SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

golden_blunder

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Buster claimed the UK is “happy” for 40,000 people a year to die from Covid. My response is, Buster, and everyone else, including yourself have been “happy” to spread respiratory viruses that kill at similar rates to that (40,000 /year). That’s part of life.

No-one is arguing about the past 18 months.
Well if that’s your argument let’s mandate wearing masks in flu season. I’d be down for that.
 

golden_blunder

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How much would it reduce transmission by? What are the current numbers of people wearing masks? We still have a mask mandate in Northern Ireland and our cases have been amongst the highest in the U.K.
You know as well as I do that people in the north do what they want in their own homes etc as well as the no mask & no vaccine lot.
 

golden_blunder

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You know what difference that makes on flu death rates in Asia compared to the West.

None.
Explain how you know that it makes no difference to those people that don’t catch the cold/flu etc when someone is sneezing or coughing in public transport?
I wish I’d cottoned on years ago. I used to travel by bus to work and usually about this time of year I had without fail, someone coughing or sneezing in the seat behind or besides me. Then I’d end up with it.

off course masks make a difference otherwise a whole continent wouldn’t bother their arses. We all used to think ‘look at them with their masks on’ when they walked around london etc. Who’s laughing now?
 

jojojo

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France has about 10k in hospital and UK 8k but admissions are around 300+ in France and 1000+ in the UK, maybe France don't chuck them out so quickly
France had 4248 admissions in the week ending 5 Sept (down 20% on the week before) - I'd be surprised if they are at 300/day now as that would constitute a 50% drop in one week. Not impossible, but it would be impressive and analysis-worthy, as I'm not aware of any major policy/other changes in France that could do that in a week.

In any case, where case rates are falling fast, hospitalisations are the trailing indicator and the total number hospitalised will trail that. The current stats of around 10k hospitalised and 2k in intensive care (vs UK 8k/1k approx) may just be showing that some patients take a long time to treat, and longer to discharge if they can't return home until completely virus free. That's almost certainly a demographic issue rather than a policy one. Averages tend to flatten stories but in general younger patients stay in for less time.

The UK is also seeing the start of what might be an uptick in hospitalisations in the older vaxxed groups. We don't know why yet, maybe just that the at risk group have decided to take more risks, or maybe we are starting to see a decline in vaccine effectiveness and they need boosters. At any rate it's a recent phenomena and it could be a couple of months before it's a major factor for over 70s in France.
 

Ecstatic

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You seem to be quite happy to write off several thousand additional deaths under the guise of ‘We have to open up sometime, we don’t mitigate for other transmissible disease’. You are happy for more people to die than him.
Anybody aspiring to a form of normality (pre-covid life) is an awful psychopath delighted to see a lot of people dying from Covid. Gotcha.
 

Buster15

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Ok. Seems like I have raised a few hackles.
So, just to set the record straight.
I was listening to an eminent virologist this morning.
She was arguing that the UK has gone from having one of the strictest set of restrictions, which with the vaccination programme brought daily infections down to a manageable number and deaths down to some of the lowest since the pandemic.
And after all that hard work, new infections and deaths have increased to unacceptable numbers, unless we are happy to pay that price for the current freedoms.
I find it difficult to understand how an annualised figure of about 40,000 deaths could be seen as acceptable, when that number could be reduced significantly (not my words) by the wearing of face coverings....
Can't see much wrong with that logic. Hence my post.
 

Paul the Wolf

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France had 4248 admissions in the week ending 5 Sept (down 20% on the week before) - I'd be surprised if they are at 300/day now as that would constitute a 50% drop in one week. Not impossible, but it would be impressive and analysis-worthy, as I'm not aware of any major policy/other changes in France that could do that in a week.

In any case, where case rates are falling fast, hospitalisations are the trailing indicator and the total number hospitalised will trail that. The current stats of around 10k hospitalised and 2k in intensive care (vs UK 8k/1k approx) may just be showing that some patients take a long time to treat, and longer to discharge if they can't return home until completely virus free. That's almost certainly a demographic issue rather than a policy one. Averages tend to flatten stories but in general younger patients stay in for less time.

The UK is also seeing the start of what might be an uptick in hospitalisations in the older vaxxed groups. We don't know why yet, maybe just that the at risk group have decided to take more risks, or maybe we are starting to see a decline in vaccine effectiveness and they need boosters. At any rate it's a recent phenomena and it could be a couple of months before it's a major factor for over 70s in France.
https://www.linternaute.com/actuali...-se-poursuit-3e-dose-dans-les-ephad-ce-lundi/

Sorry it's in french but in summary the lastest is 322 admissions, people in hospital falling, down 500 in the last week, deaths down, starting booster vaccines in old people's homes from Monday and surprise, Marine Le Pen is against covid passports.
 
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2mufc0

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Ok. Seems like I have raised a few hackles.
So, just to set the record straight.
I was listening to an eminent virologist this morning.
She was arguing that the UK has gone from having one of the strictest set of restrictions, which with the vaccination programme brought daily infections down to a manageable number and deaths down to some of the lowest since the pandemic.
And after all that hard work, new infections and deaths have increased to unacceptable numbers, unless we are happy to pay that price for the current freedoms.
I find it difficult to understand how an annualised figure of about 40,000 deaths could be seen as acceptable, when that number could be reduced significantly (not my words) by the wearing of face coverings....
Can't see much wrong with that logic. Hence my post.
I see where you are coming from and don't understand the outrage. It's a really fecked up situation where you will be just left to die because there are not enough resources to help you, that's essentially what we will end up with in the winter. Not calling for a complete lockdown but a bit of caution will save a lot of lives.
 

jojojo

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https://www.linternaute.com/actuali...-se-poursuit-3e-dose-dans-les-ephad-ce-lundi/

Sorry it's in french but in summary the lastest is 322 admissions, people in hospital falling, down 500 in the last week, deaths down, starting booster vaccines in old people's homes from Monday and surpise, Marine Le Pen is against covid passports.
I'm looking at:
https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/content/download/373773/3154180

Wandering around a bit more there's:
https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/...ion-de-la-covid-19-en-france-et-dans-le-monde
Which I guess updates daily currently showing around 500/day suggesting a 20% week on week decline - which is more in line with the other data. Hopefully it's a trend that will continue and you'll keep seeing the numbers fall.
 

Buster15

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I see where you are coming from and don't understand the outrage. It's a really fecked up situation where you will be just left to die because there are not enough resources to help you, that's essentially what we will end up with in the winter. Not calling for a complete lockdown but a bit of caution will save a lot of lives.
Exactly that.
Compare the things we do when driving a car. Seat belts, drink driving etc and not to mention the safety features built into the cars. And the annual deaths of less than 2,000.
That is the point.
 

Paul the Wolf

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I'm looking at:
https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/content/download/373773/3154180

Wandering around a bit more there's:
https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/...ion-de-la-covid-19-en-france-et-dans-le-monde
Which I guess updates daily currently showing around 500/day suggesting a 20% week on week decline - which is more in line with the other data. Hopefully it's a trend that will continue and you'll keep seeing the numbers fall.
Yes it's a day or two behind the figures I showed but trends are continuing downwards which is good; with good mask wearing by most people, vaccinations still going strong, social distancing and covid passports for events and restaurants etc, long may it continue to improve.
 

golden_blunder

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Of course. Which is why I question how much will change with a mask mandate.
Oh right I get your angle now. Fair point.
At the same time a lot of especially older people do listen to what the political parties and experts tell them. So If it were me, I’d mandate masks at least on public transport during flu seasons. That way the hospitals aren’t having to deal with a rise in flu and covid coming into winter. It could be relaxed again after winter
 

golden_blunder

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Ok. Seems like I have raised a few hackles.
So, just to set the record straight.
I was listening to an eminent virologist this morning.
She was arguing that the UK has gone from having one of the strictest set of restrictions, which with the vaccination programme brought daily infections down to a manageable number and deaths down to some of the lowest since the pandemic.
And after all that hard work, new infections and deaths have increased to unacceptable numbers, unless we are happy to pay that price for the current freedoms.
I find it difficult to understand how an annualised figure of about 40,000 deaths could be seen as acceptable, when that number could be reduced significantly (not my words) by the wearing of face coverings....
Can't see much wrong with that logic. Hence my post.
Thank you for clarifying, though personally I don’t think you had too.
 

Brwned

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Oh really.
I was actually quoting facts. Facts that are in the public domain.
Maybe you should re-read my post, which is in the correct Covid thread.
If you don't agree with me, then that is your right.
And by the way. When were the public required to wear face coverings prior to the covid pandemic.
You quoted projections, and presented them as facts. But those projections have a lot of variables attached to them, much of which are tied to unpredictable social behaviour and an evolving virus that still manages to upend our understanding of things. There are lots of projections with conflicting answers because of that. So when you were presenting your "facts" back in July about what would happen in mid-August, there were other projections like this:
If you're curious about what the modelling is actually looking like and what the appraisal was in June (that led to the opening being delayed until July) this will give you an overview:
https://www.covid-arg.com/post/modelling-the-return-of-freedoms

You need to download the pdf file to see the modelling summaries from Sage. Basically they have three models - imperial College, Warwick and LSHTM. These start with various scenarios relating to how much more infectious Delta is, what the hospitalisation rate would be (unvaccinated) and how well the vaccines are working. Then they try and describe what might happen if...

Currently cases are rising as fast as predicted in early June but hospitalisations are lower (but rising). The black/orange lines were the Warwick predictions of what would happen if we reopened fully on June 21 as planned v July 19. The blue is the actual hospitalisation data so far.


This seems to be down to the cases not really moving out of the under 29 group in the same way as they did in previous waves. That's assumed to be part vaccine and part behaviour related (the vaxxed mixing mostly with the vaxxed for example). Unfortunately it now looks like it's spreading into the very highest risk group 80+ probably from unvaxxed or single vaxxed family members or carers, hence why hospitalisations are starting to rise, having not risen as early as was expected.

Next week's data will give people an idea of how the infection is moving through age groups and the vaccinations given in June are part of the equation.

Right now it really is too close to call, but there is an assumption in all the Sage scenarios that not only will there be an exit wave, there will be a lot of hospitalisations over the next year and thousands more deaths. That's what "living with covid" means - we're just not used to seeing it as a calculation.
That model suggested a peak of around 1,400 cases but instead it never quite reached 1,000 in August. And of course it never got close to the worst-case scenarios of 10,000:
The government advisory group's SPI-M model - the thing that's supposed to estimate hospitalisations etc as the case rates rise had been updated:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...I-M-O_Summary_Roadmap_second_Step_4.2__1_.pdf

They show a wide range of outcomes with somewhere between 1000/day and 10,000/day hospital admissions depending on the way the case rates across age groups move. To go with the wide margins there's a set of information about vaccine effectiveness, vaccine takeup by age and the big unknown social mixing behaviour. The optimistic projections come from the idea that the 40+ will basically behave like they're doing now and, of the unvaxxed groups, only the under 30s will actually start to really mix more.

Personally I'd interpret that as meaning if age group (indoor) mixing rates change, all bets are off really. They say, that given the uncertainties, case and hospitalisation rates need continuous monitoring. On that basis, the under 1000 admissions/day line is currently looking a little optimistic - but they're hoping that schools breaking up will make it better rather than worse and that the case rate flattening seen in the north west is typical.
None of which is problematic of course. Models have error margins built into them and the people who designed them were always careful to add caveats about the unknowns.

One expert saying one thing at one point in time is not a fact, it's an interpretation of complicated evidence that should be weighed up accordingly.

If after doing that, you think it's a fair assessment, that makes sense. But you can't then re-brand them as facts. If you describe them as facts then you'll misinform people, might increase their anxiety, etc. And if you convince yourself they're facts, then when someone on the other side of the discussion presents an alternative argument, you'll find it much easier to dismiss that argument - but that's your error, not theirs.

The more you do that, the more you convince yourself you're "right" and people simply aren't listening to "the facts", the more likely you are to sneer at people for responding differently to ambiguous scenarios. Which is where we're at now.

The public weren't required to wear face coverings prior to the pandemic. But then your point was about morality, not legality. There are many things that are now legal to do - no masks on public transport, going to large events - that you think is not quite right. It's not a good trade-off, and it's causing unnecessary harm for a very small sacrifice.

The same thing applies in 2019. You weren't forced to wear face coverings, but you could've. It was an unusual thing to do in the UK, mostly foreign people did it, mostly from Asia, and most of us thought it was kind of weird, surely unnecessary. We thought that at a time when tens of thousands of people died from viruses every year, many of which spread in exactly the same way. That's now your red line that's unacceptable, so you have to judge yourself by the same standard then.

If it's immoral to allow that number of deaths to happen in society, and you believe simple preventative measures could reduce that, then how do you judge your prior behaviour? Maybe you didn't know what the value of masks was, but if preventing deaths was so key to your sense of morality, it wouldn't be that hard to google something like "mask flu study" and see this, from 2012, in the UK. If you did read it you'd probably be a little confused, though. Complicated and contradictory evidence outside of your expertise has that effect on people.

Personally, my judgement at the time was people wearing masks in 2019 were a bit silly, while now I think...yeah we probably should've worn them. I think we as a society were a bit slow to catch up to it. But I don't feel ashamed for not doing it.

I wasn't very familiar with how to wear them, why to wear them, where to get them...it was all a bit distant to me. I didn't worry about the flu, I got it once, it was pretty rubbish but no big deal. I didn't think too much about how viruses spread, and there wasn't anyone immediately close to me that suffered badly from a virus. Whereas the folks in Asia, some of them had experienced a pandemic, some of them were used to wearing it for other purposes, it was a socially acceptable or benefical thing to do...they did it more often not because they're "better" people, who care more about preventing lives than other people, it was just normalised through experiences.

The people that you ridicule now, I think of in much the same way. They're still a bit unsure about the value of them - people they know that wore masks got covid, people that didn't wear masks didn't get covid, one minute the experts say this the next they say that, it's not really socially acceptable in their circles, they've changed all these rules so what's the point of masks, etc. It hasn't registered with them in the ways that drive action, because many people don't understand the world using the same tools. They haven't gotten to the point where they think of masks the same way you do, in the same way we took a while to think of masks in a vaguely similar way to folks from Asia.

If you want to cast that kind of judgment on others you have to cast it on yourself too, and not only in the situations you're comfortable with. So how do you judge yourself?

No. There’s a direct line of sight there. Deaths are at 100-200 a day and people are living without caution.

We don’t have to both sides this. The callous and the idiots have won. Edit : Not calling you either of these.

You seem to be quite happy to write off several thousand additional deaths under the guise of ‘We have to open up sometime, we don’t mitigate for other transmissible disease’. Simply by Buster saying he’d keep mandated mitigation’s in place to ensure the death toll was as low as possible, he shows himself to be a more compassionate person. You are happy for more people to die than him. And me for that matter. That’s kind of ok. Oddly.

Have the courage of your convictions. If you think 70,000 a year instead of 40,000 is acceptable in exchange for unlimited freedom, do you. But don’t berate another for not being cool with bigger numbers.

If I were in charge I’d have;

- Extended indoor mask mandates until Spring for many events without adequate mitigation’s
- Required evidence of vaccination for indoor dining
- Mandated masks on all public transport
- Required evidence of a negative test inside 24 hours for those ‘risky’ events not requiring a mask.
- Lowered the cost of tests to £25 and have them centralised, out of Private companies hands.

I’ve seen this level of day to day ‘restriction’ in play in the last two months in France, Croatia, Hackney, Airports, Taxis. None of them are a big deal and all are easy to comply with. I’ll happily do them to see 10-30,000 people not die.

I’d then reset in Spring next year when we would hopefully be close to 90%+ vaccination and communicate plans centred around the newest facts, adequate ventilation and is probably ignore the dumbest people In The room instead of considering their voices to be valid simply because they voted for me.
Yeah you've just invented my opinion I'm afraid. But no worries, you obviously don't need to listen to what other people are saying because you've got all the answers. Have fun with it.
 
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Hernandez - BFA

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I’ve moved to GP land since last month after quite an intense last year working on Respiratory.

Last week I had to admit three patients on three separate home visits with COVID. All double-vaccinated, but looked truly terrible when I reviewed them.

Think we are in for a harsher Winter than normal. Maybe not like peak-January, but certainly rough ones.

I cant see further lockdowns happening unless deaths go above 600-700/daily again, but I do feel restrictions should be brought back within the next couple of months. People may not like it, but I feel it’s inevitable.
 

acnumber9

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Oh right I get your angle now. Fair point.
At the same time a lot of especially older people do listen to what the political parties and experts tell them. So If it were me, I’d mandate masks at least on public transport during flu seasons. That way the hospitals aren’t having to deal with a rise in flu and covid coming into winter. It could be relaxed again after winter
I think that’s a fair enough compromise for normality. As much as I don’t like mask wearing in general.
 

Pogue Mahone

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I’m not convinced that masks make a big difference all on their own. Where I think they do move the dial is in reminding people life is not back to normal yet and to continue to do their best to behave in a way that will slow down/reduce viral transmission. Take away the masks and human nature dictates we’ll all start to behave exactly as we did pre-covid. Which is a problem while the UK remains only partially vaccinated. The un-vaccinated will become immune eventually after catching covid but there’s a whole lot of collateral damage if that many people all get infected over the next two or three months.
 

berbatrick

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...

there's a large-scale paper on masks, they make a minor but significant difference:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y


The latest finding is based on a randomized trial involving nearly 350,000 people across rural Bangladesh. The study’s authors found that surgical masks — but not cloth masks — reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in villages where the research team distributed face masks and promoted their use.

Styczynski and her colleagues began by developing a strategy to promote mask wearing, with measures such as reminders from health workers in public places. This ultimately tripled mask usage, from only 13% in control villages to 42% in villages where it was encouraged. The researchers then compared numbers of COVID-19 cases in control villages and the treatment communities.

The team found that the number of symptomatic cases was lower in treatment villages than in control villages. The decrease was a modest 9%, but the researchers suggest that the true risk reduction is probably much greater, in part because they did no SARS-CoV-2 testing of people without symptoms or whose symptoms did not meet the World Health Organization’s definition of the disease.

The study linked surgical masks with an 11% drop in risk, compared with a 5% drop for cloth. That finding was reinforced by laboratory experiments whose results are summarized in the same preprint. The data show that even after 10 washes, surgical masks filter out 76% of small particles capable of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, says Mushfiq Mobarak, an economist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study. By contrast, the team found that 3-layered cloth masks had a filtration efficiency of only 37% before washing or use.

emphasising that the 9% they observed is for 42% masking vs a 13% background, so the results will be much much better if you compare, say, 80% to 5%.
 

berbatrick

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university talk on their surveillance testing of students. nothing groundbreaking but it was interesting from a biology point of view.

Strains detected


only weeks with positive tests are shown so there are gaps. numbers on top are total cases seen in a given week. percentages refer to each strain.

effect of masking/gathering:


data from students alone, not staff/faculty.
march outbreak was caused by many off-campus gatherings.
current semester (fall 21) started mid-august, and there were gatherings on and off campus and lenient rules. we had stricter rules on masks and gatherings end-aug. pretty drastic effect!

other notable results, both scientific and policy:
spike protein is undergoing a lot of mutations. another gene, the polymerase, is seeing less mutations than the baseline, it is highly conserved. but there are other proteins (some surface protein whose name i missed) also being rapidly mutated, so it could be involved in evading immunity/vaccines.

mutations are happening so fast that for contact tracing, they expect to see at least some difference between 2 cases if they weren't acquired at the same contact. so basically contact tracing without using wifi/bluetooth location, but relying on positives being honest about where they were after detection.
but each mutation doesn't mean a new variant, each variant has some signature mutations and then further mutations that arise and don't seem to change its behaviour.

based on their models of infection: if vaccines were 90% effective at stopping transmission, surveillance testing and isolating of detected asymptomatic cases would be unnecessary. at 50-75%, there is a *massive* (5-10X) difference in infections if there is surveillance testing and isolation of positives. in fact, without surveillance testing and isolations, every student would have to be infected before the curve dropped. so, they decided to continue with testing despite having very high vaccination rate. they also found that instead of asymptomatic quarantine, they can get the same results with 3X weekly testing of positive asymptomatics.

e - zoned out during the q&a. one point was that they don't expect it to become less severe over time like other viral diseases, since in its current state it usually doesn't kill, and transmits before it kills. so that selective pressure to help it spread isn't there.
 
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Stack

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Hi People this is going to seem like a really stupid question so apologies in advance.
Down here in NZ the race is on to get a big chunk of the population vaccinated, the reality is this current lockdown will be the last of its type as the population and especially the business community are growing weary of our situation.
So my question is What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?
Cheers. PS its a genuine question and not an attempt to troll etc.
 

Wibble

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Flu death rates in Asian mask wearing countries are no different to the West, there’s decades of data, hence the huge mask debate when Covid kicked off.
Asia is particularly susceptible to flue for a variety of reasons e.g. climate, a large range of different influenza viruses circulation simultaneously and populations density in big cities, so you would exoect them to have a higher death rate than many other places. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7482764/

There is also lots of data showing that flu transmission is reduced by vaccination and almost as much by mask wearing. This study in Japan was in schools and masks work even better with adults than kids (as demonstrated by them working better with older kids). I'm not sure how you would regulated mask wearing but I'd love it if it became a habit that people wore a mask as soon as they get a sniffle.

The fact that flu has virtually disappeared here in Australia strongly suggests that vaccination combined with distancing and masks works incredibly well. Masks help with all respiratory viruses so why should flu be different?
 

Wibble

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Hi People this is going to seem like a really stupid question so apologies in advance.
Down here in NZ the race is on to get a big chunk of the population vaccinated, the reality is this current lockdown will be the last of its type as the population and especially the business community are growing weary of our situation.
So my question is What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?
Cheers. PS its a genuine question and not an attempt to troll etc.
I'd say watch Australia for your options. Either you eradicate until you have herd immunity (which is probably practical impossible on the time scale needed) or the art is opening up and vaccinating at a rate that doesn't overwhelm your medical/ICU facilities. There is no perfect solution but if you can eradicate long enough to get vaccination to 80 or even 90% of adults before you open up you will be doing well.
 

Wibble

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one point was that they don't expect it to become less severe over time like other viral diseases, since in its current state it usually doesn't kill, and transmits before it kills. so that selective pressure to help it spread isn't there.
I have seen it suggested that this also minimises the chances of vaccination being a driver of "worse" variants.
 

mav_9me

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Hi People this is going to seem like a really stupid question so apologies in advance.
Down here in NZ the race is on to get a big chunk of the population vaccinated, the reality is this current lockdown will be the last of its type as the population and especially the business community are growing weary of our situation.
So my question is What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?
Cheers. PS its a genuine question and not an attempt to troll etc.
Denmark is where you want to look.
 
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Denmark is where you want to look.
Aye, great example for New Zealanders. Similar population size, and have been living with it lockdown free for what? 17 months now? as of a few days ago Denmark no longer considers COVID-19 "a socially critical disease” so is now living restriction free.
Excess deaths in Denmark have been 810 since the start of the pandemic so no worse than a bad flu season for them.
I don’t think NZ has much to worry about at all at this point once 80%+ is vaccinated.
 

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Kind of a bizarre take to call someone out for participating in spreading diseases pre pandemic and how that means he can’t want to take a few more cautions now. It’s almost like there’s been a life changing event for the best part of 18 months, with constant death updates every day and messaging about the important of practicing good hygiene.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Aye, great example for New Zealanders. Similar population size, and have been living with it lockdown free for what? 17 months now? as of a few days ago Denmark no longer considers COVID-19 "a socially critical disease” so is now living restriction free.
Excess deaths in Denmark have been 810 since the start of the pandemic so no worse than a bad flu season for them.
I don’t think NZ has much to worry about at all at this point once 80%+ is vaccinated.
Both of these things can’t be true at once. Denmark has had to make a lot of changes to live with the virus. Including the vaccine passports you’re railing against in another thread. What Denmark has done incredibly well is extraordinarily high levels of compliance with the restrictions and with vaccine uptake. That’s their secret sauce. They’ve only in the last week removed the last of these restrictions.
 
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Both of these things can’t be true at once. Denmark has had to make a lot of changes to live with the virus. Including the vaccine passports you’re railing against in another thread. What Denmark has done incredibly well is extraordinarily high levels of compliance with the restrictions and with vaccine uptake. That’s their secret sauce. They’ve only in the last week removed the last of these restrictions.
Denmark hasn’t been in lockdown since April 2020, true.
Denmark is now restriction free since 9th September (aside from vaccine passports for travel), true. Vaccine passports for cafes, sports etc are now gone.

Did you misread my post maybe? I didn’t say they’ve been living with it restriction free, not at all. Confused here pal.

Stacks asked “What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?


The example is a similar sized country that have been living with it (I don’t consider lockdown living with anything), lockdown free for 17 months, as for hospitals and deaths, they’ve managed to make excess deaths during the pandemic no worse than a bad flu season and now due to high vaccination rates they are basically restriction free.

I know what the secret sauce is, that’s why I said that New Zealand once they get to a similar level of vaccinated don’t have too much to worry about, when taking a similar size population in Denmark as an example.
 
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Pogue Mahone

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Denmark hasn’t been in lockdown since April 2020, true.
Denmark is now restriction free since 9th September (aside from vaccine passports for travel), true. Vaccine passports for cafes, sports etc are now gone.

Did you misread my post maybe? I didn’t say they’ve been living with it restriction free, not at all. Confused here pal.

Stacks asked “What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?



I know what the secret sauce is, that’s why I said that New Zealand once they get to a similar level of vaccinated don’t have too much to worry about, when taking a similar size population in Denmark as an example.
Denmark hasn’t been in lockdown since April 2020. Not true.

I do agree they’re a role model regarding how to live with this. But they’ve managed to keep cases very low over the last few weeks. Which has to be down to more than just the effect of vaccination alone, when you compare them with other similarly vaccinated countries. And that will be the hard part for New Zealand. Adopting all the other behaviours needed to safely live with the virus.
 
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Which has to be down to more than just the effect of vaccination alone, when you compare them with other similarly vaccinated countries.
Well Denmark has always out done almost every other country on the planet in that regard, with far less restrictions than most.
As I argued for much of last year they (along with Norway) have a smallish but wealthy population, very little in terms of poor neighbourhoods with practically no immigration, and only one true “City” of note.
I’ve lived in NZ and whilst they do have poor neighbourhoods, and more cities, they are also sparsely populated so I see no reason why they need to worry too much if they hit 80%+ vaccinated.

I regret saying it now, as always on here anything positive about how it absolutely is possible to live with a virus (and how NZ will be fine when vaccinated) has always been met with negativity about how everyone should continue to shit their pants and never return to normal.
 
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golden_blunder

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Hi People this is going to seem like a really stupid question so apologies in advance.
Down here in NZ the race is on to get a big chunk of the population vaccinated, the reality is this current lockdown will be the last of its type as the population and especially the business community are growing weary of our situation.
So my question is What does living with Covid actually mean in real practical terms for those of you who are doing that already?
Also is it difficult in terms of hospital stress and deaths or has everyone got used to that now?
Cheers. PS its a genuine question and not an attempt to troll etc.
Use common sense. Wash your hands after being out in public. Use a mask when necessary.
personally I also avoid large crowd build up, but that’s down to how comfortable you feel.
 

golden_blunder

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Well Denmark has always out done almost every other country on the planet in that regard, with far less restrictions than most.
As I argued for much of last year they (along with Norway) have a smallish but wealthy population, very little in terms of poor neighbourhoods with practically no immigration, and only one true “City” of note.
I’ve lived in NZ and whilst they do have poor neighbourhoods, and more cities, they are also sparsely populated so I see no reason why they need to worry too much if they hit 80%+ vaccinated.

I regret saying it now, as always on here anything positive about how it absolutely is possible to live with a virus (and how NZ will be fine when vaccinated) has always been met with negativity about how everyone should continue to shit their pants and never return to normal.
is it any wonder people argue with you? You were the one arguing till you were blue in the face about Sweden’s decision to not lockdown in the original variant
 

Pogue Mahone

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Well Denmark has always out done almost every other country on the planet in that regard, with far less restrictions than most.
As I argued for much of last year they (along with Norway) have a smallish but wealthy population, very little in terms of poor neighbourhoods with practically no immigration, and only one true “City” of note.
I’ve lived in NZ and whilst they do have poor neighbourhoods, and more cities, they are also sparsely populated so I see no reason why they need to worry too much if they hit 80%+ vaccinated.

I regret saying it now, as always on here anything positive about how it absolutely is possible to live with a virus (and how NZ will be fine when vaccinated) has always been met with negativity about how everyone should continue to shit their pants and never return to normal.
Nobody is advocating that anyone “shit their pants”. The fact remains that every country that’s lived with this virus for the last 18 months has had to change the way we live. Yes, even Denmark. They’re not radical changes. Some of them should have been made ages ago. Like not coming into work when you’re snotty and coughing with a viral illness. Or being a lot more flexible about allowing employees work from home. This has given the rest of the world a head start on New Zealand when it comes to living with the virus. And that’s the learning curve that is still ahead of them.
 

Massive Spanner

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is it any wonder people argue with you? You were the one arguing till you were blue in the face about Sweden’s decision to not lockdown in the original variant
I'm really not sure what he's said wrong here. He answered a question stacks asked and then was given an incredibly pedantic response that he had to clarify.
 

Stack

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Aye, great example for New Zealanders. Similar population size, and have been living with it lockdown free for what? 17 months now? as of a few days ago Denmark no longer considers COVID-19 "a socially critical disease” so is now living restriction free.
Excess deaths in Denmark have been 810 since the start of the pandemic so no worse than a bad flu season for them.
I don’t think NZ has much to worry about at all at this point once 80%+ is vaccinated.
I do worry about one thing and it was an important point Pogue mentioned a bit back and thats while we will get up to 80% vaccinated we wont also have the added protection of a certain portion of the population immune due to having had the virus. 80% vaccinated here still means 1 million people not vaccinated and thats a decent number of people not protected. The largest group of at risk are our Pacifica population and they mostly live in our biggest city of 1.6 million people. They have large extended families and often have more than 6 people per household. I think we might see some significant hospitalisation once we are mostly vaccinated and start to open up.
 

golden_blunder

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I'm really not sure what he's said wrong here. He answered a question stacks asked and then was given an incredibly pedantic response that he had to clarify.
Not just addressing that post on its own.
He’s incredibly argumentative when it comes to lockdowns, restrictions, passports etc but all makes sense when people think back to his original stance. Hence I’m not sure why we even bother replying