skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really hope we lock down fast enough that the total number of infections in the US stays below 1 million.

1 million infections is the point where we run out of ICU beds (ICU rate of 10%, US has 100k ICU beds), and that's the point where the death rate jumps from 0.2% to 3%+
If this is all true why isn't it in the mainstream media?

Why hasn't Canada closed the borders yet?
Apples and oranges. Ventilators aren't ships. Medical-grade ventilators for ICUs have all sorts of life-safety sensors, engineering and testing that went into them that cannot be rushed.
A 21st Century Jobs Program
Home based intensive care kits. For when the hospitals are overwhelmed and you're trying to keep grandma alive.
It looks like they're using slave labor.. oh sorry, forced labor while their families are held back in re-education camps:

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/306909-report-china-sell...
Should be minimized, but obviously can't be eliminated. There are some services that can't be locked down, but that's OK as long as the community transmission risk as a whole is suppressed enough. Herd immunity isn't only about antibodies, the same mathematics works no matter how you reduce transmission rate.
You are missing the point. The scenario I presented was from the SREs perspective, not the workers in the datacenter
No, social distancing affects the base, not the exponent.
Somewhat related, Brandon Lee was killed in a firearm accident filming "The Crow". A dummy bullet was stuck in the barrel, and a subsequent blank cartridge was fired, causing the dummy bullet to propelled.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Lee
The effectiveness of this warning on people who would not already limit their gatherings is questionable. Many people are just in denial or deluded about how serious this pandemic is, and are unlikely to significantly change their behavior until and unless people start dropping dead all around them.

The most effective thing the CDC can do is just to dramatically increase the amount of testing by hundreds or thousands of times over what it's doing now, then publish the results. If people know how many others are infected all around them it might give more of them pause.

The government also needs to do whatever it takes to increase ICU capacity at hospitals, and give them more resources and support of every kind.

We are very likely on the brink of a collapse of the ability of our health care system to take care of the most vulnerable, with a death toll that will dwarf in American casualties any war the US has been in and the direst of economic consequences if the pandemic is not slowed to a manageable level.
>I wonder if this isn't the time to bite the bullet and introduce UBI.

Former presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan has making this very plea for UBI lately.
I think to give these people a minimum benefit of the doubt, we as a species have never before dealt with a virus that can last on surfaces for days, incubate for several weeks, and remain in lungs for over a month beyond a “recovered” patient testing negative. Not to mention the known yet nearly impossible to measure asymptomatic spread.

All of this is new in so many ways all at once. Frankly I think it’s so beyond our expectations of what a virus can be that many people simply don’t believe the facts.
So what about the lawsuits when you throw informed consent out the window to try unproven, unfit products on patients and they die because of failed products that weren't FDA cleared or approved? How many good doctors and hospitals have to close up in order to gamble with patient's lives on untested machines?
You can only benefit / capitalize on the decreased interest if you are in possession of capital already.
This pretty much describes the approach Japan is taking. We’re special, it doesn’t apply to us, it won’t happen here. Deeply ignorant approach. I’ve got a family - including a mother-in-law with a pre-existing lung condition - to worry about.
Combination government and market failure, where the market dispassionately says "you should all just lose your jobs, no demand for now", and the government doesn't intervene?

Most ski resorts in North America are shut down for at least a week, but Jackson Hole closed for the season and others are expected to follow. Hospitality and service industry workers who have seasonal jobs, are making a large chunk of their annual earnings during spring break, which is now. Already people are asking about rent reductions. How does that work? Landlord takes a haircut? Will the bank take a mortgage haircut? Who even owns the actual loan, do they take a hair cut? And if no one does, then that means the renter is effectively taking the full hit.

Maybe some of them will qualify for unemployment insurance, but I have no idea how long that lasts or what percent on the dollar it pays.
Why would they ?

I was surprised President Macron said something along those lines in his latest TV declaration.
My point is this is most likely temporary (on the order of weeks). Guarantee people's financial/employment safety (the measures I've listed), keep them in their homes, back to business when this blows over. This is exactly the kind of stuff governments are supposed to do.
> People underestimate the amount of available high quality business leadership. Without infinite available leadership, the market can only optimize the low hanging fruit. More tricky local maxima just won't optimize out.

Poorly run businesses is why there is always opportunity for someone else to do better, and why there is a constant turnover of businesses.

> There's no real money to be made in breaking the racket, because by breaking it you'd just be paying more for the same thing your competitors are paying less for.

Your scenario means that hiring nurses is a high margin business. High margin means businessmen will be attracted to get into those businesses. (After all, businessmen are in it to make money, not pursue a social agenda.) Lots of businessmen moving in will inevitably erode away those high margins.

This is what always happens in a free market. Greed trumps racism, sexism, etc., every time. If it isn't happening, look for a legal/regulatory framework that prevents it. For example, the original impetus for medical doctor licensing was to drive black and jewish doctors out of business, because the free market had failed to do so.

See "Competition and Monopoly in Health Care" by Frech.
We need an app that tracks any nearby (few meters) MAC address it encounters and stores it on device. When someone finds out they are infected , they post their address to a database online. People can check in every day to see if they have been nearby the phone of an infected person
While I agree with the essay, keep in mind this is peak survivorship bias.
The US has major public leaders [1] and news organizations actively suggesting to people this is overblown and that they should go continue about their normal lives. We are so completely far from that step happening on a national level.

Edit: Source added.

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/03/devi...
The "Making of" video on https://uncensoredlibrary.com is extremely light on details, but you can see the player placing entire columns with a single click at one point.
> The advisory doesn’t apply to the day-to-day operation of organizations such as schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses...

Why not? A theater playing Emma on a schedule isn't somehow safer than a movie theater hosting a one-time corporate event, for the same number of people. Or a normal day at a large restaurant versus the same restaurant reserved for a private party. Why advise that the later be put off but not the former?

> Events of any size should only be continued if they can be carried out with adherence to guidelines for protecting vulnerable populations, hand hygiene, and social distancing

Say such a business tried to continue to hold events while adhering to the guidelines. It seems that "protecting vulnerable populations" would mean not admitting people with comorbidities, such as the elderly, obese, diabetic, smokers, etc. I'd think that equal access laws such as the ADA would prevent such an attempt.
of the infections that don't require hospitalization what is the average recovery time? seems like we should start seeing recovery numbers going up soon.
Thanks for your thoughts. Sad that this post got no real traction. It's an important issue, both from ethical and epidemiological POV.

My family and I are well; we went into full social distancing mode, only going out occasionally to a store. We've cancelled everything that didn't already cancel itself (this week, Poland implemented shutdown of shutdown of bars, restaurants, cinemas and all other kinds of non-essential, gathering-inducing businesses).

Do get to that Walmart and stock up a bit if you can (as a low-pass filter). The virus will definitely affect you, if not directly then by the panic it induces in people. Get well, and stay safe.
Someone we know is in a local nursing home. He is tech savvy and communicates with video chat, but many residents don't have that option.

Many states, including ours, have locked down these facilities, not allowing any visitation. These people are lonely.

You can send cards and other items to the facilities addressed to "any resident", or with a cover letter explaining you are wishing your gift to go to a resident who needs it.
That page doesn’t seem reliable—it says various domains have been used for websites since 1986.
Alot of people think that CB's should always be on call to cover their bad bets… like a gunman threatening taking a hostage if they dont get the cash grab they expect…

To bad for them, there's collateral damage sometimes… only the strong will survive.
Doubling down on your comment about germicidal UV. The existing standard way to get germicidal UV is low pressure mercury lamps. They're somewhat energy inefficient, and their UV output is lifetime and temperature dependent. The long quartz tubes are fragile and its common for them to have a design lifetime of ~10k hours, and they're hazardous waste.

[Aside, I believe the peak germicidal wavelength is 265nm, 253 is just the nearest line that mercury lamps have].

Some of the applications you mention might be problematic because many indoor materials aren't particularly UV durable. The idea that conventional home automation might drive germicidal lamps is kinda frightening to me. ALEXA DEACTIVATE CANCER TUBES. ALEXA! ALEXA! :P
Your theory is that ocean-crossing ships... aren't life critical?

I am all for doing quality work. But if I end up in the ICU and my choice is between dying and a using a ventilator that hasn't received quite the full compliment of non-crisis regulator checks, I'm going to go with the latter. Feel free to choose differently if you like.
The Problem with DAI
You'd only be allowed outside to go to work or to the supermarket or pharmacy. All other shops closed. So factories and office buildings mostly stay open, just more reduced (home office as much as possible). Every country has different limits currently. China indeed locked doors (with tape) to check if people stayed it, food delivery only through windows.
Yes, you're fairly accurate. It means cafes, non-essential retail stores, restaurants, etc. should shut down. People should only venture outside for groceries, medicine, or if their work demands it. Work that is non-essential should be put on hold. No non-essential travel, no going out for dinner, no casual shopping for goods, no hanging out or drinking with friends or family.

Stay at home as often as you can, reasonably. You don't need a curfew, yet!
> To call it flu is to deliberately downplay its significance, make a joke out of it.

To the contrary, regular non-joking, totally serious people still call it Chinese flu, bird flu, I've even heard bat flu, probably some others. I think you are forgetting common lack of awareness / ignorance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_flu

https://extra.ie/2020/01/18/news/irish-news/new-chinese-flu-...

https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/wuhan-flu-how-to-protect-f...

You can see why--a lot of media sites like the one above still show their original URL even though the titles have been changed.
Finding McAfee: a case study on geoprofiling and imagery analysis
“The one who stayed away saved all the rest”
While the warming episodes do seem to align with peaks in the normalized Milankovitch cycle curves...there are plenty of peaks on that graph that occurred during severe cold episodes. What's the explanation for those glacial peaks? This doesn't seem like a complete picture.

The article hints at something within the climate system having an effect. My wonder is what influence geothermal has had on ice ages. In particular, deep sea hydrothermal events. Do these events periodically get disrupted and cause less heat to be released into the oceans?
Murder people who refuse to cover their coughs at all.
> What's up with us Poles being into geopolitics? :)

Perhaps being pawns of various powers over the past few hundred years makes us interested :). Or maybe it's just fascinating.
Norwegian Air Could Be Weeks Away from Going Bankrupt
In the long run we'll have protocols and procedures, and your physician will have seen hundreds of covid cases before treating you, and the fatality rate will (wishfully, possibly) converge to standard seasonal flu.
Public service announcements are meant to be broadcast by the media
Spain has drones yelling at people to go home if they're spotted hanging out even in parks and whatnot.

People should stay home unless they're getting groceries/medicine or going to work in a hospital or other piece of critical infrastructure.
Totally fair and a good point.
They prevent or limit lateral movement once the malware is running.
Somehow I doubt Powell is living paycheck to paycheck. Professionals shouldn't cave under pressure that's why they make the big bucks. This is only a rebuttal to the "what would you do?" I have no idea whether or not he was pressured or if this is a good or bad move.
What Italy's doing seems pretty close to the most you can do in a western country. It just took them too long to do it.

* Only stores open are grocery stores, pharmacies and some other essentials.

* No going out except to go to work or go food shopping, or a brief walk in your neighborhood, on your own.

* No weddings, funerals, church.

* No travel outside your town, except for work.

* Work from home if you can.

* Some companies, like Ferrari, are simply shutting down for a bit - they're not a key element in anyone's supply chain.
Yeah, that would cause many times more deaths than Coronavirus ever would. Unsurprisingly, people still need food and medicine to survive.
Didn't one model show over 100M?
Austria has banned gatherings of more than five people.

Italy has closed all stores other than grocery and drug stores. All non-essential travel is banned. There's a short list of valid essentials, like taking care of aging parents; there are roadblocks, they'll make you fill out a form stating your purpose, it's a crime to lie about it, and they do sometimes check.

In China, every place you go you get your temperature taken. Go in a building, get on a bus, they take your temperature. Show a fever, they take you to a dedicated fever center, where they check you for flu and bacterial infection. Come up clear on those, you're waiting four hours for a covid-19 test. Come up positive, you're there for the duration. You don't go home to your family because they've found 80% of transmissions are in family clusters.
> Game over happens when, fiat money seems to have, on a risk adjusted, liquidity adjusted basis, a better return and better appeal than holding existing real private assets, therefore a process starts where people, businesses and banks try to hoard government paper all at the same time instead of holding private assets.

This is what happened in the 1930s. But as you say, counteracting it is as easy as printing money. Which normally has the disadvantage of causing inflation (this is what they were excessively afraid of in the 1930s), but when there are existing deflationary forces in effect, all it does is even things out.

The real question is, what happens to the money they print? Buying treasuries with it is the usual option, which isn't a total disaster (it pushes investment back into stocks by lowering the yield on bonds), but a better option right now might be paying out the new money as a UBI.

That would serve two purposes at once. One, you fight the deflationary effect, and two, you help people out whose businesses are suffering, both by giving the proprietors a UBI and by giving their customers one as well so they then have some more money to patronize businesses with. So instead of propping up stock prices artificially, you maintain their value organically by strengthening consumer demand.

This also provides a nice answer to the question, what do we do once interest rates are already zero? At that point we can use any additional new money to fund a UBI instead of driving interest rates negative.
Why does anyone heed a warning? In order to catch an issue before they get an error.
Maybe we can just enjoy a good joke every now and then instead of turning everything into a problem.
Yes, it's late. But it's still better to do than not.
What's the most recent example? It seems to me as though any diminution of the crisis stopped this weekend.
At the point when hospitals run out of ventilators, no one denied a ventilator is going to care about FDA approval.
> People need to brace for impact. The US medical system is going to be overwhelmed by people in critical condition.

I'd just like to point out that when you say the "US medical system" you're talking about a large area. It's not like a country like Italy which is smaller than the state of California but 30% more people. The US is far more spread apart and while that doesn't mean it will be better here, it does mean that you can't think about the US just like a single country. Same with China, too.
It’s hard to tell. Many cases are asymptomatic and a lot of people are being denied tests because they are rationed. But the data seems to point to roughly 1-2 weeks recovery time for unhospitalized cases.
I think the issue is cash-flow. So the govt should do things to mitigate cash-flow. Such as pause rent/mortgage payments for 2 months for anyone that is out of work due to this.
Quite frankly, a few of those are going to happen. People shoot each other over parking spot disputes in normal times.
The SRE can ask the data centre worker to take a look - or better yet the data centre worker would be notified directly and the SRE wouldn’t need to be in the loop.
> It is very last measure as in that point you are basically admitting that capitalism has failed.

1. it might be better to prevent a situation of people unable to pay rents and mortgages and have the entire banking system collapse on this enormous liquidity trap. That could mean end of capitalism for sure

2. from capitalist point of ciew, you can look at helicopter money as a dividend. Companies 'give out' money to shareholders and Alaska and Saudi Arabia give out oil money to citizens too.
People have a tendency to justify the status quo, does that automatically make the status quo suspect as well?
Hasn't MCEdit not been updated since the Aqua update?
BeyondCorp != Zero Trust

Zero Trust includes heavily leverageing attack surface limitation to prevent lateral movement. This means even if an attacker has stolen passwords, cookies or whatever single factor token that is needed to move laterally, they can't - because no connectivity.
Who is saying this?
> and that's the point where the death rate jumps from 0.2% to 3%+

Do you have a citation for that? We haven't seen a death rate of 0.2% in any population.

SK (which has the broadest base of testing), Diamond Princess (which offered a unique case study, where we could test every person), and epidemiological estimates are all closer to 1%.

Where are you getting the 0.2% number from?
I’d also like to see a lock down that doesn’t completely throw away our civil liberties. This is a serious issue, but I don’t want to be locked at home because we’re fighting a “war on viruses” twenty years from now
I think that, in the long run, we will see a de-urbanization movement pushed by all the works that, being potentially done from remote, will be done from remote.

This will bring _a_lot_ of consequences like a drastic drop on rent and prices of apartments, a fast reduction of small shop/pub/restaurants inside the big cities, a change in the way universities make courses, etc...

It is going to impact every aspect of life considering we pushed urbanization to its limit in the last 6-8 decades.
> Alot of people think that CB's should always be on call to cover their bad bets…

I think more people would probably hope that central banks don't make bad bets anyway.

You know when you hear about Japan being this futuristic society? You go and visit and you feel like they are "ahead" and have things figured out?

Their economy is what our economy is going to look like. A short-medium term down and then long drawn out sideways market. Who knows when a recovery will be.

Good time to refinance.
This is exactly how it happened in Spain. Please guys, consider it, most media is just nonsense, people pretending to have knowledge about stuff they don't know shit about. Most of you here are smart enough to know what's an exponential, logit and even run your own SIR model.

You'll be in a situation where people will die by contagion of other people who isn't even aware they are infected. You might infect your loved ones.

If you don't lock down now, it will be bad.
Some stores here are limiting hours to something reasonable: it gives them time to re-stock and to clean. This seems not only reasonable but completely sane. Close down for 8 hours a day minimally so that they can clean stores.
What does your VIX gamble look like?
Even if politicians could agree to enact this tomorrow, it would take years to get up and running.

Sam is looking for projects that can help with the crisis that’s happening now and have a meaningful impact within weeks/few months.
This is a rather evil thought, but it's entirely possible that thousands of people in battleground states who watch Fox News continue their daily routines, catch the virus, die or are unable to vote, and then the same people who encouraged them to go out end up losing in November.
Guardian is rehashing from a FAKE NEWS source, mere propaganda
Surprised there haven’t been any parking lot murders over toilet paper yet.
Really? In most deployments the firewall is only outward facing. Local isolation is possible but it breaks a ton of stuff and basically renders the LAN useless.

My own opinion is: Secure. The. Endpoint.

If your devices, OSes, etc. are not secure then your systems are not secure. A firewall will not save an insecure system, and firewalls and netsec in general gets far too much attention. That attention should be focused on OS-level and application level security.
Are there legal issues here? Can the federal government just "lock down" random local stuff in an emergency?