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The media is creating mass hysteria over the Coronavirus.

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In some countries, the situation has become really bad as the virus is technologically advanced so it's not possible to tell who has it straight away till they start to feel the symptoms.

However, in U.S. and U.K. it's like they're prepping up for the Zombie Apocalypse.




When I see that there's a need to get actually serious about it, then I will. But panic buying because the media is always talking about Coronavirus won't really help.
 

FAST6191

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I went to a costco in the UK yesterday and it was crazy.

That said despite being as busy as the time I was foolish enough to go on a Saturday a couple of weeks before Christmas I actually sailed round doing my normal Costco run (cheap but good meat, scan of the tool aisles, giant muffins, and bulk cooking ingredients sometimes for cheap but you have to watch that one). If I had wanted bottled water or bog roll it might have been more fun. Bonus is those panicked types pretty much only buying bog roll and water, maybe some big bags of rice, meant the checkouts were quick as you like as they are all really bulky. About 20 minutes after I entered they had run out of bog roll as well, not sure what time that was and I had the dubious pleasure of a round of Ikea first (after 1hr+ of driving) but probably lunchtime and they only open up to the public around 10.

Also made for some fantastic people watching, even more so than usual (and this one is in the heart of Essex so it is seldom bad).
 
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notimp

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The people are creating mass hysteria on the corona virus.

Mass hysteria, without masses of people doesnt work. Stop the blame game on media.

How do you inform, without creating mass hysteria?

3-4% death rate (20 times worse than flu), about three times as contageous as flu, and might not be ended in april by warm weather.

America (US) has no sick leave, no health insurance for vast population groups, people working two or more jobs.

Have fun.

Washing your hands (with soap) for 20 seconds (minimum) is about as effective as using disinfectants. Do it multiple times a day. Don't hog masks (people who are sick, as well as hospital personal need them, also only certain kinds of masks work, which are those that are in short supply. Production will be ramping up I'm sure.). Dont buy food and supplies like the world is ending tomorrow.

The people who die, most often are people that are above 80, or have a weak immune system, or a preexisting condition that makes them less resistant to getting over pneumonia.

Also don't become obsessed, preferably.
 
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Pipistrele

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When I see that there's a need to get actually serious about it, then I will. But panic buying because the media is always talking about Coronavirus won't really help.
There is a need to get serious about it - it almost reached the pandemic level, virus itself has relatively high lethality rate, many governments of the world show complete failure at stopping or at least holding off the spread, and as @notimp mentioned above, places like America are in a very unfortunate position when it comes to dealing with coronavirus. Sure, some people do overreact a bit, but media doesn't "create mass hysteria", at least intentionally - they deliver straight facts about the situation, however morbid they may be.
 
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IncredulousP

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There is a need to get serious about it - it almost reached the pandemic level, virus itself has relatively high lethality rate, many governments of the world show complete failure at stopping or at least holding off the spread, and as @notimp mentioned above, places like America are in a very unfortunate position when it comes to dealing with coronavirus. Sure, some people do overreact a bit, but media doesn't "create mass hysteria", at least intentionally - they deliver straight facts about the situation, however morbid they may be.
3.4% mortality rate
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/
 

notimp

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Some additional info:

- High risk groups (not being able to get over pneumonia) are very young people (but only with preexisting conditions), and people above 65.
- In Germany (remember Italy is not that far away) the height of the current wave is estimated to be in June or August (might be different for the US).
- Open Air events with more than 500 people should be avoided/prevented and mostly get canceled until then. (To prevent fast spreads.)

Parents are encouraged not to drop off their kids after school at their grandparents, but instead help them (grandparents) with shopping, so they don't have to visit supermarkets. (Basically don't abandon your elders, but also dont have them in direct contact with your grand children either, because schools have many people in tight spaces.).

Those actions might not make sense for the US yet, your government will inform you, when and if its time.

Government action for the most part currently is - supplying tests for people that show systems and went to the doctor (also you are encouraged to visit your doctors, when you show systems), and getting more intensive care beds ready in hospitals. Otherwise that scenario:

[if we have too few intensive care beds]"Who do we want to save then? A profoundly sick 80 year old, or a 35 year old with acute pneumonia that could die within hours and would be over the hill in four days with artificial respiration? There is a high probability that there will be such cases, in places where you dont have access to more intensive care, even if you could be flown in time to a different hospital.
So thats what currently needs to be prevented by precaution/organization/planning. Old people getting kicked off life support, later on. (Because capacity utilization for those facilities in Germany is at about 80%. (Too few intensive care beds, when the height of the outbreak hits, edit: in some regions.))

src: https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/charite-chefvirologe-warnt-vor-dramatischer-corona-welle-im-herbst (german)
 
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DaRk_ViVi

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Welcome to Italy a couple of weeks ago, now we are all quarantined as the infection numbers are rising.
Be safe, follow the safety rules and don't understimate the virus!

And us in Italy have high numbers of infected because the check is free for us, so if you have flu sympthoms + fever they check if you have the virus, in many states you have to pay for it and many people are not checked.
 
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FAST6191

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You say that but this is the same media that will do everything it can to avoid saying suicide as they noted a spike in copycats, swore up and down "this is not a recession" despite being one by any metric you care to use (presumably this was to stop a run on banks, and when a run on a bank was actually happening in the UK they were fairly restrained there as well), and while they have not quite cracked "don't do all the name, cool narration and 3d animate the next time some fucknut mistakes a school or their work for a shooting gallery" they are at least making steps there. When I bother to watch things it seems pretty uninformative and clueless, as well as relentless, which all combine to be nice fuel for the fire.

Also are we seeing 3-4% in medically advanced countries? Seemed more like 1% last time I watched the news (it was covering Italy, nice round numbers at suitable sample sizes placing it around 1%), and that mostly being the elderly and infirm that usually get wiped out by such things anyway.

As far as serious does that extend to the general public at this point? All for governments, large gatherings and medics being prepped for it, isolation and whatever else in accordance with sound medicine, and wash your hands and don't touch your face* is pretty good advice at the best of times, but the "prep for civil unrest" style stuff seems a bit over the top. Especially as most things I see people doing are ineffective if it is a fun one; your little paper mask, much less worn badly, is not really the gear you want (if it does not come with replaceable filters and provisions for eye covering it is not going to do much) and hand gel most are using tends not to be the best anti viral out there (anti bacterial sure, but not anti viral, or if you prefer there is a reason most of the stuff you get in hospitals and the like does a number on your hands if you use it more than a few times a day for a week). To say nothing of water and bog roll is fine, the water being somewhat redundant though, but far from what you will be missing out on should it get fun if my trips to the supermarket and Costco were anything go by (nobody did a mid-long term room temp stored food supply of any kind of nutritional value -- the rice the two or three people were getting out of the hundreds might keep you alive long enough to get scurvy I guess).
Not that I expect many would even know right now, or indeed be capable if they had to, I hate to imagine how ineffective most people would be at setting up a proper civilian decontamination/isolate the outside from you setup, to say nothing of most houses in the UK these days not really having an entrance you could do a plausible effort at it for, with the US not too much better in most houses I see there (maybe having more space to stick some wood and staple some sheeting onto it). That and as you usually have to beat in proper procedure to medics and scientists/engineers when they finally get released into the world from their schools then I don't hold out much hope there either that people could properly maintain it -- if it is something fun this is not really a matter of run a vacuum over the carpet because you did not remove your dirty shoes when dragging something heavy in.
This on top of all this is several weeks, if not months, behind the curve if you are just jumping now.

*always a favourite game to do the the "monkey see, monkey do" to new mechanics, tradesmen and the like when they have oily/dirty hands. They soon learn though.
 

Viri

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Welcome to Italy a couple of weeks ago, now we are all quarantined as the infection numbers are rising.
Be safe, follow the safety rules and don't understimate the virus!

And us in Italy have high numbers of infected because the check is free for us, so if you have flu sympthoms + fever they check if you have the virus, in many states you have to pay for it and many people are not checked.
I'm guessing this video didn't age well?

 

notimp

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You say that but this is the same media that will do everything it can to avoid saying suicide as they noted a spike in copycats, swore up and down "this is not a recession" despite being one by any metric you care to use (presumably this was to stop a run on banks, and when a run on a bank was actually happening in the UK they were fairly restrained there as well), and while they have not quite cracked "don't do all the name, cool narration and 3d animate the next time some fucknut mistakes a school or their work for a shooting gallery" they are at least making steps there. When I bother to watch things it seems pretty uninformative and clueless, as well as relentless, which all combine to be nice fuel for the fire.

Also are we seeing 3-4% in medically advanced countries?
Overall. (But then, some governments test too little, and death numbers in germany are disputed as well (there is no logical explanation for why there is such a large reported difference (in that percentage) between Italy and Germany (read between the lines here)).)

Yes, media and politics are encouraged not to report certain cases (copycat, sometimes even malpractice). The weighing/assessment you are encouraged to make there is if reporting there will do more harm as a result of it. And that also includes panics. (Real mass panics, not just people stocking up on more food for a few months (then forgetting that corona is a thing, and then the virus coming back stronger in the fall, because of that forgetting part)).

If you are looking at it structurally, raising mass awareness hopefully slows down spread somewhat. And adverse affects are slim/none. Also, some corporate health practices, will only be triggered if word gets around. (Dont force sick people to come to work.) (Effects on elections might be real as well, and not rational either, but comparatively - that should not count as an argument. (If you are not in the GOP.))

Also entire different 'ruleset' than with suicides f.e. because "its contageous!!111!1!" so people will talk about it ad nausium anyhow. (See china, where now the government is under attack for their information policy). So the 'controlling the message' aspect gets almost dropped entirely (for journalism, even in more authocratic regimes). (You can't, its useless. With suicides its different. That you can really stem by saying ok, lets try to curb them societally, by not talking about it too often.)

So - different rulesets, for the most part.
 
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Axido

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It's funny to see that the part of Berlin I live in doesn't care as much as those Costco customers, while people in the surrounding rural areas (that are not even effected as much as Berlin is right now) are hoarding powdered soup and toilet paper... I mean... GODDAMN TOILET PAPER! What's wrong with people nowadays?

I'm glad I'm not really at risk of getting harmed severely by the virus and I hope those actually being at risk can avoid it as much as possible.

That being said, I was going to start working at a new place this Friday and they canceled my contract altogether, because they sent everyone they could into home office. Therefore there would be nobody to break me in for at least a few weeks.
Said place is an accountancy office... I mean, it's not like it's a place visited by large groups of people. But yeah, definitely feels a bit over-the-top.
 
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ghjfdtg

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I think i should elaborate more on my post above. The media is not entirely responsible for this but they accelerate it because they almost only tell you the bad facts like infected and death rates. They rarely tell you how the mortality rate is still going down as more people recover and how all these numbers must mean nothing to you if you are not already at risk like elderly, babies or with weak immune system.
 

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All the stores around us are out of water bottles and toilet paper. My old school got shut down because of someone who might have the virus. That school is like 10 miles from me. I'm worried.
 

notimp

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they accelerate it because they almost only tell you the bad facts like infected and death rates
True. Otherwise people would not pay attention. :) It also helps, that this is what sells 'more papers, or more clicks'. That internal logic never is curbed by anything. (Free media. :) Remember? ;) )

Other than you saying - ok, we maybe target a more informed audience (usually as a paper or a radio broadcast) that would cut their subscriptions, when we do that to them all day.

But there are certain 'kinds' of media, that are - all that. Because - information economy. Thats what people are interested in.

So even if it might be 'dumb' to some extent, its 'market dumb' (the same kind of dumb where people in economics usually say, how intelligent markets are.. ;) ).
 
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regnad

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I think i should elaborate more on my post above. The media is not entirely responsible for this but they accelerate it because they almost only tell you the bad facts like infected and death rates. They rarely tell you how the mortality rate is still going down as more people recover and how all these numbers must mean nothing to you if you are not already at risk like elderly, babies or with weak immune system.

Just because you're outside of the risk group doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful. You don't want to be responsible for accidentally killing grandma. I mean, I guess that may "mean nothing to you" if all you care about is yourself.

Also the mortality rate is going down because more people are being tested. That doesn't have anything to do with the actual mortality rate. It has to do with more accurate assessment.

Here in Japan it's no joke. A very large percent of the population is elderly. And even if you don't care about that, there are a finite number of hospital beds. There's a maximum number of people that can be taken care of at the same time. As soon as you go over that number, the mortality rate will spike because patients aren't getting enough care. And when this happens, it then effects not just coronavirus victims, but all hospital patients.
 
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Pipistrele

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all these numbers must mean nothing to you if you are not already at risk like elderly, babies or with weak immune system.
It's less about your own survival and more about responsibility for other people's survival. For example, if you don't have any complications, you're highly unlikely to fall into that mortality rate - I, however, have chronic hypertension (one of the major risk zones for COVID-19), so if people like you end up infecting (and highly likely killing) people like me by approximation, then I'll make sure to kick your ass in the afterlife :D
 
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IncredulousP

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Which is almost 1.5x times the initial estimate, there's no foreseeable treatment against it, and it has far wider spread on top of that - the thing's already considered more severe than 2009's outbreak of swine flu. So, still pretty serious.
Swine Flu original estimated mortality rate: 0.02%

Swine Flu death toll found to have been 10-20x more than original estimates, with mortality rate somewhere around 0.2-0.4%, if going off of this discovery and assuming the original number of infected remained the same.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...th-rate-low-study-shows-idUSBRE90O0T720130125
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-10-times-more-deadly-than-previously-thought
https://www.livescience.com/41539-2009-swine-flu-death-toll-higher.html

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I think i should elaborate more on my post above. The media is not entirely responsible for this but they accelerate it because they almost only tell you the bad facts like infected and death rates. They rarely tell you how the mortality rate is still going down as more people recover and how all these numbers must mean nothing to you if you are not already at risk like elderly, babies or with weak immune system.
Regarding Swine Flu:
"The results showed that 62 to 85 percent of those who died in the 2009 pandemic were younger than age 65. Usually, seasonal influenza (not H1N1) has the worst effect on seniors; only 19 percent of seasonal-influenza deaths occur in people age 65 and younger.

"It is this 'signature age shift' that sets pandemic influenza apart from seasonal influenza," the researchers said. The high death rates in younger people mean a larger burden on the society as more potential years of human life were lost during the 2009 pandemic than during an average seasonal flu outbreak, the researchers said."

https://www.livescience.com/41539-2009-swine-flu-death-toll-higher.html


Regarding Swine Flu:

"But the current study, commissioned by the WHO, helps explain why the agency struggled so much to calibrate its response to that pandemic and find the right tone for its public messaging. WHO leaders were first criticized for taking too long to declare a pandemic when spread of the disease clearly met its definition. Then critics charged the agency with hyping the situation under pressure from vaccine makers who wanted to recoup their investment."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...-10-times-more-deadly-than-previously-thought



Regarding Coronavirus:
"For weeks, it seemed that the answer was 2. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less.

The calculation was made by comparing the total number of people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 to the number of people who died of it. As both of those numbers grew, the ratio was bound to shift.

The 2% figure seemed stable on Feb. 24, when a massive study of nearly 45,000 Chinese patients whose infections had been confirmed with laboratory tests reported a case fatality rate of 2.3%.


Later that week, on Feb. 28, a study of nearly 1,100 Chinese patients suggested a lower death rate, of 1.4%.

Four days later, on March 3, the World Health Organization said the global mortality rate was 3.4%.

How could it have changed so much in such a short period of time?

“It’s hard to say what the case-fatality rates are until the dust settles,” said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco.

“It’s not a statistic to be looking at kind of on an ongoing basis, even though I do it just as much as everybody else does,” he admitted.

That includes members of Congress. On Wednesday, they asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, what was going on. He urged them not to get so fixated on the fatality rate, emphasizing that scientists still have a lot to learn about it."

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-07/why-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate-keeps-changing

They rarely tell you how the mortality rate is still going down as more people recover and how all these numbers must mean nothing to you if you are not already at risk like elderly, babies or with weak immune system.
Sounds like the media explained it to me. The article goes into more depth.
 
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slaphappygamer

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I think people are taking it upon themselves to build trumps wall. It’s going to be paper mache. It’ll contain so much bleach and corn starch that’ll it’ll eradicate the corona. That’s the only way I can make sense of this paper product shortage. I mean, if you had to dry your hands after washing, wouldn’t normal people use a towel then set the towel a flame after use?
 
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