Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 448 posts

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

#171

Post by IronRanger »

LatteLazy wrote: post #102
dehrmann wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't know, Melbourne is A-Okay. They'd have been that way much earlier if it wasn't for one major super spreader event.

Australia has added AUD$500 billion in extra debt from this pandemic:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-06/budget-2020-tax-cuts-...

Or $20,000 per citizen.

If that amount was spent on general healthcare, or tackling sugar and air pollution, how many more lives would have been saved?

Given that Vitamin D is a major factor in mortality, its unlikely that Australia would have been hit hard beyond the mortality experienced from regular flu seasons.

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

#172

Post by dehrmann »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #146
dehrmann wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They aren’t everywhere in the Bay Area by a long shot. They aren’t even everywhere in SF...

Every store I've gone in has required them, I've heard mass transit is a lot less crowded and also requires them, and I think county rules mandate them in those cases. I've seen people without them going on outdoor walks, but that's an incredibly low-risk activity.

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

#173

Post by LatteLazy »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #149
iamben wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my experiences in London. Crazy isn't it? I just don't think people even believe it's real. Half the people with a mask on TFL wear them over their chin or with their nose out anyway.

One Londoner I know told me he moved to North Africa to escape the social pressure to wear a mask.

Good for him.

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

#174

Post by jdhn »

asdff wrote: post #162
edh649 wrote: post #134

For those (like me) who are looking for some more details of this new strain, I found 2 papers from the `COVID-19 Genomics Consortium UK (CoG-UK)` of great interest. It seems like the prime reasons for concern are increased frequency of mutations, increased proportion of cases, and possible change in immune response > Several aspects of this cluster are noteworthy for epidemiological and biological reasons and we rep…

Anecdotally I know a family where every member tested positive for COVID in the spring with severe symptoms at the time. They recovered, then over thanksgiving they started experiencing very mild symptoms (some none at all, others loss of taste and smell to more typical cold like symptoms), and all tested positive once again. It might be that after you contracted COVID once, or a particular strain of COVID once, that…

>but this certainly doesn't bode well

How doesn't it bode well? If you get one strain of covid, get over it, then catch another strain and your symptoms are much less than the first time due to your body having the proper defenses against covid, then that's your immune system working as intended.

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

#175

Post by elyobo »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #145
lefrenchy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Always be weary of the people that argue that because the experts failed, we need to be more oppressive.

The argument is not that the experts failed, but that the politicians did. In general the experts have argued for more "oppressive" approaches, because those are the only ones that have worked.

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

#176

Post by aazaa »

> “There is no current evidence to suggest the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is underway to confirm this,” [England’s Chief Medical Officer] Whitty said.

That evidence would presumably come in the form of vaccinated patients developing infections from the new strain. Given that both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines appear to have a window of about one month before full effect, it could be some time before the hypothesis can be tested.

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

#177

Post by etherealmachine »

robocat wrote: post #140
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is an island with a population almost half California. China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.

I’m tired of hearing excuses. 20% of New Zealand export income[1] came from tourism, yet we closed the doors on February 1st, cancelling tourists while the season was still high. If you want to get rid of the virus, you can, but you have to suck up the costs: shut down your borders and do whatever it takes. Close down internal travel: domestic flights were virtually shutdown in NZ; Ozzie’s had other overland travel r…

Just want to point out that US states aren't allowed to run a deficit, while countries are, so I mostly agree with this but this hamstrings states like Oregon who aren't allowed to provide relief for strict measures through debt. Also Oregonians would have to still contribute to the Federal government via taxes, essentially stealing more money from this plan.

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

#178

Post by elyobo »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #73
andylynch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aussie and I think most impressively China too.

Australia is an island with a population almost half California. China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.

I really don't understand the island fixation that so many seem to have. Is it just accepted that non-island nations are incapable of policing their borders?

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

#179

Post by robocat »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #152
robocat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m tired of hearing excuses. 20% of New Zealand export income[1] came from tourism, yet we closed the doors on February 1st, cancelling tourists while the season was still high. If you want to get rid of the virus, you can, but you have to suck up the costs: shut down your borders and do whatever it takes. Close down internal travel: domestic flights were virtually shutdown in NZ; Ozzie’s had other overland travel r…

> but you have to suck up the costs In other words immiserate anyone who’s not a comfortable white-collar person that can hole up in their home, Zoom to work, and dispatch immigrants to deliver food

I suspect your perceptions are coloured by your environs: what do you know of NZ and Oz? The poor in New Zealand and Oz were not hit any harder than the middle-class and wealthy people that lost their savings due to circumstances e.g. businesses going under.

I personally don’t know of any restaurant that had to close due to Covid (and most restaurants are close to the edge during normal times).

My friends on unemployment benefits and requiring state healthcare would prefer not to be, in other circumstances, but they muddle through e.g. one friend needed emergency care the other day (free), and another friend needs their gall-bladder removed (free). And Covid is low (or no) risk even for the most unlucky jobs.

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

#180

Post by nicoburns »

callamdelaney wrote: post #8
nicoburns wrote: post #5

You know it must be serious because Boris has been extremely resistant to imposing restrictions this entire time, and he knows how much people were looking forward to their Christmas. Apparantly it's around 70% more infectious, although I'm not sure how that's calculated. I guess we all just have to hope this doesn't affect the efficacy of the vaccines. Apparently the spike protein is affected, although it sounds lik…

He hasn’t been extremely resistant at all, the facts speak to the exact opposite.

He has.

- Both of the "full lockdowns" were implemented at least 2 weeks later than experts were calling for. Which is why they had to go on for so long.

- Between the two lockdowns people actively encouraged to go out to restaurants with the "Eat out to help out" scheme even though anyone with half a brain could have told you that this would lead to a sharp increase in cases.

- London was opened as Tier 2 even though it had as many cases as other parts of the country and should have been Tier 3 if the rules were being applied consistently.

etc, etc.

Post reply on HN