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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

#211

Post by joveian »

josephg wrote: post #135
icelancer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we going to ignore the fact AUS and NZ are island nations who have nearly permanently banned international arrivals unless there's a 14 day quarantine upon entering, and sometimes that's not even allowed? The United States can't stop illegal immigration and cross-border state travel with or without a pandemic. The laws and expectations are significantly different in connected regions like the US and EU compared t…

The US's covid numbers aren't high because of a few people crossing the mexican border illegally. (And Mexico seems to be handling covid better than the US anyway.) Being an island has nothing to do with it. The difference is due to different health policies. - We had mandatory masks in all public places here in Melbourne with on the spot fines by police. Over in the US lots of people thought covid is a hoax, and eve…

I mostly agree with you but Mexico is one of the very few countries that has done worse than the US. By one ranking they are second to last in the world, only ahead of Brazil (it sounds like the US was ranked fifth worst with Colombia and Iran also doing worse).

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/coronavirus/index-of-covid-...

And it sounds like that is based on official statistics, which the Mexican government has admitted is way off.

It isn't completely irrelevent that the US shares a border with another country that has done horribly badly at managing the pandemic.

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

#212

Post by herewegoagain2 »

croes wrote: post #209
herewegoagain2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things COULD happen. For example, a meteor could hit the earth and wipe out all life. Therefore we should pour ALL resources into space exploration, not medicine.

Compare the probabilities.

Yes, please do! I think there is an inflated perception of risk because of the relentless media coverage. Risks are probably still higher than the meteor example, but the point of the example is to call for actual numbers! It's not enough to say "some bad thing COULD happen". Many bad things COULD happen.

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

#213

Post by josephg »

baxtr wrote: post #191
josephg wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I agree there are no other western countries with zero covid except a couple island nations. There's also no other countries which have seriously tried to get covid to 0 except some island nations - which is interesting. I'm convinced the most important difference is policy, but I wonder if there might be some psychological effect of living on an island all by yourself which makes you think "Well, can we just pr…

I agree with you. The most important difference is policy. And I also think the EU should have acted very differently. They should have been way quicker and more decisive. However, bear in mind that Europe has become super interconnected in the last decade or so. There are millions crossing borders to work on the other side. Germany is a great example. Those counties close to the Czech border had way higher incidence…

Yeah I get that, and I understand that that would make it difficult for individual nations to work alone. (Though not impossible - as other commenters have mentioned Australia successfully closed our internal borders.)

But you aren't in this alone. If Europe worked together, and your neighbors adopted similar policies it would have worked fine and covid would be under control by now.

The fact that you aren't on an island doesn't excuse the EU's bad covid policy decisions, at both the scale of individual countries and as a collective body.

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

#214

Post by maxerickson »

laverya wrote: post #202
lostmsu wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should not be much of a problem in US with only 2 land borders.

Because the US has had so much success securing its southern border, and because taking the necessary actions to truly close it wouldn't be a total political shitstorm.

If we actually did contact tracing, illegal crossings of infected people would be easy enough to deal with. Infections in the US are not being driven by sick people coming in from Mexico.

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

#215

Post by maxerickson »

twelve40 wrote: post #147
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…

> - Make tests free (fully subsidized) Florida has free tests. I tried two places (giant parks filled with hundreds of cars waiting), the cops told me 3+ hours wait each, I went to a private clinic and was done in 20 min. But yeah, they have free and fully subsidized tests. Apparently the logistics of it is not that simple.

The other poster obviously means sufficient free testing, not advertising free tests and failing to supply them.

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

#216

Post by __blockcipher__ »

maxerickson wrote: post #214
laverya wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the US has had so much success securing its southern border, and because taking the necessary actions to truly close it wouldn't be a total political shitstorm.

If we actually did contact tracing, illegal crossings of infected people would be easy enough to deal with. Infections in the US are not being driven by sick people coming in from Mexico.

Very fallacious reasoning here. No-one is saying that infections are driven by Mexican immigrants.

Rather they’re pointing out the obvious: if you’re trying to get to zero COVID, all it takes is one person to start the chain. Thus you cannot have ANY illegal immigration.

FWIW I strongly oppose the “zero COVID” goal because it’s completely unrealistic. We’ll see if the island nations can maintain it long-term but certainly in the US it’s a non-starter.

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

#217

Post by __blockcipher__ »

gls2ro wrote: post #196
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…

Maybe now is a good time to see EU as one unit and have strategies at EU levels: i.e the same lockdown for all EU. Of course this is not working under the current way of how EU works, but I think this is the only pragmatic solution as response to such crisis.

You’re one step away from just advocating for a global world government.

Massive centralized control never ends well.

You’re close to the insight here though: there is a pragmatic solution, and it’s to stop waging war against an endemic respiratory virus of zoonotic origin. It’s like struggling in quicksand; trying to escape just makes it worse. That’s real pragmatism.

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

#218

Post by anotherevan »

polote wrote: post #56
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.

> 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…

> This is not true. Hard lockdown that people follow seems to work. But lowdown only doesn't work.

As a fellow Melbournite I will clarify: Real lockdowns work. End of story.

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

#219

Post by __blockcipher__ »

kingofpandora wrote: post #170
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…

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.

This article is about zero COVID. “Relatively minor flow” (btw I’m not convinced it’s even minor...) means you never eradicate the virus (which is why I oppose the idea of zero covid categorically)

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

#220

Post by anotherevan »

sto_hristo wrote: post #95
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.

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…

Can we please stop going on about it being summer. The lockdowns we had in Melbourne that lead to elimination was during our winter.
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