International COVID-19 Megathread

[Middle-aged Europe]

The city of Göttingen in Lower Saxony is fighting a new outbreak and has reentered a partial lockdown.

Nationwide the situation still seems to be looking good though. The number of daily new infections stands at 377 right now (for comparison: it's 1,800 in the UK).

[urutzizu]

Thread on how the Spanish Government artificially lowers it's death count through absurd reporting criteria.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433

[Mike88]

Thread on how the Spanish Government artificially lowers it's death count through absurd reporting criteria.

Adding to that, there's an ongoing small diplomatic incident between Spain and Portugal, as Spain says they will open their borders on June 22, while Portugal will only open the borders on July 1st. The foreign minister says that Spain didn't inform Portugal and that only Portugal can make decisions about their own borders.

https://twitter.com/sapo/status/1268502967638011905

Government "surprised" by Spain's announcement about opening borders

[CumbrianLefty]

Thread on how the Spanish Government artificially lowers it's death count through absurd reporting criteria.

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433

Surprised our government hasn't tried pulling this one yet tbh.

[Former President tack50]

Yeah the Spanish response to coronavirus has been an absolute disaster marked by chaos, rectification after rectification and what not.

It is certainly a candidate for top 5 worst response worldwide in my opinion

[Mike88]

Thread on how the Spanish Government artificially lowers it's death count through absurd reporting criteria.

Adding to that, there's an ongoing small diplomatic incident between Spain and Portugal, as Spain says they will open their borders on June 22, while Portugal will only open the borders on July 1st. The foreign minister says that Spain didn't inform Portugal and that only Portugal can make decisions about their own borders.

Spain has retracted the decision to open borders on June 22. They will now open on July 1st.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yeah the Spanish response to coronavirus has been an absolute disaster marked by chaos, rectification after rectification and what not.

It is certainly a candidate for top 5 worst response worldwide in my opinion

As bad as UK/US/Brazil?

[Former President tack50]

Yeah the Spanish response to coronavirus has been an absolute disaster marked by chaos, rectification after rectification and what not.

It is certainly a candidate for top 5 worst response worldwide in my opinion

As bad as UK/US/Brazil?

I mean yeah, certainly. The numbers do not lie. Not sure if quite top 5, but we are certainly in the top 10 worst responses. I suppose the unholy trio of Johnson, Trump and Bolsonaro are even worse.

I will say that the main problem in the Spanish case has mostly been incompetence rather than actively taking bad decisions like say Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson; but it does not make it any better. The Spanish government had the right decisions for the most part but implemented in the worst ways possible. In that regard it sort of reminds me of Belgium though I am not sure how accurate this comparison would be.

I also can't give the government a good score simply because we are number 3 worldwide in terms of deaths only behind Belgium and the UK (excluding microstates) and literally number 1 in the world in terms of cases (again excluding microstates or city states like Singapore).

Ironically I do think very highly of my regional government because we had very few cases though I do think the "island factor" helped a lot.

[urutzizu]

As bad as UK/US/Brazil?

Is UK really comparable the other two? I mean I have a different perspective as a outsider, and I would say Boris handled it worst of any Country in western Europe (perhaps with Sweden), but it seemed to me that Boris was at the very least clear to the public that the Virus is a actual medical thing that exists with real consequences, even as he desperately dragged his heels on doing something, and the Government did eventually lock down, even if much too late.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well we now have his on record comment to the Italian PM, pre-lockdown, that he indeed wanted "herd immunity". So maybe I am less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on this. The same markedly arrogant sense of British exceptionalism that drove Brexit is undoubtedly a factor too.

[Tender Branson]

Only 3 active cases left here in Salzburg state.

1 person in my district, 2 in the Flachgau district.

The 4 other districts are Coronavirus-free.

[President Johnson]

German federal government has passed a stimulus package well over 100 billion euros. The grand coalition, after long negotiations, has agreed upon the following:

- VAT Tax will be reduced from 19% to 16% until December 31 Food in restaurants has already been subject to a VAT reduction from 19% to 7% (excluding drinks).

- Families get a one time bonus of 300€ per kid. The bonus will be added to taxable income, though. Households with an anual income of over 90,000€ won't benefit from the measure.

- Social Democrats successfully blocked a bonus for cars that run with fossil energy. There will be some bonuses for purchasing an E-car.

- Deutsche Bahn (national railroad company, is partly owned by the federal government) gets a big financial aid. Local public transportation receives another 2.5 billion.

- Municipalities, who suffer from a loss in local taxes, receive financial aid as well. The sum will be splitted between federal and state governments. Unfortunately, Social Democrats couldn't get debt redemption by the federal government for cities that have already been in the red for a long time.

The measures are balanced in my opinion and will help to get the economy back on track. Still hurts me  we don't have balanced budget anymore. Hopefully we can return to that in a few years. At least fiscal discipline allowed the government to spend now, when it's urgently needed.

[EastAnglianLefty]

As bad as UK/US/Brazil?

Is UK really comparable the other two? I mean I have a different perspective as a outsider, and I would say Boris handled it worst of any Country in western Europe (perhaps with Sweden), but it seemed to me that Boris was at the very least clear to the public that the Virus is a actual medical thing that exists with real consequences, even as he desperately dragged his heels on doing something, and the Government did eventually lock down, even if much too late.

There hasn't been as much high profile idiocy (and what there has been, such as Cummings, has probably had less effect than the conventional wisdom), but a lot of low-level failures and bad decisions which had an outsized effect. Failing to lock down care homes and actively seeding the virus into them by not testing patients being discharged into them. Stubbornly low levels of testing in general (not helped by trying to game the targets). Keeping some sectors of the economy open (notably construction) despite strong environmental evidence they were clear vectors of spread. Not increasing statutory sick pay, meaning people had a financial incentive to keep working even when sick (this seems to have been an especial problem in the care sector and is worsened by the general structure of the British economy). A distinct inability of central government to keep track of what was going on in its various departments and an active hostility towards local government, which would actually have been able to deal with a lot of issues more effectively if it had been allowed to.

None of these made headline news, all of them probably led to excess deaths reaching into four figures (five figures in the case of care homes.)

[CumbrianLefty]

And a lot of that is surely down to the insouciant attitude ("take it on the chin") that the PM and other leading figures in the government showed towards this originally.

[CumbrianLefty]

And today the UK has officially passed 40k virus deaths.

[FrancoAgo]

Does someone know because the Spanish deaths go down of near 2 thousands the 25th May?

I read up, they changed the criteria, but what change they actually did?

[Middle-aged Europe]

The lockdown is for all intents and purposes effectively over in Germany. But, everywhere you go now the maximum number of attendees is heavily restricted and almost always you need to make reservations beforehand: in yoga studios, exhibitions, cinemas, churches etc. This totally eliminates any spontanity. I have never been that much of a spontanous person anyway, more like a obsessive-compulsive control freak, so I'm able to handle it. But I know people where I imagine that it could be much harder. The bottom line is, we just need much bigger buildings in the post-Corona world.

[Tender Branson]

55 new infections yesterday, but only 47 recoveries.

Zero new deaths.

42/55 new infections were in Vienna or Lower Austria.

None here in Salzburg, which is down to just 2 active cases.

Also, the number of people in hospitals (72) and ICU (17) dropped further to a new record-low.

[Tender Branson]

Fanatastic news:

The state of Tyrol, the Austrian epicentre of the outbreak in early March, is down to just 11 active cases.

Only 2 people are currently in hospital there, one of them in ICU.

Vienna and Lower Austria are most concerning right now (at a low level).

[CumbrianLefty]

New poll by YouGov across a couple of dozen countries has the UK sinking to joint bottom with Mexico regarding approval of how their governments are handling the virus.

(both are slightly behind the US, though Brazil wasn't included which is a bit annoying)

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The lockdown in Poland has largely ended, and we're no longer required to weak the masks outside (except while shopping). Many people has been disregarding this even before, including in the places of business. Unsurprisingly today we've had near 600 new cases.

F-king idiots.


The (official) figures currently stands at:

Confirmed: 27,160
Suspected: 1,881
Recovered: 12,998
Dead: 1,166

As I've mentioned before, the figures can be pretty innacurate, due to lack of adequate testing, as well as some strong-arming from the authorities.

[Silent Hunter]

Aren't most of the new Polish cases around a coal mine?

[President Johnson]

Apparently no new deaths in Spain in the last 24 hours.

Update, another drop:

Infections confirmed: 180,157
Deaths: 8,283
Recovered: 160,281
Active cases: 11,593

At this point, things are looking good, though there are some minor hotspots regionally. One hotspot had over 100 infections following a chutch visit; another one in a restaurant.

Germany update: Active cases dropped below 10,000:

Infections confirmed: 183,125
Deaths: 8,527
Recovered: 164,887
Active cases: 9,711

Germany update:

Infections confirmed: 183,879
Deaths: 8,563
Recovered: 166,609
Active cases: 8,707

Germany update:

Infections confirmed: 186,109
Deaths: 8,695
Recovered: 169,556
Active cases: 7,858

[Silent Hunter]

Two rather interesting articles on the effects of social distancing and lockdowns:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7_reference.pdf - on Europe

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8_reference.pdf - on a more international scale

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Aren't most of the new Polish cases around a coal mine?

The mines were just closed down due to this.