International COVID-19 Megathread

[Meclazine for Israel]

Drive to Vaccinate the World Against COVID Is Losing Steam

That article mentions that the US is still only 66% vaccinated, which is pathetic really.

.
Western Australian's are 95% double vaccinated and 90% triple vaccinated.

Even though COVID v4.2 finally hit us a couple of months ago, the mortality numbers are ridiculously low, and of those that do die, the majority pass away from something else.

Vaccinations saved our employment, our economy, our health and we endured little in the way of social panic unlike Melbournians which suffered COVID 1.0 and 2.0 unvaccinated.

If 33% of Americans are unvaccinated, they need to take some responsibility for when they spread it to their relatives.

The evidence on vaccinations is irrefutable now.

[Frodo]

It seems this story fell through the cracks:

In China, ongoing drastic measures against Covid-19 is pushing its population to leave
Online searches about emigration procedures have exploded, but Beijing is implementing new measures to restrict departures.

[Mike88]

https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1560204869343985664

What???

[SnowLabrador]

As everyone on this forum knows, I've generally been supportive of stringent mitigation measures for COVID. However, I think this is just a little overkill.

[It’s so Joever]

Xi is really overplaying his hand. He is DOA imo soon.

[CumbrianLefty]

Xi is really overplaying his hand. He is DOA imo soon.

As said in another thread, the party congress is coming up before long.

Its not impossible that a saner approach gains ground after that.

[Frodo]

Xi is really overplaying his hand. He is DOA imo soon.

As said in another thread, the party congress is coming up before long.

Its not impossible that a saner approach gains ground after that.

The problem here is that Xi Jinping can't back down from his zero covid stance even if he wanted to.  As bad as we had it in the United States, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population has either been vaccinated or has had COVID means that future outbreaks are highly unlikely to be as deadly as what we experienced in 2020 and 2021 -in short, we have achieved something approximating 'herd immunity'.  Such is not the case in China, with their inferior vaccines and a population that hasn't actually been exposed to the virus due to the zero covid policy.  If Xi Jinping were to relax restrictions, tens of millions of Chinese will sicken and die from COVID, especially given its latest variants (like Omicron) are even more transmissible than the original.  We experience only mild symptoms from them -for the Chinese, it will be much worse.  They are between a rock and a hard place, and I do not envy them.  

[rosin]

https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1560204869343985664

What???

It's likely a way health workers try to fulfill the quotas of how many tests they have to perform.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Personal anecdote: A recent trip to Prague - that was a follow-up to a trip to London in March - has convinced me that I'm living in a bit of a crazy country that is overobsessed with anti-COVID measures. Despite existing mask mandates in public transportation I have started to not wear masks in subway/tram anymore - except when it is a really crowded train maybe. In Prague I stopped doing it because I would have felt stupid being essentially the only one who is still wearing it. Returning to Germany I felt stupid then having to pick up that habit again, simply because I happened to be on the other side of a border now. COVID rules have become random, arbitrary and pointless, especially since can go dancing witout a mask in a club in Berlin, but God forbid you enter an almost empty subway car without it.

[SnowLabrador]

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/04/bq1-xbb-variants-resistant/

TLDR: There's a new COVID variant that's resistant to vaccines AND treatments. We're back to Square One.

[Silent Hunter]

The article doesn't say that. It's an awful lot of coulds and maybes.

In any event, I have my booster booked.

[Aurelius]

The article doesn't say that. It's an awful lot of coulds and maybes.

In any event, I have my booster booked.

SnowLabrador thinks China's approach to covid is the correct one. He's dooming for the sake of dooming.

[Frodo]

The People's Republic of China is the only one left:

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1580192849060311040

[CumbrianLefty]

Incredible, innit.

And the harm is totally self-inflicted too - Xi can't blame anyone or anything else for this one.

[SnowLabrador]

The article doesn't say that. It's an awful lot of coulds and maybes.

In any event, I have my booster booked.

SnowLabrador thinks China's approach to covid is the correct one. He's dooming for the sake of dooming.

Please explain why not doing a lockdown was worth losing a million people and counting. I'm not saying we need a total lockdown now, but the fact that "pro-life" people aren't willing to put a piece of cloth over their faces is just sickening. To be clear, I think China's strategy now is somewhat overkill, but that doesn't mean it was never warranted.

[Silent Hunter]

This thing is so infectious now that just a bit of cloth isn't going to do a lot of good now.

[CumbrianLefty]

Infectious, but happily not that serious for most.

[Silent Hunter]

Infectious, but happily not that serious for most.

I caught Omicron (probably) at the end of June. Had to work from home for a while and it took a month for the cough to go, but otherwise not too bad.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Autumn is coming and due to the season Germany has started a debate whether to reintroduce mask mandates (in addition to the still existing mandates for public transportation). This time this seems to get broken down along the political lines of SPD/Greens (for) vs. CDU/CSU/FDP (against)... and I find myself on the side of the centre-right. As someone who voluntarily got his fourth COVID vaccination last week (in addition to an infection this spring) I'm inclined to say with regards to mask mandates: Boy, just give it a rest already. But as I indicated before, this position is highly influenced by earlier visits to London and Prague and the impression that I'm living in an overly cautious, maybe too anxious, country.

But perhaps you could consider it a form of social experiment. How many people will, in practice, be willing to return to "preemptively" wearing masks in super-markets despite the fact that the healthcare system is not immediately threatened by a collapse, and to how many fights with security guards in super-markets will it lead?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Autumn is coming and due to the season Germany has started a debate whether to reintroduce mask mandates (in addition to the still existing mandates for public transportation). This time this seems to get broken down along the political lines of SPD/Greens (for) vs. CDU/CSU/FDP (against)... and I find myself on the side of the centre-right. As someone who voluntarily got his fourth COVID vaccination last week (in addition to an infection this spring) I'm inclined to say with regards to mask mandates: Boy, just give it a rest already. But as I indicated before, this position is highly influenced by earlier visits to London and Prague and the impression that I'm living in an overly cautious, maybe too anxious, country.

But perhaps you could consider it a form of social experiment. How many people will, in practice, be willing to return to "preemptively" wearing masks in super-markets despite the fact that the healthcare system is not immediately threatened by a collapse, and to how many fights with security guards in super-markets will it lead?

As kind of an update on that... after some deliberation the Red-Red-Green state government in Berlin has shelved expanding the mask mandates for the time being. Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) seems to be an opponent of the measure, or at the very least reluctant to introduce it.

https://www.rbb24.de/politik/thema/corona/beitraege/2022/10/berlin-gesundheitssenatorin-ulrike-gote-verteidigt-vorstoss-maskenpflicht.html

Federal health minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) had recently called upon all the states to reintroduce mask mandates, but since it is a state issue he can only "recommend" it.

The most hilarious politician on the issue is Bavarian minister-president Markus Söder (CSU) though, who is staying true to his opportunistic self by adopting and embracing a full-on anti-masker persona now. Söder had previously been one of the most hardcore zero-Covid lockdown supporters at one point. This is not a change of heart on his part... this is Söder being Söder, completely reinventing and rebranding himself every couple of years. I can't stop being grateful that this man has never become Chancellor.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Update: The Berlin state government has again deliberated about and again postponed a decision on expanding mask mandates. There seems to be an increasing personal rift between mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD, anti-mandates) and health minister Ulrike Gote (Greens, pro-mandates) on the issue. Giffey's opposition stems from the fact that Berlin would probably the only administrative division located within in Central/Western Europe with mask mandates outside if public transportation right now.

Nevertheless, the health ministers of the German states are planning to meet in November to discuss criteria for expanding mask mandates in the immediate future. Not sure how this will go down with Bavaria at the table who has undergone a 180 from having one of the harshest lockdown policies in the beginnning of the pandemic to being one of the most anti-masker states (despite the fact it's still headed by the same government and leader, see my previous post above).

Centre to centre-left newspaper Die Zeit, who's probably above suspicion of being a COVID denialist medium, has yesterday asked the question: Why? Why is Germany seemingly the only country in Europe right now who's discussing expanding mask mandates (or why does it still have mask mandates in public transportation in the first place, for that matter)? This seems to be a bit of a sociological/mass-psychological conundrum.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Thomas Mertens, chair of the Standing Committee on Vaccination, has probably become the first German expert of note to declare COVID "endemic": https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-stiko-mertens-endemisch-100.html

A spokesperson of the German health ministry has refuted that claim, saying that only the WHO has the authority to declare the pandemic to be over.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rumours a major Chinese u-turn on Zero Covid is imminent, stock markets have risen in response.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, and Schleswig-Holstein become the first German states to discontinue mandatory isolation for infected people.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rumours a major Chinese u-turn on Zero Covid is imminent, stock markets have risen in response.

More than a week on, still seems to be mostly rumours.