I think both the plan and this response to it are incoherent. The author correctly pokes holes in the government’s case. But what is their plan: nothing?
Britain has a functioning govt. And the Uk + Ireland are islands. Had they tried, they could probably have gotten local transmission down to zero over the summer. Scotland and Ireland almost did.
What did the UK do instead? Reopened bars and indoor dining, and actually subsidized indoor dining! (“Eat out to help out”). They encouraged vacations.
Totally myopic and now the country has the same hard choices as in the spring.
Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They were damned close.
I come from a part of eastern Canada where local transmission has been eliminated. People waited about six weeks longer to reopen and now life is mostly normal. Except for travel controls.
This plan was roundly rejected elsewhere and labelled as impossible despite the fact that it has worked in multiple places. Now look where things are.
Was six extra weeks of business closure hard? Yes. But it happened once. The rest of the west is set for rolling lockdowns and closures. Not to mention much sickness, fear, and health costs. How does that help businesses or the working class?
Here in New York we've been hovering at around 700 new cases per day since the beginning of June. During most of that time, indoor dining was closed, gyms were closed, theaters were closed, and by my firsthand estimates 90-95% of citygoers wore masks in public, even on the streets. I don't think it's fair to blame leadership for not getting the cases down to 0, because we've tried very hard and we're still not there. It seems the only way out of COVID is a vaccine.
> Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They _were damned close_.
I think that's why, BECAUSE they were close to not that many cases at some point. You see, humans (and politicians by extension) do not want to pay any of the negative consequences of a proper plan to take control of COVID19, but they will do the minimum necessary to deal with the current short term problem. If the current problem is small (ie "they were close") than that doesn't provide much incentive to go the extra length and pay the price to get it completely under control. That's one of the many reasons why I think this virus will linger with us for a very long time. Because as a society we can't get our act together to do the necessary thing to take control of the spread. And if you think about it, if we had the will we could have stopped the spread of ANY virus, but who cares about that, better to think of excuses why the virus won't infect you (like in the case of AIDS, "hey I'm not gay" and Ebola "hey, I'm not living in third world Africa") than do the necessary responsible thing to help everyone that might be potentially infected.
> A sane response would challenge the claim that lockdowns are the answer with a simple question: where is the proof that the last one worked?
New Zealand has two large islands, and some smaller ones. Lockdown worked there. 5 million people, 3 Covid deaths since June. From yesterday to two weeks before yesterday there were 28 new cases.
Those sprung on from a mysterious outbreak that started August 11th near a facility that receives refrigerated and frozen foods. New Zealand went into lockdown and tracing and it has been contained so far.
Great Britain is also an island, but it prioritized differently. In New Zealand, social life is open right now, but also the economy is less constricted, because the disease has been contained.
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[ 885 ms ] story [ 1396 ms ] threadBritain has a functioning govt. And the Uk + Ireland are islands. Had they tried, they could probably have gotten local transmission down to zero over the summer. Scotland and Ireland almost did.
What did the UK do instead? Reopened bars and indoor dining, and actually subsidized indoor dining! (“Eat out to help out”). They encouraged vacations.
Totally myopic and now the country has the same hard choices as in the spring.
Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They were damned close.
I come from a part of eastern Canada where local transmission has been eliminated. People waited about six weeks longer to reopen and now life is mostly normal. Except for travel controls.
This plan was roundly rejected elsewhere and labelled as impossible despite the fact that it has worked in multiple places. Now look where things are.
Was six extra weeks of business closure hard? Yes. But it happened once. The rest of the west is set for rolling lockdowns and closures. Not to mention much sickness, fear, and health costs. How does that help businesses or the working class?
> Why Europe didn’t aim for zero I’ll never understand. They _were damned close_.
I think that's why, BECAUSE they were close to not that many cases at some point. You see, humans (and politicians by extension) do not want to pay any of the negative consequences of a proper plan to take control of COVID19, but they will do the minimum necessary to deal with the current short term problem. If the current problem is small (ie "they were close") than that doesn't provide much incentive to go the extra length and pay the price to get it completely under control. That's one of the many reasons why I think this virus will linger with us for a very long time. Because as a society we can't get our act together to do the necessary thing to take control of the spread. And if you think about it, if we had the will we could have stopped the spread of ANY virus, but who cares about that, better to think of excuses why the virus won't infect you (like in the case of AIDS, "hey I'm not gay" and Ebola "hey, I'm not living in third world Africa") than do the necessary responsible thing to help everyone that might be potentially infected.
So hopefully science will fix it for us.
New Zealand has two large islands, and some smaller ones. Lockdown worked there. 5 million people, 3 Covid deaths since June. From yesterday to two weeks before yesterday there were 28 new cases. Those sprung on from a mysterious outbreak that started August 11th near a facility that receives refrigerated and frozen foods. New Zealand went into lockdown and tracing and it has been contained so far.
Great Britain is also an island, but it prioritized differently. In New Zealand, social life is open right now, but also the economy is less constricted, because the disease has been contained.