Not surprising at all, and the method of transmission is obvious, with most dog owners licking their dogs, or letting the dogs lick their face 
Jacko wrote:
Nobody is accusing “China” or the Chinese people of wrongdoing. The problem is their, (how can I put it without giving offence?), somewhat authoritarian socialist regime.
People do – accusing them of bringing the virus in the world in the first place (despite indications it has been in Italy before China) for not telling the truth early enough and openly enough (see this thread) and generally for all evil on the planet ;-)
With respect to authoritarian socialist regime, some thoughts from someone who is not an expert but spend a lot of time in China for business in the last 4 years:
– The vast majority of the population doesn’t care at all! And I’m not talking about the part of the population outside of the 300NM coast belt which is more rural and therefore might lack education nd information but about the well educated urban population in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzen, etc. It’s not that they particularly promote it – they just don’t care.
– Therefore much of this argument is western paternalism trying to tell the world how one should think and live – obviously combined with a very strong inferiority complex esp. in the US but also in Europe: If one would really believe ones own system is superior – why shouldn’t one be happy and confident about the competition of the systems.
- In addition I personally think it is always the pinnacle of haughtiness (not only with respect to China but also to other countries/cultures) if I not only (unconditionally) demand that all other cultures have to share my values – but also have to share the values I have exactly at this point in time/history! If you compare China with what we had in some European countries 50 years ago, it suddenly doesn’t look that authoritarian. Or think about racial segregation, or the “Committee on Un-American Activities” ?!?
Yes around 70 years or so the Germans rounded up one group of people into camps and used them for slave labour and killed them off. Now China is doing the same with the Uighurs and harvesting organs to order it seems. Both communist/socialist authoritarian regimes with very strong control of the press. All countries make mistakes in history and the better ones learn and try not to repeat them.
The Chinese manipulation of the media is well known. Taiwan suffered badly from SARS and realised this time were the canary in the coal mine sounding the alarm about the new virus from China, but they were ignored and the WHO spouted the Chinese line of no person to person transmission when the Chinese knew this wasn’t true.
It would be good to know as much as possible about the truth of the origins and what went on as there would certainly be lessons to learn in the future. However we aren’t going to get that from China where they arrest and silence whistleblowers.
With the days getting longer, spring is in sight and the flu cases will drop again. I hope we will open up a bit more through the summer although with the messages coming out from the UK government I’m not confident at all.
We seem to be doing pretty well with the vaccine rollout and I hope this is effective, although I heard Van-Tam saying that vaccinated people may still be infectious. Is this supported by much data or more of a concern / fear?
Moderna vaccine less effective on S.A variant but they are working on a new version for that one.
This is going to be the way to go to stay ahead, together with a shutdown of international travel (as far as possible) to provide the time needed.
The UK is now planning supervised quarantine in hotels. I wonder what happens to say a ferry pilot who has an AOG situation and has to leave the plane and stay in a local hotel. He might then end up stuck in one of these hotels. You have to stay in the room the whole time, to avoid cross-infection of other detainees, so this won’t be pleasant, and it will be expensive.
Even Sweden has reacted now. The new UK variant that has spread in the Oslo area has made Sweden to close it’s border from today and at least until mid February. Illegal to entry into Sweden without a good practical cause (work or living there). They are even patrolling the coast with police boats.
I fair this will get really bad if the UK variant isn’t contained and killed off ASAP. The chances of that? who knows, but IMO they are not great.
LeSving wrote:
The chances of that? who knows, but IMO they are not great
Pretty much zero. Closing borders etc. at this point is like trying to extinguish a fire by prohibiting the import of matches. Only in places where there is still control and a well functioning track-and-trace system, isolation will work.
Cobalt wrote:
Only in places where there is still control and a well functioning track-and-trace system, isolation will work.
All that is functioning well from what I can make out of it, at least that is what they say, the people who should know. But, we will see in the next weeks how it develops. We could get lucky.
This “UK variant” was actually first picked up in Kent, and guess where the busiest sea ports are? This variant could have easily entered the UK via one of these.
The nature of epidemics is that they remain at a very low level for a long time, and only an incredibly alert population and a public health system which sequences the genome of anything looking unusual will pick them up early. The mutation could have occurred in say Belgium or whatever, mid-2020.
Guernsey has some unexplained cases now. Could be from goods. It would be somewhat comical if Alderney (which has been sending anyone arriving after about 20 March 2020 straight to the guillotine; I did my last trip there on 19th March ) bans visitors from Guernsey…
Track and trace doesn’t work well in any “free” country because most people don’t participate – by not scanning the barcode in shops (the shops are usually complicit when that happens), giving a duff name / mobile number, giving a number of a phone which is switched off, etc. Unfortunately this is why home quarantines don’t work either; the resources to randomly visit everyone are not there. But I can tell you that a quarantine is pretty unpleasant at home if one was to stick to it 100%, and that’s living in a nice place in the countryside. It would be much worse living in a town and stuck at home with kids. Most parents come close to going mental then. Hence the pressure to keep schools open.
The UK has vaccinated just under 10% of its entire population now, which is amazing. I am impressed!
LeSving wrote:
I fair this will get really bad if the UK variant isn’t contained and killed off ASAP. The chances of that? who knows, but IMO they are not great.
Way too late for that. The only way to do that, is to do a Wohan like lockdown for about 2 months, Europe wide. And the chance for that is pretty much zero.
Failing that, we need to get the vaccinations into a much higher gear than they are now. It is literally the last chance to stop a 4th wave which would be, if let loose, pretty close to what the Spanish Flu and other mass killing pandemics have done. Until then, we have to keep the lockdowns going and prevent people from meeting as far as possible.
We are in the 2nd week of a not too far reaching lockdown here and right now, figures are coming down, even though by far not enough. However, they are down to about 2000 a day now, Austria is scratchingthe 1000 mark from above, which is a good singn but no way a reason to relax measures, we can talk about that if we get to 10 per day.
One question in my mind is if the explosion of figures since October is not already a consequence of mutations running rampant.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Until then, we have to keep the lockdowns going and prevent people from meeting as far as possible.
People can/should manage their own risk – I’m increasingly coming around to that view.
My biggest concern in all of this is the readiness with which European population seem to have accepted lockdowns. Related to that is the extent to which people are becoming conditioned to the idea that travel, eating and drinking out, sports and recreation, seeing friends and family etc. are things you can do only if the government permits it. I hope that in the UK we are careful afterwards to repeal all the legislation that has allowed the government this control.
