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

bloomberg.com

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

#181

Post by robbiep »

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

By suck up the costs I believe the parent is referring not just to the economic pain but also the cost of the extensive and unprecedented government support that Australia and NZ (and even in fact the UK) made.

Unemployment benefits and the aged pension were raised significantly, employers were paid a subsidy to continue to employ people of income dropped by 30% or more from the jan quarter 12 months earlier - and the support is clacheduled to continue until March at present.

This was also exceptionally well distributed and applied in almost no time.

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

#183

Post by timr »

burkaman wrote: post #129
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 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.

Lots of things are "effortless tactics". If they don't work, it's just superstition. People will figure it out, and they'll stop believing you. If you have indoor mask mandates, and outside mask mandates, and shut down restaurants, and curfews, etc., and your cases are still shooting up, you're going to have a hard time getting faith in your actions.

So much of what governments are doing in response to this are just cargo cult science. We've had ample time to run proper controlled trials for much of this stuff -- the Danes were able to do so with masks [1], and there was a big study of gyms out of Norway [2] -- it's simply pathetic that our governments mostly haven't bothered.

[1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

[2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20138768v...

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

#184

Post by trebligdivad »

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…

Thank you, that's a nice detailed read, but still relatively readable by a non-bio person like myself.

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

#185

Post by Smaug123 »

k0stas wrote: post #30
pmoriarty wrote: post #9

As has been pointed out in an earlier article about the "new strain"[1]: "Let's not be hysterical. It doesn't mean it's more transmissible or more infectious or dangerous." That there are new strains of COVID-19 has been covered over, and over, and over, and over again on the This Week in Virology podcast[2] (which usually has 4 to 6 virologists on it every week discussing COVID-19 news), and they've always had the s…

> but there is no evidence that these mutations Parroting NN Taleb: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Haven't we learned from coronavirus that we need to use the precautionary principle in the face of new information that is not fully understood. I don't know where you are from, but I locally heard a string of "there is no evidence of" starting in about January of 2019. There was no evidence that the vi…

Re "there is no evidence": this is due to a mismatch between the medical profession's use of the words "no evidence" and everyone else's.

To a standard human, "no evidence" means "there is no evidence".

To a medical professional, "no evidence" means "there is insufficient evidence for us to be certain".

The clash of terminology is very unfortunate, and it prevents one from discussing probabilities at all. A statement from the WHO is either that something is "certain" or that there is "insufficient evidence at this time", even if there is sufficient evidence for one to conclude something with 80% probability.

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

#186

Post by pjc50 »

makomk wrote: post #157
pjc50 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It'd also have meant severing food supply chains (and probably also medical supply chains and a bunch of others). The UK relies on trucks coming across from the continent and continuing on to destinations throughout the country with their original drivers. Ending that would make Brexit look like a walk in the park by comparison. Also, you've got to remember that the time period during which the UK would've had to do…

Only if you assume the worst implementation without thinking of the necessary exemptions. Obviously don't cut off the food supply chain.

> time period during which the UK would've had to do this for it to be effective

.. lies roughly from Feburary to the present day. No reason to allow travel from countries with significant prevalence.

> all the right-thinking people were insisting that border restrictions were counterproductive, xenophobic and made things worse

[citation needed]

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

#187

Post by nicoburns »

makomk wrote: post #157
pjc50 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It'd also have meant severing food supply chains (and probably also medical supply chains and a bunch of others). The UK relies on trucks coming across from the continent and continuing on to destinations throughout the country with their original drivers. Ending that would make Brexit look like a walk in the park by comparison. Also, you've got to remember that the time period during which the UK would've had to do…

It wouldn't have been that hard to implement quarantine for truck drivers (cleaning cabs and switching drivers at the crossing, etc). Not trivial. But not that hard either. There would be no need to shut down the supply chains.

> the WHO and all the right-thinking people were insisting that border restrictions were counterproductive,

I'd argue that these were very much the wrong-thinking people. And that the WHO advice has been pretty terrible throughout. It seems obvious to me that closing borders is appropriate in a pandemic. The UK still hasn't done this. Lots of people were going abroad on holiday between lockdowns.

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

#188

Post by ficklepickle »

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.

It's nearly summer there. Respiratory viruses are far more common in winter. I feel this fact is conspicuously absent from talk of Australia.

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

#189

Post by throwii »

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…

I've read that COVID-19 can sometimes be found inside the body even after testing negative for some time. This being a reason for continued weakness and impairment after infection.

Could this possibly continued infection lead to faster mutation, or is the amount of people infected the cause for the rapid mutations, or something else?

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

#190

Post by war1025 »

burkaman wrote: post #129
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 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.

> I think the argument is that masks are an essentially effortless tactic

Masks are effortless, but there is also a lot of reason to believe they are not nearly as effective as was sold to people in the early summer.

At some point we get into "just wear a crucifix to ward off the Devil" territory of superstition.

Masks are obviously helpful at preventing transmission of some illnesses, but I've seen enough evidence that Coronavirus spreads via aerosol to not really trust the things.

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