Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/coronavirus-uk--knife-edge-cases-rise-lockdowns-grow-birmingham-scotland


While the virus spreads like wildfire among the young as everywhere else, seems like we are staring to see a definitive uptick in elderly people testing positive, as well as in the number of hospital admissions.

R above 1 nationwide too.

[Eddie Teach]

Yep we are all self obsessed and brain dead.

Your President is leading the way.

Not mine. Didn't vote for him, don't live in the country, haven't given him any tax money.

You haven't renounced your citizenship.

[grumbler]

Trump's already said he's not my president, and I agree with him.  He's the president of those who voted for him, and that's all.

[Tamas]

Budapest had their first anti-lockdown protest (there's barely any kind of lockdown left but there you go).

As far as I can tell it was it had no political undertones, probably because these kind of people vote Fidesz nowadays.

But also because this movement has a clear leader in the country in some pharmacist bodybuilder or whoever. Legally or not but he gets being called a doctor on some Youtube videos so those who have found themselves inconvenienced by the whole thing flock to him. Also I guess he is not as extreme as American GOPtards and such, namely that he says yeah sure there's a virus and some frail people will die but it's no biggie and we should not restrict people.

Listening to a video coverage from the protest it seems like since Hungary went into a very strict lockdown very early the pandemic never gained serious ground there at least not enough to fill up the hospitals, so now these people conclude that it was never a big deal and it was pointless.

[Tamas]

I guess this is a good study of why we'll not see a proper lockdown again, unless hospitalisations get so out of hand that the wider populace gets scared enough. We are simply missing both governmental competence and public cooperation to deal with the current intended local lockdowns, let alone a wider one if it'd become necessary:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/13/manchester-lockdown-second-wave

Keeping up with lockdown rules in Greater Manchester has become a full-time job. On Tuesday, casinos and soft-play centres reopened everywhere except Bolton. Later that same day, pubs in Bolton were closed. You can't meet other households in your house or garden, unless you live in Stockport or Wigan. You also can't meet them in pubs or restaurants unless you sit outside, in which case it's fine, unless you live in Oldham, in which case it isn't. Restrictions were lifted last Wednesday for Trafford, where I live, until suddenly, 12 hours later, they weren't. From tomorrow, along with the rest of the country, socialising in groups of more than six will become illegal.

If the government had tried to design a lockdown that was bound to fail, it could scarcely have done a better job. The rules are now so convoluted that they are nigh-on impossible to understand: they seem to change almost daily, with no serious effort to communicate these changes. Worst of all, they simply don't make sense to people. Children can go to school but can't visit their friends? I can go to the pub but not see my mum in my garden?

....


Then there's the doublethink of having new restrictions imposed at the same time the government is aggressively exhorting us to get back to normal. We could no longer meet friends at home, yet Rishi Sunak actively subsidised us to go out for a burger. Things were dangerous enough to put our family lives on hold, but safe enough that we should all be going back to the office. The government insisted there was no contradiction here, since the problem was people not distancing in their own homes. Yet now Bolton pubs have been shut down after being linked to a cluster of outbreaks.

Inevitably, all this has led to widespread non-compliance. "People are just doing what they want, they're fed up with the changes all the time," one person told me. "I don't know anyone who's given it the slightest bit of notice," said another. The government is asking people to sacrifice things that they really care about while actively encouraging them to do things they don't really care about. It is doing so in a cavalier and disrespectful way that doesn't even try to empathise with how difficult these sacrifices might be. Meanwhile, its defence of Dominic Cummings is etched in people's memories: breaking the rules for the sake of your family is not only fine, it's what any good person would do. It doesn't take a PhD in psychology to work out that this is not a winning combination.

...

Trying to do the right thing has become emotionally exhausting. On hearing that the Trafford lockdown was due to lift, we made plans for my one-year-old son to finally see his grandparents, only to cancel them a few days later. With restrictions clearly not working and cases rising, it's increasingly hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It's starting to feel like March all over again – except this time, a sense of shared purpose and solidarity has given way to exhaustion, confusion and resentment. If we really are at the start of a second wave, with national restrictions tightening again and local lockdowns multiplying, our experience could be a bellwether for what's about to hit the rest of the country. If so, it's going to be a rough few months.

[Sheilbh]

It drives me crazy that local lockdown isn't really being led by local leaders, like Andy Burnham rather than Matt Hancock centrally

[viper37]

Yep we are all self obsessed and brain dead.

you're no longer living there, so you're ok now 

[Sheilbh]

Israel's the first country to re-impose a national lockdown - which is huge as it's likely to mean no visits to temples during Yom Kippur. Also really striking because Israel was one of the most successful countries in managing the first wave. Hopefully everyone else is learning what went wrong.

[Zanza]

The reasons are still not clear (mutation, immunity, younger age of infected, better treatment, much more testing giving better overall picture?), but the second wave in Europe is not nearly as deadly as the first.
At the moment, even high case numbers do not justify a new lockdown, considering that a lockdown also has huge costs economically and socially.

[Sheilbh]

The reasons are still not clear (mutation, immunity, younger age of infected, better treatment, much more testing giving better overall picture?), but the second wave in Europe is not nearly as deadly as the first.
At the moment, even high case numbers do not justify a new lockdown, considering that a lockdown also has huge costs economically and socially.

I think far higher testing rates is really important - I saw big blaring headlines recently that France's case numbers have now surpassed the peak, which is true but kind of misleading beause of how much testing has ramped up everywhere.

So in the UK, I'm not sure about elsewhere, the number of positives as a % of tests is creeping up which concerns me more than the actual number of new cases which looks more alarming.

[DGuller]

Apart from higher testing numbers, there is also a theory that mask usage results in less severe outcomes, almost turning an infection into a vaccination for some.

[Syt]

With rising numbers, Austria will tighten the rules again. Masks are mandatory again in all businesses with customer contact. In bars and restaurants, food and drink will only be served at tables. Masks mandatory in schools outside of class. Also, the government urges all companies to work from home where possible (which our company will ignore, I assume).

[DGuller]

I wonder why even non-fucked-up Western countries can't seem to keep a lid on Covid-19, whereas Asian countries seem to have put it away successfully (unless I'm just not following the news).

[Syt]

Here, clusters mostly rise around groups flaunting social distancing rules - mostly parties, returning vacationers who ignored distancing rules while drunk, some church groups, etc. Weddings and funerals seem to be quite common as spreader events.

[Eddie Teach]

New Zealand and Greenland are doing well.