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Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

bbc.com

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Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#31

Post by thesizeofa »

joshuahughes wrote: post #30
thesizeofa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view o…

Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiot…

Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#32

Post by adrianN »

Nextgrid wrote: post #27
saiya-jin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering various aspects like anti-vaxers, very remote tribes etc. as true eradication with 7 billions is most probably impossible. Everybody will never get them. Also, seems like every state will have their own variant with varying effectiveness (and possibly some bad side effects), I don't see things very rosy for next few years. It will be probably good enough situation eventually, but I presume it will just be…

Considering that Covid can be lethal I’d assume anti-vaxxers would be a self-resolving problem if given enough time.

Measles can also be lethal. People are stupid.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#34

Post by Taniwha »

Animats wrote: post #2

A drop of only 5-10% in GDP? They won. They're tiny isolated islands with tourism as a major industry. How's New Zealand doing?

Our (NZ's) tourist industry is in trouble, but most of the country (except for 1 city for the past 2 weeks due to a new cluster) hasn't been in lockdown for 3 months and people are taking vacations, locally rather than internationally - ski slopes are open - the govt is supporting some tourist stuff that's going into hibernation until after, there will still be bungie jumping and Hobbiton to visit when it's all over.

We've largely beaten the infection (despite what Trump has said recently), except for people coming back from overseas into quarantine, we had no new cases for 3 months, 2 weeks or so ago we had an outbreak in Auckland which is currently locked down (we do lockdown much harder than most other countries), probably until this current weekend. Apart from this the rest of us are out and about, we have some limitations on large crowds, most people are going to work, I went out to a movie on Sat (Tenet), then for a meal at a restaurant. Went to Queenstown for a weekend away a couple of months ago.

Having said that - we expect to have more small outbreaks and associated lockdowns, the quicker we can find them the quicker we can nuke them.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#35

Post by ImaCake »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #22

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of trave…

Third world countries have first world problems as well. They just have them on top of their third world problems. Something tells me they would rather be hungry rather than both hungry and dying. Palau having open borders wouldn't have stopped the end of tourism, but it would have let the virus in.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#36

Post by i_am_proteus »

thesizeofa wrote: post #31
joshuahughes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiot…

Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.

While there are many metrics of the pandemic's, including health, GDP, and unemployment, it's interesting to note, in light of this comment, that the UK per-capita death rate is currently about 20% higher than the US per-capita death rate from COVID-19.[0]

[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#37

Post by bosswipe »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #22

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of trave…

Privileged software engineers do not set lockdown policies. Go rage at somebody else.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#38

Post by ImaCake »

joshuahughes wrote: post #25
LoSboccacc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a day ago there were estimate that anout basically everyone in NYC has having been in contact with the virus at some point and the city doesn't look like a wasteland. lethality was grossly overestimate and subsequent decision built off not only partial and incomplete data, but flat out wrong. would full lock down have been the best course of action? probably still so. but the extent and duration and especially now fo…

“but both now and yesterday people with a wide view of the issue were basically ostracized and chased away as if they were flat earther or antivaxxer” Agreed. I’ve been quite taken aback, seeing HN’s response to Covid threads. I’ve always assumed the community was willing to ask tough questions and entertain alternative points of view that are backed by data, but with Covid there’s a complete unwillingness to think a…

Just as an alternative perspective, I fully support lockdowns. But I have noted the opposite response on here compared to your observation; lots of people are arguing against the lockdowns on HN. Maybe we see what we want to see rather than what is actually there? Seems like a typical human bias.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#39

Post by joshuamorton »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #12
vmception wrote: post #3

I don’t understand how people can see a global response and repercussions like this and then politicize their local government’s attempt to keep the R0 below 2.5.

a day ago there were estimate that anout basically everyone in NYC has having been in contact with the virus at some point and the city doesn't look like a wasteland. lethality was grossly overestimate and subsequent decision built off not only partial and incomplete data, but flat out wrong. would full lock down have been the best course of action? probably still so. but the extent and duration and especially now fo…

The issue here is that (in the US), we've ended up with the worst of all the worlds. A case spike in NYC on the scale of Italy's, but without the same level of lockdown, and without similar widespread efforts, so instead of being down to 1 case per 100K people per day, we're 10x higher and dropping more slowly.

Combine that with a refusal to do (or for the government to enforce) simple, easy things that reduce spread even in otherwise relatively normal life (masks), and you get a situation that will require a longer, more painful response than if we did the more invasive stuff early on.

> there's quite a difference in Italy for example from the "hundreds new cases a day" in march, with a unknown size pool of undetected cases, and "hundred new cases a day" but everyone else is fine and contact tracing will find the rest.

I think you're also underestimating the difference a bit. It went from 5,000 new cases per day to ~100 per day, although there's since been an uptick to around 1000 cases per day.

But the level of containment in those nations is such that its generally safe to have offices open. Less so in most of the US.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#40

Post by wdb »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #22

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of trave…

The problem is that with your developer job, in the U.K., you won’t be eligible for government help because your last salary after loosing your job causes you to go over the maximum savings limit. That happened to me
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