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Covid-19 #16: Not Waving, Loop-de-Looping


Zorral

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I guess that's one thing positive that can be said about Duterte, he isn't an anti-vaxxer.

Vaccine development is a fairly mature science. There is a very small chance of debilitating or life threatening side effects. The biggest concern is not being effective in preventing disease. It's not the same as developing new therapeutic drugs. So I am not really concerned about safety for people who are already being given a vaccine. But since there is no way of knowing if the immunity is long enough lasting to be of any worth I think it's dicey to be getting any vaccine out there for wide distribution at this point.

My guess is US FDA won't approve a vaccine for general use until January at the very earliest. By January they may just have enough data to be reasonably confident of 6 months of effective immunity when given to healthy people, and have fingers crossed that by June 2020 they'll be able to confirm 1 year, and in a wider range of people.

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15 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

Oh man. You never were so on the spot.

WTF? A random household infected? This means there are more people with the virus out there.

Yes, with no clear link to known points of entry it's clear we are going to see more cases. I don't really understand the reasoning for initially only announcing a 3-day rise in alert level. It is painfully obvious to me that we'll remain on elevated alert for considerably longer.

We live about 7 hrs drive from Auckland. A local friend who is 76 has a niece and her son visiting from the UK, they came here because her father died during lockdown so she came back to NZ for his funeral and she stayed on for a bit. Their flight from Auckland back to the UK is due to leave on Saturday. So my friend is driving them to Auckland tonight (left at 12AM) to get them INTO the level 3 zone before the lockdown comes into effect at 12 noon tomorrow, and he needs to get back out of the level 3 Zone before midday. At least he doesn't need to get all the way back here, he just needs to get south of the Auckland border before high noon. He should make it with hours to spare, but any substantial delay might mean he gets stuck.

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21 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

So we're all trying to get up and running with the university still planning to open by the end of the month.  All fine, but we still are missing key positions and are trying to alter plans accordingly.  Also, fine for the most part.   But it means we're not, especially since we don't have many people back yet, in the swing of properly doing temperature check upon the start of the day.  So the boss pitched a fit about that today (rightly so), but then proceeded to be the only one with a temp registering over 100. On three separate thermometers. With about 30 minutes between one of the checks, as another thermometer was sought out.   She then, apparently I'm told as I'm in a different building today, took nearly two more hours to leave the premises.  This instilling confidence in all and sundry...

Could you please pass this article to your very competent management

Body temperature screening to identify SARS-CoV-2 infected young adult travellers is ineffective

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55 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yes, with no clear link to known points of entry it's clear we are going to see more cases. I don't really understand the reasoning for initially only announcing a 3-day rise in alert level. It is painfully obvious to me that we'll remain on elevated alert for considerably longer.

It's three days to buy time, to figure out what this says about the outbreak. Specifically, whether the outbreak is Auckland-only. Yes, it's going to be extended, but for now, they don't want potential cases interacting with additional people while they hunt down the connections.

(IIRC, many Auckland Airport employees live in South Auckland. That might hypothesise a possible entry point...).

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8 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Sorry, but what did NZ expect? That they would stay isolated forever to escape the virus?

The only way out of it is trough it. Meaning herd immunity. That’s reality.  Sweden is pretty much there already.

The lockdown fanatics on the other hand have a long way to go.

We've had 22 deaths since February. Sweden's had 5770 (with twice the population). I know which one I'd prefer. 

If necessary, we'll purge the virus out again - we've done it once, we can do it again. In the meantime, we wait for an effective vaccine.

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This is a graphic illustration of not understanding how it works.

Allowing a contagion to burn through the globe without trying to contain, trace, track, isolate, distance, means every system from the most official to the most intimate is overwhelmed.  Bodies lay everywhere, inside and out, putrefying.  People die not just from the particular disease, but because there's no one to care for them while ill, including getting them food.  People literally starve to death and die from dehydration -- and this includes people sick from something other than c-15.

The economy from personal to national to global crashes (unless one is a billionaire investor who is sucking what liquidity is left up for itself and only itself).

That's what happens when a disease of this nature wildfires around the globe, virulently contagious, unidentified, and virulently lingering.

If you have no idea how gruesome and terrible this is, read John M. Barry's The Great Influenza, which killed so many also via the most violent pneumonia and respiratory shredding, leaving heat attacks, hallucination and weeks, months of weakness behind for those it didn't kill that way.  Not to mention orphans, widows, widowers and those who lost their children.  BTW, more and more children are getting sick with this now.  Who will nurse them during their bout, even if they don't die, if their parents are also ill -- or dead?

The biggest difference I'm seeing with how C-19 plays out vs the Great Influenza is that Covid-19 has a much longer incubation period before showing symptoms. and it takes them a lot longer to die in agony. People in the Great Influenza, as with the Bubonic Plague, not uncommonly dropped dead only hours after showing symptoms, or even, just immediately.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The biggest difference I'm seeing with how C-19 plays out vs the Great Influenza is that Covid-19 has a much longer incubation period before showing symptoms. and it takes them a lot longer to die in agony. People in the Great Influenza, as with the Bubonic Plague, not uncommonly dropped dead only hours after showing symptoms, or even, just immediately.

To be fair, the death rate from Covid 19 does not remotely approach the Spanish Flu, let alone the Black Death.

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25 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The only way out of it is through it. Meaning herd immunity. That’s reality.

If you're a psychopath maybe.

ETA: Or, more precisely, if you don't care enough about the people around you that you don't mind them paying the price for you being an asshole.

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17 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Sorry, but what did NZ expect? That they would stay isolated forever to escape the virus?

The only way out of it is through it. Meaning herd immunity. That’s reality.  Sweden is pretty much there already.

The lockdown fanatics on the other hand have a long way to go.

This is such a strange statement to make.

Can you give a definition of herd immunity? How many people would need to be immune/have been infected for that?

If you say around 60%, fine.

But then again.

Sweden:

Population: ~10m

Confirmed COVID infections: ~80.000

80.000 out of 10.000.000 is more like 0.8%.

Not sure if you are either really poor at math, or just spouting nonsense.

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17 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This is a graphic illustration of not understanding how it works.

Allowing a contagion to burn through the globe without trying to contain, trace, track, isolate, distance, means every system from the most official to the most intimate is overwhelmed.  Bodies lay everywhere, inside and out, putrefying.  People die not just from the particular disease, but because there's no one to care for them while ill, including getting them food.  People literally starve to death and die from dehydration -- and this includes people sick from something other than c-15.

The economy from personal to national to global crashes (unless one is a billionaire investor who is sucking what liquidity is left up for itself and only itself).

That's what happens when a disease of this nature wildfires around the globe, virulently contagious, unidentified, and virulently lingering.

If you have no idea how gruesome and terrible this is, read John M. Barry's The Great Influenza, which killed so many also via the most violent pneumonia and respiratory shredding, leaving heat attacks, hallucination and weeks, months of weakness behind for those it didn't kill that way.  Not to mention orphans, widows, widowers and those who lost their children.  BTW, more and more children are getting sick with this now.  Who will nurse them during their bout, even if they don't die, if their parents are also ill -- or dead?

The biggest difference I'm seeing with how C-19 plays out vs the Great Influenza is that Covid-19 has a much longer incubation period before showing symptoms. and it takes them a lot longer to die in agony. People in the Great Influenza, as with the Bubonic Plague, not uncommonly dropped dead only hours after showing symptoms, or even, just immediately.

 

 

The idea of herd immunity is that it should largely be achieved within the young, healthy part of the population, while the old and vulnerable are isolated as much as possible. Then - when enough young people are immune the danger of spread is largely eliminated.

Sweden’s deaths were overwhelmingly in care homes. That part they messed up. As they have rightly admitted. 
 

The point is - isolate the vulnerable. Not the entire population - which is impossible in the long run in any case.

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Declaring herd immunity when we haven't even been able to confirm surviving an infection conveys even medium-long term immunity, let alone lifetime immunity, is quite the claim to make. Especially when even if it does they haven't had near enough cases for herd immunity - even if we're generous and take the actual cases as 10x the confirmed cases that's still under 10%.

I'm getting whiplash from people that normally would decry everything about the Eurocommie Swedes suddenly holding them up as exemplars.

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5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The idea of herd immunity is that it should largely be achieved within the young, healthy part of the population, while the old and vulnerable are isolated as much as possible. Then - when enough young people are immune the danger of spread is largely eliminated.

Sweden’s deaths were overwhelmingly in care homes. That part they messed up. As they have rightly admitted. 
 

The point is - isolate the vulnerable. Not the entire population - which is impossible in the long run in any case.

Again you graphically reveal that you don't know what you are saying, and you don't understand what herd immunity is.  It does not exist except in places where enough people are vaccinated against a disease that those who aren't made immune can't spread it to those who are.  It only works within context of an effective vaccine.  Which does not exist.  

See, for example in real life, how measles are coming back now as so many refuse measles innoculations, as are quite a few of what we had come to think of as childhood diseases.

Nor do you understand how isolation works -- the point is to SLOW DOWN THE WILDFIRE so doctors, nurses and all the others who have to deal daily, 24/7 with the masses of the sick don't die either.

If Sweden had a population like ours, their method would have people lying dead in the streets.

And this ain't over, not by a long shot.  And it never will be until people understand how it works.  A vaccine may never get made that works, you know.  But 'It" will not be leaving the human population, probably, ever, particularly since the virusshares with all the classic flue viruses, whether or not Covid-19 is a flu, either animal to human, or human to animal (poultry) and back to human origin.

And again, what is it about the reports that more and more of the Young, and children, are getting sick with covid-19?

 

 

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5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The idea of herd immunity is that it should largely be achieved within the young, healthy part of the population, while the old and vulnerable are isolated as much as possible. Then - when enough young people are immune the danger of spread is largely eliminated.

Sweden’s deaths were overwhelmingly in care homes. That part they messed up. As they have rightly admitted. 
 

The point is - isolate the vulnerable. Not the entire population - which is impossible in the long run in any case.

Whom, exactly, do you think of as vulnerable? A lot of those vulnerable people you've advocating to protect are the same ones you'd accuse of being lazy for not going back to work, if we were having a discussion about unemployment payments.

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Herd immunity is fucking nuts, because if you want to let 60% of your people catch it, then you basically expose vulnerable people, specially in the US, considering the amount of overweight people around.

Besides, we know this doesn't just kill some people, it massively hurts others with lasting damages. And I'm mightily annoyed these idiots haven't been able to tell us the % of people with breathing issues months after getting rid of the thing, because that's actually as important as the 0.5-1.5% death ratio (depending on country and age distribution). Scaring 25-y old with being disabled for life is pretty much the only thing that might let these young idiots behave responsibly.

That said, I disagree with Zorral that isolation is only there to slow down the spread. The only defensible strategy is full eradication, first by special measures and then by mass vaccination. Any other strategy, be it herd immunity or even just flattening the curve, is pretty much a sociopath's lunacy.

Alas, looks like NZ wasn't serious enough when controlling who they let in and how to handle them (though to be fair, NZ still did better than any other "Western" country so far). And here, by "let in", I don't mean tourists put into quarantine like in early July, but most probably airport security measures when dealing with incoming flights, probably trading goods. Either you have enough people who already got the virus and who can work without extreme security measures, or you have to pretty much isolate people coming from outside, even when they only stay at the airport to deliver or pick up stuff (after all, it wouldn't be realistic to quarantine them for 2 weeks).

Bottom line: pretty much every nation on Earth should work towards a higher level of autarky, to reduce as much as possible the need of importing stuff and of having to deal with people from more infected areas. Since this would also do wonders when it comes to environmental issues, specially climate change, it's for once a win-win trend that could help us to face two global crises with one move.

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6 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

It's three days to buy time, to figure out what this says about the outbreak. Specifically, whether the outbreak is Auckland-only. Yes, it's going to be extended, but for now, they don't want potential cases interacting with additional people while they hunt down the connections.

(IIRC, many Auckland Airport employees live in South Auckland. That might hypothesise a possible entry point...).

I understand why the Alert level has been raised immediately. What makes no sense is announcing only 3 days. All of the things you say needs to get done can be achieved with an initial 5 day lockdown. Announcing 3 days gives people some false hope that they will be able to go back to something closer to normal for the weekend. It would have been better for people to get the message that they should cancel their weekend plans last night than for that disappointment to be dropped on them on Friday afternoon.

I think if we kick this bastard out again, every person working in a job that is exposed to foreign travel will need to have weekly tests. It will be interesting to see how the public responds to a second attempt to achieve elimination. It'll be a minimum of 5 weeks before we can claim elimination if everything goes smoothly and we get zero new cases in the community after just one week. Interestingly that pretty much takes us up to election day. I think there will be less appetite to do what needs to be done to achieve elimination because people will wonder what's the point when it'll just come back again. I think it's worth the effort with news being so hopeful about a vaccine, but I wonder if I'm still in the majority on this.

 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Herd immunity is fucking nuts, because if you want to let 60% of your people catch it, then you basically expose vulnerable people, specially in the US, considering the amount of overweight people around.

I think the number of countries in the world where 60% of the population is in the low risk category can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, and possibly with that hand having lost a digit or two in an industrial accident. Even Sweden doesn't qualify, because the % of people that are vulnerable just due to age is close to 40%.

And trying to make a plan for the virus to run wild and free in that 60% while effectively isolating 40% of the population is a logistical impossibility.

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21 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It will be interesting to see how the public responds to a second attempt to achieve elimination.

I think there will be less appetite to do what needs to be done to achieve elimination because people will wonder what's the point when it'll just come back again.

If measures are lighter than during the first outbreak for everyone outside Auckland, this shouldn't be an issue, should it? On the other hand, I could understand people despairing if they had to go through another 6 weeks of lockdown, Spain style.

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45 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I understand why the Alert level has been raised immediately. What makes no sense is announcing only 3 days. All of the things you say needs to get done can be achieved with an initial 5 day lockdown. Announcing 3 days gives people some false hope that they will be able to go back to something closer to normal for the weekend. It would have been better for people to get the message that they should cancel their weekend plans last night than for that disappointment to be dropped on them on Friday afternoon.

If I was to be cynical, then a 5 day lock down would encompass the weekend - and for this weekend, specifically the 16th, there's a sold out sporting fixture at Eden Park where 40-45 thousand people could congregate. A 3 day lock down gives authorities a glimmer of time to find out if the new cluster can be in fact traced to a source and clamp all contacts into managed isolation, and then lift the lock down for the weekend - again, if I was thinking cynically about it. My current thinking is they'll realise by Friday there's too much of a risk and extend the lock down through the weekend.

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5 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

If measures are lighter than during the first outbreak for everyone outside Auckland, this shouldn't be an issue, should it? On the other hand, I could understand people despairing if they had to go through another 6 weeks of lockdown, Spain style.

The major concern here is the first cases out in the community don't have a clear connection to the border / recent arrivals. So it's a bit like the Faberge shampoo commercial: you infect two friends and they infect two friends... how many friends back does it take for these cases to be connected to someone who brought it in from overseas? I think if there is a realistic prospect of a 3 week lockdown at max level 3 and only in regions where there is active cases there will be decent majority support for it. much longer or much more strict lockdown and I think there might be an increasing wariness about going through it all over again.

This next week will be very telling as to what we will need to face to get back to elimination.

 

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