International COVID-19 Megathread

[Silent Hunter]

Cannot support as in cannot afford?

[Silent Hunter]

Well, looking from what will be in our Papers tomorrow, it seems as if we will be heading into a 4 week national lockdown from Wednesday, to be announced on Monday afternoon.

Let's hope it actually works then.

[Silent Hunter]

People no longer trust the government in the UK.

[Silent Hunter]

For many that sounds like "the floggings will continue until morale improves".

[Silent Hunter]

So, that's basically 10 times higher than the previous Slovak record.

[Silent Hunter]

What does your lockdown actually involve?

Also, any implementation will generally take at least two weeks to have an effect on recorded case numbers.

[Silent Hunter]

With a high level of infections, people will socially distance of their own accord, though.

[Silent Hunter]

Lockdown 3.0 probably in March or April.

You might well be rolling out the vaccine then.

[Silent Hunter]

Four if you believe Sputnik V's data.

[Silent Hunter]

What I find discomforting is that the curve of new deaths in Germany is still rising.

Deaths are always the last to fall - it can take a month or more for someone to die from Covid-19, with just as long to be notified to the authorities.

[Silent Hunter]

Pfizer vaccine approved in the UK.

[Silent Hunter]

That one didn't really have a huge impact as many of the most vulnerable had experienced a similar strain 20-30 years earlier and had some immunity. But it just goes to show that plagues are more common than you think.

The popular history impact of the 1968 pandemic, which killed more than Covid has so far, is basically nil.

[Silent Hunter]

I wonder how Covid would have played out 20, 30 or 40 years ago?

In 1980? Probably just seen as a really bad flu season.

[Silent Hunter]

Trump didn't actually drop that much below his 2016 PV in 2020, mind. In fact, he went up 0.8%. Of course, the alarming thing is that without the pandemic, he might well have hit 50%...

[Silent Hunter]

My state & district mass-tested its population today.

Turnout was 28% here in the district, or some 20.000 people.

99 were positive, or 0.5%

I didn’t go.

Why not?

[Silent Hunter]

Christmas - people will ignore the restrictions anyway and politicians don't want to be seen as "The Grinch".

[Silent Hunter]

"Up to 70%" sounds like there's a fairly large 95% confidence interval and I'd like to see what the lower end of that is.

Mind you, I agree that vaccination is our ultimate way out of this.

[Silent Hunter]

The South African mutation is arguably the more concerning one ATM, but in both cases, we're just dealing with slightly modified tanks, so to speak.

[Silent Hunter]

The NERVTAG document sayings 65-73%, but there is a lot of disagreement from other scientists in either direction.

[Silent Hunter]

Until the vaccines start having an impact, I would say that's likely.

[Silent Hunter]

Maybe a bit, but the results of Thanksgiving in the US were mixed.

[Silent Hunter]

The UK's headline death numbers are those reported on that day and can include a considerable time lag, sometimes over a month. Based on date of death, it's been around 400-500 per day since the second wave began, which of course is still not good.

[Silent Hunter]

Which ones did the Germans order then?

[Silent Hunter]

By wicket?

[Silent Hunter]

AstraZeneca is not ineffective against mutations - it's less so at preventing mild and moderate illness, but still seems to protect against serious illness and death. That is good enough for most.