I suspect there is a different attitude toward reasonable precautions there vs here (no proof, just suspicion.) Hide and watch, though. The slow but steady decline in new cases has already been arrested and i predict in the next week or so there will be a significant trend upward. That would be true even without the police riots against peaceful protesters, but even more so with.
11 Likes
I think mostly the behavior is the same: social distancing but with a fair amount of failure, getting too close to other people in the stores and streets. People might be slightly more naturally distant in northern Europe, but balanced by not wearing masks even in shopsâŠ
I was talking last night with a friend who teaches high school in Oslo, what both of us found most puzzling is that the Covid death case rate among under-19s in Sweden (where they never closed the schools) is less than that for Norway, which has half the population.
I think that when things shake out, the biggest difference between countries will turn out to be how soon and well they closed the borders, how soon and well they cracked down on crowded close contact events (indoor restaurants and bars) and superspreading events (concerts).
Hide and watch, though.
I wish I could. Iâm going home soon, thereâs no way to get from here (pretty safe) to home (pretty safe) without 20 hours of flying (yikes!) and a night in LA (yikes!). As an old guy with comorbidities Iâm pretty scared, frankly.
11 Likes
First thing on my mind is this might be due to different approaches in testing.
Can only speak for Germany. As case numbers went up, I learned, testing changed also. Since local authorities are in charge, they first tried to test full families if one index case was reported. Later on, only symptomatic cases were tested (while the rest of the family was put under quarantine, of course). In case numbers, this is reflected by less children and young adults being present in the overall positives, while it can be safely assumed that more were infected.
As usual, the whole thing is multifaceted, multifactorial, and made absolutely opaque (or, if you prefer, not being transparently reported, with all caveats, in official number reports, because the professional reader will know a lot of factors already and these reports arenât written with the general public in mind).
Iâm with you with both other points, but not with closing borders. To the best of my knowledge, there is little effect which can be directly attributed to closing borders. Iâm proofreading another thing right now, will try to look that up later.
5 Likes
I think there is not a lot that can be directly attributed to much of anything at this point. As you correctly write,
As usual, the whole thing is multifaceted, multifactorial, and made absolutely opaque
While I agree that closing borders doesnât always accomplish much â right now the US is closed to Europeans, how does that make sense any more? â I think the successes in places like New Zealand and Hawaii are in large part due to just having kept the virus mainly out in the first place. Likewise in Norway and even Sweden, had they had a border closed to the Alpine countries in February and March the numbers would have looked much different.
Anyway, this is just my speculation at the moment, I am not claiming that there is any solid science behind it right now.
W/r to testing, I agree that testing protocols can artificially inflate or deflate numbers, I am less sure that they would normally have such a huge effect in one direction in one age demographic, and a huge opposite effect in another, so that seems like a low-probability cause of these particular numbers.
3 Likes
Whoa. Iâll probably have that âTake Back Your Minkâ number from Guys and Dolls stuck in my head all day after reading that! 
8 Likes
I forgot about that one. (Vivian Blaine should have won an oscar for the movie.)
The story made me think of this horrendous Cary Grant/Doris Day movie.
6 Likes
Yeah, I wanted 90 minutes of my life back after that one! Agreed about Vivian Blaine - she made me forget the parts when Marlon Brando or Jean Simmons were singing.
8 Likes
AstraZeneca Approaches Gilead About Potential Merger
Bloomberg canât figure out oneboxing?
3 Likes
Hey, no use crying over spilled mink.
Back on topic, there was some good news today.
In my country, for the first time since March 20th, there were no COVID-19 deaths reported today:
Now, this immediately requires caveats. Yes, reported deaths are usually lower on weekends, but our real low day that you can see from the chart is usually Monday, when the Sunday figures are reported.
Despite that, this is still great news. we have been severely hit by this outbreak, and are still at only the first stage of relaxing the lockdown. We really need to get on top of testing and tracing the lingering tail of remaining active cases:
We should be testing everyone in high risk environments, following up aggressively to track down any other asympomatic or non-reported cases, and keep the lid on this.
When you do an international comparison, the differences are stark. Hereâs a table of international comparisons, sorted by deaths per million people.
Overall, weâve suffered proportionately worse than the USA up to this point. If the USA were to hit our death rate, then thatâs about another 33,000 deaths over there. Or another hundred thousand dead if it were to reach the worst rate in that table.
Of course, these are only current figures, as Brazilâs entry in the table demonstrates.
The other thing that this table implies just reinforces the need to test, test, test! The various countries currently making up the UK have a hideously high death rate from this virus. This clearly points to thousands of undiagnosed infections out there- there clearly isnât a 13 percentage point difference in how deadly the same virus is between Wales and England.
(All visualisations courtesy of @travellingtabby )
9 Likes
Well, we can agree to disagree on that.
Still havenât had the time to look at the studies I have in mind checking for models of efficacy of measures. (However, especially NZ and Taz are comparatively low-populated island states. Scandinavia, not so much. 
However, closing the border to prevent infections by homecoming aprés-ski infection stuff might be a bit over the top when you can achieve the same by quarantining those small group of people. Especially if it is your own population coming back from there, which is not excluded from re-entering, normally. Just saying. )
2 Likes
the who still doesnât recommend closing borders for pandemics because it hinders the necessary movement of medical personel and supplies. ( and, as we saw here with bunkerboyâs sudden unplanned closures, people crowd into airports and at checkpoints creating conditions that help to spread the virus. )
also, just because there are a lot of factors, and just because we cant explain exactly variations between counties we shouldnât under play what we do know.
itâs respiratory, masks help, physical distancing is key, donât crowd together in enclosed spaces, wash your hands, donât touch your face, people can have it without symptoms, we need testing and contact tracing like nobodyâs business, minority communities are at special risk, the american healthcare system sucks, many low wage workers are essential workers, nurses deserve a pay raise and need more ppe, trump is actively trying to kill us, a vaccine is still six months to a year and a half away.
iâm not sure thatâs a complete list, but itâs not nothing.
9 Likes
5 Likes
Many nations, including New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Denmark (and Hawaii in the US) have closed borders to the extent possible, with quarantines for people entering the country even if theyâre citizens. That might not be what you mean by"closed borders", but it is what I was suggesting. I will be returning to my home soon, and will happily go into quarantine, even though Iâm coming from a low-infection country.
It doesnât help if you close the borders after your have widespread infection, or if you do it in such a way as to create superspreading events (as the US did). And while I donât necessarily suggest that shutting the borders should be a general strategy for all pandemics, I suspect in this instance that in the long run the places with very low infection rates will mainly turn out to have been places that shut down early.
(ETA: And, just to be clear, I oppose closing borders for political reasons, always. For example, I support completely open borders for immigration into the US. But thatâs a different thread.)
2 Likes
I find with some sites that if you drop the âsâ in https:// then it will one-box. Which is a useful bit of information about those sites to keep in mind.
Letâs see:
(Ah, well, at least it isnât due to that!)
10 Likes
Iâm glad that the situation is improving in your country. Iâm near Philadelphia, and the people who pushed to reopen businesses (despite the number of new cases in some areas are double or triple the level initially set to reopen) have won. We havenât yet assessed the impact of the folks who went out in groups to celebrate Memorial Day just under two weeks ago:
Iâm curious to see if the government changes the reopening plan/phase if thereâs a spike in new cases at the end of the week. They might just leave it at the current level because of the groups that keep complaining about having any restrictions.
11 Likes
I think thereâd be a hell of a difference between, say, 9th Street or Center City reopening, a suburb like Chester reopening, and a suburb like Swarthmore reopening.
1 Like
The counties surrounding Philadelphia had a high number of cases and deaths for their individual populations. Add Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware together and Phillyâs population is 20% lower than that. I didnât initially include Chester County but people also commute from there to town.
Thatâs over 2.5 million in four suburban counties, and 1.6 million in the city. The counties have lots of university and college campuses that become clusters, as well as nursing homes and county seats - where the population more than doubles during business hours.
8 Likes
The audience paying as much attention as I do at a baseball game.
19 Likes
Is Spongebob drinking a beer? He looks happy to be there.
15 Likes
