Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Monoriu]

Few places can claim to have a higher density of people or high rises than Hong Kong.  We have like 1,200 cases and 6 deaths so far.

You guys were using masks though. In the US or Spain the authorities were telling people masks were useless, because they didn't have enough PPE for frontline workers.

Use masks then.  It isn't that difficult.  These days I can buy a box of 50 masks for like US$20.  They are on sale literally everywhere.  Even clothing stores sell face masks. 

I also notice one thing.  Since using masks, I have not had a cold or sore throat. 

[Maladict]

Use masks then.  It isn't that difficult.  These days I can buy a box of 50 masks for like US$20.  They are on sale literally everywhere.  Even clothing stores sell face masks. 

They're not that common here. I had to wait two months for mine.

[Iormlund]

I get two surgical masks a day at work. It's good to have unions sometimes.

[Duque de Bragança]

Few places can claim to have a higher density of people or high rises than Hong Kong.  We have like 1,200 cases and 6 deaths so far.

You guys were using masks though. In the US, Spain or France the authorities were telling people masks were useless, because they didn't have enough PPE for frontline workers.

Fixed!

[Eddie Teach]

Nobody cares about the French. 

[alfred russel]

I can't say what most people care about, I haven't surveyed them.  But I wasn't responding to most people, I was responding to AR who was making a claim about Florida having a good outcome *compared to other states*   In addressing that claim, the rank among states is not only relevant, it is really the only relevant criterion.

I disagree, but semantic points aside, at least we can agree that the residents of Florida have experienced death from covid19 at a rate significantly less than the national average (and still less even if we exclude the tristate area when computing the national average).

[Legbiter]

A lot of the differences could just be the luck of the draw.  It's an unsatisfying conclusion, but sometimes it's the right one that even many professionals don't consider heavily enough. 

Maybe NYC got a super-spreader early on that other cities didn't get.  In the early phase of the outbreak, when everyone is caught with their pants down, the spread is essentially exponential, and with a really high rate of growth at that.  One trait of exponential growth with some element of luck involved is that your luck early on has an incredibly leveraged impact on eventual outcome. 

The difference between a disaster city and a non-disaster city could really be as simple as the fact that patient zero in the former infected 10 people, and patient zero in the latter infected 2.  The luck of the latter city bought it time, so that when they did enter the lockdown, they were a week or two behind on uncontrolled spread simply because the chose their patient zero wisely.

Yeah. This exact point had me very worried when the Chief Medical Officer here sounded like he was going to do nothing except precisely manage the pandemic via spreadsheet. We got very lucky there that that wasn't the route taken.

[Legbiter]

Few places can claim to have a higher density of people or high rises than Hong Kong.  We have like 1,200 cases and 6 deaths so far.

You guys were using masks though. In the US or Spain the authorities were telling people masks were useless, because they didn't have enough PPE for frontline workers.

Yeah. That was the party line here as well. Now every tourist coming over has to wear one on the flight and at the airport while they await their test results.

[Sheilbh]

Few places can claim to have a higher density of people or high rises than Hong Kong.  We have like 1,200 cases and 6 deaths so far.

You guys were using masks though. In the US or Spain the authorities were telling people masks were useless, because they didn't have enough PPE for frontline workers.

Yeah. We're still not getting a full endorsement for masks - they're mandatory on public transport but I think that's it. There's a weird Northern European exception going on (Nordics plus the UK and Ireland) where masks are not becoming that common.

I saw loads at the peak but fewer people are wearing them now.

I think other key bits for East Asia is probably the recent experience with pandemics. But also there must be something in how the governments responded that actually just worked better than what European and American governments tried. As I say I don't understand why we weren't trying to learn from Korea and Taiwan in January/February. I saw one comment in an article about France's response where a French civil servant basically said part of it was arrogance: France is a bigger power and not a country that takes lessons from a country like South Korea. I think that was definitely at play in the UK too - arrogance, with a little bit of cultural/racist views that stopped us from learning.

[Tamas]

The only possible explanation beside arrogance is incompetence, and I don't think we had too much of the latter outside of the higher echelons of political power.

[Legbiter]

There's a weird Northern European exception going on (Nordics plus the UK and Ireland) where masks are not becoming that common.

They're practically rare here.

I wear one to the supermarket and I get a much smoother shopping experience because many people stop dead in their tracks when they see me wearing one and don't cut in front of me. The effect is like Moses parting the Red Sea at times. 

[Sheilbh]

The only possible explanation beside arrogance is incompetence, and I don't think we had too much of the latter outside of the higher echelons of political power.

I'm not sure it's a UK specific thing. Even European successes had a worse outbreak and more severe lockdown than was common in East Asia. I think there's definitely a UK issue though. Despite there being almost no genuinely new policy ideas under the sun it always feels like we never try to learn from the experience of other countries. And that this isn't just a current thing either - it was true during New Labour and the Coalition as well, I think part of it is the UK political class are obsessed with American politics so they all want to know how to be LBJ (Osborne famously expected all his aides to read Caro, I think Brown did too) and look at policies there, but very few follow or care about European politics which are far more similar, or look at experiences in Asia or Latin America or Africa.

Part of it may just be politics. The Taiwanese representative here said they tried throughout January to set up meetings with the Health Department. Ultimately, if you're a civil servant in the Department of Health there is no way you are going to meet someone from the Taiwanese government without running it past the Foreign Office and probably the ministers. But that doesn't explain why we weren't trying to learn from Korea.

And I think there's a fair bit more incompetence in our system than just at the top level of politicians

[Duque de Bragança]

There's a weird Northern European exception going on (Nordics plus the UK and Ireland) where masks are not becoming that common.

They're practically rare here.

I wear one to the supermarket and I get a much smoother shopping experience because many people stop dead in their tracks when they see me wearing one and don't cut in front of me. The effect is like Moses parting the Red Sea at times. 

So much for Ásatrú.

Over here, mask wearing is compulsory in public transportation and stores but now some people can't be arsed to wear it and have to be reminded to do so.

[Sheilbh]

So it's not just Spain that monitors the sewers - just seen a paper based on similar testing in Boston and it seems to track really well with actual infections so could be a useful part of epidemic monitoring.

I did not realise that cities were monitoring the sewage like this though

[Legbiter]

Over here, mask wearing is compulsory in public transportation and stores but now some people can't be arsed to wear it and have to be reminded to do so.

Which is the smart, sensible thing to do. We're on an island with only a few points of entry so quarantining everyone coming over and universal brute force, almost street-by-street testing & tracing worked to kill it off entirely. Now we have to hold the line and be vigilant, but we've learned on the job and got lucky initially.