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Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

bbc.com

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Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#71

Post by curryst »

jariel wrote: post #66

It's obviously a bad sign if they are even thinking of resorting to this ... the 'second wave lockdowns' are a failure of leadership in most of the West. The '1st wave' was understandable - crude measures in an emergency, fair enough. But should have a much more nuanced understanding of the situation by now, and be able to focus on smart but clear policies. There was a 'sweet spot' coming out of the lockdowns that wo…

> In Canada Unis opened up, there were house parties, dorm parties, bars with drunk student what the goddam hell were they thinking? How about: nobody in your house/dorm unless they live there, 'outdoor beer gardens' only, limit 2 beers. Have a 'dance party' in a big open parking lot to break the social malaise. Otherwise threaten expel students who break the established rules for putting other people's lives at risk.

They were thinking "My risk from COVID is exceptionally low, as is the risk of everyone I live with." I don't understand why this seems crazy to anyone. More college students die from suicide every year than would die if they all got COVID (in the US, assuming that current mortality rates hold). Many colleges are even self-contained, in a way, because they're a "college town" wherein everything revolves around the college.

If there were a single group of people that I would say were in a good demographic to be out of quarantine, it would be college students. They're unlikely to die from the disease, they're far less likely to live with someone in a risky group, and they're old enough to make a decision on whether they want to quarantine or not. They're also unlikely to overwhelm medical services, given the rate that they're asymptomatic at.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#72

Post by jariel »

curryst wrote: post #71
jariel wrote: post #66

It's obviously a bad sign if they are even thinking of resorting to this ... the 'second wave lockdowns' are a failure of leadership in most of the West. The '1st wave' was understandable - crude measures in an emergency, fair enough. But should have a much more nuanced understanding of the situation by now, and be able to focus on smart but clear policies. There was a 'sweet spot' coming out of the lockdowns that wo…

> In Canada Unis opened up, there were house parties, dorm parties, bars with drunk student what the goddam hell were they thinking? How about: nobody in your house/dorm unless they live there, 'outdoor beer gardens' only, limit 2 beers. Have a 'dance party' in a big open parking lot to break the social malaise. Otherwise threaten expel students who break the established rules for putting other people's lives at risk…

"I don't understand why this seems crazy to anyone. "

? Because it's contagious and when cut loose cases literally widespread death, massive economic peril and joblessness ?

Why is that so hard to understand?

Do people not feel any responsibility for others they infect with potentially deadly pathogens that spread to large numbers of people?

We're not that hugely concerned about 'other people taking small risks' - the issue is the externalization.

Frat Houses can drink '24 beers' and visit the hospital, okay, 'it's their body' ... but the issue with COVID is mostly systematic.

We don't care that you as an individual want to bring 'Deadly Asian Wasps' into North America, it's not a big deal, but by introducing them, you'll cause calamity as they spread through the region causing mayhem. Or like setting a 'small fire' in a dry forest.

I'm struggling to understand how people think a their contagion is a 'personal choice'.

People who think about 'personal choice and living with the consequences' may want to contemplate the liability in such a situation: you hit someone's car - you owe them the repairs. Imagine if you had to pay for someone's healthcare if you were to 'infect them'. Instead of passing 'mask laws' maybe liability laws could be passed -> you infect someone, they sue you for $50-500K. We'd literally have to buy insurance for that, and one of the criteria for insurance would be 'mask wearing' - if you 'wear a mask' your 'infection liability insurance' premiums would be 1/2. It's obviously not going to work, point being it illustrates the systematic issue here, it's not 'personal risk taking'.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#73

Post by jariel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #68
jariel wrote: post #66

It's obviously a bad sign if they are even thinking of resorting to this ... the 'second wave lockdowns' are a failure of leadership in most of the West. The '1st wave' was understandable - crude measures in an emergency, fair enough. But should have a much more nuanced understanding of the situation by now, and be able to focus on smart but clear policies. There was a 'sweet spot' coming out of the lockdowns that wo…

> The '1st wave' was understandable - crude measures in an emergency, fair enough. The US is largely still in a rolling first wave; the separate nation-wide peaks are the result of the fact that not everywhere got hit at the same time, so, e.g., New York had hit it's first peak and bent things downward before much of the country had even noticeably been hit at all. There's some places that are in genuine second waves…

That's a great point - US overall looks like it's in a '3rd wave' but really, the 2cnd blip was due to different states hitting at different times.

However - if you break down by state - it looks fairly clearly that we are in a '2cnd wave' of a totally different kind: it's younger people driving the infections, and the case fatality rate is a lot lower.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#74

Post by soco »

justusw wrote: post #55
slaw wrote: post #47

Sweden and Belarus handled pandemic by not doing lockdowns. In Sweden for the last 3 months only 0-3 people a day die with covid-19. There is no second wave like in other European countries. https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se

Interesting to hear about Belarus. Did you find more resources that detail their approach to dealing with COVID-19?

Given all the street fights and unrest in Belarus I really don't know what to think of their official numbers - like in any dictatorship, there might a great deal of "lets make it look good to the world" in there.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#75

Post by makomk »

mannykannot wrote: post #62
harambae wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were workers in the Italian fashion industry who came straight from Wuhan. That was the whole reason they had a step-function for initial infection.

Precisely - physical distance is not a relevant measure.

You're right that what actually matters is the number of people travelling between countries - social, rather than physical, geography - but for the most part actual physical distance from Italy seemed to be a good approximation of that, maybe with the exception of the UK and New York.

The reason why Italy was the epicenter is a bit of a mystery though. There's hints they screwed up their Covid testing and managed, pretty much uniquely among Western countries, to not actually test people hospitalized with potential symptoms who didn't have links to travellers from China, meaning that they only detected community spread when someone who did happen to have contact with someone who travelled from there caught it from someone else. But there doesn't seem to be much coverage of this at least in English-language media; everyone's focused on arguing that their country did worse than Italy because Italy was caught by suprise, whereas everyone else had them as a warning, without examining how they ended up getting caught by surprise. It's also not a full explanation. Possibly it just came down to random chance.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#76

Post by [deleted] »

brmgb wrote: post #61
sokoloff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t the actual presence of a dog be better evidence of a dog walk than a paper saying you’re walking a dog? This sounds like a rejected Monty Python sketch. “Pardon, monsieur; why are you out after curfew?” “I’m walking my dog!” “What dog?” “I have the paperwork right here.” “Very well; bonne nuit!”

It is to have people have the time they went out and the place they are staying at written (or on an app actually) so it can be checked during controls. If it wasn't mandatory, people could stay out all night and go wherever they wanted provided they were bringing a dog with them.

[deleted]

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#77

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

baud147258 wrote: post #70
m0zg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is now under control Famous last words. See e.g. France.

Was it claimed that it was under control in France? (it might have been said in the media, but I've mostly stopped following the news)

No, never really. What blows my mind is that the French haven't mandated work from home for all office-workers, even with the number of cases they are seeing.

Essentially, the EU (in general) had a terrible first wave, and then said well we need the summer for our economies, and now we are paying the price for that.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#78

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

axolttl88 wrote: post #26
monoideism wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, and obviously, all 3 examples mentioned in this thread are islands (NZ, Aus, and Iceland). That seems like more than coincidence.

The ability to limit spread by controlling your border has been a factor, and that’s certainly easier for island nations. But it’s not the only factor: well-managed healthcare systems, clear government policy and action, and public support for controls are also important. e.g. - Vietnam: landlocked, populous, excellent internal response: just over 1000 cases and 35 deaths; approx. 60 active cases currently - UK + Ire…

> - UK + Ireland: quite frankly a bit of a mess

That is mostly true. However, I would note that Ireland were kinda screwed in some respects by the border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK and thus has the incredibly poor response of England and the Tories. We've definitely made a bunch of mistakes, but it would have been a lot easier to deal with Covid were it not for the border (and our vast under-investment in our health service over the last 20-30 years).

It's worth noting that the UK cases are far worse than they seem, as uniquely amongst European nations, they only test symptomatic people, even though we know that asymptomatic spread is a big problem with Covid.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#79

Post by ch4s3 »

jariel wrote: post #67
ch4s3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Estonia all rank higher in economic freedom than the US and have more direct democracies. The US literally wrote Japan's constitution. France stands out as having the most powerful executive branch of any of these countries.

That the US 'wrote' Japanese constitution is a technical artifact. 99% of their culture is not based on the cultural vestiges as we articulate then 'in law'. They technically have some institutions which mirror 'Western Liberal Democracy' but they are not remotely like Western nations in that sense. Taiwan, Singapore are also technically a lot like 'Western Liberal Democracies' but we can see they absolutely are not,…

I think that's misses my point a bit. What I'm trying to say is that Japan has strong protection for freedom of speech, assembly, and general civil liberties especially as compared to Singapore. I don't know very much about Taiwan. While culturally quite different, Japan has a fairly familiar government from a western perspective, and civic life that seem roughly comparable(IMHO).

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#80

Post by ch4s3 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #64
ch4s3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan and Canada seem to have done relatively well, as have the Nordic countries (perhaps with the exception of Sweden which is TBD). The Baltic nations have done reasonably well too. Looking outside of Europe and the OECD, African democracies like Rawanda have kept the virus in check without draconian measures. Having good or at least recently tested public health infrastructure and lucking into a good head of state…

> Canada seem to have done relatively well Strangely, although Canada was much better prepared (from SARS-1 in 2003) than the USA (CDC fiasco) and their politicians listened to "science", they haven't done as well as expected. Their death rate is half that of the USA so far, but that's still almost 10,000 dead for a population of 37 million, vs. 200,000 dead for US population of 320 million. Some of the spread and de…

> they haven't done as well as expected

I think there are some elements of luck, demographics, and geography here.

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