Doesn’t matter. In many European countries, we noticed how other countries managed their pandemic response, but the learning curve is trailing the infection by orders of magnitude.
Cue in the “is not an Island” yaddayadda, the “but the economy, stupid” yaddayadda, the “nanny state” yaddayadda, and continue in that line.
I refuse to call these"arguments" any longer.
Right now, we are again in exponential growth of case numbers in Germany. Two major states (Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia have already decided that incidence is no longer important. Everyone and their dog in politics is repeating that we won’t have another “lockdown” (FUCK, NEVER HAD A LOCKDOWN, SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU IDIOTS) and, worse, everyone outside politics is behaving as if the pandemic is over.
All the best to you.
I would not count 37°C as a fever, but as normal temp. Anything above 37.6 I would count as slightly elevated, 38 as elevated to mild fever, and everything over 38.5 would be a fever. I believe something like this is also the POV of (germanophone) medicine, in general.
Is this different in Japan?
Also, how is the test regime working? To the best of my knowledge, PCR is still generally covered by health insurance for symptomatic cases, and for those who have had contact to confirmed cases. If symptomatic, you usually would call your doctor, they would tell you to get tested and not come in to the doctor. At the facility, they would ask who your doctor is, for documentation. Else, if the contact tracing app gives you a warning, you can directly go to testing and show the warning to the people taking your data.
Test centres are often in community halls or indoor sports venues reserved for the purpose, with exhibition stand construction style “test streets” to reduce contact.
Over here, communal and state test centres for PCR testing are federally funded, and when these funds are running out, states will close the test sites. Antigen test sites are already reduced, and antigen test will no longer be federally funded or health insurance covered by October.
In Japan, around 36C is treated as normal, and around 37 is treated as a mild fever. The point at which they no longer allow you to enter public facilities is 37.5. My temperature has been bouncing around from 36.8 to 37.3 all day, so I would not worry so much if I did not also have a cough. (In all honesty, though, I think that I just have a throat infection, but I still want to get tested out of an abundance of caution.)
As for the testing system in Japan, I think that it is rather similar. There are really two systems: the free system and the expensive system. The free system is totally free, but requires you to first go through a general practitioner who either administers the test directly or makes an appointment with a larger hospital that has specialized testing facilities on your behalf. If the doctor just makes the appointment for you, it does not necessarily require you to go visit the doctor; the arrangements can be made over the phone. They do also tell you to call your doctor first instead of just going in.
However, it is not simply a matter of being symptomatic; the doctor has to decide that the test is necessary. There are no testing centers that you can visit without a doctor’s introduction (at least not here in Kobe, which is one of the top 10 largest cities in Japan). Even if your contract tracing app tells you to get tested, you still need to contact your primary care physician to make arrangements for testing.
The expensive system is for people who just need a PCR negative test for travel, etc. Anyone can walk in and take a PCR test and the price varies from as little as a few thousand yen to tens of thousands of yen.
Update: I actually had to call around a bit to find a clinic that could do a PCR test, but when I did, it came back negative in just 30 minutes. The doctor then confirmed that my throat was red and a bit swollen, so it turns out that it was just a throat infection, as I had thought. It feels good to be sure!
Note that New Zealand have paused vaccinations because of the lockdown.
You do wonder whether some people feel that indefinite lockdowns until the virus is eradicated are the only way out, and that vaccinations are somehow “cheating”.
No, I’m implying that they have their priorities wrong if they think that vaccines aren’t worth the increased risk of people transmitting the virus while at or on their way to the vaccination centre.
You do wonder whether some people feel that indefinite lockdowns until the virus is eradicated are the only way out, and that vaccinations are somehow “cheating”.
I understand the pause in the vaccination campaign to be about getting a grip on the contact tracing for the known cases. The initial case that triggered the lockdown had travelled across the North Island and had no known connection to international travel. That has made contact tracing and finding the origin particularly urgent. The vaccination pause is only until Thursday.
NZ was later than some nations arranging for the vaccine supply, but have been administering the Pfizer shot since March.
Outside of a few brief lockdowns, life has continued normally and the economy has been ticking along. Our extended family and friends have been out and about more or less normally for a while. This sense of normalcy leads to astonishment when our friends hear we’ve been in some sort of lockdown for 18 months in Ontario . Watching the disaster unfold in Sydney has been a wake up call, though…
Looking through the various Guardian articles, they are certain through genomic comparisons that the Aukland cases are linked to the Sydney outbreak. I guess they’re still trying to determine how it got into the country at all though?
(My guess - wealthy people get to bypass the border controls)
A couple times over the past year I’ve read little snippets of things that make me wonder if it’s actually a coincidence that I started developing symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis shortly after recovering from a presumed case of Swine Flu acquired while traveling home from Hawai‘i in 2009. For the record, I still think it’s a coincidence, but the more I learn, the less I know.
Yes, so people would NOT be going out and spreading the virus… Turns out that although those of us who are vaccinated are less likely to get seriously ill, we can still spread the virus.
This isn’t rocket surgery. They are doing the RIGHT THING here. They are SAVING LIVES by ensuring that people are not SPREADING A DEADLY VIRUS… FFS.
Well, clearly that Commie wants to wreck the economy of her country because reasons? /s
Very few countries are in a position to criticize New Zealand’s handling of the pandemic to date. According to Worldometer they currently have had just 5 deaths per million of population so far. Iceland, which has been highly praised as an example to follow, has had 87 deaths per million. Some European countries that were considered to be pretty good at handling the pandemic early on are orders of magnitude worse. Germany is currently at 1099 deaths per million. And of course the US is about double that.
That is a very interesting hypothesis. As usual, it’s a single study and requires a lot more work before it can be interpreted in context, but it is at least a suggestive association. Stay tuned for more data.
I so love that all the ills he wishes on people are mundane discomforts, but would make life just that much dreary for them.
I get what your saying. My…frustration, I guess, was that whatever news media she takes in hasn’t included any reporting on stuff like the NZ approach. Disagreement would be one thing, but complete lack of information was a surprise.
This, I understand.
While in hindsight, I also can dismiss situations where people are uninformed because of various reasons (disinterest and lack of media coverage among them…), it usually makes me mad when I’m confronted with it.
Why I don’t feel inclined to let people off on this one. It takes a lot of bloody minded effort to be ignorant at this stage of the pandemic. It’s a lifestyle choice that’s killing people. Like smoking or leading your petrol.
friends hear we’ve been in some sort of lockdown for 18 months in Ontario 
.
has been a wake up call, though…
