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

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

#221

Post by stevesimmons »

ficklepickle wrote: post #188
LatteLazy wrote: post #102

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.

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

Your timing is out.

Melbourne started their lockdown in winter. Everyone obeyed it. It was strongly enforced [1, 2]. They beat coronavirus. And now they can enjoy their summer.

I live in London. At one point in the summer, our covid rates were lower than Melbourne's. But the UK's messaging was confused and contradictory ("eat out to help out", test and trace was shambolic, rules were not enforced). So no one is the least surprised that it has got out of control again so quickly.

[1] My parents live half an hour's drive from Melbourne. Police stopped every car on the highways to enforce no travel, fined the drivers and made them turn back home.

[2] One party of 26 people got busted ordering KFC to the same address and fined $26,000.

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

#222

Post by jonplackett »

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…

Also in London and 100% agree. I’ve barely been to a shop in 8 months because of this.

For some reason we can manage to prevent drunk agro people entering a club with the wrong shoes, but 8 months into a pandemic we can’t make people wear a bloody mask? It’s insane.

The government are partly to blame for making rules so haphazardly that even someone like me who reads EVERYTHING and wants to do the right thing 100% of the time finds them hard to be sure of.

But ultimately people have to start taking the blame for not even doing the basics or following the letter of the law but not the spirit - nose slingers are the prime example of this.

I’ve just decided to go my own much more stringent path and ignore dumb government advice.

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

#223

Post by randomsearch »

robbiep wrote: post #165
randomsearch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

During Melbourne’s winter, Melbourne was reporting the same number of cases a day as the UK in summer. [0] https://twitter.com/drdeannechiu/status/1322834922269073408?... [1] https://twitter.com/drericlevi/status/1322822297867018240?s=... yes I know I posted essentially the same information to two comments, I apologise for the spam

My point was, the comparison was invalid due to the seasons but _the comparison is invalid anyway because the two countries are extremely different_.

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

#224

Post by detaro »

toast0 wrote: post #217
makomk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The UK relies on trucks coming across from the continent and continuing on to destinations throughout the country with their original drivers. I'm not familiar with freight in Europe, so please excuse the diversion. They drive freight vehicles onto the Eurotunnel Shuttle or on ferries? I'm guessing this isn't containerized freight, which would seem to make sense to transfer to freight rail (at least to cross the ch…

> They drive freight vehicles onto the Eurotunnel Shuttle or on ferries?

Both, although more volume goes through the ferries. (tunnel trains is 1.5 million trucks a year or something in that ballpark if I remember correctly)

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

#225

Post by robocat »

etherealmachine wrote: post #177
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…

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.

Excuses. If the state really wants to do something, they can. It is just a question of the costs.

NZ is not a state, but instead has a precarious relationship with the USA and other countries, which can ban-hammer us for things it really shouldn’t have any say in.

A better example: “Since Canberra pointedly demanded an investigation into the origins and spread of the coronavirus, the number of Aussie businesses being squeezed in China has exploded. Crates of Australian rock lobsters have been left to rot at a Chinese airport, and mountains of coal have been stuck in Chinese ports. Beijing turned the screw again, hitting Australian wine exports with punitive tariffs of up to 212 percent, essentially closing off a US$1 billion market.” “Australia's virus-weakened economy is being targeted for political retribution and the two countries may be sliding into a shadow trade war.”

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

#227

Post by DanBC »

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…

For people not familiar with London train stations: they're huge and can be very busy.

Here's video from one (St Pancras, about 35m people per normal year) today: https://twitter.com/scattermoon/status/1340393706009079812?s...

Most people appear to be wearing masks, but still it's not ideal.

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

#228

Post by godmode2019 »

vmception wrote: post #106
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…

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 are also better at controlling the media and banned disagreement with the government position. All we hear is they are doing a good job so it must be true.

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

#229

Post by raarts »

stevesimmons wrote: post #221
ficklepickle wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your timing is out. Melbourne started their lockdown in winter. Everyone obeyed it. It was strongly enforced [1, 2]. They beat coronavirus. And now they can enjoy their summer. I live in London. At one point in the summer, our covid rates were lower than Melbourne's. But the UK's messaging was confused and contradictory ("eat out to help out", test and trace was shambolic, rules were not enforced). So no one is the l…

But numbers seem to be up again, this article is speaking of another lockdown: https://t.co/2S9b4HfUhg

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

#230

Post by edh649 »

dillondoyle wrote: post #212
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…

Does anyone have insight on how much / specific changes in the spike protein would be needed to render the mRNA vaccines - which to my understanding create only those spikes - would be render less effective or not effective? Is that a concern here?

Page 8 of https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo... hints towards this.

The short answer is that 'The extent to which SARS-CoV-2 may evolve to escape immunity induced by infection or vaccination is not currently known'. However analysis has been carried out to work out how far from the receptor-binding site the mutations are, and how 'antibody-accessible' these are, with a few such as . No conclusions are drawn from this analysis.

Earlier on in the report (towards the end of page 1), this statement is given `One of these (the N501Y mutation) occurs in the region of the Spike protein, the receptor binding domain (RBD), that the virus uses to bind to the human ACE2 receptor. Changes in this region of the Spike protein can result in the virus changing its ACE2 binding specificity and alter antibody recognition`.

Saying all this, vaccines are designed to create a range of antibody responses, in order to stop this very fear of a single mutation rendering a whole vaccine useless. [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6] I also recall reading somewhere that adapting the vaccine to account for a mutation (much like is done yearly with the flue vaccine) is relatively easy, though I haven't managed to find that article again yet.

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