The Corona Virus

[Forum Explorer]

For what it's worth, my opinion remains largely unchanged, but I don't think it helps to repeat it any more.

Yes, it's a crisis. Yes, things are bad. People are losing their homes. Friends are losing jobs, and my sister, who has a five-month-old baby, may lose hers, and in her industry that's a career-killer. My colleague in employment law is deluged with calls from clients trying to cull their employees. There's a good chance I will have to go part-time and take a serious pay cut for the next few months because the alternative will be major redundancies even at my firm. Local businesses are shuttering and barring a miracle many of them will probably never re-open, which means lost livelihoods.

But it's not the virus doing that. It's the reaction to the virus. It reminds me of an autoimmune disease where in an attempt to respond to a perceived threat the body turns on itself and makes matters worse.

I don't know what the right response is. I don't know whether any of the measures that have been taken are correct. I do know that the combination of uncertainty and panic is causing serious economic damage - not just theoretical, but real - and will leave a mark on pretty much everyone long after the virus itself has disappeared into the background soup of endemic minor human ailments, and the consequences of that frighten me a lot more than anything the virus itself will do.

The question I want to ask you is how many people need to get sick and die before these actions become reasonable in your eyes? Because we've got nearly a quarter of a million cases globally and just over 10 000 deaths.

The way I see it, these severe economic burden you are talking about (and yes, it is very real. I've been temporarily laid off for pretty much that exact reason) would be inevitable. Either you do it now to prevent people from getting sick, or you suffer it later because everyone is sick. I don't think you can just ignore it, because in less than two months it's gone from being in pretty much only China to a global pandemic.

[Eldan]

Look at Bergamo sometimes. The post going around German social media right now from a survivor is entitled "They are dying like dogs". Several weeks waiting time to cremate the bodies, because the crematoria are overfilled. The dying stacked in hospital corridors, and not just old people, young ones too. Even basic medicines are used up and even things like painkillers and anti-inflammatories only come in sporadically by long-distance delivery. The author writes she has to send commiserations ten times per day just for her town.

That's the worst that could happen everywhere if those measures aren't taken soon enough. And you don't want that get there.

[Lord Torath]

Here's an interesting article with a handful of simulations of a virtual disease called "Simulitis":
www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

Shows how "social distancing" can help slow the spread.

[Aedilred]

The question I want to ask you is how many people need to get sick and die before these actions become reasonable in your eyes? Because we've got nearly a quarter of a million cases globally and just over 10 000 deaths.

The way I see it, these severe economic burden you are talking about (and yes, it is very real. I've been temporarily laid off for pretty much that exact reason) would be inevitable. Either you do it now to prevent people from getting sick, or you suffer it later because everyone is sick. I don't think you can just ignore it, because in less than two months it's gone from being in pretty much only China to a global pandemic.

As I said above, I don't know. And you can never put a number on these things, precisely, because if I say the number is 20,000 and in fact we end up with 20,001 - etc.

A quarter of a million people have caught it and that's a large number, but in the majority of cases they will not be seriously ill. We don't generally freak out about other minor illnesses which infect a lot of people. 10,000 deaths is the important figure, and that is one of those numbers that is both a lot and not very much at all, depending on how you look at it.

Compared to other, recent disease outbreaks it's a lot. Compared to the population of the planet (or indeed some historic epidemics/pandemics) it's hardly any. Yes, I know we haven't reached the final death toll yet.

I mean, by comparison, over 2 million people die every year of diarrhoea, and a high proportion of those are children (as opposed to Covid, which is mostly killing those who are elderly or already ill). That hasn't prompted anything like this level of global response, financial stimulus, panic, outrage - or indeed, toilet roll hoarding. Maybe it should do. But I suspect that's out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

[Eldan]

We don't freak out because a few thousand people die. We freak out because they are dying in the same small towns, no one can do anything about it, and the health system is imploding, with, again, people dying without being able to see their loved ones or any treatment at all. There's a difference between that and dying in a well-supplied hospital and a chance to say goodbye. Hundreds are dying every day in Italy right now. 475 on Wednesday.

[Forum Explorer]

As I said above, I don't know. And you can never put a number on these things, precisely, because if I say the number is 20,000 and in fact we end up with 20,001 - etc.

A quarter of a million people have caught it and that's a large number, but in the majority of cases they will not be seriously ill. We don't generally freak out about other minor illnesses which infect a lot of people. 10,000 deaths is the important figure, and that is one of those numbers that is both a lot and not very much at all, depending on how you look at it.

Compared to other, recent disease outbreaks it's a lot. Compared to the population of the planet (or indeed some historic epidemics/pandemics) it's hardly any. Yes, I know we haven't reached the final death toll yet.

I mean, by comparison, over 2 million people die every year of diarrhoea, and a high proportion of those are children (as opposed to Covid, which is mostly killing those who are elderly or already ill). That hasn't prompted anything like this level of global response, financial stimulus, panic, outrage - or indeed, toilet roll hoarding. Maybe it should do. But I suspect that's out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

It's not out of sight, out of mind, it's because diarrhea is easily treated, drink lots of clean water. People die from it because they don't have access to that. In fact, they typically catch diarrhea because they don't have clean water in the first place. It's a tragedy people die from it, but poverty is a complex social problem that we can't really discuss without getting super political.

In comparison if you catch Corvid-19, you can't really do anything. Just stay at home and try not to spread it to anyone else. If it gets serious, pray the hospital has room for you. If it doesn't have room, than you very well might die. If you have mild symptoms and quarantine measures aren't in place? You are going to spread it. We know you'll spread it because of how much this virus has spread already. That means more mild cases (which means more spreading) but also more critical cases and a greater strain on the hospitals.

And once the hospitals are full people start dying rapidly, and not just from corvid-19. Because now those easily treated diseases and disorders like, say, appendicitis, will become much more dangerous because you can't get treatment.

Which for me, is my answer. If you can predict that the hospitals will hit critical capacity from a disease (for example, by seeing it happen in a different country), than you need to take action to make sure it doesn't happen. And we've long passed that point. Because it's not like Italy or Spain has a weak medical system and it is buckling under the every increasing strain as they still get new patients every day. And again; it's not like you can say that 'oh, that won't happen here,' because the disease is already in your society. There are over 3000 reported cases in the UK, and without quarantining, the disease has exhibited exponential growth.

[Mikemical]

{scrubbed}

[Tyndmyr]

This is faulty logic.

Imagine if 100% of the planet had the flu, but none of them died.

Society grinds to a halt. All businesses close because there's nobody there to man them, and no customers in any case. Nobody makes any money, so the government gets no taxes. Which would result in essential functions being shut down, but that's okay because all of them are already non-operational because everybody has the flu.

The long term effects are pretty catastrophic economically and socially even with zero fatalities.

Yeah. I think we're going to see some long term effects even if the disease suddenly recedes. Which, yknow, it may well not. The trend so far as not been great.

Mortality rate isn't a flat percentage - it's tied directly to the number of infections since there is a limit to the capacity of hospitals. It is extremely likely that a mortality rate that is low while everyone in critical condition is well cared for instantly becomes much higher once hospitals reach capacity and become overwhelmed. ...
If you find the steps that have been taken in the UK to be too drastic or "panicky", I recommend that you spend an hour take a good look at the situation in Italy. That's the situation the rest of Europe an the US will be in in a week.

Oddly, that's...a little comforting. The US has a *lot* of ICU beds and ventilators relative to the population. If you scaled up Italy to our population size, it remains manageable. Not convenient, mind you, and still bad. I would encouage taking any steps you can to avoid putting stresses on any hospital system in the weeks to come if you can avoid it. But everyone would be getting treated, where in Italy, they sadly are just unable to keep up.

However, we really don't know for sure how bad it will get. Might be better, might be worse. There are significant error bars for any reasonable prediction, and at least some of the predictions have been quite dire. But however the actual disease goes, the social effects of what's happening are very, very real.

Mostly, this is just...strange. Had to stop by the mall area to fax something, and the parking lot is literally empty save for a police car with the siren on. Casino that normally is going 24/7 is just dead, save for a single black and white sign promising to return...sometime. Encouraging, that. Looks like I'm going to be out of work for an indeterminate amount of time, and everything's shutting down. My local supermarket is rationing EVERYTHING to 2/customer, and even so, many things are just out of stock. The meat cooler has been simply unplugged as nothing has been in it for some time. As apocalypses go, I expected them to be more...active.

Anyway, stay safe out there, best of luck to all.

[Xyril]

I mean, by comparison, over 2 million people die every year of diarrhoea, and a high proportion of those are children (as opposed to Covid, which is mostly killing those who are elderly or already ill). That hasn't prompted anything like this level of global response, financial stimulus, panic, outrage - or indeed, toilet roll hoarding. Maybe it should do. But I suspect that's out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

These people are primarily concentrated in poor developing or undeveloped countries. As Eldan points out, this scares people less because it's something that will never directly affect most of us lucky enough to be able to waste time on this forum.

What Forum Explorer pointed out is even more important: This is something that's happening only because those regions are pretty much in the worst case scenario. If they had the physical and economic infrastructure, (i.e., clean water and enough basic medical capacity), those numbers would be orders of magnitude lower.

In terms of remembering to change basic habits, avoiding most diarrhea-causing pathogens would be arguably easier than avoiding any respiratory disease. When you drink, remember to drink from a clean source. When you poop, remember to do so somewhere that it won't contaminate other things. When you cook, make sure your food is fresh, and cooked thoroughly. Maybe remember to wear shoes all the time, and to wash your hands before you eat. The challenge is setting up a self-sustaining system where everyone has access to clean water, sanitary toilets, safe food, shoes, and doctors who can keep them hydrated and monitored for secondary infections and other complications.

With a decent medical system and the infrastructure and support available even to people below the poverty line in the United States, diarrhea is probably about as likely to kill you as lightning. Take those advantages away, and it kills millions.

Now imagine what happens if you start with a disease that requires more sophisticated medical interventions and has a decent death rate to begin with. Then you push an otherwise developed country beyond its capacity, starting with its ability to provide said sophisticated medical interventions to everyone who needs it. Or, if you don't feel like stretching your imagination, look at Italy. Or even Iran, which is fairing much worse. Without getting into the politics too much, I acknowledge that its recent geopolitical situation puts it at an economic disadvantage, but notwithstanding that fact Iran is/was a country with a strong professional class and well developed infrastructure. It had the educational system and the technological and economic capacity to develop sophisticated medical infrastructure within its own borders. And it's pretty much hit its breaking point already.

[halfeye]

if you don't feel like stretching your imagination, look at Italy.

Italy is not a third world country. If it can get that bad there, it can get that bad here or in the USA.

[Xyril]

Italy is not a third world country. If it can get that bad there, it can get that bad here or in the USA.

Was anyone saying that Italy is a third world country?

Now imagine what happens if you start with a disease that requires more sophisticated medical interventions and has a decent death rate to begin with. Then you push an otherwise developed country beyond its capacity, starting with its ability to provide said sophisticated medical interventions to everyone who needs it.

[Aedilred]

I understand the principles. If not contained the virus will cause a spike in people needing urgent healthcare which overwhelms the facility to provide it at a local level, which in turn leads to unnecessary deaths both from the virus itself and from other ailments requiring treatment that can't be accommodated. I get that.

But that is a reason to be socially responsible and take steps not to facilitate the spread of the virus. It's not a reason to freak out like this is the End Times. The number of deaths is unusually high in the modern era for a disease outbreak but the mortality rate is low, the absolute number of deaths is on a global scale as yet virtually negligible, and the people most vulnerable to it are the people who are already most vulnerable to everything else. The direct effect of the virus itself on most if not all people reading this is likely to be minimal. It's not the Black Death.

If left to run its course, things would get bad and a lot more people would die, which is a reason not to let that happen. But it's not an existential threat, in itself.

There are things out there that are. Like climate change, which has received approximately zero attention during the last few weeks but in terms of "things which are going to kill us all" should really be the first item on the news every day.

There has to be an element of callousness in an approach to any situation like this. How many people die in road traffic accidents worldwide each year? More than a million. That's a different order of magnitude to people being killed by the virus. Those deaths could be prevented or at least mitigated by the simple expedient of banning all motorised transport. But we've decided on some level that the number of deaths is an acceptable price to pay for the convenience afforded.

But in this case, we're prepared to shut down entire cities, entire countries, lock people in their houses indefinitely. We'll fight in the aisles of supermarkets to secure toilet roll we don't need. We'll beat up innocent students because they look like they might come from a country near where this virus originated, all out of fear of a contagion that on an individual level is likely to leave us unscathed. And meanwhile the world burns.

It just makes me think that if this is the reaction to this, how would we respond to something worse? And, given that there are worse things out there that also require urgent attention but we're collectively ignoring in favour of this, we're doomed.

[Xyril]

But that is a reason to be socially responsible and take steps not to facilitate the spread of the virus. It's not a reason to freak out like this is the End Times.

This feels like a straw man at this point, to be honest. Literally nobody here is urging blind panic, or arguing that this is the end of the world. (Except possibly you, in the sense that you're borderline arguing that this is the end of the financial world.) My only issue is that you seem to be pointing at the reasonable steps that people are taking and complaining that it's all needless panic that's unnecessarily tanking the economy and doing more harm than the virus ever could. If I am mistaken in seeing that as your argument, then I apologize. (Also, you might want to be more careful in how you articulate your position, because I'm clearly not the only one who sees it that way.)

If left to run its course, things would get bad and a lot more people would die, which is a reason not to let that happen. But it's not an existential threat, in itself.

There are things out there that are. Like climate change, which has received approximately zero attention during the last few weeks but in terms of "things which are going to kill us all" should really be the first item on the news every day.

That's technically true, but even back when the U.S. leadership was... let's be kind and say "ambiguous" on the topic... there was much more consensus on what practical steps could be taken to mitigate this pandemic. In contrast, even among those who agree that climate change is a real threat--and this is sadly not 100% of people--the consensus on a proper solution exists only in the most general terms. They agree that ultimately on "cut carbon emissions/greenhouse gas emissions in general/mitigate their impact," but there is much less consensus on what is economically and politically feasible, or what approach would be the most effective or most efficient. And once you get down to the individual level, there doesn't feel like there is much more you can do to mitigate the issue, and the ones who really want to do what they can do are already doing it.

In contrast, with this virus, the harm is obvious and immediate, the evidence that the harm is already occurring is much more obvious to the generally science-illiterate public, and the basic steps people can take are not only (hopefully) enough to have an aggregate impact in protecting society as a whole, but also enough to have a tangible and immediate effect on their own safety. If I give up everything to live a zero carbon life, I'm trading my lifestyle for the off chance that enough other people do it that my children will have a future. If I take steps to prevent the spread of the virus, then even if everyone else puts their heads in the sand and it burns through much of society, I personally will still be much better off having taken those precautions.

There has to be an element of callousness in an approach to any situation like this. How many people die in road traffic accidents worldwide each year? More than a million. That's a different order of magnitude to people being killed by the virus.

And how many people are saved every year because of motorized transport? How many people are able to get medical help because ambulances exist? How many people live because we have a specialized economy enabled in large part by fast transportation? How many diseases have been cured or mitigated decades or centuries ahead of schedule because we have a system where people with the aptitude or the desire to go into research have an opportunity to get the education they want and the jobs where they can do the most good, rather than being largely constrained by geography and the circumstances of their own birth? This isn't even a rhetorical question: The amount of individual opportunity is starkly different in more affluent countries and poorer ones, and it's one of many factors contributing to the stark difference in quality of life and technological development.

Those deaths could be prevented or at least mitigated by the simple expedient of banning all motorised transport.

Yes, and in order to keep preventing those deaths, we'd have to keep banning motorized transport, meaning that there's a linear relationship between the harm prevented and the benefits sacrificed. Actually, as someone who believes in the power of scientific development to have a non-linear benefit from society, I would argue that the relationship is worse than linear--that every year we ban cars for the sake of preventing a million deaths, the amount we sacrifice gets greater and greater.

For something like this virus, the harm is concentrated in an event that is plausibly limited in scope and duration. We're hoping that it will be much more like a war. Forcing the car manufacturers to drop everything they're doing to make tanks was a practical and palatable solution because we all believed--or at least hoped--that we would beat back the Axis eventually, and things could go back to the way they were. The cost-benefit analysis changes drastically when we're talking about solutions we know will be long term. It's why--for example--police departments rely on more sustainable procurement practices, rather than deciding by fiat the certain companies have to accept contracts to manufacture police cars and handcuffs.

If this persists--if it doesn't just naturally burn itself out, or get pushed back by a vaccine or some technological development--then people will reconsider what they're willing to sacrifice. But unlike you, I see people's willingness to endure temporary hardships in times of crisis as something to be respected, and looked down upon or mocked.

[Aedilred]

This feels like a straw man at this point, to be honest. Literally nobody here is urging blind panic, or arguing that this is the end of the world. (Except possibly you, in the sense that you're borderline arguing that this is the end of the financial world.) My only issue is that you seem to be pointing at the reasonable steps that people are taking and complaining that it's all needless panic that's unnecessarily tanking the economy and doing more harm than the virus ever could. If I am mistaken in seeing that as your argument, then I apologize. (Also, you might want to be more careful in how you articulate your position, because I'm clearly not the only one who sees it that way.)

<snip>

If this persists--if it doesn't just naturally burn itself out, or get pushed back by a vaccine or some technological development--then people will reconsider what they're willing to sacrifice. But unlike you, I see people's willingness to endure temporary hardships in times of crisis as something to be respected, and looked down upon or mocked.

I don't think anyone here is urging blind panic but it seems to me there is nevertheless a fair amount of doom-mongering. Less so here than elsewhere, admittedly. The overwhelming impression I get from social media, TV, newspaper headlines and indeed quite a lot of daily conversation is that people are terrified. Supermarkets have had to introduce what amounts to rationing because people are panic-buying everything. Beating up Chinese tourists in the street? That's not hypothetical.

Some of the concern, for people's children for instance, is understandable, but ultimately irrational. A lot of it is just unnecessary. The sensible, justified concern, for the elderly as a sector of society and for the maintenance of healthcare resources seems to be at the very least equalled by a selfish concern for each individual's wellbeing even where that individual is not themselves at risk.

I respect people's willingness to endure temporary hardships in times of crisis. I'm not sure that that's what is actually happening. The response (not necessarily here, but generally) seems to be less "keep calm and carry on" and more "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE". I suspect this is making the crisis worse. I also suspect I am overcompensating for that in my own attitude.

[Peelee]

Beating up Chinese tourists in the street? That's not hypothetical.

That is remarkably stupid people acting in remarkably stupid ways, IMO, and not fueled by the media. Also, the panic-buying is a loop that feeds on itself. When some people panic-buy, others will find empty shelves, go to another store with full shelves, and panic-buy because that is what they saw happening, and so on and so on. It's another thing I don't really think is being fueled by the media, though I'm less sure of myself on this one.

[Forum Explorer]

I don't think anyone here is urging blind panic but it seems to me there is nevertheless a fair amount of doom-mongering. Less so here than elsewhere, admittedly. The overwhelming impression I get from social media, TV, newspaper headlines and indeed quite a lot of daily conversation is that people are terrified. Supermarkets have had to introduce what amounts to rationing because people are panic-buying everything. Beating up Chinese tourists in the street? That's not hypothetical.

Some of the concern, for people's children for instance, is understandable, but ultimately irrational. A lot of it is just unnecessary. The sensible, justified concern, for the elderly as a sector of society and for the maintenance of healthcare resources seems to be at the very least equalled by a selfish concern for each individual's wellbeing even where that individual is not themselves at risk.

I respect people's willingness to endure temporary hardships in times of crisis. I'm not sure that that's what is actually happening. The response (not necessarily here, but generally) seems to be less "keep calm and carry on" and more "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE". I suspect this is making the crisis worse. I also suspect I am overcompensating for that in my own attitude.

That's interesting because in some places people are underreacting. Like breaking quarantine to take their daughter to a school function. And I mean breaking quarantine, as the man's wife has corvid-19. Or refusing to be quarantined in the first place, running from the hospital, and needing to have their home surrounded by police to force them into quarantine. Or you know, just refusing to do basic hygiene (like coughing directly into their hands), let alone proper social distancing.

[Xyril]

I don't think anyone here is urging blind panic but it seems to me there is nevertheless a fair amount of doom-mongering. Less so here than elsewhere, admittedly. The overwhelming impression I get from social media, TV, newspaper headlines and indeed quite a lot of daily conversation is that people are terrified. Supermarkets have had to introduce what amounts to rationing because people are panic-buying everything. Beating up Chinese tourists in the street? That's not hypothetical.

Speaking as somebody who feels that hate crimes don't get nearly enough attention, I'm not disagreeing with you on this point. But again, this is a little disingenuous I think. You keep saying that you're only criticizing the unhelpful or harmful panic, but in terms of articulating the harms done, you keep going back to "closing down cities," which is both a bit hyperbolic and also one of the big things that everyone agrees will have a tangible, beneficial impact in terms of public health.

And just because it bears repeating, the whole hate crimes against anyone who looks foreign and "might have the virus" bothers me enough that I've dusted off my conceal carry permit after years of never actually using it. Yet I also can't deny that the economic and social impact of even a few thousand (more) racist attacks on the world-at-large is barely a rounding error compared to the impact of people staying at home. Same with panic buying--while the emotional impact of perceived scarcity on the public at large (and the actual impact when specific needy groups can't get their hands on necessary goods) can't be denied, people suddenly swarming Walmart and Costco isn't having a substantial negative effect on the economy.

Some of the concern, for people's children for instance, is understandable, but ultimately irrational. A lot of it is just unnecessary. The sensible, justified concern, for the elderly as a sector of society and for the maintenance of healthcare resources seems to be at the very least equalled by a selfish concern for each individual's wellbeing even where that individual is not themselves at risk.

How exactly are you quantifying that? I mean, on some level, me not wanting to get sick is a major motivation. The thing is, the steps I take not to get sick are exactly the same as the steps I take not to be a carrier for the disease, which in turn contributes to not overwhelming our health system. When self-interest and more altruistic impulses are 100% in alignment, how do you presume to tell me which concern is more of a concern for me, when I honestly couldn't even tell myself which motivation is the dominant one?

I mean the guys beating up tourists are not only jerks, they're morons--if those guys are really carrying the virus, guess who just took a big exposure risk? The guys buying up stock to profit off of scarcity they're helping to create? Huge jerks. But for the majority of people, how can you even begin to judge their motivations? They're doing what the government or the experts tell them is the right thing to do, not only to protect themselves, but also to protect society at large.

There are people who certainly face tough choices, but ironically, the ones making the "selfish" choice are probably the ones who bother you the most: The people who go about their business as usual not because they work in an essential field, but because they have to keep making money to support themselves and their families.

I respect people's willingness to endure temporary hardships in times of crisis. I'm not sure that that's what is actually happening. The response (not necessarily here, but generally) seems to be less "keep calm and carry on" and more "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE".

I feel like you're actually kind of engaging in the sort of histrionics you're worried about. "Things are bad, people are responding poorly. Well, not the people here, with us, where you can see how they're responding, but those other people, out there." Even before this, people used social media to vent, to exaggerate, to give voice to their very worst feels and speculation because that's where they feel comfortable doing it.

If you look at people, for example, expressing worry about gang violence, you'd think that gangs were having public shootouts in every major city in the U.S., on a nearly daily basis. Or, at the very least, you'd think that most people sincerely believe that to be the case. In reality, most of these people have never been touched by gang violence, seeing it as at most a real problem affecting people who aren't anywhere near them. They are sincerely worried about it growing as to the point that it moves into there backyard, but they're taking zero tangible actions to address that possibility.

The same also applies to the media. They thrive off of scary headlines--especially once you start including papers like the Daily Mail in "the media." These get attention, they generate conversation, and sometimes even prompt action, but most of the time you don't get the sort of overreaction you'd expect from the scary headline.

Things seem scarier now because this crisis was, to begin with, a bit scarier than what we faced before, and now a lot of people are stuck with nowhere but social media to vent, but I think people are a bit more resilient than you give them credit for. Despite the scarcity, people haven't been too bad to each other at the stores. In terms of people being testy and generally jerks, I'd say slightly worse than Black Friday at its lowest point, but in terms of violence it seems much better than things during other major disasters. We haven't seen the sort of chaos you expect just before a hurricane or an invasion, when people legitimately worry that they have no future, and if you look at Italy--who are already experiencing what will hopefully be the worst-case-scenario for us--the response of regular people has been nothing short of inspiring.

It's almost as if having a sense of security--justified or not--gives people the confidence to give in to fears and base impulses during minor disasters, while facing a greater threat drives most people to step up and be better.

[Xyril]

That is remarkably stupid people acting in remarkably stupid ways, IMO, and not fueled by the media. Also, the panic-buying is a loop that feeds on itself. When some people panic-buy, others will find empty shelves, go to another store with full shelves, and panic-buy because that is what they saw happening, and so on and so on. It's another thing I don't really think is being fueled by the media, though I'm less sure of myself on this one.

AFAIK, the toilet paper thing started on social media, with someone or another posting (incorrectly) that we'd have problems weeks or months out because we get our TP from China. The media absolutely contributed in the sense that they reported on people panic-buying things, and thus made other folks realize that shelves were empty days or weeks before their normal shopping trips. At the same time, burying the story because they didn't want to contribute, even marginally, to the panic would itself carry a number of harms, both short-term and long-term. Squashing a few stories--especially ones those that are already spreading through less "official" channels--might have some short-term benefits, but I can't help but think society would be much poorer if we all rightly believed that the news media would withhold information or even lie because they didn't trust us to handle the truth.

[Peelee]

AFAIK, the toilet paper thing started on social media, with someone or another posting (incorrectly) that we'd have problems weeks or months out because we get our TP from China. The media absolutely contributed in the sense that they reported on people panic-buying things, and thus made other folks realize that shelves were empty days or weeks before their normal shopping trips. At the same time, burying the story because they didn't want to contribute, even marginally, to the panic would itself carry a number of harms, both short-term and long-term. Squashing a few stories--especially ones those that are already spreading through less "official" channels--might have some short-term benefits, but I can't help but think society would be much poorer if we all rightly believed that the news media would withhold information or even lie because they didn't trust us to handle the truth.

I don't tend to consider "the media accurately reports on what is happening" as a bad thing.

[Keltest]

I don't tend to consider "the media accurately reports on what is happening" as a bad thing.

I would love to see news media that actually consists of doing their best to lay down the facts as we understand them without any personal spin or interpretation. Please let me know if anybody actually starts one of those up.

As it is, speaking as somebody working on the front lines of dealing with this panic, people need to stop. Period. Just today in a 4 hour shift, I had to stop something like four people from buying 4-6 cases of eggs, through my register alone. People are literally buying out food and items that they cant use before they go bad. There may not be a lot of fearmongering going on in these forums specifically, but the damage being done by the panic is at least an order of magnitude greater than has been done by the disease.

[Peelee]

I would love to see news media that actually consists of doing their best to lay down the facts as we understand them without any personal spin or interpretation. Please let me know if anybody actually starts one of those up.

Won't happen. Doesn't mean they can't accurately report on things.

[NichG]

This is a situation that basically forces everyone to publically declare what they think the value of other peoples' lives are to them, because given the exponential nature of the thing small actions for good and bad end up having magnified effects. Someone who gets the virus early on during the course of things could effectively save hundreds or kill hundreds depending on their behavior - and in either case it's far less likely that they'll either be rewarded or punished for that anywhere near the extent of other ways that humans can influence that many lives at once.

Despite the apparent chaos of everything and economic damage and so on, it seems to me that locking down everything for a month is likely close to the cheapest exchange of money and inconvenience for saving the lives of people around them that most people would see within their lifetime.

Looking at the progress of the virus around the world, I can get a good sense of how many people would be killed in the name of keeping business as usual by avoiding such measures. I've also heard a lot of people dance around the economic argument, but so far other than saying 'this is really bad, we'll be feeling the effects for years' or 'I lost my job' or other personal-level reactions I haven't actually seen a proper quantitative estimate of how many people would unavoidably die directly from the economic impact of the closures (e.g. assuming protective measures against economic hardship on par with the protective measures against the virus).

I'm willing to believe that it's possible that it could be more than the tens of millions of deaths you'd get if the world just shrugged and said 'business as usual' if that can be shown quantitatively without assuming things like redistributing the costs to concentrate them and maximize deaths; but absent that evidence the argument that the economic damage is worse than the illness and death seems very self-serving to me. The scale of death (e.g. ~1% of the world population assuming 3% IFR and about 1/3 of people getting it) is tiny in absolute numbers - not even enough to exceed our yearly growth rate - but proportionally that's about how much death we have in major wars that changed the way of life of entire countries and peoples, caused entire societies to reorganize around them, etc. WW2 caused the death of 3% of the world population, and is on the very high end of things.

(While writing this, I was trying to find comparably how many people were killed by the Great Depression, but that's much harder to estimate because the causal factors are easily masked by other things. However, what I'm finding suggests that mortality rates didn't increase, or even went down: e.g. average life expectancy of people living through that period was increased by 6 years, supposedly because of the decline of transmission of tuberculosis.)

[Asmotherion]

This bit is largely wrong. There are several corona viruses, best known is the common cold, and that's been in circulation amongst humans for at least centuries, probably millenia.

How is it wrong? 1960 was the first time it was identified; I never suggested it poped out of no-were.

Now I wish I had not sold my stainless steel dry sauna.


Do you have a source for that? The WHO Q&A does not recommend alcohol over soap & water.

I don't either, I have no datta to suggest otherwise. However alcohol can be a good sanitising substitude if you don't have soap at hand. As to which one is supperior, I honestly cannot say.

[factotum]

There are things out there that are. Like climate change, which has received approximately zero attention during the last few weeks but in terms of "things which are going to kill us all" should really be the first item on the news every day.

The ironic thing here is that the things they're doing to combat Covid-19 are also doing a bang-up job of helping out on the climate change front. NASA has said that the lockdown in China has led to a significant reduction in air pollution there, for example, and the canals in Venice are running clear for the first time in a very long time indeed. So, you ought to be rather grateful for what's happening, even if the measures being taken are not directly aimed at your biggest issue!

[DavidBV]

Those against lockdown measures probably believe this problem, if merely ignored, would just affect the elderly and unhealthy, therefore having little economical or social impact. Since an eventual mass infection seems inevitable, they believe it's better to, at least, not sacrifice the economy.

If that was the case, harsh dictatorships around the globe wouldn't be shutting everything as well, and epidemiologists, virologists and other experts would be divided. Yet they aren't, and the reason is not all infections are equal. If you are young and healthy but you are exposed to different sources of the virus during the day, you have much bigger chances of ending up in hospital with a ventilator tube in your throat. Viral infection is a race between the virus replication capabilities and your body immune system producing antibodies; if you give the virus the advantage of multiple initial spots to begin replicating, your body will be in trouble. Furthermore, small differences due to mutations between different virus strains will make the job harder for the immune system. Sadly, getting infected is not a mere yes/no question, you can become more or less exposed, and it matters.

This is why doctors and nurses, even young and healthy, can become critically sick and die. Same with policemen and other over-exposed workers, in contact with lots of people. So with this virus' unheard of spread capabilities, if you do nothing, you would get exposed to dozens of infection sources each day. What would happen then? Nobody knows because most countries did a lockdown, except a few that probably will but are being extremely lenient about it. Netherlands has been one of the most passive countries regarding the virus, refusing to lockdown; as a result half of their ICU patients are under 50: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/0...-are-under-50/
And I am afraid we might see similar numbers in countries like UK and USA.

So if you were ready to sacrifice grandmas and grandpas because the Spice Must Flow and not to anger the vengeful gods of capitalism, please think twice. The world faced a 6 year long world war when we were far less technologically advanced than now, if we can't stay at home a few weeks now then we need to change some rules to make it possible.

[Tyndmyr]

If left to run its course, things would get bad and a lot more people would die, which is a reason not to let that happen. But it's not an existential threat, in itself.

There are things out there that are. Like climate change, which has received approximately zero attention during the last few weeks but in terms of "things which are going to kill us all" should really be the first item on the news every day.

Pandemics can be an existential threat. Disease is a significant reason for population collapse in other species, it would take a lot of hubris to believe that humans are immune.

However, more than that, we're looking at different levels of urgency. Yeah, sure, try not to pollute, but pollution is not likely to kill you and your family this month. When treating a patient, you treat the most urgent life threatening injuries first. Same goes for a broader scale. You gotta survive the short term for the long term to matter.

There has to be an element of callousness in an approach to any situation like this. How many people die in road traffic accidents worldwide each year? More than a million. That's a different order of magnitude to people being killed by the virus. Those deaths could be prevented or at least mitigated by the simple expedient of banning all motorised transport. But we've decided on some level that the number of deaths is an acceptable price to pay for the convenience afforded.

There's a good case to be made for prioritizing automobile safety higher than many things we worry about, yes. But a fringe benefit of quarantines and what not is that it'll likely reduce these deaths as well, since folks are driving less. While the economic cost does suck pretty badly, there are some silver linings.

We'll fight in the aisles of supermarkets to secure toilet roll we don't need. We'll beat up innocent students because they look like they might come from a country near where this virus originated, all out of fear of a contagion that on an individual level is likely to leave us unscathed.

Most people are not willing to do these things, and certainly nobody here is advocating these things. I haven't actually seen any fighting over toilet paper and what not. Tense people, limits, stock problems, sure. But Costco didn't become a fight club overnight, and we generally agree that any person beating up others over their race is kind of a terrible person.

I don't think anyone here is urging blind panic but it seems to me there is nevertheless a fair amount of doom-mongering. Less so here than elsewhere, admittedly. The overwhelming impression I get from social media, TV, newspaper headlines and indeed quite a lot of daily conversation is that people are terrified. Supermarkets have had to introduce what amounts to rationing because people are panic-buying everything.

A few people are panic-buying. Yeah, the media reported on one lady that tried to order $7,000 of toilet paper on Amazon, but pretty much everyone agrees that this level of purchasing is not reasonable. On social media, folks are largely making fun of such folks, and of course, the media reports on cases like that because they are unusual. The generalized outages are, in most cases, more reasonable. The CDC has asked folks to stock up for an extended stay at home. So, you probably do want to make sure that you have food and other essentials there. Stores nowadays tend to rely on Just in Time stocking, and the supermarket probably only has a three day supply for normal sales in stock at any one time. If all the customers are stocking up for weeks at the same time, well, of course there's going to be outages.

However, the food supply chain is still functioning, so those things will be restocked. It may take a bit for supply to catch up, but it'll get sorted out.

There have been one or two reactions that have been perhaps not entirely reasonable. I do wish more was being done to mitigate the economic damage, but it's difficult to discuss that without risking political discussion, so I'll leave it as a generalized statement that more could be done here. Still, a lot of the activity you see is fairly sensible. Even if a lesser amount of social isolation was opted for, you would still want to do things like quarantine nursing homes, as they are at a high amount of risk.

Looking at the progress of the virus around the world, I can get a good sense of how many people would be killed in the name of keeping business as usual by avoiding such measures. I've also heard a lot of people dance around the economic argument, but so far other than saying 'this is really bad, we'll be feeling the effects for years' or 'I lost my job' or other personal-level reactions I haven't actually seen a proper quantitative estimate of how many people would unavoidably die directly from the economic impact of the closures (e.g. assuming protective measures against economic hardship on par with the protective measures against the virus).

This is challenging to quantify in part because we simply don't know how badly the shelter in place/social distancing measures will be. A two week outage is going to be a bad hit, but an eight week outage would be a great deal worse. We do know that poverty is significantly associated with increased mortality. So, if this pushes us into a recession, which seems increasingly likely, we are at least considering many thousands of excess deaths. Back of the napkin estimates, you can assume that a 1% reduction in the employment rate will increase mortality by 4%*. I have no good way to estimate the total magnitude of this event, but I can safely say that economically it's quite bad indeed.

*Cautionary bit on data: This is drawn from relatively modest, regular chances in employment rates. If we're postulating something like Great Depression Two, then recent economic data may not be as good of a predictor. It's been a long time since a Depression of that size, and the economy looked very different then.

The ironic thing here is that the things they're doing to combat Covid-19 are also doing a bang-up job of helping out on the climate change front. NASA has said that the lockdown in China has led to a significant reduction in air pollution there, for example, and the canals in Venice are running clear for the first time in a very long time indeed. So, you ought to be rather grateful for what's happening, even if the measures being taken are not directly aimed at your biggest issue!

While I would generally agree that the lockdown is probably not harmful to the environment on average, the canals in venice are probably not a pollution issue, but a simple matter of sediment. If you're poling a boat down a river, you kick up quite a lot of sediment, but you're not causing pollution. Clear water being equated with unpolluted water is common, but is often inaccurate.

[Unavenger]

It's worth noting that almost every "Heartwarming animal story" about how we're not messing things up because we're too busy hiding from CoV-19, is fake.

[NichG]

Back of the napkin estimates, you can assume that a 1% reduction in the employment rate will increase mortality by 4%*. I have no good way to estimate the total magnitude of this event, but I can safely say that economically it's quite bad indeed.

*Cautionary bit on data: This is drawn from relatively modest, regular chances in employment rates. If we're postulating something like Great Depression Two, then recent economic data may not be as good of a predictor. It's been a long time since a Depression of that size, and the economy looked very different then.

Do you happen to know where that estimate comes from? I've seen an identical estimate quoted elsewhere, and I'm curious what it's actually based on (or even better would be to know the distribution of that coefficient across various countries).

[Lord Torath]

I would love to see news media that actually consists of doing their best to lay down the facts as we understand them without any personal spin or interpretation. Please let me know if anybody actually starts one of those up.

I give you NPR: National Public Radio.
Also: The BBC.

Yes, there are opinion pieces on those stations, but their news is spot on and pretty much spin-free.

[Unavenger]

Also: The BBC

...has been caught on record making two different and incompatible claims about how many people require hospitalisation, as well as a sketchy track record in the past. I wouldn't be 100% confident in anything they post, either.

As always with the news, check multiple sources.