Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

Yeah it sounds entirely unenforceable. Lets hope the vaccine will be able to protect people from the ignorant morons who decide not to have it.

[celedhring]

Over here trends are worrying. The R number is still under 1 but it has slowly been inching up for the past 2 weeks despite only modestly relaxing restrictions, and it could go over 1 sometime next week. Experts believe it's because of the british variant. I see infection rates have been falling a lot in the UK, so I suppose the vaccination campaign will eventually help keep it under control. Spain finished giving the second shot to the entire care home population this week, so at least we've got that covered.

[Syt]

[crazy canuck]

Yeah it sounds entirely unenforceable. Lets hope the vaccine will be able to protect people from the ignorant morons who decide not to have it.

I fear it is going to be like the other diseases we could easily eradicate if everyone just got vaccinated.  We will probably see it flair up every now and then in pockets of anti vaccine lunacy.

[alfred russel]

I completely welcome the talk of a vaccine passport and hope they hurry up with it, with the proviso that things are not too strict until everyone has had a chance to be vaccinated.
Punishing those who refuse vaccination is fine. Punishing the young because we have been waiting for our turn isn't.

I think the idea of a passport is terrible.  It would make it very difficult to enforce restrictions for those who are not vaccinated.

News flash: restrictions aren't being enforced now. Does anyone have statistics on the number of arrests and citations that have been issued for not following covid restrictions in North America? I've certainly seen towns that have effectively given up on doing much of anything about the virus - our jails would be overflowing with covid resisters if we were arresting people for noncompliance.

People want to resume normal community life and they shouldn't be stopped from doing so because it would make it difficult to enforce restrictions that aren't being enforced anyway.

[Tamas]

I completely welcome the talk of a vaccine passport and hope they hurry up with it, with the proviso that things are not too strict until everyone has had a chance to be vaccinated.
Punishing those who refuse vaccination is fine. Punishing the young because we have been waiting for our turn isn't.

I think the idea of a passport is terrible.  It would make it very difficult to enforce restrictions for those who are not vaccinated.

News flash: restrictions aren't being enforced now. Does anyone have statistics on the number of arrests and citations that have been issued for not following covid restrictions in North America? I've certainly seen towns that have effectively given up on doing much of anything about the virus - our jails would be overflowing with covid resisters if we were arresting people for noncompliance.

People want to resume normal community life and they shouldn't be stopped from doing so because it would make it difficult to enforce restrictions that aren't being enforced anyway.

Actually most restrictions are very well enforced by keeping places of business (and hiking) closed. Don't really have to worry about whether people have gone to the pub if you know the pub is closed.

But if you let pubs open for patrons with vaccine cards, it is guaranteed that unvaccinated people will show up, and that at least some landlords will have no qualms about letting them in and serving them. Then how do you enforce this? Send the police into pubs to do checks? It's just not practical.

Perhaps it would be more practical to require employers to submit vaccination IDs of employees, and have them pay punitive taxes after employees not vaccinated but that would go down terribly with people.

[alfred russel]

Actually most restrictions are very well enforced by keeping places of business (and hiking) closed. Don't really have to worry about whether people have gone to the pub if you know the pub is closed.

But if you let pubs open for patrons with vaccine cards, it is guaranteed that unvaccinated people will show up, and that at least some landlords will have no qualms about letting them in and serving them. Then how do you enforce this? Send the police into pubs to do checks? It's just not practical.

Perhaps it would be more practical to require employers to submit vaccination IDs of employees, and have them pay punitive taxes after employees not vaccinated but that would go down terribly with people.

In the real world, hiking trails and pubs are open. I went hiking yesterday in the North Georgia mountains and on the way home we stopped at a sports bar in Gainesville Georgia--the sports bar was the only restaurant in the town square that didn't have a waiting list so we went there.

Maybe in the UK that is not the case, I have no idea. But if it isn't, what the fuck is your problem? You guys have a death rate higher than the US -- per million residents it is 1,814 versus our 1,562 -- you should be asking why you should be putting up with harsher rules and not getting any benefit from it.

[Josquius]

So anywhere that's not the US isn't the real world?

A high death rate is a sign harder measures are needed. Not lesser.

[Syt]

Actually most restrictions are very well enforced by keeping places of business (and hiking) closed. Don't really have to worry about whether people have gone to the pub if you know the pub is closed.

But if you let pubs open for patrons with vaccine cards, it is guaranteed that unvaccinated people will show up, and that at least some landlords will have no qualms about letting them in and serving them. Then how do you enforce this? Send the police into pubs to do checks? It's just not practical.

Perhaps it would be more practical to require employers to submit vaccination IDs of employees, and have them pay punitive taxes after employees not vaccinated but that would go down terribly with people.

In the real world, hiking trails and pubs are open. I went hiking yesterday in the North Georgia mountains and on the way home we stopped at a sports bar in Gainesville Georgia--the sports bar was the only restaurant in the town square that didn't have a waiting list so we went there.

Maybe in the UK that is not the case, I have no idea. But if it isn't, what the fuck is your problem? You guys have a death rate higher than the US -- per million residents it is 1,814 versus our 1,562 -- you should be asking why you should be putting up with harsher rules and not getting any benefit from it.

That presumes that the death rate wouldn't be even higher in the UK without those measures. Keep in mind that e.g. the UK is more densely populated than the US on average.

[Zanza]

Worrying signs in Germany that government having the procurement conflict with Astrazeneca and not allowing the vaccine for over 65s creates considerable rejection of the AZ vaccine here. When you consider the snail speed at which we are progressing that's another limiting factor. The whole vaccine rollout here leaves much to be improved.

Considering our infection numbers have plateaus and R is back to around 1 despite on going lockdown it does look really bad in Germany now.

Not enough vaccinated, stable too high cases, lockdown getting unbearable economically...

[Syt]

Not enough vaccinated, stable too high cases, lockdown getting unbearable economically...

Same in Austria except worse in each metric.

[Syt]

@Zanza: this article in Der Standard has a decent Germany vs Austria comparison: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000124330209/warum-oesterreich-schlechter-als-deutschland-durch-die-krise-kommt

[Tamas]

Dorsey, the UK has had a number of ease up-hospitalisations run up-lockdown-see numbers go down-ease up cycles hence the over 100k deaths.

[alfred russel]

That presumes that the death rate wouldn't be even higher in the UK without those measures. Keep in mind that e.g. the UK is more densely populated than the US on average.

London is actually below the UK's average in terms of deaths per capita: 1,805 / million in the UK overall, 1,667 / million in London.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Plus, the effect of lockdowns is not necessarily what you think it is:

Abstract

Background and Aims

The most restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID‐19 are mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects. We evaluate the effects on epidemic case growth of more restrictive NPIs (mrNPIs), above and beyond those of less‐restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs).

...

Results

Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a nonsignificant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, for example, the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95% CI: −5%‐19%) when compared with Sweden and + 13% (−12%‐38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro‐contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.

Conclusions

While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less‐restrictive interventions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

[Richard Hakluyt]

I was out for a walk and was surprised to find that golf courses are shut. Now, to me it makes sense for the 19th hole to be shuttered, but a round of golf with a couple of other golfers strikes me as being almost certainly harmless. In fact one might be tempted to argue that an unnecessary restriction like the golf ban might be counter-productive; along the lines of "...well we can't go golfing so...drinks at my place 2pm?".

I do believe that lockdowns work, but in this 3rd iteration (for the UK) I'm disappointed that there isn't more fine-tuning.......not even that fine really, essentially that outdoors activity is typically very safe.