Norway advises citizens to avoid all travel abroad
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Travelling abroad this summer is considered by many as stupid and careless. I bought the trip when the numbers were good and when the governments were allowing tourism. I think we may have to travel only when the indicators are green for some time. It was green, it's not anymore.
By the way, some asshole passengers are coughing in the plane.
Can't really stop people from coughing, no? It's pretty involuntary.
But it's not the virus, have been tested negative twice. It's allergies and other things.
When generally outside, it's annoying to have to suppress coughing lest I scare others.
So wait. You bought your tickets when "the numbers were good". So you made a bet. Why do you have a problem with other people making a bet NOW? They're just accepting different odds. Everyone has to judge their own risk/rewards.
You claim French people aren't taking covid measures seriously, yet you are behaving as a potential human carrier of the virus by travelling abroad.
And you have the nerve to complain about people coughing on the plane...
But remember that Norwegians also have maybe the worlds largest inferiority complex ;-)
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=online%20shaming%20by%3Adang&s...
Compared to 0% mask usage in Norway.
That is factually incorrect.
I see several people wearing masks, at least in Oslo. Both on the subway, but also people working in grocery stores etc.
> There is a reason that France and Norway do not have the same numbers, French people are pretty bad at taking the covid19 measures seriously. [...] I have seen many restaurant employees not wearing a mask correctly or at all
But my loved one is in another country and the last thing my heart needs is more lock-downs. We need to consider what closed borders are doing to bi-national married / unmarried couples. They've been a largely ignored demographic during this pandemic and collateral damage due to the broad and sweeping policies that have taken place on the borders.
edit: in case you aren't:
US: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2120-anti-asian-hate-incid...
UK: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/anti-asian-hat...
Australia: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/victoria-urged-to-toughen-hate-c...
Also, if governments had done their job and prevented all travel to/from China (as well as all countries that refused to implement similar restrictions) in the beginning, then we likely wouldn’t be dealing with a pandemic right now, and people wouldn’t have been discriminated against (more than usual that is). I’d say in the beginning (not anymore) it was also justified to be wary of anyone believed to be Chinese since there was a high chance that they recently been to China or had close contact with someone who had been (since Chinese tend to stay together when abroad).
I don’t support anyone getting beaten up no matter what crimes they’ve committed, but I do support isolating China from the rest of the world until we see a positive regime change.
The racism towards Asians in general is overblown. I highly doubt that Malaysians, Koreans, etc. abroad have seen an increase in physical assaults compared to white/black people. If there has been for Chinese people then it’s also important to consider that they in democratic countries went out to have anti-democracy protests (and the Chinese were often very aggressive during these anti-democracy protests).
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/canadians-fed-up-with-unwan...
It's like they don't understand that things are in control and there are well over 325 million people in the US that are not infected/sick/Covid-19 Free.
I'm an expat in Texas and I can't even begin to tell you the kind of phones calls I've received from friends and family about Covid 19 in Texas. I can't blame them, the hysteria created from the media is driving this insanity of fear.
There are about 70,000 detected cases a day... it’s certainly the case that widespread US tourism in Canada by people who haven’t been tested or gone through a 14-day quarantine could result in a significant amount of virus being spread.
Various US states have these restrictions on travel from other states as well, e.g. Hawaii and Maine. Massachusetts is currently requiring out of state travelers from about 40 states to get tested or quarantine for 14 days after arriving.
So this is nothing to do with xenophobia. Simply governments trying to protect their citizens from a virus which kills between 0.25-0.75% of those who are infected.
(Dead people)/(recovered people) = (death rate)
Doing the math based on infection ignores the fact that many cases are in progress, outcome unknown. This makes for much smaller numbers, and a less realistic risk perception based on lack of data for the scope of risk being evaluated.
Flat out, we do not yet know whether active cases will turn bad. This also means death rates can and will change over time too. By tracking outcomes we can understand the impact of science and policy, as well as mother nature and how the virus itself continues to mutate.
Further, there is a secondary risk of ongoing, potentially chronic, complications. People may recover, but are changed significantly. Data on that is harder to boil down.
My own outcome is profound fatigue. It is significant and appears very slow to improve. Being sick was no joke. Being more tired for months on end now isn't either.
And I am fortunate, due to fatigue being among the more mild of the potential bad outcomes we know about today.
Surviving the virus does not always mean returning to normal.
Those governments acting to prevent harm are on stronger ground than many may be aware of.
The health care system costs will be serious and endure for a long time, even by measures of what governments consider a long time. In the US, that will be acute, due to our current policy. Other nations are well justified in many of their policies for this reason alone.
Health care impact translates into increased death rates from other causes. Flatten the curve is about that as much as it is being able to manage the death rate direct from COVID down.
Right now, death is understated and poor health outcomes more seriously missing from the policy discussion, as are the timelines and potential costs, efficacy of our potential remedies.
This mess is here with us for a long time. A poorly managed, non global discussion only makes it all worse across the board, risks, costs, quality of life, etc.
It is time to realize COVID is more likely to transition to endemic than we are to return to life and business as it was last year.
That will be true for humans on this planet period.
Of the millions and millions of people who have now had this virus and recovered without incident, only a small fraction have seen the inside of a medical facility. Only a tiny fraction of those have had “recovery” reported, and even when it is reported, it generally lags by months. The only reason you would divide “deaths” by that number is to mislead people and scare them.
The overall IFR for this virus is somewhere around 0.1-0.6%. That is the actual chance a person will die if they catch it. For healthy people under the age of ~50, divide that by ten (at least).
We shall see as more outcomes continue to be known.
We will get better at tracking that because this virus is more likely to be endemic, forced.
Having some healthy respect for this mess, rooted in basic fear and concern for the future, is just not a bad thing.
As we get better at the data related to chronic complications, that info will also give people a more solid reason to live and work differently. Fact is a whole lot more people than we think will suffer a reduction in overall health too.
Also not a bad thing.
Frankly, I believe the outcome based death rates will fall over time as we improve our will and ability to record outcomes. I do not believe it will end up being fractions of a percent.
I also believe complications, organ damage, etc... will be respectable percentages as we improve on capturing that data.
We are finding immunity does not endure. We are also finding repeat cases can vary widely in severity.
Add in the growing reality of it being endemic, and there is a solid basis for real concern.
Ideally, we all remain able to revisit all this after a full year cycle.
Do you have a good citation for this, because the Biostatics research university at Cambridge have IFR 10 times that.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
Until recently Cambridge had 0.9%, this has increased recently as more evidence has come out. Taking a 0.7% value would mean that 40% of Brooklyn has had it, a figure not backed by serological tests. Even is 100% of Brooklyn had has covid, that would give and IFR of nearly 0.3%
Let's put 'em in orbit and assume they survive reentry and land where we can evaluate heads or tails, so we have some flight time in this analogy.
Just for shits and giggles.
It takes a coin anywhere from two weeks to a month to land.
We have tossed all 100 coins, 25 per week over the course of a month.
Our stats could look like this.
Tossed coins = 100 Landed coins = 50 Tail landings = 4
To make it a bit more interesting, we could also say we are tossing 25 new coins per week right now, and that could change up, or down.
New coin tosses this week = 25
Right now, we know the outcome for 50 coins, and 4 of them landed tails.
(4/50) = 8 percent tails rate
We know at least 50 coins are in flight, outcome unknown.
It could be that every other coin toss lands heads. We could also say, there are no more tosses to consider. So let us add the 25 new tosses this week too.
(4/125) = 3.2 percent tails rate. This would be the best case.
It could also be every other coin lands tails too.
(54/100) = 54 percent! That is the worst possible case.
In reality, for this example, we know there are more tosses coming and we also could model poor testing and say we are not aware of all the tosses.
Some error factor could be computed to refine best and worst case too.
The better we are at collecting data, the more those outcomes will tell us.
The more time that passes, the more outcomes will tell us.
We may find tosses at night double risk of landing tails, for example.
Or maybe coins tossed mid week land tails consistently.
Ignoring that which has not come to conclusion biases the risk assessment toward lower risk with a larger error.
Low numbers with high error rates are not all that useful in this context.
Current global stats are:
Coronavirus Cases: 19,725,865
Deaths: 727,548
Recovered: 12,660,022
That's 5.7 percent deaths overall known outcomes with 7,065,865 cases in progress right now.
If people test positive, don't end up in the hospital and we have no death certs filed, they are recovered, but may be harmed in some way. Poor data on that.
Otherwise, we know they died.
Some argue a percentage of those deaths are with COVID causing a death due to other factors.
You can bias that overall 5.7 percent number up or down based on your own personal risk assessment, but dead is still dead, and catching the virus only adds to ones risk. These all count for purposes of policy and understanding danger.
I know at least one person who did that low risk assessment, went to a State with high case load and who has been on a ventilator for a month now.
They may live, and that looks increasingly likely, but will definitely not be the same after it is all said and done.
"I am unlikely to die" carries greater weight in that light, yes?
All I am really saying here is people would be wise to treat this with more respect than we may otherwise feel is warranted.
The basic reasons are simple ignorance (we are doing the science and it takes time) and lack of effective medicine at this time.
Both of those warrant the more firm, lower error numbers we get from actual outcomes.
https://www.ft.com/content/52e7062b-0cb2-448a-b944-05b3025d4...
Does Norway handle this differently?
[1] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/rajivs-fru-stopp... (Swedish)
As far as tourism is concerned, the government has divided European countries into two groups: traveling from "red" countries requires a mandatory quarantine upon entry, traveling from a "green" country does not mandate a quarantine. AFAIK all non-European countries are considered "red", meaning quarantine on entry.
One of my key takeaways from this experience is that I wish someone besides Facebook was making relatively inexpensive, easy-to-use home video portals that can follow you around a room.
I do not understand why you think that one specific demographic is being targeted here, as lockdowns typically affect every demographic <sic> within a region.
My heart (and renal, neural, respiratory etc systems) all very much need some brutal lockdowns for a few solid weeks, followed by very careful and complete contact tracing with significant penalties for people who intentionally try to circumvent these measures.
Perhaps you could mention where you and your loved one are.
The more people feel like they're a special-case snowflakes who should be exempt from travelling restrictions, the longer this situation is going to last.
You may be reasonably comfortable in your situation (as much as this entire situation gets, anyway) but not everyone is so lucky. This is not "special-case snowflakes", just a recognition that people, their circumstances, and experiences greatly differ. I'd argue that almost everyone gets treated "special" at some points in their lives and rightfully so. Always treating everyone the same is deeply misguided as people are simply not the same (equality shouldn't mean "one size fits all for everyone").
Merely travelling wouldn't cause a "chain of deaths", when done with with appropriate precautions and care. That's an extremely wild and panicked exaggeration, and not based on what we know.
Besides, I'm not entirely sure what you're exactly proposing to achieve with your "hard lockdown"; it's already well established that the virus is impossible to contain, and in many ways a "hard lockdown" will make it worse. There needs to be some balance.
There's countless examples of people all over the world not taking appropriate precautions and care when dealing with Covid. I think it's pretty obvious that you cannot trust everyone to do the right thing, and indeed there's enough people not doing the right thing for it to cause major problems.
Additionally, note that the current outbreak in Melbourne - 12500 cases, and 175 deaths (and counting) - can be traced back to a handful (i.e. 1-3) initial outbreaks due to lapses in quarantine protocols. It is absolutely, demonstrably true that individuals can cause a 'chain of deaths'. Individaul leaked cases through a lockdown can cause an explosion of cases to spiral out of control if allowed to get any traction. I would not call that wild or panicked exaggeration at all, and is most definitely based on what we know.
Lastly, it's very obviously false to claim that a hard lockdown cannot help, see New Zealand as a shining counter-example. Extremely aggressive lockdowns and widespread testing can indeed control it.
"Can" is not the same as "will". I already said "when done with with appropriate precautions and care" in my previous comment.
The thing is, just because there are some Oz bogans returning from their coma drinking holiday in Bali acted in an idiotic fashion doesn't mean we should prevent everyone else on the planet from travelling at all, no matter the personal circumstances. Lockdowns also cause real harm, see e.g. [1], although the full effects won't be known for certain with time.
"There's enough people not doing the right thing for it to cause major problems" with many things: cars, guns, knives, etc. It's always a matter of balancing different interests and trade-offs.
> Lastly, it's very obviously false to claim that a hard lockdown cannot help, see New Zealand as a shining counter-example. Extremely aggressive lockdowns and widespread testing can indeed control it.
That's not exactly that I said either. What is your long-term plan with this? Institute a draconic hard lockdown every time there is a single case? It doesn't seem that any of this is just going to disappear from the world any time soon, if ever. It's not a solution, just a stop-gap measure (which is what people have been saying pretty much from the get-go).
The real question is what will happen in 6 months, a year, or 2 years time with New Zealand. Remember, we've managed to eradicate exactly one disease in the history of humanity, and that was a far more serious one, although we've been close with Polio for years.
New Zealand had great success in the short term (being a fairly sparsely populated island more than 3 hours removed from any other significant landmass probably helped with that), but you can't lock everyone indoors every time there is a new case and it's almost certain this will happen unless NZ commits to a long-term multi-year border lockdown.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
Well, you don't know. Therefore you must act as if "can" = "will". Otherwise, you're playing Russian roulette.
> draconic hard lockdown
Travelling ban is not a draconic hard lockdown; in fact it'd allow the country to function mostly as normal. Draconic lockdown would be shutting down all non-essential services (what Norway did in March) and even more drastic measures that other countries used (curfew, home confinement, you're allowed to go out only with a concrete purpose and not "too far away" from your apartment... like it was in France for a while.).
Depression, stress and loneliness all have health consequences too. Whether that is separation from loved ones, or seeing the business that fed your family evaporating before your eyes. In the rush to protect ourselves from a disease with a 99.97% survival rate, that only tips people over the edge who had pre-existing morbid conditions, that most people won't even know that they've had, we have sown the seeds of something that will kill many more people.
IFR seems in the >1% range, admitadly this is skewed towards older people. Maybe that IFR is overestimated slightly, but it's far far more deadly than 0.03%
This all makes me sad.
The real URL should be https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/07/coronavir..., although I'm not sure that's stable either.
Aerosol covid risk is highly likely, meaning that air travel requires N95 masks and goggles (eyes are a known vector).
If you are outdoors, dilution of virions happens quickly, especially in windy conditions. UV helps denature RNA quickly as well.
Indoor risk can be greatly mitigated with room air purifiers, but they have not been deployed because the WHO hasn’t acted on aerosol risk. (albeit, the deployment of air purifiers would be a larger expense than cloth masks, which are not effective at stopping aerosol).
* Deployment of air purifiers would be a trivial expense relative to any other economic harms of COVID19. It's mostly a question of policy catching up to science.
* Large droplets are a confirmed major source of spread. Cloth masks help reduce those. They're not full-proof even there, but they're $2. It's a no-brainer ROI.
* Even with aerosol, the risk is reduced by cloth masks. Some aerosol comes from large droplets evaporating.
The trick is to get R0 under 1, so we have exponential decline rather than exponential growth. Even if it's above 1, if we can bring the exponent down, it's huge. There's no sane argument that masks don't do that.
You might want an N95, and I might want one too, but there aren't enough to go around. For the most part, easiest thing to do is to not go out in public.
Given that the likelihood of catching it from a brief encounter with a random passer by is in fact quite small the idea that a mask could reduce the odds meaningfully in large unconfined spaces seems unlikely. We do not wear masks here in Norway but we do keep our distance (except for usual idiots at parties, etc.).
Recent clusters of infection here have all been traced to people who were in close contact with large numbers of people for hours (wedding parties, cruise ships, etc.). Then perhaps diligent use of masks might have helped but just not holding the party helps more.
> For the most part, easiest thing to do is to not go out in public.
This together with simple measures like making sure one washes ones hands seems to be what is working here.
It confounds my mental model of how this virus is spread. Any idea what's going on there?
The relevant government webpage (https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/foreign-affairs/reisein...) says:
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is maintaining its global advice against all non-essential travel to all countries. This advice currently applies until 20 August. Exceptions have been made for countries and regions in the Nordic region and in the Schengen area/EEA that meet the criteria for infection levels set by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The infection situation and local restrictions can change very quickly. Anyone thinking about travelling abroad should consider all the potential ramifications beforehand and should make sure that they know what the situation is in the place they are planning to visit."
The Public Health Institute website has the details of which countries meet the criteria for travel, see https://www.fhi.no/en/op/novel-coronavirus-facts-advice/fact....
If you're a healthcare professional coming back from a Green Area they suggest you wait for a negative test before returning to work.
Here in the U.S. it can take up to TWO WEEKS to get test results back.
Can I just 2-day Air my test to Norway?
Air travel probably got too cheap too fast. The world is not prepared for the jet set class to include too many.
AirBnBs and camp sites are packed. I've established a strategy to go grocery shopping based on the weekly rental patterns to lower exposure. Mask is mandatory in shops which is good and well respected.
The national health institute here opines that closing the borders has questionable or no effect, even though most of the cases in the 1st wave got imported from ski-resorts in Italy. I really don't get how keeping borders open only for goods traffic won't help with reducing imported cases. Something doesn't add up.
Just make a case-by-case judgement. Holidays are clearly stupid, but there are plenty of much more valid reasons to travel.
It does suck, but shit happens.
Hell, Aussies aren't even allowed to leave the country without approval from the government at the moment.
Rich people wouldn't just hand-wave away obligatory quarantine on return. It'd make them think twice whether they MUST travel.
True, but in additition to this advice, there is the Department of Foreign Affairs official travel advisory (the kind that every country issues, like "due to a civil war, we advice against all non-essential travel to country X") [1]. That advice is currently to avoid all non-essential travel to all countries, except the whitelist that is updated every two weeks. As of right now, that whitelist consists of the countries or subnational regions labeled as green on this map [2]. This is not just splitting hairs on my part: by violating the latter type of travel advisory, your health insurance is likely void, you are to expect no assistance, and you are subject to a mandatory quarantine on return, for which there is no paid sick leave.
> The government should set up a 5000 NOK (at least) "traveling fine" per person, and obligatory quarantine
For all the non-exempt countries, i.e. for most of the world, there is obligatory quarantine on your own dime. Unless your job allows you to work from home, that's a substantially larger financial penalty than the fine you suggest.
> ("home" confinement in state-provided guarded quarters)
Oh come on, this isn't China.
> The national health institute here opines that closing the borders has questionable or no effect, even though most of the cases in the 1st wave got imported from ski-resorts in Italy.
You seem to be aware of the whitelist of countries (even though you misrepresent the situation at the beginning of your comment). Then you are probably also aware that the idea is that the whitelisted countries have a low enough case rate that the authorities believe that closing the border to those countries has little effect. This may or may not be correct, but you seem to try to view the situation as negatively as you can.
[1] https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/foreign-affairs/reisein...
[2] https://www.fhi.no/nettpub/coronavirus/fakta/reiserad-knytte...
Aaand.. quarantine based on trust in people is eventually going to be ineffective. "Traveling fine" was a minor point, the major point was forced, guarded quarantine upon entry.
I mean, you can go out of a plane, go to a party next day instead of placing yourself in quarantine, infect several people, and.. nothing is going to happen to you. You could and should be prosecuted by "smittevernsparagrafen" but that most likely won't happen even if you somehow DO get identified as the source of the infection.
> Oh come on, this isn't China.
The way people have been partying lately around the country only proves that people can't even uphold simple rules and that a strategy based on trusting that people aren't going to behave stupidly is eventually going to fail.
> Then you are probably also aware that the idea is that the whitelisted countries have a low enough case rate that the authorities believe that closing the border to those countries has little effect.
The large infection cluster that has been brought to Norway this winter came from an Italian ski-resort that has been in a region that would be considered "green" today. The authorities' beliefs contradict concrete evidence.
> This may or may not be correct, but you seem to try to view the situation as negatively as you can.
Well... I look at people's behavior and there need to be real, tangible consequences for "unwanted" / irresponsible behavior.
In your country (wherever that is) perhaps, in the UK almost certainly.
In Norway it is certainly possible and in fact happened quite near the beginning of the epidemic here. Nonetheless I feel that it is on the whole less of a problem here; solidarity is still a live concept in Norway even though it has been somewhat eroded in recent years.
> You could and should be prosecuted by "smittevernsparagrafen" but that most likely won't happen even if you somehow DO get identified as the source of the infection.
People have already been prosecuted for breaking quarantine, see for example https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/QoblPV/oslo-40000-i-bo..., https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/0nA4BA/fikk-20000-i-bo...
Oh, good, that's somewhat reassuring to know.
It's possible to make a case that travel in and of itself is risky, as you will spend more time in enclosed spaces with strangers than usual, including planes, airports, public transport, taxis, and hotel lobbies. But much of that also applies to domestic travel.
Norway gets the benefit of the doubt here that, unlike some large north-American countries, it doesn't resort to cheap xenophobia as a political strategy. And, indeed, the quote from the article offers a specific alternative: "I think most of us have now understood the holiday is over”, says the minister of health. That hints at a somewhat puritanical frustration from even the thought of others enjoying themselves in these times.
Why not?
I don't entirely buy that premise. It's easier to contact trace and control other factors when everything is domestic. And it also keeps random outbursts much more local.
The problem is that Norwegians have essentially had a vacation from worrying about Covid, since there has been more or less no new cases since May-June. This has made the Norwegian population more relaxed, meaning more social gatherings have been taking place, bars have reopened, etc.
However, during the summer months there was some tourism to and from other European countries, which seems to have caused a potential new outbreak of Covid.
So, when the health minister says "I think most of us have now understood the holiday is over" he means that it is time to start thinking about social distancing, thinking about work-from-home policies and your personal hygiene again.
No. We are taking the expected action to prevent a loss of control. A small variation in infection rates is inevitable and the smaller the rate the greater the visibility of the variation.
I agree though that a few people do seem to have decided that there is no longer any need to worry, luckily I only see them in the pages of the newspapers. In my daily life and weekend shopping trips, including visits to cafés, I haven't seen any noteworthy carelessness. This is in the area surrounding Drammen, Asker, Fornebu.