Coronavirus thread

[Florestan]

[MusicTurner]

Am a Stephen King ignoramus, but checked, and yes, he wrote something called 'The Stand'.

[mabuse]

 

[Karl Henning]

Variant exploding in U.K. accounts for 6 percent of U.S. infections, White House says'

[SimonNZ]

Am a Stephen King ignoramus, but checked, and yes, he wrote something called 'The Stand'.

Highly recommended, even to those who think they have no interest at all in SK. Hugely ambitious and fully realized. Near universally agreed as the best thing he ever did.

[Karl Henning]

Highly recommended, even to those who think they have no interest at all in SK. Hugely ambitious and fully realized. Near universally agreed as the best thing he ever did.

Duly noted.

[MusicTurner]

Agreement about an almost complete, domestic opening up here in DK. Hopefully it will work. Almost half of the population has begun the vaccine process, and though there are still around 1000 daily infections, the number of fatalities and hospitalized remains low. The official prognosis says a further, quite dramatic flattening out of the curves from late June.

Masks will be kept only in relation to standing passengers in public transport, from this Monday, and abolished elsewhere; food servings will be until midnight, including alcohol, starting from tomorrow, and in mid-July until 2 AM; there will be normal education conditions, but with tests twice weekly recommended; allowance of 25,000 stadium spectators at the upcoming European Football/Soccer Championships; gradual outphasing of the Corona Pass, from the 1st of August, it will be abolished by the 1st of October; and loosening the travel conditions for visiting foreign tourists must be decided further upon within a week from now.

In the longer run, they hope for an abolishment of the current, massive, permanent testing apparatus, replacing it with sewage testing in stead.

[Mandryka]

Variant exploding in U.K. accounts for 6 percent of U.S. infections, White House says'

That's a BIG problem unless you get vaccinations up FAST!!!!!!

[MusicTurner]

The G7 summit will work for a strategy that can fight future pandemics globally and successfully within just 100 days, reports say today.
That would be nice ...

[71 dB]

Now 50 % of Finns have gotten at least the first jab (12.7 % also the second one).

[Karl Henning]

That's a BIG problem unless you get vaccinations up FAST!!!!!!

Indeed.

After the austerity of the lockdown, tourism to Boston is spiking dramatically now.  Some percentage of those folks coming in probably haven't bothered to vaccinate. 

[Karl Henning]

The G7 summit will work for a strategy that can fight future pandemics globally and successfully within just 100 days, reports say today.
That would be nice ...

Aye, planning and competence will be a nice change ....

[steve ridgway]

The G7 summit will work for a strategy that can fight future pandemics globally and successfully within just 100 days, reports say today.
That would be nice ...

Should be possible if they get advance notice of any future virus releases.

[Mandryka]

Here's my vision for the future

1. Lots of sickness and death in Europe and the USA, due to the ravages of δ. We will be OK in the UK because vaccination and exiting from the current lockdown has been well managed.

2. It'll be like gastroenteritis. Nearly everyone catches it often, most people shake it off, a few people end up in hospital and a few people have a long form -- IBS. We're all taught how to take precautions against it, and no-one lets it get in the way of having fun unless they've got some sort of aggravating medical condition or they're neurotic.

3. Domestic life mostly back to normal, as if nothing ever happened, in the UK in 2023 or even earlier. There will be lots of test, trace, isolate to guard against new variants and rapid vaccination against them.

4. In Europe there may be a reaction against the EU, demands to leave à la Brexit. Vaccine reluctance will be all but eradicated for adults.

[Mandryka]

Indeed.

After the austerity of the lockdown, tourism to Boston is spiking dramatically now.  Some percentage of those folks coming in probably haven't bothered to vaccinate. 

The consequences are obvious and easily predictable, so the interesting question is, why are governments letting it happen? I suppose that really they don't give a fuck about the health consequences, and they care a lot about the economy. So they reason that a big wave in Autumn/winter is more than justified by the revenues accrued to hospitality and tourism in the summer.

Similar things are set to happen in the EU. I wonder if Que has any insight into the thinking of government about this.

What I find totally surprising is that the UK government seems to be behaving pretty responsibly.

[Que]

The consequences are obvious and easily predictable, so the interesting question is, why are governments letting it happen? I suppose that really they don't give a fuck about the health consequences, and they care a lot about the economy. So they reason that a big wave in Autumn/winter is more than justified by the revenues accrued to hospitality and tourism in the summer.

Similar things are set to happen in the EU. I wonder if Que has any insight into the thinking of government about this.

What I find totally surprising is that the UK government seems to be behaving pretty responsibly.

A lot in this crisis has been about economics money...

In the winter of 2019 local Austrian authorities didn't act and close ski resorts for economic reasons, This was a major spreading event in Europe which resulted in the first lockdown in March.

Then the EU was behind the game, not only because of more cautious authorisation of new vaccines but also because it didn't want to pay too much. The US just threw a massive amount of money at it, and ended up first in line. The EU indeed ended up paying less for its vaccines, but was it really worth it? 

Then in the summer of 2020 several Southern European countries allowed mass tourism for economic reasons, leading to the "Ibizza" spreading surge.

And the past few months I have seen govts jumping the gun and moving faster than scientific advisors suggested. For economic (=political) reasons.

I must sound cynical, but it has been about money, the economy and votes from day one...

BTW The UK govt did not behave anything close to responsible during most of this crisis...
The UK was in a pretty awful situation initially with high infection rates and many fatalities. But Boris' chums at AstraZeneca got him off the hook with a speedy supply of vaccines and good old NHS delivered a quick vaccination program.

The reason why the UK is so cautious now, is because the vaccinations have slowed down and a new "Indian" variant that is 40% more contagious has spread like nowhere else in Europe. Probably more could have been done to prevent this. Anyway, now you would need a vaccination rate of roughly 90% to achieve group immunity (!) instead of the previous 60-70%.

And I'm not gloating, because eventually this will spread to the rest of Europe as well. No wonder that governments are considering vaccinating children over 12 - those vaccination rates need to be beefed up ASAP. If anti-vaxers would prevent group immunity, I can forsee lots of political tensions.

[Mandryka]

The reason why the UK is so cautious now, is because the vaccinations have slowed down and a new "Indian" variant that is 40% more contagious has spread like nowhere else in Europe. Probably more could have been done to prevent this. Anyway, now you would need a vaccination rate of roughly 90% to achieve group immunity (!) instead of the previous 60-70%.

Yes I fear that it will spread very quickly in Europe and indeed the US. By the way, where did you get the 90% figure for herd immunity from?

The problem I have is that it's really predictable what will happen, and yet Macron in France (the only European country I follow) looks like he's burying his head in the sand. Only yesterday there was some news that delta has been found in a flair up in Strasburg -- it's just not possible to keep this thing in check IMO.

I think the UK has been pretty responsible this year, and the level of information and dialogue with the public is so much better than in France. I can't speak for Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy . . .

I don't know that there's any point in vaccinating kids -- as far as I know there's no evidence to suggest that the vaccination reduces transmission, maybe you've seen something.

[MusicTurner]

I must sound cynical, but it has been about money, the economy and votes from day one...

In DK there's been massive critique of the government for not to adjust enough to the demands for reopening from the business life & its comrades during the whole pandemic, and really massive sums have been taken from state funds to compensate in stead. Virus experts have generally been satisfied with the scientific approach behind the government's policies, some have even wanted less lock-downs. Safety and avoiding a break-down in the health sector came first. Obviously, this strategy, resulting in less fatalities, also gave solid vote support. The economy seems to be recovering surprisingly fast.

[Mandryka]

In DK there's been massive critique of the government for not to adjust enough to the demands for reopening from the business life & its comrades during the whole pandemic, and really massive sums have been taken from state funds to compensate in stead. Virus experts have generally been satisfied with the scientific approach behind the government's policies, some have even wanted less lock-downs. Safety and avoiding a break-down in the health sector came first.

What does avoiding a break-down in the health sector mean? In the UK we've not seen people taking their last dying gasp in a tent in a hospital car park, though to avoid that we had to ship elderly non-symptomatic patients to their nursing homes, where they promptly infected all the other residents and effectively killed them.  But the waiting lists for non-COVID related treatments are very long, and there are predictable excess deaths.

[MusicTurner]

There hasn't been big scandals of that sort in DK, since the number of hospitalizations has been quite low. Some weeks ago the health sector stated that the virus is no longer a hindrance for any other treatments. We currently have less than 100 hospitalized, and only once came close to the feared 1000 of them. There are, in theory, 1200 intensive respiratory care units, but we never came close to that number.