This author appears to be completely unaware that, in the US anyway, the progress of the pandemic has been completely and totally disconnected from all control measures.
San Francisco, where I'm told (and believe, based on having lived there) that they had very strict lockdown measures:
The stats are virtually identical despite dramatically different policy decisions. So what the hell is the point?
As an addendum, to put this into perspective: in 2020, Oakland's murder rate was 23/100k, making it _almost as high as the covid death rate_. Why is it that one year of covid deaths is a world-destroying incident, but _every_ year of Oakland deaths and nobody does anything about it ever? Are Bay Area people really just that racist?
Those lockdowns are not actual lockdowns, and were doomed to fail.
Moreover lockdown restrictions were removed when numbers of new cases simply lowered, as opposed to all known cases being removed from community and quarantined, and confidence there was zero community transmission.
Meanwhile borders are porous, with new cases arriving constantly. The combination of all this is heartbreakingly difficult to observe.
Honestly this stuff is easy.
A lockdown means only essential workers who actually keep the lights on and provide food go to work, and they do with ridiculous protection.
It means no fast food delivery, no public transport or Ubers, no leaving your residence except for exercise (maybe - some places you had to stay inside) and 1/week shop at the supermarket (or delivery) with one person/household.
It means closing the borders firmly, and government-provided and provisioned (not outsourced) quarantining every arrival for at least 14 days.
And it means providing plenty of funding and kindness to businesses and people to allow them to get through without fear. Including putting homeless into homes (e.g. empty hotel rooms).
And it needs to last long enough to know and isolate every case, which is say 6-8 weeks if done properly.
The US and UK failed on every one of these tests, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead.
Meanwhile in New Zealand we did the above almost a year ago, and are enjoying our summer break essentially normally.
Nowhere in the US has really had harsh lockdown measures.
SF also has density issues that will drive up the r0 of the virus. While the widely quoted r0 of the virus is around 3.0, the r0 in NYC at the start of the outbreak was estimated to be 5.0
(You could argue about if that was really the r(t) and not r0, but I'm not considering time-dependence or the reaction to the virus, but the actual starting reproduction number in NYC before there was any human reaction to the virus -- that isn't a constant value but depends on the local conditions).
Austin has an overall 3,000 people per square mile density, SF has an overall 18,000 people per square mile (and some areas are even more dense than that).
My perception, born and raised east-bay, is the Oakland has been a lost cause (for murders) since at least 1985. And more than one mayoral candidate has talked up the issue.
But, and this is the terrible part, the murder happens to "the poors". So, IMO,, it's less about racism and more about classism (possibly rooted in racism).
It's similar to how we (usa) don't care too much about the covid deaths. It's like Earthican tradition for disease and pestilence to affect poor folks first/more and for the wealthy to just not see it (they simply look the other way).
As a citizen of New Zealand I believe a short, sharp lock-down combined with test & contact trace is the only route to zero.
I think that this option is far far better than being in "half measures" restrictions for very long periods of time.
When a country announces their lock-down measures I feel excited for their populace that they might finally be heading to zero.
Then I read the holes in the measures:
- Resturants open, even if only for takeout.
- People mixing bubbles with friends
- Working from an office when WFH is possible
- Anything beyond food, health and utilities being considered "essential" and allowed
- Lack of financial support so it is not financially feasible to take public health measures (stay home, feed family, get tested, get healthcare).
I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules and institute an Alert level 4 lockdown, not some half-hearted level 3 / 2 ripoff.
When all the citizens are in this together, when they all see the shared sacrifice and they have the means to actually take a lock-down together ... it's a huge weight off. It would only take 6 weeks of true level 4 to transform the infection rate of any nation - the virus dies out if it cannot spread.
Kudos to New Zealand, but I'll restate the obvious here: for this strategy it really helps if you're an island - not only with the initial implementation of the strategy, but also with staying virus-free once you reach that state. Because in NZ everyone who enters the country is registered and can be forced to follow the quarantine rules. By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks. Sure, people returning from another country should get a test and quarantine if it's positive - but does anyone know who travelled where and is required to get a test? No...
A small anecdotal example of why this complicates fighting the pandemic: during the first wave, eastern Germany got off relatively easy, with few cases. Czechia was even better, because they locked their borders and hardly had any cases initially. Then, during the summer/early autumn, Germany had the usual rules with masks, distancing, no large gatherings etc., while Czechia had much laxer/less-enforced rules. So guys from Germany would throw their bachelor party in Czechia, get infected and then infect everyone at their wedding a few days later. Which led not only to Czechia having a catastrophic number of cases in October, but also to eastern Germany (particularly Saxony) being hardest hit in the second wave.
In Europe, the conclusion was that you simply cannot do that, physically. It is so integrated, even for essentials such as food or medication, that you have a huge area, requiring delivery/lorry drivers whizzing around, medical staff in hospitals and care homes, etc. Short sharp shock just can’t happen.
So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keeping the lights out. That’s a tough one to balance.
Kudos to New Zealand, I’m just not sure it’s a blueprint others can replicate.
New Zealand had it very easy with its geography. Same for other relatively small islands. Place like EU with its own national, often competing goals can't be effectively 100% locked out. That's what happens when you have a federation with strong independent parts.
Not that I disagree with your points, they should be the baseline for any serious covid response. Lockdown measures have so far always been watered down by politicians due to pressures from business. Business is this time acting staggeringly idiotically, prolonging the situation due to fear of complete shutdown. At the end, they get hurt much more.
Some local info - Swiss are faring quite well, while not having that many things closed, ie ski resorts work (since its outdoor activity). Not restricting traveling within country. France on the other hand is going again mental (liberté has long abandoned the place of revolution, but that's happen when you go extreme left in real world). Closing many basic things, but ie annual sales in shopping centres were going very strong till today.
I mean how fucking stupid you can be, close outdoor business giving salaries to significant part of population, and on the other side allowing large indoor gatherings of people so they can buy cheap clothes and stores can clean their stock. Even now they only close those > 20,000m2 surface.
Outdoor activities also keep many people sane and in good health, which at this point is becoming significant negative side effect of this whole situation. Most people I know, including myself, the fitness level declined in last year. That is tightly coupled with mental health. At least spring will fix things up a bit (looking forward to run in the park again, more sun, less rain).
>> I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules
When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess.
EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. Keep them coming.
Yes, the holes in the "lockdowns" elsewhere are kind of unbelievable. If the lockdown is hard enough, and the financial support is there for those who need it, then it can be short and effective.
Definitely a report we did not want to hear. Just the the record though, the author is factually wrong about Denmark being one of the jurisdictions that "chose not to stamp out this virus and blithely tolerated high infection rates" and is probably referring to Sweden - see https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2020/11/17/the-nor....
He is also factually wrong on at least one other thing:
“He finds it astonishing that COVID-19 has boosted its infectiousness by 30 to 50 per cent over previous strains by doing what viruses do: evolve, mutate and adapt for more effective reproduction.”
The UK strain seems to be 25% more infectious. It’s still bad but less than mentioned.
EDIT: source is the latest Drosten podcast, where he referenced to some new evidence and papers. Here’s the transcript (in German), see page 9 bottom.
Here on the ground in Portugal I'd say the government's response is apparently competent but it's just not effective. Although the country is simply following what others are doing, the population is taking this very seriously. Mask wearing outside is pretty universal except if you're exercising, everybody is working from home where possible and the schools are closed (finally). But it's not enough. The problem is that family ties are very strong here. Relaxing the rules for 36 hours at Christmas and 24 hours at New Year was absolutely the wrong thing to do and that is why the death toll has doubled in the five weeks since then.
It won't happen, because there's no political incentive to do so.
The citizens of these beleaguered countries seem quite happy with the government management thus far[1]. I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the UK response thus far and think - more of that please!
The UK is faced with a lack of choice here. My read is that people strongly dislike the current government policies but believe that the cons are "least worst".
There's been very little in the way of real opposition, sadly. For instance, when the Tories do make actual fuckups Labour usually resort to off-topic complaints about idpol so the Tories just do whatever they want with no push back.
I agree, but it also doesn't help when the Labour opposition have had a string of weak opposition leaders.
Even Keir Starmer seems content to sit back and only critise the Government's response the day or days after a grim milestone/but of news.
Why isn't he constantly saying that the UK should totally shut their borders, for example? He should be saying this and nothing else, and directing the rest of Labour to do the same. That's how an effective opposition works.
As already said by someone else, I don't think that's the right reading of it. I know it's anecdotal, but I don't know anyone here (I'm in the southern UK) who thinks that the government has handled this even remotely competently, but they also acknowledge that there's not really an ideal way to handle it. The only thing that seems to be going 'to plan' is the vaccine rollout, which has surprised me as I never thought they'd get near the target figures they now look to be going to achieve (i.e. vaccinating the four key groups by Feb 15).
You have to make some sacrifices to win the battle, but it seems we've paid a lot of the price (in terms of economic costs as well as deaths), but without the positives that should have come from that. As soon as there's any sign of let-up in any of the statistics, it seems the government wants to remove the measures, which seems to be a bad idea to me, but I'm a chump who's not making the decisions!
The UK response has been mediocre rather than awful.
* PPE sourcing has been poor.
* Track and trace has been poor, and for the money they spent should have been far better.
* Lockdowns have been too leaky, and too late.
* But the vaccination research and rollout has been excellent.
The high UK death toll is only partly due to the above mediocrities, and mainly due to factors that cannot be pinned on the government:
* A very highly internationally mobile population that seeded infections everywhere in the country.
* A very highly internally mobile population that spread infections everywhere in the country.
* A very high density population
* Little experience of pandemic management and limited pre-existing testing capacity
* No culture of mask wearing
* A higher than average aged population
* A higher than average obese population
* Higher percentage of ethnic minority individuals who have been more susceptible to the disease, even after adjusting for health and income inequalities.
* More northerly climate with colder temperatures and higher rates of vitamin D deficiency
* Lower public tolerance for restrictions on movement
* Insufficient police numbers to enforce lockdown policies
No SINGLE cause from the lists above explain the UK's high death rate. It's a perfect storm of all of them.
The author never says it and probably because he knows the reaction it would cause. "Decisive" lockdown at this point would likely be a troops patrolling the street type of event with extreme restrictions on leaving one's home.
I don't see that being anywhere near politically acceptable in many areas of the country.
China and Vietnam get the virus under control by using centralised quarantines.
I wonder how many people supporting the sentiments of this article would be ok with someone arriving at their doorstep, taking you to a prison basically whether you agree or not, and quaranteening you there for at least 10 days with other covid people. Perhaps they also take your family too, in case they are also infected.
Are you willing to pay that price?
Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were:
- Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you needed medical care.
- Unless we had a really good reason, we had to stay within a 5km radius of home at all times, and couldn't leave home for more than 1hr each day. We also had an 8pm curfew - though I'm still not sure what that was for.
- No visitors unless they're an intimate partner
- Masks mandatory any time you left your home. On the spot fines from police if they catch you outside without a mask.
Basically everything indoors was closed - no gyms, takeout only at restaurants, etc. Supermarkets had security guards to make sure nobody entered without a mask on, and they had complimentary hand sanitizer at the entrance.
That strategy was enough to go from 700/day down to 0/day in a couple months. Those months were awful, but just about everything has opened up again now since we've been sitting at 0 local infections in the whole country for the last few weeks. We only broke our streak today - a hotel quarantine worker was infected in Perth. The city has immediately locked down to make sure it doesn't spread.
If the whole world followed the same strategy, covid would be gone already and international travel could have resumed months ago.
I find the notion of China having the virus under control hard to believe.
CCP is known to misinform with less at stake than this, and to not care all that much about large areas of rural territory (recall the one child policy, which was more or less unenforced outside of larger cities and resulted in the depressing phenomenon of millions of “invisible” children who are outside of the system and do not have access to education or healthcare). With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the virus has been raging over the countryside, unreported.
That is not to say I know one way or the other, but merely to point out that relying on official information may not be correct—one ought to look at secondary signs, such as new hospitals being built or some inconsistencies in numbers. Claiming that centralized measures helped get the virus under control based on official numbers from a totalitarian regime may be disingenuous.
I'd very much support this. Somehow America thought this was fine for decades when somebody might be smoking a joint, but now it's fascism when it actually has a material purpose. Pretend like the people with covid actually have drugs and 10 days in jail sounds absurdly progressive when viewed in terms of very recent history. Covid is a gateway drug to full respiratory failure, and it takes very little peer pressure to spread it.
edit: also, I thought our pretense for harassing prostitutes was to stop the spread of disease. If we don't actually care about disease we should stop harassing them so they can have have a few years of freedom from interference before a strain of covid mutates into the death rate of MERS and civilization falls because we can't live like the awful Chinese.
I was in a Vietnamese quarantine in March as a foreigner. It's definitely not a prison. There are two types of quarantine: before and after the test. The second one is pretty good and you can even live in a special hotel.
Yeah I don't think lockdowns have worked universally. Even stringent ones like those in India where cases picked up quickly after they opened up.
What seems to have worked in Wuhan was, in addition to lockdowns, rigorous contact tracing and isolation of symptomatic patients and their close contacts in centralized quarantine facilities.
Once all of this is done, I hope we learn more about how China actually contained this. But the answer is likely authoritarian measures that no democracy can legally or politically afford.
Exactly what we have in NZ right now. But it’s not prison (which is emotional language at best).
Quarantining is done in nice hotels, and people are treated well. Special accommodations are even made for extended family groups.
"He notes that a more infectious virus is more dangerous than a more lethal one, “because every new case will infect more people, and each of them will infect more people, such that the number of cases will grow exponentially.”"
Oh my god, that sounds horrible - except, that's how EVERY infectious disease works. We have been living with that kind of diseases forever.
Also, no, they don't grow exponentially. The population saturates.
Last spring, we were flattening the curve. Last summer, we were waiting for a vaccine. Last fall, we were solving the logistical challenges for production. Now I'm starting to see headlines that "just because there's a vaccine, doesn't mean it's over"?
I'm 25. I've spent the last year in a small apartment alone with my dog. If the problem is that we didn't lock down well enough the first time, why should I believe a better job will be done this time?
If the CDC says it, I'll do it. But I'm tired of reading "science writers" constantly shitting on the situation. Really makes me wonder why I bothered in the first place.
I thought "American science has given us a Lamborghini when what the world needs is a Toyota" was a particular gem in this piece. I could swear six months to a year ago I was reading people like this guy saying we shouldn't expect a vaccine to be discovered soon, if ever.
The problem is that if 80% of the population do their civic duty and stay home while the remaining 20% carry on with life as usual - go to bars and sporting events, protest, and so on then the numbers won't come down. The reality of covid is that a few selfish people can easily ruin the hard work of everyone else.
Here in Australia we tried asking people who were infected to just quarantine in their own homes. Eventually the police went around and started doing spot checks, and found that a bunch of people who had known positive covid tests had gone in to work! No no no - you need strict enforcement to go along with lockdown rules or it just doesn't seem to work.
I can't find it right now, of course, but somebody -- I think it was Tom Scott -- had a decent video early on in the pandemic that said, "as a pandemic gets bigger, it gets more weird."
Coronaviruses mutate, and every single infected human becomes a petri dish for new mutations. The rest is straightforward natural selection: the most efficient covid-19 variants will win. We might get lucky; the most efficient variant might accidentally mutate away all the things that makes it deadly to humans. There might even be some selection pressure for that.
But it could also stay about as deadly while changing enough about its spike protein to defeat antibodies in previously infected individuals and get more infectious in the process, and that would be a really bad scenario.
I've been stunned for the last 12 months at the volume of the people that are totally okay with this, since we have no way of knowing right now how this might turn out over the next few years.
None of the variants so far are any more lethal than the original. Isn't that right? I have heard nothing to the contrary, although this guy seems to think it's already happened.
Can people in the northern hemisphere stop banging on that the reason it is so easy for us to get a handle on COVID in Australia is because it is summer. We eliminated COVID in Melbourne during winter with wearing masks and real lockdowns. It was not easy. It required a huge effort of societal and political will and cooperation. It involved following the science. Stop blaming the weather.
“ New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Iceland and Taiwan got it right. They went to zero and eliminated the virus. Atlantic Canada and the North got it right, too.”
These countries are all islands. How is that representative of the rest of the world and how they can handle it?
> Moreover, our politicians have placed their bets on two high-tech, two-shot and costly vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. They require refrigeration that half the world can’t afford.
> American science has given us a Lamborghini when what the world needs is a Toyota
There is no Pfizer vaccine ... it's German science from Biontech. The author doesn't even get this detail right. Why should I take his panicky opinion serious?
> They actually represent an entirely new pandemic.
This is semantics abused for FUD. It's not a new pandemic - period.
> And by New Zealand’s or Taiwan’s measure, we look very bad.
Did it even occur to this guy that his favorite reference countries are small islands with basically just one major ship and airport?
> Be like a zero hero, like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern.
This whole text is just a cheesy opinion piece - not a scientific view.
> No politician wanted to hear that evidence [by Drosten], and many continue to ignore it.
Not true - he's been the court scientist of German government since early 2020.
Not to mention that Moderna's vaccine doesn't require special refrigeration that 'half the world can't afford', just the pfizer/biontech vaccine. Moderna's vaccine can be stored in regular refrigeration for up to 30 days.
The New Zealand or Taiwan model works because you don't let the virus enter in the first place.
Also New Zealand and Australia are in Summer right now. Just 30 seconds of Australia sun radiation now will kill(inactivate) any virus on any surface. Temperature will dry the membrane of any COVID virus that remains on the shadow. People immune system is much stronger in Summer, and people go out, do not live that close together as in Winter.
Once you let it enter like the UK, Spain, Italy or US did, it is too late.
It took three months for the Spain going "from 1 to 0", and it was the biggest catastrophe for the economy and democracy itself in decades, because it takes time for the spread to halve. And it did not get a real 0 after all the pain. Spanish' Spring and Summer had probably the biggest effect after all.
It is not that catastrophic by the way. Once people get infected, they do not get infected away, and just protecting people over 65 years old with vaccine will stop most deads.
In fact just going for people over 80 years old have a significant effect on deads.
In the US, 15% of the population is over 65 years old and 9% already got the first dose. Next month most of them will be immune.
I wonder what the effects of rapidly vaccinating your population would be, like Israel is currently doing.
There are still children and people who can’t tolerate a vaccine, but vaccinating 6.5M out of 8.5M people quickly (assuming 2M children and 800k that have or soon will catch COVID) should have a huge effect on the r rate.
Funny he puts more faith in Astrazeneca vaccin. True it's logistics are easier. But it's efficacy is not... Worse given the higher transmission rates of the new strains it in itself might not be sufficient to prevent further spread. Higher R0 requires higher efficacy to keep R below 1.
how the efficacy of vaccines changes with mutating strains of the virus is I think still out in the open, but I'll second the general tone of the article. Complacency is dangerous. Already are there people who treat the vaccinations themselves as panacea despite the fact that in some countries like the US almost half of all frontline workers aren't even willing to be vaccinated.[1]
The pandemic will not magically end because of a miracle cure, but with enough state capacity and social coordination crushing the thing would be possible right now.
[+] [-] eqdw|5 years ago|reply
San Francisco, where I'm told (and believe, based on having lived there) that they had very strict lockdown measures:
https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/coronavirus.asp
* Population: ~900,000
* Total Cases: 31,111 (3,457 / 100k)
* Total Deaths: 324 (36 / 100k)
Compare Austin, TX, where I can personally attest that basically everyone has said fuck the rules for almost six months now
https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#...
* Population: ~2,400,000
* Total Cases: 68,290 (2,845 / 100k)
* Total Deaths: 655 (27 / 100k)
The stats are virtually identical despite dramatically different policy decisions. So what the hell is the point?
As an addendum, to put this into perspective: in 2020, Oakland's murder rate was 23/100k, making it _almost as high as the covid death rate_. Why is it that one year of covid deaths is a world-destroying incident, but _every_ year of Oakland deaths and nobody does anything about it ever? Are Bay Area people really just that racist?
[+] [-] lancewiggs|5 years ago|reply
Moreover lockdown restrictions were removed when numbers of new cases simply lowered, as opposed to all known cases being removed from community and quarantined, and confidence there was zero community transmission.
Meanwhile borders are porous, with new cases arriving constantly. The combination of all this is heartbreakingly difficult to observe.
Honestly this stuff is easy.
A lockdown means only essential workers who actually keep the lights on and provide food go to work, and they do with ridiculous protection.
It means no fast food delivery, no public transport or Ubers, no leaving your residence except for exercise (maybe - some places you had to stay inside) and 1/week shop at the supermarket (or delivery) with one person/household.
It means closing the borders firmly, and government-provided and provisioned (not outsourced) quarantining every arrival for at least 14 days.
And it means providing plenty of funding and kindness to businesses and people to allow them to get through without fear. Including putting homeless into homes (e.g. empty hotel rooms).
And it needs to last long enough to know and isolate every case, which is say 6-8 weeks if done properly.
The US and UK failed on every one of these tests, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead.
Meanwhile in New Zealand we did the above almost a year ago, and are enjoying our summer break essentially normally.
[+] [-] lamontcg|5 years ago|reply
SF also has density issues that will drive up the r0 of the virus. While the widely quoted r0 of the virus is around 3.0, the r0 in NYC at the start of the outbreak was estimated to be 5.0
(You could argue about if that was really the r(t) and not r0, but I'm not considering time-dependence or the reaction to the virus, but the actual starting reproduction number in NYC before there was any human reaction to the virus -- that isn't a constant value but depends on the local conditions).
Austin has an overall 3,000 people per square mile density, SF has an overall 18,000 people per square mile (and some areas are even more dense than that).
[+] [-] edoceo|5 years ago|reply
But, and this is the terrible part, the murder happens to "the poors". So, IMO,, it's less about racism and more about classism (possibly rooted in racism).
It's similar to how we (usa) don't care too much about the covid deaths. It's like Earthican tradition for disease and pestilence to affect poor folks first/more and for the wealthy to just not see it (they simply look the other way).
[+] [-] gridspy|5 years ago|reply
I think that this option is far far better than being in "half measures" restrictions for very long periods of time.
When a country announces their lock-down measures I feel excited for their populace that they might finally be heading to zero.
Then I read the holes in the measures:
- Resturants open, even if only for takeout.
- People mixing bubbles with friends
- Working from an office when WFH is possible
- Anything beyond food, health and utilities being considered "essential" and allowed
- Lack of financial support so it is not financially feasible to take public health measures (stay home, feed family, get tested, get healthcare).
I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules and institute an Alert level 4 lockdown, not some half-hearted level 3 / 2 ripoff.
Ask for level 4: https://covid19.govt.nz/assets/resources/tables/COVID-19-ale...
When all the citizens are in this together, when they all see the shared sacrifice and they have the means to actually take a lock-down together ... it's a huge weight off. It would only take 6 weeks of true level 4 to transform the infection rate of any nation - the virus dies out if it cannot spread.
[+] [-] rob74|5 years ago|reply
A small anecdotal example of why this complicates fighting the pandemic: during the first wave, eastern Germany got off relatively easy, with few cases. Czechia was even better, because they locked their borders and hardly had any cases initially. Then, during the summer/early autumn, Germany had the usual rules with masks, distancing, no large gatherings etc., while Czechia had much laxer/less-enforced rules. So guys from Germany would throw their bachelor party in Czechia, get infected and then infect everyone at their wedding a few days later. Which led not only to Czechia having a catastrophic number of cases in October, but also to eastern Germany (particularly Saxony) being hardest hit in the second wave.
[+] [-] rich_sasha|5 years ago|reply
So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keeping the lights out. That’s a tough one to balance.
Kudos to New Zealand, I’m just not sure it’s a blueprint others can replicate.
[+] [-] saiya-jin|5 years ago|reply
Not that I disagree with your points, they should be the baseline for any serious covid response. Lockdown measures have so far always been watered down by politicians due to pressures from business. Business is this time acting staggeringly idiotically, prolonging the situation due to fear of complete shutdown. At the end, they get hurt much more.
Some local info - Swiss are faring quite well, while not having that many things closed, ie ski resorts work (since its outdoor activity). Not restricting traveling within country. France on the other hand is going again mental (liberté has long abandoned the place of revolution, but that's happen when you go extreme left in real world). Closing many basic things, but ie annual sales in shopping centres were going very strong till today.
I mean how fucking stupid you can be, close outdoor business giving salaries to significant part of population, and on the other side allowing large indoor gatherings of people so they can buy cheap clothes and stores can clean their stock. Even now they only close those > 20,000m2 surface.
Outdoor activities also keep many people sane and in good health, which at this point is becoming significant negative side effect of this whole situation. Most people I know, including myself, the fitness level declined in last year. That is tightly coupled with mental health. At least spring will fix things up a bit (looking forward to run in the park again, more sun, less rain).
[+] [-] icelancer|5 years ago|reply
When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess.
EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. Keep them coming.
[+] [-] mkl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jensgrud|5 years ago|reply
We actually wiped out an entire industry of mink farming in the name of stopping the spread of mutations, but that is a topic for an other thread (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/health/covid-mink-mutatio...).
[+] [-] baxtr|5 years ago|reply
“He finds it astonishing that COVID-19 has boosted its infectiousness by 30 to 50 per cent over previous strains by doing what viruses do: evolve, mutate and adapt for more effective reproduction.”
The UK strain seems to be 25% more infectious. It’s still bad but less than mentioned.
EDIT: source is the latest Drosten podcast, where he referenced to some new evidence and papers. Here’s the transcript (in German), see page 9 bottom.
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript262.pdf
[+] [-] smackay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __blockcipher__|5 years ago|reply
(Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)
[+] [-] plantain|5 years ago|reply
The citizens of these beleaguered countries seem quite happy with the government management thus far[1]. I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the UK response thus far and think - more of that please!
[1] https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1355606835873669126
[+] [-] throwaway3699|5 years ago|reply
There's been very little in the way of real opposition, sadly. For instance, when the Tories do make actual fuckups Labour usually resort to off-topic complaints about idpol so the Tories just do whatever they want with no push back.
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
We are up for election mid-March, the ruling party and PM will be re-elected.
The populace will not 'take chances' during crises.
[+] [-] tristanperry|5 years ago|reply
Even Keir Starmer seems content to sit back and only critise the Government's response the day or days after a grim milestone/but of news.
Why isn't he constantly saying that the UK should totally shut their borders, for example? He should be saying this and nothing else, and directing the rest of Labour to do the same. That's how an effective opposition works.
Instead he generally chooses silence.
[+] [-] djaychela|5 years ago|reply
You have to make some sacrifices to win the battle, but it seems we've paid a lot of the price (in terms of economic costs as well as deaths), but without the positives that should have come from that. As soon as there's any sign of let-up in any of the statistics, it seems the government wants to remove the measures, which seems to be a bad idea to me, but I'm a chump who's not making the decisions!
[+] [-] jl6|5 years ago|reply
* PPE sourcing has been poor.
* Track and trace has been poor, and for the money they spent should have been far better.
* Lockdowns have been too leaky, and too late.
* But the vaccination research and rollout has been excellent.
The high UK death toll is only partly due to the above mediocrities, and mainly due to factors that cannot be pinned on the government:
* A very highly internationally mobile population that seeded infections everywhere in the country.
* A very highly internally mobile population that spread infections everywhere in the country.
* A very high density population
* Little experience of pandemic management and limited pre-existing testing capacity
* No culture of mask wearing
* A higher than average aged population
* A higher than average obese population
* Higher percentage of ethnic minority individuals who have been more susceptible to the disease, even after adjusting for health and income inequalities.
* More northerly climate with colder temperatures and higher rates of vitamin D deficiency
* Lower public tolerance for restrictions on movement
* Insufficient police numbers to enforce lockdown policies
No SINGLE cause from the lists above explain the UK's high death rate. It's a perfect storm of all of them.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
I don't see that being anywhere near politically acceptable in many areas of the country.
[+] [-] zpeti|5 years ago|reply
I wonder how many people supporting the sentiments of this article would be ok with someone arriving at their doorstep, taking you to a prison basically whether you agree or not, and quaranteening you there for at least 10 days with other covid people. Perhaps they also take your family too, in case they are also infected. Are you willing to pay that price?
[+] [-] josephg|5 years ago|reply
- Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you needed medical care.
- Unless we had a really good reason, we had to stay within a 5km radius of home at all times, and couldn't leave home for more than 1hr each day. We also had an 8pm curfew - though I'm still not sure what that was for.
- No visitors unless they're an intimate partner
- Masks mandatory any time you left your home. On the spot fines from police if they catch you outside without a mask.
Basically everything indoors was closed - no gyms, takeout only at restaurants, etc. Supermarkets had security guards to make sure nobody entered without a mask on, and they had complimentary hand sanitizer at the entrance.
That strategy was enough to go from 700/day down to 0/day in a couple months. Those months were awful, but just about everything has opened up again now since we've been sitting at 0 local infections in the whole country for the last few weeks. We only broke our streak today - a hotel quarantine worker was infected in Perth. The city has immediately locked down to make sure it doesn't spread.
If the whole world followed the same strategy, covid would be gone already and international travel could have resumed months ago.
[+] [-] strogonoff|5 years ago|reply
CCP is known to misinform with less at stake than this, and to not care all that much about large areas of rural territory (recall the one child policy, which was more or less unenforced outside of larger cities and resulted in the depressing phenomenon of millions of “invisible” children who are outside of the system and do not have access to education or healthcare). With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the virus has been raging over the countryside, unreported.
That is not to say I know one way or the other, but merely to point out that relying on official information may not be correct—one ought to look at secondary signs, such as new hospitals being built or some inconsistencies in numbers. Claiming that centralized measures helped get the virus under control based on official numbers from a totalitarian regime may be disingenuous.
[+] [-] kiba|5 years ago|reply
I am tired of wearing the god damn masks, having to worry about my elderly parents,
Are you tired of the god damn pandemic? I know I am. Because we already have no freedom.
[+] [-] pessimizer|5 years ago|reply
edit: also, I thought our pretense for harassing prostitutes was to stop the spread of disease. If we don't actually care about disease we should stop harassing them so they can have have a few years of freedom from interference before a strain of covid mutates into the death rate of MERS and civilization falls because we can't live like the awful Chinese.
[+] [-] f311a|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueblisters|5 years ago|reply
What seems to have worked in Wuhan was, in addition to lockdowns, rigorous contact tracing and isolation of symptomatic patients and their close contacts in centralized quarantine facilities.
Once all of this is done, I hope we learn more about how China actually contained this. But the answer is likely authoritarian measures that no democracy can legally or politically afford.
[+] [-] lancewiggs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] res0nat0r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herewegoagain2|5 years ago|reply
Oh my god, that sounds horrible - except, that's how EVERY infectious disease works. We have been living with that kind of diseases forever.
Also, no, they don't grow exponentially. The population saturates.
[+] [-] ahepp|5 years ago|reply
I'm 25. I've spent the last year in a small apartment alone with my dog. If the problem is that we didn't lock down well enough the first time, why should I believe a better job will be done this time?
If the CDC says it, I'll do it. But I'm tired of reading "science writers" constantly shitting on the situation. Really makes me wonder why I bothered in the first place.
I thought "American science has given us a Lamborghini when what the world needs is a Toyota" was a particular gem in this piece. I could swear six months to a year ago I was reading people like this guy saying we shouldn't expect a vaccine to be discovered soon, if ever.
[+] [-] josephg|5 years ago|reply
Here in Australia we tried asking people who were infected to just quarantine in their own homes. Eventually the police went around and started doing spot checks, and found that a bunch of people who had known positive covid tests had gone in to work! No no no - you need strict enforcement to go along with lockdown rules or it just doesn't seem to work.
[+] [-] thaumaturgy|5 years ago|reply
Coronaviruses mutate, and every single infected human becomes a petri dish for new mutations. The rest is straightforward natural selection: the most efficient covid-19 variants will win. We might get lucky; the most efficient variant might accidentally mutate away all the things that makes it deadly to humans. There might even be some selection pressure for that.
But it could also stay about as deadly while changing enough about its spike protein to defeat antibodies in previously infected individuals and get more infectious in the process, and that would be a really bad scenario.
I've been stunned for the last 12 months at the volume of the people that are totally okay with this, since we have no way of knowing right now how this might turn out over the next few years.
[+] [-] gridspy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] area51org|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotherevan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cudgy|5 years ago|reply
These countries are all islands. How is that representative of the rest of the world and how they can handle it?
[+] [-] jansan|5 years ago|reply
Wouldn't it be a shame if the window closed before the goals are reached? Also, I do not trust activist writers.
[+] [-] 74d-fe6-2c6|5 years ago|reply
> American science has given us a Lamborghini when what the world needs is a Toyota
There is no Pfizer vaccine ... it's German science from Biontech. The author doesn't even get this detail right. Why should I take his panicky opinion serious?
> They actually represent an entirely new pandemic.
This is semantics abused for FUD. It's not a new pandemic - period.
> And by New Zealand’s or Taiwan’s measure, we look very bad.
Did it even occur to this guy that his favorite reference countries are small islands with basically just one major ship and airport?
> Be like a zero hero, like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern.
This whole text is just a cheesy opinion piece - not a scientific view.
> No politician wanted to hear that evidence [by Drosten], and many continue to ignore it.
Not true - he's been the court scientist of German government since early 2020.
[+] [-] wgjordan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bumbada|5 years ago|reply
The New Zealand or Taiwan model works because you don't let the virus enter in the first place.
Also New Zealand and Australia are in Summer right now. Just 30 seconds of Australia sun radiation now will kill(inactivate) any virus on any surface. Temperature will dry the membrane of any COVID virus that remains on the shadow. People immune system is much stronger in Summer, and people go out, do not live that close together as in Winter.
Once you let it enter like the UK, Spain, Italy or US did, it is too late.
It took three months for the Spain going "from 1 to 0", and it was the biggest catastrophe for the economy and democracy itself in decades, because it takes time for the spread to halve. And it did not get a real 0 after all the pain. Spanish' Spring and Summer had probably the biggest effect after all.
It is not that catastrophic by the way. Once people get infected, they do not get infected away, and just protecting people over 65 years old with vaccine will stop most deads.
In fact just going for people over 80 years old have a significant effect on deads.
In the US, 15% of the population is over 65 years old and 9% already got the first dose. Next month most of them will be immune.
[+] [-] jraby3|5 years ago|reply
There are still children and people who can’t tolerate a vaccine, but vaccinating 6.5M out of 8.5M people quickly (assuming 2M children and 800k that have or soon will catch COVID) should have a huge effect on the r rate.
[+] [-] Pietertje|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
The pandemic will not magically end because of a miracle cure, but with enough state capacity and social coordination crushing the thing would be possible right now.
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/02/large-numb...
[+] [-] wernercd|5 years ago|reply
How many thousands die a year from the flu and it was all but ignored?
[+] [-] sparrish|5 years ago|reply
~ Thomas Jefferson
[+] [-] fire7000|5 years ago|reply
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