I just finished listening to a veteran virologist give a 2 hour interview. It’s being blown way out of proportion. Nobody under the age of 9 has died, period. Under the age of 30 your mortality probability is vanishingly small. It’s only a threat to people who have a compromised immune system because of age, diabetes or something like that. This is nothing like the Spanish flu. Unlike influenza viruses, these viruses don’t mutate in a way that would cause their recurrence every year. The chances of a more deadly strain popping up are extremely small.
I listened to trump address the nation in the rose garden live today. The npr correspondent confidently said that this virus “isn’t going away.” It’s a flat out lie and hysteria.
Would love to see your sources. I’m shocked there are still people like you claiming this is all an overreaction while the smart folk are all bracing for impact.
You gotta get it together man, this is bigger than anything you’ve ever seen in your life. If we’re very lucky it’ll be bad in the coming weeks and months, if we’re not it’ll be much much worse.
I would love to see a source that contradicts what I said. My source is the testimony of a virologist with 40 years of experience and other qualified people. I’m sorry to be blunt but there simply isn’t anything to brace for. The worst case scenario is that a very small number of people die before herd immunity slows the spread to nothing, after which the virus will basically disappear probably before we even have a vaccine for it. That’s what happened with Zika and some others. That’s what’s going to happen here. The number of people who die will be similar to deaths from the flu, car accidents and other things. Can you offer a single substantive counter argument to anything I’ve said? I will enjoy reading it.
" I’m sorry to be blunt but there simply isn’t anything to brace for."
This is appallingly wrong.
If you're commenting here on HN and referring to legit medical sources, then you're also smart enough to see what has happened in Wuhan and Italy where hospitals are completely overwhelmed, where triaging is leaving many people without any care. Over 65? Comorbidities? Sorry, 'just die' or hopefully not, is the medical response because they are overwhelmed.
That under 30 are less likely to die is irrelevant when most of the population is >50 and the rate of spread, the severity of cases is such that health services are completely overwhelmed.
Hospitals around the world are facing 'Denial of Service' attacks and everything is crumbling.
The way to make this survivable is to control the spread of the disease so as to make care available and give enough time for rapid trials etc..
"The worst case scenario is that a very small number of people die before herd immunity slows the spread to nothing"
No! The 'worst-case scenario' is 10's of millions of infected, (possibly over 100 million in the US), 1000-to-1 infected to ventilator ratio, total and complete overwhelming of US medical services, several million dead, 10's of millions out of work and isolated for many weeks, unable to work, contribute, teach, provide medical services, run the 'toilet paper factory', etc..
Literally the worst disaster in US history - worse than WW2 or the Civil War (~2% death rate) in terms of domestic turbulence.
Now - add in how many people are going to die from 'regular things' because the healthcare system is null.
Appalling. That’s so funny. The morbidity rate is far less than 3%. Most people who get it probably don’t even realize they have it which makes the numbers look worse than they are. Look I’m not saying nothing should be done. If nothing were done the. We might see something that vaguely resembles what you are describing. If people wouldn’t panic and if antibiotics were prescribed remotely and if people did a few basic things like wash their hands and stay at home if they have a preexisting medical condition, then basically nothing would happen. The only one we don’t have is a lack of panic. People are trying to see their doctors and get tests while they have no symptoms. I’m sorry man but you’re wrong this time.
>>> "We might see something that vaguely resembles what you are describing."
No, there's a 100% chance we will see it if we don't take measures. Watch the news from Wuhan, Italy - it's apoplectic. It's really bad, and if they didn't shut everything down, it would be a zombie movie.
We know that 'shutting things down' works because in China, the virus is contained, at least for now and medical facilities are starting to be able to cope.
>>> "The morbidity rate is far less than 3%"
Source? Because every credible source and the data coming out of various countries puts the rate at somewhere near 3%, not 'far less than' 3%. Some facts [1]
Even a 1.5% death rate is existentially problematic, we're still talking millions of people dead.
Moreover, if you bother to look at the data, you'll see that morbidity rates are a function of access to care, meaning that when Hospitals are 'overwhelmed' - people die at much greater rates. In Italy, it's 5%.
But there's a bigger issue: 20% of people who get it requires specific medical intervention, and at least 5% of them 'intensive care'. COVID is totally overwhelming medical the medical system in 100% of the areas wherein the contagion has let loose; people getting zero treatment, medical staff getting infected, people dying in the hallways, in their homes.
FYI 20% of 330M Americans is 66M people, only a fraction of whom need to be infected for 'zombie apocalypse' in the Hospitals, again: see Italy, Wuhan for what will happen.
>>> Antibiotics?? Antibiotics are not part of this equation.
>>> "and if people did a few basic things like wash their hands and stay at home if they have a preexisting medical condition, then basically nothing would happen. "
No - absolutely not. Having a few people 'wash their hands' and having the elderly 'stay home' will do very little to quash the pandemic.
The evidence from other countries is writ large, the variables are established: extensive testing, restricted travel, social distancing, isolation for any sick person, aggressive operational preparation by medical staff, keeping social order, restriction on large scale events etc. etc..
This is the 'new normal' for at least a few months.
You've made some reasonable points in places but you've also broken the site guidelines egregiously. The latter is more significant, so we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
because the hospitals could become overloaded, that means a lot more people with other medical problems would be getting triaged than just coronavirus. not only that but this exponential curve can be blunted saving thousands of lives, including your own elderly acquaintances.
Both of these viruses do exactly that. They're among the many that give us colds.
"Coronaviruses have a worldwide distribution, causing 10–15% of common cold cases. Infections show a seasonal pattern with most cases occurring in the winter months."
> Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV).
I saw that too. He isn’t a virologist and also is hawking his book. And he’s not very articulate or dispassionate. And he still hasn’t contradicted me in any way. Not unambiguously.
Is tails actually safe to use? Has it been audited by someone who is trusted in the sec community? And that’s not even to talk about whether tor itself is still good.
Indeed. You must've missed the memo. I know I did. The Internet is a safe space for serious business now. It's no longer just the fun world of lol cats, memes, and pr0n. We have serious things now. Like Facebook. And Snapchat.
I use a long diceware password for my iPhone. It prevents police from bypassing the rate limiter and brute forcing your password quickly. There’s supposed to be a machine that allows them to do that.
Unlocking my phone throughout the day is done with Touch ID. If I think I’m going to encounter the police or be away from my phone, I press the lock button five times which disables Touch ID. I’ve been doing this for two years and it works great.
Do you have a citation that police are as _equally willing_ to beat a password out of someone as they are to use existing tool to image a phone in compliance with a lawfully obtained and executed search warrant?
In 2015 I was detained at Heathrow by immigration for not willing to unlock my phone. I sat there for hours being told that somebody would be free to attend to me "shortly". 6 hours later I was told that it was a routine check. I was there for 14 hours, and missed my business appointments in London running a security workshop. They returned my phone after a few hours but I was still kept there waiting for somebody to attend to no avail. I called my lawyer after several threats that this will have legal consequences for them and was initially denied that request. When I got through to my lawyer I was advised to keep still until they charge me. After they let me go I threw the phone in the next bin I could find. I wish I had the brains and guts to take it home and RE this thing because I'm sure they bugged it. But I was too terrified at the time.
A close friend of mine is a cop in Ireland. I love him to bits but hate him for his bragging about how he loves to use his pepper spray after having his 5th Guinness.
Another brother of mine is actually a cop. He thinks that other cops are all corrupt. And he suffers a lot due to institutional racsim in the force and lack of promotion unless you agree to be a racist.
I grew up spending lot of time time riding a cop car with an old guy who really liked my gran and was with the criminal police. We walked our dogs together. I was 8 he was in his 50ies. One of the things I still remember vividly is when he exited the car to show me the power he had over people by stopping and questioning them and he also bragged about all the "dirty crooks" that he took shortcuts with to arrest them because he was the good guy and they were the bad ones.
My brother dated a girl who's ex was a cop with the criminal police in Bavaria. he (the cop) abused her and raped her over several years. He also loved to brag about what he would do to her and how he would fuck up her life if she ever left him. Covering his and his friends asses over speeding or parking tickets were the least of his crimes.
Seriously cops are just people. Fuck people. Fuck power. Fuck cops. If you think for 1 second that a cop has your interest in mind think again.
I 100% believe every anecdote you just presented. I'm sorry that those things happened, especially when unpunished. As you said, cops are just people. Most people are okay. Some are heros, some are monsters. Weeding out the monsters is notoriously difficult, especially when a profession like law enforcement has definite appeal to them. It also appeals to the heros.
I can give anecdotes about friends who are cops that risked their lives to save strangers, even the bad guys. I know more than 1 cop who arrested a guy, and had the suspects family thank them for how they saved their life in the process.
I can also bring up anecdotes about how people who were so passionate about security were also criminals hiding criminal deeds. I could assume, and assert, that since I've personally seen people use their phones' security to hide evidence of murder, and infant rape, that all people who care about their phones' security are the same.
But that'd be a disservice. It'd be a disservice to those who legitimately care about security for legitimate reasons, because freedom is important, and fragile. It'd be a disservice to others who aren't sold on either side of the discussion. And it'd be a disservice to myself in that it makes me seem very narrow minded and narrow viewed. Its letting fear overcome observation.
There are 700,000 cops in America alone. Undoubtedly some are unqualified garbage. Some are malicious monsters. Some are believe the ends justify the means. Some are paragons of truth and justice. Some aren't malicious, or dumb, but only care about their careers and are shortsighted with all else. We can't make sweeping statements either way, it does nothing to help.
There have undoubtedly been cases of cops using rubber hose decryption. There have been warrants falsified intentionally and unintentionally.
But cops wanting to be able to execute search warrants on phones isn't as simple as "We want more power, more control". There are countless legitimate cases of human trafficking, murder, and sadly worse. We, as a society, have to figure this stuff out. We have to find the balance between "Give us all your secrets" and "Do whatever you want without question".
But we can't have this conversation to find the balance, until we admit that we are on a scale.
Well, let’s get past and anecdotes to data. There are clear statistics that police target minorities and the “War on Drugs” became about “treating a disease” as soon as it started hitting “rural America”.
So given the choice between giving the police more power and less power, I would much rather they have less power.
I've often heard this said, but my iPhone 8 doesn't operate like this at all. Touch ID still works regardless of how many times I press the lock button. Is there a setting I'm missing? I've looked around and couldn't find anything.
It ought to, this is an iOS 11 feature which is what the iPhone 8 shipped with.
I don’t see any option for it in the passcode settings either.
On my iPhone SE it takes me to a screen with power off, medical ID, and emergency SOS sliders. To get back to the home screen after that I need to enter my passcode.
I was surprised to learn about the glassware. When I learned that mdma therapy for ptsd wouldn’t be available for years and would cost 15k even with insurance, I dusted off my old organic chemistry book. I can’t believe I’ve been made to do this in order to get medical treatment.
99% of people would just find a street dealer or buy off the dark web. You're the 1% that the laws are actually established for.
> I can’t believe I’ve been made to do this in order to get medical treatment.
No one made you break bad and then brag about it on the internet... Fabricating your own controlled substances is exactly why certain types of glassware are illegal.
I haven’t done it yet so I’m not bragging. And how am I gonna take a street drug that’s dirty, tainted with other drugs and also there’s no way to know what dose you are taking which is critical to the treatment? And I’m not getting anything off the dark web because I don’t want to go to prison and also want know what I’m taking. Making single dose quantities is harmless and it’s pretty much impossible to be caught. And nobody cares anyway because I’m not distributing it or even using it in public. The number of people who do this are in the double digits and offer no threat to society. What the fuck is wrong with you.
This is just silly. Of course it’s known if we can transport humans to mars. The answer is yes. The only question is how much it will cost. All you have to do is surround the craft with mass. It doesn’t even have to be attached to the craft. The cost of giving the mass enough energy to get out of orbit and over to mars is the only question.
Literally everything you said is wrong except projectiles and space stations. Magnetic fields are easy to make. Wind storms and unbreathable air and radiation and projectiles don’t matter if you’re underground. The idea that a floating city is better than a city cemented in soil is laughable. Good luck maintaining that Teflon coating on literally every exterior surface.
Well here I am again. Here are things I think people should know:
Gluconeogenisis does not kick you out of ketosis nor is it’s existence a counter-point to the keto diet.
I have first hand experience with keto and psychosis. I experienced something traumatic a while ago and began to have psychotic symptoms similar to schizophrenia. I had read an article beforehand written by a doctor claiming that keto benefited his psych patients, so I tried it. It cured me. Most symptoms gone in a couple days, total remission within a couple weeks. So PSA: if you or someone you know is having problems with psychotic mental health problems, keto may help you.
And I should add I was formally diagnosed with psychosis and prescribed antipsychotics. And the symptoms correlated perfectly with going on and off keto. Very little ambiguity. They are doing a study on this in Finland but results won’t be out till December.
My step mom was recently going through a bunch of old vhs tapes looking for wedding footage of her mother’s wedding. 99% of the tapes are television from the early 2000s. She was going to just throw them away! So now I’ve got 30 tapes of early 2000s gold. I’m going to digitize them and upload them to YouTube.
I listened to trump address the nation in the rose garden live today. The npr correspondent confidently said that this virus “isn’t going away.” It’s a flat out lie and hysteria.