91–100 of 248 posts
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New Zealand did the same.
Yes, but here in NZ we didn't wait until there were 500 infections to act. The lockdown was instituted around the time of <100 active infections being detected and our level 4 lockdown is far more stringent than any US state lockdown.
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Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were: - Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you ne…
Montreal is following the same rules, down to the silly curfew, but, we're at 600 cases a day still and rising. Obviously people aren't following it, but... It doesn't seem to be enough.
Because of the incubation period, covid numbers are effectively delayed 2 weeks. That is to say, there's a 2 week delay between the time your government changes policies and when you see the effect of those policies on covid case numbers. It took us awhile too - after they brought the lockdown into effect our numbers kept going up for awhile - which was terrifying. But the numbers trended down eventually.
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New Zealand is about as large as Europe. Larger than the UK. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/08/map-how-n...
But not a major transit hub, miles from anywhere, low density population
Keep the (potentially) sick people on the "air side" of the airport terminal and then directly into quarantines on arrive at the final destination.
Those who bridge this gap (air crews, terminal staff) need to follow very strict measures (PPE, cleaning, regular testing) to make that work.
Perhaps more places need to decide they don't want to be a major transit hub during this pandemic? You know, restrict non-essential traffic a bit to make the essential traffic and local populace safer?
China and Vietnam get the virus under control by using centralised quarantines. I wonder how many people supporting the sentiments of this article would be ok with someone arriving at their doorstep, taking you to a prison basically whether you agree or not, and quaranteening you there for at least 10 days with other covid people. Perhaps they also take your family too, in case they are also infected. Are you willing…
Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were: - Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you ne…
The United States can't stop illegal immigration and cross-border state travel with or without a pandemic. The laws and expectations are significantly different in connected regions like the US and EU compared to a singular island nation.
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Yeah I think the mink culling was an absurd over-reaction and highly unethical. Those poor minks. (Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)
Lockdowns work. End of story. Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives. No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.
Lockdowns do work, technically speaking, but not in the long-run. Virus doesn't care and will operate as usual, albeit at slower rate. Persistent things those viruses are.
Lockdowns make sense only at the beginning of a pandemic and their only sane purpose is to give the health care segment to prepare itself for the hit. Beyond that it's a lost cause. You're not saving thousands of lives, you're just extending the inevitable further down in the future, while your economy is sinking, which will create even more problems down the road.
So even if you stay inside the cave forever, the bear will still come.
None of the variants so far are any more lethal than the original. Isn't that right? I have heard nothing to the contrary, although this guy seems to think it's already happened.
Think of two kinds of fires burning at different levels of a forest. The lethality could even go down, transmission rates could go up and still kill more people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lockdowns work. End of story. Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives. No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.
> Lockdowns work. End of story This is not true. Hard lockdown that people follow seems to work. But lowdown only doesn't work. 1. Not all lockdown are equal, look at Germany how long they have a been in a soft lockdown so that death can decrease? like 2 months? Not sure at this point this is due to lockdown 2. If people don't follow the order it doesn't work, Peru one of the toughest and longest lockdown but yet als…
Large fines, arrests publicised on television and a strong police presence across the cities ensured that people weren't given the choice about to whether to comply or not. Now does it introduce questions about whether people's civil liberties were infringed ? Absolutely. But it works.
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He is also factually wrong on at least one other thing: “He finds it astonishing that COVID-19 has boosted its infectiousness by 30 to 50 per cent over previous strains by doing what viruses do: evolve, mutate and adapt for more effective reproduction.” The UK strain seems to be 25% more infectious. It’s still bad but less than mentioned. EDIT: source is the latest Drosten podcast, where he referenced to some new evi…
The article leads with B117 but B.1.351, the South African variant, is approximately 50% more contagious. Probably just a minor mix-up on the author's part.
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Yeah I think the mink culling was an absurd over-reaction and highly unethical. Those poor minks. (Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)
Lockdowns work. End of story. Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives. No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.
I don't see how most of the EU countries can follow this strategy. Germany für example has porous borders with Denmark, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, Poland. If they don't in turn all follow this strategy we'd have to militarily secure all these borders and stop anybody from going through. This would cause an enormous hit to the economies and cost a lot of money in military gear and personnel to execute.
Now for the next scenario, say the whole EU + Switzerland + UK decide to follow zero Covid. Then we still have a boatable connection to Africa and a pretty large land border with Asia to defend. Despite the never before seen political coordination this would need, this would create very harsh humanitarian situations along those borders, even worse than what we've seen in recent years.
So all in all I don't think it's that easy to use island nation strategies for mostly land locked nations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Montreal is following the same rules, down to the silly curfew, but, we're at 600 cases a day still and rising. Obviously people aren't following it, but... It doesn't seem to be enough.
When did you start? Because of the incubation period, covid numbers are effectively delayed 2 weeks. That is to say, there's a 2 week delay between the time your government changes policies and when you see the effect of those policies on covid case numbers. It took us awhile too - after they brought the lockdown into effect our numbers kept going up for awhile - which was terrifying. But the numbers trended down eve…