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The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

thetyee.ca

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Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#61

Post by wernercd »

baq wrote: post #13
wernercd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or it'll turn into just another cold/flu that we get used too and ignore. How many thousands die a year from the flu and it was all but ignored?

I don’t know but before COVID I used to get a flu shot each year. This year wasn’t as important as 1) restrictions also decimated the flu, 2) my country used up all the shots it ordered (which never happens) before I had time to get one myself.

and even with large swaths having resistances and a new flu vaccine each year? thousands still died "normally" every flu seasons.

Which is my point... it was normal. Colds, flu, etc.

COVID? not going anywhere... its out and mutating... we'll eventually get used to it.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#62

Post by ptr »

threeseed wrote: post #28
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think the mink culling was an absurd over-reaction and highly unethical. Those poor minks. (Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)

Lockdowns work. End of story. Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives. No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.

Why single out Sweden? UK, who have/had more stringent lockdown rules than Sweden, are facing 1,540 deaths per million. Sweden is at 1,120 and roughly equal to France, Switzerland. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#63

Post by gridspy »

irq11 wrote: post #19
MattGaiser wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cherry picking as Taiwan and New Zealand are also on the list.

Until they open their borders.

The New Zealand borders are open and accepting citizen and essential arrivals into quarantine with a long waiting list.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#64

Post by pessimizer »

zpeti wrote: post #12

China and Vietnam get the virus under control by using centralised quarantines. I wonder how many people supporting the sentiments of this article would be ok with someone arriving at their doorstep, taking you to a prison basically whether you agree or not, and quaranteening you there for at least 10 days with other covid people. Perhaps they also take your family too, in case they are also infected. Are you willing…

I'd very much support this. Somehow America thought this was fine for decades when somebody might be smoking a joint, but now it's fascism when it actually has a material purpose. Pretend like the people with covid actually have drugs and 10 days in jail sounds absurdly progressive when viewed in terms of very recent history. Covid is a gateway drug to full respiratory failure, and it takes very little peer pressure to spread it.

edit: also, I thought our pretense for harassing prostitutes was to stop the spread of disease. If we don't actually care about disease we should stop harassing them so they can have have a few years of freedom from interference before a strain of covid mutates into the death rate of MERS and civilization falls because we can't live like the awful Chinese.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#65

Post by mkl »

irq11 wrote: post #19
MattGaiser wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cherry picking as Taiwan and New Zealand are also on the list.

Until they open their borders.

The NZ border is unlikely to be open to non-citizens this year. We'll wait until we've vaccinated ~everyone, and since we have no community transmission, we're sitting back in the queue a bit.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#66

Post by Shacklz »

jeofken wrote: post #43
bigmattystyles wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the minks were going to be killed for fur anyways right? The culling isn’t really the problematic part.

Denmark’s fur industry is old, but now also dead. Morally, raising mink for fur is equal to eating meat or consuming dairy products.

> Morally, raising mink for fur is equal to eating meat or consuming dairy products.

Meat and dairy products feed humans, which is a necessity (that, in our day and age, may or may not be achieved by other means while still maintaining a healthy diet), while fur is a luxury product - by no means necessary. It isn't even a byproduct, the fur is the sole reasons the minks are killed.

I can't even fathom how you can see these two things in the same light, morally.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#67

Post by threeseed »

baxtr wrote: post #39
josephg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because she's not an island, Canada can still close her borders. I'm sure it'll be inconvenient, but short and sharp beats long and drawn out.

Yes I agree. Canada has a long border but just with one country. So think it’s in a good position. It’s way more difficult for a European country for example.

It's not that difficult for most European countries.

People are going to be crossing borders at relatively few and well understood locations.

And they could've simply imposed large fines for anyone who tried to sneak through.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#68

Post by the-dude »

plantain wrote: post #2

It won't happen, because there's no political incentive to do so. The citizens of these beleaguered countries seem quite happy with the government management thus far[1]. I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the UK response thus far and think - more of that please! [1] https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1355606835873669126

You are exactly right. The Dutch response has been and still is a shitshow.

We are up for election mid-March, the ruling party and PM will be re-elected.

The populace will not 'take chances' during crises.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#69

Post by smackay »

jensgrud wrote: post #17

Definitely a report we did not want to hear. Just the the record though, the author is factually wrong about Denmark being one of the jurisdictions that "chose not to stamp out this virus and blithely tolerated high infection rates" and is probably referring to Sweden - see https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2020/11/17/the-nor... . We actually wiped out an entire industry of mink farming in the name of stoppin…

Here on the ground in Portugal I'd say the government's response is apparently competent but it's just not effective. Although the country is simply following what others are doing, the population is taking this very seriously. Mask wearing outside is pretty universal except if you're exercising, everybody is working from home where possible and the schools are closed (finally). But it's not enough. The problem is that family ties are very strong here. Relaxing the rules for 36 hours at Christmas and 24 hours at New Year was absolutely the wrong thing to do and that is why the death toll has doubled in the five weeks since then.

Re: The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

#70

Post by [deleted] »

prox wrote: post #49
threeseed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns work. End of story. Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives. No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.

Is there a good place I could read about how Australia did it?

[deleted]
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