Corona Virus 2019-nCoV

In the U.S. there is currently a big difference between the cities with higher densities and lower densities. It's hard to get away from people if you live and work in NYC. If you live in Seattle (for example) it's easy to maintain some spacing.

My best friend is a doctor in a hospital in an area just outside of the Seattle area. She says that Covid-19 really has had little effect in her working life. Her hospital is not crowded at all, there are a few Covid-19 cases and that's about it. There was even some talk of some of the doctors getting fewer hours later in the summer if things stay this quiet (since most elective surgeries have been postponed.

Most stores that are open around here have spacing requirements that everyone follows and most people wear a mask if for no other reason (since they don't do all that much) than to keep everyone else calm.

The new case numbers have gone down although not as much as one would hope probably because as rules start to relax some people are taking advantage of that. I expect there will be a learning curve regarding what to do as the rules relax.

There have been no shortages in my grocery store throughout all of this except for the first few weeks with toilet paper and certain other hoarding items.

Unemployment is going to be an issue nationwide but most that are unemployed are being compensated better than they have ever been compensated before. It's mainly the lower skill jobs that are being lost. That's not good but just to put things in perspective, most people with any kind of education or skill aren't going to be unemployed for long and most are still employed.

I know someone who works in a warehouse for Outdoor Research (like REI) and he still has a job. Currently it sucks to work in a restaurant, bar, barbershop or nail salon.

It we are going to have all of the Covid-19 threads, it would be less annoying to have a little balance in what is posted.

 

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I find this very interesting. We have seen relatively little on how R varies as a function of the density of living.

An E. Coast city built for the era of the horse, that relies on high density accommodation and crowded public transport, could have an R number of 3, close to London or Paris, but a place like Seattle could have a far lower R number, which can perhaps be kept below 1 with relatively few control measures. At any rate, some of the experience of Asia and Europe may not be directly applicable in the Western US. We are going to find out.

 

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You seem to think that we are that different.
The only difference is in the numbers not the intent.
My comment originally was that I was surprised that the UK borders were not closed, and you decided in an over defensiveness manner to ridicule my thoughts.
Of course it makes sense to restrict your borders today.
Better late than never.
All the delay has achieved is elongate the economic hit and higher death rates.

The science will tell you that if you don't restrict your borders now you will inevitably have to later...and the economic clock is ticking all the time...You either quarantine properly or you will be playing Russian Roulette with this thing until you do.
The only difference (UK, AU and NZ) is that we wanted to get this over with with the least amount of damage in the shortest possible time. Even so, we have taken a massive hit to our economy and longer term social freedoms.

( I believe today we find out from the Aust. Treasury just how bad we have been hit... and even then it will probably be an overly optimistic statement)
Hospitality, tourism and international education have virtually ceased to exist awaiting an effective vaccine and therapeutic treatments.
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Do you not understand that the ONLY reason your Ro rate is so low today IS because of strong physical distancing, and that any relaxation when so many new cases a day are being presented will blow that R0 number almost immediately?
The fact that you are still having a large number of new cases means what to you? (reporting about 4000 a day - not including those that are infected, asymptomatic and untested)

Are you aware of what is happening in other nations embarking on a similar move with much lower new case levels and better testing/tracing regimes?
Singapore is now almost a second wave disaster zone...
China is having outbreaks all over the place...
and so on...
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Putin has just ordered a relaxation of lock down and his nation is experiencing over 11000 new reported cases per day...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05...oronavirus-cases-passes-italy-and-uk/12236120
Basically he is claiming by this action that the fight against this virus is lost and it is every man with a hazmat suit for himself. Economics vs lives, when both are inextricably entwined.
Is this what Boris is contemplating?

 

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Putin and Trump couldn't have said it any better...
The problem is the surrender you, Boris and others contemplate will not restore the economy in fact it will further destroy it...
Unless of course you can force people to work in unsafe work places..

 

lashing out??

 

There you go with your sensationalism, QQ. You can't seem to help yourself! It's all words like "surrender", and "destroy".

We are. Completely different scenario as to when the first measures were put in place, and likely the true number of infected at that time.

No, the intent is different, as explained: in Australia it is to eradicate the virus, to stop it spreading entirely. In the UK and other such countries it is to minimise the number of cases to a manageable level. We have gone well past the ability to stop the spread entirely. Do you really not see how that is different?

It wasn't your surprise but your subsequent opinion that remains worthy of ridicule.

They have been restricted for quite some time - just no full quarantine for arriving passengers. That is why our airlines are seeing a drop-off of over 90% in passengers - and as also explained to you previously, the vast majority of those inward passengers have been UK citizens returning home, and most outward have been foreign citizens returning to their own country.

Your understanding of the facts is woeful, and your conclusions / opinions based upon them are pathetic, unhelpful, and worthy of nothing but the gutter-press.

Nonsense. While the initial reaction was unfortunately rather slow, the subsequent quarantining of incoming passengers is only now making sense for the UK situation.

We have restricted our borders, to all but essential travel. And we have done since mid-March. The odd additional infected case coming in with those people being allowed in has likely had negligble impact since then.

No, that's actually the one similarity. The difference is the situation the countries find themselves in, and the situation when they first implemented lockdowns. This has driven a slightly different agenda, one the UK seemed to be working toward from the outset, though, of the UK looking to keep the infection rate to manageable levels, and Australia looking to prevent any cases.

Which, QQ, is why the relaxing of any lockdown measures will be done gradually - to ensure the R number does not rise to unamanageable levels again. It is about finding that accepable balance between lifting measures and maintaining an R number no higher than 1.

It also doesn't include those that are infected, symptomatic, and untested - i.e. those that simply have symptoms and self-isolate at home, not needing the intervention of our healthcare.
The daily case number is falling, which given the increase in testing capacity is very good news. It means the lockdown is doing its job, and if the case load is manageable then it might be time to slowly, gradually, relax the measures while keeping the R number below 1.
Because that is the situation the UK, and other countries, are in. That is the objective.

And there you go again with your sensationalism "second wave disaster zone"

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It has always been expected that this pandemic, like nearly every other example prior to this, will go through waves, quite often the second much worse than the first.

Of course it is economics vs lives. When has it not been? Do you think countries should go into lockdown for the annual flu season, for example? Or do we not do that because the economic impact of doing it is not worth the cost, because the health services can cope with the outbreaks, even if it means hundreds of thousands die annually from it.

I am not privvy to his thoughts. I would suspect he will promote a much more gradual relaxation, and judge accordingly. If the R number rises again then the measures lifted would presumably be reinstated. But until/unless that happens, who knows.
I could, if you want, make up some spurious speculative apple, sensationalise it, and compare it to a neighbouring orange? Would that suit you better?

 

Tell ya what..
I 'll respond to your post #1707 in 14 days from now ( say 26th/05/02020)...and then we can

Afterall,

Lets see what the fact prevail... yes?

 

My mistake - I must have been thinking of NZ. 'Cos it's all the same down there, isn't it? Nothing but a few 1,000 miles of ocean between the two.

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To eradicate this virus is to give it less efficacy .

 

Huge bacteria-eating viruses close gap between life and non-life



https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200212131458.htm

 

I am unsure how you can consider an infected person arriving into the UK as no longer increasing the daily tally.
But you are not alone, even the British Home office thought in similar bizarre ways..

The Home Office is facing further questions about the lack of interventions at the border before the coronavirus lockdown after the government’s chief scientific adviser revealed the UK received a “big influx of cases” from Europe that “seeded right the way across the country”.

Sir Patrick Vallance was giving evidence to the health and social care committee after figures revealed that just 273 out of the 18.1 million people who entered the UK in the three months prior to the coronavirus lockdown were formally quarantined.

Vallance said that studying the genomics of the virus had allowed them to determine the origin of cases brought into the UK.

Arrivals into the UK have plummeted by as much as 99% on some routes but the country has been described as an “outlier” in its approach to border controls during the crisis. The only measures being taken at the border are the use of posters, digital displays and leaflets with information about the measures in place.

The Home Office has insisted that the scientific advice showed that placing restrictions at the border would not have had a significant impact on the spread of the virus in the UK.
....
Doughty said: “The admission that just four flights from two locations, barely a few hundred individuals – out of literally millions of arrivals – were formally quarantined while the pandemic was already raging in a series of locations beggars belief.

“On what scientific basis were a handful of flights from Wuhan and one from a Tokyo singled out for extreme attention? But not a single flight from Northern Italy, Spain or the US?

“The fact that many of these people then likely arrived and travelled onwards across the UK with little or no adherence to social distancing, and with no checks or protections at the border – barely a whiff of hand sanitiser – is deeply disturbing. Let alone the arrival of 3,000 fans from Madrid [for a football match against Liverpool] as the pandemic picked up speed.

“Yet arrivals continue to this day – with no formal quarantine requirements. It is simply staggering. Who made these decisions? And on what basis?”
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src: just one of many:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...iving-in-uk-in-run-up-to-lockdown-quarantined​

18 million people in the 3 months prior to the very late lock down arrived in the UK. No effective quarantine and that was even as Italy and Spain were in so much trouble.

Repatriation of potentially infected UK citizens were not quarantined either after the Lock down.

The home office has insisted on a lot of rather bizarre things... which is why the UK is were it is today I guess...

...and this is the same Home Office that is attempting to manage a staged relaxation of quarantine in the middle of a pandemic...
good luck with that!

 

We were indeed lucky especially with regards to the uptick in people recognizing just how serious this contagion was.
People can be forgiven for being slow to realise that their world was about to be upended and just what was required to minimize the fall out.
The Ruby Princes debacle was Australia's wake up call.IMO..and one we are still paying hugely for. But it was a lesson we learned quickly and adapted rapidly to the ramifications.
Things were happening so fast and to expect a bureaucracy to quite literally change over night is one hell of an ask.

Many people in Australia including politicians, were scrambling to attempt to comprehend the sheer scale of what was happening and that rapid adaptation we went through is what saved our backsides from replicating the devastation being wrought in Europe and China. ( at the time the USA was even further behind)
The thing is the pace of change was soooo fast... it is expected that mistakes will be made.

The UK was just a little slower in moving from a "develop herd immunity " strategy ( thinking influenza instead of SARS) to a stronger strategy of quarantine, stabilize and then heal.

I think the people of France, Spain and Italy are still trying to work out what hit them and will probably be doing so for a generation or two.
And it is all far from being over...and until a vaccine is developed life is going to be very different for just about every one.

 

https://time.com/5824042/new-zealand-coronavirus-elimination/
This suggests that their goal is to eliminate the virus. Of course, that plays out by flattening the curve, as any curve that goes from an increase to zero must first flatten. But their goal is/was to eradicate it. At least per this article, and others I have read.
But not worth arguing further over.

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It will be interesting to see how NZ's small economy hangs together, one thing the country has had for a while is the ability to be self sufficient.
Maybe some people will move back to rural areas; in NZ you can hunt and fish just about anywhere (except the cities of course) . . .

 

I was thinking more along the lines of thousands of people going Bear Grylls, reverting to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. It could help keep the infestations of unwanted mammals and other varmints down. Anyone know a good bushrat pie recipe?