I think there may be significant “population compliance” differences. There are many allegations in the UK of gatherings out of sight, house parties, even “corona parties” where the young could catch it easily (then infect their parents, etc…).
Something else is interesting. This JP Morgan study (again sorry for the Daily Trash link but the source is not easy to find, and the reporting quality here looks ok) claims that there is evidence that this virus has as yet undiscovered dynamics, is declining by itself, and lockdowns have done actually done very much.
This is different from the usual contrarian position which is basically that most of us have already got it and that is why the infection rates are going down, so the lockdowns are pure economic damage. This proposition has by now been disproven by antibody tests. Well, unless there is some mysterious antibody which nobody knows about…
Peter wrote:
There are many allegations in the UK of gatherings out of sight, house parties, even “corona parties” where the young could catch it easily (then infect their parents, etc…).
Lots of corona parties here as well. The conclusion from the health agency is the people 20 or younger, simply are not part of the equation at all. All schools, all sports (for younger people) are back to normal now, and the number of infected and sick is going down, even though the virus is around. Closing of schools and kindergartens had zero effect on the virus, but huge effect on peoples lives (for no obvious benefit). No one wear masks here. The health agency don’t “believe” in masks for some reason, and maybe they are right. Social distancing and hygiene is perhaps 10x more effective ? who knows? There certainly are no conclusive evidence that masks helps, except maybe as fashion thing, a symbol 
You automatically tend to shy away from people wearing masks, increase the distance.
It’s not like you get sick with just one single virus either. There is a threshold. Among the young people, that threshold is never exceeded. They don’t get sick and they don’t spread it to others.
It’s a bit mysterious the whole thing though. Maybe we never will get all the answers. But why bother? It’s easy to beat, and things are already almost 100% back to normal already, even with the virus around. No excess death either.
Interesting article in todays guardian.
This guy has a different perspective as to why some countries have faired better than others. For example Germany,
Very good article.
I definitely think this thing is not at all well understood.
Peter wrote:
Very good article.
I definitely think this thing is not at all well understood.
Yeah, I read it too.
I really wonder what our “immunological dark matter” could be. My wife (a GP) and I speculate it might be a kind of “cross immunity” from other coronaviruses. These make up a significant percentage of “common cold” cases, especially in autumn and winter. If having had a coronavirus-caused common cold makes one (partially) immune to the new SARS-CoV2 type coronavirus, it would explain while many have only a mild or no clinically apparent infection.
Germany might have more coronavirus immunity than other countries, through sheer luck or coincide. I know for sure that coronavirus already appeared as a differential diagnosis for respiratory infections, including viral pneumonia and viral heart infection, in our (German) medical textbooks from the 2000s.
I know it might be a stereotype but Germans do seem to be more inclined to follow rules. They seem better able to appreciate the good for society by all following the rules rather than the good to the individual by ignoring them.
This probably is very helpful in the current environment, making efforts to stop the disease more effective in Germany than in other places.
Here the government has to try to bring in rules that are strict enough to be effective but lax enough that sufficient numbers of people will actually follow them. That can be quite hard, particularly given that the younger demographic feels immune to the virus, the older generation fears correcting them, and the police don’t want to be caught in the middle which could leave them hated by the public! If the government knew they could bring in rules and knew they would be respected, I suspect their job of stopping the virus would be a lot easier.
Another factor might be that Germany didn’t get seeded by the skiers as well as other places, because Germans love driving and lots of German skiers drive to the Alps. So those who caught the virus didn’t get a chance to spread it to 150 others on the flight back.
In the UK, I have been told over and over by people close to the matter, more or less all the early cases were skiers. And same in the other countries where everybody skiing in the Alps is flying there. Norway and Iceland have already been clearly reported thus.
Brits hate driving and for good reasons. Only a few take the train to the French Alps. Bear in mind there is practically no skiing in the UK, and almost all have to fly. Perfect for spreading a virus. The other countries have also got a long way to drive, but some of them have in-house skiing (France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and of course most of the former communist bloc).
This is also the problem with opening up airline travel. It’s not where you go. You can do self catering and be more or less isolated – like our ski holiday in Cervinia in January. The virus was already well known and I was avoiding packed lifts, and touching door handles. It is the flights where you get a great chance to infect 150 others all in an easy 2 hour session
I am convinced the lack of action on the returning skiers was the biggest disaster of this whole saga.
I have a part-family in Germany and they are convinced there are big lifestyle differences. In very general terms obviously, Germans stay in “aparthotels” which are basically self catering. They shop at Lidl even when abroad; the likes of Waitrose could never be big in Germany. They also don’t dominate the apres-ski bars like the Brits do. The Brits also mostly eat out and generally booze as hard as they can.
Interesting article.
I’ll offer one more data point – the relative ease with which SE Asia more or less shrugged off the virus. Last night I had a long conversation with an old friend who runs a business in Malaysia. Apparently in KL nothing ever got really shut down, they only avoided (IOW prohibited) large crowds. Their infection and death rates are pretty negligible. Same for most places in Indochina. I wonder if these populations weren’t already exposed to all sorts of Corona viruses and are therefore at last partially immune.
As for the difference between the UK and Germany. Could it be that the German health care system is simply vastly better? I’m not talking about the pandemic, but the general health of the population. While living in the UK (+/- 20 years) I always considered the NHS pretty much a sub-Sahara African system that kept people alive, but in relatively bad health generally.
This quarantine thing imposed this late in the crisis is simply beyond me.
As things stand today, the UK has about the most cases still going and THEY are worried that people will bring this home from abroad? That being while people from the UK quite rightly have to do quarantine in some places who have overcome the crisis to a large extent and don´t want it to restart with tourism…
But if quarantine is necessary for people entering, then either it is necessary NOW or rather was before MR Johnson went on his self-experience trip to keep it off the island, or then it is a political b.s. which is not explicable. Announcing a quarantine starting in 2 weeks time opens all doors to people who will get their trips done while they still can and quite possibly leave caution behind.
The UK numbers are going down. Not as fast as they should, for reasons not currently clear to the great unwashed.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
In much of the country there is almost no virus. From https://coronavstats.co.uk/england/utlas, this is Sussex, with a population of roughly 2M:
The UK gets ridiculed by the mainland, as is popular nowadays. Brits don’t care but if one did the same to say German politicians there would be big trouble
