Same-same in Germany. RKI warns people are currently not taking precautions serious enough. Also, as expected, the infection dynamics change from local clusters to a dispersed model, i.e. something of a “background infectiosity” in the whole population.
That makes it difficult to say, BTW, if continued ‘lockdown’ measures would have changed that.
What’s for sure is that traveling does hasten this dispersion. And Germans are holidaying the shit out of this pandemic. I am very ashamed of behaviour reported from, e.g., the Balearic Islands, Bulgaria, even Austria. (That said, people coming back from, e.g., Italy and southern France told me they were shocked how little social distancing was happening there, and specifically pointed out they weren’t talking about tourists. I get the feeling we are somehow dooming ourselves in Europe to follow the US lead, in a slightly different way.)
I’ve been scanning news in various languages - Italian, German, Spanish, and French. I’m surprised to see people in so many countries (there are reports and stories from nearly every continent) either wearing no mask at all, or just covering their mouths. What’s odd is seeing people working together, and half the people are wearing the mask properly but no one seems to correct the folks who are not.
I wish that this was covered in one of those mask videos (or all of them).
Seems like people talking past each other. Nate is correct in saying that lockdowns alone were never proposed as a sole solution, but he’s not claiming here that technology is a substitute for governance. Rather, lockdowns enable technological (or more precisely, scientifically justified) approaches to be effective. That’s what a “manageable” level means.
How many people has he exposed? Congresscritters tend towards older and higher risk individuals, esp on the right, so this could have consequences far beyond the average. Or just a nice case of schadenfreude.
I don’t think it’s a binary thing, but I don’t think you should talk about making a strategy based on a vaccine without saying that it’s a bad strategy.
When this got started, the best case scenario on a vaccine (assuming our current technology can make one! Still a question!) was 18 months. That’s next August. Our treatments have all also been underwhelming: shaving percentage points off of fatalities, no mention of whether they reduce the permanent damage (and likely, many of the people suffering permanent organ damage are not being treated, since they’re not being hospitalized, and often don’t know it’s happening until it’s too late).
I don’t think there is an honest strategy of mitigation ahead of a vaccine that wouldn’t look exactly like a mitigation strategy with no expectation of a vaccine.
Gohmert, who was in attendance at Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr, is the seventh representative to contract the virus. He was spotted without a mask on Tuesday speaking with Barr within an arm’s length prior to the hearing.
One-fifth of the inpatients treated for corona died
A good fifth of the corona patients who were admitted to German hospitals in spring did not survive, according to a study. Mortality was particularly high, at 53 percent, in patients who were ventilated, according to an analysis by the Scientific Institute of the AOK [a health insurance], the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine and the Technical University of Berlin. In total, the study was based on data from around 10,000 patients, of whom around 1700 were ventilated. Of the hospital patients who were not ventilated, 16 percent died.
This is Germany we are talking about. Really good healthcare, and at no point, hospitals were overwhelmed so far.
More info, for you to throw into gtranslate or deepl:
Nate specifically says “not just vaccines though”. Better testing and contact tracing, and better understanding (of e.g. how helpful masks are). All of those expand what a manageable level of virus looks like. I consider Nate’s point as more arguing for a more holistic approach that offers a clear sense of the objective of lockdowns, and what needs to be done beyond just a lockdown.
