Proof? Lol. The proof is in the definition. — Harry Hindu

I just explained it is no proof.

Unless you have some extreme position where you don't want the police, justice system ensuring property rights are defined and allocated, voting for management of at least these systems, then you are admitting that to pursue your goal you need some institutions.

You have no proof that your list of institutions and laws is actually optimum, or even remotely close to the optimum, to pursue your goal.

It's like saying "I want to travel light, as less mass means less energy needed to get to where I am going; therefore, I will walk naked from New York to San Fransisco without any supplies at all". Then saying "proof by definition!" when someone points out this doesn't follow in the slightest.

You still dont get it. Libertarians arent concerened with telling others how to live. They only rule is "Do as you will but dont tread on me". — Harry Hindu

But that's telling people how to live. You're telling them not to tread on you.

To make sure it's not a suggestion but an ideal enforced as best you can, you want police and a justice system to safeguard property rights. Maybe other institutions to then safeguard those institutions, etc.

If your scheme isn't enough institutions designed in the right way to be stable, you may lose even those institutions you think are in fact necessary and someone treads on you hard.

I am arguing public education and health policies protect more from the situations you want to avoid, not less. What's your counter argument? Other than telling me how to live and to not tread on you.

Libertarians want less govt and that means minimizing any one group or individual imposing their ideals on others. — Harry Hindu

There's no proof of this.

For instance, I would argue that healthy educated people can more easily minimize one group of individuals imposing their ideals on others.

Health and education make people more capable and efficient.

Now, granted, to have these healthy educated people we need to impose the ideal of wanting a healthy and educated population and pursue policies that accomplish that. I am willing to impose that ideal on society, not ashamed to say it.

Now, let's say to get rid of me imposing this ideal, you convince everyone that, even if they agree with that ideal they shouldn't impose it through the institution of voting that you do pursue, along with me, imposing on people. Ok, voting is part of the 3 ideals that you do impose on people, along with the police and property rights, no need to debate why, of course, as that may lead to a framework of reasoning from which to impose a dreaded 4th ideal, which we want to avoid, so better not to know why these 3 institutions but no more!

People agree, vote to ensure there's not an optimum health or education public policy, not even close.

Time passes, let's say, purely for the sake of argument, someone comes along who's clearly a corrupt self centered narcissist and also incompetent along most dimensions of institutions management, even 3 is too much for him; but low educated people like him and vote for him, he gets into office, imposes his ideal of a trillion dollar deficit on everyone and then incompetently manages the small public health institution you did allow in a sort of 3.5 institutions reasoning, that institution was then inefficient in stopping a public health crisis, and that leader, thinking nothing other than his own ego and money, did nothing to intervene early, because government intervention should be minimized and he has no clue what's going on anyways before it's too late to prevent a serious crisis.

Then the crisis unfolds, and large portions of people's freedoms you've been trying to preserve with your system, such as the freedom to just travel and meet who and where you want in whatever number you want, are now curtailed. Is this more or less freedom than the freedom lost in other people having access to health care and education that would mitigate, maybe even completely prevented, this "severe freedom restrictions" scenario?

Just, purely for the sake of argument, what if "less institutions" to ensure "more freedom" actually resulted in "less institutions causing less freedom"?

Lol. Do you even understand what that means? It means that we don't need a bloated govt to tell everyone else how to live. — Harry Hindu

But you still need a government to tell people to live within the laws that you have in your system, and maintain the institutions to accomplish that.

You're just saying your religion with 3 rules is not a religion compared to a religion with 5 rules.

However, your society still has to compete with other society's, so if 5 good rules are better than 3, people may change their religion to the 5 rules because it has better outcomes.

SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) is a good example. SARS (another corona virus) jumped from animals to humans and first appeared in China in 2002, then showed up in several distant places. SARS has a very high fatality rate (15%, and 55% for elderly patients). — Bitter Crank

Yes, but the difference with SARS is that, because it was so dangerous, containment was serious and effective.

We not only allowed Coronavirus to spread by plane, but abandoned effective containment as to not annoy a lot of plane travelers and so as to avoid a small decrease in airline and boeing stock 2 months ago. Obviously, not realizing airline stocks would be far lower as well as the stock market in general if containment was not pursued seriously, just shows how easily Western leaders are deluded by their own propaganda. Coronavirus is less dangerous than SARS, for the moment anyway, but still dangerous enough to cause all these extreme measures to be taken now; however, it seemed it was below a psychological threshold for our leaders and the general population to not take it seriously.

It's like dismissing a danger that will cut off your hand because "well, it's not like it's my head". Of course, anyone who has such an idea clearly changes it when their hand is being crushed in the gearing. Completely predictable. Easy to talk a tough game of "not even a head bro, not even a head", a lot harder to be zen when one's hand is being slowly pulverized.

Continental Europe, slightly less deluded and so slightly more responsible, but the UK and US reactions have really shown who has drank most of the coolaid.

The implications is those that survive will be immune. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I've made that assumption clear. One of the unknown risks of the disease is re-infection rates of the same strain, which can happen with some disease, and of course mutation into a new strain.

If you're just repeating my points, thanks for pointing that out.

Thanks, China. — Harry Hindu

Yes, I think it very plausible China wanted to maintain air travel to make sure everyone else suffered as much or worse, in a zero-sum game view of geopolitics.

However, we've had all the data needed to make an optimum containment strategy regardless of what China wants. The West didn't pursue an optimum containment strategy, for neo-liberal ideological reasons according to my analysis, and the West is now paying the price for inviting the virus in to grow in an explosive manner, and soon essentially everyone will pay the price.

There were lot's of policy tools available to slow the spread to something manageable and all the information needed to design such policy since the start of the year.

Socialists can only be authoritarian as they think they know what is "good" gor everyone, and want to impose their morality on everyone else. It really is no different than a religion. — Harry Hindu

But don't you want to impose your morality of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism on everyone else?

I agree, I wan to impose my morality of rule of law, universal health care, free education, and similar institutions on everyone. But don't you want to impose your morality of property rights, police and courts to manage those property rights, maybe some fire fighters, on everyone?

Seems, as per your definition, just a different kind of religion, just less institutions are desired but no fundamental difference. You claim your morality, if imposed on everyone, would be the best for society, so do I.

Even though only 40% (+ or -) of adults get vaccinated for influenza each year, that is still many millions of people who won't get, and thus won't transmit, the influenza virus. — Bitter Crank

Flu vaccine doesn't really change the conclusion, as it does not provide 100% immunity, flu is constantly evolving to defeat the vaccine policy.

And what is essentially for certain is there won't be a vaccine for this first wave, which I'm currently focusing on as lot's of members of the discussion don't seem to understand the implications of this first wave.

A good basis of comparison to this first wave is the flu but no one's immune, and a high case fatality rate, as with the Spanish flu.

What's different today is that global travel, because there was no travel freeze when it could have made big difference, has done a great job of mixing up the disease in the major economies in a short period of time.

The flu" doesn't really describe a particular disease, but each year it's a different strain. If you're saying that at some point in everyone's life they'll get some viral infection, I think that's obvious, but that doesn't equate to saying that each year we should expect 100% (or anywhere close to it) will get that year's particular virus. — Hanover

That's exactly what I explain:

And if it keeps coming back like the flu where one part of the population has lost immunity due to a new strain, — boethius

Why it's considered the same disease is because it's phenomenologically similar, and descends fro the previous strains, just like you're considered the same person even if you cut your hair -- your different, but still the same person. A new strain that defeats immunity can be a small change like different hair for the virus; so it's considered the same disease, and the word "strain" is used to differentiate. That's why I used the word strain ... and also why you used the word strain in the same sentence as making the overall point that "it's actually a different disease".

The answer to whatever your'e trying to figure out will be found by looking at actual infection rates over time, not by whatever calculations you're throwing together. I can say that I've never been in a school or work situation where 70% of the people were gone due to the flu. — Hanover

Again, my comment explains why this is the case. Many people are immune to the new flu at any given time, and many others have so mild symptoms they think it's just a cold. So not everyone gets it any given year.

But take a new strain of highly infectious flu, such as happened in 1918, that no one seems immune to, and a high mortality rate relative the "normal flu" we have today, and the situation is very different.

My calculations are based on what we know so far.

- It's highly infectious
- No one has existing immunity to it
- It has demonstrated ability to kill of 0.5 - 1 % percent of cases in good care conditions, such as South Korea were infection rate was lowered to a manageable number, at least so far.
- It has demonstrated ability to kill 3 - 5 percent of cases in sub-optimal care conditions, such as Wuhan and Italy, were cases exceeded the medical systems ability to handle them.
- We do not know how many "mild" infections there are that don't result in cases, but the ice-burg hypothesis seems extremely unlikely at this time, as random sampling testing of the population has not revealed an iceberg of mild or asymptomatic cases, as is being done in Germany; there are some of these asymptomatic or super mild, but not close to twice as many, much less on the order of 10 times needed to significantly lower the danger and change policy to "it's not so bad guys", it is a few percent in this category.

Now, there can be lot's of infections that are in the incubation or first symptoms stage that have not moved yet towards cases and hospitalizations, but that is simply a time lag problem matching observations to the best model of what's going on requires estimating those infections and extrapolating critical care cases. However, in the "uncontrolled spread" scenario we don't care about current cases, just a ballpark estimate of infection to case ratio, and case fatality in triage conditions.

So, if left to go out of control, we could estimate 70% of people on the earth getting it this year, and if we conservatively estimate there's double undiagnosed and never diagnosed infections currently, so a 2.5% infection fatality that then matches up with 5% case fatality, then this is 120 million deaths this year.

I have not seen any data or analysis to suggest uncontrolled spread would far lower, such as 0.2%, than that estimate.

Of course, it's completely unfeasible to have an uncontrolled spread policy, so we're seeing extreme actions that will have a large affect on how things play out: these extreme actions are motivated to avoid this 70% infected, 1-5% infection fatality situation.

Even if the death rate were 5% of those infected, that wouldn't equate anywhere near 5% of the total population. Communicable diseases are common and with no controls at all come no where near infecting 100% of the population. — Hanover

Communicable diseases that aren't controlled but don't reach 100% is because the disease has a hard time spreading. Maybe very dangerous, but is not crazy infectious.

Something very infectious, like the flu, basically does infect close to 100% of people, just not in any given year as a large portion of the population still has immunity. But eventually, nearly everyone gets the flu at least once.

For a new disease, highly infectious, and no one has immunity, without controls, the base line assumption is it would infect about 70 percent of people, at least.

Once infected, including recovered and now immune, population passes 50 percent then the disease has a hard time finding new hosts, as now the majority of people are either recovered or already infected. Especially if those that aren't yet infected is because of behavior that lowers their chances, which is statically guaranteed. So 20 or 30 percent may not get infected.

For instance, something very infectious like cold sores, follows this pattern and it's thought 50 to 80% of adults have it. We aren't bothered too much by this because cold sores don't put 10% of people in intensive care within weeks of getting the disease, and large amounts of people are getting it for the first time because it's a new disease.

Which is why I used 70 percent of people get infected in my calculation.

However, that's only true for 1 wave. If the disease comes back in another wave, then statistically you're going to "get" part of that population that didn't get it the first time. And if it keeps coming back like the flu where one part of the population has lost immunity due to a new strain, then you'll get close to 100 percent over several waves. This maybe the case of corona.

But in terms of the short term consequences, I have been mainly discussing the first wave.

In the first wave, assuming the disease stays the same, and no effective treatment is found, especially applicable to large numbers that would otherwise be triaged, if nothing is done to slow the infection rate, such as the little measures that have been taken so far in the US, then numbers can get really big, really fast.

Clearly not anywhere close to the "uncontrolled" case, but big enough to cause major disruptions, and a single doubling time left to its own devices can result in a very different situation. Whatever problem you already have, now you have two of them.

1800+ as of yesterday. I can't find if there's a separate number for triage deaths though. — Benkei

Yes, I was off by a factor of 0.3 in my lower bound estimate in making the point that order of magnitude differences in deaths have much different implications.

But it will be at 3000 shortly in Italy. Death rate is still rising

368 die of coronavirus in Italy in 24 hours — CNN

And this is with measures that were taken, albeit too late to avoid overload, but relatively proactively based on testing. So, the US could be much worse.

An order of magnitude worse would have very different implications not simply for the health system but for societally and politically. According to official confirmed cases, the number of cases increases by an order of magnitude every 2 weeks about, so waiting for that to happen by not testing and downplaying can have a massive difference in outcome. A week of delay of the needed response can mean 2 doubling times.

Of course, apologists for Trump will say "ahh, but he's learning now! he's doing what's needed now! He stopped the flights". This misses the point that response to this sort of situation needs to be quick and needs to be informed by real data. Neither of which happened, and so the situation is going to be bad. Howe bad will depend on how out of control the virus has been left to spread before extreme measures are taken.

As I'm sure you agree with this basic point.

And I'm sure you will also be amused that when deaths aren't in the "do nothing case" of millions, because "something was done", the same apologists for Trump will say "see, see, I told you so! not thaaaat many people died".

I've previously been arguing why "the sooner the better" for lowering the rate of infection, there is no scenario where the economic costs of stopping flights a month ago would be higher than the economic costs we're seeing now, nor is there a scenario where you want to "make a quick dash to heard immunity".

As an epidemiologist wrote:

I’m an epidemiologist. When I heard about Britain’s ‘herd immunity’ coronavirus plan, I thought it was satire — https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19

Obviously, defending against a threat is not possible by letting that threat run rampant. It's like resolving a fire hazard in your house by burning down your house; yes, situation now resolved, but if the goal was to prevent or stop the fire the concept of "fires do burn out you know when they have no more fuel", isn't helpful. Yes, by maximizing the damage the damage can be mitigated.

Apparently the UK is walking back the whole "herd immunity strategy" and some officials are now explaining it was just "a medical concept" but not an actual strategy.

They've decided "isolate 70 year olds" is a nice stepping stone to ease themselves into admitting eventually, as in today or tomorrow, that they'll do as the rest of Europe is doing. BUT! And this is the critical point, their followers will remain ignorant of the easily avoidable mistakes made along that story arch of self realization.

It's going to be just like Mad Max. I'm telling you. Total disaster. — frank

I've already explained it cannot get to a madmax outcome since 85-90% of cases recover easily. So letting it just go out of control and killing whomever it can as quickly as possible, wouldn't collapse society. The 90 - 95% (as not all people become cases) of people that survive can easily just carry on.

So, even if society chose to maximize deaths by doing absolutely nothing to slow infection, it's still not a mad max scenario.

Stop wagging your finger at that straw man.

However, just straight up letting 5% of people die without any attempt to help them is obviously not politically feasible.

Even 5000 isn't politically desirable as @ssu notes.

Italy is already at 3000 deaths mostly due to triage conditions (and it's not finished, if it peaked symmetrically right now deaths would end up about 6000 as a rough estimate, and current estimate is it's not peaking right now), so assuming 5000 triage deaths is a rough lower bound for deaths in the US (I don't think reasonable guess by a wide margin, but for the sake of argument, such as a scenario where containment was pursued competently); well, 5000 is not good, but not the worst cause of death this year by a long shot as has been well established on this thread. Unfortunate, but social and political consequences would not be extreme, one political football among many and one more disease for doctors to deal with (going the way of N1H1 that was soon mostly forgotten).

However, the only way to keep those deaths low is to slow the rate of infection. The reason Italy got to triage conditions is because they didn't take these measures early enough.

So between 5000 and 5 000 000 there's a wide spectrum of different health and political outcomes.

Since there's no adequate testing in the states, no way to get a good statistical understanding of the current status of infection (which then results in hospital visits in a 5-10 day lag, 10-15% of the time, which is a big number for something 70% of people could get in a short time frame).

So, infection rates could already be much higher than Italy, resulting in much more deaths. The more deaths, the more consequences to society through a bunch of second order effects I describe above.

H1N1 has a reputation for hating pregnant women. We'll see if this virus is any different. — frank

Fortunately, there's not much evidence it's really bad for babies, and I believe also pregnant women haven't had it particularly worse. Luckily, children really do seem fairly unaffected, which is definitely a silver lining in the situation.

I don't know where you're getting your figures, but I assume others have already tried to explain to you that you're wrong, and failed. — frank

No one has, but please do try.

You seem to be concerned with all the young healthy people. Most of them will either have no symptoms, mild symptoms, or they'll feel like shit for a couple of weeks. They won't burden the system too much more than all the other viruses are already doing.

I'd be happy to join you in talking about triaging hundreds of people in one day, rounding them up in convention centers, etc. That's almost a philosophical issue (not quite.) There just isn't any reason at all to think that we'll need to do that. None. — frank

Ok, well let's talk in a week or two.

As triage is happening in Italy right now ... doesn't seem that philosophic to me. But if you only care about the states, then let's wait. If it doesn't happen, then we can talk hypothetically about "had it happened in the US".

Yes, I do care about the old and would rather anyone, old or young, get the care appropriate to the disease.

The disease affects young people less, yes, but many still need critical care and some still die, all at once it is not logistically possible to provide that care.

The point I am making in these last comments is that there is a big difference politically between 5000, 50 000, 500 000, and 5 000 000, people dying in triage conditions.

There's also a big difference politically if marshal law is implemented or not. Even if it's not some sort of uprising, it's a highly symbolic event.

Thanks for the lesson, I'm sure it will be useful for someone not yet informed.

Believe it or not, the situation won't be vastly different in the US than wherever you are. American hospitals don't turn people away from emergency rooms. They just eat the cost. — frank

This is not what's being discussed.

Had the US taken the measures (it's now starting to take) such as cancel events and ramp up testing, and encourage everyone to take it "really seriously", declare an emergency, etc. earlier, then yes, I am in agreement with you: US health system would handle the health part more or less comparatively to Europe. The financial part would be a separate issue that would resolve afterwards one way or another, but the finances wouldn't be a crisis, just evidence for or against universal health care. The finance is the easiest part of this puzzle to solve.

The difference is that the US did not take those measures earlier, so we do not know how many cases are going to hit the health system all at once. Reports are the wave has started, so we're going to find out soon enough.

Once numbers exceed capacity for doctors, no matter how well trained and good intentioned, to deal with so many patients, then people start to go through all the stages you describe but without medical care.

The longer a country delays in taking measures to slow the rate of infection, the more people will be in the situation of "One night you find that you can hardly breathe, so you call an ambulance" but there is no ambulance, or then the ambulance takes you to a tent where you don't get any help.

The more people in such a situation, the greater the social and political consequences.

As per my original position, we are about to find out (yet again) why abandoning containment early was a crazy idea.

That the US saw things unfold in Italy and are now aiming for the Italy baseline as the best case scenario (which I hope transpires), is also crazy.

The paid sick leave option is a good point. But then who will say that they cannot go to work? — ssu

I forgot to elaborate. No paid sick leave means people that really are too sick to work won't get paid. But more importantly, lot's of precarious jobs in the US that may simply disappear all together and it may simply be impossible to even attempt to keep such business and giggers afloat as you don't know who they are as it's not a regular business (without some sort of universal basic income scheme).

I will assume that the US response will be something similar. With the exception that it's the rich that will get tested for corona-virus. So not surprising it's Tom Hanks and wife as the new models for corona victims. — ssu

It won't be similar. European countries have learned from the Italy case, and it is more or less known at which stage each European country is. Tests have been available, especially for people dying of covid19 symptoms.

The danger in the US is that due to delay of testing (even of people dead of Covid19 symptoms) it's gone through more doubling times than anywhere in Europe. Doubling times are as short as 2-3 days, seemingly as short as a day in some conditions (such as people actively trying to spread the virus to stick it to the libs). So a week delay on appropriate response can be really a significant difference on how events then unfold.

Dealing with a twice as big problem is obviously much worse, and if you get to 4,8,16 times bigger scale problem by delaying 10-15 days (4 doubling times), it's really a totally different situation.

The current assumption is the US will be as bad as Italy, but due to lack of testing and thus real data informed strategy it could be much worse.

The problem with these sorts of growth rates is that it's really, really difficult to catch up from behind the problem. Italy delayed more than Wuhan in extreme measures ... new cases haven't leveled off as we speak in Italy and are higher than Wuhan's maximum reported number; so, imagine delaying more than Italy.

If you have a real anxiety disorder, you should ignore me. Do you want to know what happens when they intubate you (to put you on mechanical ventilation)? If you're more informed, maybe you'll be calmer. — frank

I don't live in the US. I am not in a high risk group, but thanks for your concern. Please share your information in the event it does end up being useful to me or then someone else following this discussion.

I'm not really worried about any worse problems other than dealing with the disease happening where I am. Why? Universal health care, social security, etc.

I feel for people unnecessarily suffering or having loved one's dying in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

But since this is a philosophy forum and my main concern is politics, my analysis is that this situation is particularly unstable in the US given the political system. This instability can lead to adjacent negative outcomes in the US, but also have geopolitical consequences; worthwhile to discuss.

That such events are now a serious possibility to consider, is exactly why you don't abandon containment in favour of keeping the stock market from going down a bit (my original purpose to argue when I started in this discussion, as I realized containment was dropped as a strategy).

Now that the window for containment is passed, the window to deny it will explode in the US and elsewhere in Europe has passed, we may as well move onto the likely political outcomes.

Yet hardly a pandemic makes these things happen. It doesn't happen with lightning speed. And this is the time we are at peak hype about it. So... toilet paper riots? — ssu

You are using your European experience as a basis. There are some key differences.

The US does not have paid sick leave, nor quick and easy "keep me alive money" like your infamous Kela (Finnish bureaucrats solve your personal problems on behalf of the government). As soon as people have no money, can't eat, and get violent on, not necessary big scale, just impressive for the news cycle: Marshal law.

The US does not have universal health care, so it's going to be chaos people, government, hospitals, trying to resolve who pays for what. Obviously, the simple solution is for the government to say "ok, we'll pay for all health care" and poor in what money's needed and people just get whatever treatment they need (if they survive the government death panels: i.e. triage), as that's a sensible policy, but the Republicans will have a very difficult time psychologically coming to such a realization, in particular before the chaos begins. As soon as someone attacks a hospital with a gun and succeeds a bit: Marshal law. Such a person may feel cheated of treatment for themselves (for instance, a different chronic disease that can no longer be treated properly), may be aggrieved for lost loved ones that got triaged unjustly in their view, or some other chain of reasoning to violence. Marshal law.

The US does not have free education and rehabilitation based justice system; this fosters a large criminal underclass. These people do crime, it's how they survive. They won't stop because of a pandemic. They see new opportunities and (thanks to poor planning due to a low education quality that is funded to proportional to the value of houses in the neighborhood) get into too many gun battles with the police: Marshal law.

Measures without Marshal law are just not getting the virus under control and the pressure is immense to do so: well, Marshal law.

It's the only institution Trump will have available to deal with any of these problems, and so it is the institution Trump will use.

It's like Mad Max. — frank

Marshal law isn't a mad max scenario. Most people would just be sitting at home.

But if the administration loses it's grip even more of the situation (they're trying to catchup now, have serious press conferences, take everything "really seriously", listen to the experts and build some sort of collectivist spirit of "all America"), then soldiers in the streets will be needed to fix things.

Marshal law will just symbolize how incompetently the whole thing has been managed.

If the virus stays the same, hospitals will be overwhelmed and lot's of people will die in bad conditions, but the virus will end up going through the population and achieve the "herd immunity" strategy all by itself (no government intervention is needed to achieve this goal).

However, what the situation will be like then socially, economically, politically, is hard to predict for the US.

I don't see any reason for people revolting. — ssu

I'm not sure NOS4A2 is talking about a revolt.

For me, however, it's not that people revolt, Marshal law would be needed in the event of "crazy people" vs the police or just your normal gangs vs the police.

Marshal law may also be needed if (due to inaction in slowing the infection rate until now) it's simply way more out of control than even Italy as a base case.

I disagree. Even the libertarian people of the US will adhere to the instructions of the CDC and their local health services. — ssu

Although I agree US libertarians will be fully engaged in the collectivist organization, funding and even proud of their own little personal sacrifices for the common good, I actually agree with .

The institutions needed to keep things stable in the US don't exist as they do here in Europe, and there's no way to create them on short notice.

People are going to get really, really angry for many, many reasons.

There's also a massive organized crime problem in the US due to decades of pursuing a policy to create prison labour and disenfranchise African American voters; a very different situation to the Nordic's where organized crime does exist, but is not a rampant one nor is gun violence the norm within the organized crime community. Thanks to investments in education, social security and a rehabilitation based justice system, so all members of society can "see" the social contract working if they look, which avoids fueling a vast criminal underworld of, essentially, outcasts. Crime gets worse, not better, when the system destabilizes.

It could be managed, but it's a tinderbox.

That's true. It started as an "ordinary flu". The second time around was worse. — ssu

Yes, so if this is starting already at "really bad" our last experience with sort of major pandemic is we can expect it to get even worse.

It is a truly plausible and quite simply terrifying possibility.

When a person is sick with two bad viruses at the same time, genetic material gets mixed and matched and there is quite high probability of a new viable virus ... that maybe solve the weaknesses of one with the strengths of the other.

This is a quite rare occurrence, but in a pandemic so many people are getting a dangerous pathogen that these recombination events become essentially inevitable. We now have more people on the planet, and thus more absolute numbers for such possibilities to occur (there are other factors at play, but they could easily give us worse odds too, I don't think it's possible to know ... ahead of time).

If no action would be taken to fight the disease, there would have already been a lot of pandemics in our lifetime causing similar havoc as the black death or the Spanish flu. — ssu

And this is my point: we simply don't tolerate the idea of many thousands dying in an epidemic as we earlier did. — ssu

Both these statements assume you can make a comparison between "action" and "no action" by estimating the likely outcome of each course of action.

However, I disagree that "we tolerated the idea of many thousands dying in an epidemic as we earlier did". We didn't "tolerate the idea" of, for instance, the Spanish flu; it wasn't just accepted as "that's life", lot's of actions were done from trying to cover it up where it emerged so as not to invite a German attack at a time of weakness, to wide spread fear and disruptions, and a large effort to treat people as best as could be done.

The whole idea of policy measured to reduce rate of infection to something doctors could deal with was discovered in the Spanish flu and from which the classic comparative cases are drawn as the empirical basis for the policy.

The phenomena is very similar to what we are seeing today for a pandemic of comparable mortality.

The case fatality rate was 2.5% for Spanish flu, "not so much", "nothing close to the black death" and yet society remembers this event.

Our coronavirus pandemic today could easily be worse, as we've spread the disease around the globe even more quickly and efficiently and despite our science improvements we have places with a official case fatality rate of between 3 and 5 %, and we do not know what the future holds. It was a second mutated strain making a second wave in the fall that was the most lethal episode of the Spanish flu.

Treatment for critical coronavirus patients is possible, but highly labour and equipment intensive for medical facilities. This is a massive disadvantage compared to Spanish flu.

Making a precise comparison is very tricky (we can for instance count not only deaths but "quality years lost" in which case Spanish flu is weighted much worse; but only so far in this pandemic; if it causes a lot of long term complications the weight may swing back on such a scale), but they are clearly comparable events and the fear is rational now, as it was rational back then. It wasn't just "a tolerated idea" that a disease would come through and kill a bunch of people; people feared such events, and rightly so.

I don't understand. What do you mean? — Shawn

If money isn't your motivation, why would observations of the stock market have any affect on you?

The thing is, you cannot argue with counter-factuals of "What if nothing would be done, then how many would die". — ssu

Obviously you can argue with the counter factual of "What if nothing would be done, then how many would die" by having some basis to estimate the deaths will be low if action isn't taken.

Your whole previous point of drawing a comparison to previous pandemics that didn't have these extreme policy reactions is proof that you can go forward without the measures we're seeing today ... if the deaths really are low enough that "the economic disease" of extreme measures would be worse than "the actual disease" then yes, it's unfortunate it will kill people but it's impossible to shut down society to just delay the inevitable spread of the disease.

In those previous cases where the world reaction wasn't so intense, health systems weren't completely overloaded. That's the difference with this disease, and it's not based on "aha, you can't argue with the counter-factual! now bow to the liberal hysteria!" it's based on the experience that unfolded in Wuhan, Italy, South Korea. The disease explodes in number of cases and is overwhelming until measures are taken to reduce rate of transmission.

If numbers of deaths aren't crazy high, it's because measures were taken. This simple fact should be very obvious by now. If more people aren't already dead in Italy, it's because they've been progressively making more and more intense measures until the infection rate goes below the threshold of what's manageable. That it has not been achieved yet should be extremely worrying of just how dangerous this disease is to enough people that it quickly overwhelms the health system (3 weeks from "we have an outbreak" to shutting down the entire country).

Now, yes, you could just let everyone who can't survive without treatment die and everyone else carry on as normal. The fact is, people don't accept that policy. So, you can argue for a change in values and subsequent change in policy, but the facts simply happen to be this disease is way more deadly than the flu, both seasonal and previous flu pandemics up until the Spanish flu (and the Spanish flu was very disruptive to society and economies; some places avoided the disease for quite some time through extreme measures like quarantines and travel restrictions like we're seeing today; the reason we remember the Spanish flue of 1918 is precisely because it was so disruptive; without treatment Corona virus could easily kill 10% of cases, that's a deadliness on par or higher than the Spanish flu. The difference today is that we have way better treatment for pneumonia and so societies want to save people that can be saved, which requires lowering the infection rate to a level where doctors can treat everyone).

Good for you, then. Money never motivated me so go figure. — Shawn

Then why does a stock market move lead you to change your dealings with people in the first place?

I'm not buying in your scenario, I'm selling.

And I'm raking it in.

then what? — Shawn

Smells like victory to me.

There is little doubt in my mind that Coronovirus is being exploited mercilessly as a profit generating idea, based on fear, anxiety, and hopelessness. — Shawn

Even if that were so, isn't that just good marketing?

Lot's of ideas make money by taking advantage of psychological weaknesses in people. Can Windows and Mac compete with my Debian Linux, I don't see any rational basis for it, but I don't see why I shouldn't wish Microsoft and Apple success in exploiting psychological weakness in people to make them desire their products, that then make it easier for me to compete in the market place with my numerical analysis service taking advantage of software people were foolish enough to give away for free! talk about an ocean of insanity over there. Indeed, I wish Microsoft and Apple all the best. Why, if you've lost money failing to predict these events, I feel nothing for you, but I divert my energies to taking the market share from anyone who made a similar mistake.

You’re seriously under selling your point with those stats. — I like sushi

No, the stats are only a good point if there was some reason to believe deaths and injury from Corrona would of similar magnitude as previous pandemics.

But this whole logic that "the liberals are inventing" is just ridiculous. If Trump was in charge, and the facts didn't warrant "banning flight with Europe for 30 days" and declaring a state of emergency, why would Trump do it then? To please the left? It makes no sense.

Certainly if it was really a hoax or overhyped by keeping a cool head Trump would prove his superior genius and all the other attributes he attributes to himself. Why go along with a ruse if you know it's a ruse and you're the president of the united states?

He even becomes self aware that the logic makes no sense when he has to add "diminished power" before explaining it's all whipped up by liberals.

Based on current case fatality rates under triage conditions, global deaths could be as high as 100 million. If 70 percent of the world gets it and there's 1 non-diagnosed mild case for every "case" and the case fatality is 5 percent, then that's roughly 120 million people. An order of magnitude more deaths than cancer and many additional risks that we simply don't know yet: long term injury, reinfection, complications, more dangerous mutations, etc. Maybe we get lucky ... maybe we don't.

It's these basic numbers that is causing these completely unprecedented responses from governments.

I think most of this is self-inflicted. I observed the plunge in the stock market, and it prompted me towards the conclusion that people are rather not worth dealing with. — Shawn

Why did't you deal with those people in the stock market by placing put options or betting on the winners in this sort of situation, like netflix?

Shouldn't you just learn to make better deals next time? Why conclude you shouldn't deal with people at all in a free market exchange framework? Seems rash.

... Also, why would Scotty be motivated to beam you up in a moneyless society dedicated to the betterment of mankind? Implausible fantasy if you ask me.

I don't know what your position is. Anyway, thinking nowadays is becoming so hard to do that I just lay in bed and relax and hope I go to heaven with my small piece of sanity. — Shawn

Thanks for joining and promptly existing the discussion. Your contribution has been noted and catalogued. I will ask you later if you still think your island is the sane one, once consequences enter your personal sphere it should be easier to judge; hands on learning and all that.

I've never seen so much fear and anxiety. Aspirin kills more people a day than this ever will. — Shawn

Notice how when I say to all these comments "you'll understand in a week or two" none of my astute interlocutors ever comes back with reasons the situation should be expected to be any different than is described currently right now in Italy? But please, try to succeed where others have failed.

I was talking about deaths, not every Corona induced sneeze. 6455/worldwide population is the current number. — Hanover

We're also talking about deaths, but also those in the future which, with foresight, is possible for people to do something about now.

If you want to only talk about current deaths and a hypothetical world where only those matter, you should say so, so that we can dismiss such a topic as irrelevant and not waste our time.

You're at about Feb 15th Italian time. — Baden

This would be the case if there wasn't a quick corporate gift to make a quick buck producing some easy-smeazy test kits. That socialist institution the WHO did it! How hard could it possibly be.

US could be as little as 8 days behind Italy, but actually worse than that because, again without testing, measures are lagging behind and additionally, with the president downplaying, lot's of republicans and other fools felt the need to virtue signal that they didn't fear this "just the flu" by participating in activities and gestures that actually increase the chance of spreading the disease, as well as everyone scrumpling together to panic buy as the free market gracefully responds efficiently to the situation, and to make matters even worse, without sick leave, many just have to work even if they know they're sick. Therefore, more doubling times will be locked in before there is a lock down, resulting in significantly, significantly more problems.

Thanks to testing, Italy did put in place regional travel restrictions and quarantine pretty quick, that those measures weren't good enough to significantly slow the virus should absolutely terrify anyone in the US a saturation is reached without even the benefit of those inadequate measures.

In all seriousness, there are expectations that the death toll in my home state of Georgia will double at some point. It's currently at 1 but on the verge of chaos.

The US is at 41. That's 41/50ths a person per state we've lost. Do you know what it's like to lose just over 80% of a person? It's not pretty I tell you. — Hanover

Let me introduce you to a little concept called "exponential growth", or if you insist on technical mathematical speak, the acceleration phase of a logistics curve of total cases, active and resolved.

Since you're about to get a live demonstration, just circle back if you have any questions once we pass the inflection point and things start to calm down.

Yes, the very large percentage of critical cases (cases that are unlikely to recover without medical intervention), is why abandoning containment as a policy, as I observed when I joined this thread, was so incredibly irresponsible.

Had containment been pursued, and the threat taken seriously, systems would be overwhelmed much slower as well as at different times. This not only "flattens the peak" for each individual health system, making it easier to deal with, but allows other health systems to move resources around to optimize the global community's response (increase capacity where it's needed, take lessons learned from one crisis spot to the next).

The only plausible explanation is that policy makers in the West simply didn't see human life as having any intrinsic value, and by the time the economic consequences were investigated of different approaches (takes a while because economists are not real scientists and they mainly just deal with retro-active predictions and so want to see how things play out elsewhere) it was too late to pursue an optimum strategy both from a public health and economic point of view.

Turns out you really can't serve two masters; you will love the one and hate the other, and your house will be divided in times of crisis.

Any idea why Germany has a CFR almost an order of magnitude lower than everyone else? — Echarmion

Although as mentions, cultural differences have an effect, Germany is not yet overloaded. They also have higher health care capacity due to more sustained public health care investments.

Deaths start to rise with triage. Someone with almost non-functioning lungs can be kept alive on a respirator for weeks. Someone with completely non-functioning lungs can be kept alive with a ECMO machine (filters and oxygenates the blood outside the body).

With capacity, many people that would otherwise die recover, and even the people that don't ever recover can have their life extended by many weeks.

At capacity there will still be differences between outcomes in different places due to average age, average weight (obesity makes it harder to breath and so much harder for the body to deal with pneumonia), smoking, culture etc., but they won't be large differences (not near an order of magnitude difference we are seeing). However, once capacity is reached and the system is forced into triage, as happened in Wuhan and now Italy and Iran, deaths rapidly increase. Lung failure of course kills immediately without intervention.

Of note, because old people are triaged to save the young, this biases the data towards "old people dying" even more, leading (at first) young people to minimize it even more and spread it around even more. Statistics seems to suggest the "true danger" of the virus is actually more-or-less equally dangerous to all age groups in that catching the virus doubles your chances of death this year; however, if you're plus 80 and have a 10% chance of dying this year, now it's 20% so results in way higher absolute numbers for older age groups (in addition to the triage bias).