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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

#161

Post by rob74 »

gridspy wrote: post #148
rich_sasha wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, the conclusion was that you simply cannot do that, physically. It is so integrated, even for essentials such as food or medication, that you have a huge area, requiring delivery/lorry drivers whizzing around, medical staff in hospitals and care homes, etc. Short sharp shock just can’t happen. So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keep…

Lorry drivers should only live in one city. Anywhere else, they need to "self isolate" - contact-less reception of food, hand-off of documents etc. On return home, they need to assume they became infected en-route and use PPE suitable for that reality. Medical staff already know how to avoid taking disease home. They just need the funding and support to access the right PPE, facilites and reasonable hours. If they ar…

In Europe, the sad truth is that lorry drivers don't really "live" anywhere, except in the cabs of their trucks. Maybe they get a few weeks of home vacation per year, but other than that, they're permanently on the road.

More generally, these rules are all nice and well, but unless you are you going to give every person his or her own policeman to make sure that they follow them, people will keep stretching, bending and breaking the rules - of course, some (maybe even most?) behave responsibly, but the virus only needs a few who don't...

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

#162

Post by strogonoff »

josephg wrote: post #143
lordnacho wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any population of Chinese speakers in the west is going to know someone there on Wechat. I've talked to friends there as well, there's no major problem now. By contrast when things were bad in Wuhan people were reporting it. On top of that there's plenty of foreign reporters there, and plenty of foreign diplomats who would also notice.

Yep. The Economist has a journalist over in China, and he was interviewed recently on the economist's podcast. He said covid has popped up a bunch of times since the pandemic started. Each time they've immediately launched strict lockdowns and border controls for the region involved. He's personally been tested 7 times or something since covid started - apparently getting tested is often a requirement to travel anywh…

> covid has popped up a bunch of times since the pandemic started

(The times when news got out.)

The ability of Chinese authorities to suppress the information domestically (again, recent crackdowns on using social media for self-journalism), as well as to influence Western sources, shouldn’t be underestimated. I wouldn’t mind listening to that podcast though.

I know about COVID test results required for travel, but I don’t take it as much of an indicator if you consider people outside major cities who do not travel much (especially now that there’s an extra barrier to it) and may just suffer from virus outbreaks in localized clusters where they live.

Either way, what we don’t have is reliable numbers of how many people were tested, and how many of them were positive, across China.

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

#163

Post by mewse »

carlmr wrote: post #99
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.

The biggest issue with these strategies is that they're somewhat easier to execute in island nations. I don't see how most of the EU countries can follow this strategy. Germany für example has porous borders with Denmark, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, Poland. If they don't in turn all follow this strategy we'd have to militarily secure all these borders and stop anybod…

Just for clarity.. the lockdown we’re talking about was Victoria.

That’s just one of Australia’s states, and we were the only state with a severe lockdown like this. We have massive land borders with South Australia and New South Wales.

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

#164

Post by rob74 »

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…

Kudos to New Zealand, but I'll restate the obvious here: for this strategy it really helps if you're an island - not only with the initial implementation of the strategy, but also with staying virus-free once you reach that state. Because in NZ everyone who enters the country is registered and can be forced to follow the quarantine rules. By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks. Sure, people returning from another country should get a test and quarantine if it's positive - but does anyone know who travelled where and is required to get a test? No...

A small anecdotal example of why this complicates fighting the pandemic: during the first wave, eastern Germany got off relatively easy, with few cases. Czechia was even better, because they locked their borders and hardly had any cases initially. Then, during the summer/early autumn, Germany had the usual rules with masks, distancing, no large gatherings etc., while Czechia had much laxer/less-enforced rules. So guys from Germany would throw their bachelor party in Czechia, get infected and then infect everyone at their wedding a few days later. Which led not only to Czechia having a catastrophic number of cases in October, but also to eastern Germany (particularly Saxony) being hardest hit in the second wave.

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

#165

Post by sto_hristo »

mewse wrote: post #158
sto_hristo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High density, you say. Relative to the rest of the world, you say. Sidney - 423/km2 Melbourne - 508/km2 Brisbane - 155/km2 Paris - 20,000/km2 Berlin - 4,206/km2 London - 5,666/km2 NYC - 27,755/km2 You are effectively out of touch with reality. edit: NYC - 27,755/km2 to NYC - 10,716/km2 (27,755 is in mi2 units) sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney https://en.wikipedia.or…

What’s your source? What geographic region are you counting as “Melbourne”, for example? If we’re talking just about Melbourne’s CBD (which might be a sensible thing to do seeing as we’re talking about people being clustered in the cities and not about the surrounding suburbs, national parks, and rural areas which presumably are included in your “Melbourne” number), then the actual number for Melbourne is around 19,0…

edited post with fix on New York and added sources

We're talking about the cities as a whole, not selectively for this or that neighborhood, or that particular bus.

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

#166

Post by baxtr »

josephg wrote: post #151
baxtr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's also no western nation that tried NZ/Aus's "go early, go hard" policy of lockdowns and didn't reach 0 local cases. Maybe the real difference is that we're an island. But much more likely is our different public policies. And if you need evidence, the UK is an island (like Aus/NZ) with policies more like the US and - surprise! They have case numbers more similar to the US than similar to Aus/NZ. If you really…

I think you have it backwards. I never said being an Island will save you, see the UK. Still the fact remains that there is no other Western country which is no Island that has zero Covid. If you accept this fact we can start discussing the underlying reasons.

Maybe it’s because they’re islands, and maybe you’re right and it’s because of the policy in place. I believe it’s the former, because it’s way more difficult to control influx of people in a connected economy like the EU for example.

It’s basically like saying the state of New York could have been able to drive COVID down to zero while other states had it exploding.

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

#167

Post by mantas »

icelancer wrote: post #112
mkl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh. My country, a small EU member having land border with several EU members and other countries did a good job in spring. Next-to-zero cases in summer. Then the public demanded to open up the gates. We ended up #1 in Europe around Christmas...

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

#168

Post by Ekaros »

josephg wrote: post #157
icelancer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Canada can still close her borders This was already done and the infection rates are still sky high.

With closed borders, Canada is basically an island like Australia, NZ and the UK. Lots of posters here seem convinced that being an island makes it easy to control covid. If thats the most important factor, I'd love to hear some theories on why the numbers in canada aren't coming down to 0, like they have in Australia and NZ?

Key detail here is likely that it should have been done early enough. Once the virus is inside it is very hard to contain. Specially when asymptomatic carrier are common. Chain of them can keep virus alive and spreading for weeks or months.

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

#170

Post by kingofpandora »

icelancer wrote: post #89
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…

>> 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…

I don't see why the USA or Canada can't do what NZ did. If you are serious about stopping travel into the country by closing the border to travellers - and actually quarantining the residents who come back home - then you only have the relatively minor flow of illegal land crossing. Neither Canada nor the US have even tried.
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