Ted wrote:
If you want to use it as an immunity passport you need to be reasonable sure that a person is not a asymptomatic carrier.
90% sure is reasonable; it only needs to be good enough to keep the replication rate below one. If the initial rate is, say, 3, keeping 66% of the infected prefectly isolated will be good enough. Of course isolation is not perfect, but 90% is not too bad.
“ On the basis of information from China, medical protocols have been defined worldwide that rapidly provide invasive artificial respiration by intubation for test-positive intensive care patients. On the one hand, the protocols assume that a more gentle non-invasive ventilation through a mask is too weak, on the other hand there is the fear that the „dangerous virus“ could otherwise spread through aerosols. As early as March, however, German physicians pointed out that intubation can lead to additional lung damage and has an overall poor chance of success. In the meantime, US physicians have also come forward who describe intubation as „more harm than good“ for patients. Patients often do not suffer from acute lung failure, but rather from a kind of altitude sickness, which is made worse by artificial respiration with increased pressure. In February, South Korean physicians reported that critical Covid19 patients respond well to oxygen therapy without a ventilator. The US physician mentioned above warns that the use of ventilators must be urgently reconsidered in order not to cause additional damage.”
From https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ , more links there like https://www.doccheck.com/de/detail/articles/26271-covid-19-beatmung-und-dann
One more thing lost in the hysteria, it seems.
Cobalt wrote:
90% sure is reasonable; it only needs to be good enough to keep the replication rate below one.
I agree, however what I said still stands if you don’t maintain your isolations strategy.
This all depends on the percentage of people having the passport and it reliability, versus the percentage who have not had the virus AND to what degree they remain isolated. My statement assumed that 66% would not stay locked in their homes for the next three years.
Peter wrote:
t’s a real pity that most “readable” newspapers are behind paywalls but clearly that is the reality of the business.If the annual sub was low 2 digits, it would be ok, but it is way higher than that.
What bugs me is the absence of a ‘pay-as-you-read’ model. There are several newspapers out there I would like to read and pay money to do so, but I’m just not interested in sports or the domestic politics of Swiss cantons. Therefore, a sub to the whole paper is of very limited value to me.
Silvaire wrote:
Excepting island countries, it won’t be economically acceptable or practical for each little European country to lock itself up like a gated homeowners community, even for a relatively short period. The Schengen zone still exists and the economies are too intertwined – I think they will have to resume proper cooperation quickly or face economic suicide.
It doesn’t work like that. It’s only people movement that is restricted. There is no restrictions on transport of goods, or capital. Meetings are done online. It’s the airlines that are hit the hardest, otherwise import/export goes uninterrupted. No big deal anyway. Each summer farmers need seasonal workers . They are already here, in quarantine 
one week left I think, from Romania (this also show the insanity in the situation, since unemployment is as big as ever. But the farmers want real working people, not spoiled iPhone junkies).
The economic analysis shows that 2/3 of the downturn is from our own restrictions. Only 1/3 is due to measures in other countries. 1/3 of the total is still a lot, but very far from economic suicide. I think dublinpilot is right. It won’t take that long before countries open up, but it will first be those countries who managed to suppress the initial growth. That could happen even before June.
The foreign workers at German businesses with which I personally have a connection were laid off a few weeks ago and went home to their families in different countries immediately, some Schengen, some not. If they can’t return those businesses are in trouble.
dublinpilot wrote:
Interesting that those from the UK seem to keep returning to the idea of herd immunity which their government originally entertained. I don’t think that’s feasible in the long term. For that to work, most people will need to get it eventually. But a lot of those will die, even with full intensive care available.
I would say that’s what everyone expects. How can we deal with this otherwise unless there is a vaccine?
Airborne_Again wrote:
I would say that’s what everyone expects. How can we deal with this otherwise unless there is a vaccine?
The way South Korea is dealing with it?
I am not sure this has been posted here:
https://towardsdatascience.com/covid-19-excess-mortality-figures-in-italy-d9640f411691
Basically for those saying that the official COVID-19 death toll is just a noise in the normal mortality: Here they look at the overall mortality in Italy (a sample of cities, with focus on northern Italy) for the period 1.3. – 21.3., as compared with the same period in 2019.
What they observe is a significant increase:
“The table below shows the data of deaths grouped by the 12 Lombardy provinces, ordered by the number of deaths in 2020. The province of Bergamo is showing the biggest increase with 454% in 2020 w.r.t. 2019, the province of Milan the smallest with a 42% increase.”
Together with other more detailed data, one of the conclusions is "This shows that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 could be two-and-a-half times bigger than the official deaths " (they mean official deaths due to COVID-19).
From circumstantial evidence, similar thing is in effect in other countries with high death rates (Spain, UK, USA, …) – very few people dying at home are tested for the coronavirus, the testing capacity is saved for the living people.
