all human life should be valued then every
country would have implemented measures similar to China.

I thought first that it is incompetence but apparently it is possibly just
matter of values.

~~~
nostrademons
China doesn't value human life - if they did they would never let air
pollution in Wuhan get to the point where a good day is like the Bay Area when
all of California is on fire, or have opened their arms to Phillip Morris such
that > 50% of Chinese men are smokers.

China values political survival, and they know that if dead bodies are piling
up on the streets, the days of the regime are numbered. That's why you see all
these harsh quarantines now. Eventually they'll drop the quarantines, the
coronavirus will re-infect China (because that's what viruses do), and about
20M people will die, quietly.

~~~
eveningcoffee
I do not agree or disagree but I have thought that what strategy the Chinese
have in mind.

They took very hard measures to contain the virus inside China but they did
not close the borders to not let it spread out of the China.

Do they plan to close the borders now to keep the virus out of China as this
would be politically more acceptable for them?

Because if there is pandemic then also they should be expected to have it
again, or they will use some measures to keep it happening?

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bjourne
You can't really stop a virus. But on the bright side, in France only 11
persons have died of 949 infections. In Germany no one has died despite 800
infections. That indicates that with access to proper medical services the
death rate is actually quite low.

Find stats here:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-
maps.html)

The death rate for European countries is about 0.7% at the moment.

~~~
DanBC
Those hospitalisations cause pressure on healthcare systems, which means that
people without covid-19 but with other life threatening respiratory problems
are at increased risk of death.

~~~
bjourne
Is there any indication that the health care system will fail in any European
country excluding Italy?

~~~
scalesolved
At the current point no, if we hit anything like 1% or above infected in a
single country then yes we'll probably see that.

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imhoguy
Current containment efforts are made to let medical care systems handle the
outbreak in a controlled way.

SARS-CoV-2 will be with us forever, maybe not everyone will get infected
because of some immunity factor we haven't learned yet. But we are not going
to be all isolated forever. Human contact is essential for our survival too.

------
mindcrime
_I am upset that the human life is not valued_

I'm not sure how you get "human life is not valued" from this. Even here in
the US there is a lot of talk about how containment simply isn't going to be
successful, and that we might as well accept that this is going to be a
widespread pandemic. If containment is going to fail no matter what we do,
then pretending otherwise isn't going to help.

OTOH, accepting a pandemic, and the possible presence of a new seasonal
affliction doesn't mean people don't value human life. There are still people
working on (a) vaccine(s) for this, and treatments for it (or researching if
existing treatments for similar viruses may help with this). If a vaccine is
successfully developed, then we don't necessarily have to accept large numbers
of deaths from Covid19 over the long-term. Yes, _some_ people are going to
die, but that seems like a tautology anyway to me.

~~~
DanBC
> I'm not sure how you get "human life is not valued" from this.

See for example this retired nurse who says that a pandemic would be a useful
way to kill off many old people who tend to cause patient-flow ("bed
blocking") in the system.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-
news-u...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-news-uk-
latest-june-andrews-bed-blockers-hospitals-scottish-parliament-a9384116.html)

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not saying there are NO examples of people who don't value human life. I
was just referring to the context of the story the OP told in the original
post. That, to me, didn't seem to contain much support for the "human life
isn't valued" sentiment.

Beyond that... all sorts of people have different moral/ethical systems. I
suppose people who believe in some brands of utilitarianism can adopt the
position you cite here, and feel that it's justified.

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eveningcoffee
I think that there are more layers in this story. There is medical community
and there are politicians.

I expected that medical community would strongly advise in such situation
about the policy that would save the most lives.

It is possible to politicians will find courage to take measures that will
save lives. It is now up to them to find this courage.

