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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

#361

Post by megablast »

randomsearch wrote: post #139
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.

These comparisons are so lax. NZ is in summer right now, and is a remote island on the other side of the planet from Italy where the virus first really went crazy. The U.K. government is beyond contempt, but these comparisons don’t help. NZ is not an international flight hub. Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe prior to COVID (it is not anymore).

It wasn't in summer when the virus hit. Who cares what it is in now, what a stupid point.

It is remote, but the UK is an island too, with complete control over who enters.

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

#362

Post by xyzzy123 »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #216
paulnechifor wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to why you're not wearing a mask. I haven't worn a mask twice. Once because I forgot it and once because I just forgot to put it on. If "I don't have one" isn't an acceptable excuse what am I supposed to do: produce one out of thin air? It's not like they give out free ones if you forget. There are so many signs now that they're basically invisible. If I'm fined for not we…

Offer you one and then fine you. Seriously, don't forget and if you're forgetful then prepare early I have one in my car, a spare in my backpack, keep one in my jacket pocket, and a cheap disposable in my wallet folded up. That way if I forget, I'll have one. My city in Australia had a grace period for everyone to get a mask. After that a lot of fines were handed out. Without fines I doubt we'd have seen compliance a…

There's also a social tipping point sort of thing that happens, and fines help with that.

When hardly anyone is wearing a mask you feel a bit weird or silly.

When half the people are wearing masks you look at the people who are and aren't and can't help but wonder which side is your in-group.

When fines are enforced, everyone has an "excuse" to wear a mask. Darn fines.

Then, when everyone is wearing a mask you feel naked if you don't have one. Only the seriously anti-social will defect.

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

#363

Post by dehrmann »

bsder wrote: post #322
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.

Welcome to the Thanksgiving bump. People didn't listen and stay home. And, if they got together, they didn't wear masks. I got Covid from community transmission. I quarantined in my house, away from my wife, and wore a mask 24/7. She didn't get my Covid. Masks work, but people have to bloody well use them.

> She didn't get my Covid.

Out of curiosity, did she get tested? What about for antibodies?

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

#364

Post by sterlind »

School-Cotton wrote: post #350
robocat wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AFAIK there is no legal mechanism for a US state to close its borders to other states. Regulating interstate travel is a purely federal matter.

Not a state, but American Samoa's governor ordered the ports closed in 1917 and allowed no ships to dock. They escaped the flu pandemic with zero cases.

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

#365

Post by Felony_Fred »

exmadscientist wrote: post #336
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the liberal northwest, where we at least have a token amount of public transport, I see the bus signs alternating between their usual route number + description and "masks required". Haven't been on one to verify use by ridership, or to see what the driver's reaction to noncompliant riders is. The higher staff-to-rider ratio might help? Outdoor mask use is limited (50%?) but at least quite sparse and distant…

> Haven't been on one to verify use by ridership, or to see what the driver's reaction to noncompliant riders is. Compliance is very high (>95%?), but the people who do not comply are basically the same people who were problems in the Before Times: belligerent, mentally ill, or both. The drivers almost always let them get away with it, again just as in the Before Times, probably because it's a risk to even interact w…

> the people who do not comply are basically the same people who were problems in the Before Times: belligerent, mentally ill, or both.

Or maybe they're one of 12,943 medical and public health scientists who signed the Great Barrington Declaration [0].

[0] ; https://gbdeclaration.org/

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

#366

Post by dillondoyle »

edh649 wrote: post #230
dillondoyle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concl…

Thanks for all this detail.

That's my laymen's guess at the end - even if spike changes too much we can just fire up a new yearly vaccine, maybe bundle with the flu.

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

#367

Post by elyobo »

rocqua wrote: post #354
elyobo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As an inhabitant of the Netherlands, I would be very surprised if we would police our border with either Belgium or Germany. There are no natural obstacles, and plenty of spaces with forest crossing the border. No-one but the military comes close to having enough man-power to enforce that border. Sure, with actual army deployment we could get somewhere (it seems we have about 20 soldiers per kilometer of border). But…

The same could be said of Australia's internal borders, which were largely closed as well. Most people will follow the rules, so simply closing the borders will get you most of the way there.

The issue is not whether it's possible - it is - it's whether the cost of doing so is too high. It's a fair consideration to make, but it should be clear that that's the consideration being made, rather than pretending that only island nations have this option.

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

#368

Post by addicted »

bjourne wrote: post #340
DenisM wrote: post #302

Apropos of other comments. What do we think about the mask “issue”? Some people vehemently refuse to wear them, others take “just go with flow” attitude, yet others approach it with outsized religious zeal, hounding the heretics or at least giving them the stink eye. It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open. Are we witnessing a religious schi…

There is still no evidence showing that mask usage reduces spread. Worse, people think that mask usage entails fail-safe protection. Like condoms against pregnancy. I know of IT-companies that enforces mask usage in their offices but still does not allow employees to work from home .

This is false. There’s a lot of evidence that mask usage reduces spread.

The evidence ranges from the fact that masks almost certainly capture water droplets which are supposed to be major carriers of the virus to the fact that there is correlation between countries that wear masks having reduced spreads compare to ones that don’t. In fact, a recent study compared districts in the same state, grouping them by whether the district implemented mask mandates or not, and found that the ones that had mask mandates had significantly lower levels of COVID hospitalizations vs the ones that didn’t.

There’s a LOT of evidence that masks reduce COVID spread. What there isn’t, is conclusive evidence that lets us say with a 95% degree of probability that masks work. Or carefully designed scientific studies that prove this.

But evidence doesn’t just mean a double blind scientific study, and if we waited for that degree of confidence to make decisions in everyday life, or even in very significant arenas like business and politics, we would be making no decisions at all. The entire IT industry, a massive trillions of dollar industry, for example, has switched from waterfall to agile development on the basis of far less and weaker evidence that agile works better than waterfall than we have for whether or not masks work.

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

#369

Post by Retric »

makomk wrote: post #286
Retric wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masks can make a significant difference when new cases per infection is near 1. Dropping it from 3 to 2 doesn’t matter has that’s still heavy exponential growth, dropping it from 0.5 to 0.25 again doesn’t matter because it’s dropping fast. However dropping from 1.05 to even 0.95 is huge.

In theory, any tiny reduction in infection rate can make the decisive difference when the number of new infections from each existing infection is close enough to one. In practice, this is extremely unlikely to work in the real world because in reality, this is not some universal constant that is fixed at a particular value everywhere by some physical law - it varies from place to place, from job to job, from communi…

It’s not about an abstract model, there are feedback loops involved. Shutdowns and people’s behavior responds to the number of new infections. Globally across the last 6 months, new infections are close to 1:1 because you don’t exponential growth. Just look at the three waves in the US.

In effect masks buy you a more open environment where people can leave their homes and do more stuff. Further, when locations decide to shutdown that shutdown is more effective.

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

#370

Post by bsder »

dehrmann wrote: post #363
bsder wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the Thanksgiving bump. People didn't listen and stay home. And, if they got together, they didn't wear masks. I got Covid from community transmission. I quarantined in my house, away from my wife, and wore a mask 24/7. She didn't get my Covid. Masks work, but people have to bloody well use them.

> She didn't get my Covid. Out of curiosity, did she get tested? What about for antibodies?

Yes, she has been tested for active Covid about a half-dozen times with both the fast (15 min) and slower tests. We wanted to make extremely sure she wasn't an asymptomatic carrier who could give it to her elderly parents.

She didn't get tested for antibodies as the health system has far more important things to deal with right now in the US, unfortunately.

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