Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Essex, of course

Lockdown-flouting hairdressers investigated in Essex
    22 June 2020

Essex trading standards officers are "dealing with" 42 complaints of hairdressers flouting social distancing restrictions to serve clients at home.

Hairdressers and barbers are not allowed to reopen before 4 July.

Sheila Abrahams, from the Freelance Hairdressers Association, said: "Nobody dies from not having their roots touched up but people do from a virus."

It comes as a BBC Essex investigation found some hairdressers willing to cut hair during lockdown.

Anyone caught breaching the government's prohibition notice could face criminal prosecution and an unlimited fine.

"It really has set hairdresser against hairdresser," said Ms Abrahams. "The reality is we are not permitted to work and it's because of the close proximity.

"Everybody is chomping at the bit [to get back to cutting hair]. But the professional hairdressers that our organisation represents are sticking together and will not be serving clients.

A BBC Essex reporter called 50 hairdressers in the county, of which 10 said they would not arrange an illegal appointment.

However, two hairdressers offered appointments across four different days, with rates starting at £20. The others contacted did not respond.

The reporter did not take up their offers.

Essex Trading Standards said: "We deal with alleged non-compliance of social distancing by offering advice and guidance to encourage compliance.

"This has proved to be enough to achieve a positive outcome in the overwhelming majority of cases."

In May, 30 barber shops in Kent were ordered to cease trading following a separate BBC investigation.

[celedhring]

Over here after the ending of the state of emergency the national government has turned over containment regulations to the regions. The Catalan government has just banned dancing with strangers. 

We are having some local outbreaks, hopefully we're doing a better job of finding and containing them. The border areas between Aragon and Catalonia seem to be a bit troublesome, with several small outbreaks usually tied to farms (which use a lot of immigrant workers living in tight quarters)

[Duque de Bragança]

Cinemas reopened yesterday! Well, some of them. Cinémathèque won't reopen till July 15th.

[alfred russel]

I guess 120 000 deaths is not dire enough 

Zoupa, since you are responding to my argument, you should know the points of comparison are not between "no covid" and "covid" - which is the only points of comparison that produce 120,000 deaths in the US to this point in time.

The points of comparison are between "states that have been relatively strict with countermeasures" and "states that have been more haphazard". The measuring stick is the incremental death appearing in the latter--and so far the results do not appear terrible if they are measurable at all.

[Josephus]

So as a confession, while months ago I said I was following the rules, somewhere along the way I gave up. My girlfriend's family has a lake house in South Carolina near Clemson, and we have been going there some weekends.

She has a brother that goes to Clemson, and I've gotten some perspective on what the college kids are doing: which is life as normal. He comes over to the house with large groups of people, and the restaurants are filled with groups of college students. So they started testing the Clemson football team last week, and 23 tested positive. There are probably 100 on the team, and that probably means a very significant portion of the team has had it, and it is probably moving through the Clemson student body like wildfire. But they are young and most of the football players at least are asymptomatic (none requiring hospitalization).

Bill Maher agrues millennials should be out doing the shit they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83hrRvtdg4

[alfred russel]

Also I don't think New York's the best comparison because NYC has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world. I think in Europe only Bergamo (which has about 100,000 people in it) was worse hit - I think the excess deaths there was over 400%. In NYC it was over 300% which is about the same as Guayaquil in Ecuador (again with a smaller population), I think the nearest to that is then Lima. London, Madrid and I think Milan all saw their excess deaths go up by 100-150%, which I think is around the same for New Jersey. New York is a really extreme outbreak, like Bergamo (I don't know why for either - I assume there was bigger spread before anyone realised what was happening?), so I'm not sure it's a useful comparsion point.

If we want to take out NYC as an outlier, I'm fine with doing so. But then we should do so generally--it shouldn't just apply to me when I point out the poor results in NYC despite their lockdown.

For example, if you pull out the tri state area (NY, NJ, Conn) from the US results, our deaths / million drops from 374 to 247. That is right in the ballpark of Canada's 228.

[Josquius]

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/22/museums-galleries-and-cinemas-to-reopen-in-england-from-4-july

Museums, galleries and cinemas will be allowed to reopen from 4 July, alongside pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday in a decisive but potentially risky easing of lockdown measures in England.

Two days later, millions of people with underlying health issues will be permitted to leave their homes and mix with groups for the first time in three months, it was announced on Monday.

But as Downing Street hailed the "opening up", doctors, unions and charities voiced concerns over the shift away from lockdown and the planned halving of the 2-metre distancing rule that has been in place since March. The change has been billed by Downing Street as ultimately a political decision based on balancing health concerns and economic wellbeing.

Unions representing shop and hospitality staff complained of a lack of consultation by the government over the reduced distance rule, set to be formally announced by Johnson in the Commons on Tuesday. All the changes apply to England only, and are dependent on continued lower infection rates.

...

Well, its clear England has failed. We might as well get drunk.

[The Larch]

Novak Djokovic tests positive for Covid-19 amid Adria Tour fallout
World No 1 becomes fourth player to test positive
Dimitrov, Coric and Troicki revealed other positive tests

Novak Djokovic, the men's world No 1 tennis player, has tested positive for Covid-19, the Serbian said in a statement on Tuesday.

Croatia's Borna Coric, Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria and Viktor Troicki have previously tested positive after playing in Djokovic's Adria Tour exhibition tournament in the Balkan region.

Djokovic revealed that he and his wife, Jelena, had both tested positive for Covid-19 after taking a test immediately after returning to Belgrade from Zadar in Croatia where the final of the tournament was cancelled following Dimitrov's positive test.

In the statement, Djokovic said: "I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection. I hope that it will not complicate anyone's health situation and that everyone will be fine."

While other players remained in Zadar to be tested on Sunday night, Djokovic travelled home from the tournament to his home in Serbia before being tested for the virus, with Adria Tour organisers saying this was because he was not showing symptoms.

In Tuesday's statement, Djokovic added: "The moment we arrived in Belgrade we went to be tested. My result is positive, just as Jelena's, while the results of our children are negative.

"Everything we did in the past month, we did with a pure heart and sincere intentions. Our tournament meant to unite and share a message of solidarity and compassion throughout the region.

"We organized the tournament at the moment when the virus has weakened, believing that the conditions for hosting the Tour had been met. Unfortunately, this virus is still present, and it is a new reality that we are still learning to cope and live with."

[The Minsky Moment]

Covid 19 may have been in NY earlier than in Florida, but they both had their first case confirmed on the same day, March 1.

The date of the first "confirmed case" is meaningless. The virus was spreading in the city well before March 1.

[alfred russel]

Covid 19 may have been in NY earlier than in Florida, but they both had their first case confirmed on the same day, March 1.

The date of the first "confirmed case" is meaningless. The virus was spreading in the city well before March 1.

Covid 19 may have been in NY earlier than in Florida, but they both had their first case confirmed on the same day, March 1.

The date of the first "confirmed case" is meaningless. The virus was spreading in the city well before March 1.

I'm sure it was spreading in Florida before March 1 too.

If your assertion is that NY has bad results because of a late response, and we take the comparable of Florida:

-NY has results something like 15 times worse than Florida,
-NY issued a stay at home order well in advance of Florida,
-They had the same date of first confirmed case,
-There is significant travel between the two states, so it seems unlikely the disease was raging undetected in NY but absent in Florida.

I don't see it.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm sure it was spreading in Florida before March 1 too.

What is the data to support that?  In the case of New York there have been multiple studies based on the extensive antibody testing done in April.

My understanding is that Florida only recently released antibody test results and that the testing was less extensive.

[Tamas]

With daily press conferences ending after today and pubs plus other places opening up in less than two weeks, I think the pandemic is officially over, mission accomplished!

[DGuller]

Can we get a summary of the respective points?  Is the argument being made by AR that New York got hit a lot worse than Florida, so people really shouldn't be putting down Florida's response and exalting New York response?  And is the argument made by Minsky that given the luck of the draw both states started with, New York mitigated more suffering than Florida?  I'm kind of getting lost in the weeds here.

[Sheilbh]

If we want to take out NYC as an outlier, I'm fine with doing so. But then we should do so generally--it shouldn't just apply to me when I point out the poor results in NYC despite their lockdown.

For example, if you pull out the tri state area (NY, NJ, Conn) from the US results, our deaths / million drops from 374 to 247. That is right in the ballpark of Canada's 228.

Sure - but I don't quite get your point.

What I meant with New York isn't that we ignore it, just that it's not a terribly useful comparison because it's one of the five worst outbreaks in the world - and I don't know why that is, I don't know what factors made those areas so bad (New York, Bergamo, Guayaquil and Lima) because they don't seem to have much in common. If anything I think the interesting question is why is New York like those, what happened that made it so bad rather than why is Florida/California/Washington (and I think Washington's a really interesting example) not like New York. Because the worst bits of Spain, the UK, France, Belgium are not like New York.

But also I think Florida or California should aim higher than one of the worst outbreaks in the world. A useful comparison might be other bits of the Tristate - because Jersey and Connecticut have had outbreaks that are as bad as the really big European outbreaks, so Lombardy, London, Madrid, Castilla. If a state's heading into that area they will still have a significantly lower excess mortality rate than New York (1-150% v 3-400%), but still be really bad, just not unusual/outlier territory.

And, you know, I think there's a bit of fetishisation of lockdown - if we're just a little bit stricter we'll save loads of lives (and I think there's a comparison between the whole "cancel culture"/public shaming thing and taking photos of people in park or whatever and sharing on social media). No European or American country was able to stop or control the disease throught their normal pandemic preparedness - this may just be lack of experience as much as anything else (I'm a masks truther too). But they all more or less had to resort to lockdown which is a really brute force way of stopping the disease. But other countries managed to stop this without that sort of lockdown - South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, I think Vietnam and Israel too.

But I think if you're not doing lockdown because you're lifting it, or you never had to - I feel like you have to be doing something else. Otherwise you're just in the same cycle of uncontrolled spread, hospitalisations, deaths and lockdown. The thing I don't understand about the US states that are coming out of lockdown is what is the something else?

[Tamas]

I must admit that personally I don't care. The battlelines of the basic argument between whoever is typing under AR and most the rest of the posters have been drawn up in about early April and its been just reiterating the same basic points since then by everyone.