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So every week, it seems as though it's getting worse. Israel is basically gonna shut down it's airport. Northern Italy, the cool part with the hot women, is under lockdown. Public events are being cancelled. Dublin cancels St. Paddy's day.
Are we, that is the government and organizations, over reacting? Thousands of people die of flu every year, and most people aren't even aware of it.

Regular flu spreading is really slow & requires multiple exposure. This new Covid-19 is fast & skews old in a world of old people.

I've already stated my position on this.  Since then, it appears the worst case scenarios in terms of mortality rates can be ruled out.  The true mortality is probably no greater than 1 percent.  But it is definitely significantly more deadly than the seasonal flu - probably 5 to 10 times more deadly.  Which is pretty bad considering how deadly seasonal flu can be despite the existence of vaccines.

Quite possibly, from next year, nobody will care who catches Covid-19. But to me it seems we cannot be certain of how dangerous it is. Plus we might still have a chance of getting mostly rid of it. The responsible thing in this situation is to over-react.

I think they are too passive and should do much more aggressive and far reaching quarantine and control of travellers. Social isolation helps against the virus.

Governments and organizations are mostly under-reacting. Individuals are mostly over-reacting*.

Agree with everyone. When you don't know the risk but there's a potential tail risk of total ruin, you massively overreact and you do it early. Just look at Iran. You can be paranoid and wrong 1000's of times and survive fine, be blasé once and be wrong and you're dead.

Quote from: Maximus on March 09, 2020, 11:30:52 AM
Governments and organizations are mostly under-reacting. Individuals are mostly over-reacting*.

It's kinda funny, individuals overreacting in this instance helps the society by curtailing the spread. I don't do handshakes, wash hands frequently, I've set up a home gym, I avoid public gatherings for instance by shopping a lot more in bulk to reduce my social connectivity.

The actual risk of catching the virus is miniscule, therefore it is "irrational" to panic like this but if everyone dosen't act ultra-cautiously the virus will spread and severe risk to society will happen.

I say we should all start culling the elderly before they are infected and extracting vital minerals and amino acids from them.  Then we should panic.

I don't like shaking hands anyway, it turns out that it takes me 30 seconds to wash my hands (though I have increased the frequency) and i don't like the gym or restaurants so now have a great excuse not to bother. For me at least semi-isolation is a breeze  :cool:

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on March 09, 2020, 11:44:45 AM
I don't like shaking hands anyway, it turns out that it takes me 30 seconds to wash my hands (though I have increased the frequency) and i don't like the gym or restaurants so now have a great excuse not to bother. For me at least semi-isolation is a breeze  :cool:

:lol:

I must admit it would not be a dramatic lifestyle change for me either.

Quote from: Tamas on March 09, 2020, 11:22:23 AM
Quite possibly, from next year, nobody will care who catches Covid-19. But to me it seems we cannot be certain of how dangerous it is. Plus we might still have a chance of getting mostly rid of it. The responsible thing in this situation is to over-react.

Yeah I've no idea. Like we could all look back on this and wonder what the panic was about or it could be severe.

My impression of the UK government is it's under-reacting. I also wonder how much we're learning from South Korea - some of the testing stuff we've picked up, but I think there's more we could do/learn.

My impression of the US government is that it's looking profoundly negligent at best, especially on testing. The numbers in the US, given the low number of tests that have apparently been done seem worrying to me.

I also think there's a bit too much reliance on the government to impose measures. I've said before but I think the Premier League should, at a minimum, have advised elderly ticket-holders to stay away and, honestly, should probably be playing games behind closed doors. Multiple crowds across the country of 30,000+ people from all over the country and, at certain grounds, overseas strikes me as risky.

I get the stuff around individuals over-reacting - and yet I still see people not covering their mouthes when they cough/sneeze :ultra:

Agree with everyone else. Individuals who hoard toilet paper and plan for a Charlton Heston Omega Man type outcome are being a bit melodramatic. Because its a horrible virus and new and it kills old people fairly reliably, the right thing for national governments to do is to over react, economy be damned, and contain it and push it back. It seems like the Chinese have had the most success.

(https://ghostof82.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/omega1.jpg?w=640)

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 11:31:42 AM
Agree with everyone. When you don't know the risk but there's a potential tail risk of total ruin, you massively overreact and you do it early. Just look at Iran.

... or climate change.

Quote from: fromtia on March 09, 2020, 11:49:29 AM
Agree with everyone else. Individuals who hoard toilet paper and plan for a Charlton Heston Omega Man type outcome are being a bit melodramatic. Because its a horrible virus and new and it kills old people fairly reliably, the right thing for national governments to do is to over react, economy be damned, and contain it and push it back. It seems like the Chinese have had the most success.

Although I still have a slight conspiracy about China.

I am suspicious that it basically got very out of hand in Wuhan with local officials covering it up/dealing with it locally, before they decided to inform their bosses/national government before Chinese New Year when it couldn't be kept local any longer. By which point it was probably too late.

I think we will get to see which approach works best as time goes by; each country is adopting different measures after all. There is going to be so much hindsight in 2021  :P

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 09, 2020, 11:55:21 AM

Quote from: fromtia on March 09, 2020, 11:49:29 AM
Agree with everyone else. Individuals who hoard toilet paper and plan for a Charlton Heston Omega Man type outcome are being a bit melodramatic. Because its a horrible virus and new and it kills old people fairly reliably, the right thing for national governments to do is to over react, economy be damned, and contain it and push it back. It seems like the Chinese have had the most success.

Although I still have a slight conspiracy about China.

I am suspicious that it basically got very out of hand in Wuhan with local officials covering it up/dealing with it locally, before they decided to inform their bosses/national government before Chinese New Year when it couldn't be kept local any longer. By which point it was probably too late.

It is an interesting display of the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese system. Local third-rate officials fail to send the bad news up to the top because they are frightened of their leaders; but once it was all known incredible discipline and rapid deployment of countermeasures. I'm not sure we (the UK for example) are going to be able to replicate that discipline.

Quote from: Syt on March 09, 2020, 11:54:54 AM... or climate change.

I've never had any problem with switching up the entire planet's energy mix purely out of precaution. I just don't need the endless hysterics from doomsday Thunbergian mental cases. I need engineers and 100 years. And as you can see climate change is not the only thing we need to pay attention to.

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:03:40 PM
I just don't need the endless hysterics from doomsday Thunbergian mental cases. I need engineers and 100 years. And as you can see climate change is not the only thing we need to pay attention to.

Ok but without the doomsayers are you going to get your engineers and resources? Somebody has to generate the political pressure.

Quote from: Valmy on March 09, 2020, 12:05:41 PM

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:03:40 PM
I just don't need the endless hysterics from doomsday Thunbergian mental cases. I need engineers and 100 years. And as you can see climate change is not the only thing we need to pay attention to.

Ok but without the doomsayers are you going to get your engineers and resources? Somebody has to generate the political pressure.

Except they are counter-productive. You can only predict imminent doomsday so many times before people tune you out. What's Greta gonna do after 5 years and we're not all dead? She can go nag the Chinese, a billion plus Mono's. They'll just laugh at her and wonder if she'd make good soup stock to go with their bats.

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:11:08 PM

Quote from: Valmy on March 09, 2020, 12:05:41 PM

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:03:40 PM
I just don't need the endless hysterics from doomsday Thunbergian mental cases. I need engineers and 100 years. And as you can see climate change is not the only thing we need to pay attention to.

Ok but without the doomsayers are you going to get your engineers and resources? Somebody has to generate the political pressure.

Except they are counter-productive. You can only predict imminent doomsday so many times before people tune you out. What's Greta gonna do after 5 years and we're not all dead? She can go nag the Chinese, a billion plus Mono's. They'll just laugh at her and wonder if she'd make good soup stock to go with their bats.

I mean people have been doomsaying for 30 years but somehow you still know people like Greta exists which kind of proves your point wrong, if you were right everybody would have stopped doing anything about global warming 25 years ago. Everybody being complacent and silent about it isn't going to work. You need people talking about this to get your engineers and resources.

Frankly I don't know much about Greta besides the fact that some media love her and the right wing nutcases DESPISE her all despite her saying nothing new that hasn't been said thousands of times. But I guess she had to say it for some people to pay attention. But if you want to make the case that right wing nutters now won't go along with global warming precautions just because they hate some random person, well they have been pushing back against it forever.

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 09, 2020, 11:55:21 AM
Although I still have a slight conspiracy about China.

I am suspicious that it basically got very out of hand in Wuhan with local officials covering it up/dealing with it locally, before they decided to inform their bosses/national government before Chinese New Year when it couldn't be kept local any longer. By which point it was probably too late.

I dont think this is conspiracy, although Im not terribly well informed, I think this is what went down. The municipal and regional government pooped in the bed, the National government stepped in and fired lazers out of their eyes.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on March 09, 2020, 11:55:46 AM
I think we will get to see which approach works best as time goes by; each country is adopting different measures after all. There is going to be so much hindsight in 2021  :P

Well the US is certainly an outlier - but it seems that those of us with variations of single payor systems seem to be reacting roughly the same way.

Quote from: Maximus on March 09, 2020, 11:30:52 AMIndividuals are mostly over-reacting*.

Most people I know are definitely under-reacting. I can't even convince my mom to stay put.

Quote from: Josephus on March 09, 2020, 11:10:18 AM
So every week, it seems as though it's getting worse. Israel is basically gonna shut down it's airport. Northern Italy, the cool part with the hot women, is under lockdown. Public events are being cancelled. Dublin cancels St. Paddy's day.
Are we, that is the government and organizations, over reacting? Thousands of people die of flu every year, and most people aren't even aware of it.

Not a universal response.  Some maybe over panicking, like Israel, but I'll admit I haven't followed the situation over there, so maybe they were justified if there were many travels from infected area.

Some countries are not reacting fast enough (USA...), some are doing fine because the provinces managed to get their head out of their arse, not because some idiot suddenly realized provinces are concerned and ask them to be ready :roll: (yeah, I'm talking about the clown in disguise from Ottawa).

Death isn't the only danger.  Stock markets react because the fear a shortage of labour due to too many sick people and a lockdown, as it happenned in Wuhan and northern Italy, not because they fear everyone will die.  Is the panick overblown?  Well that's the thing with stock markets, every big event is usually overblown.

It's not like we have whole cities being locked down at gunpoint. In this country.

Still more likely to be killed by a car.

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:11:08 PM
You can only predict imminent doomsday so many times before people tune you out.

It has worked as a strategy for Christianity since the start...

Quote from: PDH on March 09, 2020, 03:46:44 PM

Quote from: Legbiter on March 09, 2020, 12:11:08 PM
You can only predict imminent doomsday so many times before people tune you out.

It has worked as a strategy for Christianity since the start...

And people have tuned it out.

Quote from: saskganesh on March 09, 2020, 03:34:14 PM
It's not like we have whole cities being locked down at gunpoint. In this country.

Still more likely to be killed by a car.

You're much more likely to be killed by a car.

If you're over 70 though, I'm not so sure about that.  There are over 6.5 million Canadians 65 or older...

I actually did the math yesterday. Even a healthy Spaniard between 30 and 34 will be far more likely to die from Coronavirus if it reaches enough population.

Quote from: Barrister on March 09, 2020, 03:54:27 PM

Quote from: saskganesh on March 09, 2020, 03:34:14 PM
It's not like we have whole cities being locked down at gunpoint. In this country.

Still more likely to be killed by a car.

You're much more likely to be killed by a car.

If you're over 70 though, I'm not so sure about that.  There are over 6.5 million Canadians 65 or older...

My father is 75 and has a serious heart condition (they've talked about him going on the transplant list, he struggles to walk up a flight of stairs).

At first he was planning to lock himself down when corona virus hit. But he had a change of heart and is planning on going to a baseball game this weekend and a rodeo next weekend, and generally just live life as he normally would, while taking simple precautions.

I considered telling him that is a bad idea, but is it? His life expectancy is probably ~5 years. If the virus is floating around for 6 months, that is 10% of his remaining life expectancy (and likely his healthiest 10%). Is that more or less than the percent chance of catching the virus and then perishing?

Quote from: Barrister on March 09, 2020, 03:54:27 PM

Quote from: saskganesh on March 09, 2020, 03:34:14 PM
It's not like we have whole cities being locked down at gunpoint. In this country.

Still more likely to be killed by a car.

You're much more likely to be killed by a car.

If you're over 70 though, I'm not so sure about that.  There are over 6.5 million Canadians 65 or older...

I friend of mine made a comment about this today:

QuoteMore people die in auto accidents than playing Russian roulette.

If the conclusion you read from this is that Russian roulette is safer than driving into work in the morning, you might not be cut out for a career in epidemiology.

Quote from: Iormlund on March 09, 2020, 04:03:12 PM
I actually did the math yesterday. Even a healthy Spaniard between 30 and 34 will be far more likely to die from Coronavirus if it reaches enough population.

A healthy Spaniard is unlikely to get very sick, nevermind dying, from the virus.

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 09, 2020, 05:10:10 PM

Quote from: Iormlund on March 09, 2020, 04:03:12 PM
I actually did the math yesterday. Even a healthy Spaniard between 30 and 34 will be far more likely to die from Coronavirus if it reaches enough population.

A healthy Spaniard is unlikely to get very sick, nevermind dying, from the virus.

Neither are they likely to die from a car accident.

Quote from: Iormlund on March 09, 2020, 02:06:49 PM

Quote from: Maximus on March 09, 2020, 11:30:52 AMIndividuals are mostly over-reacting*.

Most people I know are definitely under-reacting. I can't even convince my mom to stay put.

yeah, both my parents are in their mid-80s, and they're totally ambivalent. I guess they feel they've lived thorugh shit like this many times.

Seems like there should be some option in between the first 2.  But then again, poorly designed polls are a tradition here.