International COVID-19 Megathread

[Tender Branson]

Situation in Europe continues to get worse. France reporting over 6,000 cases in the past 24 hours. Germany again has hit 1,500. Not good.

As long as it doesn’t spread to nursing homes, no problem ...

[Alcibiades]

The resurgence in Europe is of a very different character to the initial spike in March. First off, it is nowhere near as rapid a spread, and it is also being driven by younger people, and as a result there is as of yet no noticeable increase in hospitalisations. The worry, of course, is that it spreads to the elderly.

[Tender Branson]

Sturm Graz will allow 7.300 fans into their stadium ("Merkur-Arena") tomorrow, in their opening match of the new Cup season against Innsbruck:

https://steiermark.orf.at/stories/3064029/

This is in violation of Austrian rules, which only allow 1.250 fans until August 31 (but starting on September 1, about 10.000 will be allowed in football stadiums again).

They could still go ahead with the 7.300 fans, because of their security concept which broke apart their stadium into various different sectors that are sealed off from each other, fans need to wear masks, sit far apart from each other and register at an app for possible contact tracing later on.

The federal government (ÖVP-Greens) has decided to kill their plans now:

https://steiermark.orf.at/stories/3064029

Instead of 7.300 fans, they are only allowed the max. 1.250 capacity ...

[palandio]

Situation in Europe continues to get worse. France reporting over 6,000 cases in the past 24 hours. Germany again has hit 1,500. Not good.

I'm very worried about France and even more so Spain, but cautiously optimistic about Germany. Numbers in Germany overall are ca. at last week's level. Numbers in NRW (where holidays have been over for two weeks) have clearly fallen compared to the peak and numbers in Hesse (where holidays have been over for like ten days) seem to have peaked, although it might be too early to say. The estimated reproduction number for Germany has been below 1 for a couple of days, although that number seems useless to me in a situation where the numbers are driven by imported cases.

[Hnv1]

Peru is now the worst hit per capita finally leapfrogging Belgium

[Tender Branson]

I expect cases to go down again when the summer vacation season is over.

Austrian students still have vacation until September 13 (they have 9 weeks !).

Bavarian students until September 6 and Baden-Württemberg also until September 13.

A few other German states have their school holidays ending this weekend, meaning parents will head home from Austria.

Austrian vacationers will head home from the South too (from the hotspot Balkans and Spain).

I expect a significant drop in new cases heading into October, after which it will pick up speed again in early November during the regular cold/flu season and later on during apres ski tourism.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Berlin's lowest court has ruled to allow tomorrow's anti-COVID restrictions protests to go forward. The Berlin Police has alreay appealed the decision. Even if the ruling is upheld the decision included a number of stipulations for the organizers of the protests like regularly making loudspeaker announcements urging attending protestors to practice physical distancing. If stipulations are not followed the police nominally has the authority to discontinue the protests anyway.

[Middle-aged Europe]

So I just went to observe to big, fat anti-COVID restrictions protest in Berlin. My primary take-aways from there:

- There was a lot of flag-waving going around. The most commonly seen flag seemed in fact to be the Black-White-Red flag of the German empire (1871-1918), also a widely used symbol of full-on neo-Nazis because the Swastika flag itself is outlawed around here, while the Black-White-Red had also been been used as Germany's official flag in concurrence with the Swastika for a transitional period between 1933 and 1935. The apparent ubiquity of that flag today surprised even me a bit. Didn't actually expect everything to be that right-wing.

- The second most commonly seen flag at the protests seemed to be the state flag of the Russian Federation. Go figure. This also included a guy with a Vladimir Putin t-shirt I had seen walking around.

- The third most common symbol was the "Q". Some people who had arrived to the protests in their car had the habit of donning a big, white "Q" symbol on their vehicles. There were even some comibinations with aforementioned symbols, for instance I also saw a woman protestor wearing a t-shirt with a big "Q" in the Black-White-Red colours of the empire.

- A few Trump fans were also waving an American flag, often in conurrence with the Russian flag or even the Black-White-Red one. In Germany, the Stars and Stripes seem to be increasingly becoming a symbol carried by Nazis as a result of the presidency of Donald Trump. But maybe this would change again with a Biden win in November.

- Another notable aspect was that there seemed to be significant age gap between protestors and counter-protestors. While anti-Corona restrictions protestors had an average age of about 50, pro-restrictions counter-protestors were more about 30. This seems to be line with the fact that Pegida and AfD in Germany as well as Trumpism in America is in large parts a rebellion of middle-aged white people against the system. Another feature distinguishing protestors and counter-protestors was that the former group was often mask-less, while the latter group usually wore a mask.

- I happened to come by at a corner were anti-Corona restrictions protestors and the Antifa was almost directly faced against each other. The mood was pretty aggressive there and I sometimes expected a brawl to start any second. But in the end, it limited itself to mutual shouting, insulting, and name-calling.


UPDATE: And I just read in the news that the police has officially dispersed the protests due to non-compliance with phyiscal distancing rules.

[CumbrianLefty]

The government here has issued new guidelines for schools re-opening in just a few days time.

Teachers are, needless to say, not happy.

[President Johnson]

Demonstrations in Berlin continue to a degree, but I'm glad the police has stepped in. The court should never have ruled to allow the demonstration in the first place given in what kind of situation we find ourselves in. Many of the protesters are AfD-hacks and other deluded folks anyway. The most hilarious thing is these people complaining about "dictatorship" now. They have no clue what a dictatorship is actually like.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Demonstrations in Berlin continue to a degree, but I'm glad the police has stepped in. The court should never have ruled to allow the demonstration in the first place given in what kind of situation we find ourselves in. Many of the protesters are AfD-hacks and other deluded folks anyway. The most hilarious thing is these people complaining about "dictatorship" now. They have no clue what a dictatorship is actually like.

Well, I certainly get the point that banning such protests would only help to embolden them and radicalize them further. And of course, at this point this could very well be the strategy of right-wing extremists: Deliberately not wearing any masks and not keeping distance to fellow protestors so that such protests get banned and so that they can point out how awfully authoritarian everything has become.

However, I do agree that seeing a large-scale (40,000 people?) protest march against a alleged "Corona dictatorship" which primarily dons the flag of the old German empire and of Russia definitely exhibits a certain amount of cognitive dissonance and/or hypocrisy.

[Tender Branson]

"Just" 180 new cases yesterday.

Down from the 250-400 daily new cases recently.

There has also been no death due to COVID in the past week.

[CumbrianLefty]

Deaths do seem to be right down almost everywhere. More effective treatments are certainly a major reason for that, but maybe the virus is also mutating and becoming milder?

[palandio]

Deaths do seem to be right down almost everywhere. More effective treatments are certainly a major reason for that, but maybe the virus is also mutating and becoming milder?

Deaths (not to be confused with COVID-19 caused deaths) are actually way up in Belgium and to a lesser degree in Spain, although I cannot tell whether this is due to COVID-19 or due to other causes like e.g. a heat wave.

Better treatment is certainly a major reason for deaths being down. Additionally protection of the most vulnerable groups seems to be working better than in spring so far. During and after the summer most people also have higher vitamin D levels which certainly doesn't do harm. And due to more testing a higher ratio of infections is actually being reported than in spring, leading to an overestimation of relative infection numbers compared to spring.

Accounting for all of that the idea that the virus is mutating and becoming milder is certainly not absurd because that is what many viruses at some point do. But it's probably too early to say.

[Silent Hunter]

Deaths do seem to be right down almost everywhere. More effective treatments are certainly a major reason for that, but maybe the virus is also mutating and becoming milder?

Also a 'harvesting effect'. The most vulnerable have already had it and either survived or died.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

In the last few days the number of cases per day in Italy has remained pretty stable (around 1,400) but I am not sure how hopeful or relieved to be about this.

[urutzizu]

New Community Transmission in New Zealand: four cases in a family which apparently had not travel contact abroad, which is why this is so worrying.

In China in multiple cases reimportation of the Virus had been linked to seafood imports, so it might be that or other imports. Crews of Cargo ships have been mentioned as concerns as well. As the Outbreaks in China show, you can sustain elimination and quash any outbreaks if you act fast and extreme enough. However it also kept much of the population monitoring of everyday activities and contacts in place after elimination, as well as certain social distance measures, preparing the Beijing authorities for what happened and vastly easing the process of eliminating the Xinfadi cluster in Beijing within days. New Zealand doesn't and cannot do that. So, like in it's first wave, must make up for it with severe social distancing measures. It is good that the entirety of Auckland is under restrictions, instead of what Daniel Andrews did of trying to just lock down a ever increasing plethora of local areas. However Level 4, not 3, is needed in my opinion, and mandatory face masks also, the reluctance to impose at first, Melbourne payed for very highly. I personally feel this won't be enough, and such measures are likely to come anyway but too late. But hope otherwise and either way an interesting Case study if any western country can sustain elimination.

New Zealand abandoning it's Stage 3 Lockdown, despite community transmission still continuing. This means, although they won't admit it, they are also de facto abandoning elimination. Western Countries cannot sustain elimination, the population don't have the guts to stick it, Government's don't have the tools to do it.

Ardern is a populist, essentially. And a masterful one at that, in a league with Modi only. The days of weak populists who put the interest of business and "the elites" first are over. Empirically speaking, people love lockdown, and a good populist is a strong leader, who'll do whatever it takes. One of the most isolated Islands, in the middle of the south pacific, 100 cases in the entire country, of which 99% were overseas travellers, and Ardern's response is to inflict a lockdown so harsh that 7% of GDP went up in flames. And she keeps that lockdown much longer than needed, just to drive every single case out. She makes total elimination her whole thing, then a few cases reappear, just as the Virus mortality has massively decreased and much of Europe has learned to live with the Virus. So she locks down the Capital again to drive out the Virus, and then is forced to end it after two weeks (?), and ends up right where she started. And now NZ will be doing what the rest of the World has been doing for months, wearing Masks, limiting mass gatherings and living with the Virus. The whole rollercoaster was epidemiologically unnecessary, economically insane, but the media and the people love it.

Modi's nationwide lockdown is the same. Both have mastered the Art of politics and understood that during the Pandemic, policy failure does not mean political failure and Modi and Ardern are more popular than ever. People want to see collective action, and Trump could be cruising to a landslide right now with exactly the same Pandemic figures, even much worse economic figures, had he just been the strong populist he always dreamed of being. The Pandemic was the penalty before the empty goal, and he takes that ball, runs across half the field to his own goal and shoots it in there. Because he is w e a k.

[palandio]

[...]

New Zealand abandoning it's Stage 3 Lockdown, despite community transmission still continuing. This means, although they won't admit it, they are also de facto abandoning elimination. Western Countries cannot sustain elimination, the population don't have the guts to stick it, Government's don't have the tools to do it.

Ardern is a populist, essentially. And a masterful one at that, in a league with Modi only. The days of weak populists who put the interest of business and "the elites" first are over. Empirically speaking, people love lockdown, and a good populist is a strong leader, who'll do whatever it takes. One of the most isolated Islands, in the middle of the south pacific, 100 cases in the entire country, of which 99% were overseas travellers, and Ardern's response is to inflict a lockdown so harsh that 7% of GDP went up in flames. And she keeps that lockdown much longer than needed, just to drive every single case out. She makes total elimination her whole thing, then a few cases reappear, just as the Virus mortality has massively decreased and much of Europe has learned to live with the Virus. So she locks down the Capital again to drive out the Virus, and then is forced to end it after two weeks (?), and ends up right where she started. And now NZ will be doing what the rest of the World has been doing for months, wearing Masks, limiting mass gatherings and living with the Virus. The whole rollercoaster was epidemiologically unnecessary, economically insane, but the media and the people love it.

Modi's nationwide lockdown is the same. Both have mastered the Art of politics and understood that during the Pandemic, policy failure does not mean political failure and Modi and Ardern are more popular than ever. People want to see collective action, and Trump could be cruising to a landslide right now with exactly the same Pandemic figures, even much worse economic figures, had he just been the strong populist he always dreamed of being. The Pandemic was the penalty before the empty goal, and he takes that ball, runs across half the field to his own goal and shoots it in there. Because he is w e a k.

I recommended your post because it is very insightful but I hope that you don't actually find e.g. Modi's actions good or right. Usually I would be the first one to point out that understanding and explaining is very important and not at all the same as justifying and cheering. But here you sound a bit too much like if you were watching a wrestling game.

At some point we can judge all governments by how successfully they fought the pandemic under which circumstances and at which costs. This is far from being over and one government after the other will "end up right where they started", although we are better prepared now. The thing is that living in Germany we actually have had a very middle-of-the-road approach so far, doing the necessary but without resorting to the madness that other countries have applied. Although I have begun to loathe Söder's new fanbase he is actually a very moderate populist and far better than what there is in other countries. (Going by what I consider "good" and not by being "good at populism".

[Middle-aged Europe]

Epidemiologist-turned-politician Karl Lauterbach (SPD) - probably Germany's most prominent and most hated lockdown hardliner - has said that he's considering a second lockdown to be "unlikely" because by now we have sufficient alternative instruments at hand to trace and contain infections. If Lauterbach says that it probably means smooth sailing through the winter... yay.

[Lord Halifax]

Some good news from Italy: Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/sep/02/coronavirus-live-news-us-wont-cooperate-with-who-vaccine-china-uk-trump-brazil-cases-near-4m

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Some good news from Italy: Silvio Berlusconi has tested positive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/sep/02/coronavirus-live-news-us-wont-cooperate-with-who-vaccine-china-uk-trump-brazil-cases-near-4m

1. Do you need to be such a dick?

2. You gave me a glimpse of hope with "Some good news from Italy" and then... nothing.

3. Berlusconi is still a rascal with power (and a dick himself).

[Tender Branson]

Ahead of the school start on Monday, the Health Ministry has launched a traffic light map for districts and coloured 4 districts in yellow: Vienna, Graz, Linz and Kufstein.

The other 90 or so districts are "green", indicating very low risk.

https://corona-ampel.gv.at

This has created controversy, because the traffic light system has been worked out by a commission of health experts, politicians and representatives of the states and cities, but according to recent infection rates there are other districts which have a higher 7-day or 14-day rolling infection rate and are classified as "green", such as Innsbruck.

The Health Ministry argues that the traffic lights are based on a variety of indicators, not just rolling 7-day or 14-day infections, but also how many ICU beds etc. are available in a city or district and how many of those are currently occupied ...

"Yellow" for a district doesn't really result in much more significant regulations, except for more mask-wearing in restaurants (by workers) and in schools (for people not related to daily school life) and the likes.

[Alcibiades]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54000629

This could be part of the reason why deaths and hospitalisations continue to fall as cases rise in Europe. If you have a dead fragment of virus in your body, your test will come back as positive. So we could actually be overestimating the number of cases. Each type of data obviously shows different things, but I think deaths are the most useful as they are fairly inarguable.

[FrancoAgo]

This could be part of the reason why deaths and hospitalisations continue to fall as cases rise in Europe. If you have a dead fragment of virus in your body, your test will come back as positive. So we could actually be overestimating the number of cases. Each type of data obviously shows different things, but I think deaths are the most useful as they are fairly inarguable.

If true, actually we actually not overestimating the number of cases, we actually overestimating the number of active cases
however this are not estimate

[Helsinkian]

Ahead of the annual Finland-Sweden track-and-field match, the Swedish team's doctor, Sverker Nilsson, has made some strange comments about the Coronavirus -- he insisted that no quarantine was needed after one Swedish runner contracted it:

"He infects others only if you kiss him. You can share a room with him and eat with him without problems. It is spread only through saliva."

Regardless of Nilsson's beliefs, the runner won't participate in the match. This just goes to show how far Sweden has drifted from the rest of the world when it comes to treating this pandemic.