International COVID-19 Megathread

[President Johnson]

But we can now be cautiously optimistic about a vaccine being available soon, after today's news.

Yeah, this vaccine, developed by German Biontech and Pfitzer in cooperation, could be a breakthrough.

[Tender Branson]

Our lockdown 2.0 doesn't really work it seems.

10 days now and more than 9.000 new cases today, the highest on 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.

[Tender Branson]

What does your lockdown actually involve?

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

Link

It's not a hard lockdown like in March, with the schools open and all retail stores as well + all service-oriented businesses as well (hairdressers, physiotherapy, beauty shops etc.)

The most important things are that restaurants, hotels and bars/clubs are closed and there's a 8pm-6am curfew.

The government could unveil stricter measures this weekend though.

[President Johnson]

Our lockdown 2.0 doesn't really work it seems.

10 days now and more than 9.000 new cases today, the highest on record.

Well, Germany has at least halted further growth beyond 20,000 new cases per day. But lockdown takes at least two weeks to show any drop new cases.

Another factor may be that schools are not closed (I assume same in Austria?). Studies have not given a clear picture how much schools drive Covid numbers. The closing of restaurants and certain other places like theaters was definitely a mistake since most of them have solid safety concepts in place.

[Tender Branson]

We are now among the 10 countries worldwide with the highest new daily #s.

Therefore, Chancellor Kurz will probably announce tomorrow the closure of schools as well and of all retail and services businesses.

[Mike88]

We are now among the 10 countries worldwide with the highest new daily #s.

Therefore, Chancellor Kurz will probably announce tomorrow the closure of schools as well and of all retail and services businesses.

The situation here in Portugal isn't better either. New cases vary between 5,000 and 6,000 per day, so far, but new deaths are soaring with a record 82 deaths by Covid just last Wednesday. Plus, there's a lot of confusion about the restrictions and many people are becoming angry towards the government. Costa had to made another speech yesterday to correct and explain better the restrictions.

[Tender Branson]

We are now among the 10 countries worldwide with the highest new daily #s.

Therefore, Chancellor Kurz will probably announce tomorrow the closure of schools as well and of all retail and services businesses.

The situation here in Portugal isn't better either. New cases vary between 5,000 and 6,000 per day, so far, but new deaths are soaring with a record 82 deaths by Covid just last Wednesday. Plus, there's a lot of confusion about the restrictions and many people are becoming angry towards the government. Costa had to made another speech yesterday to correct and explain better the restrictions.

We had 9.586 new cases yesterday and 53 deaths.

In US terms, that would be 350.000 new daily cases and 2.000 deaths.

I hope the vaccine is out soon, so I can get vaccinated and a ton of Austrians too (even though only half say they want to get it).

[CumbrianLefty]

Last few days have also seen a Russian claim of a 90% plus effective vaccine.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Last few days have also seen a Russian claim of a 90% plus effective vaccine.

92% 

[Tender Branson]

Some good news:

Today's report shows we had 7.276 new cases yesterday.

For the first time this is lower than the 7.565 cases from last Saturday's report ...

The new lockdown 2.0 started 11 days ago, so it might start to have some effects.

Big question:

Will Kurz still anounce a full lockdown today with the closure of schools ? I think so.

[Mike88]

The media in Portugal is reporting long lines in supermarkets and other stores across the country as the 1PM curfew order approaches.

[Tender Branson]

The media in Portugal is reporting long lines in supermarkets and other stores across the country as the 1PM curfew order approaches.

Same here.

There were 100m long lines in front of a shoe store.

https://wien.orf.at/stories/3075967/

The people are so stupid ... unbelievable ... as if they cannot buy shoes at another time during the year.

[Mike88]

The media in Portugal is reporting long lines in supermarkets and other stores across the country as the 1PM curfew order approaches.

Same here.

There were 100m long lines in front of a shoe store.

https://wien.orf.at/stories/3075967/

The people are so stupid ... unbelievable ... as if they cannot buy shoes at another time during the year.

Yeah, people are not planning this very well. However, here there's still a lot of confusion about the measures. Many people say supermarkets will be open all day, but in reality only stores with size until 200m2 can be open past 1PM. There was also a controversy this week as a big supermarket chain, Pingo Doce, proposed to open their stores at 6:30AM but there was public outcry and they retracted the proposal.

[Samof94]

Ukraine is in serious trouble as a country form Covid. Their own President got it at one point too.

[Mike88]

There are still ongoing protests against the government by restaurants/hotels workers across the country, with the main one in Lisbon right now. Yesterday was in Porto city where it ended with clashes with the police.

[CumbrianLefty]

Ukraine is in serious trouble as a country form Covid. Their own President got it at one point too.

Following the Trump example.

[Tender Branson]

Hard lockdown has just been announced, starting on Tuesday (until December 6).

All retail and service stores will be closed (excl. supermarkets and gas stations), all kindergartens and schools get closed (excl. for kids who have nobody at home) and there’s a general 24-hour curfew in place. People are only allowed outside for walks, sport, shopping groceries, work or to help people in need.

https://www.ft.com/content/33242eab-79c3-4b93-a266-9e3a7be6164e

Vienna today (lines of stupid people who still need shoes or clothes or gardening utilities):

[parochial boy]

Case numbers here actually going down over the last 10 days; which seemed too good to be true, but the numbers of hospitalised people have also started going down over the latter half of this week - and this is despite restaurants and bars being open, no restrictions on going outside, non-contact sports trainings still going ahead etc, etc... All the kind of stuff that had the rest of Europe accusing Switzerland of being "the new Sweden" or "choosing austerity over life".

Does kind of make me think of Alain Berset's earlier line about staying low key and trying to take the measures that are the most effective, rather that "the politics of the specatcular". The original target was Macron, but seems to apply to Kurz as well a little bit.

[palandio]

Looking at Switzerland, but also e.g. the Netherlands I wonder how much of the falling numbers are an effect of the epidemiological phenomenon that must not be named. Could it be that many already had it, particularly the socially more active and those that cannot avoid contacts because of e.g. their job? Immunity levels are probably too low for "herd immunity" under pre-pandemic social connectivity, but maybe high enough that with the current social distancing in place further exponential outbreaks can be avoided for the next few months.

The price is of course that hospitalizations and deaths have gone up a lot. To avoid this, many countries are trying to bring the numbers down before very high infection levels are reached. But if you use harsh restrictions that you need to lift after a few weeks then what are you going to do afterwards? Germany says that the goal is that numbers are low enough to allow for effective contact tracing by local health authorities. A strategy that is succesfully applied in Japan and South Korea. But we in Germany failed at exactly this in late September/early October. What are we going to do better this time? Do we know what we're doing?

Austria seems to be headed for the partial herd immunity path against its will and without a plan. If they had wanted to stop the spread they should have installed their "Lockdown light" earlier than November 03. And now they are too impatient. Everybody knows that the effect of measures can be seen in the numbers only after ca. two weeks. The Austrian government decided that their original measures were insufficient after eleven days. The new measures are not measures that can be sustained for long. They are dreaming of Christmas with the family and skiing holidays afterwards. They don't know what they're doing.

[Silent Hunter]

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

[palandio]

Yes, that's a valid objection. It remains to be seen if the people of Switzerland will sustain for the rest of the winter a level of social distancing that is sufficient to prevent exponential spread.

[Samof94]

Hard lockdown has just been announced, starting on Tuesday (until December 6).

All retail and service stores will be closed (excl. supermarkets and gas stations), all kindergartens and schools get closed (excl. for kids who have nobody at home) and there’s a general 24-hour curfew in place. People are only allowed outside for walks, sport, shopping groceries, work or to help people in need.

https://www.ft.com/content/33242eab-79c3-4b93-a266-9e3a7be6164e

Vienna today (lines of stupid people who still need shoes or clothes or gardening utilities):

The German language version of Amazon is more useful. You can’t spread Covid on their internet.

[Tender Branson]

The German language version of Amazon is more useful. You can’t spread Covid on their internet.

I'm especially against buying shoes etc. on Amazon instead.

Who profits from all of this ? Amazon.

Maybe even Bezos is behind this virus, who knows ...

People should just buy their shoes at other times of the year and not stand in line ahead of a lockdown. Or buy their shoes and home improvement stuff online (but not at Amazon !) as well during these 3 weeks.

Austrian stores have online shops as well, you don't need to use Amazon for it.

[Tender Branson]

Austria seems to be headed for the partial herd immunity path against its will and without a plan. If they had wanted to stop the spread they should have installed their "Lockdown light" earlier than November 03. And now they are too impatient. Everybody knows that the effect of measures can be seen in the numbers only after ca. two weeks. The Austrian government decided that their original measures were insufficient after eleven days. The new measures are not measures that can be sustained for long. They are dreaming of Christmas with the family and skiing holidays afterwards. They don't know what they're doing.

This 3-week full lockdown is pretty good IMO.

The light version is not showing much of an effect yet, so it needs to be more stricter to lower the numbers significantly.

Also, we are quite depending on winter tourism.

So yeah, we indeed need to "save" Christmas and the winter tourism season.

Otherwise, a lot of companies would go bankrupt and a lot of revenues would be missing for 3 months.

If the numbers go down, we can open up the ski areas and everything else again.

The question is how long it will last until the numbers are exploding again.

Lockdown 3.0 probably in March or April.