Given the surge in Europe despite wide differences in approaches by governments and citizens, it looks like the main thing that went wrong for the UK was vaccinating their population earlier and seeing the effects waring off earlier. All the other behavioural and political differences have very little correlation to how badly countries are suffering, they were just another convenient reason for national one-upmanship.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Given the surge in Europe despite wide differences in approaches by governments and citizens, it looks like the main thing that went wrong for the UK was vaccinating their population earlier and seeing the effects waring off earlier. All the other behavioural and political differences have very little correlation to how badly countries are suffering, they were just another convenient reason for national one-upmanship.
I don’t think you can make that claim at all. Although, interestingly, it looks like the UK is currently seeing the upside for being so bad at controlling the spread of the virus over the last 12 months. So many people have been exposed at this point there’s a huge reserve of immunity independent of the vaccination program. Not herd immunity as such but something close.
How else could it be that the thread you posted showed such different behaviours and policies across those countries, yet now they're experiencing such similar outcomes? What you originally drew attention to was a correlation between the UK's bad situation and the UK's bad behaviour. Now those other countries who didn't have the same faults are now experiencing the same outcomes, so surely the opposite correlation now proves the relationship was non-existent in the first place, just clutching at straws to explain something that repeatedly disproves hypotheses, often framed with obvious biases?
Antigen/ lateral flow is fine (and cheaper and less likely to show positive)
This one I’ve seen recommended
https://breatheassured.com/product/usa-uk-test-package-for-vaccinated-traveller-standard-ba/
Different behaviours can cause the same outcome. The European countries really struggling right now have all had worse vaccine uptake rates than the uk.
Plus, as I said most of them have a history of lower case rates so don’t have past exposure filling up the unvaccinated gaps in the same way that we’re seeing in the UK.
You seem to be trying to argue that behaviour (i.e. indoor socialising, returning to offices etc) can’t be considered an important factor in high case rates. This is, of course, nonsense.
Just been in Dublin for the past two days for work, got checked more for covid status in bar's than I did at passport control at the airport. Only thing they checked there was the passport.
What on earth are you talking about? UK figures falling 18 days in a row, dutch about to impose lockdown, Germany removing entry for non vaxxed. You seem to have some agenda against the UK who are light years ahead of anyone with boosters.
I'm not saying behaviour doesn't matter. I'm saying the behaviour that you particularly disapproved of that you used to explain the UK's surge no longer seem particularly explanatory given countries are experiencing a very similar surge without the same behaviour. If the UK didn't behave in that way then they might have experienced the same surge, that's the clear the evidence now, so the focus on those particular attitudes and behaviours doesn't seem particularly warranted.
Most of the explanations that have been used to explain why country x is experiencing outcome x have gone on to be disproven months later when country y does something completely different and experienced something very similar. Most of the relationship appears to be explained by confounding variables, time and time again. ##
And it's strange that even though that's happened multiple times, people keep repeating the same narratives. Some people talk about how bad the UK are when they're living in a country that's having a hard time themselves, but at least they're experiencing that hard time in the right way, or something. Other people point fingers at schools because they're getting in the way of the social stuff they care more about. The same themes from the same people over and over again, when evidence supports their theory they pile on, when the evidence contradicts their theory they go silent. And when that contradictory evidence comes up, people just double down.
This thread has just been a place for people to share in despair and point fingers at others to cope. Which is almost cruel, if you take a step back and think about it from the perspective of someone who has different priorities and perspectives than you. It's a good thing to have outlets to process those sorts of things in difficult times, but the way people use this thread as an outlet end up making it more difficult for people who process it very differently. It suffocates them out of the conversation and creates despair where there wasn't. Anyway, I'll jump out again, this can't go anywhere good.
You've read my post as meaning exactly the opposite of what it was saying. I'm really not interested in country x is better than country y because those arguments are only made when the evidence fits the narrative people want to make, and that evidence is almost always temporary. At least in the European comparisons. But I definitely don't have an agenda against the UK. I'm totally fine with the post-vaccine approach. It turned out nowhere near as bad as the doom-mongers were saying, but that's been swept under the rug again.
It will be interesting to see what happens here in Australia once we fully open up. Nationally we have just passed 90% first dose (16+) and NSW is at nearly 95% with 90.6% fully vaccinated. 12+ are catching up fast and 6+ approval is likely very soon. NSW has largely opened up and infections are still dropping from 1500 a day to about 200 a day. There is a bit more vaccine hesitancy in states who are essentially covid free but I suspect most of that is just a lack of urgency so I have hope we will get to 95% nationally.
It will be a disaster based on everywhere else thats opened up too soon
Maybe but our vax rates are going to be very high so if we can get anywhere near the same % of the 6+ age groups vaxxed I think we have a shout at getting somewhere near herd immunity. Next winter will be the crucial test I suspect.
A few observations on reopening. I'll focus on the UK and Europe, but other countries with similar population age and mobility profiles have similar questions to answer.
The UK has had a R rate bouncing around 1 since May. The ONS antibody survey gives an idea of why.
In the UK, more than 95% of 18-60 year olds now have covid antibodies. If you use the ONS dataset, in May-July when the UK reopened, 99% of over 60s had antibodies and almost all of them were double vaccinated. Unfortunately those groups now need boosters to get them back up there. Around 70% of under 18s have antibodies.
Around 10m boosters have been done since the ONS collected the blood samples used for those graphs.
In the next month or so the UK will probably be as close to numerical herd immunity as we're ever likely to get, but covid will still be around and still killing people - it won't be leaving, it will become endemic.
It's nice to believe that there's an easy route but even Spain with its high vaccine uptake, some continuing mitigations (masks etc) and low case rates, has over 200 deaths/week at the moment.
Is there a right time? Well, in the UK, they effectively decided to try and let it run through the population before Christmas - leaving February onwards for the flu season. If the vaccine waning effect hadn't hit the vulnerable groups in September, maybe we'd have done better. There's still a good chance though, that with the booster program, hospitalisations and deaths will fall soon. Unfortunately some of the most vulnerable (the 80+ in particular) are not getting their boosters quickly enough - partly because GPs etc are trying to catch up with pent up demand on other health issues.
Some countries, including Germany who managed the initial waves very well, will find full reopening even tougher. Which sends us back to question of whether there is such a thing as a best time to reopen. Every country will have its own version of an "exit wave" and will have multiple waves in the future - hopefully smaller in terms of hospitalisations/deaths.
Any country reintroducing controls now is just buying time. I think they need to know (and preferably state) what they're buying time to do.
The UK has had a R rate bouncing around 1 since May. The ONS antibody survey gives an idea of why.
In the UK, more than 95% of 18-60 year olds now have covid antibodies. If you use the ONS dataset, in May-July when the UK reopened, 99% of over 60s had antibodies and almost all of them were double vaccinated. Unfortunately those groups now need boosters to get them back up there. Around 70% of under 18s have antibodies.
Around 10m boosters have been done since the ONS collected the blood samples used for those graphs.
In the next month or so the UK will probably be as close to numerical herd immunity as we're ever likely to get, but covid will still be around and still killing people - it won't be leaving, it will become endemic.
It's nice to believe that there's an easy route but even Spain with its high vaccine uptake, some continuing mitigations (masks etc) and low case rates, has over 200 deaths/week at the moment.
Is there a right time? Well, in the UK, they effectively decided to try and let it run through the population before Christmas - leaving February onwards for the flu season. If the vaccine waning effect hadn't hit the vulnerable groups in September, maybe we'd have done better. There's still a good chance though, that with the booster program, hospitalisations and deaths will fall soon. Unfortunately some of the most vulnerable (the 80+ in particular) are not getting their boosters quickly enough - partly because GPs etc are trying to catch up with pent up demand on other health issues.
Some countries, including Germany who managed the initial waves very well, will find full reopening even tougher. Which sends us back to question of whether there is such a thing as a best time to reopen. Every country will have its own version of an "exit wave" and will have multiple waves in the future - hopefully smaller in terms of hospitalisations/deaths.
Any country reintroducing controls now is just buying time. I think they need to know (and preferably state) what they're buying time to do.
Lockdown in Holland, the Dutch are rioting in the streets. Ugly scenes.
We are at 20k+ cases a day, 250 deaths, hospital admissions are through the roof.
Restrictions in place: none.
Restrictions in place: none.
The next measures will be stronger in 3 weeks.
The booster program is for over 50's and the over 40's group will be hitting 6 months early December (so only a couple of weeks away). My worry is that we've missed again as a country and hospitalisations in the 40's followed by the 30's will rise over Christmas followed by some emergency booster doses.
We shouldn't prioritise boosters over other countries doses obviously, but hospital admissions will increase in lower age groups than 50 soon judging by what we've seen so far.
Austria’s going to go with an “unvaccinated lockdown”. If you’re not vaccinated you can’t leave your home. Even as someone who’s in favour of mandates for people with certain jobs this seems draconian to me.
Not technically, anyone in a ‘risk’ category also qualifies for the booster. I’ve got mine in a couple of weeks. I’d still expect to see hospitalisations and deaths decline as the most at risk demographics as boosters take hold.
I just can’t see how they will manage/police it effectively, seems almost like a prison approach of managing a public health challenge.
You weren't in favour of the Italian Green Pass for workers either and that's worked well. Cases are staying relatively low and virtually all hospitalizations are unvaccinated. It looks like it's here to stay and seems necessary to avoid the situation in Eastern Europe.
You need a two tier society if you don't want everybody to have some level of restriction. The primary spreaders (unvaccinated) need to be isolated from the rest, but also from each other to slow the spread amongst themselves. A few million unvaccinated can still overwhelm hospitals all on their own.
Or you can take the UK approach and let the virus roam free in everybody and get to herd immunity quickly. It will need to go extremely wrong for Europe to catch up to the death counts that approach has caused though.
I never once criticised the Italian green pass. In fact this is the first time I’ve ever objected to any measure intended to increase vaccine uptake.
Police roaming the streets doing spot checks, apparently. All very dystopian.
Why Eastern Europe in particular? Aren't Germany and the Netherlands in a bit of a situation too? Despite following a similar path to most of Western Europe for most of the year, as I understand it.
Real world evidence suggests the vaccination programs have not been able to reduce the incidence of cases. Even places with 80%+ fully vaccinated are experiencing record numbers. Pretty much all the northern hemisphere is seeing a seasonal? surge.
In the UK London has the lowest case rates:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/lon...er-hamlets-southwark-westminster-b965984.html
How can this make sense?
In the UK London has the lowest case rates:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/lon...er-hamlets-southwark-westminster-b965984.html
How can this make sense?
If you mean this, I'd say it's pretty obvious that the vaccines simply aren't as effective (short and longterm) regarding actual immunity as we hoped them to be. We are going to need periodical booster vaccines and improvements/adjustments. Vaccines won't end the pandemic alone, that has become pretty clear. We are going to need a variety of approaches to end this situation (better preventative strategies, medication, vaccines etc.). With the current course of some major nations Europe (looking especially at Germany here), the pandemic is here to stay. There's a possibility that this coming winter will be the climax of the pandemic. The virus is here to stay and despite vaccinations, we have absolute record numbers here. Government led people to believe this was over 14 days after getting the 2nd jab. Which is why many people let their guard down and many public events with recovered/vaccinated people were allowed recently. The effects of the carneval (especially in cologne) might be devastating. We're not far off a collapse of the health care system already and it's just the mid of november.
Not feeling optimistic at all at the moment.
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At this point, I'm absolutely in favor of drastic measures to prevent unbelievable amounts of suffering that are to come if we don't act now. If necessary and constitutional considerations make certain measures illegal, I'd like to see constitutional changes to be able to handle this situation properly. We can not let these old documents prevent us from living properly in this - in constitutional terms - novel situation. Also, mandatory vaccination is overdue. Events for vaccinated/recovered won't cut it, we have to limit the allowed amount of people attending events and make it mandatory for hosts to check tests from people who are vaccinated/recovered. Draconic punishment if these business owners not oblige and manage properly.
This is taking too long and I feel like the time for softer approaches is over. We need drastic changes, no more blabla about how people are sad that they're not able to follow luxus lifestyle choices when people's life and health are in danger left and right.
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Just a combination of random variation in geographic spread within a specific time period and the effects of herd immunity? (London had 1.2m positive cases, with however many untested)
I am hoping that once the Merck and Pfizer anti-virals are released next year we will be able to treat it as just another illness.
Hopefully everything will flatten down, but don't get your hopes up too high. We had a similar effect with vaccines only just recently.
You weren't too sure on the mandatory worker pass though:
Eastern Europe is driving it. I don't enough about whats going on in Benelux but it's the Eastern border states that are seeing the biggest increases in Germany and creeping into Italy.
You could pretty much inversely overlay this map onto the vaccine uptake one.
Yeah sure, you could do that, if you ignore the likes of Belgium having the same level of vaccine uptake but a completely different case rate. I’m not sure why you would do that but no doubt we can create some contrived explanation for the difference that once again paints Italy in a wonderful light. And when Italy experiences an increase in cases at some other time we’ll no doubt have a whole new explanation for why that’s not really the point. Rinse and repeat.
Same shit in Ireland. Delta is so contagious that it’s almost impossible to get vaccine uptake high enough to keep cases down if you’ve got a porous border with another countries that has extremely high community spread (for whatever reason, poor vaccine uptake or lack of non pharmaceutical measures)
Belgium is struggling due to its border with Germany, where vaccine uptake is poor. Italy seems to be better geographically isolated from the Eastern European “non vax wave”.
Given that Belgium has more cases and more people in ICU per capita than Germany, then obviously they are not sruggling due to Germany.
Germany borders these Eastern European countries and has a lower vaccination rate yet has a lower case rate than Netherlands and Belgium, while France also borders Germany and has a lower vaccination rate than Belgium yet has a lower case rate then those two…so yeah we can create contrived explanations that fit a narrrative but are full of holes in the data. As long as you both can say those nasty neighbours of ours are the problem, we’re doing it right, there’s nothing more we could have done, that’s mission accomplished. It’s not a sober analysis of the results.
That’s just not very apparent because this place is an echo chamber from the same people and it’s tiresome to point out the logical flaws and it’s a little comical to watch the narratives repeat irrespective of changing conditions, so it’s mostly people listening to their own voices having the same debates.
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Mate, Mallorca is not officially German, we just pretend it is
would be nice. But many deemed these borders pretty offensive.
Not to be pedantic but Spain also doesn't border BelgiumFair point. One country too far! Duly edited.
Also, I don't think - geographically speaking - that Germany has any borders with eastern europe. czech republic, Poland and Austria aren't in my books.