London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain • Hacker News Board

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#121

Post by vmception » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

leg100 wrote: post #114

vmception wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so fascinating how some cultures are just ready for different environments on this planet. Authoritative collectivist monocultures are doing great with this pandemic, and that is practically the only combination that has a grip on things.

"Authoritative collectivist monocultures"...That sounds like you're insulting them three times over :) You could call them sensible, mature, selfless societies. Either way one cuts it, the UK is neither.

That requires a lot of assumptions

Authoritative:

I don't consider less-inclusive political systems worse. They have best, average and worse cases, where the problem is that they get worst case many times over. A benevolent dictatorship is capable of getting the best case results, the predictable threat is that their replacement will not be capable of stewarding resources the same way.

Whereas more inclusive political systems get average case results more reliably and it is practically impossible to get a best case result with a lot of energy continually necessary to avoid worst case results.

Collectivist:

I don't consider collectivist to be a pejorative term and don't know of any context where it is. You picked a synonym, selfless.

Monoculture:

Just a fact of life. Where monocultures help them be able to predict what their neighbor does and trust that result, then large-scale immediate coordination without the state is easy. It isn't impossible for a multicultural society to achieve the same benefits, its also not happening. Unlike others that might use this word, I am not making any statement on a preferred living arrangement.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#122

Post by codeulike » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

jpxw wrote: post #19

rwmj wrote: post #12

British Medical Journal (BMJ) page about the new variant: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4857 It has 17 mutated bases (is that a lot? or typical?) Of particular concern is the mutated spike protein which "may, in theory, result in the virus becoming more infectious and spreading more easily between people."

> Mutated spike protein Hm. Let’s hope the vaccine still works.

They're looking into it. In theory the vaccines should still be ok but we'll know in two weeks or so I think.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#123

Post by mhh__ » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #117

mhh__ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also New Zealand? Our (UK) response has been a bit of a clusterfuck so far, we're not a good example to judge by.

Indeed. We could have chosen to be an island, but that would have meant quarantining business travel.

The comedy of errors around the government has probably been worse though.

Barnard Castle alone probably killed thousands, the way this government is doing contracts is probably criminal, we fucked up the T&T for months etc. etc. etc. etc.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#124

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

ta8645 wrote: post #36

Do we have any reason at all to trust that any of the vaccines currently being rolled out deal with this new strain? There was surely no way to include testing for this in any of the trials. Doesn't this at least raise the spectre that the vaccines will all be for not and we'll still be faced with all the same issues that already exist.

[deleted]

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#125

Post by raphlinus » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #101

Here's a Twitter feed (a Swiss virologist I think?) with decent info on the new strain. Dr Emma Hodcroft (@firefoxx66): https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1340327606303027201?s=...

I just want to confirm the quality of this source, as someone who is not actually a biologist but who has been following the scene carefully since the beginning. Dr Hodcroft is in the top tier of science communicators. This "new strain" story is basically tailor made for misinformation and poor information, as it has such a strong hook.

The tl;dr as I understand it is that there may be something there, but it is too early to tell for sure.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#126

Post by lefrenchy » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

rweir wrote: post #91

andylynch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aussie and I think most impressively China too.

No other western country has actually been willing to do what NZ or Australia did - strict contact tracing, strict lockdowns, and a near-complete ban on entering the country, with those that do being picked up the police or military at their plane and driven to quarantine hotels where the doors lock from the outside. I don't know why everyone keeps going on about other countries not getting the same results - no othe…

In fact it’s worse, western nations have done the stupidest thing which is half measures. They’ve wrecked their own economies by taking measly half measures and not providing adequate relief. Wrecking people’s lives without actually achieving meaningful ends.

At risk of being labelled “anti-lockdown” or whatever, i’ll clarify my point is we should have done MORE. Strict lockdowns, tracing, etc... AND providing direct relief and freezes.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#127

Post by makomk » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #96

lefrenchy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like no nation in the world has succeeded at containing this virus. Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand. We have the solutions, we just refuse to do what it takes to solve it. Western nations are taking half measures with poor enforcement, and blaming individuals for failures that should be attributed to institutions.

> South Korea You might want to check the news on South Korea. They're hitting daily records right now. This isn't to say they're at US levels, but with their current measures, they don't have control of the virus.

It's been bloody obvious for months that South Korea can't control Covid through test and trace alone without massive, economically-damaging social distancing and business closure measures - every time they lift them cases go up, and there's been a worrying increase in cases not linked to any previous known cases which implies an exponentially increasing pool of unknown infections entirely unimpacted by contact tracing. (They also have massively less testing than the UK and European countries, so they're probably detecting a small fraction of those unlinked cases.) One of the big things which seems to have changed in South Korea is that unlike the last few times there's no longer the political will to impose those restrictions. You wouldn't have known this from the British press, which has been pushing hard on the idea that they succeeded at this to convince people that our country could've too if it wasn't for our incompetent government (which they hate due to Brexit).

More generally, the press here almost exclusively report the facts that make the UK look like a failure and South Korea look like a success. So for example, the BBC reported on the removal of those social distancing measures, framing it as proof that South Korea's test and trace was so effective they could even reopen nightclubs... like, the day after they did, but making it sound like something they'd done a while ago with no ill effects. They then ran loads of reports on important topics like BTS whilst ignoring the explosion in cases. So everyone who gets their news from the British press is convinced that our government is incompetent, keeps on doing U-turns that damage businesses and the economy, recklessly reopened knowing it would result in the virus spreading, is behind the rest of the world in Covid testing, etc when we should've acted like South Korea... when in reality South Korea was even more like that and if the UK government had taken the same actions they'd have been described in that exact same negative way rather than glossed over and omitted. It's a complete and utter media illusion.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#128

Post by randomsearch » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

This is mostly hugely speculative.

Australia is in summer, so it would make more sense to compare it to the UK’s summer, if you insist on comparing two countries with very different population densities (a key factor in the spread of COVID-19).

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#129

Post by burkaman » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #93

LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

Masks might slow it, but they're everywhere in the Bay Area, and cases are rising faster than ever, and we're setting new records for new cases, so "just wear a mask in public" isn't enough.

I think the argument is that masks are an essentially effortless tactic, and if people can't even bother to put them on and the government doesn't seem to care very much, then what hope is there for more effective measures?

I don't live in the UK, just explaining how I read this comment.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#130

Post by tom_ » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #23

tobylane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three days ago he said it would be inhumane to cancel Christmas. Today he said the data from the last 72 hours forced a change. Johnson is an oaf, but covid has kept him fairly serious. His waffling bumbling act was dropped.

He thought it was however perfectly humane to cancel all of the other religious holidays, and though that doesn't speak to his bumbling act, it speaks volumes about his character.

Christmas is a key Christian festival, and the UK is a Christian country, with the monarch as the head of its official church. So perhaps no surprises if it gets special treatment.