The coronabrexit thread. I mean, coronavirus thread

[G STAR RAM]

8 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

Not sure what all the Aussie/NZ criticism is about. Aren't they just trying to keep Covid cases as minimal as possible, until vaccines take up is at a level when a sufficent proportion of the country is safe from serious illness?

Any news of short lockdowns is jumped upon as evidence that they will be under martial law forever, even though our Aussie correspondents regularly post how their lives have been pretty non-impacted for the last 18 months.

Uk Covid death toll is 131k. Aus is 948 and NZ is 26. You can sort of see why they think it's a good idea to quick stop the spread of any outbreaks.

 

Its not really criticism is it?

Just people wondering what exactly they are trying to achieve?

If its not zero Covid then is it just about stopping avoidable deaths?

If so, will lockdowns also be implemented for flu season every year?

[ariotofmyown]

53 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Its not really criticism is it?

Just people wondering what exactly they are trying to achieve?

If its not zero Covid then is it just about stopping avoidable deaths?

If so, will lockdowns also be implemented for flu season every year?

It seems blatantly obvious what they are trying to achieve. They are stopping the spread of Covid until a sufficient % of people have been vaccinated. We've been told on here how the federal government messed up the vaccine supply.

In the UK, we have about 30k deaths in a bad flu year. We've had 130k Covid deaths in 18 months (and 1 winter). The flu argument is really odd. It's not just about stopping avoidable deaths. It's about stopping 1000s and 1000s of avoidable deaths.

[G STAR RAM]

19 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

It seems blatantly obvious what they are trying to achieve. They are stopping the spread of Covid until a sufficient % of people have been vaccinated. We've been told on here how the federal government messed up the vaccine supply.

In the UK, we have about 30k deaths in a bad flu year. We've had 130k Covid deaths in 18 months (and 1 winter). The flu argument is really odd. It's not just about stopping avoidable deaths. It's about stopping 1000s and 1000s of avoidable deaths.

So in 4 or 5 years time, without lockdowns, as many people will have died from flu as have from Covid, not sure why you find it so odd?

Let's not forget, if it wasn't for the care home catastrophe and people catching Covid in hospital, that number of 130k would probably be a lot closer to the 30k bad flu year...

[ariotofmyown]

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

So in 4 or 5 years time, without lockdowns, as many people will have died from flu as have from Covid, not sure why you find it so odd?

Let's not forget, if it wasn't for the care home catastrophe and people catching Covid in hospital, that number of 130k would probably be a lot closer to the 30k bad flu year...

You should work as an advisor to the Australian authorities.

"Look guys, the UK only had 4 or 5 times as many deaths than a bad flu year, and that was with months of lockdowns and restrictions to stop it spreading even more. There is no point locking down now to restrict infections whilst everyone gets vaccinated. Open everything up and best case you, might only end up with a 4x increase in your normal flu death total. That number will probably grow much more though, as I advise against any other lockdowns. It's important you do it right now, so not to give enough time for everyone to get vaccinated. It's just common sense, we have to learn to live and die with Covid, rather than having a short lockdown when cases emerge. Look to America and Western Europe for inspiration. Or Brazil."

[Archied]

8 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

It seems blatantly obvious what they are trying to achieve. They are stopping the spread of Covid until a sufficient % of people have been vaccinated. We've been told on here how the federal government messed up the vaccine supply.

In the UK, we have about 30k deaths in a bad flu year. We've had 130k Covid deaths in 18 months (and 1 winter). The flu argument is really odd. It's not just about stopping avoidable deaths. It's about stopping 1000s and 1000s of avoidable deaths.

Be interested to know what the average death rate over that 18 months is now compared to the usual average , covid came along and took out in the main people who were old and reaching the stage in life where they were susceptible to all manner of illness / disease that would take their lives , it took lives in a wave rather than perhaps over maybe a two year period ? This was perhaps worsened by duck ups like the care homes fiasco , now before the usual outcry I’m not saying who cares , those lives don’t matter , of course they do but it is going to be interesting to see how things turn out going forward and how much numbers change once covid goes through a country like Australia even when vaccinated fully , one of the things I’ve found strange as we see this virus in the longer term is the hugely different effects it has on different people , is there something in certain peoples make up that makes them more susceptible to covid than others that we don’t understand yet apart from age ? 
i personally know quite a few people who have contracted covid twice now , once before being double jabbed and now after double jab in the main they have said it was worse the second time after jab ( not serious or life threatening) with classic symptoms of loss of taste and tiredness being heightened? I am by no means suggesting jabs don’t work but we still have a lot to learn 

[Spanish]

10 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

It seems blatantly obvious what they are trying to achieve. They are stopping the spread of Covid until a sufficient % of people have been vaccinated. We've been told on here how the federal government messed up the vaccine supply.

In the UK, we have about 30k deaths in a bad flu year. We've had 130k Covid deaths in 18 months (and 1 winter). The flu argument is really odd. It's not just about stopping avoidable deaths. It's about stopping 1000s and 1000s of avoidable deaths.

Is there any relationship between flu and Covid.  Flu is pretty well understood even the flu jab anticipates what next year’s virus will look like.  COVID is new and we are vaccinating against known variants.  Do we know yet whether this will settle down into an anticipated cycle or could there be a more potent variant on the way.  Happy to be corrected if I have something wrong

[ariotofmyown]

1 hour ago, Archied said:

Be interested to know what the average death rate over that 18 months is now compared to the usual average , covid came along and took out in the main people who were old and reaching the stage in life where they were susceptible to all manner of illness / disease that would take their lives , it took lives in a wave rather than perhaps over maybe a two year period ? This was perhaps worsened by duck ups like the care homes fiasco , now before the usual outcry I’m not saying who cares , those lives don’t matter , of course they do but it is going to be interesting to see how things turn out going forward and how much numbers change once covid goes through a country like Australia even when vaccinated fully , one of the things I’ve found strange as we see this virus in the longer term is the hugely different effects it has on different people , is there something in certain peoples make up that makes them more susceptible to covid than others that we don’t understand yet apart from age ? 
i personally know quite a few people who have contracted covid twice now , once before being double jabbed and now after double jab in the main they have said it was worse the second time after jab ( not serious or life threatening) with classic symptoms of loss of taste and tiredness being heightened? I am by no means suggesting jabs don’t work but we still have a lot to learn 

I guess it's difficult to know the impact on death rates, but it makes sense that Covid has finished lots of people off who wouldn't have lasted too much longer.

Death rates could also drop as vulnerable people have been mixing less, reducing their chances of catching other illnesses.

But death rate could also increase from people who've missed treatment due to hospitals been full of Covid patients. 500k of them since Covid started.

 

[maxjam]

23 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

Not sure what all the Aussie/NZ criticism is about. Aren't they just trying to keep Covid cases as minimal as possible, until vaccines take up is at a level when a sufficent proportion of the country is safe from serious illness?

Any news of short lockdowns is jumped upon as evidence that they will be under martial law forever, even though our Aussie correspondents regularly post how their lives have been pretty non-impacted for the last 18 months.

Uk Covid death toll is 131k. Aus is 948 and NZ is 26. You can sort of see why they think it's a good idea to quick stop the spread of any outbreaks.

I'm just having a bit of fun with our Antipedean members. 

I think it depends greatily upon which state you live in as to how impacted you have been - some places have had 100+ day lockdowns.

There is not question that their respective deaths tolls are far better than ours but at what cost?  Australia will tip into recession after 30 years of growth and as lockdown burnout increases the Authorities introduce ever more draconian rulings...

 

[Albert]

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

I'm just having a bit of fun with our Antipedean members. 

I think it depends greatily upon which state you live in as to how impacted you have been - some places have had 100+ day lockdowns.

There is not question that their respective deaths tolls are far better than ours but at what cost?  Australia will tip into recession after 30 years of growth and as lockdown burnout increases the Authorities introduce ever more draconian rulings...

 

The issue around NSW has been that they didn't follow the health advice to lockdown at first, and this was cheered on as a great win by the Murdoch press. They tried to go the UK route of track and trace, and exactly as predicted by everyone else in the country, it went pear shaped rapidly. They, until today, still hadn't lockdown the state, instead going by regions, and they still haven't locked down to the extent that other states did. 

Ultimately though, Australia's economy has, overall, performed drastically better with this strategy than most others have. The issue now is that NSW mismanaged themselves into this mess trying to play politics with a virus, again underlining why just letting it burn just doesn't work. 

If we had a competent PM, this could all of been avoided of course, with some kind of national strategy, rather than just leaving it to states individually. That said, given Morrison's mistakes, it's probably been best that he's been asleep at the wheel in that regard.

In the last year, I've been in lockdown for 10 days, and nobody in my state has died, let alone anyone I care about. Nobody I know has lost their job, and our economy as a whole has grown beyond the pre-Covid baseline. I'd say our strategy has worked pretty well. 

[G STAR RAM]

14 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

You should work as an advisor to the Australian authorities.

"Look guys, the UK only had 4 or 5 times as many deaths than a bad flu year, and that was with months of lockdowns and restrictions to stop it spreading even more. There is no point locking down now to restrict infections whilst everyone gets vaccinated. Open everything up and best case you, might only end up with a 4x increase in your normal flu death total. That number will probably grow much more though, as I advise against any other lockdowns. It's important you do it right now, so not to give enough time for everyone to get vaccinated. It's just common sense, we have to learn to live and die with Covid, rather than having a short lockdown when cases emerge. Look to America and Western Europe for inspiration. Or Brazil."

Maybe we just have a different outlook on life and I don't want people telling me to stay in my house every time someone gets a virus which I am vaccinated against. 

 

[Archied]

7 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

I guess it's difficult to know the impact on death rates, but it makes sense that Covid has finished lots of people off who wouldn't have lasted too much longer.

Death rates could also drop as vulnerable people have been mixing less, reducing their chances of catching other illnesses.

But death rate could also increase from people who've missed treatment due to hospitals been full of Covid patients. 500k of them since Covid started.

 

Yep lots of variables once we can start looking in hindsight and in a less panic stricken mode

[ariotofmyown]

3 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Maybe we just have a different outlook on life and I don't want people telling me to stay in my house every time someone gets a virus which I am vaccinated against. 

 

But we are talking about what is happening in Australia where not enough people have been vaccinated yet.

[G STAR RAM]

1 hour ago, ariotofmyown said:

But we are talking about what is happening in Australia where not enough people have been vaccinated yet.

And what is the magic 'enough people' number?

[Eddie]

4 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Maybe we just have a different outlook on life and I don't want people telling me to stay in my house every time someone gets a virus which I am vaccinated against. 

 

Whilst I, by and large, agree with that strategy, a work colleague of mine has just spent the last 10 days in hospital with Covid-19. He has been fully vaccinated for 3 months now, but because of a history of illness and various treatments for said illnesses, he is immuno-suppressed.

He came out today, thankfully well on the mend. 

The source of his infection is unknown - he has by and large left pubs alone, doesn't use public transport and basically follows the guidelines.

[Albert]

4 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

And what is the magic 'enough people' number?

80%+ fully vaccinated is seen as the figure that will allow us to move away from lockdowns. The reason for this is that at that point, the effective R number can be kept below 1 without such harsh restrictions. The only issue is that the modelling underpinning that required us to keep the Covid zero approach until then, but NSW has messed that up. Going to be an interesting few months, though things are virtually where I am. 

[G STAR RAM]

7 hours ago, Albert said:

80%+ fully vaccinated is seen as the figure that will allow us to move away from lockdowns. The reason for this is that at that point, the effective R number can be kept below 1 without such harsh restrictions. The only issue is that the modelling underpinning that required us to keep the Covid zero approach until then, but NSW has messed that up. Going to be an interesting few months, though things are virtually where I am. 

So based on the UK now reaching this figure there should never need to be any lockdowns ever again?

[therealhantsram]

3 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

So based on the UK now reaching this figure there should never need to be any lockdowns ever again?

That's the theory. But it doesn't mean we won't need to re-introduce some restrictions in the future. Israel is a case in point. They had opened up and had world leading vaccination rates, but had to re-introduce restrictions as a new variant (Delta) got a foot hold.

The next new variant will most likely come from a country with low vaccination rates. And that's why the WHO is saying the priority now is for the the wealthy countries to help provide vaccines to the pooer nations. These variants don't observe borders.

[maxjam]

8 hours ago, Albert said:

80%+ fully vaccinated is seen as the figure that will allow us to move away from lockdowns. The reason for this is that at that point, the effective R number can be kept below 1 without such harsh restrictions. The only issue is that the modelling underpinning that required us to keep the Covid zero approach until then, but NSW has messed that up. Going to be an interesting few months, though things are virtually where I am. 

Sounds like a never-ending authoritarian nightmare to me

And I have to keep asking, if you are going for 0 covid deaths, why allow hundreds of flu deaths?  

[Albert]

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

So based on the UK now reaching this figure there should never need to be any lockdowns ever again?

The UK is at around 60% fully vaccinated right now. 

Also, the point is that at 80%+, we can control outbreaks without the need for lockdowns. That starts from the assumption that current outbreaks are under control at that point. The UK isn't in such a position. 

53 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Sounds like a never-ending authoritarian nightmare to me

And I have to keep asking, if you are going for 0 covid deaths, why allow hundreds of flu deaths?  

It's not about zero deaths necessarily, it's about cases creating more cases. When you allow some, you get more, so the Covid zero approach protects lives and livelihoods at the same time. 

Authoritarian implies that it's something that the government is driving, in any case, when this move towards Covid zero policies in Australia was driven by what the electorates wanted. WA's government is hugely popular, and won 53/59 seats earlier this year in their election, 59.9% of the popular vote, and 69.7% on two party preferred. 

[G STAR RAM]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

The UK is at around 60% fully vaccinated right now. 

Also, the point is that at 80%+, we can control outbreaks without the need for lockdowns. That starts from the assumption that current outbreaks are under control at that point. The UK isn't in such a position. 

It's not about zero deaths necessarily, it's about cases creating more cases. When you allow some, you get more, so the Covid zero approach protects lives and livelihoods at the same time. 

How have you concluded this out of interest?