Peter wrote:
You may be right at this point, but I would suggest that a country of 66M people has never been shut down, or anywhere near it. Most of the UK continued to work – which is why the lockdown did so little. A complete lockdown would have totally eliminated the virus in a few weeks.
It is an interesting proposition Peter.
There are a number of countries who have achieved just this, or are very close.
It occurs to me where do they go from there, however. St Lucia is a good example of a very small island nation that I think when I last checked have no new cases. However most of their economy is based on tourism. Two weeks in quarantine would ensure no tourists. Where does a country such as St Lucia eventually go?
Of course if a successful vaccine appears, those that locked their borders and have eliminated the virus, will have found the best solution if their population can be quickly immunised, but, if it doesnt, how do they ever rejoin the rest of the world who will continue to have cases for a long time to come?
If the UK had chosen this course could we have disconnected ourselves from the rest of the world to sustain the elimination of the virus?
It’s a balancing act which way we go. My feeling is that we have probably gone too far with the lockdown strategy, others obviously feel differently and want more shut down. I think it makes more sense to try to protect those most vulnerable and at risk, whilst trying to keep the economy functioning.
Total lockdown elimination in weeks is an interesting one, Just totally impossible to bring in, I doubt all that many people have enough food to comfortably last them a few weeks, and without stopping people coming into the country (both illegally and legally) you risk it popping back up again. In the first few weeks around here I saw very little on the roads other than farmers. On the pavements there were lots more people walking their dogs than usual.
Peter wrote:
A complete lockdown would have totally eliminated the virus in a few weeks.
How so?
In residential care for example which are in lock down 24/7 365 days of the year, because the residents are not cable of leaving the virus seemed to continue very effectively, after the lock down.
If you look closely I think you will find with the lock down in many ways just changed who you infected. It pretty much ensured that you infected your close family, the local sainsburys employees, and perhaps everyone in your building if you live in a flat, sparing your co-workers.
I am not suggesting the lock down did not work but I am not sure it is that simple. i.e. many of the positive effects just came from not being inside next to your co-workers etc.
In countries that have been successful, they got it early enough such that there testing infrastructure was big enough, to TEST and TRACE.
Also today in the guardian they suggest 20% of hospital patients with the virus got it AFTER they were admitted.
If you look closely I think you will find with the lock down in many ways just changed who you infected. It pretty much ensured that you infected your close family, the local sainsburys employees, and perhaps everyone in your building if you live in a flat, sparing your co-workers.
Wouldn’t you have infected all these people anyway? You would have needed somewhere to live and food to eat whether you go to work or not.
The change is that you infected fewer people, not just different ones. You also didn’t infect the waiter at the cafe you didn’t go to, who then didn’t infect half a dozen people you don’t know. Neither have you infected everybody you might have sat next to at a football match and your children didn’t infect all their classmates who then didn’t infect their parents and grandparents. My son won’t have infected his friend from 3 doors down with whom he spent most afternoons after school.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Of course if a successful vaccine appears, those that locked their borders and have eliminated the virus, will have found the best solution if their population can be quickly immunised, but, if it doesnt, how do they ever rejoin the rest of the world who will continue to have cases for a long time to come?
New Zealand appears to have — or at least be very close to having — eliminated the virus. I wonder what they will do now to maintain their tourist industry. Not many tourists would accept a 14 day quarantine.
Jersey_Flyer wrote:
Hi Peter – I think death rates of 0.5% to 1% are way too high…[between 0.1 and 0.2%]
They are too high if and only if the health service remains underwhelmed.
If you just let it rip through the population, a lot of people who would otherwise live with treatment end up dying, because at the peak only a small fraction of serious cases can get adequate treatment. The mortality rate of 0.5 to 1% is when you just allow the virus to rip through the population. That is the point of the lockdown (which is a pretty soft lockdown in any case) – it’s not to reduce the total number of cases, it’s to spread them out so the health service remains underwhelmed and to buy time so health provision can be increased, so everyone who needs treatment to survive it can get that treatment.
As for 0.1%, New York State has already had a death rate of 0.15% for its entire population, not just the infected. If we assume the actual infection rate is 10 times higher than the detected infections (so 3.6 million have actually been infected, versus the 360k known cases) then this gives an approximate death rate of 0.7%.
Has anyone here personally tested positive for the virus? I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of the virus. However I feel that the media reports the worst cases and little is said about the vast majority of the infections which are mild. Thought I would share my experience of having a mild version of the virus, maybe bring a bit of balance and know what to expect if you do have a mild infection.
Beginning of April, both my partner and myself started showing the symptoms. A couple people at her office were also having the same symptoms. We thought calling the hotline was pointless, as reading the UK news about lack of testing, they would just advise us to stay home and not get tested. We called anyways and they sent us to the local hospital to get seen by a doctor. We both got tested and received the results couple of days later saying we were positive. It turns out that Portugal doesn’t have lack of testing kits, not sure why. After that they tested the entire office (about 30ppl) and found half of them positive, many without any symptoms. All of them have now tested negative. None of them had it badly, including a couple that were late 60s.
I’ve had colds that were 10x worse than this. All I had was about 1 week of coughing, slight joint and muscle pains for a couple of days and no fever at all. The worse part of the virus for me was that I lost taste and smell for about 2 weeks. The loss of taste and smell is what makes it is different from a normal cold/flu. Your nose is clear but somehow you cannot smell/taste anything. I could eat raw chili peppers without feeling anything. For my partner the symptoms were even milder. We both tested negative after about 4 weeks. This is not because we had the virus for 4 weeks, but because they put you on a longer queue to get retested as they prioritize the new cases. This is quite annoying as it means you’re stuck inside for longer than needed, having to rely on friends to do your shopping and take your bins out…
The entire episode was quite surreal. I got daily calls from health authorities checking on us. Even though I only told a couple of people, friends I hadn’t talked to in years started calling me asking if I needed help. Some of them were genuinely worried that they would never see us again. All I had was a bit of cough that cleared in few days!
This thread here is all about people who had it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gln8tu/people_who_had_covid19_or_know_someone_who_did/
TL;DR: it varies from nothing or almost nothing, to near death experiences (and most posters on the thread are young people). One of the replies in the thread stands out in contrast:
ICU nurse checking in: I just got cleared to go back to work tomorrow after testing positive a couple weeks ago.
How bad was it compared to the covid patients I’ve treated? Nothing. I didn’t even have a fever or shortness of breath. Our ICU patients are SO. SICK. All the things you’ve heard about on the news. Hypoxia. Blood clots. Multi-system organ failure. We’ve had many people in their 30s and 40s with no pre-existing conditions who’ve ended up just as sick as the 80 year olds, and many of them haven’t had good outcomes, sadly. I work at a major hospital where we routinely get the sickest patients transferred to us from smaller hospitals, so I realize I’m seeing the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, but it is scary.
My symptoms were all so minor and nonspecific that I blew them off or chalked them up to other things (spring allergies, dry hospital air, sleeping poorly on my shitty mattress, working overtime) for several days until I realized I’d completely, profoundly lost my sense of smell and taste. That’s when I knew I had to get tested. Lo and behold, it was positive.
It sucked, but I’m very grateful I wasn’t any sicker than I was AND especially that I have health insurance & work at a place that paid for my covid-specific sick leave as well as having paid sick leave in general. I know there are so many other people out there who don’t have such a safety net and it seems very unfair.
kwlf wrote:
Wouldn’t you have infected all these people anyway? You would have needed somewhere to live and food to eat whether you go to work or not.
The change is that you infected fewer people, not just different ones.
Possibly No.
That paragraph was probably poorly worded. My point was that many aspects of the lock down were ineffective and disproportionate. In my case the virus already stopped my international travel, and put an end to a regional flying job. I voluntarily maintained 2m and washed my hand etc before the lock down like many.
So in order to eat I visited the largest supermarket about 3 times as much as did prior to the lock down. I saw much more (at a distance) of the 40 odd households in my building some of which are in the high risk categories.
I am totally supportive of a lock down because we don’t yet understand all the mechanisms of the infection, that doesn’t stop me analysing if I think all parts of it are effective. Perhaps I should move to Sweden 
Airborne_Again wrote:
New Zealand appears to have — or at least be very close to having — eliminated the virus. I wonder what they will do now to maintain their tourist industry. Not many tourists would accept a 14 day quarantine.
New Zealand is looking to form an open travel area with Australia who looks like they will soon have eliminated it also. I suspect that is the short term way forward. Countries who have eliminated it can travel freely between them, and countries who have not can’t. It means that the economies of those countries who have eliminated it return to normal except for tourism from effected countries.
Many countries will see that as a small price to pay to let the rest of the economy operate as normal without restriction.
There may also be an option (like I think Iceland is trying) where you can travel to the covid free country, but on arrival you have to under go a COVID test. Once you past the test, you’re allowed in and can move around freely. I’m not sure how long it takes to get results. If it’s 24 hours that might well put off many tourists, but also it might attract tourists who look forward to being able to enjoy the rest of their holiday without having to worry about COVID.
Personally I don’t see the point in going on holiday to a country like Spain, Italy, UK etc if when I get there I have to be worried about everything I do and everywhere I go. I might as well just stay at home. But a trip to Iceland or New Zealand where I do a COVID test on arrival and 1 day in quarantine and for the rest of my holiday I get to forget about COVID, is quite attractive.
Of course it isn’t perfect. There are problems too such as what happens if one person on the plane tests positive. Is everyone on the plane sent home as they are possibly infected also but won’t test positive for a few days?
But in any case, such a trip isn’t on the cards until Ireland relaxes it’s 14 day mandatory quarantine for when I return home.
I think international tourism is stuffed for this year no matter what. Domestic tourism might make up for some of that at later stages of the lockdown.
Accepting that tourism is stuffed this year, means that getting the rest of the economy up running at 100% would be a massive bonus for countries who’ve managed to eliminate the virus. Those who don’t eliminate it will still have tourism stuffed, but the rest of the economy will struggle too while people lack confidence to do business as normal.
