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

thetyee.ca

71–80 of 248 posts

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

#71
Something must be said: It is too late.

The New Zealand or Taiwan model works because you don't let the virus enter in the first place.

Also New Zealand and Australia are in Summer right now. Just 30 seconds of Australia sun radiation now will kill(inactivate) any virus on any surface. Temperature will dry the membrane of any COVID virus that remains on the shadow. People immune system is much stronger in Summer, and people go out, do not live that close together as in Winter.

Once you let it enter like the UK, Spain, Italy or US did, it is too late.

It took three months for the Spain going "from 1 to 0", and it was the biggest catastrophe for the economy and democracy itself in decades, because it takes time for the spread to halve. And it did not get a real 0 after all the pain. Spanish' Spring and Summer had probably the biggest effect after all.

It is not that catastrophic by the way. Once people get infected, they do not get infected away, and just protecting people over 65 years old with vaccine will stop most deads.

In fact just going for people over 80 years old have a significant effect on deads.

In the US, 15% of the population is over 65 years old and 9% already got the first dose. Next month most of them will be immune.

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

#72

None of the variants so far are any more lethal than the original. Isn't that right? I have heard nothing to the contrary, although this guy seems to think it's already happened.

You miss the point - a virus with a 1% death rate of those infected, that mutates into a virus 50% more transmissible, with a 1% death rate of those infected, is obviously likely to kill more people.

No that is not obvious at all. It doesn't depend on the transmission rate, just on how many people get infected. Higher transmission rate just means it spreads faster, not that it infects more people in the end.

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

#73
post #56

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.

> Lockdowns work. End of story This is not true. Hard lockdown that people follow seems to work. But lowdown only doesn't work. 1. Not all lockdown are equal, look at Germany how long they have a been in a soft lockdown so that death can decrease? like 2 months? Not sure at this point this is due to lockdown 2. If people don't follow the order it doesn't work, Peru one of the toughest and longest lockdown but yet als…

I'm pretty sure OP is implying that lockdowns which are properly enforced do work, obviously. A lockdown is anything but if people can just move about and ignore the rules defeating the whole purpose of a lockdown.

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

#74
post #59
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…

Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were: - Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you ne…

Montreal is following the same rules, down to the silly curfew, but, we're at 600 cases a day still and rising. Obviously people aren't following it, but... It doesn't seem to be enough.

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

#75
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…

Yeah I don't think lockdowns have worked universally. Even stringent ones like those in India where cases picked up quickly after they opened up.

What seems to have worked in Wuhan was, in addition to lockdowns, rigorous contact tracing and isolation of symptomatic patients and their close contacts in centralized quarantine facilities.

Once all of this is done, I hope we learn more about how China actually contained this. But the answer is likely authoritarian measures that no democracy can legally or politically afford.

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

#76
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If it means I can actually go to the gym and workout, meet my friends, etc. I am tired of wearing the god damn masks, having to worry about my elderly parents, Are you tired of the god damn pandemic? I know I am. Because we already have no freedom.

Ethics of mandates aside, there’s no strong evidence that universal cloth masking in a community setting reduces transmissions, and many theoretical mechanisms by which they could worsen transmission (increased aerosol generation, deeper breaths to maintain o2 homeostasis leading to more absolute aerosols, improper handling->contamination, altered social behavior, having to speak louder or closer). So, I would argue…

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-08-oxford-covid-19-study-f...

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...

https://fullfact.org/health/evidence-shows-masks-do-offer-pr...

Please stop perpetuating this myth that masks don't work all because you just don't like wearing one.

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

#77
post #53

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)

That the mink industry still existed in this day and age in a country such as Denmark was in my opinion a complete travesty to begin with. Having all these animals in ridiculously small cages just for the sake of their fur - the cruelty is appalling. As cruel as Corona itself is - it did bring a few good things, killing the Mink industry was definitely one of them in my opinion.

Those Mink were already dead at birth, whether they die today en masse or tomorrow one at at a time makes no difference. The ethical choice is to not conceive them in the first place.

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

#78
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 find the notion of China having the virus under control hard to believe. CCP is known to misinform with less at stake than this, and to not care all that much about large areas of rural territory (recall the one child policy, which was more or less unenforced outside of larger cities and resulted in the depressing phenomenon of millions of “invisible” children who are outside of the system and do not have access to…

While it's true they have a reason to misrepresent, I think it would be fairly obvious if hospitals were overrun with patients. The great firewall is not so high that that message wouldn't come out. They had good reason to keep the prison camps in Xinjiang secret too, but that came out, and there's a lot fewer of those than hospitals.

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

#79
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. It’s embarrassing for the UK... my point was that there is no example of a western, liberal country not being an island that was able to reach zero Covid. It’s just way easier as an island state.

This island nonsense needs to stop. All of the European countries were able to implement border controls as the Schengen Borders Code permits. They easily could have had a mandatory 2-week quarantine for all foreign approvals and had a similar result to Australia and New Zealand. They chose instead to mimic themselves after Sweden and opted to contain rather than eliminate the virus. Even now Macron refuses to impose…

I am just referring to facts here. I am sorry if you don’t like them. There is no western country not being an island that has zero COVID. It’s a fact don’t you agree? If you agree we can now discuss if this is just a coincidence or if it has something to do with political realities

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

#80
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 was in a Vietnamese quarantine in March as a foreigner. It's definitely not a prison. There are two types of quarantine: before and after the test. The second one is pretty good and you can even live in a special hotel.
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