Coronavirus: awaiting for the new wave

[Kyriakos]

More economic news.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business...fell-to-4-point-9-percent-in-december-quarter

Unemployment fell instead of rising. The deficit also came in a lot smaller than expected.

Consumer spending was also higher than expected.

So yeah controlling Covid who would have thunk it.

You iz a remote island.

 

[El_Machinae]

Honestly the extra attention to clean fomites is probably helping with other pathogens

yay, autoimmunity

 

[Arwon]

you can lick all the doorknobs you want I guess

 

[Arwon]

You iz a remote island.

Their tourism share of their economy is actually fairly high, closing the borders wasn't trivial for them

(this isn't the whole picture, countries that export a lot of education services have also a lot of exposure to border closure)

 

[El_Machinae]

you can lick all the doorknobs you want I guess

I am already taking care of myself. It's the increased future social burden that I worry about.

 

[Zardnaar]

Their tourism share of their economy is actually fairly high, closing the borders wasn't trivial for them

View attachment 584447

(this isn't the whole picture, countries that export a lot of education services have also a lot of exposure to border closure)

Turns out tourism wasn't all that.

It was low productivity kinda offset by kiwi tourists not spending money overseas.

Wages apparently also up well over the inflation rate, no easy access to cheap foreign imports.

Most of the lost tourism jobs seem to be replaced doing other things.

 

[Zardnaar]

You iz a remote island.

Heh another bit of myth. There's more than a few island nations doing a lot worse than us with smaller populations.

No Covid death in 6 months, no Covid locally since May last year.

Watching the news is becoming surreal. San Francisco is a ghost town for example.

 

[innonimatu]

It is an interesting phenomenon that people seem to be very reluctant to give up measures that did not work well in order to focus on something else. It is either piling up new measures on top of the existing ones or easing up on all of them, very seldom one measure gets abandoned in favor of another one.

I will argue that Australia abandoned the laissez-faire, leave-with-the-virus measures pretty quickly when it was shamed by the different example of NZ. Its government could not deny that New Zealand was being successful in eliminating the virus locally, it was a similar country, same conditions applied and therefore Australia could do it also.

Some desperately poor countries would have a very though (but still doable!) time at organizing elimination, because their economy is structured in such a way that people cannot stop their jobs quickly. But even Brazil, for one such example, managed some lockdowns and a competent government would have been able to organize a serious one. Even if it took some months to organize: stockpile and then start one. As for the wealthy countries, those in Europe and the US or Japan or SK should have had a ridiculously easy time doing elimination.

The particular tragedy of these wealthy countries is the political structures. Local political autonomy was destroyed long ago in the US, and recently by interested abdication of national governments in the EU. In Australia I think it was the states that piled up pressure on the federal government and took unilateral action to start with? In Europe and in the US no "state" deviated from the story that it was "impossible to contain" or "too late to eliminate" the virus. Easier for the ruling parties (didn't matter whether supposedly "left" or "right") to copy what everyone in the neighborhood was doing, and thinking of all the trade and tourism the tendency was to refuse the sine qua non condition for elimination, controlling borders. They were kept open, thereby eliminating elimination as a possible strategy. As if tourism was compatible with a pandemic! So all governments announced a "management of the virus" strategy.

But in the 1980s it would not have happened this way: in Europe countries would have gone their own ways, I believe that at least some would eliminate, most would try to "manage" and fail, and everyone by now would have settled on eliminate. Because the successful example next door cannot be ignored or justified away to your population. While the far-away one can and has been: they're oriental, despotic, islands, small, whatever. But even the US after a delay would have implemented systematic elimination across the country, as Australia did, because it had succeeded in the rest of the developed world.

In fact I still think that if - when - one country in Europe changes policy the governments of others will be forced to follow. And what is the end game with a vaccine but elimination anyway? Except that waiting for a vaccine that allows that is taking a long time even if everything goes well.

So why didn't Japan or SK change to eliminate, copying Taiwan? Stubbornness, granted. But I think those got away with playing the "manage" strategy because they made it somewhat work. If it gets worse (it is in Japan...) they're move. Averse though they may be to admitting mistakes.

 

[Zardnaar]

I will argue that Australia abandoned the laissez-faire, leave-with-the-virus measures pretty quickly when it was shamed by the different example of NZ. Its government could not deny that New Zealand was being successful in eliminating the virus locally, it was a similar country, same conditions applied and therefore Australia could do it also.

Some desperately poor countries would have a very though (but still doable!) time at organizing elimination, because their economy is structured in such a way that people cannot stop their jobs quickly. But even Brazil, for one such example, managed some lockdowns and a competent government would have been able to organize a serious one. Even if it took some months to organize: stockpile and then start one. As for the wealthy countries, those in Europe and the US or Japan or SK should have had a ridiculously easy time doing elimination.

The particular tragedy of these wealthy countries is the political structures. Local political autonomy was destroyed long ago in the US, and recently by interested abdication of national governments in the EU. In Australia I think it was the states that piled up pressure on the federal government and took unilateral action to start with? In Europe and in the US no "state" deviated from the story that it was "impossible to contain" or "too late to eliminate" the virus. Easier for the ruling parties (didn't matter whether supposedly "left" or "right") to copy what everyone in the neighborhood was doing, and thinking of all the trade and tourism the tendency was to refuse the sine qua non condition for elimination, controlling borders. They were kept open, thereby eliminating elimination as a possible strategy. As if tourism was compatible with a pandemic! So all governments announced a "management of the virus" strategy.

But in the 1980s it would not have happened this way: in Europe countries would have gone their own ways, I believe that at least some would eliminate, most would try to "manage" and fail, and everyone by now would have settled on eliminate. Because the successful example next door cannot be ignored or justified away to your population. While the far-away one can and has been: they're oriental, despotic, islands, small, whatever. But even the US after a delay would have implemented systematic elimination across the country, as Australia did, because it had succeeded in the rest of the developed world.

In fact I still think that if - when - one country in Europe changes policy the governments of others will be forced to follow. And what is the end game with a vaccine but elimination anyway? Except that waiting for a vaccine that allows that is taking a long time even if everything goes well.

So why didn't Japan or SK change to eliminate, copying Taiwan? Stubbornness, granted. But I think those got away with playing the "manage" strategy because they made it somewhat work. If it gets worse (it is in Japan...) they're move. Averse though they may be to admitting mistakes.

Eliminate requires the government bro pony up money.

Basically they had to pay people to stay home.

Aussie/NZ have very low debt levels, Aussie is one of the richest real countries in the world (NZ not so much).

In Europe Spain n and Greece probably don't have that option heavily reliant on tourism so probably can't afford to bubble for 18 months/two years and were heavily in debt.

 

[Arwon]

I will argue that Australia abandoned the laissez-faire, leave-with-the-virus measures pretty quickly when it was shamed by the different example of NZ. Its government could not deny that New Zealand was being successful in eliminating the virus locally, it was a similar country, same conditions applied and therefore Australia could do it also.

Not so much - it's not really accurate to talk about a single approach given there's nine different governments here. New Zealand got a lot of press internationally for doing a quick lockdown back in March, but I think that's largely because it's a white country and so was focused on over other countries because of racism. And, being a unitary state, it is easier for people overseas to understand compared with a federation with different governments doing somewhat different things.

Even then, "laissez-faire, live-with-the-virus" was never really the approach anywhere, especially from the states who control every lever except international borders and welfare funding and very quickly got the federal government (possibly reluctantly) to play ball on the welfare front (with regrettable exceptions). There's a bit of diversity between the states in how they approach things, but it largely comes down to instant lockdowns on the identification of first case, vs test/trace/isolate as the primary method of controlling each cluster which leads to things going naturally back to zero.

Generally speaking, if people have used the phrase "live with the virus" it has not meant uncontrolled spread but rather meant maintaining some level of restrictions and record keeping measures to aid test/trace/isolate, on the understanding that no quarantine is foolproof and you're going to see clusters emerge sometimes. It's a criticism of the false certainty of relying on borders and quarantine alone.

The timeline is roughly:

Border closures from late March meant that there was a fairly limited spread in the first wave with most people being isolated and not passing it on to many people. That mistakenly disembarked cruise ship only led to a limited number of secondary infections for instance, since everyone was contact traced pretty quickly. Global travel bans and mandatory quarantine for a limited number of international arrivals was instituted in March. Lockdowns were instituted over most of April and they killed off the existing spread - by mid May the thing was largely eliminated and under control by contact tracing. There were single digit national daily cases through much of late May, and actual zero days by June. Then the Victorian second wave happened, which wasn't an experience replicated anywhere else in the country due to either having no virus or successfully finding and tracing it.

So pretty much since July the situation has been:

• NSW successfully and repeatedly suppressing clusters and repeatedly returning to zero cases without city-wide or state-wide lockdowns. Clusters usually taking about 3 weeks to play out even with big seed events.
• Victoria sat in a four month hard lockdown from July to October, the rest of the country closing its borders, while Victoria rebuilt its public health systems to be able to do what now looks like a perfectly decent test/trace/isolate system
  
• The rest of the country largely avoided new spread by the simple expedient of NSW handling the majority of international arrivals, meaning fairly limited quarantine numbers in other states, which have each only rarely produced any leaks of their own.

One interesting inversion that's actually happened recently is that New Zealand has shifted way from instant lockdowns at the first sign of a community case, towards a more New South Wales-style reliance on test/trace/isolate with localised lockdowns reserved for more serious seeding events. So their recent Northland case, they didn't react the same way they did a few months ago.

By contrast, some Australian states (Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia) have recently started doing those instant lockdowns at the first sign of an infected quarantine worker, although as it turned out the SA one was based on false information and rescinded the day they realised this. And the Queensland one was about about fear of the new strains, which I suspect will have subsided a bit after there were no transmissions from the case there.

 

[Camikaze]

Well according to the Guardian, Rita Ora has stolen your sister's quarantine slot:

the kangaroo

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...to-australia-ahead-of-40000-stranded-overseas

One phenomenon with limited spots on flights is that airlines prioritise first class/business class passengers. So if you have the money to pay for those classes (not that the economy seats are cheap at the moment), you are less likely to be cancelled. I don't blame airlines for making flights more commercially viable, and I don't blame celebrities/rich people for buying available tickets and then using them. It's a governmental failure that places are so limited. It becomes even more perverse when apparently the same thing is happening with the special government-chartered repatriation flights. My sister was told by the London High Commission that she might have a shot at landing a hardship spot on one if she can show she is running out of money and struggling to pay for food in the UK; but meanwhile there are still business class tickets available on those flights for those who can pay more.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not so much - it's not really accurate to talk about a single approach given there's nine different governments here. New Zealand got a lot of press internationally for doing a quick lockdown back in March, but I think that's largely because it's a white country and so was focused on over other countries because of racism. And, being a unitary state, it is easier for people overseas to understand compared with a federation with different governments doing somewhat different things.

Even then, "laissez-faire, live-with-the-virus" was never really the approach anywhere, especially from the states who control every lever except international borders and welfare funding and very quickly got the federal government (possibly reluctantly) to play ball on the welfare front (with regrettable exceptions). There's a bit of diversity between the states in how they approach things, but it largely comes down to instant lockdowns on the identification of first case, vs test/trace/isolate as the primary method of controlling each cluster which leads to things going naturally back to zero.

Generally speaking, if people have used the phrase "live with the virus" it has not meant uncontrolled spread but rather meant maintaining some level of restrictions and record keeping measures to aid test/trace/isolate, on the understanding that no quarantine is foolproof and you're going to see clusters emerge sometimes. It's a criticism of the false certainty of relying on borders and quarantine alone.

The timeline is roughly:

Border closures from late March meant that there was a fairly limited spread in the first wave with most people being isolated and not passing it on to many people. That mistakenly disembarked cruise ship only led to a limited number of secondary infections for instance, since everyone was contact traced pretty quickly. Global travel bans and mandatory quarantine for a limited number of international arrivals was instituted in March. Lockdowns were instituted over most of April and they killed off the existing spread - by mid May the thing was largely eliminated and under control by contact tracing. There were single digit national daily cases through much of late May, and actual zero days by June. Then the Victorian second wave happened, which wasn't an experience replicated anywhere else in the country due to either having no virus or successfully finding and tracing it.

So pretty much since July the situation has been:

• NSW successfully and repeatedly suppressing clusters and repeatedly returning to zero cases without city-wide or state-wide lockdowns. Clusters usually taking about 3 weeks to play out even with big seed events.
• Victoria sat in a four month hard lockdown from July to October, the rest of the country closing its borders, while Victoria rebuilt its public health systems to be able to do what now looks like a perfectly decent test/trace/isolate system
  
• The rest of the country largely avoided new spread by the simple expedient of NSW handling the majority of international arrivals, meaning fairly limited quarantine numbers in other states, which have each only rarely produced any leaks of their own.

One interesting inversion that's actually happened recently is that New Zealand has shifted way from instant lockdowns at the first sign of a community case, towards a more New South Wales-style reliance on test/trace/isolate with localised lockdowns reserved for more serious seeding events. So their recent Northland case, they didn't react the same way they did a few months ago.

By contrast, some Australian states (Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia) have recently started doing those instant lockdowns at the first sign of an infected quarantine worker, although as it turned out the SA one was based on false information and rescinded the day they realised this. And the Queensland one was about about fear of the new strains, which I suspect will have subsided a bit after there were no transmissions from the case there.

They only lockdown if there's unknown community spread.

Last case was singular and quickly contact traced. They also had a good idea she got it in quarantine.

Last outbreak there were multiple cases of unknown source so they locked Auckland down.

I expect them to pull the trigger again if they get more than a few cases if unknown origin.

Idk if they ever identified the irugin if last outbreak. Probably snuck through qurantine.

 

[Arwon]

A friend of mine who went to India because her father died had been trying to get back for like 3 months (after it took as long to get over there) has finally managed to get on a repatriation flight from Sri Lanka by first going to the Maldives, it's an ordeal. The number of quarantine places being allowed is just too low.

They only lockdown if there's unknown community spread.

Last case was singular and quickly contact traced. They also had a good idea she got it in quarantine.

Last outbreak there were multiple cases of unknown source so they locked Auckland down.

Yeah that's much closer to NSW than to some of the other states, though NSW will tolerate a few initially unknown cases unless there's a big seeding event rather than a lone case, since a lone case is very traceable.

By way of contrast, Western Australia this week did a region wide lockdown of Perth and surrounds, 2.5 million people, because one quarantine worker got it and, 3 days later with all contacts testing negative, doesn't seem to have given it to anyone else.

 

[Zardnaar]

A friend of mine who went to India because her father died had been trying to get back for like 3 months (after it took as long to get over there) has finally managed to get on a repatriation flight from Sri Lanka by first going to the Maldives, it's an ordeal. The number of quarantine places being allowed is just too low.



Yeah that's much closer to NSW than to some of the other states, though NSW will tolerate some unknown spread unless there's a big seeding event rather than a lone case, since a lone case is very traceable.

By way of contrast, Western Australia this week did a region wide lockdown of Perth and surrounds, 2.5 million people, because one quarantine worker got it and, 3 days later with all contacts testing negative, doesn't seem to have given it to anyone else.

Yeah heard about Perth but not much information on it over here +I don't watch normal news).

Yeah if you jump on that single case early enough nips it in the bud quick enough.

 

[r16]

wrong thread

actually some right thread . Considering ı chanced upon some Al Crusading report on lvermectin or whatever on the same day , a wonder drug that helps patients very much and now formally researched by those people in Oxford or whatever . You know , especially China will insist coronavirus thing existed before , therefore conspiracy tendencies will insist it had a vaccine already present and it hurting the West far more will create stories that Boris Johnson and company are a vindictive short sighted lot content to see their former colleagues suffer . Hey , there is this drug that cures it , too ... No problems if you have been denied your vaccines you would apply in March , do not listen to loonies out there ...

 

[red_elk]

Interim results of phase 3 clinical trials published. Based on 20,000 participants.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00234-8/fulltext
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04530396

Interim analysis of the phase 3 trial of Gam-COVID-Vac showed 91,6% (95% CI 85,6–95,2) efficacy against COVID-19 and was well tolerated in a large cohort.

 

[Samson]

Interim results of phase 3 clinical trials published. Based on 20,000 participants.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00234-8/fulltext
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04530396

The primary outcome was the proportion of participants with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 from day 21 after receiving the first dose.

So they counted infection, not clinical signs. This has to be good news. It makes it even more surprising that Pfizer and monderna did not.
Though:

p values were obtained by χ2 test or Fisher's exact test (if the expected frequency in any cell is <5).

Why in this day and age does anyone use the Chi square test, unless the numbers are in the thousands and the table is bigger than 2*2. <5 in a cell used to be a rule of thumb when you had to do it by hand, but is a very low threshold to get over. I am sure it makes no difference in this case, but I can rant.

 

[Josu]

In Europe Spain n and Greece probably don't have that option heavily reliant on tourism so probably can't afford to bubble for 18 months/two years and were heavily in debt.

Spain allready has morons speaking about "saving the easter tourism campaing", which basically means that they are asking to reduce the restrictions so that tourism can rise.

 

[thetrooper]

Silence, @innonimatu is going ballistic again

 

[Hrothbern]

Spain allready has morons speaking about "saving the easter tourism campaing", which basically means that they are asking to reduce the restrictions so that tourism can rise.

In that case all people working and living in the coastal-beach tourism-hospitality sector should get vaccins with priority.