The Virus Changed. Now We Must ‘Get to Zero’ or Face Catastrophe

My perception, born and raised east-bay, is the Oakland has been a lost cause (for murders) since at least 1985. And more than one mayoral candidate has talked up the issue.

But, and this is the terrible part, the murder happens to "the poors". So, IMO,, it's less about racism and more about classism (possibly rooted in racism).

It's similar to how we (usa) don't care too much about the covid deaths. It's like Earthican tradition for disease and pestilence to affect poor folks first/more and for the wealthy to just not see it (they simply look the other way).

Nowhere in the US has really had harsh lockdown measures.

SF also has density issues that will drive up the r0 of the virus. While the widely quoted r0 of the virus is around 3.0, the r0 in NYC at the start of the outbreak was estimated to be 5.0

(You could argue about if that was really the r(t) and not r0, but I'm not considering time-dependence or the reaction to the virus, but the actual starting reproduction number in NYC before there was any human reaction to the virus -- that isn't a constant value but depends on the local conditions).

Austin has an overall 3,000 people per square mile density, SF has an overall 18,000 people per square mile (and some areas are even more dense than that).

Those lockdowns are not actual lockdowns, and were doomed to fail.

Moreover lockdown restrictions were removed when numbers of new cases simply lowered, as opposed to all known cases being removed from community and quarantined, and confidence there was zero community transmission.

Meanwhile borders are porous, with new cases arriving constantly. The combination of all this is heartbreakingly difficult to observe.

Honestly this stuff is easy.

A lockdown means only essential workers who actually keep the lights on and provide food go to work, and they do with ridiculous protection.

It means no fast food delivery, no public transport or Ubers, no leaving your residence except for exercise (maybe - some places you had to stay inside) and 1/week shop at the supermarket (or delivery) with one person/household.

It means closing the borders firmly, and government-provided and provisioned (not outsourced) quarantining every arrival for at least 14 days.

And it means providing plenty of funding and kindness to businesses and people to allow them to get through without fear. Including putting homeless into homes (e.g. empty hotel rooms).

And it needs to last long enough to know and isolate every case, which is say 6-8 weeks if done properly.

The US and UK failed on every one of these tests, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead.

Meanwhile in New Zealand we did the above almost a year ago, and are enjoying our summer break essentially normally.

>> I can't wait for other countries to simply copy the New Zealand quarantine rules

When the United States of America can relocate to an island and near-permanently ban travel into the country like NZ has, we'll do that, I guess.

EDIT: Ah yes, HN the libertarian paradise unless it's about COVID, then the recommendations are non-practical authoritarian measures and citing island nation success and hurling downvotes. Keep them coming.

Yes, the holes in the "lockdowns" elsewhere are kind of unbelievable. If the lockdown is hard enough, and the financial support is there for those who need it, then it can be short and effective.

New Zealand had it very easy with its geography. Same for other relatively small islands. Place like EU with its own national, often competing goals can't be effectively 100% locked out. That's what happens when you have a federation with strong independent parts.

Not that I disagree with your points, they should be the baseline for any serious covid response. Lockdown measures have so far always been watered down by politicians due to pressures from business. Business is this time acting staggeringly idiotically, prolonging the situation due to fear of complete shutdown. At the end, they get hurt much more.

Some local info - Swiss are faring quite well, while not having that many things closed, ie ski resorts work (since its outdoor activity). Not restricting traveling within country. France on the other hand is going again mental (liberté has long abandoned the place of revolution, but that's happen when you go extreme left in real world). Closing many basic things, but ie annual sales in shopping centres were going very strong till today.

I mean how fucking stupid you can be, close outdoor business giving salaries to significant part of population, and on the other side allowing large indoor gatherings of people so they can buy cheap clothes and stores can clean their stock. Even now they only close those > 20,000m2 surface.

Outdoor activities also keep many people sane and in good health, which at this point is becoming significant negative side effect of this whole situation. Most people I know, including myself, the fitness level declined in last year. That is tightly coupled with mental health. At least spring will fix things up a bit (looking forward to run in the park again, more sun, less rain).

In Europe, the conclusion was that you simply cannot do that, physically. It is so integrated, even for essentials such as food or medication, that you have a huge area, requiring delivery/lorry drivers whizzing around, medical staff in hospitals and care homes, etc. Short sharp shock just can’t happen.

So then, if you’re stuck in shades of gray, you have to weigh the antiviral benefits of the lockdown with just keeping the lights out. That’s a tough one to balance.

Kudos to New Zealand, I’m just not sure it’s a blueprint others can replicate.

Kudos to New Zealand, but I'll restate the obvious here: for this strategy it really helps if you're an island - not only with the initial implementation of the strategy, but also with staying virus-free once you reach that state. Because in NZ everyone who enters the country is registered and can be forced to follow the quarantine rules. By contrast, in the EU, we have land borders without border checks. Sure, people returning from another country should get a test and quarantine if it's positive - but does anyone know who travelled where and is required to get a test? No...

A small anecdotal example of why this complicates fighting the pandemic: during the first wave, eastern Germany got off relatively easy, with few cases. Czechia was even better, because they locked their borders and hardly had any cases initially. Then, during the summer/early autumn, Germany had the usual rules with masks, distancing, no large gatherings etc., while Czechia had much laxer/less-enforced rules. So guys from Germany would throw their bachelor party in Czechia, get infected and then infect everyone at their wedding a few days later. Which led not only to Czechia having a catastrophic number of cases in October, but also to eastern Germany (particularly Saxony) being hardest hit in the second wave.

Yeah I think the mink culling was an absurd over-reaction and highly unethical. Those poor minks.

(Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)

He is also factually wrong on at least one other thing:

“He finds it astonishing that COVID-19 has boosted its infectiousness by 30 to 50 per cent over previous strains by doing what viruses do: evolve, mutate and adapt for more effective reproduction.”

The UK strain seems to be 25% more infectious. It’s still bad but less than mentioned.

EDIT: source is the latest Drosten podcast, where he referenced to some new evidence and papers. Here’s the transcript (in German), see page 9 bottom.

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript262.pdf

Here on the ground in Portugal I'd say the government's response is apparently competent but it's just not effective. Although the country is simply following what others are doing, the population is taking this very seriously. Mask wearing outside is pretty universal except if you're exercising, everybody is working from home where possible and the schools are closed (finally). But it's not enough. The problem is that family ties are very strong here. Relaxing the rules for 36 hours at Christmas and 24 hours at New Year was absolutely the wrong thing to do and that is why the death toll has doubled in the five weeks since then.

The UK is faced with a lack of choice here. My read is that people strongly dislike the current government policies but believe that the cons are "least worst".

There's been very little in the way of real opposition, sadly. For instance, when the Tories do make actual fuckups Labour usually resort to off-topic complaints about idpol so the Tories just do whatever they want with no push back.

I agree, but it also doesn't help when the Labour opposition have had a string of weak opposition leaders.

Even Keir Starmer seems content to sit back and only critise the Government's response the day or days after a grim milestone/but of news.

Why isn't he constantly saying that the UK should totally shut their borders, for example? He should be saying this and nothing else, and directing the rest of Labour to do the same. That's how an effective opposition works.

Instead he generally chooses silence.

As already said by someone else, I don't think that's the right reading of it. I know it's anecdotal, but I don't know anyone here (I'm in the southern UK) who thinks that the government has handled this even remotely competently, but they also acknowledge that there's not really an ideal way to handle it. The only thing that seems to be going 'to plan' is the vaccine rollout, which has surprised me as I never thought they'd get near the target figures they now look to be going to achieve (i.e. vaccinating the four key groups by Feb 15).

You have to make some sacrifices to win the battle, but it seems we've paid a lot of the price (in terms of economic costs as well as deaths), but without the positives that should have come from that. As soon as there's any sign of let-up in any of the statistics, it seems the government wants to remove the measures, which seems to be a bad idea to me, but I'm a chump who's not making the decisions!

You are exactly right. The Dutch response has been and still is a shitshow.

We are up for election mid-March, the ruling party and PM will be re-elected.

The populace will not 'take chances' during crises.

The UK response has been mediocre rather than awful.

* PPE sourcing has been poor.

* Track and trace has been poor, and for the money they spent should have been far better.

* Lockdowns have been too leaky, and too late.

* But the vaccination research and rollout has been excellent.

The high UK death toll is only partly due to the above mediocrities, and mainly due to factors that cannot be pinned on the government:

* A very highly internationally mobile population that seeded infections everywhere in the country.

* A very highly internally mobile population that spread infections everywhere in the country.

* A very high density population

* Little experience of pandemic management and limited pre-existing testing capacity

* No culture of mask wearing

* A higher than average aged population

* A higher than average obese population

* Higher percentage of ethnic minority individuals who have been more susceptible to the disease, even after adjusting for health and income inequalities.

* More northerly climate with colder temperatures and higher rates of vitamin D deficiency

* Lower public tolerance for restrictions on movement

* Insufficient police numbers to enforce lockdown policies

No SINGLE cause from the lists above explain the UK's high death rate. It's a perfect storm of all of them.

There would be nowhere enough troops to patrol the streets in Canada. They could supply extra reinforcement to ports/borders.

A closure order + heavy fines/penalties + economic support would work, along with clear messaging around goals and exit criteria.

You only need troops on the street in areas where there is so much unrest that neighbors can't keep "bad actors" in check.

I imagine this only being in the heart of cities.

The lack of traffic leads to a reduction in crime generally, freeing up police oversight required to keep a lid on that.

This and all other countries mentioned are Islands (Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan)

This is cherry picking as Taiwan and New Zealand are also on the list.

Yes. If it means I can actually go to the gym and workout, meet my friends, etc.

I am tired of wearing the god damn masks, having to worry about my elderly parents,

Are you tired of the god damn pandemic? I know I am. Because we already have no freedom.

Absolutely.

I find the notion of China having the virus under control hard to believe.

CCP is known to misinform with less at stake than this, and to not care all that much about large areas of rural territory (recall the one child policy, which was more or less unenforced outside of larger cities and resulted in the depressing phenomenon of millions of “invisible” children who are outside of the system and do not have access to education or healthcare). With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the virus has been raging over the countryside, unreported.

That is not to say I know one way or the other, but merely to point out that relying on official information may not be correct—one ought to look at secondary signs, such as new hospitals being built or some inconsistencies in numbers. Claiming that centralized measures helped get the virus under control based on official numbers from a totalitarian regime may be disingenuous.

Australian here, living in Victoria (where we had a second wave and a strict lockdown that took us to 0). They didn't round up the whole country and put us in prison (!?). The rules we had were:

- Stay home. The only allowed reasons to leave our homes were essential supplies (eg visiting the supermarket), caring for family, going to work (if you couldn't work from home) or exercise (eg going for a walk). Or if you needed medical care.

- Unless we had a really good reason, we had to stay within a 5km radius of home at all times, and couldn't leave home for more than 1hr each day. We also had an 8pm curfew - though I'm still not sure what that was for.

- No visitors unless they're an intimate partner

- Masks mandatory any time you left your home. On the spot fines from police if they catch you outside without a mask.

Basically everything indoors was closed - no gyms, takeout only at restaurants, etc. Supermarkets had security guards to make sure nobody entered without a mask on, and they had complimentary hand sanitizer at the entrance.

That strategy was enough to go from 700/day down to 0/day in a couple months. Those months were awful, but just about everything has opened up again now since we've been sitting at 0 local infections in the whole country for the last few weeks. We only broke our streak today - a hotel quarantine worker was infected in Perth. The city has immediately locked down to make sure it doesn't spread.

If the whole world followed the same strategy, covid would be gone already and international travel could have resumed months ago.

I'd very much support this. Somehow America thought this was fine for decades when somebody might be smoking a joint, but now it's fascism when it actually has a material purpose. Pretend like the people with covid actually have drugs and 10 days in jail sounds absurdly progressive when viewed in terms of very recent history. Covid is a gateway drug to full respiratory failure, and it takes very little peer pressure to spread it.

edit: also, I thought our pretense for harassing prostitutes was to stop the spread of disease. If we don't actually care about disease we should stop harassing them so they can have have a few years of freedom from interference before a strain of covid mutates into the death rate of MERS and civilization falls because we can't live like the awful Chinese.

Yeah I don't think lockdowns have worked universally. Even stringent ones like those in India where cases picked up quickly after they opened up.

What seems to have worked in Wuhan was, in addition to lockdowns, rigorous contact tracing and isolation of symptomatic patients and their close contacts in centralized quarantine facilities.

Once all of this is done, I hope we learn more about how China actually contained this. But the answer is likely authoritarian measures that no democracy can legally or politically afford.

I was in a Vietnamese quarantine in March as a foreigner. It's definitely not a prison. There are two types of quarantine: before and after the test. The second one is pretty good and you can even live in a special hotel.

Exactly what we have in NZ right now. But it’s not prison (which is emotional language at best). Quarantining is done in nice hotels, and people are treated well. Special accommodations are even made for extended family groups.

The problem is that if 80% of the population do their civic duty and stay home while the remaining 20% carry on with life as usual - go to bars and sporting events, protest, and so on then the numbers won't come down. The reality of covid is that a few selfish people can easily ruin the hard work of everyone else.

Here in Australia we tried asking people who were infected to just quarantine in their own homes. Eventually the police went around and started doing spot checks, and found that a bunch of people who had known positive covid tests had gone in to work! No no no - you need strict enforcement to go along with lockdown rules or it just doesn't seem to work.

We also don't know the true percentage of infected who actually do recover 100% with no long-term issues.

You miss the point - a virus with a 1% death rate of those infected, that mutates into a virus 50% more transmissible, with a 1% death rate of those infected, is obviously likely to kill more people.

Transmissibility is a key component to the death rate. People who don't get infected don't die from it, but as more and more people catch it, more roll the dice.

The article explains this. Think of it as an MLM scam or compound interest. The lethality rate just gives you a scalar increase on all the events that would have occurred. Lethality can go to infinity for all we care if transmission goes to zero. But even at low fatality rates, if everyone on earth gets it, that is a huge number of dead.

Think of two kinds of fires burning at different levels of a forest. The lethality could even go down, transmission rates could go up and still kill more people.

Does Australia even have winters? I mean, it never gets cold in Melbourne. Your winter is close to my summer.

Anecdotally, the packing of other policy goals into the pandemic response has caused several people I know to believe that it is all a fraud.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/great-reset-trudeau-poiliev...

Not to mention that Moderna's vaccine doesn't require special refrigeration that 'half the world can't afford', just the pfizer/biontech vaccine. Moderna's vaccine can be stored in regular refrigeration for up to 30 days.

Australia did "let" it enter, and had worse per capita infection rates than the UK for a while, and still got control of it and eliminated it. I don't think it's too late, but I (in NZ) think other countries have done pretty soft and ineffective "lockdowns".

Can we please stop going on about it being summer. The lockdowns we had in Melbourne that lead to elimination was during our winter.

or it'll turn into just another cold/flu that we get used too and ignore.

How many thousands die a year from the flu and it was all but ignored?

Thank you, now try telling that to the peaceful slaves :)

"who have essentially zero risk of COVID-19 mortality." With current virus, that could change with each mutation.

This is a new disease, we don’t know what is going to happen in the future. There could be chronic consequences we don’t know about yet, for example. The virus could evolve to have much higher mortality next year. By allowing it to become endemic, we are also bequeathing it to all future humans. There is surely a more risk aware scenario between endemicity and total eradication.