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Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#231

Post by dageshi »

Izkata wrote: post #205
howlgarnish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, this old canard again. Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore are all doing fine without "locking people into their homes" and they're not islands. (Ok, Singapore technically is an island but it's connected to Malaysia by the world's busiest border crossing; and Thailand's grappling with a new outbreak now but it seems to be improving.)

Thailand was doing fine, but as of this past week it broke past their quarantine.

It's Thailands winter, if there's ever a time it's going to spread there, it's probably now.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#232

Post by hnlmorg »

kinghtown wrote: post #188
GuB-42 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see "copy this country" but often, it is simply not possible, policies are usually a result of each country specificities more than the other way around. For Taiwan. - It is an island - It has an effective, well centralized surveillance network - It has (presumably) an obedient population, or at least, one that don't think personal freedom includes the right to spread the disease - They were well prepared tha…

I live in Taiwan.. I’m grateful to be living here during Covid. Taiwanese people aren’t obedient. You should see how they drive. They wear masks without flaking out about it as slavery or being against their will or whatever nonsense you guys are on about back home in the west. Taiwanese people are couch potatoes and extremely reserved. They don’t really want to meet new people or hang out with strangers. Also the go…

> Taiwanese people aren’t obedient. You should see how they drive.

...

> They wear masks without flaking out about it as slavery or being against their will or whatever nonsense you guys are on about back home in the west.

The 2nd part is what the GP was talking about with regards to 'obedience'. In some western countries like the US and UK, even the simple request for individuals to wear a mask is seen by some as an infringement on their human rights. There are literally documents floating around social media in the UK citing the Magna Carta[1] as a legal document for why they are entitled not to have their temperature checked!

Granted these people are idiots. But unfortunately the UK and US has also fostered a culture where everyone's voice is deemed equal, even the idiots. A classic example of this was during the EU referendum with the oft quoted phrase "why should we trust those so call experts?" as a retort against financial analysts voicing their concerns.

The problem is when you have research demoted to the same level as hearsay, a general distrust of the government and mix in a large does of fear due to economical, political and/or social unrest, you end up in an environment where those aforementioned idiots end up recruiting more idiots into their cause.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#233

Post by incrudible »

dragonwriter wrote: post #166
incrudible wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the countries like Japan that do not actually have excess mortality despite COVID-19. Suppose they just stopped testing for it. You would not be able to tell the difference. You could then come up with any reason for this “huge success”.

> Consider the countries like Japan that do not actually have excess mortality despite COVID-19. Suppose they just stopped testing for it. You would not be able to tell the difference. That assumes that testing-dependent interventions (whether contact tracing and quarantines of the exposed, appropriate treatment of systematic infections, etc.) have nothing to do with the absence of excess deaths. Which seems improbab…

My point is that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference whether any of these interventions work or not. That's the issue. It's of course improbable that none of these interventions work, but it's probable that some do not work.

At the same time, there are a lot of factors that are purely circumstantial, such as weather/climate, age/health of the population, elderly care system. These may have a lot of influence at the tail ends (deaths).

We must not fall into the trap of making post-hoc rationalizations that confirm what we want to believe. We're paying a heavy price with severe measures, if some data turned up that showed that it didn't make much of a difference, that would be a tough pill to swallow.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#234

Post by ksaj »

guardiangod wrote: post #191
ksaj wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's not a whole lot of evidence that illegal border crossings from Canada are a major driver of the spread in the US. Ironically it's the other way around, too. Our borders are shut to tourists, but they keep showing up in Canmore and Banff anyway. And now Alberta has a serious problem with Covid spread, and a friend of my sister's just died a couple days ago from it. They have 1/3 the population of Ontario, ye…

Don't blame the Americans for what that fool of a premier J Kennedy has done. Alberta could have clamped down the 3rd wave like BC has. Instead JK followed the right ringers wish and let everyone continue to gather.

Oh, we commiserate, with such shite provincial leadership right now.

In this case, I was putting the blame both ways. The thread started by blaming Canadians. Jason Kenney (not Kennedy, that's some other bloke) made the border so weak there that Alberta is inundated with US-bred Covid hotspots. Of course it's going in the other direction, too. There are hotspots trading germs by deciding they should visit each other, mingle, go home, repeat.

Canada isn't taking so many cases to the US. Unless you look at Alberta. Kenney there has screwed that up in both directions by somehow not noticing the tourists going through either way. He's turned it into a slow cooker of viral stew.

If I sound pissy about it, it's because both sides of the border should be shutting that down and not allowing it, even through the loopholes they are both entertaining at this particular stretch. My sister's best friend died of Covid that she caught in Banff 4 days ago. She lived and worked there, and complained about the number of Americans showing up. What a surprise.

It's both ways. There are conservatives that enjoy Trump's ideals - pretty much defining Alberta. They're gonna kill us all eventually.

Ontario is stricter about it, and everyone (again on both sides of the border) bitch about it. The problem in Ontario is the sticker-monger wants to let you celebrate and then lock down so you die out of sight of the public.

We'll never get ahead of this when everyone thinks they are somehow not the ones transporting this virus around, yet won't stop travelling and "breathing moistly."

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#235

Post by bluescrn »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #147
napier wrote: post #74

B.1.1.7 bodes stealthily and percussively enough, but I propose it be re-designated the Great Barrington Variant.

Regarding Great Barrington: I wonder if we'll ever see people apologise for their contribution towards this mess.

The cost/benefit of lockdowns will be argued about for decades.

Assuming we ever get out of them...

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#236

Post by thomasz »

rtpg wrote: post #218
thomasz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the demographics of these countries and compare them to the United States and Europe. Throw in less detailed reporting and less transparency. We’re dealing with a virus that overwhelmingly affects old, obese people. A country like Vietnam probably wouldn't even notice the pandemic wave that currently affects Europe and the United States.

You could handwave that when we were at way less cases. But at one point people would start noticing (for example) everyone in retirement homes dropping like flies. Not to mention that after the first couple of months, Covid cases are now nicely distributed amongst younger populations as well. Fatalities are still concentrated in older people, but cases are still widespread across demographics. The facts are staring…

Off course it’s possible to have a measurable impact. It’s obviously working for Vietnam, but I’m doubtful that the same measures would be sufficient for countries where the old and obese make up not less than five percent but more than a third. Vietnam could have numbers of infection similar to Germany without even noticing, especially if we are accounting for the difference in transparency.

But this obviously doesn’t change the bottom line: Their response was sufficient, while ours was not. This isn’t their Chernobyl like a lot of overconfident analysts proclaimed. I’d say it comes close to being our Chernobyl. Asian societies by and large did really well, and the pathetic response of the “First World” revealed a disturbing level of calcification and incompetence.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#237

Post by AntiImperialis2 »

m_mueller wrote: post #204
InTheArena wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long term listener of TWIV (4 years, IIRC), I think the service they have done for the community is priceless, especially once Daniel Griffin started doing his clinical updates. That said, I remember when COVID first started hitting, and their reaction was initially "meh", then like everyone else, it started to dawn on them how bad this was going to be. So still take their voices with a grain of salt. In the lat…

And then there are places like Taiwan that have kept themselves COVID free and report a grand total of 7 deaths on 22M inhabitants, without any lockdown needed and thus experiencing minimal economic impact. And yet no Western country seems to want to learn from that.

Why Taiwan? China has had even fewer deaths per capita and much larger much more connected population.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#238

Post by tchalla »

turing_complete wrote: post #225
GregarianChild wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy Taiwan. No country has been dealing better with Covid than Taiwan. No lockdown, and > 200 days without new Covid case [1]. Taipei had daily direct flights from Wuhan, and the Diamond Princess mooring near Taipei. They told the world early on [2] how they did it. Summary: Border closure, contract tracing, testing and controlled quarantine for those testing positive . It's worth reading [2] to realise how swiftly,…

It's just insane how incompetent European and American governments have been in this pandemic compared to East-Asian countries. We are lucky to have some functional private institutions that bailed us out -- kept the countries running and developed a highly effective vaccine super fast.

Moderna has received a lot of government funding despite not ever making a profit as a private institution.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#239

Post by incrudible »

rualca wrote: post #228
incrudible wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're showing a fundamental misconception and outright ignorance of what research papers are, and more importantly what science is. For example, you're somehow assuming that academic papers about to be subjected to peer review are somehow milestones which write in stone the truth instead of what they actually are and always have been: a way to share data, observations, theories, hypothesis, and even assumptions on…

> This is an ivory tower view on what research papers should be (....) It really isn't, and failing to understand what a scientific paper is shows a crass and fundamental misunderstanding of what science is and how it works. You will never arrive at a correct conclusion if all your premises are fundamentally wrong. I mean, think about it. What do you think "peer review" is supposed to be? Why do you think these paper…

> It really isn't, and failing to understand what a scientific paper is shows a crass and fundamental misunderstanding of what science is and how it works.

Again, you fail to differentiate between what things are in practice and what you think they should be. I agree with you on how things should work, but not how they actually work in practice.

All the actual science in the paper doesn't matter to the outcome. When Boris Johnson goes in front of the public and claims that this virus "might be 70% more contagious" and that therefore more lockdowns and travel restrictions are needed, he's drawing on papers like these.

If the paper just presented data and refrained from drawing scary conclusions like "there will likely be a huge resurgence unless...", it would be a different matter. Notice all the weasel words such as "likely" or "probably". It's easy on the conscience to make poorly supported predictions by just adding some words that make the claims technically weaker.

> It really isn't, and it boggles the mind how easy you come up with conspiracy theories to find alternative explanations to obvious and undisputed facts.

You're now diverting into strawmanning and baseless accusations. There is no conspiracy and I never claimed there was. There is human behavior, which is fundamentally not rational or scientific. One scary sentence in a paper has more impact than all the carefully aggregated data. Dramatic conclusions drawn from weak data make the headlines. This happens all the time and you must've noticed at some point yourself. If news headlines were based on fact, cancer would've been cured hundreds of times over, every year. It's only when you look at the details that the data doesn't hold up. Why would it be different for COVID-19, of all things?

> In fact, you should think your assertions through. I mean, you're somehow accusing a scientific paper of being rubber-stamped facts while at the same time complaining it's propaganda? Come on.

There's nothing mutually exclusive about something being "scientific fact" and "a (de-facto) propaganda tool". For instance, there's scientific data that shows that people of African descent have lower IQs than those of European descent. This data is being used for propaganda purposes by white supremacists. To the outcome, it just doesn't matter how weak the data is or what the intentions of the authors were.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#240

Post by mirko22 »

dageshi wrote: post #229
anonymoushn wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, then copy Vietnam or Australia.

How do you copy being an Island? How do you go back in time and get your population used to wearing masks (and having supply) at the beginning of the pandemic when it really matters?

For start by telling then they should wear it at the beginning, cos you seem to forget WHO suggested not to.... Then you lose confidence and that's it...
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