Woohoo - more inconsistent and unscientific policies!
* Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned
__ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat.
* Amateur team sports are not allowed, but elite sport such as Premier League football can continue
__ 'Elite' athletes, as is the case for the rest of the 'elites', should not have to follow the same rules as the plebs.
* Outdoor sports venues - such as golf courses, tennis courts and outside gyms - must close
__ Yeah - let's take a game (golf) that's done outdoors, in groups of 4 or less, and ban it. Don't worry - you're allowed to walk around the exact same golf course for excercise (as that's one of the only reasons you can leave your home), but if you have to swing a club you'll catch COVID.
I agree with you on the football thing, although the players will be getting regular tests, and the sport generates a tonne of cash.
The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple.
Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest!
>The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple.
"Golf clubs can open but the club house have to stay shut"
Then you have to think of all the other sports and possible places people can gather and make rules about those too. My point was that the rules have to be simple otherwise people won't read them.
Limit the amouunt of pre-prepared alcohol that can be delivered to a house at one time. You shouldn't be an ondemand keg delivery at this point or delivering 2+ cases in one go.
Also part of the delivery portion of this is about supporting the pub/bar. Not the access to alcohol. (Otherwise you'd just go to the store)
Not sure if it’s really that common, but it’s a staple of Friday evenings at City firms if you have to stay late.
You order a meal via the corporate Deliveroo/Seamless etc., to the firm-paid limit and immediately call the restaurant and ask for beer of the same value to be delivered instead.
No - but lots of places (particularly pubs) had started doing takeaway alcohol last year in order to have _some_ sales, there was some general restriction-lifting to help with that kind of thing.
There's of course not any evidence that it's a meaningful contributor to infection, but lockdown is such a crude tool that it's going to hit it regardless.
All states should have done that in the first 2 weeks. It's irritating to see the bible belt/NC wait 9 freaking months to now allow for take away alcohol.
It feels like the governments are:
1. Trying to limit the enforcement and severity of actions or
2. They don't know what they're doing. (Which creates more resistance)
It does make sense imo to allow elite sports to continue while banning amateurs, there are relatively few elite players so the additional risk overall is low.
You can make the same argument for top level ministers. eg. "well it's fine for the PM and the cabinet to ignore lockdown directives because they're only 0.001% of the uk population"
It's still inconsistent, bad for PR, and puts the whole government into question.
I dislike sports, but I do see that making pro sports broadcasts continue could provide the entertainment needed for folks to be happier to stay inside their homes like they should.
I love the fact that they're open and televising the fact that no fans are there. That really stops people from trying to pressure venues from "sneaking in".
Why not let everyone else sports to stay healthy and strengthen their immune systems, as well as get outside (where it's warm enough) and get the vitamin D they need?
Why should people who get paid a million get special treatment over those who are barely making it an unemployed? Being able to shoot some hoops seems more valuable for the 20 year old's mental health than watching some rich top-of-their class play in am empty stadium with cardboard cutouts.
“Why not let everyone else sports to stay healthy and strengthen their immune systems, as well as get outside (where it's warm enough) and get the vitamin D they need?”
I’m all for letting people be outside freely by themselves and in isolated social groups. I’ve spent huge amounts of time exercising in parks in the sun outside during this thing for the reasons you mention.
Team sports where you get a bunch of unrelated people together in one place breathing hard and folks probably socializing after the game afterward seems more problematic.
It has little or nothing to do with risk. Professional athletes make extraordinary sums of money, and some percentage of that is given to the government via taxes. Amateur sports generates little to no money; therefore, the government doesn't allow it.
See also: here in California, churches/synagogues/temples are closed, while liquor stores and marijuana shops are considered "essential businesses". Film crews are allowed to operate in mass numbers outdoors, but not distanced patio dining.
"__ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat."
The problem isn't the take-away alcohol itself, the problem is what people do with it.
We routinely get people around our area (East London) who buy take-away beer - stand two meters away from the pub - and drink it with their friends. It promotes people spreading COVID.
The UK government aren't confident enough to actually curtail people's behaviour (eg mask wearing in public, fining people etc) that they stop the things that people inherently do.
I don't think it's a great policy, but it's a step in the right direction.
The science itself is all in the messaging and tone.. but they make it easy to get out of with "valid reasons". Stay home.
That's kind of (rolls eyes on pure practical sense) how Chicago is handling this.
Our liqour sales are banned after 9pm from stores, and bars are able to do carryout|outdoor (we have some Canadian spies that live here.. so outdoor dining is still a thing [It's 0C or below on average right now.. chill it's a joke]) until 11pm.
My best guess for the store liqour sales is that the southside used liqour stores as a bar and would congregate outside, also the limitation of store liquor sales limits people going to impromptu parties.
Behavior change is hard to do right, but it also can be changed in completely unrelated but minor inconvenced changes. (I.e. changing a process or labeling may be more effective than a control and punish model) It's also very difficult to communicate for free societies on why a restuarant or bar ban still needs to be in place when the black market succeeds [underground raves/parties etc]. (Sigh "studies that claim most of the transmission in a household vs bars" (well where did that household interact with a different household... ))
There isn't any science there, just conjecture from the government on how their restrictions will alter social behavior. It's rather mind blowing to me after seeing extremely well funded and massive projects like the war on drugs in the U.S. fail, to now where the government thinks it can successfully push society in the right direction with even more drastic measures.
This always gets me. Isn’t it obvious that alcohol consumption is a social activity? Not all of it, but to a large degree. Limiting the consumption seems logical. Of course, you can’t assess the impact of individual measures at the moment, as you need a controlled experiment and proper statistics. But is this measure really something to be that upset about?
Lots of "plans" seem logical and this is precisely why technocracy is a vexation on society.
Unintended consequences. The presumption of knowledge and control.
All of these elite presumptions are illusory and fundamentally hubristic.
You know why "limiting the consumption" of alcohol is a dumb suggestion? We have tons of evidence that it was a massive failure: Prohibition and the War on Drugs.
No matter how well-intended you are - it'll backfire and people will ignore it.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Millions of years of evolution have seared into their biology the instinct to be social.
The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Not only folly - but abuse.
But seriously, it's bizarre. The obdurance of so-called experts set on working against the grain of every human instinct, as though that's likely to maximize the success of their plans.
> The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly.
Do you really want to go down that road? Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? Didn’t think so. You see how folly your argument is?
> Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape?
This is non-sequitur.
A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV.
If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say.
This is why jail is jail. Isolation is unnatural. It's punishment. No one voluntary chooses this.
Individual’s comfort can’t be a number one priority in a times of crisis. Sitting at home in a digital age when video calling anyone in the world is absolutely free, it’s the least you can do. Also all the entertainment which is available nowadays. How hard can it be to make this sacrifice so that someone’s grandma doesn’t die?
> isolation is counter-intuitive to humans
20 million cities are counterintuitive, and so is math. We get by.
I’m not denying that what is asked from people is a huge sacrifice. But not the biggest sacrifice you can imagine. And it’s definitely manageable.
> How hard can it be to make this sacrifice so that someone’s grandma doesn’t die?
This is where things go wrong.
You're shaming people for feeling natural human instincts to socialize.
As though it's selfish to not want to be locked in your house indefinitely.
There is a striking resemblance here of the tactics used by abusers and emotional manipulators.
> But not the biggest sacrifice you can imagine. And it’s definitely manageable.
That's a completely presumptuous personal view - for a very large and underappreciated segment of the population, the ongoing lockdown measures to combat coronavirus are absolutely devastating.
>You're shaming people for feeling natural human instincts
There are many 'natural' human instincts that are harmful to society and are either strongly discouraged or outlawed (violence, drug abuse, overeating to name a few).
"Harmful to society" is a poor standard used to justify a lot of evil stuff. That standard once included homosexuality. It was the basis for eugenics. Also like I mentioned before - Prohibition. It's a standard that's ultimately subjective and self-deceiving.
You're arguing that we should outlaw something that's vital to human life. Social interaction.
Violence, on the other hand, is clearly not necessary or virtuous.
Isolation is a form of punishment and I hope you're not saying that we all must be punished for the greater good and any dissent is evil. That's borderline cultish.
Have you considered that these measures are _temporary_? If people shared the same ideas about sacrifice, the United States would've never prevailed in WWII. Personally, it seems like objections to basic preventive measures, such as wearing a mask, are more rooted in ego and entitlement. And that is often coupled with spurious ideas about government overreach (which, while sometimes valid, isn't exactly a cogent argument in the United States, where shared ideals on liberty and limited government are so deeply ingrained).
> Have you considered that these measures are _temporary_?
I will never consider this given the excesses and absolute indefensible failures of the emergency powers introduced in service of the Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/etc. wars. Nothing has been rolled back.
Emergency powers should never be treated as temporary given history.
> Personally, it seems like objections to basic preventive measures, such as wearing a mask, are more rooted in ego and entitlement
This is a diversion to minimize that the "preventive measures" have continuously failed and been extended. "2 weeks to stop the spread" have turned into multiple years. Practically every "enlightened" & "advanced" system of Europe that the US is compared to has failed. The most drastic measures in South America, likewise have failed. We are told to act like countries on the other side of the globe - it's laughably unrealistic and divorced from reality.
Say "it's just temporary" to someone months behind on rent and unemployed. It's shockingly insensitive and paternalistic. Honestly, it's despotic given the protracted, dire circumstances of anyone that's not stably employed.
I don't even oppose mask usage. If masks solved the issue (which clearly they don't), I'd be happy.
> Personally, it seems like objections to basic preventive measures, such as wearing a mask, are more rooted in ego and entitlement.
Entitlement? Entitlement is how to describe every comfy white collar worker that rolls out of bed and hops on Zoom, and then condescendingly and abusively berates everyone else that does not have that privilege.
> Emergency powers should never be treated as temporary given history
The TSA. Body Scanners. Removing your shoes (America only; it's the only country out of the 10+ I've flow through that forced you to still remove your shoes. Some people do it in other places out of habit, but no one else actually requires it).
> Entitlement? Entitlement is how to describe every comfy white collar worker that rolls out of bed and hops on Zoom, and then condescendingly and abusively berates everyone else that does not have that privilege
The vast majority of people on here are silicon valley types. They don't understand people are loosing their businesses, their lives, their savings and their minds. They've never been out to the country and seen farms or know people who grow food. They see all republicans as racist and the enemy. It's dissociative, sad and frightening.
> If masks solved the issue (which clearly they don't)
Thank you for having some sense. The numbers are really clear on mask usage. Zero correlation and no better than a coin flip. It has a high social cost too. People are berating others for wearing masks. It's created a new talisman, and ideology and religion. It's causing insane amounts of pollution and textile waste that will further damage our oceans. It's terrifying.
Thank you for saying what you have. I have a comfy job where I can work from home, but I have been in touch with an America and a world that is falling apart, yet also gripped by insane and unreasonable fear. This is a terrible time, for reasons many cannot truly grasp.
You’re acting as if every single blue collar worker lives alone. Don’t they have families they see every day? Also, living in a city and seeing hundreds of people every day is recent. I doubt there’s any natural drive for having such big social circles as we do now.
>Emergency powers should never be treated as temporary given history.
If this were true, why were the lockdowns in China (an unabashedly authoritarian country) temporary? People in Wuhan are going to nightclubs without masks today.
It has been 10 MONTHS!. 10 FUCKING MONTHS. This isn't temporary anymore. There is literally no end in sight. Canada, the UK, and parts of the UK have INCREASED restrictions. Everyone is saying, "Well they didn't lockdown hard enough the first time"
> You're arguing that we should outlaw something that's vital to human life. Social interaction.
You’re being a bit dramatic about this. People can still use zoom, have socially-distanced meetups on their lawn etc. That’s a big difference from isolation.
This is how an abuser talks. "Why do you care so much?"
Say that to the working class person whose livelihood depends on the continuity of public life.
The person months behind on rent and jobless.
Anyone contemplating suicide.
Millions of children deprived of close to a year and counting of in-person education at a crucial point of their development that will never come back.
People horrified to enter a hospital despite needing medical care.
> People horrified to enter a hospital despite needing medical care.
I have not heard of anyone who is ‘scared’ to go to the hospital. I have heard of many hospitals in coastal states being forced to turn away elective procedures due to lack of bed space (from covid cases).
Have you ever stopped to consider that, lockdown or not, people simply aren’t choosing to do the things they used to? There are no restrictions against travel, yet people aren’t taking as many vacations. Most states today have no restrictions on dining, yet restaurant revenues are down by half. The service and hospitality industries were going to take a hit from covid regardless of lockdowns.
Mandates will increase compliance and save more lives.
Sorry but your position contradicts itself and smacks of confirmation bias. If the US government really were systematically corrupt and authoritarian, why would they want to curtail economic activity? They would tell everyone not to worry about COVID and keep driving, eating out, shopping etc to maximize tax revenue and the availability of bribes.
I have read that many people believe outlandish conspiracy theories because humans have trouble accepting the reality that sometimes, bad things simply happen for no rational reason. It is easier for many to believe that a secret government cabal is conspiring to keep people in their homes than to accept that a deadly virus has infected millions of innocents and created massive global inconvenience.
> because humans have trouble accepting the reality that sometimes, bad things simply happen for no rational reason
I believe this and I think it applies to all the lockdowns and moral superiority stuff where people are shamed for not following NPIs that don't seem effective.
It's as though the pro-lockdown side can't accept that sometimes tragedy happens and we're relatively powerless to stop it. So, unable to accept that they point fingers to anyone around them. Who must we demonize? Hunt the witch!
They suppose there must be non-compliant people if the lockdowns aren't working. And so they fight the hidden enemy. As though if there's a minority of people not complying, that population wouldn't have been exhausted through infection after a year.
>It's as though the pro-lockdown side can't accept that sometimes tragedy happens and we're relatively powerless to stop it
There are multiple countries (in both northern and southern hemisphere, islands and mainlands) that have eliminated community transmission of covid. It is wrong to say we are powerless to stop it. It is indisputable that if you and your family stay home, you will not get COVID. Likewise, common sense dictates that more people will stay home if required to do so by their government.
You are trying to make the argument, absent data, that the economic and social/emotional impacts of 'stay at home' orders are worse than the economic and social/emotional impacts of uncontrolled viral infection and death.
> You are trying to make the argument, absent data, that the economic and social/emotional impacts of 'stay at home' orders are worse than the economic and social/emotional impacts of uncontrolled viral infection and death.
My argument has the proof of vast majority of countries that’ve failed to mitigate spread with high tradeoffs and costs to society.
If Europe ostensibly can’t manage it - how is the US expected, given the elevated opinion of Europe most people on the pro-lockdown side tend to presume?
Where’s the evidence that NPIs are effective?
You want ivory tower detachment and ignorance? Suggest America just “be Australia or China.”
It's hard to square your comment that there are "no restrictions against travel" with reality. These are just three examples I happen to know of off the top of my head. The remainder of the assertions in your post suffer from the same fundamental flaw.
Hawaii: The islands of Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Hawaii continue with the state’s pre-travel testing program. Travelers must have their negative test results prior to departing as an alternative to Hawaii’s mandatory 10-day quarantine.
Beginning December 2, Kauai is temporarily pausing participation in this pre-testing program. All incoming trans-pacific and inter-county travelers to Kauai will face a mandatory 10-day quarantine.
Chicago: Anyone traveling from a state on the Orange list is directed to obtain a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 72 hours prior to arrival in Chicago or quarantine for a 10-day period (or the duration of their time in Chicago, whichever is shorter). Anyone traveling from a state on the Red list must quarantine for a 10-day period or the duration of their time in Chicago, whichever is shorter. The Order is subject to the limited exemptions outlined in the ‘Exemptions tab’.
Massachusetts: All visitors entering Massachusetts, including returning residents, who do not meet an exemption, are required to:
Complete the Massachusetts Travel Form prior to arrival, unless you are visiting from a lower-risk state designated by the Department of Public Health.
Quarantine for 10 days or produce a negative COVID-19 test result that has been administered up to 72-hours prior to your arrival in Massachusetts.
If your COVID-19 test result has not been received prior to arrival, visitors, and residents must quarantine until they receive a negative test result.
Failure to comply may result in a $500 fine per day.
That’s three states out of 50 and Hawaii is the only one with any sort of enforcement. I travelled to NM (also subject to a 14 day quarantine). Zero enforcement, totally voluntary and business travel exempted.
Ignoring the obvious here that your original statement was there are “NO” travel restrictions, your reply is a no true Scotsman fallacy. There are clearly travel restrictions but you, and most other people, are not adhering to them. Just like the majority of lockdown rules. Maybe if people like you had followed the travel restrictions we wouldn’t be in our current position where you’re still arguing that curtailing fundamental freedoms is necessary?
If you don’t get a ticket, does that mean that no speed restrictions exist?
> Maybe if people like you had followed the travel restrictions
Excuse me, I was traveling for business. I complied with the regulations exactly as they are written.
You can complain about people ‘not following the rules’ all you want but it changes nothing. There are no meaningful travel restrictions enforced anywhere on the US mainland. Without enforcement, Americans do not and will not follow them.
Hawaii is the only state with actual enforcement and compliance.
You can’t protect “natural” when being in unnatural environments. Sure, if we go back to the population density of 1 person per 10-100 square kilometers... That would mean reducing world population by several orders of magnitude. But if we, as civilization, grow to billions and choose to live in mega cities - the way of life has to be adjusted. And again, we’ve evolved to live in a society, but nowhere near the present day population density. Here in Belgium you are allowed to see some people despite lockdown. You can also meet people outside, go for a jog with your mates. That’s as much social contact as people “require naturally”.
I truly am not trying to be insensitive, but didn't these restrictions only just barely begin back in March? It's difficult for me to see the causation.
I went back and found the e-mail. She said in it, "I was doing OK there until one of my Italian colleagues committed suicide as he couldn't take the lockdown. He was in his 20s..."
So sorry, not flatmate, workmate. If the lock-downs weren't the main cause, I'm sure they certainly didn't help.
Keep in mind Thomas Schäfer, a German minister of fiance, committed suicide by train in March as well.
Another person I know told me his daughter's best friend killed herself during the lockdowns as well, and that was during the fall.
And I'll say this too, if I was in my 20s right now, I'd be at very high risk for suicide. I've had a lot of years under me and am in a much better place right now. But if I was younger and had access to firearms like I did back then, I most likely would not be here.
What’s so terrible now? Just trying to understand. Reminds me the hysteria after Trump was elected. Sure, some people have legit mental issues. But the majority is just consumed by the meme.
You can measure it [0]. It has been measured. Contact tracing, where it has been done reliably has shown that a large amount of community transmission takes place at house parties where people have been drinking. You wouldn’t know that in the UK unfortunately because you’re never given any information beyond assurances that grit and determination will get together through.
I for 1 am very glad about this. I accept this is just personal experience, but between Christmas and New Year - having not seen our families to prevent the spread of COVID - my wife and I were rather indignant to find large groups of people gathering outside the pubs of Greenwich all serving "take away" alcohol.
If you want high compliance, the rules need to be perceived as fair and just. Telling people they can't have beer with their dinner is plainly frustrating.
Not to mention that people can just get their takeaway from the restaurant, and then walk next door to the corner store and go "food shopping" to pick up a 6 pack.
If there was evidence that drinking alcohol spreads covid, I would expect that to be a clear message from the government and for there to be consistent restrictions on alcohol. Instead, we get silly rules with silly workarounds.
On a tangential note, there's a clinical trial[1] currently underway for exploring the use of alcohol vapor inhalation (with aspirin) as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
Alcohol spreads COVID. Not exactly ... but it breaks down social barriers and can cause people to be careless. If we had banned or at least curtailed alcoholic sales I can guarantee you probably the numbers would be half what they are now. A big problem is that once you close pubs clubs and other outlets then people start having secret house parties and these are very hard to police. I guarantee you, that even the best intentioned host will have a super spreader event on their hands before long. It doesn’t take many - 10 even to churn the virus among themselves and then head off home to give it to whomever is there.
I’m really sorry that you feel your rights are being curtailed, but what we are living through is hopefully a once in a lifetime event that if we could have just knuckled down at the start and endured some discomfort we would be pretty much over it by now.
So much for that “blitz spirit” all we hear is moan moan moan ...
This is complete and total arbitrary nonsense. You're taking a conclusion and trying to walk back a path of logic to some type of justification.
Let's see this for what it is: arbitrary decisions that curtails the human rights of all human beings by politicians who are figuratively drunk with power. They are banning things for the common people while they leave their regions, have expensive $1k dinners for their political backers and ignoring all the rules they've imposed on the population. From Canada to California to the UK, we watch elected leaders ignore the bullshit rules they put on people, either because they think it doesn't apply to them or they've seen the numbers and know the risks are bullshit.
We're talking about a disease that's literally has over a 98% survival rate if you're under 55 (which causes people to spout more "long COVID" narrative media non-sense). 100 years from now, do you really think scholars will see 2020 and 2021 as anything other than the largest cast of mass hysteria to date?
Let's isolate the elderly and vulnerable, or anyone who wants to be isolated, and let the rest of the world evaluate their own risks again.
Sorry but this is derived from actual contact tracing (not the UK where they haven’t really bothered but a culturally similar neighbour) - but of course you’re so outraged that’s what matters more.
Can you post a link on the evidence for contact tracking in the UK and the data analysis please? I genuinely want to see it.
Edit: the poster updated the post with an article rather than adding a comment. It wasn't there when I commented. Also an article from The Atlantic isn't data analysis.
Hypocrisy of elected officials following measures doesn’t imply that the measures they’re imposing aren’t needed.
I agree there have been elements of mass hysteria in this thing, but at the moment we have real and present reasons for hysteria to be appropriate. The number of cases we have at once is overwhelming hospital capacity in many regions and all signs point to it getting much worse over the next month.
Please research PCR and the amplification cycles. Right now most tests are using over 40 cycles and it's causing a lot of false positives. Cases should never be the number to use, fatalities should (and even then many people get marked for COVID deaths because they test positive yet die of something unrelated).
The way PCR is being used is insane and a lot of the numbers are just plain misleading to increase the amount of fear.
Sure cases as a metric has been overemphasized and unnecessarily increases fear. But the fact that that metric isn’t ideally measured or presented shouldn’t take away from the fact that the metrics that are most critical like hospital capacity are getting to frightening levels right now .
We can get an upper bound on false positives from ONS surveys over the summer, by assuming all their positives were false (prevelance was low then). At https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... the ONS says "We know the specificity of our test must be very close to 100% as the low number of positive tests in our study means that specificity would be very high even if all positives were false. For example, in the most recent six-week period (31 July to 10 September), 159 of the 208,730 total samples tested positive. Even if all these positives were false, specificity would still be 99.92%." (The false positive rate would then be 100% - 99.92% = 0.08 %). The ONS prevelance surveys are processed at a couple of the Lighthouse Labs which also do the Pillar 2 testing in the UK.
Can you explain why "false positives" go down among vaccinated patients?
> fatalities should (and even then many people get marked for COVID deaths because they test positive yet die of something unrelated)
Evidence for "many"? We have a couple of metrics for UK deaths from COVID: deaths within 28 days of a positive test, and root cause / contributing causes ("of" vs "with") on death certificates. These are imperfect in both directions (for example, some patients who die spend more than 28 days in hospital with COVID, meaning the 28 day metric undercounts them) but agree that the UK has seen around 70000 deaths of COVID.
This reminds me of how the Massachusetts governor closed hair salons and golf courses ... between the hours of 9:30 pm and 5 am. I'm sure ladies getting their hair done at midnight were the real super spreaders /s.
Honestly, its not hard to see how government's hypocrisy and inconsistency fuels conspiracy theories. Another example is the Massachusetts mask mandate that explicitly requires masks when nobody is near you. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, that this is just to remove ambiguity and make enforcement easier. But its not hard to imagine the reaction of someone who is prone to tinfoil hatting when they are told they must always wear a mask outside, even if miles away from the nearest human.
Takeaway alcohol sales run a real risk of alcohol consumption on the streets in the neighborhood of alcohol sellers. That, in turn, can easily lead to loose interpretation of social distancing rules.
As to golf: if you allow that, why wouldn’t a group of four people be allowed to kick a football around? Tennis be allowed?
Also, part of lockdown is the prevention of people mixing over longer distances. A local outburst of COVID-19 is bad, but if the infected move home over tens of kilometers (as, I guess, is quite normal for golf), you’re asking for a much bigger problem.
Having said that, it is safe to assume the government is far from an expert on what are the risky things to do. Nobody is.
One of the things that irritates me most is that Boris portrays the variant as a kind random piece of bad luck. Don't know much about genetics, but I guess such a variant becomes more likely when there are many infections (more of the virus to mutate), and the strategy has consistently been to run things "hot" and tolerate high case counts.
Any state on the planet will violently hinder their people from doing certain things, that one of the jobs of most police forces. Often it's to protect the rights of other 'free people' in the population.
Like my body is my property are the bodies of others also property of theirs, and I have no right to violate their property right. It is instead right to proportionally defend rightfully owned property.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
There is no reason stated. There is no exception for "virus." Human rights laws were not written for fair weather. They were written for crisis and disaster.
Our natural rights are God-given and true since all men are equal children of creation, and thus no man has the right to stand above any other and deny them their right to speech or to gather.
I am the property of myself and have the sole right of ownership - not anyone employed by the state.
This was worded well by the writers of the American constitution, but the idea is as old as time - it’s the idea of universalist ethics.
By that logic when the UK should have done nothing as Germany Invaded Poland and France. And then nothing as German troops landed.
The real fact is people that argue and resist taking action against Covid because 'mah freedumbs' are seriously undermining democratic governments. Basically making authoritarian governments point for them.
Lots of politicians are refusing to get the vaccine. Something about waiting their turn. That seriously undermines democratic governments in a pandemic.
I don't understand mocking freedoms. There are many people in nursing homes that want to see their families but can't. They are angry because the caretakers can see their families but they can't. Will you mock them too?
To put it simply, the UK government is continuing a decade of placing their and their friends' financial interests ahead of the interests of the country. Many own properties that are at risk when nobody's going to work, or are indebted to party donors who do. The idea is to put up with people dying (after all, austerity caused the deaths of over 100,000 people in the UK, and that was apparently acceptable) as long as the economy keeps going. Of course this will fail in the long term, and the result will be a collapsed economy and a lot of dead people, but long term thinking has never been a requirement to be a Conservative government.
It took Victoria, Melbourne over three months of a hard lockdown to get the numbers to Zero.
If you compare some of the attitudes in both policing and policy to Australia and the response between parties you'll understand why the UK can never get there.
Consider this:
- Victoria handed out 20K~ fines by August 26 [1]
- England & Wales handed out 25K~ fines between 27 March and 16 November [2]
- The UK has 120K~ police officers [3]
- Victoria has 21K~ police officers [4]
An Australian State which has only 10%~ of England's population (6M people vs 55M) and only 17% of England's Police Force size managed to get 20K~ fines by August.
The attitude there-in lies down to effective policing and policies.
Eg Melbourne made it a mandatory requirement to wear face masks in public - I don't think the UK could get close to that. Time will tell.
Australia also forecasts that it will increase its Federal debt by AUD$500 billion due to the pandemic - AUD$20,000 per person.
Meanwhile aged care deaths in the most heavily affected state, Victoria, are actually down 1,000 YoY. Its almost certain that the majority of the COVID deaths that did occur in Melbourne were with COVID - ie. people of advanced age and serious existing health conditions who would have died around this time anyway.
My comments weren't about Australian financials; however the lockdown isn't the only contributor
- The political fallout between China and Australia is worsening, the long term ramifications don't look good. This isn't attributibal to the lockdown.
- Australia's short term economy is currently recovering well after lockdown [1]
It doesn’t seem self evident to me that we can afford the economic hit. Despite the US being “the richest country in the world” we run massive deficits and have a massive debt. I suspect Euro nations are similar. There are known and unknown economic consequences to just borrowing to pay for a lockdown on top of what we already charge on the card.
Can someone elaborate on the differences between the numbers reported by the gov.uk website NOIDS[1] (notifications of infectious diseases) versus the numbers reported another gov.uk website[2] ? Looking at NOIDS's weekly reported COVID-19 cases from Week 52[3], I only see 85 new COVID-19 cases. Whereas when I look at the coronavirus.data.gov.uk website, the numbers soar and continue shoot through the roof.
What's going here? What's the NOIDS UK government website even reporting and why are the numbers significantly lower?
NOIDS is an outbreak detection program. The idea is if a primary care doctor suspects someone has something important and unexpected, like Cholera or Polio, they can let the disease control authorities know so they they can be on the lookout for outbreaks. It's an early warning system.
During a giant epidemic, no primary care doctor is detecting a new covid outbreak and reporting that up the chain as though thats new information - not when people are told to get tested outside primary
care and aren't allowed to come into primary care with covid symptoms and tens of thousands are testing positive each day and have known covid cases. There's just no reason to do that. So NOIDS numbers are meaningless for Covid. But if covid recedes, then the system is in place for detecting future outbreaks.
In the UK, 95% of the deaths are people over 60. There are more deaths for people over 90 than under 70.
When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush.
We know that lockdowns are too blunt an instrument which is why most of Europe is having to engage in ever more draconian measures. We are mortgaging our future here, without questioning the cost.
We don't need more of the same. It's not a question of willpower. It's a question of approach, and currently nobody is asking the hard questions.
EDIT It seems downvote brigade has arrived to ensure that any contrarian opinion is snuffed out. No rebuttal with data, just downvotes.
No they aren't. NHS occupancy in 2020 was lower than in 2019. We are currently 50% below our peak ventilator usage in April and the 7 day trend is very flat.
This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines.
EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figures certainly don't show it.
Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines.
Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now.
As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now.
Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.
> Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now.
Yeah I know that, my best mates girlfriend is a doctor. But that's not at all proof of anything. There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture. I have the utmost respect for our NHS heroes but front line personnel are the last people you should ask. They have been put through hell over the past year and if I were in their shoes I would be ready to keel over. And that's exactly why these individuals shouldn't be calling the shots...they're just seeing one part of the puzzle.
So if the foot soldier in the trench keeps complaining that they don't have enough bullets, and saying that without bullets they can't fight and will loose the battle, they shouldn't be listened to?
I think they are exactly the ones we should be listening to.
Do you realise that in two successive comments, you have literally just claimed that hospitals are not really filling up, then claimed that reports from front-line staff working in those hospitals don't prove anything?
There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture.
A curious metaphor. There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
> Do you realise that in two successive comments, you have literally just claimed that hospitals are not really filling up, then claimed that reports from front-line staff working in those hospitals don't prove anything?
Um, what? That's exactly right. Hospitals are not filling up. The NHS own data shows this. The fact that doctors think the hospitals are filling up is irrelevant. People's estimates of things are notoriously incorrect, especially when they are under pressure. I'm not sure what you've taken issue with.
Are you disputing the NHS data that hospitals are not filling up?
> There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
Right, Sergents run the implementation, not the planning. What we are talking about is the planning. But the bigger issue with this logic is that this isn't a medical plan. It's a social one. The people who should develop a strategy around a global pandemic are not the same people who intubate the casualties of said pandemic. It's like asking a car mechanic how we should build safer roads...they're just not the same thing.
It's easy to say something is bad. It's more difficult to say what, specifically, would be better.
What exactly would "better managed" look like, in your opinion, and what evidence do you have that your version of events would result in better outcomes than the lockdown measures that have been used?
I'm not sure your conclusion logically follows from the evidence, but even if it did, you still haven't answered the big questions your position raises. If you think what they're doing at the moment is wrong, what specifically do you think they should be doing instead and why do you think your alternative strategy would have better outcomes?
From the data we know that for vast majority of people who get infected it will be either asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms and the serious case/death is skewed towards the elderly.
Lockdown cause harm.
The virus cause harm.
More people suffer from lockdown than the virus.
At the minimum doing nothing different than the government already done in the past would lead better outcome than what we currently have.
If you want to do something, then there are many ways that are not lockdown, that can be done such as:
- increasing healthcare capacity/funding when needed
- accelerate development of better treatment
- accelerate vaccine development
- do not test everyone, so much wasted resource spent on this.
- media campaign to educate people about the actual risk of covid
- increase campaign on exercise, healthy diet, outdoor activities.
That's pretty much what I would do if I'm in power.
So you're proposing a natural selection strategy that would, on the evidence so far, probably kill around 1 million people in this country alone and possibly cause long-term health consequences that we don't fully understand yet for millions more who get the virus but don't die of it?
And that's still making the implicit assumption that the greater number of people getting the virus and therefore greater number of opportunities for new mutations to develop don't make things any worse, for example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far.
And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone who does get the virus in your scenario, and that care for others with serious conditions is not compromised causing further suffering and loss of life.
I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
>So you're proposing a natural selection strategy that would
I didn't say that, I listed multiple measure that can be taken.
What I'm saying is, if for some reason the government refuse/unable to do those, at the minimum no lockdown is better.
>on the evidence so far, probably kill around 1 million people
1 million out of how many ? How many million people who going to suffer from lockdown?
>that we don't fully understand yet
Right, its not fully understood yet, so its not a justification to implement a measure that is harmful for million of people such as lockdown.
>or example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far
New mutation generally evolve into something that spread more easily but less deadly.
>And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone
I never made assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone.
>I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
I acknowledge that everybody has their own preference, if you like to live in the place with lockdown then to each their own. I'm just trying my best to everybody people I know. If I can choose I would much much prefer to live where the government handling this without lockdown. I ready to move to place with less lockdown, if the government in my place decided to increase the lockdown.
That being said I think each of us lives in their own preferable place is probably only thing that going to work for both of us.
Meanwhile less than 400 people under age 50 have died with/of COVID in the UK.
The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention.
Meanwhile in Sweden - without hard lockdown - deaths are up only 3.2% above 2018, and even then explained by mortality shifting from 2019 and 2021.
Even Ukraine without hard lockdown over Winter has had far fewer deaths per Capita than the UK and has a much more rudimentary healthcare system.
Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
> The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention
I was saying this at the start of the pandemic. The UK is approaching US -levels of obesity, but now we have "fat shaming" whereby any mention of overweight people being unhealthy is socially unacceptable; and showing skinny people in adverts on the London Undergound causes "offence". I wonder if this particular world-view will reverse in the coming years?
That 400 number seems off to me. Without more information on where you've pulled that number, what I can find is that there's ~74.7k deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death cert in England and Whales since January last year. They didn't seem to really start counting that until March, until that point they were just classified as respiratory diseases.
> Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
This could easily be a reversed causality, that deaths drive lockdowns... which, on the surface seems to make sense as high deaths seem to force politicians to lockdown (either for reality or perception).
> The UK Government is arresting people who film empty hospitals:
The police arrested one person who walked, mask-less, though quiet public areas of a busy hospital (and was abusive when challenged by hospital workers). The vital need to spread conspiracy theories on Facebook isn't one of the "reasonable excuses" for leaving your house.
Except they are not, vast majority of people infected with covid do not require hospitalization.
If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. The solution is to fix and improve it, not lockdown.
If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place.
Any health system has finite resources available: facilities, equipment, trained staff, the money to pay for all of it, etc.
If the NHS had already been set up to handle this once-in-a-century black swan event better, it would have been less effective at handling other conditions that have affected patients in the more than a century since the last outbreak of similar severity.
I haven't been impressed by how our national government has handled this situation, but if you stop and think about what's happened in the past year or so, it's actually pretty amazing how quickly and effectively our NHS staff, scientific community and others playing supporting roles in our society have adapted. They are fixing and improving our healthcare system, and they're doing it right before our eyes in real time.
Lockdowns trade away the life, health, mental health, education, and social development of children and young people for the safety of less than 1% of the population that are either aged or unhealthy as it is, and who can be protected in other ways.
And even mentioning this cost, which is becoming quite extreme (look at youth suicidality numbers, and childhood depression rates), causes you to be accused of not caring about elderly people.
The devastation that Covid lockdowns have caused will last far longer than the disease itself.
Considering the vast number of excess deaths of old but healthy people and the human cost of the people who continue to show symptoms months after initial infection, I would say your calculations are just wrong.
I'm not sure you understand how excess mortality works. Excess mortality right now during the winter period is higher...it always is. And 13% is not panic numbers.
Would you be surprised to learn that the 17/18 flu season resulted in more excess deaths than we are having right now? Surely you must have been freaking out then as well advocating for national lockdowns...right?
No, it was 13% higher overall in England during 2020 compared to the 5-year average.
Your comparison with the '17 flu season is, honestly, stupid, and demonstrates your lack of reasoning on this. C'mon: there _wasn't_ a lockdown, and here despite a tremendous lockdown and a long way to go before herd immunity the situation is dire.
I think your point is that life and health are being traded is not the case - since these measures are to keep people alive and healthy. I agree there is some cost but let's not get hyperbolic.
Gyms and organized sports are closed. Most people are living sedentary lives. Activities that young children rely on for physical development and exercise are non existent. Many children haven't socialized with someone their age in almost a year. Children are unable to focus on school and are being under-educated. Depression rates amongst school age children have skyrocketed.
It is not hyperbolic to say that health and mental health is being traded away.
My family's experience is the exact opposite of what you describe. I've never been healthier because most of last year I had time to go for daily exercise instead of sitting in a car commuting. I took my young daughter out with me a lot of the time. My wife also took advantage of the daily outings. Our mental health is probably better than it has ever been because we get to spend more time with each other rather than with a bunch of guys in the office.
Education wise, my wife has used the opportunity to dip her toes into teaching - which is something she always wanted to try. I realise not everyone wants to be a teacher, but you never know.
My experience is the exact opposite of what you describe. I've experienced depression and anxiety for the first time in my life, due to most fun things in my life disappearing overnight (due to mainly involving socialization). The future is bleak. I've gotten pretty decent at guitar though. That doesn't replace seeing friends though unfortunately.
I'm very sorry to hear that - I'm not sure I can offer much in the way of improving your outlook. I'm just focusing on the vaccine and the hope that provides.
To change the subject slightly: Would you describe yourself as an extrovert or introvert?
As an introvert I suppose I thrive on my own / with few people around me. I wonder if extroverts suffer more mental anquish when forced into isolation?
Everybody is asking the hard questions and the hard answer is that it is downright impossible to isolate the most vulnerable from the general population. Tried and attempted in multiple places; turns out you only need one nurse, one doctor, one caretaker, one young kid in a large household to infect those people.
Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true.
> Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
The hardest question is whether or not this is worth it, and nobody is asking that because politicians want to get reelected.
You are missing the point entirely. Virology experts are not the people who should be making these decisions. It's not as if covid response is free, but they aren't tasked with consdering the costs. They aren't tasked with finding out what the right amount of death is. That's the unfortunate reality and this is what the great leaders throughout history have all understood: there are no good decisions in times like this, merely least worst decisions.
Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic measures...
> I'm always surspised that we're still arguing about this.
Ignoring the fact that Belgium is one of the worst affected countries, I'm not even sure what you're arguing? Yes, covid is bad and yes it kills people. Did people in Belgium die who otherwise wouldn't have? Yes. Can we move on to the real issue?
> If you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually, and no sane person wants to see that happen.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane) I'm very unclear where I suggested we shouldn't get a handle on it. Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed? What is this? You're just throwing up charts an screaming about how bad covid is. We already know this.
Ignoring the fact that Belgium is one of the worst affected countries, I'm not even sure what you're arguing?
Belgium is the prototype for what would happen elsewhere if you're just a bit less successful at getting a handle on the pandemic.
Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be arguing for a lessening of restrictions for the general public, right now. Here in Germany, there already are a few regions where some hospitals are close to capacity, and modelling suggests that without continued restictions, the health care system might get overwhelmed by March.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane)
I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
> I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
Ok, you're wrong. And worst of all, you've decided that anyone who doesn't share your exact opinion is insane. No wonder you've got it so wrong, you've cut yourself off from any real discussion.
What I argued was that lockdowns don't work. We have done serious lockdowns across the world, and in the best case all the do is buy a little time. In the worst case, they do nothing. The US printed $4T in 2020...do you really not believe that with that money, we could have a devised a better approach that put tremendous resources into isolating the vulnerable population and accepting the stunningly low risk to the rest of the population?
It's amazing to me that people on HN, a site dedicated to the constant advancement of the human condition, looks at a failed strategy concocted during panic and says "yeah, that's as good as it gets and can't be improved".
Jesus, when it comes to covid all I hear are people asking for faster horses.
Depends on which studies you trust. I've read a few, and my conclusion back then was that they do work. However, I've not kept up with the debate once I came to that conclusion, so maybe I shouldn't have phrased things quite as strongly as I did. If you have a recommendation for a single study that makes a particularly strong case against lockdowns, feel free to link it.
Looking for more recent results just now, I found [1], analyzing the differences in response of US states. It seems to suggests that as a general rule, the stronger the restrictions, the smaller the case growth, which would have been my null hypothesis anyway. Cf. https://i.imgur.com/kLfSs6W.png
I do agree that we do not yet know the effectiveness of any particular measure. It would be nice if we knew better, but experimenting with extinguishing agents while your house is on fire is too risky for my taste.
That’s probably because the moment someone looks at it objectively someone posts a headline along the lines of ”8 year old dies of covid” or ”Tory MP says N is an acceptable death count”. Both are useless headlines as quoted but the entire political system is a shit media popularity contest and literally the only objective is to come out looking less bad than thy neighbour.
So the hard questions are never asked for which we sacrifice a good chunk of our population to dwindling cancer care, mental health issues and economic decline. Those scandals can be written off statistically by the next lot.
And yes I’ve had it. And yes I’ve lost three relatives to it. And quite frankly they were all circling the drain already.
It's unclear how cancer and mental health patients would be any better off with less sacrifices, that would lead to the health care system being more overwhelmed, not less.
I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference.
I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on.
These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital.
The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.
All of that is bad, but I don't think avoiding lockdown or other measures would help with it. The images in the media of people dying in the street outside hospitals would just lead to more social/political pressure to deprioritise those cancer patients.
If hospitals are full, then cancel paitents won't be diagnosed.
Had we locked down 2 weeks ago when SAGE said "Lock down now or else!" we'd have fewer people in hospital and more beds for preventative cancer surgery.
Sure, you could go round with a flamethrower burning anyone over the age of 70 for using precious resources just so you could have the pub open for a few more days. Is that your solution?
If you get a bad dose and you can’t get a respirator you’re in big trouble. Guess what happens when there are so many sick that respirators run out. What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. Do you need a picture drawn for you or something?
Brilliant logic there. And if I cross the street, I might get hit by a bus. Let's ban cars.
You seem to be struggling that this is a hugely complex situation that might call for slightly more sophisticated logic than you're apparently capable of.
> What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms?
Um wow tough one. Maybe prioritize severe cases like we have been doing for the past 9 months which has worked so well that the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used...
> We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning.
I'm sorry, what are you suggesting? Ultimately marginal deaths is what this is all about. That's ultimately why hospital capacity matters.
> "We are already 'diluting' our skilled ICU nursing staff with less-well-trained volunteers."
> As well as staffing, some have argued there is just not the equipment available to treat the sickest patients
> "In some there are not even appropriate toilet facilities. They were built in a rush because we were desperate."
Based on that info, my guess is these hospitals will only be used as a very last resort, possibly staffed with vets or NHS staff moved from elsewhere in the country for a short period... This is not a scenario that we should encourage or count on.
It’s the economy, stupid. All you guys trying to find excuses to keep on going as normal because “the economy” are engaged in myopic, short-termist thinking. If the health service is smashed and nobody can do anything because the rate of infection is out of control then that ultimately destroys the economy. You have to see the big picture. How long will it be and how much evidence do we have to see before you will just pipe down and get with the program. This is all about the economy, for everybody, not just those of us who can work at home cosily ensconced in our comfortable homes.
This [1] is a useful summary of statistics comparing the current situation to that of Spring and earlier years. It’s interesting to see that the total number of hospitalised people and deaths are broadly in line with previous years, but the portion tagged as COVID is increasing. There’s lots of discussion around the issues with PCR testing (e.g. picking up old virus fragments & false positives). Difficult to know what to believe but there seems to be a lack of studies/data to back up the accuracy, and the NHS have recently switched to using Lateral Flow devices for regular staff testing due to the volume of asymptomatic staff being require to isolate.
> When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush.
We have been. That's why the vaccine is going out to them first.
We have too many people in hospital. Even if all spreading stopped right this second, the number of people going into hospital will continue to increase for another 2 weeks. This is the busiest time of year for hospitals, and we already have more covid paitents than we did in April.
If my child needs an ICU bed, I want one available, I don't want it filled with 80 year old covid patients.
Everything seems so last minute and ad hoc with this Conservative government. Their announcement of another level 5 lockdown (which hadn't existed until today) and the u-turn on school closures makes it clear they are simply making things up as they go along.
The goverment's level of incompetence is simply off the scale. How has this nasty, rotten government gotten away with some much? (No doubt helped by our nasty right-wing press.)
How would it work otherwise? The lockdowns are announced when they happen. What's the alternative? Announcing them weeks before they go into force? Then people would be up in arms the nasty Tory government are delaying the lockdowns.
They are "making things up as they go along" or as it's more charitably known, reacting to events.
Blaming it on Conservative government and “nasty” right wing press might make you feel better, but there is no reason to believe you’d get better outcomes if someone else was pulling the strings. Sure, UK government’s response to covid has been stupid, inconsistent and making things up as they went along, but the same is true about government response to covid almost everywhere else.
That’s right, nobody took it seriously. I remember my biology professors at the university joking about COVID in March: “Anyone came from Italy recently? Hahaha”. That was surreal.
I agree. It's a power grab and security theater. It's like the TSA at airports. Let's show we're doing something for the people who keep screaming at the government to do something. It's like trying to stop a hurricane or an asteroid impact. Everything is for show and most of it is just going to make things worse.
Hopefully the two vaccines currently being rolled out in the U.S. and Europe will largely eliminate the need for future lockdowns.
Once the most vulnerable populations are immune, it's just a matter of weeks or months before herd immunity among the general population is achieved and life can pretty much go back to normal.
Maybe in a year or so... There was another HN discussion on production capabilities, tldr: distribution and production takes a long time. Until then, there’s no way other than lockdown. I doubt contact tracing is going to get better, at least here in the EU.
Sadly the timescales are looking more like 1-2 _years_. That's before we get to anti-vaxers and there'll be a lot (there will also be plenty of side-effect cases - due to the sheer number of people being vaccinated at once, not because it's not safe!)
Even with a vaccine this virus will not go away for at least 10 years. It took 185 years to eradicate SmallPox (mostly from the WHO push of 20 years in the 60s/70s). Vaccine manufactures are claiming 95% efficacy, but that's honestly not a comforting number. It leaves lots of room and since Challenge trials are unethical (they shouldn't be, but they are) we don't know how accurate that number really is.
We still haven't eradicated Polio. This virus may be with us for another 100 years honestly. The next generation will grow up with it and likely won't be affected at all by it. Who knows, maybe the common cold Rhino and Coronaviruses killed millions in human pre-history and now they just give us the sniffles.
Uncountable seeds of friendship and love never take root, due to meeting people being banned. Untold numbers of ideas and plans never made between entrepreneurs. All due to people with power over government arms or mass media being caught up in a mass hysteria. Governments will print money Weimar-style to fund their debts and liabilities in the 2020s, as they kill commerce and free life.
In my country we were spared from lockdowns or restrictions until recently - and compared to how friends in Germany, Hungary, Denmark, etc live it’s such a relief. Still no more people have died here last year than on average - 90k deaths/year as usual [0] [1]
By closing businesses and shutting down the means of people to provide for themselves, governments are also forcing people to depend on handouts. Printing money without increasing value will not last. It has already damaged our economy and made us dependent on states that have not shutdown (some with terrible human rights violations like the CCP government).
It should be clear it's a means of control, used as an excuse by World Economics Form to continue with their plans for debt reset (only for certain people of course; Bezos and Gates won't have their wealth affected to devalued, just everyone under a certain income range).
I agree. This is insane and it bothers me few people on HN see it as such. There is no room for discussion on this forum for the true weight and reality of what we are seeing unfold.
The citations do not support what you say. Citation [0] says only that excess mortality in specifically the third quarter of 2020 was not higher than previous years. It says nothing about the excess deaths for all of 2020.
Citation [1] is data for 2019, before COVID-19.
Why did you cite these articles and pretend they say something they don't?
In [0] it states that 2020 is an average year in deaths, but only writes exact numbers for different quarters. In [1] it shows averages for the previous years in numbers summing while years up.
I’m getting HTTP error 500 (iOS safari from a Swedish domestic IP) when going to the statistics database - idk if it’s just me or if they deployed something buggy recently. Can therefore only find articles atm, but they are still from the government statistics bureau source.
The first paragraph of [0] says “Den ökande spridningen av coronaviruset i samhället syns ännu inte i antalet dödsfall i Sverige, visar preliminär statistik från SCB” which is English is “The growing spread of Coronavirus in the community is not yet showing any change in the number of deaths in Sweden, shows preliminary statistics from the (government) central bureau of statistics” and I think that states it rather clear.
I do believe you argue in good faith though and welcome corrections - although I still believe in principle it is not right to hinder free people from living free.
> In [0] it states that 2020 is an average year in deaths
It does not.
> In [1] it shows averages for the previous years in numbers summing while years up.
This still has no relation to deaths in the year 2020. You cannot tell anything about deaths caused by coronavirus from data that only goes up to 2019.
> "The growing spread of Coronavirus in the community is not year showed any change in the number of deaths in Sweden"
My translation is "The increasing spread of the coronavirus in society is not yet visible in the number of deaths in Sweden", meaning, "there may be more coronavirus cases than we can tell from just looking at deaths". A significantly different meaning to "coronavirus did not cause any change in number of deaths", which is in any case flatly contradicted by the same article which describes increases in excess deaths in the second quarter.
For what it's worth, I am willing to believe that despite the massive increase in excess deaths in the second quarter, it could be offset by reductions in excess deaths in other quarters. So if you do have data that specifically compares excess deaths for the last few years feel free to share it. Currently you haven't got anything to support your statement.
Is the part we are disagreeing about what “not _yet_ showing any change” means? I doubt hospitals have ten thousand deaths which they procrastinated reporting.
More likely the author meant that November and December is not yet counted, and therefore must add the “yet” to the sentence.
As you say, [0] states that a slightly larger than average number of deaths occurred during Q2, and a smaller number during Q3. It may be a tragedy to die in spring and not in fall, and miss one last summer. Please keep in mind though that the claim you’re responding to was that 2020 the year didn’t see a significant increase in deaths - it was a very average year to die as a Swede.
> Is the part we are disagreeing about what “not _yet_ showing any change” means?
No, it's the meaning of the entire statement. Your translation means "coronavirus did not result in an increase in deaths in 2020", whereas my translation means "the spread of coronavirus may be wider than the number of excess deaths in 2020 indicates". The meaning is wholly different, it is saying something orthogonal to the point you want to make. It says nothing about whether the number of excess deaths is higher or lower than usual, just that you cannot take the number of excess deaths and determine the spread of coronavirus from it.
> Please keep in mind though that the claim you’re responding to was that 2020 the year didn’t see a significant increase in deaths - it was a very average year to die as a Swede.
I am keeping this in mind because I'm trying to point out to you that you have no data for excess deaths in 2020 so you cannot make this claim.
> Your translation means "coronavirus did not result in an increase in deaths in 2020"
That’s simply a lie - you are deliberately taking the “yet” out and replacing “showing” with “result”, which indicates total certainty, from my translation. I am not editing comments earlier in this thread FYI, you know I translated it correctly. “Ännu” means “yet” and “visar” means “showing/shows”. I encourage non-Scandinavians to Deepl translate it; language barriers don’t exist in our age due to machine translation.
Difficult to see much excess death in the UK in the past few months beyond levels seen in the 2018 and 2017 flu seasons.
New lockdowns also seem to be coordinated across the global right now, independent of local conditions. This absolutely seems like a coordinated global action to achieve some kind of strategic aim.
> Difficult to see much excess death in the UK in the past few months beyond levels seen in the 2018 and 2017 flu seasons.
Excess mortality is only just starting to creep back up. It's easy to see that UK excess deaths peaked in early April at a weekly rate nearly 4 times that of the highest pre-2020 peak (2018-01). Ideally, we'd avoid a repeat of that.
> This absolutely seems like a coordinated global action to achieve some kind of strategic aim.
Could said aim by any chance be to avoid running out of hospital beds?
I live in Warwickshire - it's pretty unusual to see people not wearing masks. I even see them wearing them on my walks in the countryside (when they are on their own!). The only people I have see who have refused are some of the mums at my kid's school during dropoff/pickup.
Would be interesting to understand why regions differ so much on this.
That masks are scientifically shown to do anything. They are more superstition at this point. You can look at numbers between regions with high mask usage and low mask usage and there's literally no correlation.
Meanwhile they are contributing massive amounts of plastic waste, textile waste, and provide a placebo while also providing alienation between individuals.
The larger factor that correlates is population density. Low population areas around the US rarely impose mass mandates and they also don't have high numbers.
Lastly, hypothesis: people who are convinced of the merits of a masks are also likely to murder the people in the other room in the Stanly Milgram experiments.
There’s debate on how much masks reduce spread, and obviously a lot of variation in effectiveness given wildly different materials and design for masks that are not designed to be protective. But I’ve never heard of any serious scientific debate about their helping to some reasonable degree. With possibly high benefits and very low cost(in dollars and in freedom as compared to other measures) wearing masks while indoors in public seem like a no brainer.
There are probably issues with how much people obsess over them though. I feel like people get a false sense of protection. People tend to stand right next to you in line when masks are required rather than keeping some distance!
The costs are high. Estimates show millions, if not over a billion, of these things will make their way into oceans. That's massive environmental damage:
They have a high social cost. They are causing fear and adding stigma. People are judging one another for mask usage out of pure religion reasoning. If they are not very effective, we've watched State mandates around the world cause a new ideological divide between people. pro-Mask people literally have voiced threats of violence against those who do not see their benefit.
They hide our facial expressions and our primary way of seeing each other. Long before COVID, medical masks were used at Gitmo as one of the many means of dehumanization and torture:
Human rights groups have long been critical of the full Burqa as a way to dehumanize women. There is a psychological effect of not being able to see people's faces, and therefor not seeing them as human.
There are people who have PTSD from trauma, rape or sexual abuse who can not wear a mask without panic attacks. I know such people who cannot go into stores or restaurants and must order everything online. There are exceptions in the law, but most stores will not allow of it and the shame of walking around in a store without a mask where 99% of people do also induces panic.
Masks have a cost. It is not low. It is not near zero. It is much higher than you think it is.
The fact that you cannot see any of these problems or understand how they are fracturing people and groups all around the world is part of the problem itself. These are all highly legitimate concerns you just dismiss with a whimsical "that's stupid."
People who just accept masks and advocate for them immediately without question are also very likely to murder the person in the other room in the Stanley Milgram experiments. That should concern you and everybody.
No, I have personally seen each and every problem, and most everyone has seen them prima facie, and it boggles my mind how even so there can be a value judgement against masks.
This entire post is a disgusting and ridiculous way to to rationalize the selfish behavior of not wearing a mask in public. There is no reasonable person that would think these things in isolation. I feel gross after reading this nonsense.
Knowing that someone would try this hard to equate genuine travesties with putting fabric over your mouth and nose to protect others to advance some separate agenda when more than 1 out of every 1000 people in the US is already dead from covid is a grave disappointment.
Agree that they certainly do have a cost. I personally HATE them and am quite annoyed that people pretend the issues they cause don’t exist. They mess up my ability to read and to telegraph social cues, make it difficult for people that read lips to aid poor hearing, and constantly fog my glasses. And I still wear them when indoors in public like I believe everyone should!
But what I said which you trimmed off was that they are low cost _relative to other measures_. People wearing masks well is likely to reduce the need to use far more onerous measures like the lockdowns or having to decide who receives hospital care and who doesn’t.
230 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] thread* Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned
__ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat.
* Amateur team sports are not allowed, but elite sport such as Premier League football can continue
__ 'Elite' athletes, as is the case for the rest of the 'elites', should not have to follow the same rules as the plebs.
* Outdoor sports venues - such as golf courses, tennis courts and outside gyms - must close
__ Yeah - let's take a game (golf) that's done outdoors, in groups of 4 or less, and ban it. Don't worry - you're allowed to walk around the exact same golf course for excercise (as that's one of the only reasons you can leave your home), but if you have to swing a club you'll catch COVID.
The rest of it make sense to me. Your example of golf: the sport includes the whole social aspect (the golf club rooms etc). Remember they have to keep the rules simple.
Also allowing people to order alcohol to be delivered within the hour probably isn't the smartest!
closing the clubhouse is hard?
"Golf clubs can open but the club house have to stay shut"
Then you have to think of all the other sports and possible places people can gather and make rules about those too. My point was that the rules have to be simple otherwise people won't read them.
Why? What is the difference vs someone who keeps a quantity on alcohol in their house (other than being exorbitantly more expensive)?
Why are people confused about this?
Alcohol delivery to a house is fine unless you're assuming people are still having parties.
Also part of the delivery portion of this is about supporting the pub/bar. Not the access to alcohol. (Otherwise you'd just go to the store)
Is restaurant takeaway alcohol even a thing in normal times in the UK?
In CA at least, the state temporarily removed the normal restriction on takeaway alcohol in order to help restaurants during lockdowns.
You order a meal via the corporate Deliveroo/Seamless etc., to the firm-paid limit and immediately call the restaurant and ask for beer of the same value to be delivered instead.
There's of course not any evidence that it's a meaningful contributor to infection, but lockdown is such a crude tool that it's going to hit it regardless.
It feels like the governments are:
1. Trying to limit the enforcement and severity of actions or
2. They don't know what they're doing. (Which creates more resistance)
It's still inconsistent, bad for PR, and puts the whole government into question.
Why should people who get paid a million get special treatment over those who are barely making it an unemployed? Being able to shoot some hoops seems more valuable for the 20 year old's mental health than watching some rich top-of-their class play in am empty stadium with cardboard cutouts.
I’m all for letting people be outside freely by themselves and in isolated social groups. I’ve spent huge amounts of time exercising in parks in the sun outside during this thing for the reasons you mention.
Team sports where you get a bunch of unrelated people together in one place breathing hard and folks probably socializing after the game afterward seems more problematic.
/which is precisely why there shouldn't be these kinds of arbitrary exceptions.
See also: here in California, churches/synagogues/temples are closed, while liquor stores and marijuana shops are considered "essential businesses". Film crews are allowed to operate in mass numbers outdoors, but not distanced patio dining.
It seems pretty clear it's all about the $$$.
The problem isn't the take-away alcohol itself, the problem is what people do with it.
We routinely get people around our area (East London) who buy take-away beer - stand two meters away from the pub - and drink it with their friends. It promotes people spreading COVID.
The UK government aren't confident enough to actually curtail people's behaviour (eg mask wearing in public, fining people etc) that they stop the things that people inherently do.
I don't think it's a great policy, but it's a step in the right direction.
The science itself is all in the messaging and tone.. but they make it easy to get out of with "valid reasons". Stay home.
Our liqour sales are banned after 9pm from stores, and bars are able to do carryout|outdoor (we have some Canadian spies that live here.. so outdoor dining is still a thing [It's 0C or below on average right now.. chill it's a joke]) until 11pm.
My best guess for the store liqour sales is that the southside used liqour stores as a bar and would congregate outside, also the limitation of store liquor sales limits people going to impromptu parties.
Behavior change is hard to do right, but it also can be changed in completely unrelated but minor inconvenced changes. (I.e. changing a process or labeling may be more effective than a control and punish model) It's also very difficult to communicate for free societies on why a restuarant or bar ban still needs to be in place when the black market succeeds [underground raves/parties etc]. (Sigh "studies that claim most of the transmission in a household vs bars" (well where did that household interact with a different household... ))
This always gets me. Isn’t it obvious that alcohol consumption is a social activity? Not all of it, but to a large degree. Limiting the consumption seems logical. Of course, you can’t assess the impact of individual measures at the moment, as you need a controlled experiment and proper statistics. But is this measure really something to be that upset about?
Lots of "plans" seem logical and this is precisely why technocracy is a vexation on society.
Unintended consequences. The presumption of knowledge and control.
All of these elite presumptions are illusory and fundamentally hubristic.
You know why "limiting the consumption" of alcohol is a dumb suggestion? We have tons of evidence that it was a massive failure: Prohibition and the War on Drugs.
No matter how well-intended you are - it'll backfire and people will ignore it.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Millions of years of evolution have seared into their biology the instinct to be social.
The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Not only folly - but abuse.
But seriously, it's bizarre. The obdurance of so-called experts set on working against the grain of every human instinct, as though that's likely to maximize the success of their plans.
Do you really want to go down that road? Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? Didn’t think so. You see how folly your argument is?
This is non-sequitur.
A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV.
If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say.
This is why jail is jail. Isolation is unnatural. It's punishment. No one voluntary chooses this.
> isolation is counter-intuitive to humans
20 million cities are counterintuitive, and so is math. We get by.
I’m not denying that what is asked from people is a huge sacrifice. But not the biggest sacrifice you can imagine. And it’s definitely manageable.
This is where things go wrong.
You're shaming people for feeling natural human instincts to socialize.
As though it's selfish to not want to be locked in your house indefinitely.
There is a striking resemblance here of the tactics used by abusers and emotional manipulators.
> But not the biggest sacrifice you can imagine. And it’s definitely manageable.
That's a completely presumptuous personal view - for a very large and underappreciated segment of the population, the ongoing lockdown measures to combat coronavirus are absolutely devastating.
There are many 'natural' human instincts that are harmful to society and are either strongly discouraged or outlawed (violence, drug abuse, overeating to name a few).
You're arguing that we should outlaw something that's vital to human life. Social interaction.
Violence, on the other hand, is clearly not necessary or virtuous.
Isolation is a form of punishment and I hope you're not saying that we all must be punished for the greater good and any dissent is evil. That's borderline cultish.
I will never consider this given the excesses and absolute indefensible failures of the emergency powers introduced in service of the Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/etc. wars. Nothing has been rolled back.
Emergency powers should never be treated as temporary given history.
> Personally, it seems like objections to basic preventive measures, such as wearing a mask, are more rooted in ego and entitlement
This is a diversion to minimize that the "preventive measures" have continuously failed and been extended. "2 weeks to stop the spread" have turned into multiple years. Practically every "enlightened" & "advanced" system of Europe that the US is compared to has failed. The most drastic measures in South America, likewise have failed. We are told to act like countries on the other side of the globe - it's laughably unrealistic and divorced from reality.
Say "it's just temporary" to someone months behind on rent and unemployed. It's shockingly insensitive and paternalistic. Honestly, it's despotic given the protracted, dire circumstances of anyone that's not stably employed.
I don't even oppose mask usage. If masks solved the issue (which clearly they don't), I'd be happy.
> Personally, it seems like objections to basic preventive measures, such as wearing a mask, are more rooted in ego and entitlement.
Entitlement? Entitlement is how to describe every comfy white collar worker that rolls out of bed and hops on Zoom, and then condescendingly and abusively berates everyone else that does not have that privilege.
The TSA. Body Scanners. Removing your shoes (America only; it's the only country out of the 10+ I've flow through that forced you to still remove your shoes. Some people do it in other places out of habit, but no one else actually requires it).
> Entitlement? Entitlement is how to describe every comfy white collar worker that rolls out of bed and hops on Zoom, and then condescendingly and abusively berates everyone else that does not have that privilege
The vast majority of people on here are silicon valley types. They don't understand people are loosing their businesses, their lives, their savings and their minds. They've never been out to the country and seen farms or know people who grow food. They see all republicans as racist and the enemy. It's dissociative, sad and frightening.
> If masks solved the issue (which clearly they don't)
Thank you for having some sense. The numbers are really clear on mask usage. Zero correlation and no better than a coin flip. It has a high social cost too. People are berating others for wearing masks. It's created a new talisman, and ideology and religion. It's causing insane amounts of pollution and textile waste that will further damage our oceans. It's terrifying.
Thank you for saying what you have. I have a comfy job where I can work from home, but I have been in touch with an America and a world that is falling apart, yet also gripped by insane and unreasonable fear. This is a terrible time, for reasons many cannot truly grasp.
Do you have sources? Legitimately interested.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
If this were true, why were the lockdowns in China (an unabashedly authoritarian country) temporary? People in Wuhan are going to nightclubs without masks today.
It has been 10 MONTHS!. 10 FUCKING MONTHS. This isn't temporary anymore. There is literally no end in sight. Canada, the UK, and parts of the UK have INCREASED restrictions. Everyone is saying, "Well they didn't lockdown hard enough the first time"
This is morally reprehensible.
You’re being a bit dramatic about this. People can still use zoom, have socially-distanced meetups on their lawn etc. That’s a big difference from isolation.
This is how an abuser talks. "Why do you care so much?"
Say that to the working class person whose livelihood depends on the continuity of public life.
The person months behind on rent and jobless.
Anyone contemplating suicide.
Millions of children deprived of close to a year and counting of in-person education at a crucial point of their development that will never come back.
People horrified to enter a hospital despite needing medical care.
I have not heard of anyone who is ‘scared’ to go to the hospital. I have heard of many hospitals in coastal states being forced to turn away elective procedures due to lack of bed space (from covid cases).
Have you ever stopped to consider that, lockdown or not, people simply aren’t choosing to do the things they used to? There are no restrictions against travel, yet people aren’t taking as many vacations. Most states today have no restrictions on dining, yet restaurant revenues are down by half. The service and hospitality industries were going to take a hit from covid regardless of lockdowns.
So we don’t need mandates?
Sorry but your position contradicts itself and smacks of confirmation bias. If the US government really were systematically corrupt and authoritarian, why would they want to curtail economic activity? They would tell everyone not to worry about COVID and keep driving, eating out, shopping etc to maximize tax revenue and the availability of bribes.
I have read that many people believe outlandish conspiracy theories because humans have trouble accepting the reality that sometimes, bad things simply happen for no rational reason. It is easier for many to believe that a secret government cabal is conspiring to keep people in their homes than to accept that a deadly virus has infected millions of innocents and created massive global inconvenience.
I believe this and I think it applies to all the lockdowns and moral superiority stuff where people are shamed for not following NPIs that don't seem effective.
It's as though the pro-lockdown side can't accept that sometimes tragedy happens and we're relatively powerless to stop it. So, unable to accept that they point fingers to anyone around them. Who must we demonize? Hunt the witch!
They suppose there must be non-compliant people if the lockdowns aren't working. And so they fight the hidden enemy. As though if there's a minority of people not complying, that population wouldn't have been exhausted through infection after a year.
There are multiple countries (in both northern and southern hemisphere, islands and mainlands) that have eliminated community transmission of covid. It is wrong to say we are powerless to stop it. It is indisputable that if you and your family stay home, you will not get COVID. Likewise, common sense dictates that more people will stay home if required to do so by their government.
You are trying to make the argument, absent data, that the economic and social/emotional impacts of 'stay at home' orders are worse than the economic and social/emotional impacts of uncontrolled viral infection and death.
My argument has the proof of vast majority of countries that’ve failed to mitigate spread with high tradeoffs and costs to society.
If Europe ostensibly can’t manage it - how is the US expected, given the elevated opinion of Europe most people on the pro-lockdown side tend to presume?
Where’s the evidence that NPIs are effective?
You want ivory tower detachment and ignorance? Suggest America just “be Australia or China.”
These are anecdotes. You fail to show that the costs of NPIs to society are greater than the cost of uncontrolled spread (ie doing nothing).
Hawaii: The islands of Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Hawaii continue with the state’s pre-travel testing program. Travelers must have their negative test results prior to departing as an alternative to Hawaii’s mandatory 10-day quarantine.
Beginning December 2, Kauai is temporarily pausing participation in this pre-testing program. All incoming trans-pacific and inter-county travelers to Kauai will face a mandatory 10-day quarantine.
https://www.gohawaii.com/travel-requirements
Chicago: Anyone traveling from a state on the Orange list is directed to obtain a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 72 hours prior to arrival in Chicago or quarantine for a 10-day period (or the duration of their time in Chicago, whichever is shorter). Anyone traveling from a state on the Red list must quarantine for a 10-day period or the duration of their time in Chicago, whichever is shorter. The Order is subject to the limited exemptions outlined in the ‘Exemptions tab’.
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid-19/home/emergenc...
Massachusetts: All visitors entering Massachusetts, including returning residents, who do not meet an exemption, are required to:
Complete the Massachusetts Travel Form prior to arrival, unless you are visiting from a lower-risk state designated by the Department of Public Health. Quarantine for 10 days or produce a negative COVID-19 test result that has been administered up to 72-hours prior to your arrival in Massachusetts. If your COVID-19 test result has not been received prior to arrival, visitors, and residents must quarantine until they receive a negative test result.
Failure to comply may result in a $500 fine per day.
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-travel-order
If you don’t get a ticket, does that mean that no speed restrictions exist?
Excuse me, I was traveling for business. I complied with the regulations exactly as they are written.
You can complain about people ‘not following the rules’ all you want but it changes nothing. There are no meaningful travel restrictions enforced anywhere on the US mainland. Without enforcement, Americans do not and will not follow them.
Hawaii is the only state with actual enforcement and compliance.
So sorry, not flatmate, workmate. If the lock-downs weren't the main cause, I'm sure they certainly didn't help.
Keep in mind Thomas Schäfer, a German minister of fiance, committed suicide by train in March as well.
Another person I know told me his daughter's best friend killed herself during the lockdowns as well, and that was during the fall.
And I'll say this too, if I was in my 20s right now, I'd be at very high risk for suicide. I've had a lot of years under me and am in a much better place right now. But if I was younger and had access to firearms like I did back then, I most likely would not be here.
This has got to stop.
My grandma would rather took the small risk of dying of covid to go outside, socialize with their friends and family.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo...
Not to mention that people can just get their takeaway from the restaurant, and then walk next door to the corner store and go "food shopping" to pick up a 6 pack.
If there was evidence that drinking alcohol spreads covid, I would expect that to be a clear message from the government and for there to be consistent restrictions on alcohol. Instead, we get silly rules with silly workarounds.
[1]: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04554433
I’m really sorry that you feel your rights are being curtailed, but what we are living through is hopefully a once in a lifetime event that if we could have just knuckled down at the start and endured some discomfort we would be pretty much over it by now.
So much for that “blitz spirit” all we hear is moan moan moan ...
Let's see this for what it is: arbitrary decisions that curtails the human rights of all human beings by politicians who are figuratively drunk with power. They are banning things for the common people while they leave their regions, have expensive $1k dinners for their political backers and ignoring all the rules they've imposed on the population. From Canada to California to the UK, we watch elected leaders ignore the bullshit rules they put on people, either because they think it doesn't apply to them or they've seen the numbers and know the risks are bullshit.
We're talking about a disease that's literally has over a 98% survival rate if you're under 55 (which causes people to spout more "long COVID" narrative media non-sense). 100 years from now, do you really think scholars will see 2020 and 2021 as anything other than the largest cast of mass hysteria to date?
Let's isolate the elderly and vulnerable, or anyone who wants to be isolated, and let the rest of the world evaluate their own risks again.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo...
This article is about 6 months old, and we’ve moved on even more since then. It’s so saddening to see so many bright people unable to keep up.
Tell me again about Sweden sad lol
Edit: the poster updated the post with an article rather than adding a comment. It wasn't there when I commented. Also an article from The Atlantic isn't data analysis.
I agree there have been elements of mass hysteria in this thing, but at the moment we have real and present reasons for hysteria to be appropriate. The number of cases we have at once is overwhelming hospital capacity in many regions and all signs point to it getting much worse over the next month.
Please research PCR and the amplification cycles. Right now most tests are using over 40 cycles and it's causing a lot of false positives. Cases should never be the number to use, fatalities should (and even then many people get marked for COVID deaths because they test positive yet die of something unrelated).
The way PCR is being used is insane and a lot of the numbers are just plain misleading to increase the amount of fear.
This is misleading. The number of cycles used is irrelevant. Reference: https://virologydownunder.com/the-false-positive-pcr-problem... (from someone who has actually used PCR in research, as neither you nor I have).
> and it's causing a lot of false positives.
We can get an upper bound on false positives from ONS surveys over the summer, by assuming all their positives were false (prevelance was low then). At https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... the ONS says "We know the specificity of our test must be very close to 100% as the low number of positive tests in our study means that specificity would be very high even if all positives were false. For example, in the most recent six-week period (31 July to 10 September), 159 of the 208,730 total samples tested positive. Even if all these positives were false, specificity would still be 99.92%." (The false positive rate would then be 100% - 99.92% = 0.08 %). The ONS prevelance surveys are processed at a couple of the Lighthouse Labs which also do the Pillar 2 testing in the UK.
Can you explain why "false positives" go down among vaccinated patients?
> fatalities should (and even then many people get marked for COVID deaths because they test positive yet die of something unrelated)
Evidence for "many"? We have a couple of metrics for UK deaths from COVID: deaths within 28 days of a positive test, and root cause / contributing causes ("of" vs "with") on death certificates. These are imperfect in both directions (for example, some patients who die spend more than 28 days in hospital with COVID, meaning the 28 day metric undercounts them) but agree that the UK has seen around 70000 deaths of COVID.
but that's not what's happening. You can still get beer by going to a physical store, you just can't have it delivered to your house.
Didn’t we do just that in the spring?
Honestly, its not hard to see how government's hypocrisy and inconsistency fuels conspiracy theories. Another example is the Massachusetts mask mandate that explicitly requires masks when nobody is near you. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, that this is just to remove ambiguity and make enforcement easier. But its not hard to imagine the reaction of someone who is prone to tinfoil hatting when they are told they must always wear a mask outside, even if miles away from the nearest human.
Why the downvotes. It's on page 18 of the issued document. ffs.
The argument for allowing elite sports to go on typically is to give the population some distraction during lockdown (it’s a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)
As to golf: if you allow that, why wouldn’t a group of four people be allowed to kick a football around? Tennis be allowed?
Also, part of lockdown is the prevention of people mixing over longer distances. A local outburst of COVID-19 is bad, but if the infected move home over tens of kilometers (as, I guess, is quite normal for golf), you’re asking for a much bigger problem.
Having said that, it is safe to assume the government is far from an expert on what are the risky things to do. Nobody is.
Young people can't play football, so rich old white men play golf or go grouse shooting
Premier league footballers don't care much if they're playing or not, but the average person wants to watch it on TV.
Food delivery is fine, but they don't want people buying alcohol and meeting on the street to drink with friends
That's pretty much the definition of a mutation.
It’d be hilarious if UK blamed China for engineering the virus in the lab at the same time. Or they do?
I am the property of myself and have the sole right of ownership - not anyone employed by the state.
This was worded well by the writers of the American constitution, but the idea is as old as time - it’s the idea of universalist ethics.
The real fact is people that argue and resist taking action against Covid because 'mah freedumbs' are seriously undermining democratic governments. Basically making authoritarian governments point for them.
I don't understand mocking freedoms. There are many people in nursing homes that want to see their families but can't. They are angry because the caretakers can see their families but they can't. Will you mock them too?
If you compare some of the attitudes in both policing and policy to Australia and the response between parties you'll understand why the UK can never get there.
Consider this:
- Victoria handed out 20K~ fines by August 26 [1]
- England & Wales handed out 25K~ fines between 27 March and 16 November [2]
- The UK has 120K~ police officers [3]
- Victoria has 21K~ police officers [4]
An Australian State which has only 10%~ of England's population (6M people vs 55M) and only 17% of England's Police Force size managed to get 20K~ fines by August.
The attitude there-in lies down to effective policing and policies.
Eg Melbourne made it a mandatory requirement to wear face masks in public - I don't think the UK could get close to that. Time will tell.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/victo...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55134562
[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Police
Meanwhile aged care deaths in the most heavily affected state, Victoria, are actually down 1,000 YoY. Its almost certain that the majority of the COVID deaths that did occur in Melbourne were with COVID - ie. people of advanced age and serious existing health conditions who would have died around this time anyway.
- The political fallout between China and Australia is worsening, the long term ramifications don't look good. This isn't attributibal to the lockdown.
- Australia's short term economy is currently recovering well after lockdown [1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/australia-economy-budget/aus...
What's going here? What's the NOIDS UK government website even reporting and why are the numbers significantly lower?
[1] NOIDS - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseas... [2] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ [3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
During a giant epidemic, no primary care doctor is detecting a new covid outbreak and reporting that up the chain as though thats new information - not when people are told to get tested outside primary care and aren't allowed to come into primary care with covid symptoms and tens of thousands are testing positive each day and have known covid cases. There's just no reason to do that. So NOIDS numbers are meaningless for Covid. But if covid recedes, then the system is in place for detecting future outbreaks.
When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush.
We know that lockdowns are too blunt an instrument which is why most of Europe is having to engage in ever more draconian measures. We are mortgaging our future here, without questioning the cost.
We don't need more of the same. It's not a question of willpower. It's a question of approach, and currently nobody is asking the hard questions.
EDIT It seems downvote brigade has arrived to ensure that any contrarian opinion is snuffed out. No rebuttal with data, just downvotes.
Maybe they have asked these questions and concluded that this is the best path? Seems most countries are following similar paths.
Doesn't mean it is the best path. Monkey see monkey do. As Desmond Swayne called it 'Herd Stupidity'
This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines.
EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figures certainly don't show it.
Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now.
As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now.
Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.
Yeah I know that, my best mates girlfriend is a doctor. But that's not at all proof of anything. There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture. I have the utmost respect for our NHS heroes but front line personnel are the last people you should ask. They have been put through hell over the past year and if I were in their shoes I would be ready to keel over. And that's exactly why these individuals shouldn't be calling the shots...they're just seeing one part of the puzzle.
I think they are exactly the ones we should be listening to.
But you don't listen to the foot soldier when they tell you how you should position your troops. And that's exactly what you're suggesting.
Do you realise that in two successive comments, you have literally just claimed that hospitals are not really filling up, then claimed that reports from front-line staff working in those hospitals don't prove anything?
There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture.
A curious metaphor. There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
Um, what? That's exactly right. Hospitals are not filling up. The NHS own data shows this. The fact that doctors think the hospitals are filling up is irrelevant. People's estimates of things are notoriously incorrect, especially when they are under pressure. I'm not sure what you've taken issue with.
Are you disputing the NHS data that hospitals are not filling up?
> There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
Right, Sergents run the implementation, not the planning. What we are talking about is the planning. But the bigger issue with this logic is that this isn't a medical plan. It's a social one. The people who should develop a strategy around a global pandemic are not the same people who intubate the casualties of said pandemic. It's like asking a car mechanic how we should build safer roads...they're just not the same thing.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-...
Etc.
Lockdown is just cop out and not only it doesn't help it creates tons of additional problem.
What exactly would "better managed" look like, in your opinion, and what evidence do you have that your version of events would result in better outcomes than the lockdown measures that have been used?
By implementing lockdown, now you have 2 issue : Ambulance delay and the damage from lockdown.
Why it has better outcome?
From the data we know that for vast majority of people who get infected it will be either asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms and the serious case/death is skewed towards the elderly.
Lockdown cause harm. The virus cause harm.
More people suffer from lockdown than the virus.
At the minimum doing nothing different than the government already done in the past would lead better outcome than what we currently have.
If you want to do something, then there are many ways that are not lockdown, that can be done such as:
- increasing healthcare capacity/funding when needed
- accelerate development of better treatment
- accelerate vaccine development
- do not test everyone, so much wasted resource spent on this.
- media campaign to educate people about the actual risk of covid
- increase campaign on exercise, healthy diet, outdoor activities.
That's pretty much what I would do if I'm in power.
And that's still making the implicit assumption that the greater number of people getting the virus and therefore greater number of opportunities for new mutations to develop don't make things any worse, for example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far.
And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone who does get the virus in your scenario, and that care for others with serious conditions is not compromised causing further suffering and loss of life.
I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
I didn't say that, I listed multiple measure that can be taken.
What I'm saying is, if for some reason the government refuse/unable to do those, at the minimum no lockdown is better.
>on the evidence so far, probably kill around 1 million people
1 million out of how many ? How many million people who going to suffer from lockdown?
>that we don't fully understand yet
Right, its not fully understood yet, so its not a justification to implement a measure that is harmful for million of people such as lockdown.
>or example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far
New mutation generally evolve into something that spread more easily but less deadly.
>And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone
I never made assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone.
>I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
I acknowledge that everybody has their own preference, if you like to live in the place with lockdown then to each their own. I'm just trying my best to everybody people I know. If I can choose I would much much prefer to live where the government handling this without lockdown. I ready to move to place with less lockdown, if the government in my place decided to increase the lockdown.
That being said I think each of us lives in their own preferable place is probably only thing that going to work for both of us.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-ni...
The UK Government is arresting people who film empty hospitals:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-loc...
Meanwhile less than 400 people under age 50 have died with/of COVID in the UK.
The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention.
Meanwhile in Sweden - without hard lockdown - deaths are up only 3.2% above 2018, and even then explained by mortality shifting from 2019 and 2021.
Even Ukraine without hard lockdown over Winter has had far fewer deaths per Capita than the UK and has a much more rudimentary healthcare system.
Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
I was saying this at the start of the pandemic. The UK is approaching US -levels of obesity, but now we have "fat shaming" whereby any mention of overweight people being unhealthy is socially unacceptable; and showing skinny people in adverts on the London Undergound causes "offence". I wonder if this particular world-view will reverse in the coming years?
Current statistics show that there's around 1'400 deaths of those under 50 with COVID-19 listed on their death registration, ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... ).
Where's your data from?
> Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
This could easily be a reversed causality, that deaths drive lockdowns... which, on the surface seems to make sense as high deaths seem to force politicians to lockdown (either for reality or perception).
The police arrested one person who walked, mask-less, though quiet public areas of a busy hospital (and was abusive when challenged by hospital workers). The vital need to spread conspiracy theories on Facebook isn't one of the "reasonable excuses" for leaving your house.
If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. The solution is to fix and improve it, not lockdown.
Lockdown measures is just cop out.
Any health system has finite resources available: facilities, equipment, trained staff, the money to pay for all of it, etc.
If the NHS had already been set up to handle this once-in-a-century black swan event better, it would have been less effective at handling other conditions that have affected patients in the more than a century since the last outbreak of similar severity.
I haven't been impressed by how our national government has handled this situation, but if you stop and think about what's happened in the past year or so, it's actually pretty amazing how quickly and effectively our NHS staff, scientific community and others playing supporting roles in our society have adapted. They are fixing and improving our healthcare system, and they're doing it right before our eyes in real time.
And even mentioning this cost, which is becoming quite extreme (look at youth suicidality numbers, and childhood depression rates), causes you to be accused of not caring about elderly people.
The devastation that Covid lockdowns have caused will last far longer than the disease itself.
Is that vast?
Would you be surprised to learn that the 17/18 flu season resulted in more excess deaths than we are having right now? Surely you must have been freaking out then as well advocating for national lockdowns...right?
Your comparison with the '17 flu season is, honestly, stupid, and demonstrates your lack of reasoning on this. C'mon: there _wasn't_ a lockdown, and here despite a tremendous lockdown and a long way to go before herd immunity the situation is dire.
It is not hyperbolic to say that health and mental health is being traded away.
Education wise, my wife has used the opportunity to dip her toes into teaching - which is something she always wanted to try. I realise not everyone wants to be a teacher, but you never know.
The situation is what you make of it.
To change the subject slightly: Would you describe yourself as an extrovert or introvert?
As an introvert I suppose I thrive on my own / with few people around me. I wonder if extroverts suffer more mental anquish when forced into isolation?
Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true.
> Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
The hardest question is whether or not this is worth it, and nobody is asking that because politicians want to get reelected.
You are missing the point entirely. Virology experts are not the people who should be making these decisions. It's not as if covid response is free, but they aren't tasked with consdering the costs. They aren't tasked with finding out what the right amount of death is. That's the unfortunate reality and this is what the great leaders throughout history have all understood: there are no good decisions in times like this, merely least worst decisions.
Look at the excess mortality in Belgium:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic measures...
Ignoring the fact that Belgium is one of the worst affected countries, I'm not even sure what you're arguing? Yes, covid is bad and yes it kills people. Did people in Belgium die who otherwise wouldn't have? Yes. Can we move on to the real issue?
> If you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually, and no sane person wants to see that happen.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane) I'm very unclear where I suggested we shouldn't get a handle on it. Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed? What is this? You're just throwing up charts an screaming about how bad covid is. We already know this.
Belgium is the prototype for what would happen elsewhere if you're just a bit less successful at getting a handle on the pandemic.
Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be arguing for a lessening of restrictions for the general public, right now. Here in Germany, there already are a few regions where some hospitals are close to capacity, and modelling suggests that without continued restictions, the health care system might get overwhelmed by March.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane)
I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
...
> I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
Ok, you're wrong. And worst of all, you've decided that anyone who doesn't share your exact opinion is insane. No wonder you've got it so wrong, you've cut yourself off from any real discussion.
What I argued was that lockdowns don't work. We have done serious lockdowns across the world, and in the best case all the do is buy a little time. In the worst case, they do nothing. The US printed $4T in 2020...do you really not believe that with that money, we could have a devised a better approach that put tremendous resources into isolating the vulnerable population and accepting the stunningly low risk to the rest of the population?
It's amazing to me that people on HN, a site dedicated to the constant advancement of the human condition, looks at a failed strategy concocted during panic and says "yeah, that's as good as it gets and can't be improved".
Jesus, when it comes to covid all I hear are people asking for faster horses.
Depends on which studies you trust. I've read a few, and my conclusion back then was that they do work. However, I've not kept up with the debate once I came to that conclusion, so maybe I shouldn't have phrased things quite as strongly as I did. If you have a recommendation for a single study that makes a particularly strong case against lockdowns, feel free to link it.
Looking for more recent results just now, I found [1], analyzing the differences in response of US states. It seems to suggests that as a general rule, the stronger the restrictions, the smaller the case growth, which would have been my null hypothesis anyway. Cf. https://i.imgur.com/kLfSs6W.png
I do agree that we do not yet know the effectiveness of any particular measure. It would be nice if we knew better, but experimenting with extinguishing agents while your house is on fire is too risky for my taste.
[1] https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-12/BSG-WP-...
So the hard questions are never asked for which we sacrifice a good chunk of our population to dwindling cancer care, mental health issues and economic decline. Those scandals can be written off statistically by the next lot.
And yes I’ve had it. And yes I’ve lost three relatives to it. And quite frankly they were all circling the drain already.
I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on.
These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital.
The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.
(/s)
Had we locked down 2 weeks ago when SAGE said "Lock down now or else!" we'd have fewer people in hospital and more beds for preventative cancer surgery.
Sure, you could go round with a flamethrower burning anyone over the age of 70 for using precious resources just so you could have the pub open for a few more days. Is that your solution?
And Reddit clapped.
You seem to be struggling that this is a hugely complex situation that might call for slightly more sophisticated logic than you're apparently capable of.
> What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms?
Um wow tough one. Maybe prioritize severe cases like we have been doing for the past 9 months which has worked so well that the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used...
> We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning.
I'm sorry, what are you suggesting? Ultimately marginal deaths is what this is all about. That's ultimately why hospital capacity matters.
Are you sure you've joined the right game here?
Because there's no staff to use them:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831
> "We are already 'diluting' our skilled ICU nursing staff with less-well-trained volunteers."
> As well as staffing, some have argued there is just not the equipment available to treat the sickest patients
> "In some there are not even appropriate toilet facilities. They were built in a rush because we were desperate."
Based on that info, my guess is these hospitals will only be used as a very last resort, possibly staffed with vets or NHS staff moved from elsewhere in the country for a short period... This is not a scenario that we should encourage or count on.
So yes, the economy is fine with a high infection rate.
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYK...
We have been. That's why the vaccine is going out to them first.
We have too many people in hospital. Even if all spreading stopped right this second, the number of people going into hospital will continue to increase for another 2 weeks. This is the busiest time of year for hospitals, and we already have more covid paitents than we did in April.
If my child needs an ICU bed, I want one available, I don't want it filled with 80 year old covid patients.
And please don't say something like "do your own research," that doesn't help the conversation at all.
The goverment's level of incompetence is simply off the scale. How has this nasty, rotten government gotten away with some much? (No doubt helped by our nasty right-wing press.)
They are "making things up as they go along" or as it's more charitably known, reacting to events.
Once the most vulnerable populations are immune, it's just a matter of weeks or months before herd immunity among the general population is achieved and life can pretty much go back to normal.
We still haven't eradicated Polio. This virus may be with us for another 100 years honestly. The next generation will grow up with it and likely won't be affected at all by it. Who knows, maybe the common cold Rhino and Coronaviruses killed millions in human pre-history and now they just give us the sniffles.
In my country we were spared from lockdowns or restrictions until recently - and compared to how friends in Germany, Hungary, Denmark, etc live it’s such a relief. Still no more people have died here last year than on average - 90k deaths/year as usual [0] [1]
[0] http://www.scb.se/om-scb/nyheter-och-pressmeddelanden/overdo...
[1] http://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/mannisko...
It should be clear it's a means of control, used as an excuse by World Economics Form to continue with their plans for debt reset (only for certain people of course; Bezos and Gates won't have their wealth affected to devalued, just everyone under a certain income range).
I agree. This is insane and it bothers me few people on HN see it as such. There is no room for discussion on this forum for the true weight and reality of what we are seeing unfold.
Citation [1] is data for 2019, before COVID-19.
Why did you cite these articles and pretend they say something they don't?
I’m getting HTTP error 500 (iOS safari from a Swedish domestic IP) when going to the statistics database - idk if it’s just me or if they deployed something buggy recently. Can therefore only find articles atm, but they are still from the government statistics bureau source.
The first paragraph of [0] says “Den ökande spridningen av coronaviruset i samhället syns ännu inte i antalet dödsfall i Sverige, visar preliminär statistik från SCB” which is English is “The growing spread of Coronavirus in the community is not yet showing any change in the number of deaths in Sweden, shows preliminary statistics from the (government) central bureau of statistics” and I think that states it rather clear.
I do believe you argue in good faith though and welcome corrections - although I still believe in principle it is not right to hinder free people from living free.
It does not.
> In [1] it shows averages for the previous years in numbers summing while years up.
This still has no relation to deaths in the year 2020. You cannot tell anything about deaths caused by coronavirus from data that only goes up to 2019.
> "The growing spread of Coronavirus in the community is not year showed any change in the number of deaths in Sweden"
My translation is "The increasing spread of the coronavirus in society is not yet visible in the number of deaths in Sweden", meaning, "there may be more coronavirus cases than we can tell from just looking at deaths". A significantly different meaning to "coronavirus did not cause any change in number of deaths", which is in any case flatly contradicted by the same article which describes increases in excess deaths in the second quarter.
For what it's worth, I am willing to believe that despite the massive increase in excess deaths in the second quarter, it could be offset by reductions in excess deaths in other quarters. So if you do have data that specifically compares excess deaths for the last few years feel free to share it. Currently you haven't got anything to support your statement.
More likely the author meant that November and December is not yet counted, and therefore must add the “yet” to the sentence.
As you say, [0] states that a slightly larger than average number of deaths occurred during Q2, and a smaller number during Q3. It may be a tragedy to die in spring and not in fall, and miss one last summer. Please keep in mind though that the claim you’re responding to was that 2020 the year didn’t see a significant increase in deaths - it was a very average year to die as a Swede.
No, it's the meaning of the entire statement. Your translation means "coronavirus did not result in an increase in deaths in 2020", whereas my translation means "the spread of coronavirus may be wider than the number of excess deaths in 2020 indicates". The meaning is wholly different, it is saying something orthogonal to the point you want to make. It says nothing about whether the number of excess deaths is higher or lower than usual, just that you cannot take the number of excess deaths and determine the spread of coronavirus from it.
> Please keep in mind though that the claim you’re responding to was that 2020 the year didn’t see a significant increase in deaths - it was a very average year to die as a Swede.
I am keeping this in mind because I'm trying to point out to you that you have no data for excess deaths in 2020 so you cannot make this claim.
That’s simply a lie - you are deliberately taking the “yet” out and replacing “showing” with “result”, which indicates total certainty, from my translation. I am not editing comments earlier in this thread FYI, you know I translated it correctly. “Ännu” means “yet” and “visar” means “showing/shows”. I encourage non-Scandinavians to Deepl translate it; language barriers don’t exist in our age due to machine translation.
Difficult to see much excess death in the UK in the past few months beyond levels seen in the 2018 and 2017 flu seasons.
New lockdowns also seem to be coordinated across the global right now, independent of local conditions. This absolutely seems like a coordinated global action to achieve some kind of strategic aim.
Excess mortality is only just starting to creep back up. It's easy to see that UK excess deaths peaked in early April at a weekly rate nearly 4 times that of the highest pre-2020 peak (2018-01). Ideally, we'd avoid a repeat of that.
> This absolutely seems like a coordinated global action to achieve some kind of strategic aim.
Could said aim by any chance be to avoid running out of hospital beds?
Customers, Cashiers, Barbers... Iceland, Off-license, Asda...
It's like people don't care at all. Only about 50% of people are wearing masks.
Sharp contrast with France where people need to wear masks all the time, and it's heavily enforced.
I don't expect the number of cases to go down TBH.
Would be interesting to understand why regions differ so much on this.
Meanwhile they are contributing massive amounts of plastic waste, textile waste, and provide a placebo while also providing alienation between individuals.
The larger factor that correlates is population density. Low population areas around the US rarely impose mass mandates and they also don't have high numbers.
Lastly, hypothesis: people who are convinced of the merits of a masks are also likely to murder the people in the other room in the Stanly Milgram experiments.
There are probably issues with how much people obsess over them though. I feel like people get a false sense of protection. People tend to stand right next to you in line when masks are required rather than keeping some distance!
The costs are high. Estimates show millions, if not over a billion, of these things will make their way into oceans. That's massive environmental damage:
https://nypost.com/2020/12/28/more-than-1-5b-masks-will-poll...
They have a high social cost. They are causing fear and adding stigma. People are judging one another for mask usage out of pure religion reasoning. If they are not very effective, we've watched State mandates around the world cause a new ideological divide between people. pro-Mask people literally have voiced threats of violence against those who do not see their benefit.
They hide our facial expressions and our primary way of seeing each other. Long before COVID, medical masks were used at Gitmo as one of the many means of dehumanization and torture:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=masks+gitmo&iar=images&iax=images&...
Human rights groups have long been critical of the full Burqa as a way to dehumanize women. There is a psychological effect of not being able to see people's faces, and therefor not seeing them as human.
There are people who have PTSD from trauma, rape or sexual abuse who can not wear a mask without panic attacks. I know such people who cannot go into stores or restaurants and must order everything online. There are exceptions in the law, but most stores will not allow of it and the shame of walking around in a store without a mask where 99% of people do also induces panic.
Masks have a cost. It is not low. It is not near zero. It is much higher than you think it is.
People who just accept masks and advocate for them immediately without question are also very likely to murder the person in the other room in the Stanley Milgram experiments. That should concern you and everybody.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
Knowing that someone would try this hard to equate genuine travesties with putting fabric over your mouth and nose to protect others to advance some separate agenda when more than 1 out of every 1000 people in the US is already dead from covid is a grave disappointment.
But what I said which you trimmed off was that they are low cost _relative to other measures_. People wearing masks well is likely to reduce the need to use far more onerous measures like the lockdowns or having to decide who receives hospital care and who doesn’t.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zkE00ANmITzyXaSM-S_44ZWEJTx...