LeSving wrote:
DavidS wrote:
That’s not an option for e.g. the UK
Which is only an excuse for not doing anything. Either one does what the situation demands, or one left with the consequences. The thing is though, it’s the population at large who has to live with, and pay for, those consequences. And pay 10 folds in comparison. Either you grab the bull by the horns, or you don’t. There is no other options.
OK, I’ll bite :-)
Not eating is not an option!
… and so the lorry drivers must still cross our borders. As you may have noticed, the English virus ‘started’ in Kent. I wonder if there are any big ports in Kent which handle lorries?
:-)
DavidS wrote:
Not eating is not an option!
Perhaps the lockdown fantatics could let everything go full mad max. Only allowed to eat what you can grow or hunt or happen to have on stock? :)
The UK vaccination figure for yesterday is out, and unfortunately it’s another major day-on-day decrease. 204k, which is over 100k less than the best day (Friday, 324k).
Lack of supply is evidently really starting to bite, and unless there is a significant increase soon then the mid-Feb target for all the high-priority groups looks increasingly unlikely.
For my own interest (but others may be interested) I just put together this rather primitive graph of vaccine against total to date Covid infections for the UK population.
The last data point is about now, and each previous data point is about a month ago.
Interestingly the UK data on IgG antibody tests really does show the dip, which clearly cannot be correct, but gives a broad picture of the rate of advancement of the virus across the population. I have used the median figures throughout. It was very difficult to find the data!
It comes back to my earlier post about the race being on for mankind (well the UK kind) to catch up and overtake the viruses rate of infecting the population.
I might get around to a world graph, which doubtless would be depressing reading.
Interestingly in recent months the virus has been doing almost as well as our best efforts to get the vaccine into people’s arms.
It will be interesting to see when the tide starts to turn.
If the data can be believed, we are about where the virus was in September, somehwere around six or so months after infections started in terms of equivalent numbers of vaccines in arms. The virus in other words is still 3 months ahead.
The proper modelling would be interested to factor in vaccines, and I obviously have attempted this. Depending on where herd immunity really starts to impact, the people who have been infected combined with those vaccinated will start to increasingly slow the spread of the virus (given all the positive assumptions we make about immnunity). I am guessing they will need to start excluding vaccinated people from the IgG data and make some adjustment to the raw data.
well my trip to Europe got chopped in a funny way due to covid
BA sent me a note of cancellation of my second leg KDFW-HEATHROW-FERIHEGY with the leg from London to budapest being cancelled (march trip) so I got a code for a refund but I could not get a cancellation for the first leg. Phones don’t answer etc all I could get was a voucher with a 12 month limit……
interestingly the reservation was made 7 months ago and the cost was 3 times what it is offered now by BA. I guess there are no London budapest flights on the horizon for march. Impossible to talk to any one at BA even calling England.
On a different but related Sweden reported 13 deaths in elderly persons receiving the vaccine and Norway had more. No reports here in USA about it.
I dont think they are entitled to deny you a full refund.
You should set out in writing that you dont wish to accept the vouchers and would like your money back! (assuming you do!).
It is a quick one stop to a small claim, and while there are considerable delays in the case being heard, I suspect it would result in the desired settlement well before.
As a point of reference regarding transmission of the virus on sufaces.
The wife unfortunately knows two clients, who have independently died from Covid.
They were elderly but fully capable of being home alone. Both isolated with no-one in to their homes and had not left home.
Infection was either from post/parcels or food deliveries.
If it was from contact with delivery people cannot be ruled out, but as they were vunerable and this being careful, any contact should have been minimal so either way this is a very unfortunate set of circumstances for these two people.
Graham wrote:
For them to close the borders is quite easy – people just don’t make that major business trip and don’t take that major vacation. The closure of the borders does not inconvenience masses of people whose everyday lives involve constantly crossing those borders.
Having been through Australian quarantine in December, and seen this first hand. I would say it is not easy at all. The big difference is that is has shown to be very effective. The UK could if it wanted to take the same approach, but the cost is huge and you keep the borders closed indefinitely. In the case of Australia it looks like Australian Nationals will have been restricted from travelling from their own country for at least two years. i.e. serious quarantine for all incoming “Australians” and all others prohibited as well as normal exit prohibited for residents into 2022. Very doable for the UK, but certainly exceptionally painful. By doable I mean from a practical point of view, but from a political point of view I think it would be impossible. I don’t think citizens of the UK could be convinced of this approach.
For example truck drivers would not be able to leave there vehicle and would have to turn around at their destination, and that sort of thing. Which is the sort of thing that happens in Australia, since they also have state based border controls. Forget about flying over the channel or further for the foreseeable future, GA or CAT even to see family. Easy enough if you hand out $20,000 fines 
Another example is it is $4000 in NSW if you sell a coffee without the purchaser signing into your premises using their phone.
There is currently no clear exit strategy, forget vacinne passports. If there was no vacinne or a very effective therapeutic on the horizon then I think there would be big problems. Really they were just playing for time, which in hindsight was smart.
The local news is still dominated by covid, the difference is one person having it is a big story. If someone is infected then they trace everything, which they seem to be able to do by genomic sequencing of the virus, using the very small mutations that occur they can tell reasonably accurately whom gave it to whom.
Ted wrote:
The UK could if it wanted to take the same approach, but the cost is huge and you keep the borders closed indefinitely.
Plus:
- More people travel in and out of UK each month than in and out of Australia in a year
- Australia has only about 5% of it’s food imported (with a huge share of these being non essential and luxury foods) for UK it’s about 30% (with a high share of fruit and vegetable)
GA_Pete wrote:
Both isolated with no-one in to their homes and had not left home.
So the waste piled up in their kitchens for months? Kind of smelly …
No, not really kidding! Just want to illustrate that “isolated” in the own home is typically not really isolated in a medical sense. Even people with the best intentions doing everything as good as they can typically have face to face contacts. Not only with delivery people but also with the mailman, etc. When bringing out there trash they need to leave the home as well – and you can’t blame them for having chat with their neighbor who is in the very same unfortunate situation when they accidentally meet at the dustbin.
If contact transmission from food delivery really was a major mechanism for infections, one would observe a multitude of cases from individual delivery tours where a packer or delivery person has been infected, Haven’t heard of this globally yet.
