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

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191–200 of 448 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thoug…

Last I checked it’s pretty hard to be an expert on something that’s only been around a year. Also, experts don’t dictate government policy, and as much as I dislike government policy, if they did I’m sure we’d be in a much worse position.

The international reaction to COVID-19 is hugely irrational and the cost far outweighs the advantages of this approach.

We’re ‘saving’ the lives of the elderly by giving them absolutely nothing to live for.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try smaller stores. Gas stations, corner stores, non-chain places.

I see little to no compliance with customers or shop keepers in places like that.

I also saw lots of maskless partying and social drinking in November.

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

#193
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve seen a spike in infections in a densely populated mega city in the busiest shopping weeks of the year, when (anecdotally) people are not taking precautions and social distancing. In what way is that unexpected?

The spike isn't just in London, but across the south east. https://twitter.com/Davewwest/status/1339918672811462657?s=2... https://twitter.com/avds/status/1340355825471287299?s=20 https://twitter.com/VictimOfMaths/status/1340010730687492096... This one shows high rates for Medway: https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1338158031067033601?s=20

You are just describing a map of population density. Shocker, infections rising in the south east?

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

#194

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…

I'm pretty shocked staff in supermarket employees aren't required to wear masks in London. But this isn't really true: "One staff member with covid will rapidly infect a few 1000 people given how busy they are on a Saturday morning. Covid is pretty contagious, but you really need to be around someone for ~15 minutes to have a good chance of infecting them. Superspreading events can occur, but they are fairly rare. I…

Covid is pretty contagious, but you really need to be around someone for ~15 minutes to have a good chance of infecting them.

Does that mean that someone has to breath in my virus for 15 minutes before there's enough of it inside them to infect them?

Or does it mean that if I'm the infected staff member constantly spewing virus near an ever-changing cast of shoppers, I can expect to infect about 4 people an hour, some of whom were near me for only seconds?

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural selection. Deadlier strains reduce life span of hosts that transmit the disease.

You mean the natural selection of hosts, not viruses. Why should one kind of organism "care" about the natural selection of another?

I'm in agreement wtih @yibg.

> "You mean the natural selection of hosts, not viruses",

No, just simply 'natural selection', as the overall process that determines which entities get to reproduce.

Natural selection for the hosts is about their chances for reproducing (before dying from the disease). And in this case, we don't care about that since its a fair assumption that the patient is not having sex in ICU. :)

Natural selection for viruses is about having the opportunity to jump hosts and replicate more viruses. The longer the host lives the higher the chances for the virus to propagate.

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aggressive contact tracing works when the disease is at low levels.

Contract tracing wasn't very effective. What worked in Melbourne was that 8 months of house arrest for everyone living in the city...

I'm all for managing the virus spread but if the policies are a piece of meat, in the UK the policies are uncooked in Melbourne they were burnt.

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

#197

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…

I'm pretty shocked staff in supermarket employees aren't required to wear masks in London. But this isn't really true: "One staff member with covid will rapidly infect a few 1000 people given how busy they are on a Saturday morning. Covid is pretty contagious, but you really need to be around someone for ~15 minutes to have a good chance of infecting them. Superspreading events can occur, but they are fairly rare. I…

I don't think that the math works like that.

While it might take some time for an infected person in close proximity to push a specific second person across some risk threshold in a 1-on-1 interaction, that's not the scenario we're worried about.

We're worried about how many people an infected person might infect during many, many interactions.

Even if the probability of infection is low in a single 2 minute interaction, some people in service jobs have thousands of interactions a day. (not all one-on-one).

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

#199

One has to wonder to what extent the new strain is really responsible for this, versus being a convenient excuse for the government's failure to manage the normal variant.

Planning to keep the reproduction rate as close to 1 as possible is the most efficient way to generate new strains, so they have the same root cause anyway.

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

#200
post #114

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.

China is a sensible, mature, selfless society? I’m sure the Uighurs would have opinions that differ. Also let’s not forget Tiananmen Square and what those students would say.
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