The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by croes » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #225

croes wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things are more likely than others.

Yes, for example ushering in a new totalitarian age is much more likely than a (in children) very mild virus magically becoming super deadly. I really think you may not have ever read the literature on COVID-19 in children. We should be shouting at the rooftops that kids are safe (and btw transmit less than kids), instead here in California we’ve closed school for a year which will - in children - far surpass the har…

A mild virus? That's some kind of understatement.

"Babies under 1 year old and children with certain underlying conditions may be more likely to have severe illness from COVID-19."

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

#242

Post by croes » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 6:37 AM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #224

croes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it infects children more easily.

What’s your point? As I said: > over the long run the set of all COVID-19-naive individuals becomes dominated by the very young (infants/toddlers), who have essentially zero risk of COVID-19 mortality.

BTW they generally become less deadly because the less deadly spread faster because they don't kill the host, but this virus has a rather long incubation period, so you can have both. Easy spread and higher death rate.

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

#243

Post by anotherevan » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 6:46 AM UTC

username90 wrote: post #233

anotherevan wrote: post #227

Can people in the northern hemisphere stop banging on that the reason it is so easy for us to get a handle on COVID in Australia is because it is summer. We eliminated COVID in Melbourne during winter with wearing masks and real lockdowns. It was not easy. It required a huge effort of societal and political will and cooperation. It involved following the science. Stop blaming the weather.

Does Australia even have winters? I mean, it never gets cold in Melbourne. Your winter is close to my summer.

> Your winter is close to my summer.

Sucks to live where you do. :-^

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

#244

Post by rob74 » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 8:49 AM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #201

rob74 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, peopl…

"By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks." That's the thing you change.

Well, that's easier said then done. First, you have lots of people living in one country and commuting to work over the border. Second, the economy is so integrated that closing the borders or even introducing border checks leads to major economic disruptions. Third, in democratic countries you'll have those pesky people asking you if all these limitations are really necessary and not an undue restriction of their constitutional rights, so it will probably end up before the supreme court...

The basic problem i see with "Get to Zero" is that it's an extreme position, and politicians always tend to find a compromise in everything they do. So unless you can get everyone to agree to this goal, it's simply not realistic in a democracy, regardless of the scientific merit.

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

#245

Post by bjowen » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 8:50 AM UTC

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…

What factors led to the effectiveness of the Melbourne lockdown? Choices are things like compliance, geography, particulars of the rules (8pm curfew, 5km movement radius), enough of a population that is able to work from home, enough economic support for those who couldn’t (job keeper etc) - to slow down population mixing and interrupt transmission chains. Contact tracing was overhauled midway through and that coincides with the turnaround [0,1].

Would those measures work in similarly-high-density cities? The awkward fact is that most of the cases in greater Melbourne were outside the densely-populated CBD [2], that much of the transmission occurred in lower-paid (McDonalds) and less-safe (meatpacking) workplaces, people whose home language was not English, as well as in shared living conditions.

There’s a temptation to fit the data to the narrative you want, but (as far as I’m aware) the data you’d need to pick any one of these factors as conclusive hasn’t been released. Gestures in the direction of geography as the _one thing_ that enabled elimination are silly and ignore the vast amount of effort and personal sacrifice and organisation and argument and collaboration that went into that result.

Lockdowns do work — even if that’s not quite the end of the story.

[0] https://theconversation.com/where-did-victoria-go-so-wrong-w... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-14/victoria-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/20...

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

#246

Post by rdiddly » Mon, Feb 01, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #244

rdiddly wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks." That's the thing you change.

Well, that's easier said then done. First, you have lots of people living in one country and commuting to work over the border. Second, the economy is so integrated that closing the borders or even introducing border checks leads to major economic disruptions. Third, in democratic countries you'll have those pesky people asking you if all these limitations are really necessary and not an undue restriction of their co…

Sure sure, everybody has heard all those arguments. What's new here is the idea, and it's hard to argue with, that living with waves upon waves of infectious disease, on purpose, for years, is itself an extreme position that unduly restricts the economy and personal freedom, for longer than a proper lockdown would. And it also kills more people, and something ought to be said about their right to life & liberty.

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

#247

Post by gridspy » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

mantas wrote: post #167

icelancer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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...

Sounds like a great example of how a non-island can successfully control the virus and how when the govt stops trying, the virus comes straight back.

Also, I bet that when "the public demanded" it was a loud and public minority who wanted travel (and Covid-19) back.

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

#248

Post by sershe » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

lancewiggs wrote: post #230

eqdw wrote: post #192

This author appears to be completely unaware that, in the US anyway, the progress of the pandemic has been completely and totally disconnected from all control measures. San Francisco, where I'm told (and believe, based on having lived there) that they had very strict lockdown measures: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/coronavirus.asp * Population: ~900,000 * Total Cases: 31,111 (3,457 / 100k) * Total Deaths: 324 (36…

Those lockdowns are not actual lockdowns, and were doomed to fail. Moreover lockdown restrictions were removed when numbers of new cases simply lowered, as opposed to all known cases being removed from community and quarantined, and confidence there was zero community transmission. Meanwhile borders are porous, with new cases arriving constantly. The combination of all this is heartbreakingly difficult to observe. Ho…

NZ has a population of less than ~5mil, with 1/3rd being on one city, and no land borders with anyone (people claiming "border is just as good as being an island" don't realize that, before we even get to illegal crossings, border areas in Canada/USA and Mexico/USA are integrated and numerous, whereas in NZ any cross-border traffic is designed full-time around specialized chokepoints like ports and airports.

Good luck doing that in a country of 320mil with no internal border infrastructure or legal framework whatsoever, and a huge land-based border.

That said, even if it were possible, I'd take liberty over safety (from a vastly overblown hazard by all estimates) in this case; really grateful to an American for this crisis.