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London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

bloomberg.com

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Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#301

Post by mafribe »

beaker52 wrote: post #239
LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

Also a Londoner. Whilst I've observed greater mask compliance, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants have been packed. I've been to bars freely serving alcohol with no need to buy food, just like the old days. Definitely seeing rule breaking. And I've had a friend who wanted to beat the travel restrictions by leaving London before midnight. That's rule beating. I see it everywhere. A PSA because it's important: I can pr…

Londoner here too and I agree with your observations about compliance. Tons of rule breaking. The dance studio next to my dwelling has been running popular dance classes as recently as last night. I think it's mostly an age thing: the under 20s almost completely ignore covid restrictions, and so does a substantial part of the under 30s. I can't even blame them as it doesn't affect them. And they mostly lack an understanding of the concept of asymptomatic carrier.

Regarding your PSA: In the mean time Taiwan has not had a quarantine at all, and has been free of (internal) Covid for over 200 days. Other SE-Asian countries are all doing very well, Japan for example does not have quarantine either.

European lock-down policies have been a monumental failure. Not good enough to stop the spread. But ruining the economy (and everybody's fun). It is truly remarkable that Europeans agree with being locked away for nearly one year now with little to show for, while other societies achieve much better results with different, and less drastic measures. No curiosity at all, it seems, even to understand why Taiwan, Japan and other countries succeed! SMH

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#302

Post by DenisM »

Apropos of other comments. What do we think about the mask “issue”? Some people vehemently refuse to wear them, others take “just go with flow” attitude, yet others approach it with outsized religious zeal, hounding the heretics or at least giving them the stink eye. It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open.

Are we witnessing a religious schism in the making? Is it with us to stay, post-covid?

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#303

Post by ubercow13 »

makomk wrote: post #127
dehrmann wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> South Korea You might want to check the news on South Korea. They're hitting daily records right now. This isn't to say they're at US levels, but with their current measures, they don't have control of the virus.

It's been bloody obvious for months that South Korea can't control Covid through test and trace alone without massive, economically-damaging social distancing and business closure measures - every time they lift them cases go up, and there's been a worrying increase in cases not linked to any previous known cases which implies an exponentially increasing pool of unknown infections entirely unimpacted by contact traci…

Hard to argue with their deaths being two orders of magnitude lower than ours.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#304

Post by ashtonkem »

dboreham wrote: post #163
LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

Wow. Here in deepest Republican middle America mask wearing by _staff_ in supermarkets is universal. Customers around 90% if you count "nose-slingers" as non compliant. Pretty much nobody just swanning around with no mask these days. Costco has heavy mask enforcement -- they will hunt down and eject anyone with their nose out. Where masks are not worn here is in smaller family owned businesses. Some have notices requ…

Yup, same. I live in Idaho, and you’ve got to be out in the boonies before mask compliance for the customer base falls below 50%. I’ve not seen a single staff member not wearing a mask so far. But I’ve also avoided stores that culturally would be anti-mask, to be fair. I’d probably have a different take if I’d visited say, a gun store.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#305

Post by morlockabove »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #213
mejutoco wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn‘t this the burden of proof under a different name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

Is this a thing that is discussed in philosophy, except that Christopher Hitchens recently claimed it to be? A burden of proof applies to law, by convention, but not to the truth of a situation. If I say "513x217=111321", it's true whether I prove it to you or not. My statement of it does not obligate me to prove it.

If I say there's gold buried at certain coordinates, that's also true independent of whether I prove it. The point is that the quote is a heuristic that works because most of the by the time you hear that claim, most of the statistical work has been done, hidden in the premise in a way that skips your intuitions a bit (the kolgomoroff comolexity of my phrase is a lot higher than yours, even though they're of about the same length, even though the number of bits needed to verify each is about the same).

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#306

Post by morlockabove »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #62
friendlybus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parroting Christopher Hitchens: what is presented without proof can be dismissed without proof Mutations that have a real impact on the RNA of the virus are incredibly rare. Most random mutations and errors replicating don't produce any meaningful change in the virus and you have to get very unlucky for a deadly mutation to happen. We should stick to scientific rationalism even if it has limits. There has been too mu…

> But noo, we have to have a boogeyman to build a network of cultural changes. This particular mechanism of hijacking a natural disaster for control is embarrassingly transparent. It might be a side-effect in many local politics right now (never let a good crisis to waste), and many of them act incompetent (or maybe they're always incompetent but now we see it clearer when they're in the spotlight), but I don't think…

The 'conspiracy', i.e. the organised group, is the media coupled with a grassroots authoritarian ideology that pays it to keep reporting as 'pleases' it. Just lots of individuals and institutions acting according to their memes and incentives, no (non-obviously existing) cabal needed.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#307

Post by jasonlaramburu »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #48
friendlybus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parroting Christopher Hitchens: what is presented without proof can be dismissed without proof Mutations that have a real impact on the RNA of the virus are incredibly rare. Most random mutations and errors replicating don't produce any meaningful change in the virus and you have to get very unlucky for a deadly mutation to happen. We should stick to scientific rationalism even if it has limits. There has been too mu…

> can be managed with scientific tools we have had forever The most important ones aren’t even particularly scientific. If you’re feeling ill, stay home. Wash your hands. Don’t hang around elderly or other vulnerable. But these are simple and require no exceptional growth of state power and usurping of the right of free people to exercise their labor. All these pro-labor types have no problem making scientists, polit…

And once we isolate these ‘vulnerable and elderly’ people, who will care for them? Robots?

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#308

Post by ashtonkem »

beaker52 wrote: post #239
LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

Also a Londoner. Whilst I've observed greater mask compliance, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants have been packed. I've been to bars freely serving alcohol with no need to buy food, just like the old days. Definitely seeing rule breaking. And I've had a friend who wanted to beat the travel restrictions by leaving London before midnight. That's rule beating. I see it everywhere. A PSA because it's important: I can pr…

I’m genuinely quite shocked that bars are still serving alcohol at all. A quick glance at a typical bar bathroom should tell you everything you need to know about how safety conscious everyone is going to be after they’ve had 3 drinks.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#310

Post by morlockabove »

bserge wrote: post #41
eternalban wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural selection. Deadlier strains reduce life span of hosts that transmit the disease.

Is that the case when the hosts are all in good shape (compared to even 200 years ago) and use "artificial" means to stay alive longer?

In good shape? When half the population of the western world is obese, and 10% are diabetic?

How many people, on average, were on the brink of starvation 200 years ago? We're still better off, I'd guess, but it's not that amazing

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