LeSving wrote:
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.
Actually Swedish authorities are not worried about the UK variant as such. They are worried about a major inflow of Norwegians to Swedish liquor stores as liquour stores in the Norwegian lockdown areas have been shut down.
The law of intended consequences is quite a powerful law, isn’t it?
Airborne_Again wrote:
They are worried about a major inflow of Norwegians to Swedish liquor stores as liquour stores in the Norwegian lockdown areas have been shut down
They were for a couple of hours on Saturday, but open since Monday morning. So that’s not it 
From Aftonbladet:
Johan Styrud, överläkare på Danderyds sjukhus och ordförande i Stockholms läkarförening, tycker det är bra att Sverige har infört ett inreseförbud från Norge, för att hindra den brittiska, mer smittsamma virusmutationen som just nu sprider sig i Osloområdet. Men vi borde agera ännu mer kraftfullt, anser Styrud.
Peter wrote:
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.
Who knows where it comes from, that’s what we call it nevertheless, or more precisely: The British variant, or the English variant literally translated (50/50 I would say). Looks like the Swedes do exactly the same judging by the news quoted above, or rather the “English miutation”. That’s where it comes from when entering Norway (could be from Denmark as well, but they have it from the UK). Actually it could be from Holland or Belgium also, but all traces for now go back directly to the UK. 40% of all cases in Israel are from the UK variant at this point. Who knows, maybe it originated in Israel?
Mooney_Driver wrote:
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.
Norway pretty much killed it in the first wave. The reason it came back was from import. Way too much unrestricted travel across the border. We can do it again. Besides, the highest risk groups are already vaccinated by now, so the the edge of the virus is not nearly as sharp anymore. The next couple of weeks will show.
My realistic (IMO ) view of the situation right now is that it eventually will fizzle out and become exactly like a seasonal flu. Maybe more infectious, but since a whole lot more is likely to take the vaccine, a great deal of herd immunity will also kick in making it nothing but a nuisance, statistically speaking. Which it already is if you are below 60 years old.
One is “just” 10x more likely to die of it, or become seriously ill, than from the “flu”.
From the POV of govt policy one cannot ignore this, because it “kills” the health service (in every country) if nothing is done.
Plus the long term effects which seem to be much worse than from the “flu”, especially for younger people, say 40-60, who seem unaffected by the “flu” other than having to stay in bed feeling crap for a couple of weeks.
Well, there is another very common disease that is a lot worse for the younger population. It’s called “kiss sickness” here, or “mononukleose”, caused by the herpes virus “Epstein Barr”, EBV. I have no idea what it is called in English. 90 % of the entire population catches this disease one time in their life, but if you catch it when you are in your younger years, less than 30, you can get real ill, and it takes months before you recover. It infects lots of organs. I have heard of people being ill for at least a couple of years. It’s not very contagious, thus it will never start a pandemic. But since as good as everybody eventually get it at some point, it stays around. I would say this is much worse, by several order of magnitudes than Covid has shown to be for the younger population.
Peter wrote:
From the POV of govt policy one cannot ignore this, because it “kills” the health service (in every country) if nothing is done.
I find this data interesting… the infection numbers can be normalized to the population pretty easily.
Florida has 1179 deaths per million with a completely open economy and no restrictions since September. Population about 20 million.
UK has 1447 deaths per million with lockdowns. Population about 68 million.
An interesting article on how the Pfizer vaccine works:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
Malibuflyer wrote:
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” ?!?
Having a quick catchup and so saw your post Malibu.
I think the point you are missing however, is that whatever the political motivation may, or may not be, there is NO excuse in science, EVER, for not being open, honest and sharing, which the Chinese regime has failed on every account. I am afraid in utopia I see it this simply, and I think this is inexcusable. Whether the Chinese people care or not is irrelvant, the regime has adopted this policy and they are responsible for its consequence.
I dont think it has anything to do with sharing values either.
It has everything to do with if this is your policy with biological material you stand the risk of killing millions of people unnecessarily because of your failure to act, and for me this is inexcusable. Whether this charge can be leveled with Covid is irrelevant, whether it might or might not, I have every reason to doubt if this virus was man made and was accidentally released, then China would have been no more open or transparent.
In what way do you excuse their lack of transparency?
An interesting article on how the Pfizer vaccine works:
That’s an amazing article!
Graham wrote:
People can/should manage their own risk – I’m increasingly coming around to that view.
It is a fair point of view, but how?
1. How do rest home / nursing home residents manage risk,
2. How do people in workplaces manage risk when bosses are not effectively doing so,
3. How do less intelligent people manage the risk when they really dont understand,
There are many other examples.
