The second wave of Covid-19 has sent much of Europe back into lockdown | Hacker News Reader

The second wave of Covid-19 has sent much of Europe back into lockdown

economist.com

40 pointsSami_Lehtinen28 comments

Sending kids to school has to be the stupidest idea during this pandemic. Poland had hardly any deaths until the end of September.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/

> Sending kids to school has to be the stupidest idea during this pandemic.

It's only the stupidest idea if you see it as 'low or medium cost' - if you see it as a high cost then you can understand that there is a strategic trade-off to be made (kids staying at home would clearly have a high benefit for controlling the pandemic, so that is the trade off).

A generation of students losing a year of high-quality education could represent a huge long-term cost, particularly considering that a lot of Europe's business is knowledge-work, and the impact education has on quality of life / socioeconomic factors.

Adding to that, kids at home blocks some adults who can work from working, and there is a multiplier effect.

I'm not saying it's the right decision, but to claim that it's "the stupidest decision" makes it sound like it's a no-brainer when I'm not sure it is.

I once thought this way too, based on common cold and flu spikes coinciding with onset of school. But that's also when kids are all on top of each other all the time.

We should sooner completely shutdown bars and restaurants before shutting down schools. Especially elementary school kids. They need to be in school more than we need entertainment.

I think more frequent, even if less accurate, testing would significantly help mitigate the spread by further isolating those who have a higher degree of likelihood for being contagious.

Correlation does not equal causation.

You forgot the link:

https://xkcd.com/552/

The open question is whether this leads to people just saying "fuck it" or people asking for stronger government actions to control it.

The big difference between the US and EU is that most EU countries have instituted a much stronger populist response (eg 80% wages for unemployment that is still ongoing).

Of course people are more supportive if their livelihoods and mortgages aren’t at risk.

I've seen polls on some news sites in the Netherlands which seem to be 70% in favour of the government actions and 30% against. Seems "the silent majority" really want the government to do "something".

The Netherlands problem is that the (central) government actually doesnt have the right to legislate anything like this, so it keeps sending out strongly worded recommendations that can and are interpreted any way people feel fit. Which makes things very unclear for everyone.

They've been working on giving themselves any formal power since march, but nothing has gone through yet. That's why I think many are dying for them to make some actual laws and be done with it, even if they're strict.

Fyi: the "coronawet" legislation was passed on 27 October.

De wet is eindelijk ingediend, maar wanneer er gestemd gaat worden? Er is vziw nog geen datum. Dus, vooralsnog geen wet in werking. Het ZML stukje gisteren vatte de verwarring mooi samen.

Side note: case numbers are dropping fast right now in the Netherlands. [1]

[1] https://stichting-nice.nl

It’s similar in the UK although when it comes to individuals the compliance rate for self isolation is very low (18 %).

UK is looking grim. People have stopped caring

Mask compliance is patchy at best even in places like shops where lockdown rules say it’s compulsory

Why was there no second wave in China?

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-1G4ys...

Dark days are coming.

"Winter is coming" is the title of a (more or less) recent episode of a german podcast: https://youtu.be/Ymp11vnssMQ

I think Jo(h)n Snow ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Snow_(character) ) would agree.

You should be thankful to have such strong and rational voices (Drosten and co) in the public discourse in Germany. I think that's one of the differences with France.

I was shocked when I that France had 80k cases... O_O

I've been tracking the "millionaires' club" --- countries with at least 1 million confirmed cases.

Mexico had been lining up to be the next member, in about 8 days, first noted 2 weeks ago. Italy is now rocketing past Mexico, and will pass 1m cases in 3 days. That caught me by surprise.

https://rys.io/covid/#linear;italy,mexico

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/mexico/

France's new daily cases have been more than India.

In Belgium we have 450K active cases, 3.9% of the population. Everybody at least knows somebody with covid-19 at this point.

There is no second wave of deaths or hospitalizations in Sweden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden

1. Linking to a such a long and broad-coverage page such as that isn't very helpful

2. Maybe it was cut off on your screen but under heading "Cases per day" there certainly has been a second peak after the first (24 June, 1698 cases per day) on 23 Oct, with 1870 cases per day. Very much appears like a second wave despite remaining relatively high in the "down" period with 300-case peaks every week between the two highs.

3. Not sure what policy they changed after the first peak but there is a significant drop after that through early-mid July.

Keyword being "deaths". COVID is peaking and cases are 3 times worse than in June, but deaths are staying flat.

On France, the second lockdown started a week ago, but honnestly it should start mid september…

Schools are still open, the lockdown is pretty useless without schools remaining closed. Kids are asymptomatic carriers and infect their parents back home.

https://imgur.com/d2mLyhY

Yeah; it was pretty obvious in mid-August that the spring peak had been sorta (there's a lot more testing now) surpassed and growth was going exponential.

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