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

bloomberg.com

351–360 of 448 posts

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

#351
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to wonder, we can look at nations that succeeded in controlling the spread from the start and now are reaping the benefits.

With time the people we vaunted as enlightened don’t appear to be doing well. In fact it seems they’re vulnerable and now subject to the same seasonal trends of spread everyone else was largely powerless against. California, Germany, Korea, Japan... We don’t consider whether the reaction has been worse than the virus, but that’s because there’s so much political reputation, ego, and identity staked on having been “le…

Don't forget New York, where Emmy laureate Gov. Cuomo published his book on how he beat COVID-19 mere days before cases started exploding again in the second wave.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great Britain is an island...

It is probably the most connected not-tiny island. (One of the world's biggest airports, several of Europe's busiest, frequent direct rail connection to the continent, frequent ferries on many routes, fully integrated free trade + work zone.) "According to Getlink, the company which operates the Channel Tunnel, 1.64 million trucks traveled between the UK and the EU using the crossing last year. More than 2.5 million…

Not to mention it has double the population of Australia and 80x the population density.

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

#353

"You can attend places of worship for a service." This is completely unacceptable.

Not everyone has the same priorities as you, and some might find it completely unacceptable to ban religious services out of fear of a virus.

Hard to say who is right or wrong since it's just a function of weighting different values differently.

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

#354
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is an island with a population almost half California. China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.

I really don't understand the island fixation that so many seem to have. Is it just accepted that non-island nations are incapable of policing their borders?

As an inhabitant of the Netherlands, I would be very surprised if we would police our border with either Belgium or Germany. There are no natural obstacles, and plenty of spaces with forest crossing the border. No-one but the military comes close to having enough man-power to enforce that border.

Sure, with actual army deployment we could get somewhere (it seems we have about 20 soldiers per kilometer of border). But the massive difference in effort between "police airports and the coast with radar" and "Mobilize the army" is huge.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With time the people we vaunted as enlightened don’t appear to be doing well. In fact it seems they’re vulnerable and now subject to the same seasonal trends of spread everyone else was largely powerless against. California, Germany, Korea, Japan... We don’t consider whether the reaction has been worse than the virus, but that’s because there’s so much political reputation, ego, and identity staked on having been “le…

Don't forget New York, where Emmy laureate Gov. Cuomo published his book on how he beat COVID-19 mere days before cases started exploding again in the second wave.

[deleted]

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

#356
post #345
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't bode well that you can get it twice to begin with.

Is it impossible to get a cold twice in one season? If so, why is catching covid twice a bad thing, especially if the second time is a lot milder than the first time, even for people who experience mild symptoms the first time?

Do you not understand that this means you can spread it twice?

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

#357
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Australia" has a low population density because most of it has close to no population; it's easy to be mislead by this if you're not aware of how the population is distributed within a huge area, but the areas where most people live do not have low population density. It's heavily urbanised (more so than the UK), with the vast majority of the population living in reasonably dense metropolitan areas. It's the willing…

If geography and population density have nothing to do with it, then I suppose California isn't one of the world epicenters right now. Australia has a lower population than California, by the way. Obviously, its pop is mostly spread over the east coast, but compared to the UK it's extremely sparse, with no tunnels connecting it to the mainland. It's disingenuous (at best) to think that the island nations that had suc…

Population density has something to do with it, you're just mistaken about the population density of Australia where people actually live.

And obviously you can close a land border as well, it's just a matter of whether you're willing to do it. Australia also imposed tight restrictions on most of the land borders between states.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>that's also true independent of whether I prove it.

This is so different from my point that I'm not sure how it relates.

I am confident there is literal treasure near to where I live, because I've seen very convincing evidence of dredging from multiple sources. In my mind, it is proven. But, I'm not acting on that because I don't find it worthwhile.

On the other hand, if a stranger told me there was a police traffic stop in a particular direction, I'd probably take a detour - even if there was a complete lack of proof.

Proof doesn't guide my action at all - I don't require a burden of proof in order to act.

Burden of proof is a legal concept, not a philosophical one.

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

#359

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…

I live in London, and I couldn't tell you what it's like on the tube or in shops; interesting to hear. But, probably you're also a software engineer working from home, so if it bothers you, how are you able to tell me?

I assume the large majority of tube users are the non compliant, simply because so few of the compliant have any reason to actually need to use the tube, so your 50% doesn't surprise me at all, certainly not that it's low.

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

#360
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staff enforcement is much easier in the US since losing your job results in homelessness.

The US has a homelessness rate of 6.2%, while the UK has a homelessness rate of 7.7%.

One in around fourteen? I don't need to look anything up to know that's way off, in both countries. I doubt that can even count as 'misleading'.
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