Coronavirus: More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover

Started by dsanchez, February 23, 2020, 23:47:08

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SueC

Quote from: word_on_a_wing on November 28, 2020, 12:17:51Wow yes ... that scene from The Wall doesn't sound too far from where Clapton was heading.

Sorry to hear about the racism you experienced Sue. I had no idea you were German. I'm Scottish and received lots of teasing about that when I was a child. Back then there was very little diversity, almost all the kids were white, and usually with a surname like Jones or Brown... so being Scottish was unusual. I revisited the same school 25yrs later (as they have polling/voting stations from there) and It felt liberating to see the old buildings demolished. In its place were nice modern buildings ...I walked through a hallway where the students had painted handprints with their names written beside them, with a lot of culturally diverse names :)  I felt very happy to see this. A big positive sigh of relief for progressive change 🥰

Yes, it's good to see the improvements that have happened over the past few decades.  (They say that change happens one funeral at a time!  :evil:)  The younger generations in particular are far less inclined towards racism, misogyny and homophobia than the generation I'm from.

I'm surprised you got flak for being Scottish.  You were from the same island as the Anglos... but it's not really about geographical proximity or skin colour or accents, it's just about picking on any difference at all, for people like that.  If necessary, they'll go to war against the supporters of other soccer teams...  :1f635:

I'm part German, part Italian, and ironically, some of the people who were giving me a hard time and going on about Hitler when I was in middle school in the 80s were the children of Italian immigrants.  I asked them, "Have you heard of Mussolini?"  They hadn't, so I suggested they ask their parents about that.  Funnily, in Italy itself (70s, early 80s) I had always been made welcome by everyone around, even though I wasn't born there and only had a rudimentary level of Italian.

I'm sorry you got stupid comments for being Scottish.  Have you retained any of the accent?  I could eat Scottish accents...  :cool

Re the COVID-19, after observing what's gone on this year I do think that go hard, go early is the best way to deal with a pandemic.  Taiwan, NZ and Australia (and China, if you want an example of a non-island nation with that approach) all did that, and as a result, aren't going through the horror stories that are happening in the US and Europe, where the damage to the economies will end up being greater than it would have been with a go hard, go early suppression/elimination approach.  Western Australia largely avoided community transmission this year, and there's less impact on the economy because of it - we can live a semblance of a normal life - just no international travel, no interstate travel most of this year, following social distancing and hand hygiene advice etc, and most people here are back at work and have been for months - but obviously some businesses going over the cliff (hospitality, arts hard hit, with varying degrees of government support in response).  No crowds yet, and that's a good decision.

Some people were giving Daniel Andrews (Victorian premier) so much flak over locking down the second wave hard, but the results completely vindicate it.  The virus is now at such a low level that testing and tracing should be able to prevent a rapidly escalating outbreak next time around.  Had the much-maligned lockdown not happened, Victoria would look like the UK by now.  I for one am glad to live in a country that's been following the advice of its public health experts to a T instead of arguing about "freedom" or alternative realities...

@Ulrich, yes it's not useful to call people morons just because you disagree with them, but it's more than that here, isn't it?  ...sometimes people really are morons, e.g. conspiracy theorists, people who think the earth is flat, people who think COVID is a hoax, people who think they can affect the course of aeroplanes with their thoughts; people who malign others based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation etc;  basically people who are impermeable to verifiable facts...

It's very laudable for Morrison and Clapton and anyone else to do a fundraiser for the arts.  What I don't find laudable is associating yourself with the "anti-lockdown" brigade, when that section of the community is the refuge of some really obnoxious right-wingers (AKA white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia), I-don't-care-about-you-I-want-my-freedumb bleaters,  conspiracy theorists, anti-science pro-gun pro-toxic-God people, and other idiots like this (idiots as in, they fit the dictionary definition of that word).   What those people are doing is NOT engaging in reasonable, rational discourse about how to deal with the pandemic in an intelligent and compassionate way.

I know you don't agree with some of the ways the German government has approached lockdown - but 1) I'd never lump you with the "anti-lockdown" brigade because you care about reason and compassion, and 2) your government's approach, despite all its flaws, has resulted in one of the better results in Europe for pandemic control (and probably also economically?).  There's nothing wrong with reasoning out the pros and cons of various approaches and thinking about how it affects various subgroups in the community, and the various long-term effects of various strategies - but that's not what the "anti-lockdown" brigade is doing.  While we have a pandemic, lockdowns in some form or another are a necessary part of the response in order to prevent a huge body count and a significant aftermath of chronic illness - as well as the economic disaster of an uncontrolled outbreak.  The question is not, do we do any lockdowns or don't we, it's how do we best do lockdowns, and how can we get public behaviour, mass testing and contact tracing to the point that we can suppress this virus effectively with the least amount of necessary lockdown.

It looks like a vaccine is on the way, but that's going to take a while to roll out and in some ways I think life will never go back to "normal" - and in some ways that's actually a good thing, because our previous "normal" was sending people to the wall and destroying the biosphere rapidly.  We have to change.  Also, at the current levels of human overpopulation, predominances of cultures of entitlement, resource overconsumption, treating the planet as a toxic waste bin, and destruction of habitat, pandemics are going to be increasingly more likely, so we have to learn how to deal with them effectively, while hopefully addressing those characteristics and behaviours in us that make us the most toxic species on the planet.  (Or, we could take the view that Gaia is correcting our overpopulation and destructiveness because we're refusing as a species to take responsibility for that ourselves.)
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15it's not useful to call people morons just because you disagree with them, but it's more than that here, isn't it?  ...sometimes people really are morons, e.g. conspiracy theorists, people who think the earth is flat, people who think COVID is a hoax...

I tend to agree, but as far as I can tell, both Clapton and V. Morrison did not talk about conspiracies or such (so far)!
So I will give them the "benefit of doubt" and the "freedom of speech" until anyone proves the opposite.
(And mind you, I'm not a fan of both of them.)

Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15It's very laudable for Morrison and Clapton and anyone else to do a fundraiser for the arts.  What I don't find laudable is associating yourself with the "anti-lockdown" brigade...

Well, that is my question - did they really? In the article, there is one sentence from each of them. None of them suggests "anti-lockdown". The title of the article says "lockdown single". Anything else is "interpretation".

Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15There's nothing wrong with reasoning out the pros and cons of various approaches and thinking about how it affects various subgroups in the community, and the various long-term effects of various strategies

Absolutely, that is (or should be!) part of democracy (which had come to a halt here, because federal governments were churning out decrees without discussing them in parliament)!

In my opinion, they failed to come up with a real "strategy" or "long-term approach". All summer long they talked about fear of a 2nd wave (which wasn't there between June und Sept.), when it came they seemed "surprised" and acted confused...

Also, any politician who wants to be re-elected won't tell us the truth about the finances.  :unamused:

To get back to the topic of concerts, it is possible (in theory, but it's not going to be an option for small clubs or little promoters to "break even").

From a current interview with musician TV Smith:
QuoteUntil a vaccine does get rolled out there is really no guarantee when there are going to be gigs. I've got a couple of social distanced gigs coming up if there is no local lockdowns. I've done two already in Ipswich with everyone sitting in sixes at tables separated from each other and it was not bad, not a bad way to do it. At least it was a feeling of coming back to live shows and I did do all the songs from the new album over those two gigs. It's the best we can get, so we'll take the best we can get. We can't get everything we want.
http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article/9708/TV-Smith-InterviewTV-Smith-Interview
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on November 29, 2020, 10:59:11
Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15it's not useful to call people morons just because you disagree with them, but it's more than that here, isn't it?  ...sometimes people really are morons, e.g. conspiracy theorists, people who think the earth is flat, people who think COVID is a hoax...

I tend to agree, but as far as I can tell, both Clapton and V. Morrison did not talk about conspiracies or such (so far)!
So I will give them the "benefit of doubt" and the "freedom of speech" until anyone proves the opposite.

See, this is where I made the mistake of taking that stuff at face value, instead of checking out at least three different sources like you're supposed to, to get any chance of getting something straight... and it's a bit disconcerting to still find yourself doing that at times when you're nearly half a century old.  :'(

So if I've unjustly helped to malign Eric Clapton or Van Morrison as anti-lockdowners, I would like to offer an apology.

And this is just one reason it's good to bounce off other brains - because it helps with error checking.  Thank you, @Ulrich, for remembering that one needs to check these things out further before making pronouncements on them - I really didn't have enough evidence for that.

I think it was a kneejerk response to being fed up with the people in the world who think they're more important than the rest of the community.



Quote from: Ulrich on November 29, 2020, 10:59:11(And mind you, I'm not a fan of both of them.)

One of our favourite TV dramas is Edge of Darkness, for which Clapton did a track of the same name we both also like.  But generally, no, I never liked his lyrics very much, and the genre he plays in is a bit howly for my taste generally.  And I had no idea he had made that outburst in the 70s.  I hope he's learnt a bit since then.

I do like some of Van Morrison's stuff.  By the way, I remember one time in the 80s, a DJ on 96fm had just been to a gig and said he was disgusted because Van Morrison had played with his back to the audience and not said a word of acknowledgement to them the whole night.  Next time he was in that slot he explained he'd been rung up by a personal friend of Van Morrison's who told him he struggled with some social phobias etc and when he had a bad turn of it, he had to play with his back to the audience so he could play at all.  This is just what I remember and I obviously don't know if that explanation was true, but it does make you think that there can often potentially be another side to the story.


Quote from: Ulrich on November 29, 2020, 10:59:11
Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15It's very laudable for Morrison and Clapton and anyone else to do a fundraiser for the arts.  What I don't find laudable is associating yourself with the "anti-lockdown" brigade...

Well, that is my question - did they really? In the article, there is one sentence from each of them. None of them suggests "anti-lockdown". The title of the article says "lockdown single". Anything else is "interpretation".

Quite right - thank you!   :cool


Quote from: Ulrich on November 29, 2020, 10:59:11
Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15There's nothing wrong with reasoning out the pros and cons of various approaches and thinking about how it affects various subgroups in the community, and the various long-term effects of various strategies

Absolutely, that is (or should be!) part of democracy (which had come to a halt here, because federal governments were churning out decrees without discussing them in parliament)!

In my opinion, they failed to come up with a real "strategy" or "long-term approach". All summer long they talked about fear of a 2nd wave (which wasn't there between June und Sept.), when it came they seemed "surprised" and acted confused...

Also, any politician who wants to be re-elected won't tell us the truth about the finances.  :unamused:

I'm sorry there was apparently such dithering and lack of communication in your parliament - they absolutely should be discussing this stuff.  What was remarkable about Australia's response - it really surprised me - is how well both sides of politics here came together and worked together on this issue.  They even formed a special cabinet to keep discussing their responses as they went along, with the health experts on board too.  I just listened to some interviews with people who were inside Australia's pandemic response, and it's extraordinary given the prior enmity, how people were actually putting that aside and listening to each other to help serve the public - for once!!!
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on November 29, 2020, 14:33:41I'm sorry there was apparently such dithering and lack of communication in your parliament - they absolutely should be discussing this stuff.

Well, with our federal "structure" it is difficult enough, I guess. Still, in a crisis it is okay for a while if the government acts without parliament, but not over six months or more. (At the moment, they do "discuss" it, but the parliament does not get to "vote" over it.)

Right now, some of our federal states do act differently compared to the rest:

QuoteIm Gegensatz zum Rest der Republik werden in Schleswig-Holstein die Kontaktbeschränkungen nicht verschärft, Beautysalons, Massagestudios und Zoos öffnen wieder und an Weihnachten sollen Hotelübernachtungen erlaubt sein.

Bund und Länder hatten sich am vergangenen Mittwoch auf neue und erweiterte Maßnahmen zum Kampf gegen die Corona-Pandemie im Dezember geeinigt. Die Beschlüsse sehen auch die Möglichkeit vor, je nach Infektionsgeschehen die Maßnahmen zu variieren – und schon einen Tag später wurden die ersten Ausnahmeregelungen verkündet. In Schleswig-Holstein sind die Corona-Grenzwerte niedrig, die Sieben-Tages-Inzidenz liegt bei unter 50.
https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/id_89032638/schleswig-holstein-zoos-und-beauty-salons-oeffnen-wieder.html
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

word_on_a_wing

Quote from: Ulrich on November 29, 2020, 10:59:11
Quote from: SueC on November 28, 2020, 16:03:15It's very laudable for Morrison and Clapton and anyone else to do a fundraiser for the arts. What I don't find laudable is associating yourself with the "anti-lockdown" brigade...

Well, that is my question - did they really? In the article, there is one sentence from each of them. None of them suggests "anti-lockdown". The title of the article says "lockdown single". Anything else is "interpretation".




...sorry to keep this topic going but I haven't been here a few days.

A few months ago VM released 3 very clearly anti-lockdown tracks (I mean one was titled "No more lockdown" ...cant be more obvious than that). If you look at the lyrics of those 3 tracks it's very clear what he is saying. When he released these tracks he made a call for "fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up."

guardian article

Then Clapton comes out in support of VM's stance, and it is announced they are releasing a song together called Stand and Deliver.

....this is all very clear for me. Do you really debate that this is could be something other than anti-lockdown?
"Where the flesh meets the spirit world,
Where the traffic is thin..."

SueC

Thank you for that extra link, @word_on_a_wing - that makes it very clear!  ...in which case, yes, it's so unhelpful to have such attitudes around, and I'm quite surprised that Van Morrison has turned out like this...

Brett says I should stop being surprised when people do or say idiotic things and just see it as the norm - and then I will only be pleasantly surprised if someone actually says or does something intelligent, instead of facing a continuous stream of disappointment...  😮
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: word_on_a_wing on December 01, 2020, 12:50:50A few months ago VM released 3 very clearly anti-lockdown tracks

I didn't know about that. (How should I? I'm not very interested in V. Morrison and even less in E. Clapton...)
Did VM at least suggest practicable other solutions? If not, that is of course stupid (but not quite "moronic" yet).

Anyway, I hope next time Roger posts about "morons", he delivers a little more background.
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

word_on_a_wing

...and I realise I could have given more background too, sorry about that Ulrich
"Where the flesh meets the spirit world,
Where the traffic is thin..."

SueC

Now I'd like five examples each of things @Ulrich finds just stupid, versus things he finds moronic!  :angel

...pretty please with cherries on top...  🍒 🍒 🍒 🍒 🍒
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Nah, let's stay on topic here.

I'll try and explain it via the example of VM: if he has his opinion, that is okay. If he can give good reasons for his opinion, even better.
In this case: if he just says "no lockdown please" but doesn't have better suggestions, that's stupid.
If he says, "Covid is just a hoax" or similar conspiracies, that woulde be "moronic".
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

"No more lockdown / No more government overreach / No more fascist bullies / Disturbing our peace ...

No more taking of our freedom / And our God-given rights / Pretending it's for our safety / When it's really to enslave
..."


...in my book, the highlighted parts of the lyrics qualify as moronic.  Van Morrison seems to be singing from the US far-right song-book...

SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

I wonder if Van Morrison wears a seatbelt, and if he stops at red traffic lights - or if he thinks those are examples of fascist bullying taking away his precious freedumb...

Let freedumb ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedumb ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedumb ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedumb ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedumb ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedumb ring.


I hear a lot of ringing.  Poor Martin Luther King.  He little imagined what sorts of freedumb Americans would rise up to defend - while still embodying all sorts of injustice and inequality, more than 50 years after his death.  (And how morons all around the world would be inspired by their example - like Morrison, and Australia's own Bunnings Karen.)

:1f635:

But here's what I really wanted to put on this thread this morning:  Claire Moodie lives in Perth, Western Australia, but originally hails from Scotland.  She went back recently because one of her parents was dying, and was flabbergasted by the laxness of COVID-19 restrictions she encountered in Europe:  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-01/learning-from-the-scotland-second-wave-as-australia-hits-summer/12930228

Australians like us have been watching the European response to COVID-19 and have wondered:  Why can't a lot of people in the UK get COVID tests, symptomatic or not?  Why did some countries never impose hard borders on international travel - including between EU countries?  (Our regional travel restrictions here were an effective part of the virus control arsenal - and yet the whole of Europe seems to be treated like it's a single country, and with the population size there, that's so dangerous...)  Why can people go on holidays to other countries at a time when neither their country nor the holiday country has eliminated SARS-CoV-2 from community transmission?  Why is there no consistent compulsory quarantining of incoming people?  And how on earth does anyone think they can effectively suppress COVID-19 without doing those things?

I think we're very lucky in Australia that the epidemiologists essentially got to run the show here this year.  We look at Europe and the US with horror.

PS:  @Ulrich, thanks for this link:  http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article/9708/TV-Smith-InterviewTV-Smith-Interview
TV Smith interviews so well each time I read one of these, and this is again interesting and excellent.  That man has a good head on his shoulders and I doubt he will be spouting right-wing propaganda when he reaches age 75.  Use it or lose it, etc.  :cool
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Australians like us have been watching the European response to COVID-19 and have wondered:  Why can't a lot of people in the UK get COVID tests, symptomatic or not?

Because testing itself requires organising and causes cost, which B.J. & co. won't do.

Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Why did some countries never impose hard borders on international travel - including between EU countries?

Which countries exactly? As far as I know most borders were closed in spring. But you can't tell people about "being free to move around the EU" and then restrict them for more than a few months. It's okay to have "contingency measures" for a while, but not like "forever".

Plus, in Europe, we need the workers from other countries, because otherwise "nothing goes".

Also, in summer, lots of travelling was done without high infection numbers. Why?

Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Why is there no consistent compulsory quarantining of incoming people?  And how on earth does anyone think they can effectively suppress COVID-19 without doing those things?

Why have some countries with strict measures have had high numbers anyway? (Spain, Italy...)

I read from a person ("medical expert") that the numbers we have had right now are fairly "normal" for a November. So we might do more lockdown or we might not...

Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43TV Smith interviews so well each time I read one of these, and this is again interesting and excellent.  That man has a good head on his shoulders and I doubt he will be spouting right-wing propaganda when he reaches age 75.

Never. TV has maintained his integrity ever since he started his first bands back in the 1970s.
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20
Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Australians like us have been watching the European response to COVID-19 and have wondered:  Why can't a lot of people in the UK get COVID tests, symptomatic or not?

Because testing itself requires organising and causes cost, which B.J. & co. won't do.

Yes, and how short-sighted of them.  Also I expect that, like the Resident Rump, they couldn't organise their way out of a paper bag if they tried...

Or maybe - and this is mean, I know, but maybe they're not too sorry at losing old-age pensioners as it would save on pensions and provision of aged care.  So long as it's not someone old that they personally know and like, I suppose...


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20
Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Why did some countries never impose hard borders on international travel - including between EU countries?

Which countries exactly? As far as I know most borders were closed in spring.

Here in Australia, we hear a lot about the UK (because of being an ex-colony and The Motherland and all that) and the US (because Australia generally aspires to many of the idiocies the US aspires to) - so they're in our faces all the time.  The US is not relevant to a discussion of Europe, of course, but I'm trying to give you a feel for media focus in Australia.

Anyway, we were just flabbergasted because the UK didn't close borders to international travel for many months after Australia had already done so, and I don't know if they ultimately ever did or not, but even in July there was no hard border, nor quarantining of incoming people (and we were quarantining everyone who was allowed past the hard border, mostly repatriating Australians).  I've randomly found an article from the time (but I was getting it via the ABC):  https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/07/uk-country-world-not-airport-health-checks-closing-border-12669125/

It's not the best article in the universe, but it does compare and contrast various approaches to borders.

And also, by imposing hard borders I don't just mean having them for a couple of months and then opening them up again before community transmission is very low in countries (/states) either side of the borders - and I was astonished that Germans and British etc were off holidaying in Spain etc again, in the middle of a pandemic.  That just should never have happened, in terms of pandemic control.  People could have holidayed in their own regions, as was the case in Australia.  After a couple of months without documented community transmission in our own state, we opened our farmstay again and were just as busy as pre-pandemic, this time not mostly with international travellers, but with locals who would normally have travelled overseas.  So while tourism across the board is reduced, small operators like us haven't really felt it.

Excepting via special permit and quarantine, we still don't have international travellers to Australia - not counting NZ, who have a reciprocal agreement with Australia so that visas aren't required for NZ citizens to visit Australia and vice versa.  At the height of the pandemic, borders with NZ were closed, just like many state borders were closed here - but recently we created a "travel bubble" with them, since NZ also successfully suppressed the virus with its hard lockdown initially, and then its hard lockdown around a cluster later - just as Melbourne has been able to, after experiencing a second wave, and is now 30+ days with no documented community transmission.

Effective contact tracing, and isolation of contacts of known cases, is nearly impossible if community transmission isn't low.


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20But you can't tell people about "being free to move around the EU" and then restrict them for more than a few months. It's okay to have "contingency measures" for a while, but not like "forever".

Plus, in Europe, we need the workers from other countries, because otherwise "nothing goes".

This is where some people have a different view - contingency needs to be done until the thing is properly controlled.  All these arguments were trotted out by various people in the business lobby when states in Australia made hard border closures - "You can't do that!  The world will end!"  ...but we could, and the majority of the public supported it, even when the corporate sector and the billionaires were screaming blue murder - billionaires like Clive Palmer, who didn't like not getting special treatment and not getting a permit to enter Western Australia, and who took a leaf out of the Resident Rump's book, and just tried to sue his way into getting his own way.  He went to the High Court of Australia to have the West Australian border closure declared unconstitutional and lost, and also tried to sue our state (i.e. the taxpayers here) for several billion dollars in damages (bullying posterior orifice that he is, and the hide of him, considering he owes his extreme wealth to favourable deals shovelling public resources into his pockets - he seems to have forgotten they're not his resources, but public property, at least in theory - so he grew fat on our resources, and then wanted to sue us little guys for damages to boot, not caring whom he impoverished...:evil:).

As for workers from abroad, those who were "in" at the time of border closure could choose to stay where they were.  As a result of border closures, we've had a deficit in seasonal workers from overseas (backpackers do a lot of fruit & vegetable picking and packing in Australia), but we've had to adjust to it - some people lost parts of their harvests as a result, but the greater common good, as well as a long-term view, were considered primary in the way the pandemic was dealt with here (and there has been good, but patchy, financial help from the government for people adversely affected).

And now, with very tiny amounts of community transmission remaining and no second waves current anywhere in Australia, life is about as normal as it's able to be in the middle of a pandemic - we still socially distance and do pandemic hygiene; outbreaks could happen anytime (via quarantine staff going into the community etc) and those behaviours help limit their spread before the leak is detected.  We still have restrictions on crowds and rules about seating etc, and are learning to live with it.  Many people obviously have lost their jobs and/or businesses, but last week, we technically came out of the recession that we were plunged into by COVID-19, and if we can keep the virus suppressed, we're going to have a reasonable recovery.

Western Australia's hard border is currently being removed, as well - but will be re-shut if an outbreak happens interstate, until that outbreak is back under control.


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20Also, in summer, lots of travelling was done without high infection numbers. Why?

We prefer to follow the precautionary principle with travel whenever there's community transmission:  Is it totally necessary?  If not, don't do it.  If yes, quarantine.  (We = Australian epidemiologists advising this show, and many of our policy-makers, and also it's the personal opinion of both of us here.)

That's also the approach taken by NZ, Taiwan, and a number of other Asian countries who are doing really well at suppressing SARS-CoV-2.  The hard, precautionary approach does reap rewards because you don't have a constant backwards-forwards on policy and lockdown - you do it once and properly to effectively eliminate the thing from the wider community, and then you jump hard on any outbreaks that may come through quarantine workers etc to stop it re-establishing.

If the whole world had locked down for four weeks at the beginning, we'd not be dealing with this ongoing mess, and virus running out of control in large parts of the world... and that's the thing my Taiwanese friend could never understand.  Their country had already been through the first SARS and just immediately implemented their pandemic protocol from that, when SARS-CoV-2 hit, and therefore never even had a first wave - just a few clusters to jump on... and she says, "The information on what to do is already there, why are other countries so slow to adopt it?"


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20
Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43Why is there no consistent compulsory quarantining of incoming people?  And how on earth does anyone think they can effectively suppress COVID-19 without doing those things?

Why have some countries with strict measures have had high numbers anyway? (Spain, Italy...)

Because the strict measures often came too late in the first place (which wasn't necessarily obvious because before testing capacity expanded people were running blind, but from the point of view of virus establishment...), and because things got slapdash again after lockdowns - plus a lot of lockdowns have ended way too early, before the point that was used in Victoria (second wave), NZ etc:  No documented community transmission for 28 days (= approx. two viral reproductive cycles), start with a clean slate, continue to test at high rates and jump hard on any new clusters.  In the US especially, they had a whole bunch of ineffectual lockdowns that were done too late and lifted when infections were reducing significantly, but not eliminated from the community.  Of course, to eliminate it from the community you have to have a lot of community buy-in, and you were never going to get that in America, because acting together for the greater good isn't their cultural style - it's more like, "Me first, and don't stop me doing what I want to do!"  Whereas NZ, many South-East Asian countries, and miraculously Australia decided to do serious teamwork as a community... with majority support.


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20I read from a person ("medical expert") that the numbers we have had right now are fairly "normal" for a November. So we might do more lockdown or we might not...

Normal for what?  We've never had SARS-CoV-2 before...  One reason that the infection keeps soaring back is because the thresholds being allowed are too high, so it just becomes an endless pain and repeated cycles of more of the same.


Quote from: Ulrich on December 02, 2020, 09:49:20
Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 23:31:43TV Smith interviews so well each time I read one of these, and this is again interesting and excellent.  That man has a good head on his shoulders and I doubt he will be spouting right-wing propaganda when he reaches age 75.

Never. TV has maintained his integrity ever since he started his first bands back in the 1970s.

That's great to see!  :cool  We need more people like that...
SueC is time travelling