Five million people live on Hokkaido, north of Japan. They went into a lockdown early on Feb 28th. By March 19th Hokkaido looked like a success and was showing the world how to manage Coronavirus (they started early, and used masks). But then they reopened too soon, when there were still a few cases around and within a month had to lockdown again.
UPDATE: From readers in Japan (or who know people there) we hear that this is voluntary self-isolation, the government can declare “A State of Emergency” but the people are asked to comply, not forced. The Japanese government cannot order the population to “lock” down. Presumably “restrictions” are therefore “recommendations”.
The restrictions were released just before a three day holiday weekend and the border with the rest of Japan was not closed, which meant workers and students returned quickly and brought infections in. Three weeks later on April 14th Hokkaido closed down again.
The lag is diabolical. Most of the cases in Hokkaido were reported after the second State of Emergency was declared.
h/t David E.
…
As long as the borders are open, the lockdown cannot succeed until the whole country is cleared.
As long as there are cases circulating, a second wave is likely.
States that don’t close borders are not serious.
This Japanese Island Lifted Its Coronavirus Lockdown Too Soon and Became a Warning to the World
By Abigail Lenard, Time Magazine
A doctor who helped coordinate the government response says he wishes they’d done things differently. “Now I regret it, we should not have lifted the first state of emergency,” Dr. Kiyoshi Nagase, chairman of the Hokkaido Medical Association, tells TIME.
The announcement lifting restrictions came just before a three-day weekend; Hokkaido residents spilled onto streets and lingered in cafes, celebrating the conclusion of their weeks-long confinement. That likely kicked off the second wave of infections, says Nagase.
Further fueling it, people from other parts of Japan saw that Hokkaido had relaxed restrictions and began travelling there. Some were university students in big cities, who returned home to Hokkaido when classes were cancelled in April, says Nagase. Others were employees of large companies that typically start new job rotations at that time of year; when the state of emergency was lifted, businesses sent a fresh crop of workers from Tokyo and Osaka to Hokkaido.
On April 14, Hokkaido was forced to announce a state of emergency for a second time.
Businesses are now preparing for the long haul. Tetsuya Fujiawara, CEO of Smile Sol, a group of ten pub restaurants in Hokkaido, says even though sales are down 60%, he’d rather a strong, consistent lockdown than “lukewarm measures” that would only perpetuate the cycle of restrictions being lifted and then reinstated as infections resurge.
REFERENCES
Japan: https://www.managementdo.com/2020/03/19/new-coronavirus-update-how-to-tackle-japanese-case/
Official data: http://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/hf/kth/kak/hasseijoukyou.htm
Graphs: https://stopcovid19.hokkaido.dev/en/
Yes, yet again proving that lockdowns are a failed unsustainable policy.
But that should also be obvious from the fact that countries all over the place keep relaxing/lifting for the sake of the economy before the virus is eradicated (it never would be anyway, it will just keep smoldering away until it has been unleashed).
So by “too soon” you mean before the end of times!
Lockdowns are not a solution, they are a delay, accept the inevitable, if the virus is well established in a distinct area, town, country – whatever – you have to let it burn through. We now have ample evidence that ICUs will not be overwhelmed, the death rate will not be 1%, the peak will quickly pass in weeks. Every time you disrupt the epidemic without total eradication, you might as well press the reset button and start self-flagellating.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/
4913
Not at all MrGrim. Hokkaido shows that rolling waves of infection are a failed unsustainable policy.
What’s worse than a lockdown for the economy? Two lockdowns.
Do it right once and hold the borders until the virus mutates to be well behaved, or until we have a treatment or vaccine.
The pain of doing 6 weeks properly is nothing compared to 6 – 18 months of rolling disruption. Once democracies see how countries are doing it and getting back to normal, everyone will want to be on the clean list, flying back and forward with others on the clean list too.
Nations outside that zone will not ask 20% of their population to stay home in fear, they will not be willing to risk losing 1 in 10 grandparents. Nor will they want to spend money while the next wave of virus hangs over them. Wealthy nations have the choice. Doctors and nurses won’t want to risk dying or living under the constant stress of 100% PPE. The extra load on hospitals will blow out elective surgery lists.
The only reason ICU wards were not overrun in many towns was the lockdowns.
2533
I respectfully disagree. The lockdown slows down the spread of the disease, that’s all it does. If you keep it indefinitely, you get a steady low level of new infections. You can try a limited opening, which should result in a a steady but higher level. If you don’t open enough, people will die of hunger instead of virus. The Precautionary Principle applies in both cases, but no one ever became immune to starvation.
[Exactly why I advocate the shortest proper lockdowns we can do. – Jo]
456
‘people will die of hunger instead of virus’ what a load of tosh !!
GeoffW
107
Are you growing your food while observing social distancing?
54
Nobody in the western world will die of hunger, but in the Third world there maybe some dislocations which could lead to widespread hunger.
I’m with Geoff on this.
43
Like in India where the lower caste is treated like dirt.
‘Heart-rending scenes of migrants escaping the cities in a lockdown fail to move the authorities. The higher-caste policy elite sees only low-borns struggling to survive, and cannot understand the fuss. Isn’t that the natural order of things?’
SCMP
40
Its not a load of tosh in South Africa. For the first time in decades, children with malnutrition are showing up in hospitals, Supermarkets have been looted.
41
Curious George do you have data to back up what you said… or is this just your opinion.
42
Common sense. I don’t have a working crystal ball.
11
Made in China.
Pre-programmed
Available from Amazon
Dead cheap
And home delivered.
03
I’ve already suggested why I consider a real lockdown in the US a lost cause;
we’ve already decideded to pretend, and suffer both lots of fatalities and lots of economic damage.
We may not have had a choice; even with social control there seems to be a second wave in China as well.
As an exerecise, consider what lockdown requires in minimal activity;
Full farming and food processing, and food delivery to groceries, with shopping or delivery.
Food prep are delivery to those who don’t or can’t cook.
Pharmacies and essential household needs.
Medical care and emergency services. Policing, fire departments, communications. Some government.
Communications net maintenance. Nothing else for how long? 28 days? With sealed borders?
I guess it’s barely possible. If we were talking a fatality level like 10% across all age groups you might gain the consent of the governed
sufficient to manage this, but our social cohesion is on a knife edge in many places as it is. It is fair to attribute much of this to abysmally
bad and irrational management of the issue by many governments.
Bu at this point most government in the US is chasing the populace. We are likely looking to accept up to 120,000 fatalaties across 320,000,000 in our ‘extended first wave’,
through midsummer.
I wonder if anywhere not an island will really be able to stay virus free?
213
Yes the USA is a lost cause. 1.5 million infected officially; 23,000 new cases and almost 90,000 dead from Covid 19 yesterday.
This is a huge tragedy for all the people of the USA. And unfortunately it was an avoidable one. But a lack of political leadership at national, state and probably local levels prevented any national coherent strategy to contain and then eliminate this virus.
tHe USA will probably have the virus until an effective, safe, and cheap vaccine is developed. And be a potential source of further infections for all countries which have prevented the virus entering or got rid of it.
The future is grim there. And as I have a son & grand daughter there in Minneapolis personally disturbing.
317
And the USA presidential election campaign has begun in earnest with Obama leading the charge against Trump & the Republican party.
We can expect to hear a lot more like this in coming months. And it will resonate with many many Americans because it is true.
https://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/obama-criticises-virus-response-in-speech/news-story/3df137fcc8e98e7a2d10a0bf295f3433
314
Really the infection numbers are just for drama as for most its not a serious deal. I dont recall these cries of tragedy and woe for previous equally deadly epidemics, but I guess it is the social media age.
122
Disagree there Richard, there are predictable virus spot-fires, but nothing comparable as yet in scale to the first wave (whatever level that was, we’ll never know.) The Chinese also will not let the mid-February situation reoccur, they know how to prevent a mass second-wave. And I don’t mean the CCP, the people in general know how to beat it, and will.
52
Jo, Nations do ask that of their citizens each and every year at each and every flu season…
224
No. Though it is depressing to go through the reasons why this is not the flu again:
WuFlu: spreads 2 – 3 times as fast (Ro of nearly 4). Could infect 5 – 20 times as many people in a single season, has a mortality rate that is 5 – 15 times worse, and a much higher hospitalization rate. Has unknown long term repercussions, potential lung, kidney, heart damage…
Plus no vaccines, no prior immunity (that we know of yet).
1114
It’s hard to have to go through this yet again. You are assuming the virus is deadly, and that people who contract it will die. In fact, it is not deadly. Almost nobody under about 50 who is infected will die. Certainly the elderly should take precautions, and be protected, but almost no-one else is at risk of more than a few days in bed.
135
Wrong and also delusional.
In late March Italian doctors admitted to giving up on severe/critical cases over age about 60 as they virtually never survive. Instead they preferentially put younger patients under ~60 on the ventilators. But even then the Italian ICU doctor said
. Many had terrible lung and organ damage and it was not clear if they would ever recover their previous health level.
This fact also emerged at about the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtHQGYrLAIo
It also kills large numbers of people under 50, I saw one doctor say that in Italy about 50% of the under 60 patients placed on a ventilators will die.
78
Jo surely it’s time to stop people promoting fake information on this blog.
It is dangerous and frankly wasting about 90 % of all our time.
let these mis-information find or create their own nice plandemic blog
511
Indeed WX, almost exclusively those with per-exisiting comorbidity. Diabetes, heart problems, heavy smokers, malnourished people living in subways without a job due to draconian lockdowns, and so on.
73
Forgot: My disclaimer.
In my non expert student opinion or IMNESO. I recently had to update my disclaimer to show that i am a student. So it is now abbreviated as “IMNESO”.
13
I’ll second that, Bill.
11
Damon, and people with comorbidities like cancer, high blood pressure, clotting disorders, transplants and stuff like that deserve what they get, eh?
These 800 people under 50 didn’t die. But I get that there plenty of spare young people, the US is not going to run out (or even notice 800 less).
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/why-young-healthy-people-severe-coronavirus_l_5e9eea72c5b6a486d07f3485
“The CDC reported in March that 38% people who had been hospitalized due to coronavirus were between 20 and 54 years old,” Sarin said. “Half of the intensive care patients admitted during the CDC’s report period were under age 65.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/
Great civilizations were built by brave men who said “old people can look after themselves”.
14
Yes the SARS-CoV2 does spread quickly and with people with healthy innate immune systems it is not infectious well over 90% of people in Wuhan and in London and in New York were not infected. There are some with some insufficiency in their innate immune system and those will get COVID-19 but may be Asymptomatic and unaware. A small number of the population with poor innate immune systems – insufficiency in one or more of vitamin D, Zinc, Selenium; will actually have symptoms of COVID-19 those with significant insufficiency of Vitamin D may end up in ICU and if they have comorbidities may die. [Do an internet search Corona Virus COVID-19 vitamin D).
The probable reason for children suddenly appearing to have Kawasaki type symptoms from COVID-19 is that they have been kept indoors and their vitamin D levels are insufficient, this is more the case in dense population centers where children cannot go outside into a back yard to play in the sun. It may even be the reason that >60% of infections in New York are to people staying in at home – so much for the safety of staying in. The lack of vitamin D is seen in old people kept in and less absorption of Vitamin D, dark skinned people in Northern Hemisphere as they make less natrually, Obese people where vitamin D tends to be sequestered by adipose tissue – etc etc.
Indeed if people were told to ensure that they were vitamin D sufficient (and ideally zinc and selenium too), it is probable that the Pandemic would die out.
As it is the COVID-19 has just the ~5% people with poor innate immune systems to infect. This makes the correct epidemiological model a predator/prey model – while there are prey the virus will spread as soon as the dispersion of the prey becomes greater as the number of prey is reduced (infected – died/survived with immunity) then the virus will just stop. Hiding the prey indoors increases their susceptibility by reducing their natural vitamin D and they will get infected anyway by someone accidentally bringing the virus in and sometimes deliberately importing it as with Cuomo in NYC mandating COVID-19 positive patients were taken by nursing homes.
I suspect that COVID-19 will just stop, as did SARS and MERS before it as there are no more prey with poor enough innate immune systems.
20
… and despite annual and readily available flu vaccinations in developed countries that are taken by a majority of the community – still the appalling record of flu deaths every year.
293
This flu season in Australia should be close to negligible, because of border restrictions and distancing. Oceania can become free of pandemics very quickly.
111
Captain Cook, 1770 – 2020.
Sorry Captain but we gotta shut all your good work down. You went too far.
After 250 years the second major P virus has finally nailed us.
We had a dream, but seems it’s gone.
84
You’re O/T but I’ll remind you of the smallpox outbreak at Manly, it is what it is.
31
Captain Cook should probably have taught us all to swim then, Keith.
July 2018 to June 2019 recorded 276 death by drowning – 3 x the COVID 19 fatalities in Australia.
https://royallifesavingwa.com.au/news/community/national-drowning-report-2019
113
Our average yearly drowning toll is 80 – per capita that’s higher than Oz. Then again, back in ye olde days before fossil fuels, drowning was called ‘the New Zealand death’ due to accidents crossing rivers, streams & rivermouth sandbars, as well as sailing & shipping mishaps.
Our road toll last year was 353, an ‘improvement’ on 2018’s 377 lost souls. So far, twenty-one (21) old folk, with an average age of 80 and beset with numerous other health complications, have been claimed by the mystery flu. Just sayin’.
42
I wonder how many of his crew could actually tread water or swim?
The first P virus was Global Warming. Totally and absolutely refutable with real science and engineering: but it won and so we had our first political virus.
This second virus is real and dangerous but the solutions are reminiscent of the CAGW Monster: crushing and poorly applied.
21
Everybody misunderstands vaccines. They do not stop you contracting an infection. They reduce the symptoms, and in many cases stop you from dying. They DO NOT protect you from catching the infection. Which is the reason people die from flu, even though they might be vaccinated.
13
Damon. Not so. Some vaccines do protect people from diseases. OTher vaccines to close strains may reduce symptoms. Some don’t help as much as we’d like or as many people as we’d hope. Many don’t create long term immunity with one shot and need regular boosters. Could people be careful making sweeping statements? We (humanity) do not yet know how natural effective immunity to the influenza virus is generated by our immune systems and why it lasts a lifetime. When we do figure that out, we might be able to design vaccines which mimic that mechanism.
51
Vaccines are variously effective. Smallpox is effectively life-long, tetanus needs boosters. We don’t know why, perhaps something to do with immunogenicity. Also, you’re confusing ‘natural’, that is innate immunity with adaptive immunity, such as generated by a vaccine. Immunity to flu may, or may not, last a lifetime, but if so, it is insufficiently cross-reactive to provide significant protection against new strains. We do know why the flu vaccine needs to be updated year by year – because of antigenic shift and drift in the haemagglutinin and neuraminidase. Immunology may be complex, but there is a vast body of knowledge that you seem unprepared to acknowledge..
33
I’m not confusing anything. Natural immunity is immunity generated by a natural infection, as opposed to artificial immunity we try to get from a vaccine. You didn’t realize they can produce different responses?
Anytime you want to start shining your “Vast body of knowledge”. Don’t hold back OK?
Here to help you start on Virology 101:
Lesson 1. Natural Flu infections do protect for life, and they certainly do provide some cross-reactive protection. It’s why the Swine flu didn’t end up hurting the seniors as much as they expected. Infections from decades ago gave them more protection.
Childhood Influenza infections protect for life:
Researchgate
Our findings emphasize that childhood exposures can imprint a lifelong immunological bias toward particular influenza subtypes, and that these cohort-specific biases shape epidemic age distributions. As a consequence, newer and less “senior” antibody responses acquired later in life do not provide the same strength of protection as responses imprinted in childhood
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09652-6
Antibody responses to influenza are highly cross-reactive, in that antibodies induced by infection or vaccination with one strain often protect against infections with related strains3,4.
PS: Everyone from primary school age on knows about antigenic drift. Skip the lectures OK?
21
[ Off Topic ]AD
02
Jo
“The pain of doing 6 weeks properly is nothing compared to 6 – 18 months of rolling disruption.”
I think it would help your case Jo if you explained what “properly” means. Richard (Above) has touched on some of the issues but there are many more to be considered along with the associated cost both financially and in life years lost of implementing them.
With politics being the way it is at the moment and with the lefts hatred of Trump I don’t think you can rule out a full lockdown in the US being sabotaged. Then there is also a % of the population who just don’t care. In a previous post wasn’t it 20% of people in VIC who were under an home quarantine order were found not to be at home when police visited to check their compliance. As far as lockdowns go the only thing I can think of that is worse than a prolonged western style partial lockdown is a prolonged full lockdown whatever that actually is.
143
“wasn’t it 20% of people in VIC who were under an home quarantine order were found not to be at home when police visited to check their compliance”
Apparently
It would be interesting to see if Australia’s lock down, despite its relative (attempted?) severity, was in fact followed any better than what Sweden were “allowed” to do. No real way of knowing, and without immunity to prosecution who would be open, but an anonymous survey might shed some light.
If it’s 20% in Victoria in one session of checking, what’s the total across Australia for the entire period of this event?
53
A proper lockdown means whatever level you have to do (under current weather etc conditions) to crush the curve and get those numbers down. (ie. To bring that Ro far under 1). That is different in different nations and different in the city compared to the country.
There are traffic estimates and mobility tracking data that suggest Swedens lockdown was roughly in the order of 50 – 70% complete compared to Australias at sort of 80% and Italy around 90%.I’m looking at these different estimates now.
If Sweden has an Ro close to 1 the number of cases will stay constant for a long time. For business the pain is extended. This is the slow bleed option.
I don’t see the appeal of a 50% lockdown for months, compared to an 80% (albeit in summer weather) for 6 or 7 weeks and then have 95% of your economy and freedom back?
Given the different levels of lockdown I repeat (again and again) we should split nations and even states into regional lockdowns so the latter can do lower levels and be released sooner.
Doing it as “one whole nation” is the hard way.
Doing it with open borders (US and UK) means waiting for the rest of the world to get rid of the virus. It’s a form of sabotage…
98
March 27th was the date of the article I posted re: 20% of people returning from overseas not being home. I cannot figure out how they gave false addresses. Were they not citizens? That’s too weird. Regardless, my guess is they were asymptomatic. Most people I see / hear about getting the flu have no interest in doing anything but staying in bed.
A week later, The Daily Mail reports:
Huh. ~20% again. Pareto’s principle (loosely) says 80% of things happen because of 20% of the things that cause them.
Unless people diagnosed with COVID-19 are detained, my guess is 20% will continue to not properly self-isolate. And cause 80% of the ongoing viral propagation.
53
Jo “release” what triggers that and what does it really mean? If you are going to put the population into a lockdown you need to give them some light at the end of the tunnel.
Dividing into much smaller regions for quarantine purposes has a lot of merit. This is far simpler boarder control with far fewer side effects that possibly lead to a loss of life years by those that otherwise would not have been affected by CV19. Local area quarantine will also be a much easier sell to the public.
51
Jo “I don’t see the appeal of a 50% lockdown for months, compared to an 80% (albeit in summer weather) for 6 or 7 weeks and then have 95% of your economy and freedom back?”
I also don’t see any appeal in a 50% lockdown for months. But I disagree with your premise that a 6-7week lockdown would be successful in getting 95% of our economy back. Yes in theory and perhaps in communist countries it is possible but in the west you need to successfully sell the lockdown to the population to gain enough compliance for it to work. This is a hard sell given the unintended consequences, side effects and costs of a lockdown While early on when less was known about CV19 and the fear was high this may have been possible but I doubt it is now as more people have had a taste of lockdowns and a chance to asses their individual risk. What do you think would happen to a politician that sold you a short sharp lockdown and it ended up being a long drawn out one.
So sorry but I don’t share your optimism that a short sharp lockdown in the west is currently or possibly ever was an option.
61
Jo, “A proper lockdown means whatever level you have to do (under current weather etc conditions) to crush the curve and get those numbers down”
Jo I would like to know how far you would go to achieve this as it seems a bit caviler. Does “whatever level” include stopping all trips to the supermarket, chemist and doctors, no ambulances on the road, hospitals closed, armed guards patrolling the street with shoot to kill orders. You obviously have to draw a line at some point ( which could be well after the cure is worse than the disease) and when you do draw that line if the virus is still around it wins and laughs at you because your did most of the damage to yourself.
21
Aaron bloody heel you are a ‘misinformer’ I wonder if it is deliberate ?
That aspect of the Australian quarantine strategy was abandoned weeks ( months ago ? ) Yes too many returned travellers did not do the 14 day home isolation. So now they MUST remain in a hotel room under police supervision for 14 days. I have a friend in isolation doing this after returning from Italy last week after a 7 weeks stint helping in the hospitals in Cremona. Not too far from your beloved Geneva. And if you ever wandered back here that is what YOU would be doing.
510
Bill. The data Aaron posted shows what happens if you rely on the people who have been ordered to isolate are left to their own devices. It became clear that better enforcement was required hence the guards. So extrapolating this if we were to all be forced to lockdown how many guards with guns would be needed. (Australian police carry guns).
81
Shut the borders Reddy.
It happened here long ago.
07
“Do it right once and hold the borders until the virus mutates to be well behaved, or until we have a treatment or vaccine.”
Just how long is a piece of string.
I knew some were wanting to wait for treatment / vaccine, but waiting until the virus mutates to a benign enough variant is stunning.
Meanwhile, Switzerland wants to, “learn to live with the virus”. Every country relaxing lock downs – as far as I can tell – is doing worse than Australia and allowing more freedom.
156
” waiting until the virus mutates to a benign enough variant is stunning.”
Only to people who haven’t been reading my site for long. Since the beginning of my posts on this (or since the Spanish Flu) anyone who has studied past pandemics knows this is a reasonable strategy and mortality rates in the first or second wave are usually the worst, and a natural disease progression is to evolve into a virus that is more contagious, but eventually, usually less deadly. It’s not a given. Sometimes the second wave is deadlier. This is what we risk by recklessly allowing it to run free instead of stopping the flights and keeping it in China.
Read my post Feb 7th. American Samoa = 0 dead. Western Samoa = a quarter of the population died.
American Samoa did a quarantine, they still caught the Spanish Flu in 1920 but by the time it came around it was far less deadly.
I see Aaron you have not bothered to look up Switzerlands curve before commenting? They are tracking to zero too. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/switzerland/
86
Jo “… hold the borders until the virus mutates to be well behaved,”
Clearly I misunderstood. I thought you meant close the borders. Any time I have read your solution to “crushing the curve” or “eradicating the virus” when it comes to border control, it’s been to only allow certain countries that have also “eradicated the virus” access to our shores. My understanding is there are no such countries. Supported by evidence I posted below.
“American Samoa did a quarantine”. Pedantically, American Samoa quarantined ships for 5 days then let them in, not the residents of their country.
“I see Aaron you have not bothered to look up Switzerlands curve before commenting?”
Incorrect. In fact posted details on Swizterland and a host of other countries down below
The Swiss president said “we must learn to live with the virus” as they implemented relaxing their lock down on the 27th of April, when their daily average new cases was 174.
32
c’mon Aaron. On Switzerland, I say “update your figures” and you say “I did” and then you link to a comment where you posted figures from April 27, three weeks ago, that are far higher than now. Which was exactly what I was criticizing you for.
Daily new cases in Switz are now one third of your figures.
Timewasting.
10
Jo, this is where (link below) lockdowns might work to some extent, in my non expert student opinion (IMNESO)
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4
13
Gosh, i might have to explain that again. I kept it simple. Fingers crossed 🙂
35
Have you seen the protocols? I mean. The analogy fits, but gah! Clumsy oafs like me would be wandering around for ages with rips in our suits… 🙁
62
I know the feeling as an 9 year old student apiarist….slightest hole, and the bee’s find their way…ouch!! 🙂
21
From Finland… 🙂 too good!
01
http://paradisehoney.net/en/project/beebox-series/
01
Best beee boxes on the planet come from Finland.
11
The virus won’t “mutate to be well behaved” — it will continue ‘as is’ for as long as susceptible hosts exist to be infected.
There is every reason to believe Covid-19 has a genetic component for who’s predisposed to extreme adverse reactions, compounded by effects related to increased age and chronic illnesses.
And what if no vaccine or effective treatment is developed? Are you proposing Hokkaido (and by extension, the rest of the planet) stays locked down indefinitely? That’s just insane. It’s equally ludicrous to assume movement between nations can ever be 100% “in compliance” when so many people are asymptomatic carriers and susceptible subpopulations have not achieved immunity.
66
Sigh. For the 141st time:
RNA viruses mutate rapidly, this one already is. Even in one person there can be different versions.
Read my posts. 25 countries tracking to zero will be able to reopen flights soon. Some are arranging that already. They can fly freely as long as they kieep a mandatory enforced two weeks quarantine with all nations that are failing to control the spread. Which means the UK, USA, Sweden and Canada.
The zone of safe clean nations will grow. The borders around them will expand. People inside the UK and US will be angry their governments kept open their borders, sabotaging the lockdown, and meaning that they won’t be accepted on flights direct for much longer, and no one in a safe country will want to holiday in London or NY because they might get sick and because they will have to do a 2 week quarantine on return.
The economies of clean nations will flourish and recover. Those nations with uncontrolled and mismanaged spread will struggle.
107
… and they keep suitable `social’ distancing between aircraft 😀
10
Sorry, but the theory is wrong. The more successful the lockdown, the less the population is exposed, and the less resistance is developed. Unsurprisingly, the population remains just as susceptible as it was originally.
The idea that a virus can be ‘eradicated’ is nonsense. It has been achieved once in history – smallpox – and since it can apparently be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, the idea of ‘virus-free’ travel bubbles is sheer fantasy.
105
You wont get rolling waves simply because you will get herd imunity at some stage.
Until that occurs you have to stay locked down but if you stay licked down you will never get herd imunity
32
Tim. Assuming that herd immunity is even possible. We don’t have herd immunity to any Coronavirus yet. It may happen, but you’ll have to wait years to find out if people get long lasting immunity to this coronavirus.
“Herd Immunity” is used as a marketing sales point pushed by corporations selling vaccines.
It’s real and valuable in some diseases, but oversold, and there are plenty of other ways to manage disease.
We don’t have herd immunity to ebola, rabies, the black plague, RSV, Norovirus, cholera, hantavirus, lassafever, SARS1, MERS, etc etc
We can manage this disease with quarantine until there is another option or it mutates. See Stem Cells, Monoclonal antibodies, antivirals, antiviruals, antivirals, RNAi, etc.
106
You should not promulgate nonsense. The body will make an immune response to almost all antigens to which it is exposed. Some diseases are so aggressive that they will override any such responses.
If you think herd immunity is so worthless, why the devil are you rabbiting on about vaccines, whose sole purpose is exactly that – induction of herd immunity?
64
If you think herd immunity is so worthless, why the devil are you rabbiting on about vaccines, whose sole purpose is exactly that – induction of herd immunity?
If there is one person that has not been “rabbiting on” about vaccines, its Jo Nova, (show us where you think she has, and link directly to it). Jo has been pessimistic about a vaccines from the beginning, and numerous times discouraged talking of vaccine as a likely solution.
But you didn’t even know that much.
Damon, your every comment shows you have no clue about the discussion which has occurred here since January, so how about you shut your gob and read the old posts first if you wish tag Jo’s comments with your tedious uniformed tirades, you have nothing going on upstairs thus far to be ‘schooling’ anyone with in here.
73
Yes, but in Australia we CAN do total eradication. And it will only take a few weeks. AND we dont have to keep in lockdown. We just have to KEEP THE BORDERS QUARANTINED. Apply the same controls on incoming humans as we do apples, or dogs. Australia CAN eradicate the virus and keep it that way. We just have to re-adjust to the idea we can go to Bali for the weekend or a few days. We can still do international trade, just keep the ship and aeroplane crews quarantined from the local population. Hokaido COULD have done the same, but didnt, opened its borders, rather than control them, and have to go into lockdown again. There is no human right to free international travel without quarantine. Who needs flights for business, just do meetings online. It is the modern age after all. Just put two weeks quarantine on all incoming people. That is not “lockdown”. Lockdown does not equal border control with quarantine. Border control does not mean complete economic ruination and starvation. Australia is not going to get a second chance, once the virus is in and widespread you are right in that lockdowns probably wont work. We have this chance to get it right here. I am in the sights for this virus. For the last 4 years just a simple cold or flu has given me pneumonia and post-viral syndrome for 4 or 5 months that the symptoms are just like those described for corona virus. I have got sick beause people would not respect not bringing their diseases to work as my employees. I have hope this year I might not get sick because of the social change toward sickness. I am in permanent lockdown or likely death if I associate with humans if we dont eradicate this in Australia. Permanent isolation or death is a very hard life sentence. Dying later rather than sooner IS the human condition. So you say I should just die now, drowning in my own lungs (and I already know that agony) because it is too inconvienient for you to add two weeks to your holiday. It is beyond infuriating to see the politicians stuff it up. If they had done what Jo said, and put quarantine on international flights from February we would have had NO lockdown at all in this country. People do not need to die if idiot politicians had the guts to do something sensible, obvious, and not particularly expensive.
187
Exactly right Plain Jane.
Look after yourself, Annie.
90
Plain Jane, you are right!! by simply turning Australia into a level 4 biosecurity laboratory. (See my entire theory IMNESO in the link above)
87
Doesn’t matter what the data shows does it ES?
53
Jo, show me/us some granularity in the alleged data that shows if a person died, of corona, or, with corona for example. Granularity is the level of detail of the data within the data structure.
63
Env Sk, Australia has managed for 200 years to keep out many diseases that plague many of our trading partners. We have kept out rabies, foot and mouth, West Nile Virus, a host of diseases of crops and birds etc etc. In 2007 the Australian Quarantine service slacked off in its protocols and let loose from a recent arrival from Japan an extremely contagious and deadly flu virus. Unlike cv-19 it would spread on the wind, over a number of km. It spread throughout large areas of the eastern seaboard of Australia within two weeks. The Australian quarantine service held instant lock-downs. It was inconvienient and costly to many. We beat that virus. We eradicated it within a year and it has not come back. There are outbreaks of that same infuenza in multiple places throughout the world to this day. Australia continues to keep this virus out. We can keep viruses out by Border Protection – like it says in the heading of this thread. Why the hell will the politicians switch their brains on for their sports, but not the general human population. It does not mean we cant have Emirates bring their horses in for the Melbourne cup. It just means there has to be the political will to protect our borders. I dont think there are many legitimate reasons for the existence of our political leaders, but border protection is one of them. We dont have Level 4 biosecurity on everything that comes into Australia yet we manage to keep out so many types of flu and virus. Just a general level of doing the obvious would really really help. I mean – the Ruby Princess – really !!! We beat highly contagious flu in 2007, why not 2020. I admit the pollies seem to have gone more crazy since then.
52
I am fine with 200 years of trying to keep out diseases. The order of magnitude is that a virus is so small, not even the most hardened lab can keep them inside. Believe it or not, it is now possible to create a virus from scratch, make it bigger/smaller, give it teeth, or remove some, over an internet connection. These viruses built from scratch are ‘chimeric’ viruses.
When a virus escapes, the order of magnitude compared to a fruit fly are not even in the ball park. We can slow it, but not defeat it by brute force. I think that kind of thinking is fantasy at best. (Sorry Jo!)
Sure there are success stories for very big things like flies and so on…
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
Shutting down the source of possibly new viruses would be my first audit…like the laboratories all over the world that can build viruses from scratch and give them teeth while they are at it.
21
Thanks for your reply Plain Jane.
00
Parting comment…..We should keep our powder dry for the something like a new and improved Spanish Flu.
20
‘let it burn through’ what a load of tosh!!
GeoffW
42
My daughter has been living in Hokkaido for the past 18 months. She has told me that the first lock down did not happen. Life went along as normal until early April.
190
This is very true. I’m living in Hokkaido too. These ‘lockdowns’ never happened because Japan has it in law that the government can’t restrict the rights of the people of Japan, including their right to free movement. The government politely requested the cooperation of the Japanese people in preventing the spread of this virus by asking people to not make unnecessary travel.
Since the end of February, in accordance with the government’s requests, not being legally required to do so but wanting to help, the people of Hokkaido cancelled large events and gatherings, and such events were not reinstated even for Golden Week. Stating that the country opened because of a three-day weekend is not only wrong, it’s a little insulting.
The only ‘lockdown’ Jo might be referring to would be the closure of schools. The government gave permission for schools to close (it was still the decision of each local board of education whether to do so or not). Schools were closed in Japan from as early as February. As of now, schools in towns without infections have re-opened, but those in areas with even only a few infections have stayed shut. Schools are the only places that are actually closed. All other businesses, including transportation, are open and running.
There are and have never been any lockdowns of the manner that Jo Nova is suggesting, only requests and suggestions and advice from the government which the people of Japan follow as they see fit. So life was entirely normal (apart from the closing of schools, but that is a common occurrence in flu season anyway) in Hokkaido until early April, when the government gave more advice to Hokkaido, and the people here politely followed that advice. The advice was to continue to not have any large events even in festival season, and to try to keep up social distancing where possible, and to avoid unnecessary travel if possible.
Yes, we are in a state of emergency, but it is not the picture that Jo Nova is painting. The government directly giving the people of Japan requests and advice only happens in a state of emergency. A prefecture might have a state of emergency because of an earthquake or tsunami. This post was rather inflammatory and I hope in the future that Jo might consider not only her language but her resources before posting.
20
Katsuki, Scott, delighted to hear from people on the ground. I merely quoted Time, and said little else.
I’ll amend the post to add that “lockdown” there is voluntary — “self-isolation” is a better term. The libertarian in me would be delighted if we could all still do that, but sadly, in other countries which are not the cohesive, high trust cultures that they used to be, that isn’t so successful anymore.
Rather than being inflammatory, I commend the Japanese for acting early and wearing masks.
And glad to hear there are Japanese readers. Keen to learn from your experience.
21
Maybe they could use a bit of HCQ?
https://twitter.com/VincentCrypt46/status/1261122553461923840
40
“This Japanese Island Lifted Its Coronavirus Lockdown Too Soon and Became a Warning to the World”
If the objective is to minimise deaths, then yes, locking down early and not lifting it will achieve that objective. If the objective is minimising deaths whist maximising economic activity … then there going to have to be trade-offs. This is the tension everyone is under.
Australia and NZ may be lucky in being able to completely eliminate the virus, and by continuous restrictions and isolation keep it that way. Everyone else is going to have to learn to live with it.
133
Twenty countries that could get to zero: Australia, NZ, France, Germany, Norway, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Iceland, Czechia, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Greece, Switzerland. Plus Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Estonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovcakia, North Macedonia…
Save the economy, kill the coronavirus. :- )
1413
No, you are sounding la lot like those who chant a mantra of “Save the planet, ban fossil fuels.”
327
And you are sounding lie you have no else to support your ideas
So you bring up something completely different to distract people.
That’s an old debate’s trick.
But not one that gives you any credibility.
18
Get ready for the next virus. Do NOT import PPE, make it locally. Do proper health checks at the border. Look at your supply chain. Promote healthy lifestyles. Reduce drug dependency.
We all know none of this will happen. There are too many “pigs in trough”.
Have a vote on whether the people want to bear the economic pain of zero infections via isolation. Its called democracy. Tell people just what this policy will mean to their way of life. Educate teachers about coping with viruses.
242
Geoff you write
“We all know none of this will happen. There are too many “pigs in trough”.
Which country are . you writing about Geoff ?
We have the borders closed here in Oz already. So do lots of other countries. So which ones are you talking about
314
Geoff you write
“We all know none of this will happen. There are too many “pigs in trough”.
Which country are . you writing about Geoff ?
We have the borders closed here in Oz already. So do lots of other countries. So which ones are you talking about
111
mmmm if “save the economy” means leaving the next couple of generations pay to get us back to 2019
113
Jo, the only way to save the economy is for the vast majority of people who lost their jobs recently to get back to new jobs. The only way to do that is to relax lockdowns completely. That contradicts your theme to maintain certain lockdowns indefinitely. Please elaborate on how we can save the economy by other means.
166
‘Please elaborate on how we can save the economy by other means.’
Our world has been turned upside down, which suggests there are many opportunities to be had. Australia will bounce back fit as a fiddle, but we may have to cancel our jet fighters and submarines.
43
Yes those subs need to be cancelled but only because they are a waste of time and space by the time they are delivered. Not sure about the fighters. As for taking advantage of the opportunities that are now made available to us, well they were already there a long time ago. We need to take action and grab onto them ASAP. Let’s hope the crises has knocked us off our complacency. I’m not yet convinced we are. PM Morrison hasn’t come up with any real initiatives. So far it’s just talk with no substance let alone actions.
73
Everyone is chaffing at the bit for a return to normalcy, patience and perseverance is required.
Other changes to come out of this, we don’t need international travellers or foreign students, the south sea bubble will cater for all our needs.
24
PeterS please, you keep repeating that I say something I’ve never said. I will email you. I need to hear you acknowledge this so you stop repeating a falsehood.
After 80 posts on Coronavirus I would hope regular readers know:
1. I did my damnedest to stop lockdowns. If people had done what I suggested on Feb 9th, there would have been no need for any outside China.
2. I have repeatedly called for a short sharp lockdown so we could save the economy and restore as much employment as soon as possible.
3. I have consistently called for borders and sub-borders so lockdowns in regional and rural areas can be as short as possible.
4. Now I’m working against repeat rolling lockdowns.
Can anyone name a blogger who has worked harder or earlier to stop lockdowns, who predicted they would happen a month before they did, and who warned they would be expensive but inevitable, that they would work if done properly, and was right every time?
The less lockdowns the better.
Just call JoNova the Anti-lockdown girl, :- )
123
Jo, in that case stop focusing so much on the virus and start focusing on ideas to try and fix the current economic crisis.
54
What do you think I’m doing?
The US is headed for a trainwreck keeping borders open, doing an expensive sabotaged lockdown, and releasing restrictions too early, not doing the easy cheap things (masks and Vit D). A lot of people who want the US to succeed have no interest in the viral science, they apparently like the “hopey change” plan that if they ignore the science the virus will go away, or the democratic population will suddenly adopt their own high risk tolerance and won’t hoard their cash and stay home while the virus spreads uncontrolled.
All the people who want to solve the economy might want to look first at the science of the thing that caused the trainwreck. Only by understanding this virus do we solve the economic problems.
Just like climate change, no matter how much money people throw at the problem, if they don’t look at the data, it’s wasted money.
105
Jo Nova wrote:
1. The US locked down its borders to travel from China on Jan 31st and to the EU on March 26th — six weeks ago, which should be sufficient time for quarantine measures within the country to be effective (and also presumes every person on international flights NOT from the member states of those nations to be infected.)
2. The US has been effectively locked down for even longer — at least 7 weeks. In areas with few cases and even fewer deaths, self-isolation has been an unnecessary protocol. How long do you propose 347 million people remain “properly” locked down to trend to zero?
3. “Easy cheap things” like masks and vitamin D not being done? Masks don’t protect against the virus, especially when people don’t know how to properly wear them, continually handle them with contaminated hands, and are homemade from simple cloth (as is often the case), not medical-grade material. Vitamin D deficiency is a correlation to mortality risk, not causation. The black community being disproportionately affected by Covid-19 have other risks unrelated to vitamin D — not to mention, most northern European descendents in America also have lower vitamin D levels but aren’t suffering the same mortality risk. That points to either a genetic predisposition, an age- or co-morbidity dependent risk, or both.
11
AZ1971
I’ve listed the papers that show masks do protect both the wearer and the community against viruses E.g. Masks stop 3/4 influenza infections in the people who wear them.
On Vitamin D, read the twenty papers I link to in this post. We have causal mechanisms already known. We have empirical evidence that supplements help (and that’s extremely rare in medical studies). It is genetics too, blacks don’t make VitD well at 50 deg N. Vit D deficiency helps create the co-morbidities and some co-morbidities help create the deficiency. Obviously, it’s one factor of many. It won’t solve all covid cases. It won’t save all lives, but at 5c a dose it is nuts not to reduce the spread, and reduce the deaths.
We need to understand the virus and virology first — otherwise we run around in circles wasting money, lives, livelihoods. Just like climate change, the US is burning through all three because the debilitating polarization means politics is put before science.
People are deciding policies on both the left and the right through a political lens.
The left says HCQ can’t work because Trump will look good if it does. The left says we will have to have a vaccine, because experts say so, and we can’t stop this virus with things we do ourselves. (like masks).
The right (I can’t believe this) is letting the left run rings around them, sabotaging Trump, keeping the virus running when it could be wiping it out.
The right unwittingly agrees that we don’t need to build the wall, or enforce the borders because the virus is “only the flu” — they repeat a CCP propaganda line — and smirk while they miss the best opportunity to do something they always wanted.
30
And I prophesy that this train wreck will have it’s own name very soon :
“The Trump Great American Tain Wreck “.
And America will go on to vote by a supermajority for a very, very surprised and undeserving Joe Biden as President with Obama behind the scenes pulling the strings as ‘special adviser’
Ohhh well, they do things differently in the USA.
111
… cancel our jet fighters and submarines – and hang up welcome signs in Mandarin for our new rulers.
Si vis pacem, para bellum – Flavius Vegetius Renatus c.400AD.
(If you want peace, prepare for war)
41
Cancel our jet fighters and buy cheaper and more functional fighters like the Gripen. Cancel the submarines and buy Japanese submarines off the shelf – cheaper than maintaining the Collins class. Maybe keep the order for the French subs as well if they are nuclear.
51
Trace and track. Taiwan worked. Lockdown hasn’t worked. Too many mistakes made in closed spaces, particularly associated with elderly people who make up most of the dead. The modelling has been falsified so no need for extreme lockdowns.
74
Glen, tracking and tracing even a small number of people takes huge teams. Taiwan could do it because it never let many infections in.
Total number of cases in Taiwan was 440.
Once countries actively fly in infections and the Swamp convinces them to keep the Borders Open tracking and tracing is no longer viable.
The models are irrelevant. Lockdowns are the only thing that works once complacent arrogant nations with health departments filled with corrupt or incompetent officials stupidly advise that “flights should stay open”. I don’t need a model to show lockdowns work. Even a child can see the effect they have on a graph. No statistics needed.
87
“Twenty countries that could get to zero”
Some of them are listed here:
Based on case information from this link and the official Czehia gov website:
Czechia
April 20: 120 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
April 20, the following business can be reopened: craft workshops (except for professions where a direct physical contact with clients is a requirement), car dealers, outdoor markets or dog grooming salons. From the same date, students of the last year of university programmes may return to their universities for individual consultations. Last but not least, weddings of up to 10 people and outdoor training sessions of professional athletes (both under strict hygiene conditions) may be held as well.
Here’s a summary of some of the other countries in the “could get to 0” list:
Germany
April 20: 2427 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
On Monday 20 April, Germany began to reopen for business. Shops with a floorspace less than 800 square metres – approximately the size of four tennis courts – were allowed to open their doors, along with car showrooms, bookstores and bicycle shops.
Norway
April 20: 79 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
The numbers of daily new cases in Norway has been falling since late March. At the time of writing, the country has reported 7,103 cases and 165 deaths from COVID-19. This relative success prompted Prime Minster Erna Solberg to announce on 7 April that “Norway has managed to get the virus under control”.
Norway’s kindergartens reopened on 20 April. Primary and some high schools, as well as universities and hair and beauty salons will reopen one week later. Domestic travel is now permitted, but is strongly discouraged for all non-essential purposes.
Austria
April 14: 226 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
On 6 April, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced a “resurrection after Easter”; the country, another early adopter of lockdown measures, would soon be lifting restrictions.
From 14 April, non-essential shops with a floor-space of less than 400 square metres – about the size of two tennis courts – were allowed to reopen, as well as DIY stores and garden centres.
Switzerland
April 27: 174 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
On April 27, businesses such as salons, florists and DIY shops were allowed to re-open with precautionary measures in place, such as the use of face masks.
Australia:
May 11: 17 average new confirmed cases / day over the past 7 days
The Guardian writes,
New South Wales – Yes. According to the NSW government’s website, as of 15 May you can go to a park for recreational purposes, such as to have a picnic. You are also allowed to gather in public spaces, like parks, with up to 10 other people.
Victoria – Unclear*. Legislation suggests that you would only be allowed in a park for the purpose of exercise, but on 1 April Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton told ABC radio that he thought sitting in a park alone was an acceptable activity as it posed little risk of spreading infection. Guardian Australia has requested clarification from Victoria police and the premier’s office.
Queensland – Yes, as of Friday 1 May people are allowed to leave the home for recreational activities. This means you are allowed to sit in a park even if you aren’t exercising. You can do this alone, with one guest or with all the members of your household.
Tasmania – Technically no*, Tasmanian residents are only allowed to leave the house for essential reasons. The essential reasons include exercise, however, sitting in a park for recreational reasons is not allowed. But a spokeswoman for Tasmania police said they are unaware of anyone being charged or summonsed in relation to sitting in parks so far.
Australian Capital Territory – As of 8 May, ACT residents are allowed to gather in groups of up to 10 people indoors and outdoors, and have picnics. Therefore, it is likely to be OK to sit in a park by yourself, or with others, as long as you are observing responsible physical distancing.
Western Australia – Yes, you are allowed to leave the home for recreational reasons, and are now allowed to meet with up to 10 people. However, you are not permitted to travel between the nine WA regions unless it is on “compassionate grounds”.
South Australia and Northern Territory – Yes. There are currently no fines for leaving the house for non-essential reasons, however unnecessary socialisation is discouraged. In SA gatherings are limited to 10.
You cannot sit alone in a park in Tasmania.
And possibly Victoria.
51
I sat in a park yesterday with 7 other people, directly opposite the Police station. Nobody including the Police seemed to care much about us or the couple hundred people further up the street chatting and drinking coffee in various sized groups. Dan is living the socialist dream in Melbourne, meanwhile the population seems to have moved n.
91
Dear Aaron,
Why are you quoting out of date figures?
See Switzerland https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/switzerland/
Current daily cases are now around 50.
We will find out two weeks after the new rules change weather it increases the rate of spread. How many of those nations/states will repeat Hokkaido?
And right now I’d be happy for flights to come to Perth from Darwin, Adelaide, Auckland, Taiwan, selected Pacific Islands, and soon Hobart and others.
55
Jo: “Why are you quoting out of date figures?”
I am citing the lock down process of each country when they started to ease their lock down. (eg: open hair dressers)
I am citing the date of that easing of the lock down. (eg: April 27)
I am citing the new cases per day of the date of the easing of lock down. (eg: April 27, 174 new cases/day)
When it comes to data and analysis, context matters, so the dates of the lock down easing and the cases / day from the same date are listed. That’s why I took the time to highlight in bold both the date of new cases / day data, and the date within the lock down easing description that the easing was occurring.
Jo: “Current daily cases are now around 50.”
That’s confirmed new cases / day.
Do you know the criteria for testing someone with COVID-19 in Switzerland? I have been looking and have not found any info.
31
Specifically: countries opened up in April, 2-3 weeks before we did, with Switzerland (for example) at 10x the new cases per day (174) we had when we started to ease (17/day).
They are opening up before they “eradicate the virus”.
Unless by “eradicate the virus” you mean “174 cases per day” or “50 cases per day”.
They are all countries from your “can get to 0” list.
I did quote you at the start of the post: “Twenty countries that could get to zero”
Austria started to ease lock down when they had over 2,000 new cases per day.
31
OK. I see you have a reason for looking at old data, so what’s your main point? It will take PhD’s to figure out the risks of each kind of reopening. Yes, it’s valuable data. This is when we start to find out which parts of locking down were the most useful, and presumably each nation is testing what they can release while keeping Ro as low as possible.
I’m concerned that some are releasing too soon, but on a case by case basis some things seem a much lower risk than what they did when we had no info 2 months ago. I expect that outdoor events in warmer weather might be OK. Hairdressers, I don’t know. But there is so much data we don’t have. Compliance. Testing. Uptake. Activity.
As long as a country keeps Ro down below 1, it’s on the road to zero cases. At some point the number of cases will be low enough to start tracking and tracing or regional small local lockdowns.
20
Jo…without perpetual fear, you will never achieve your political goals.
54
And my political goals are to Drain the Swamp. Right now it’s Trump versus the Swamp and the Swamp is winning (with some help from misguided Trump fans).
What are yours?
I’m the one who said all along, we will beat this virus. We can get rid of it. The solution I’m advocating is the only one that gets rid of the fear. I’m the die-hard optimist.
My plan is to get our freedom and economy back as fast as possible. You may disagree with my approach, but you apparently don’t even know what my approach is.
ES, looking forward to when you start to read my posts again.
104
But not China? But they have already, surely???
Cheers,
Speedy
10
Well I have to admit it, but “the fairly new”, New Zealand Prime Minister has done a passable job, in reducing the coronavirus. She did so by throwing politics out of the window, and adopting what her technical advisors, from both sides of the isle, advised her to do.
It is probably not the way to run a nation, in normal times. But some times you need to refuse to be normal.
Will I vote for her at the next election? Probably not. But these are single-issue times, and therefore very interesting.
31
I think your strategy is flawed mainly because the virus is not as deadly as you are think it is.
BUT … even if it was, and elimination was the only viable way forward, apart from Australia and NZ … how do those other countries manage to remain isolated from everybody else ?
01
There is a logic problem.
With lockdown – few get infected and no herd immunity is built, less people die.
Release lockdown – one person starts it all rolling again, no herd immunity, more people die.
Can’t stay indoors forever, people don’t have the economic resources for that and the lack of social contact does not help either.
This virus won’t finish up until 2022, same timeframe as the other virus infections.
Wisest strategy currently is to concentrate on building your immune system defense, while keeping fit so that you have the best chance of fighting the infection. Masks probably help reduce the virus load, the question is are we drawing out the cycle longer than 2 years?
221
and maybe quarantine and protect the vulnerable, rather than the world
231
Don’t sweat the petty things.
And don’t pet the sweaty things.
You know it makes sense.
40
#3
‘logic problem’
This is not what Jo is advocating -to my understanding.
The lockdown does not cure, does not give immunity, but what it does do is to buy time.
Time enables planning to built up hospital capacity, develop a vaccine (unlikely), develop cures and treatments (see several of Jo’s comments), enhance testing, and detect and protect individuals who are the most susceptible.
‘wisest strategy’
Yes of course. This is directed at individuals and is good advice regardless of what is happening re borders and lockdowns. But it does not inform public policy for which the question is: Is the benefit of buying time worth the financial, economic cost, and the implications for civil liberties?
20
Thank you Lucky.
John, we won’t know for years if Herd Immunity even exists or is worth getting. Surely, given all the unknowns, it would be a mistake to aim for a potential fantasy with the price of many deaths to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
20
“Report: Wuhan Locks Down Again, Seals Residences amid Coronavirus ‘Resurgence’ ”
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/05/16/report-wuhan-locks-down-again-seals-residences-amid-coronavirus-resurgence/
31
Lock down not showing up at Flight Radar for the International Airport in Wuhan.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airports/wuh/statistics
91
Another in the long list of apparently illogical decisions and actions.
52
Broadie note “international airport”, the ccp doesn’t mind exporting tis virus.
50
If you look at the flight detail its nearly all domestic flights
60
We are talking about China, here.
This may be a manifestation of an inspection by a local big-wig, who has decided that Wuhan is not being demonstrable enough, when it comes to compliance with what the central committee is expecting.
These things happen.
10
A couple of days ago TdeF wrote about a very simple concept involving CV19o and CV19 and the possibility of using CV19b to downscale the onslaught of this horrible disease.
An excellent concept.
In the meantime we stumble on with an uncertain base of info to work from and suffer the consequences of the action being taken.
Contaminated localities need to be isolated.
Locking down the whole country? I’m not so sure; it seems to smell more of quick politics than rational epidemiology.
KK
192
Yes, what I”ve been saying all along is one strategy is to wait for a successful mutation.
If TdeF is advocating active infection with a less virulent strain we enter the tricky ethical world of “do not harm”.
Let’s say a strain is 50% less deadly, but doesn’t quite propagate as well as the current strain. We would need to keep boosting it – meaning actively helping it spread, infecting people. But the death rate is still a significant (worse than the flu) death rate. With potentially permanent disability or death.
Which docs would inject something that dangerous into their patients?
I’m not sure exactly what TdeF’s plan is. Ideally, we’d love a safe version of this disease, but there are almost no 100% safe viruses. Even ones that are endemic, and found in 90% of the population can still cause a nasty disease in a few. And some are involved in cancer generation many years later. It’s a hugely complicated and difficult ethical task to actively infect people.
We could perhaps isolate and lockdown the most serious strains and help nations with the worst strains to limit their spread. There is no ethical barrier to that. By working hardest against the worst strains we would be speeding up evolution of a nicer strain.
40
Good.
10
sounds like a live attenuated vaccine. Think anyone is making and testing one?
00
Herd immunity and vaccines appear to be almost wishful thinking.
In Australia, the time has come for the burden of responsibility to be shifted away from Governments and back to the individuals.
We know a lot about how infections are transmitted and pretty much everyone is au fait’ with the basics of hygiene and social distancing. The economy has to be re-fired urgently if we are going to save most of the furniture.
Blanket rules and regulations will not allow that to happen, individuals must be given responsibility to make their own choices. Those choices will involve risks which will vary from person to person and place to place.
Closing all churches makes little sense when you consider St. Mary’s Cathedral Mass at 7a.m on Wednesday where maybe 30 people attend with little risk. On the other hand, Parramatta Leagues Club, crammed with 3,000 people on Saturday night without social distancing would be a high risk. Obviously there 100’s if not 1000’s of scenarios in between. For the sake of brevity, I’m suggesting three risk levels, being low, medium and high.
Every event or premises must be required to sanitise touch points frequently. Social distancing to be encouraged where practical.
A crowded restaurant with social distance seating requiring the app to gain entrance would be designated as say medium risk.
High risk events to only allow entry to those with the app installed, as in The League’s Club scenario or say a football match.
All premises/events/activities involving the general public to be registered as whatever level of risk.
It would then be up to each individual member of the public to assess the personal risk associated with their own decision.
Extensive anti-body testing (although currently imperfect) needs to be instituted whereby individuals would have at least feel for their own level of immunity and also that of the public at large.
This is just a broad-brush of my idea but something like this has to happen now, where personal responsibility and risk assessment becomes the new normal but we must open everything up and get cracking again.
Our economic survival, not to mention our mental health depends on it.
233
You talk about the app as though its a working piece of technnology rather than dysfuntional window dressing.
Other than that, totally agree.
133
Pete I have red thumbed you. You make many valid points. But you miss one key point. About 20% of infected are a-symptomatic carriers. And probably more are pre-symptomatic.
This makes it impossible for individuals to act responsibly because they are acting in ignorance.
By the way, the lock downs cannot be enforced with willing cooperation by ordinary people. And for the past 2 months that cooperation has bene there here in Oz…
312
Bill, thank for your honesty if not your red thumb lol. Funnily enough i agree with you. My reference is not about people acting responsibly but rather taking responsibility for their choices. E.G Do i go to the league’s club or not. A responsible parent of young kids say, would probably say no, whereas a fit and healthy 20 year old may feel differently.
60
Hokkaido, a very useful and interesting case study.
91
Yes Keith it is. A clear example of what works and what does not work.
Adelaide in South AustraliaI is also effectively an island with sea on the South and deserts to the North the West and the East. And in SA we are now running zeros again with no active cases in the state. The lock down is gradually being eased and the economy building up steam again.
I fully expect that Tasmania with it’s effective government strategy will also be a very good example in the next few weeks. And WA is on the same pathway to restoring our normal lives.
410
A bit early for a somewhat O/T but
“llanfar says:
15 May 2020 at 2:45 pm
https://jchristoff.com/covid-test-doesnt-test-for-covid/
The PCR test is invalid.”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/yet-another-government-corruption-or-medical-fringe/#comment-129681
And while I’m O/T
Quite a corona collection here
“A C Osborn says:
15 May 2020 at 9:41 am
EM, here is the updated list from the database.”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/yet-another-government-corruption-or-medical-fringe/#comment-129674
51
On the question of imagination: https://www.nationalreview.com/videos/why-florida-may-become-another-italy/
Mugged by reality: https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases-map-high-risk-states-8ceeaa05-cc07-4e8b-b9f4-df3a3315f143.html
On the question of data credibility: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/colorado-state-health-dept-classified-man-who-died-of-alcohol-poisoning-as-covid-death-coroner-claims/
30
One of your links is saying Florida may become another Italy.
Yesterday I came across an article giving some information on Italy that I hadn’t seen before. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article.
“Colorado Naturopathic Doctor, Michael Murray writes: “Could a new flu vaccine be partly responsible for the COVID-19 mortality rate in Italy?…My colleague, Dr. Alex Vazquez, provided me with a valuable insight. In September 2019, Italy rolled out an entirely new type of influenza vaccine. This vaccine called VIQCC is different than others. Most available influenza vaccines are produced in embryonated chicken eggs. VIQCC, however, is produced from cultured animal cells rather than eggs and has more of a ‘boost’ to the immune system as a result. VIQCC also contains four types of viruses – 2 type A viruses (H1N1 and H3N2) and 2 type B viruses…”
Well-known Italian writer, Br. Alexis Bugnolo, states: “Italians are still trying to understand why Bergamo, of all the cities of Italy, is the epicenter of the Coronavirus epidemic…”
“One factor may be that the city was vaccinated en mass not once, but twice, in the 2 months preceding the Coronavirus outbreak in the city.”
In the fall [2019], according to records 141,000 doses of vaccine against the winter flu were administered by the local health board. Of those, 129,000 were Italians over 65 years of age. Of those, 129,000, 70% had grave heart problems.”
“Then, again, in December, from the 24th through to January, there was a mass vaccination program against Hepatitis-C of 21,331 citizens of Bergamo. And in the surrounding province, another 12,000 citizens.”
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/12/bill-gates-hr-6666-remdesivir-deaths-in-italy/
72
Ahhhh yes. Italy has an anti Vaxxer scare clique, the same as Australia.
And clearly seeking air time just like here in Oz.
212
A summary of studies comparing the health of vaccinated vs unvaccinated, including flu vaccines:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Vaxxed-Unvaxxed-Parts-I-IX-1.pdf
31
David thanks for that link to the weekly USA state by state breakdown. A few comments:
1: The decreases in New York, New Jersey ect are probably a response to the lock downs. People are sheltering in place and avoiding being infected.
2: The weekly stats are averages.. I wonder what the daily figures show.
3: Some states are re-opening..It will be interesting to see what happens to the infection rate there….A miraculous economic recovery with no infections or the disaster that happened in Hokkaido…
I am all ears to know what happens.
210
There are 21 US States yet to show an ability to get the reproductive rate below 1.
The big population states still increasing are Texas (1206cases/day) and California (1817cases/day). Virginia appears to have the highest reproductive rate:
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states&highlight=Virginia&show=25&trendline=default&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=cases-daily-7#states
892cases/day now and still going steadily upward.
22
Greece has reported a fraction of the COVID-19 cases of neighbouring countries, and has a very similar experience as Australia. Their lockdown rules were similar to ours and in some cases even harsher with officers walking around with machine guns to control the restrictions. They were also quicker to apply the lockdowns than surrounding countries. Also note that Greece has an aging population similar to Italy, which had a horrific experience. So, border closures and lockdowns appear to be the key element in slowing down dramatically the spread of the virus. The problem though is we can’t maintain lockdowns indefinitely without causing other massive problems. Maintaining border closures then appear to be the only way to go. Perhaps what we must do is when we allow international travel again, we must test each and every arrival. That would be an impossible task with the current systems in place. The only other alternative is to restrict international travel indefinitely until we have a vaccine, which might even be never. So be it, at least until perhaps herd immunity takes effect. It’s really the only practical way out of all this. This means a second wave for sure. It will happen anyway as we gradually relax local restrictions. Those who keep harping on the need to keep lockdowns in place indefinitely are not being realistic nor helpful.
100
From a non expert – Perfect or improve the antibody test. Prior to embarking, international visitors must display antibodies or they can’t come in.
50
Yes that is one way. I have little doubt if we turned our focus away from emissions reduction and renewables to finding the best testing means we could do it very quickly.
50
PeterS,
Good comment with a few changes in the second half:
1. Testing will never find people who are in the incubation phase. 1 – 14 days. Hence we have to maintain a two week quarantine, but only with nations that have incompetent quarantines or sabotaged ones and still have virus circulating. We don’t need a two week quarantine with countries like NZ and Taiwan that have controlled the virus.
2. Herd immunity is not worth discussing except to say we will have to wait years to even find out if it exists to this form of Coronavirus when it doesn’t to any other form. There is no sentence with the words “practical” and “planning” that makes sense that also contains “herd immunity” — at least until we get a vaccine that works (which may or may not happen).
The short sharp quarantine that works is the only peaceful democratic way to restore the economy to near full potential.
The other alternative is to use guns/fines/jail to force people to return immediately to full employment etc despite their wishes and fears and order them to get regular hair-cuts, visit restaurants, cafes, dentists, etc. 😉 Then the 0.5%-1.5% death rate could roll through the economy. I agree that the economy would probably recover after this, though businesses that rely on older customers (travel, food, housing, care services, medical) will suffer some long term loss, and some families with young children will lose carers. /sarc
Elections would be further skewed to the left by reducing the number of older wiser voters. This demographic will help the Democrats and Labor, but thankfully, they are not even contemplating this, and we know if they took this plan to an election they would be crushed.
” Those who keep harping on the need to keep lockdowns in place indefinitely are not being realistic nor helpful.”
Yes exactly which is why I have opposed that 100%. The Expert Swamp in the USA and the UK appear to be aiming for this, and surprisingly some skeptics are assisting, albeit unwittingly.
65
As a clinical laboratory scientist I can tell you that people aren’t going to want to sit in an isolation chamber with other unknowns whilst waiting for a rapid test to “prove” their immunization status. No one knows how long immunity is conferred once a serological assay is positive, or even that prior immunization confers long-term immunity — one only needs to look at the many cases of MMRV-vaccinated individuals who do NOT retain their measles immunological response beyond 6 months despite repeated vaccinations.
Again, I’m of the opinion that much of the Covid-19 pathogenicity is based in a genetic predisposition along with advanced age and co-morbidity risks from chronic diseases. Someone much higher up the food chain of R&D virology is going to have to prove me otherwise before I convert to a “you get it, you die” bullshit meme.
21
International travel is a very large part of current economic activity. For economies to get anywhere near where they were in 2019 there will need to be international travel.
I consider the prognosis for international travel is much better than most think right now.
The concept of ‘herd immunity’ in the context of humans is interesting. That result, when considering droplet transmitted virus, creates tension between human desire to socialise and for self-preservation. HIV caused similar tension between sex drive and self-preservation when it emerged in the 1980s; being predominantly a sexually transmitted virus. HIV did change behaviour and the rate of spread was reduced to very low level in most countries. We still see it in contact sports where the blood rule is applied – millennials may not appreciate how that rule came into existence.
The herd immunity threshold, so-defined, is (Ro-1)/Ro, where Ro is the reproductive rate of the infection. Once the threshold is reached, the level of infection across the herd subsides.
Taking Italy as an example, their number of cases began to decline from 28 March when there were 92k known cases. Based on death rate, it is likely there were 1M actual infections at that stage. So Italy achieved herd immunity with a threshold of 1.7% – with all the anti-social measures introduced in that country. That means the Ro was reduced below 1.017; much lower than the rate before the anti-social measures. Realistically much lower than 1 given the rate of fall in cases.
In the case of Australia, herd immunity was achieved with just 6000 cases; meaning the reproductive rate was taken below 1.00025. Again, likely a small fraction of that value given the rapid decline.
The sensitivity to symptoms, the rapidity and accuracy of testing for CV19 and the active contact tracing are all factors in keeping the reproductive rate to very low value.
Clearly humans have the ability to control the reproduction rate of an infection. As government orchestrated anti-social measures are eased, it is a matter of keeping the infection rate below the level that enables exponential rise. Self-preservation is a powerful driver.
There has been a rapid education program on how to keep the infection rate low. There are a few laggard countries that have not yet found the balance between current level of infection and anti-social measures to prevent the spread but most have. Most countries have a declining rate of infection. We know that it only takes 30 days to wipe the virus from any population so it will not be long before many countries are virus free. Or, like any exponential decay, just a few isolated outbreaks that are rapidly identified and quarantined.
It would be nice to think that aircraft apply social distancing rules such as 4sq.m per passenger but I have a feeling that will not occur. Hygiene on board will be stricter. More passengers will wear masks, some airlines might have it as a requirement and issue them upon boarding. Aircraft makers may be considering changes to air filtration and air circulating systems.
Zoom may replace a slice of travel but not eliminate air travel – probably better to have shares in Zoom than in Boeing in the next decade though. I had my first Zoom meeting this week. My wife has already had two tennis club committee meetings over Zoom.
70
Thanks for that about Greece Peter.
Greece is not an island. It has hundreds of islands but the mainland has land borders to Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia. So clearly it is an example that shows that closing the borders works and stops this disease being imported.
Greece is also like Australia in that it has a big international tourist industry and closing the borders has had a huge impact economically. But clearly the Greeks do not want this foreign disease either.
38
You are welcome Bill. Yes there are many similarities. It’s now obvious that border controls and lockdowns were the right thing to do up front. As I said many times we really had no choice since there were too many unknowns and so if the precautionary principle were to ever apply then that’s one situation it clearly does. Now we need to get back to business ASAP in the most sensible way possible. There are far too many people who have lost their jobs. Some 60% of the population now depend on government welfare. It can’t last too long.
40
I can understand people going to Greece, and being part of the big tourist industry, because there is so much history to see, and absorb.
But I cannot compute that as applying to Australia. If you have seen one koala, and one kangaroo, you have probably seen them all.
41
[Duplicate]
00
As more countries experience this saw toothed recovery, the failure of our economic system should be fingered as the root cause
Why lift restrictions? It’s the economy
Who benefits? The owners
Who dies? The workers
A system that condemns a percentage of its population to sickness or death just to function, needs to be re-evaluated
226
Our economy system based on the Western capitalist approach was flawed a long time ago but there is none better. It explains our great prosperous past compared to other approaches, such as communism and socialism. Our system is not perfect and so it was only a matter of time before the flaws show up in spades. The pandemic is not the cause of these flaws but it was the trigger that has exposed the flaws more viably than ever before. The warning signs were there before. Crashes like 1929, 1987 and others in between, dot com boom/bust of 2000, GFC, and now the pandemic. If it weren’t for the pandemic it would have been something else. I doubt this is the last sign. Eventually though the moment of truth will hit everyone when the economic woes become overwhelming. That’s inevitable. History is proof enough. We never learn.
70
Having said all that there is another way. That would require a bipartisan approach to change drastically a lot about how economy works and how we lend and borrow money. Good luck with that one. Given bipartisan is not going to happen (witness how the ALP is voicing their disagreement on how the Morrison government is tackling the current economic crisis) it would be pie in the sky stuff to believe we could evolve into a better economic and social system. The only times bipartisan has really appeared is during times of world wars. Then it works well to enable us to defeat the enemy. It’s sad the same sort of bipartisan can’t be displayed at other times. Of course that would defeat the purpose of having a two party system, and we would eventually become a totalitarian one, with all the associated risks. There might be a middle of the road approach but that’s realistically asking for too much of humans. It never has worked out that way in the past so it’s unrealistic to expect it to come about this time. The ALP and LNP will be at each others throats long enough for the crash and burn scenario to play out.
41
I agree, step 1 – nothing is too big to fail.
32
China might have a different view.
20
‘We never learn.’
That ain’t right, but I won’t go into detail.
Assuming there won’t be a second wave in Australia and we get back up and running at a slower pace, infrastructure spending is a certainty. What sort of infrastructure do you suggest?
31
In that case you will never learn 🙂
41
As for what infrastructure spending should be to focus, I highlighted them many times before, including here in this thread. One I didn’t mention today but did at other times is going nuclear. Yes that also means nuclear weapons. I know I will get a lot of flack on that one as it is to be expected. However, we do have the US to rely upon in the event of a nuclear attack, right? I’m not so sure.
30
Energy is a free enterprise matter, dams and canals may require taxpayers to foot the bill. Anyway its hypothetical in this economic fog.
‘China concedes it ordered unauthorised laboratories to destroy samples to ‘prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens’. Oz
21
The workers ? When its mostly the over 65s that are even hospitalised let alone killed. Thats generalised socialist nonsense.
By this logic we should stop all driving as we have lost 89 people on the roads this year to date. Four times the wuflu deaths. This is just below average even with the lockdowns, clearly we need to be more strictly controlled!
In case you havent noticed we are all condemed to death, “system” or no system. I am so sick of this save every nanna thinking. I am smack in the middle of the high risk profile and have no desire to see the younger generation being financially crippled and constrained for my sake supposedly. By all means take steps to protect the vulnerable that want and need protecting, but shutting down the world is just BS.
181
yarpos, try not to mix personal risk (ie car accidents, deaths of over 65’s) with community risks, ie deaths of health care workers which are over 1000 world wide, the youngest being 20.
However, to your second point, why does a wealthy country like Australia need to financially cripple anyone, why would you suggest that it is fine to send a 20 year old health care worker into peril, just to salve you conscience. I will note that here in New South Wales the Head of the Infrastructure department was awarded a 5.5% increase on a base salary of $550,000 while denying cleaners employed in Hospitals any increase at all. Who is taking the biggest risk here, the cleaner, of the department head?
23
Peter as a favor to us less ‘well informed’, could you provide us with some non capitalist examples of nations which are handling this crisis better ?
The ones i know about like Venezuela or North Korea are not doing so well.
38
Sorry to disappoint you buy I don’t have all the answers. I do have some ideas for improvement but they are nothing new and are well known to most. The obvious one to me is to reduce the amount of red tape and bureaucracy that are holding up many projects. The other is to control better how our enterprises are bought up lock, stock and barrel by overseas interests, as distinct from being supported by financial investors. The other is to provide far greater incentives for major projects, such as dams, base load power plants and the like.
60
PeterS – base load power plants – yes! Just generate as much cheap energy as you can and let people decide what to do with it. That means you have to remove unnecessary restrictions too. There isn’t much that could compete with that as a way of lifting the economy.
60
I mentioned that too at other times. Dropping the cost of power dramatically would be the biggest stimulus our economy could have at the moment. Yet neither major party will admit it let alone do anything about it, such as creating incentives to do so. No, they rather promote emission reduction agendas that will only make the cost go higher. Go figure.
30
I just realised Bill you were referring to the other Peter. Sorry.
30
Not to worry, he seems to disappeared.
Maybe the question was too hard to answer ?
🙂
56
Probably.
40
Vietnam
31
and regards to the economy of Vietnam
Like other countries hit by COVID-19, Vietnam’s economy has also suffered significantly over the course of the outbreak. It’s GDP fell to 3.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, as compared to 6.8 percent in the same period in 2019
In the same period the US GDP figure wend to -4.8% (according to the BBC)
Rest my case
11
An excellent example of the power of crony capitalism.
Heck the party is not even called “Communist”
But “Vietnam People’s Workers Party”
05
The Vietnamese Communist Party has run the country much like China with a free enterprise capitalist economic system.
They call it Doi Moi but nowadays are reluctant to admit that they copied it from China.
But it works for them and the party cadres have rich and prosperous as the company businessmen.
‘Connections’ always help
🙂
27
Bill, communist Vietnam (with long physical border with China) has over 90 million people, almost 4 times Australia, and NO deaths. How’s that for an example?
30
None that we know of Peter.
I have my doubts about some aspects of the Vietnam story.
We do know that in Feb the Vietnamese government locked down a rural area North West of Hanoi
The population of ths area was ~12,000.
Army, police and health Dpt were all involved.
For about 6 weeks.
Out of that black hole nothing has emerged.
06
Neuro-COVID: Gaining Recognition as New Disease Terminology
There’re 3 types of Neuro-COVID, and it progresses through 3 stages — involving the brain’s respiratory center.
Shin Jie Yong May 14 · 4 min read
Extracts:
In a May 5 published paper in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, researchers at the University of Brescia in Italy said there are three distinct features of clinical COVID-19 neuroinfection: (1) Cerebral thrombosis with hemorrhagic infarction, (2) demyelinating lesions, and (3) encephalopathy. “We defined this condition as Neuro-COVID for the overwhelming CNS involvement in COVID-19,” they proposed.
Two other papers by researchers in China support the proposed neuroinfection route the Italian researchers, which involve either olfactory nerve transport or blood-brain-barrier crossing, or both.
Other research groups have also linked the brainstem — brain’s respiratory center — to COVID-19. …
https://medium.com/@shinjieyong/neuro-covid-gaining-recognition-as-new-disease-terminology-3b0c450fd868
70
The primary purpose of lockdowns is to delay most of the infections until means are found to stop people dying (or acquiring and suffering serious long-term morbidities).
In the current circumstances (ie vaccine not available, probably continuing for some time, and anyway not guaranteed possible) we should be looking hard and fast for anti-virals and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs).
Also, given the importance of timing with such a fast-acting infection, early-stage treatments should be applied – rather than waiting until hospitalisation becomes necessary to suppress the worsening symptoms (eg through oxygen). It should be remembered that the early-stage treatments are to assist the patient’s immune system in winning – rather that those reinforcements turning up after the battle is lost or too far gone for saving.
Then the recovered patients become part of the immune division of the herd; eventually enough being immune for the disease to die out, or become a very minor probably somewhat seasonal thing (at least in temperate zones) for which vaccination helps maintain long-term suppression.
Keep safe and best regards
70
A great explanation of the purpose of lockdowns, well it echoes my thoughts.
10
Good comment Nigel. Yes. Except we appear to be still a very long way from being immune enough for the disease to die out. but I am optimistic that antivirals could help if used early or prophylactically.
20
There is not just a dichotomy – lockdown vs not lockdown. How about we discuss border control. If all countries did border control and quarantine on incoming as soon as we knew about Corona Virus there would be tens of thousands of more live people and multi billions and trillions in wasted money and agony could have been saved. It does not even mean Cov positive people could not come in, just that they have to go into quarantine.
As Jo points out, border control and quarantine can be dropped with nations that have eradicated the virus. Then with those countries we can go back to life as we knew it.
83
All so simple in theiry isnt it? If only the world was that perfect.
81
Only Taiwan did was vigilant and had the protocols in place to manage this outbreak; it’s far too much to expect all countries to follow its example hereafter but I would expect Australia to be taking steps in that direction.
41
Do you propose to eradicate bats and pangolins as well?
32
We should eradicate Asian bats and birds which show the slightest sign of being complicit in the manufacture of viruses, spread to poultry, swine or humans.
Its inhumane to let these prehistoric creatures exist, but I’ll put in a good word for the pangolins because they are only innocent go-betweens.
50
And those bloody fruit bats are a feral flyingdicease ridden rats in South Australia !
46
Flying Foxes are only nuisance value with an occasional outbreak into polite society, we are the aliens in their territory. The problem seems to stem from bats in tropical regions and the close association with humanity.
You won’t see a pandemic coming out of South Africa, where the bats are well behaved and useful.
https://www.batswithoutborders.org/role-of-bats-in-our-ecosystems.html
11
I assure you that there’s no such things as a “well behaved” bat. 😉 You’ve been suckered by blatant greening propaganda there mate. 🙂
Spend just one early summer night in a house in Cairns, which has a mango tree in the yard, and you’ll have no doubt that well behaved fruit bats do not and never have existed anywhere on Earth, at any time. They are aggressive, rancorous, noisy, filthy and smelly. Plus they eat all the best fruit and destroy the rest, then drop it your car, which needs to be hosed off every morning, or your car literally looks like is was dive-bombed by a flock of seagulls with diarrhea.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/2881698-3×2-700×467.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Spectacled_Flying-fox.png/220px-Spectacled_Flying-fox.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Bismarck_Flying_Fox_area.png/220px-Bismarck_Flying_Fox_area.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Naked-Rumped_Pouched_Bat_area.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Pteropus_range.jpg/220px-Pteropus_range.jpg
A couple of billion people affected.
93
I live in the NSW central west and recognise that they are a nuisance to humans, but only bats which spread pandemics need to be severely culled.
The tropical areas of Asia and South East Asia seems like a good place to start.
30
We’re going to disagree about that. 😉
52
We don’t need to eradicate bats. We need to stop funding and helping bioweapon leaky labs in communist adversaries.
We need to stop funding renewable energy dead ends and put that into proper biotech research instead.
114
Fruit bats are feral foreign blow in arrivals in all of Southern Australia.
They have come only because humans plant fruit trees.
They are NOT native in these parts of the continent.
They are just like Med Fruit fly in WA…
A pest that should not be tolerated.
19
Geezes, China bashing again….
14
You could refrain from that irresponsible ill will to China manufacturing behavior. I want amiable relations with our neighbours perhaps unlike yourself.
In molecular biology, there are no borders. The science is so intense, molecular biologists and so on from all countries have been working together since year dot. Potential leaky labs are all over the world who work in ‘gain of function’ virology.
23
E S it seems you have fused a brain cel or two.
We are talking about bats – fruit bats in Australia.
Who’s talking about China ?
07
Agreed!..we don’t need to shut down the fruit bats, just the ‘gain of function’ research.
‘Lead by example’ and so on. Thanks for helping me focus Bill 🙂
30
If i were a politician (political), or in preliminary training to be one, i would be shutting down GOF research until a full audit is comprised.
10
You mean there’s always an upside to weapons research, or do I mischaracterize gain of function virology?
21
There are those who characterise ‘gain of function’ as boring and entirely monotonous however, even in peace, worst case scenarios need to be investigated priori/before any political/financial system threat. The extent or depth to which ‘gain of function’ needs to be pursued needs to be audited. Every country has the same problem/responsibility and identical labs and an similar internet connection.
01
In other words, GOF is not audited very well in any country is my best guess.
01
Sorry Jo but can we stop this implication that the Wuhan lab was/is a bioweapons facility? It defies logic and reason that any nation (even a corrupt communist one) would build a bioweapons lab in a major city then tell everyone it is there and invite international scientist to visit. No, weapons labs are built in isolated underground places well out of the view of the international busy body crowd.
Just because they brought in a military microbiologist to clean up the mess is not evidence of a military link. As a microbiologist yourself you should know that military microbiologists specialise in prevention of infectious disease spread. More soldiers have died of disease than have ever died from bullets, bombs, swords etc. so it is completely logical that a military type would be brought in to fix the stuff ups.
Did this escape from the Wuhan lab? I don’t know. Did it come out of the wet market? I don’t know. This is why we need a full independent investigation to find out and prevent/reduce the change of a reoccurrence. Please leave the scary implicating to the tin foil hat crowd Jo.
I don’t mean to be overly critical as I think you have done a pretty good job of explaining the rights and wrongs of this pandemic but little things like this get my goat when casually implied in the public forum 🙂
31
DonS, the kind of work they were doing with “gain of function” is known as “dual use” research. That means it has both a purpose to learn and understand disease, but is likely to also advance knowledge of bioweapons research.
I stand by my point that we should not sponsor research in communist adversaries which has “dual use”.
https://www.virology.ws/2013/02/26/proposed-us-policy-on-dual-use-research-of-concern/
\https://viroblog1.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/dual-use-research-how-should-it-be-handled/
Why put any weapons grade virus underground if it can get foreign funding and be hidden in plain sight.
I was aware of the claims the virus escaped the WIV in January 2020. I hinted at it in the first post that there was doubt about the Fish Market story. I waited for months for more information. The natural origin theory was believable, but there is too much covering up, too many things that don’t match. See my latest post. China (or the CCP) has many questions it should be answering.
If this was a natural virus why would they work so hard to stop people investigating it?
71
More news on Vietnam : The CCP Corona virus has been banished from Vietnam. A success story.
Using the sledge hammer !
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/coronavirus-cases-how-vietnam-sledgehammered-virus-curve/news-story/703f1dfe65ab43d3ccf61c0c1fbbea1a
38
I have been reading up what I can find about Vietnam, and other countries where HCQ would be a common drug, like Myanmar, including on non-google searches. Many articles frequently mention “treatment”, a number of time. But no mention of what that treatment is. I am trying to find out about what is been found out about HCQ + AZ + Zn – other than the standard formula of words the MSM invented against it back when Trump mentioned it. I cant find anecdotal evidence. I suspect the Google/Facebook/MSM are going to a lot of trouble to make sure nothing gets through. I tried looking up preliminary results of the trials that were supposed to start. The one in Vietnam probably got pulled because the number of people proposed to be enrolled in the study was 240, and there have only been a few more cases than that. I am not that good at finding things – does anyone else know what is happening with HCQ trials?
30
Plain Jane
There are number of videos around about HQC etc. This one is one of the better ones, in my view, is an interview by Rudi Guilliani with Dr Zelenko, the NY based Jewish doctor who was one of the first medics to talk about its use. He has been extremely successful with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TJdjhd_XG8&list=PLlMn0a7NgIUZIGjQVofrk1M3Ulqdc7_-4&index=10&t=8s
40
Plain Jane: Here’s one that may help. The first link is a newspaper report on the second.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8309337/Zinc-hydroxychloroquine-effective-COVID-19-patients-study.html
Triple-drug combo of anti-malaria pill hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and ZINC improved coronavirus patients’ chances of being discharged and cut death risk by almost 50%, study finds
Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine looked at 932 coronavirus patients hospitalized between March 2 and April 5
Half were given a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc sulfate and the other half did not receive zinc
Patients receiving the triple drug combination were 1.5 times more likely to recover enough to be discharged and 44% less likely to die
The team believes hydroxychloroquine helps zinc, which has antiviral properties, get into infected cells
And here’s the original paper:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1.full.pdf
Hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin plus zinc vs hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin alone: outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients
40-word summary: Zinc sulfate added to Hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin may improve outcomes among hospitalized patients
[..] We performed a retrospective observational study to compare hospital outcomes among patients who received hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin plus zinc versus hydroxychloroquine and azythromycin alone. [..]
Conclusion: This study provides the first in vivo evidence that zinc sulfate in combination with hydroxychloroquine may play a role in therapeutic management for COVID-19.
NB. It’s in medrxiv.org, so it’s not peer-reviewed.
70
Yes because Vietnam has such well managed , non porous borders this a certainty to be sustained (if it ever really existed)
21
Vietnam was prepared though it appears to be a very communist approach which some might not be comfortable with. But more info on it would be good. Their 3 level contact tracing was some of the most rigorous in the world.
71
Jo
I suspect that one of the most interesting factors at play in Vietnam could be seen in the population dynamics.
At the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, the population of the country was about 43 million.
Currently it is just over 95 million.
This means that at a bare minimum there are at least 52 million under the age of 45 years.
Assuming that half of the original population has passed on, it is entirely likely that upwards of 75 million Vietnamese are under the age of 45 years.
From the known behaviour of the virus elsewhere it would explain the low rate of serious issues.
Also, given the absence of nursing homes, there is not the large number there just waiting for the CV19 to come calling so another factor to help reduce numbers.
I believe that an area near Saigons main airport was used to hold incoming passengers after a certain date, for quarantine.
Although the Maccas- Pizza Hut syndrome has struck, the bulk of the population still probably doesn’t present with the “large” western profile that seems to attract the CV19 bug.
The border shutdown with China was enforced to the point that component parts from China for use in Vietnam’s factories were unavailable. This caused factory shutdowns and unemployment initially but there may have since been a workaround.
KK
10
Vietnam has a 1400 Ks border with China.
A 1500 ks border with Laos
A 1600 ks border with Cambodia..
There are local native tribes that move through and across those borders pretty freely as it’s mostly jungle
And sea coast of about 2400 ks with lots of fishing boats etc..
IE Pretty porous mostly
But on this occasion the government has done a good job of sealing the borders.
17
Ambassador,
You say: “IE Pretty porous mostly”.
I think it is very obvious to everyone that fishing nets are “porous”.
They are very difficult to use otherwise.
KK
10
1. April 22 THE Special Envoy to World Health Organisation (WHO) and Director-General on Convid-19, Dr. David Nabarro
2. April 29 Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga told a press conference in Bern.
3. May 8 As India’s coronavirus doubling rate fluctuated between 12 and 10 days in just a two-day period, the Modi government Friday told the country that
4. May 16 Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said that people will have to mentally prepare themselves
to
5. May 4 European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said
72
You saying we all MUST live with the CCP’s & WHO’s f*ck up.
And accept advice from the EU ? Since when was anything the EU said worth a pinch of salt ?
Ummmmm ?
No thanks.. Nobody in Australia ( except for a few grumpy old men here ) is listening to foreigners on this one. Australia will do what we think is best for us. And will ignore the foreign advice.
Good luck in Geneva in Switzerland.
313
Even Dan will get to this new mantra eventually, in reality its not a voting opportunity for most of the world its just reality.
53
By which he did not mean coexist with it, he meant operate with it still present within other surrounding countries. Just take a look at the Swiss new cases data here.
Daily New Deaths in Switzerland
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/switzerland/
They’re not talking about living with it in their community, so nice cherry-picked quote, in reality Switzerland is on a path to total elimination of the virus, and they’re doing much better at that than Austria is.
The path they are on is the same one Australia and NZ are on, the Swiss are clearly aiming to eliminate it from the country, or isolate it where ever it pops up. They are not the slightest bit interested in co-existing with it, they want to open their economy and prevent the virus freedom to move or survive. And if careful and adaptive it’s likely they’ll succeed and become an example for Europe to follow.
But they’ve managed this because the country is naturally sheltered and isolated via the Alps. It will be harder to replicate and maintain that elsewhere without having very strong borders and border crossing controls. Controlling access and flow is the path out of the infection and keeping it out. Counties that don’t strictly control they borders will fail to “live with it”, like Switzerland and Australia now can.
94
Good grief ! Knuckle fever lead to a red thumb !
Count as a green !
18
Most countries have the virus under control. There are very few locations where the infection rate exceeds 1. Many countries have achieved infection rate below 0.5 with their home quarantine rule. That means the virus is on its way out. By September Sweden will be one of the few locations where the number of daily cases is still substantial because they have no contact tracing system. Russia and Brazil could still be large numbers.
The new challenge is to keep the infection rate below 1 while anti-social measures are relaxed. Taiwan did not make changes that inhibited economic activity but still crushed the virus:
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-05-09_TW_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
Again, Taiwan has already shown the way.
The individual’s priorities for recovery are:
#1 Be aware and responsive to possible symptoms – avoid contact until tested
#2 Present for CV19 testing – (test authority make certain test is reliable)
#3 Provide contact tracing information if positive – (tracing process to be fast and efficient)
#4 Quarantine if positive
Countries that have learnt how to get the infection rate well below 1 will have little difficulty keeping it below 1.
10
Aaron, your tenacious ability to hunt for quotes that rationalize your approach is impressive but still irrelevant.
Just because there are a few officials saying something that supports your view does not change the data in the graphs.
Sadly for poor countries with high density populations, they may be the breeding sites for the future Covid mutants.
But we hope preexisting cheap drugs like HCQ, Vit D, Ivermectin, and masks will reduce their role in viral evolution. I wish we could do more.
63
WXCycles: “so nice cherry-picked quote”
Jo: “Aaron, your tenacious ability to hunt for quotes that rationalize your approach is impressive but still irrelevant.”
Incorrect on both counts.
I had read Switzerland’s President Simonetta (-a suffix typically indicates feminine, WXCycles, it’s a female president FYI) weeks ago and googled it to find the article again to link to it when I provided the quote.
The results that came back were for India, as well as Switzerland, so I removed “Switzerland” from the google search and tried again. A whole bunch of others turned up. Including another one just now for the French:
April 28: French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe revealed his government’s much-awaited plan to ease the strict nationwide coronavirus lockdown on May 11
No hunting was required nor conducted.
WXCycles: “By which he did not mean coexist with it, he meant operate with it still present within other surrounding countries.”
She made the statement around the 29th of April, when Sweden’s new cases per day averaged over 7 days was 162.
Your assertion smacks of wishful thinking.
23
Who to believe, your lying eyes and the graph or what the MP’s say? Oh the dilemma.
People (especially politicians) say stuff for all kinds of reasons. It’s mostly noise in a science debate.
11
May 5 Infectious disease specialist and microbiologist Peter Collignon, a professor at the Australian National University and former World Health Organization (WHO) advisor
21
But henalso says “‘I would not recommend the Swedish approach. Their death rate is many times higher than Australia and they haven’t had a large percentage of their population become immune,’ Professor Collignon said ”
That shoots down your favorite deathy appraoch Aaron !
And also I note that he suggests testing sewerage effluent as infected persons shed the virus in their urine and faeces..Often before they develop symptoms.. So potentially we have an early warning system as well if it ever comes back ..
🙂
05
In case anyone is curious about my “favourite” approach, I can state it clearly so you don’t have to take someone else’ word for it
1. we need to have a nnumber of approaches to this problem. ideally a country or state with no lock down at all (what’s known as a “control”), self-directed lock down like Sweden, to Australia’s stringent lock down and all the way up to China welding people into their homes (??)
2. without differences in approaches we have no way of confirming what “worked”***. if you do not understand why I say this,
a. google “correlation is not causation”
b. watch this instructional 90 second video
c. do a google image search for “lemons imported from mexico vs highway fatalities”
3. i do not know which approach is the best*, all I ever expressed about the Swedes was
a. I was grateful they were taking a different approach because it would go some way to helping with 2. above
b. worldometers data was pretty much garbage, and pretty much every comment claiming “Sweden’s death rate is still climbing” was utterly false
c. Sweden published comprehensive, accurate data as soon as it was available
d. I do not think Sweden are eugenics-embracing nazis like one self-alleged “stoic” commenter here
While everybody is claiming success for “their favourite approach” I do not have one. I am anti-lock down because it infringes on our liberty and hands gratuitous power to governments without due process, based on what I perceive to be nothing but fear tactics.
As an example of the power I am discussing:
1. In Australia authorised officers can Enter any premises without a warrant to search and seize “any thing that is necessary for the purpose of investigating, eliminating or reducing the risk to public health”.
2. In Sweden, Sending children to school is mandatory, even now, and homeschooling remains illegal.
It’s revolting.
***What does “it worked” mean?
I believe nobody can know if their “favourite approach” was successful (it worked!) and those that do are committing a temporal error. This is not over by a long shot, and IMO any attempt to claim success is premature.
The goal for any approach should be (ie “it worked” ==) the longevity and ongoing health and prosperity of a nation was preserved.
eg: Skin cancer is very dangerous. Cutting off your arm (ie “quarantining” it from every other part of your body) if skin cancer appears on your elbow is one way to prevent it spreading through out your body. It is undeniable that it “works”. There may, however, be long term effects that are debilitating to the rest of the body after conducting such a drastic measure.
As far as I am concerned, you cannot say “it worked” for about another 21 months. That’s how long it will take for the effects of lock down and ongoing infections, deaths and economic impacts to be full realised.
I posted the “we have to learn to live with it” quotes as data. There was no opinion from me. Nobody else was posting it. I discovered more than just Switzerland saying it (mind you they could all be parroting the WHO, quelle surprise). Same with the lock down easing dates + data. It provides a counter point to the ongoing utopia espoused here that countries can “get to 0”. It looks to me like no country is interested in that as much as they are in relaxing lock down and “learning to live with it”. It’s just data.
None of the countries in the “can get to 0” list look like they care about doing that, based on their easing of lock down restrictions or direct quotes from the people in charge of each country.
If every single country that could “get to 0 GHG emissions” came out and said they were relaxing GHG emission restrictions before they “got to 0” and were going to “learn to live with it”, you’d be saying Australia was stupid to pursue the “0 GHG emissions” approach because unless we initiated an impenetrable “quarantine” we would still suffer the consequences of every other country in the world.
For some reason you cannot see it’s the same with COVID-19.
IMO if any of these countries “get to 0” (based on their stated attitudes and lock down easing actions wrt current cases / day when implemented) it will be dumb luck or concrete evidence the virus was not the crippling problem everybody made it out to be. Or herd immunity threshold was reached. Same thing.
60
1: You do not live in Australia..you are in Switzerland- Geneva. So you have no idea what is happening to ordinary people here.
2: The parade has moved on…You are commenting on a post which is now two posts out of date..Why would you do that I wonder ?
3: Time to stop trolling as well.
18
Bill
“2: The parade has moved on…You are commenting on a post which is now two posts out of date..Why would you do that I wonder ?
3: Time to stop trolling as well.”
Your point 2 applies to you as well Bill making you a number 3) as you comment contributed nothing.
BTW a good discussion/debate can go on as long as people are happy to participate and does not need to stop just because you think it is two posts old.
30
Along those lines: of vast differences in the factors involved, Jo was asking about Vietnam.
One of the things that is probably not immediately obvious is the unusual age profile that is no doubt very different from the Italian and New York points of focus.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/05/hokkaidos-second-wave-was-bigger-than-the-first-close-those-borders/#comment-2330668
Unusual.
10
Aaron, 50% of Swedes live in single person households.
Copying the Swede approach involves some very big infrastructure changes.
And yes, forcing kids to attend school, doesn’t sit well with me anytime.
And since the Swedish approach isn’t working, perhaps we could move on?
14
Could this be an instruction manual? 🙂
From: https://summit.news/2020/05/15/bizarre-eu-funded-comic-book-predicted-pandemic-with-globalists-as-saviours/
From: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4cc2ea93-d003-417e-9294-1103a6ee877d
42
E M Smith sums up the CCP Corona 19 virus situation in the USA. It is very grim & nasty and scary as well.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/spain-wuhan-virus-ifr-1-16/
510
mmmm terribly scary, just like Ferguson’s numbers were. Did you notice the bit at the bottom or did you stop once satisfied it was scary enough?
“One complexity in that: IF a lot of folks, like children, toss off the disease without antibody formation (say, by innate immunity, which IMHO is probable) those numbers could end up much lower.”
93
yarpos: “Did you notice the bit at the bottom or did you stop once satisfied it was scary enough?”
Never let facts get in the way of a scary story!!
11
From The article:
The idea of herd immunity for humans is a silly concept. For Australia to have 6000 cases then be down to 60 cases in 20 days means the reproduction rate was reduced to about 0.5. Any value below 1 will eventually wipe out the virus.
The survival instinct is simply too strong to have unrestrained social behaviour in the presence of a killer virus. Most of the global population has learnt how to self-isolate and practice good hygiene in the face of a serious threat.
Countries will gradually open up with people being cautious. They know what needs to be done to avoid the rampant spread.
A pre-requisite for opening up fully is that the number of new cases be below the number that can be rapidly and effectively traced.
If you look at the experience in Italy you can argue that herd immunity was achieved with about 1.7% of the population infected. On the other hand we know they got the infection rate below one by some effective anti-social measures. By my calculation the Ro got down to 0.77. Not brilliant but good enough to reduce the daily cases by a factor of 10 to present day over a period of 50 days. The challenge now is to keep the infection rate below 1 while opening up the economy. I expect there will be an abundance of caution.
22
Note the UK and Netherlands which were previously the only two countries in the world refusing to report their closed-case data, have now just decided (simultaneously) to both stop publishing their daily active cases numbers as well.
Besides the fact it’s curious the to countries are closely coordinating this shameless hiding of the most relevant data about the infection’s progress, it’s also implied that they’re doing it because the data is not showing improving trends and they are finding it hard to hide the truth. So they’ve just stopped reporting it.
The relevant active cases yesterday (May 15 data) were these:
UK = 199,193 active … apparently > 200 K actives was too much reality for Boris Johnson and Co.
Netherlands = 37,641 active … yeah, what are they trying to hide?
What will the incompetent scoundrels within the UK Govt and UK ‘pubic-service’ bureaucracy do next, hide the new-cases data also? I’d not put it past them as even China didn’t try to completely hide the disclosure of such data (though Iran did for awhile, but soon relented). China may have falsified data on a grand scale (and we know they did) but they never had the cheek to simply not publish any data like he UK and Netherlands now are. Even Russia, which is hiding tens of thousands of COVID-29 deaths, doesn’t try to hide the active cases and close cases numbers!
Apparently the UK and Netherlands political classes feel they just might be held publicly and lawfully accountable for the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths that resulted from their hopelessly incompetent policies and fiddling as Rome burned.
Disgusting behavior Boris, you’re making Xi’s data-friggers look like pikers.
134
WXcycles…Did those who died have any comorbidities? Where is the granularity in your alleged statistics?
Do you have any numbers on those who are dying of malnutrition in the UK?
You seem retired, and you do not seeming to be posting your comments from a subway with no income.
49
I’m not the slightest bit interested in if they did, or did not. The caught COVID-19, and it quickly pushed them into a coffin, adn produced very high death-rates in many countries.
MOST (almost all in fact) of the people in ICU beds within the most severely affected countries are under ~50 years old, OK?
And these under 50s are still fighting for their lives, and about 50% of even those die anyway!
This is simply because the doctors are using triage approaches to what is possible with resources on hand and have realized the disease is so deadly, and that there are so many cases, that they can’t save almost anyone older than ~55.
Get that?
That’s why the older are dying in high numbers in countries that have a lot of cases. The medical system is having a hard time saving even the younger patients, and still about 50% of the younger patients are dying.
Snap out of it, I’m tired of you foolish and flippant remarks, you don’t make any good arguments via constantly ignoring what’s really occurring with those who are dying and suffering permanent health degradation and impairment even from the severity of the treatments and the immunological aftermath.
If you can’t even honestly acknowledge that’s the prevailing situation you’re wasting everyone’s time, and not worth reading.
108
All you have to do is find some data with granularity listing the comorbidity that was present when the person died to evaluate if the person died with, or, from the virus. A relatively simple task if those numbers exist.
Without detail, numbers are no better than a footy or soccer score.
53
WX
The UK is publishing Covid related (often with rather than from) deaths from all sources (hospitals, care homes and residences) plus new infections daily. Both are dropping steadily and are now a fraction of those at the peak. Obviously, those who do not die must recover so what is your complaint ?
There is no sign of significant after effects for the vast majority with mild or no symptoms and those with severe symptoms who have continuing problems usually had invasive ventilation which is known to cause long term damage. Fortunately we realised early on that ventilators were doing more harm than good so we use less invasive CPAP machines.
One or two nations had an overwhelmed health service so severely ill elderly folk were effectively abandoned and younger patients put on ventilation which harmed them. That has not happened in the UK.
I do find your interpretations replete with worst case scenarios that turn out to not fit the rather more complex realities.
11
I said very clearly what the compliant is, no UK active cases data is being supplied.
As for what you make of what I say, I suggest that’s, as in this case, more about user-error.
10
come on, nova, get your act together.
publish this, quit deleting everything as if you are the all-knowing. This is an Australian leading scientist, N. Petrovsky:
anyone for a 3rd wave? Professor Nikolai Petrovsky points out:
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/anyone-for-3rd-wave.html
[I have no idea what you are referring too? The aggressive style of complaining isn’t helpful. – jo]
47
But we already knew this Rob.
Good to see the link though.
07
may i correct you as well, Oz Bill: the public round the world is not aware of even 1/10th of the story; you have little idea of synthetic viruses, synthetic vaccines, synthetic DNA! You don’t listen even to your own scientists to any profound degree. Jo Nova with her degree is very lukewarn, she spoke against the precautionary principle on this site (before you showed up, Bill). Insanity is afoot once people have irons in too many fires simultaneously. One can’t be true to life and truth and chase political ambition and renown, power, position, success, stardom, plus desires, power, genetic control over life. You guys at this site are careless, having fun in a quaint way, which I think is valid up to a point. However, you will have a very hard path to hoe if you don’t research a lot harder and patiently and in the way of life, the wholeness. No, posts here concerning Luc Montagnier which I post are blocked. This is after Nova championed here his revelations. This guy is very high level, but the public via establishment media is greatly blocked from his views. We in America are hardly practicing free speech though it is Constitutional, but I experience here at nova’s blog a degradation of free speech, free press on a site that purports to be a champion of truth. Bah. You are not in action as a group and as a discussion very fair, but I do not include Bill of Oz in that last point. One person can convert the rest if highly devoted. I cannot do it, as I have found across these years at this site. You here are at a crossroads: you will never cut through being just fun-loving and not really disciplined to the core because it requires a tremendous energy to cut through to the core. That you must learn. I wish you well, but don’t try for the truth if you are just more gamers amusing yourselves. Be honest especially when you are already divided at your root which is motivation. Do you know what your priorities even are?
21
I am amazed that anyone claims people will starve because of this virus. The jobs being hit are not food and crops and animals grow slowly anyway. The food chain is fine.
They say food but they mean golf and parties and restaurants. The service industries are suffering from car repair, petrol sales, movie theatres, theatres in general, restaurants and pubs and big department stores. And the travel industry.
(1,000,000 Australians go overseas every month to spend their money overseas on perhaps better beaches like Bali and Hawaii and California. And 500,000 people from overseas each month. It would be nice to see Australians visit Australia. It does seem excessive to send 50% of our total population overseas each year. And a great National cost. I would love to see airfares to Broome and Cairns below those to Paris. A lot of domestic travel is sheer extortion.)
The only solution is to eliminate the virus. Going at it half hearted just slows the doubling from 2 days to 20 days but it is still exponential. Once gone, we keep it out.
Many countries, notably South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand have shown what can be done. And Sweden and Brazil have shown what it cost to do things half way. As the very safe countries slowly return to normal, the difference will become obvious.
Half shut down is like half pregnant. You still have a problem.
56
However as I have written before, the real hope for the world is that viruses are not alive but mutate in reproduction mistakes eventually and compete mathematically for victims. A virulent benign strain may succeed and replace the deadly pathogen simply because it is benign and can infect a whole community exponentially without anyone knowing, doing what a vaccination would do. This is what must happen to end these plagues. It must be what happened in 1919.
And perversely this savior virus is likely to come from countries where the disease is rampant and spreading of the symptomless benign virus is allowed, but we are not prepared to pay the price this time because we have the hope of a man made vaccination, for the first time in human history. However when it happens, that mutant virus must be identified. It hardly needs to be cultured, just isolated.
I also believe that herd immunity to the original deadly virus is claimed in hindsight because it is indistinguishable from herd immunity to the benign virus. But that cannot be the case because mathematically more people would die than have died. In the Solomons deaths reached 30% because the place is small. The virus arrived but not the benign virus and they were too small to generate it. The world figures were 37 million out of 1600 million, or 2.5%.
This has led countries to aim for herd immunity at a terrible cost in lives, without understanding that it does not come from the original deadly pathogen.
Practically if we keep blood samples from everyone infected in an aged home so that if any of them recover suddenly against the odds, examine the live virus for differences. All other samples should be destroyed. An amazing success against the odds could signal the self vaccination we need. Otherwise it dies perversely because in lockdown the patient is isolated until the virus or the patient is gone. This benign virus will develop eventually but never survive lockdown.
What is missing is any explanation of why viruses die out and how herd immunity happens without truly massive deaths. In that question lies the answer to the pandemic. And it depends on being able to distinguish a benign virus from the killer virus.
85
And I know I have written about this twice before, but here I am trying to say how it could be achieved. Blood samples. Aged care. Actively look for the golden mutant virus which can displace the killer one. And while Donald Trump needs the US army to manage innoculations on a truly massive scale, an active benign virus can do it all for free in weeks. Use one virus against another.
Every time I read of a 95 year old who has survived miraculously, I want to tell someone that there might be more to it than just being ‘tough’. In fact I just read of a 108 year old who survived both the Spanish Flu and the Wuhan Flu. That is not ‘tough’. That requires an answer.
75
And don’t ignore that a 108 year old woman who has now survived two pandemics has not died of cancer or heart disease. That is beyond ‘tough old bird’ stuff. It needs explanation.
If her immune system was very strong that would not explain surviving the Spanish flu because it killed mainly by cytokine storm. Not dying of cancer by 108 is itself amazing. The replication system eventually makes a mistake, so it takes a special immune system to stop that. Her antibodies would be worth collection and an earlier blood sample, if one exists.
A program to locate the golden benign virus might bear fruit far faster than anyone understands and every aged care home is an unwitting laboratory. As Governor Cuomo says, the virus has gone through the Aged care homes like a grass fire.
75
🙂
CV19o >> CV19b.
Original mutates to Benign.
Benign then out-competes the Original for space in the human garden.
11
Spot on. You either eliminate the virus, or your economy will not be able to recover. People will not sacrifice their health and family to the virus to save a bloated debt-bubble.
Economy had one function in the beginning of human village economics, that was to provide for our absolute needs (not luxuries and entertainment). And excess to needs was used to increase capacity to meet higher needs and to store as a buffer to shortfalls, and to improve the ways we can more efficiently meet needs in future. It was never about pandering to excess and the greedy who can’t see past their Toad-of-Toad-Hall gluttony and irresponsibility to others.
Once a country eliminates this virus they still have a modern society where everything needed still works and when the economy recovers it will not be what it was, nor should it be, but a functioning healthier belt-tightened economy it will be, and it’ll gradually recover to extravagant prosperity and cheap affordable luxury goods once again. It won’t take long, in fact I’ve noticed that imported luxury goods are now cheaper, not more expensive (even with a lower $AUD). So I’m really upset about that.
Meanwhile, we all must suffer through watching a 50 inch 4K ultra-high-definition TV, using high-speed broadband, and wearing good clothing while driving in nearly new luxury personal cars, which use fuel from ultra-low oil pricing, while eating like Kings and Queens, sleeping in a warm secure beds, while our mortgage repayments are suspended, and we’re forced to have some time with the ones we love, while we plan our return to profit making. Oh, the humanity.
My house is clean and looks good, everything is working, yard is in good order, I’m healthy and feeling fit, no mental hangover, my bank account is sufficient, my fridge is very good, and I’m entertained. Plus I’m hearing much less political and cAGW lies and trash every day. It’s been enjoyable, I’m feeling positive, morale is high, I see a lot of good things coming out of this process, a lot of constructive refocus on what really matters. Much better preparation if the situation worsens (I still have 31 rolls of TP beside the cistern!).
I’m already doing 99.9%% of what I did in January. I still have to pack my (new single-use) shopping bags (the supermarkets resumed this last week, which I think is a good idea) and I maintain a social distance with strangers, I use a bit more soap and vitamin supplements than before, I eat better, but otherwise everything’s back to normal. People are having fun, you can hear them, and the car traffic is almost back to normal.
103
You are correct insofar as life continued, and was fine for many in the 1930s. Absent bad actors, people of good will would have recovered peaceably.
Unfortunately, the elephant in the room is a nation of 1.3 billion with no ethical constraints bent on world heegmony.
30
Aus and NZ will likely be half shutdown forever. When will they open airports for normal tourism? Never on the current plan.
Sweden and Brazil are not doing too bad. Neither is destroying their economies. Sweden is only number 8 on list of deaths (364) per million Popn, behind UK (508), Italy(525), France(423), Spain(590) and belgium(777) who all have gone for total lockdown and economic destruction. Brazil is at 28 in league with only 74 deaths per million.
So the data (rather than the computer climate models) shows Sweden and brazil are doing better with their policies than comparable countries (one’s where its impossible to close all borders). And they’ll be able to open up to the whole world in a couple of months without drastic quarantines. Aus and NZ wont be able to that this year, or next , or the year after …
31
False facts Bob. Utter nonsense in fact.
06
When do you see Australia being able to open up to world travel again, Bill ?
30
The asymptomatic population maybe unknowingly creating the second wave.
‘Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province where the COVID-19 pandemic originated last December, will arrange nucleic acid tests for all residents who have not been tested before, in order to better know the number of asymptomatic cases of the novel coronavirus. The decision was made as the city continued to report daily increases of asymptomatic infections, which raised concerns among the public, reports Xinhua news agency.’
https://www.sentinelassam.com/international/financial-conditions-worsen-for-americans-due-to-covid-19-pandemic-477240?infinitescroll=1
10
Alternatively monitor those societies where the virus is running uncontrolled. Look for when the death rates drop suddenly without explanation. That will signify a competing mutation. That needs to be isolated. It has cost tens of thousands of lives to create the mutation and could save millions more.
The problem with the Swedish model is isolation, modern medicine, half way. So anyone who might generate a benign mutation is locked up, isolated until either they or the mutation die. They will never get herd immunity with a half isolation approach and even ten million deaths may not be enough if every sick person is isolated.
So while some countries are chasing accidental herd immunity, they are also defeating it. Nothing will come of the Swedish experiment but misery.
47
Not sure i understand the Hysteria in this article.
Japan is doing brilliantly. Only 725 deaths as of 15 may. They are the model to copy. Hokkaido has only 74 deaths (1006 cases). What this posting shows is that you cannot hide from this virus forever. It will find you. we will all need to let it pass so manage that passing with Quarantine of the elderly and weak but let the healthy socialize with care (with masks) so the infection slowly passes round and we gain herd immunity. Herd immunity is the only way to get our societies back. Without it you will need to lockdown, dodge and hide forever. You cannot keep the country in quarantine forever Jo (which is what your policy requires). It is unlikely that any vaccine will be more effective than the flu vaccines, which seem to score about 30% success. Time to grow a pair!
12
Why? We’ve done it for over century prior at various levels of quarantine, and we will certainly be doing it again for COVID-19.
AQIS was disbanded in 2012.
We have quarantine right now between all Australian States and Territories, so if you imagine we’ll be doing less with casual elective foreign travelers, you’ll be disappointed.
Just yesterday the QLD Premier announced Queensland will be maintaining a closed-border quarantine policy with travelers from New South Wales until at least September. The NSW Premier was not happy with that but given the bulk of cases entered Australia through Sydney, and that some criminally brainless NSW bureaucrats illegally allowed COVID-19 passengers ashore from a cruise ship during a Nationwide ban on entry to Australia without quarantine, and allowed these people to spread COVID-19 cases to almost every part of Australia, then New South Wale’s idiot public-servants vandals will not be trusted to not do that again, at their earliest opportunity. We’ll make sure they can’t, and if it costs NSW a bunch of money they should have thought about this, first.
Travelers will not be coming here without serving at least a 2 week quarantine period, at their expense.
And what’s it to you what we decide to do? Why this burning need of foreigners to tell us what’s good for us, when it’s actually good for you, but bad for us? You don’t care, you won’t have to live with the consequences of what you do to vandalize our economy and kill our people. You can prove to us you have earned the privilege of entry to Australia via serving a quarantine period, without infection. We don’t owe you an entry pass, entry is not a right, it is earned.
We will not be brow-beaten into opening entry access through our borders for anyone. We paid the price to get our country clear of COVID-19, this is our home and sanctuary, we don’t have to let anyone in. What’s it to you?
21
This probably is not politically correct, but how did so many sufferers of Coronavirus Derangement Syndrome find this blog? To be in such denial of the inherent danger of this virus and to display callous disregard for most at-risk population is astonishing and depressing. We will never know if isolation would have worked in the US because it has not been properly attempted and now the genie is out of the bottle as more and more people are not taking it seriously where the regulations continue to exist.
Hat’s off to Oz for showing the world how it’s done.
22