International COVID-19 Megathread

[Silent Hunter]

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

[Mike88]

New year's eve is canceled in Portugal. Costa just announced a mandatory curfew starting at 11pm 31 December. No changes for Christmas though, however, family gatherings should have the minimum of people possible.

He also said his first test came negative but will continue in isolation.

What an insane thing to do, if you know you need to hard lock down, why wait so long???

It's the economy. Because the economy in Portugal is so fragile, the government is afraid of a full lockdown and its consequences again. But, many things aren't right, IMO: the weekend curfews don't make sense, as people just fill supermarkets and shopping centers to buy stuff during the morning; the constant delay/bad planning and bad communication, like in the video I posted above, of new measures;

[Tender Branson]

Number of deaths continues to be high

Vienna, 2020-12-18 – In calendar week 49 (from 30 November to 6 December 2020), 2.536 people died in Austria, according to preliminary results from Statistics Austria.

"In the 49th calendar week, the number of deaths broke another sad record – it was 58% higher than the average for the same calendar week of the years 2015 to 2019.

In total, 82.610 people have died so far this year. That is 8.6% more than the five-year average", says Tobias Thomas, Director General of Statistics Austria.

The increase in deaths during the first 49 weeks of 2020 affected men (+11.5%) to a much greater extent than women (+5.9%).

Since calendar week 43 this year, the discrepancies in absolute deaths have also been visible in the age-standardized death rates, in which the deaths were adjusted for age and population structure using a standard population.

http://www.statistik.at/web_en/press/125039.html

2020 might see 91.000 deaths, up 10% from last year, and up 11% from the 5-year average of 2015-19.

November and December will be especially brutal, with 60% above-normal.

[Tender Branson]

Should be noted that even with this huge increase in mortality this year, the 91.000 deaths would produce a death rate of slightly over 1% in Austria.

This is far below the death rates seen between 1945 and well into the 1980s, when the rate was constantly at 1.2% to 1.3%

Depending on the 4th quarter, births are going to be anywhere between 83.000 and 87.000 - so the birth deficit will be at around 4.000 (best case) to 8.000 (worst case), down from a surplus of 2.000 last year.

[President Johnson]

There are reports that Emmanuel Macron is really not feeling well. Has severe symptoms, though he sent out a short video on Instagram today.

Worst day with new infections in Germany was yesterday, over 33,000 infections. We're approaching a constant level of high tripledigit deaths per day at this point. The lockdown will probably be extended beyond January 10.

[Mike88]

There are reports that Emmanuel Macron is really not feeling well. Has severe symptoms, though he sent out a short video on Instagram today.

Worst day with new infections in Germany was yesterday, over 33,000 infections. We're approaching a constant level of high tripledigit deaths per day at this point. The lockdown will probably be extended beyond January 10.

The Slovakian PM is also infected. It seems to be not related with Macron, but both attended the EU council meeting last week.

https://www.politico.eu/article/slovakian-prime-minister-tests-positive-for-coronavirus/

[Tender Branson]

5.127 candles have been lit in front of St. Stephenˋs Cathedral in Vienna for the dead this year:

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

We are FINALLY getting a mask recommendation, but even then it's only for public transit at certain times. I doubt a majority will still do it

[urutzizu]

New Corona mutation in the UK seems extremely problematic. If it is indeed up to 70pct more transmissible and increases R by about 0.4, has become the dominant strain so fast, and the infection rates from SE England during the Lockdown are an Indication, it is essentially infectious to the point that even harsh lockdown measures are not able to contain it. In that case only possibility would seem to vaccinate yourself out of it as fast as possible, or essentially abandoning containment entirely and just try to Isolate vulnerable.

European Mainland is scrambling to contain the mutation as much as possible. NL and Belgium have already closed Borders to UK, Germany likely to do the same, it seems possible much of Europe will follow quite fast. It has already been Identified in a few other countries (incl. NL), not yet in Germany, but considering the sheer amount of travel between SE England/London and Europe, even during the Pandemic, and the dominance this strain already has there, it would appear improbable that it isn't prevalent at at least a low level in much of Europe already. The Question is more likely how prevalent, and how long it will take until a situation like in the UK is reached.

[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.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Italy will have specially hard restrictions during the winter holiday period, and I found some of them nonsensical or inconsistent. Of course I have already forgotten most of the specifics, I rarely go out anyways. Whatever.

Daily new cases have been decreasing for a while now, and daily deaths are currently starting to decrease as well. But the levels are still so high...

This new mutation found in the UK is giving me very bad feelings. I can only await vaccinations I guess.

[CumbrianLefty]

Reports now that this new UK "mutation" actually started in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, as even many outside the UK may have heard, Johnson yesterday effectively cancelled Christmas for a large swathe of the English population - just a few days after he shouted at Starmer that *he* wanted to do that during PMQs. Most people do not appear to be impressed.

[Former President tack50]

Someone must be playing Plague.inc with the planet at this point tbh. I just wish they had called the virus "Your penis" at this point, so we'd get the "Your penis is destroying humanity" headlines

[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.

[Tender Branson]

Weekly Austria update:

* New cases down to 16.400 vs. last Sunday (ca. 2.300 new cases per day) Peak: 9.500 per day
* Active cases dropped from 37.000 to 30.000 (Peak: 80.000 active cases)
* Hospitalisations dropped from 3.500 to 2.900 (Peak: 4.800)
* Patients in ICU dropped from 580 to 470 (Peak: 800)
* weekly deaths though increased to 900 vs. 650 the week before

Don't know exactly why deaths are still not peaking ... while all other indicators are moving down significantly.

Most deaths happened in Vienna, Styria, Carinthia and Upper Austria recently, states with a high FPÖ-share in the past.

Maybe it's because this 2nd wave has spread a lot more into retirement homes and old Austrian people used to be heavy smokers (Austria had one of the world's highest smoking rates in the 20th century). Which could now see a lot of previously unhealthy old, retired people being killed.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany has joined the Netherlands in discontinuing air traffic with the UK.

South Africa will be likely added tomorrow.

[GenerationTerrorist]

Always great to see us be "The Sick Man of Europe" once again 

[Mike88]

Germany has joined the Netherlands in discontinuing air traffic with the UK.

South Africa will be likely added tomorrow.

Portugal will fordid UK citizens entering the country and Portuguese citizens coming from the UK have to have a negative test, or do one, in order to enter the country.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

"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.

I would be wary of believing absolutely anything the liars in this government trot out right now, particularly when there are obvious political incentives to lie.

But yes. Vaccination not delusions of State Power, but that's been true all along.

[Silent Hunter]

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

[Cassius]

I recall reading somewhere that they’ve known about this particular strain since September. A ‘break glass in case of media storm’ type explanation?

[Pericles]

If the variant is actually roughly as contagious as is claimed, and the UK government only recently discovered this fact, then I don't think their response has been that bad honestly. Their earlier actions, like loosening the lockdown too early and their initial Christmas plans, were mistakes. However since Johnson's cancelling of Christmas, their actions seem reasonable (even if they could have been done earlier, but that partly depends on how much they knew about the variant at each time). It's a low bar, but this response isn't as bad as their responses to the first and second waves. Governments seem to be taking it seriously and having a good precuationary approach with the travel bans. If it is contained, it could give some insight into how the early days of the pandemic could have gone differently.

[Alcibiades]

German virologist Christian Drosten says he is “everything but worried” about the new strain, and thinks it is perhaps more likely the strain ‘rode the wave’ in SE England which was caused by factors other than increased transmissibility, as the presence of the strain in the Netherlands does not appear to have caused an uptick in cases.

[President Johnson]

New Corona mutation in the UK seems extremely problematic. If it is indeed up to 70pct more transmissible and increases R by about 0.4, has become the dominant strain so fast, and the infection rates from SE England during the Lockdown are an Indication, it is essentially infectious to the point that even harsh lockdown measures are not able to contain it. In that case only possibility would seem to vaccinate yourself out of it as fast as possible, or essentially abandoning containment entirely and just try to Isolate vulnerable.

European Mainland is scrambling to contain the mutation as much as possible. NL and Belgium have already closed Borders to UK, Germany likely to do the same, it seems possible much of Europe will follow quite fast. It has already been Identified in a few other countries (incl. NL), not yet in Germany, but considering the sheer amount of travel between SE England/London and Europe, even during the Pandemic, and the dominance this strain already has there, it would appear improbable that it isn't prevalent at at least a low level in much of Europe already. The Question is more likely how prevalent, and how long it will take until a situation like in the UK is reached.

Leading German virologist Christian Drosten, who is an expert on SARS and was always a trustworth source so far, urges not to panic here, though he admits current data is not sufficient. There is no evidence the vaccines are less effective with this mutation. There is also no evidence the mutated virus is more deadly. The opposite is actually more likely. Viruses usually intend to spread as fast and wide as possible, and from that perspective it just doesn't make sense to kill too many people.

Mutations are nothing unusual and happen all the time (that needs to be said as often as possible, because a lot of people think makes a virus more dangerous). While suspending travel with the UK makes sense, I would be surprised if this specific virus isn't already in Germany. There are reported cases in Italy, France and even Australia.

[CumbrianLefty]

It does appear that vaccines will also be effective against the "new" strain, which is something.