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

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

#111

Post by strogonoff »

lordnacho wrote: post #78
strogonoff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just don’t think many messages come out at all (considering bans on inbound travel and recent crackdowns on documentary uses of social media), and especially from outside of larger cities.

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

#112

Post by icelancer »

mkl wrote: post #101
icelancer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess. EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. K…

It's possible to close borders without being on an island. I (in NZ) don't think the the island factor is essential. The USA has more active military personnel than almost any other country, enough to make closing borders pretty easy compared with many other places.

>> I (in NZ) don't think the the island factor is essential.

Why are the countries consistently being cited for doing good jobs in this thread seem to be island nations? Exclude AUS and NZ from the analysis and there are very few landlocked countries doing a good job without very authoritarian measures that are unlikely to be legal in the countries doing poorly.

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

#113

Post by gridspy »

mkl wrote: post #90
gridspy wrote: post #82

As a citizen of New Zealand I believe a short, sharp lock-down combined with test & contact trace is the only route to zero. I think that this option is far far better than being in "half measures" restrictions for very long periods of time. When a country announces their lock-down measures I feel excited for their populace that they might finally be heading to zero. Then I read the holes in the measures: - Resturant…

Yes, the holes in the "lockdowns" elsewhere are kind of unbelievable. If the lockdown is hard enough, and the financial support is there for those who need it, then it can be short and effective.

Indeed. And then the "consumers" are free to head straight back out to enjoy society and participate in the economy again once it's safe.

It isn't a choice of Health vs Economy, it's Health for Economy

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

#114

Post by icelancer »

gridspy wrote: post #104
icelancer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess. EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. K…

- Make tests free (fully subsidized) - Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal) - Institute financial support for all non-essential businesses, then force them to close (cease in person trading) during lock-down - Educate the populace on Covid details It's not just about strong walls or deep oceans. We're not talking about a zombie apocalypse here. S…

>> Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal)

"Make this legal" is a pretty hand-wavy way to say that it isn't legal and isn't likely to become legal. Restricting interstate travel is going to be very difficult to both achieve and to survive federal court challenges.

Some toolkits are not available to some countries. The United States is unlikely to be able to effectively use the authoritarian measures other countries have used.

Pointing this out gets mass downvotes on HN which is a typical libertarian paradise, but when it comes to COVID, is all about authoritarian measures to get it done. I'd be fine with them too if they were at all practical in this country, but they aren't.

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

#115

Post by thaumaturgy »

I can't find it right now, of course, but somebody -- I think it was Tom Scott -- had a decent video early on in the pandemic that said, "as a pandemic gets bigger, it gets more weird."

Coronaviruses mutate, and every single infected human becomes a petri dish for new mutations. The rest is straightforward natural selection: the most efficient covid-19 variants will win. We might get lucky; the most efficient variant might accidentally mutate away all the things that makes it deadly to humans. There might even be some selection pressure for that.

But it could also stay about as deadly while changing enough about its spike protein to defeat antibodies in previously infected individuals and get more infectious in the process, and that would be a really bad scenario.

I've been stunned for the last 12 months at the volume of the people that are totally okay with this, since we have no way of knowing right now how this might turn out over the next few years.

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

#116

Post by jansan »

res0nat0r wrote: post #40
jansan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I look a the infection numbers of South Africa and UK, I completely fail to see how there variants are more infectious. Also, in Brazil, where life seems to go on as usual, there is no exponential growth of cases. Do you have any numbers that prove that the new strains are actually spreading faster in society?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/25/fauci-uk-coronaviru... The UK variant which will be the dominant strain in the USA in a couple months is more deadly, and I believe the same is true for the South Africa version. Both more infectious, and both more lethal.

>The UK variant which will be the dominant strain in the USA in a couple months is more deadly,

That's not what is in the article. It says "“there is a realistic possibility that infection with” the country’s dominant Covid-19 variant “is associated with an increased risk of death compared to infection with” other strains of the coronavirus."

What they are saying is basically "we do not know".

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #110
sto_hristo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is big and sparely populated compared to other countries that implemented full lockdowns. Also, it's summer down there, with heat waves, etc. All of this diminishes virus' ability to spread. It's very situational. Australia is not doing anything more special than other countries. You gotta look into the meaning of these numbers and just the value. Lockdowns do work, technically speaking, but not in the long…

1. 71% of Australians live in a handful of cities each of which has very high density relative to the rest of the world. 2. Lockdowns occurred during winter. 3. Australia has effectively eliminated COVID-19 and by having so few cases it allows for targeted lockdowns to work over the long-term e.g. Perth just had 1 case today and is having a short 5-day lockdown - their first in 10 months.

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by mkl »

gridspy wrote: post #113
mkl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the holes in the "lockdowns" elsewhere are kind of unbelievable. If the lockdown is hard enough, and the financial support is there for those who need it, then it can be short and effective.

Indeed. And then the "consumers" are free to head straight back out to enjoy society and participate in the economy again once it's safe. It isn't a choice of Health vs Economy, it's Health for Economy

Yep. Life in NZ has been almost completely normal for ~10 of the last 12 months (one hard ~6 week lockdown, one short mostly-region-specific one followed by a couple of weeks of mask-wearing).

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

#119

Post by throwaway3699 »

croes wrote: post #37
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #11

SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic, (fairly) highly infectious endemic respiratory virus. Eradication is literally impossible, and even if we could wave a magic wand and simultaneously eradicate it from all humans on earth, you still need to worry about it jumping back over from any of the many animal species infected with it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise... : > The selection of infectious…

"who have essentially zero risk of COVID-19 mortality." With current virus, that could change with each mutation.

We cannot indefinitely implement totalitarian lockdowns based on the fact that something "might" happen. No joke, that is how dictatorships start.

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

#120

Post by gridspy »

icelancer wrote: post #114
gridspy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Make tests free (fully subsidized) - Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal) - Institute financial support for all non-essential businesses, then force them to close (cease in person trading) during lock-down - Educate the populace on Covid details It's not just about strong walls or deep oceans. We're not talking about a zombie apocalypse here. S…

>> Shut down the highway off-ramps into towns with some sort of inter-state quarantine scheme (make this legal) "Make this legal" is a pretty hand-wavy way to say that it isn't legal and isn't likely to become legal. Restricting interstate travel is going to be very difficult to both achieve and to survive federal court challenges. Some toolkits are not available to some countries. The United States is unlikely to be…

I concur it was hand-wavy. I'd hope there was some acceptable measure you could get through the courts here in the name of health.

Such a barrier is only really essential when different states have different rules. If you could get all states to agree on a lock-down it would go a long way. You might be able to set up quarantine barriers as you exit the interstate? I don't know.

Personally, I think it is terms like "libertarian paradise" which lead to down-votes. Talk about the issues, not some made up catch all names like "libertarian"

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