Peter wrote:
I feel frustrated that so little media coverage is aimed at people with some sort of a brain. But that’s been a long term trend – decades.
Hear Hear…
And if you really want to cringe watch any of the daytime shows…they live amongst us and breed…
Peter wrote:
I think the main issue is that policy messages have to be aimed at the almost totally thick.The totally totally thick are already in institutions
I feel frustrated that so little media coverage is aimed at people with some sort of a brain. But that’s been a long term trend – decades. Remember some of the old Horizon programmes?
Do you know you might be right – but I never cease to be amazed how much people you might think havent got to grips with it, are way ahead – and do you honestly imagine those that you are referring to listen to the daily briefing on the Beeb – I very much doubt it, so it does make you wonder what the audience the politicians think they are playing to every day.
I think the politicians know the audience: the almost totally thick.
For example, the slogans used make everybody else cringe.
Is the rest of Europe any different? Hard to judge, without spending a lot of time online. One can’t do it easily – in the same way as a mainland European reading the only readable UK paper not behind a paywall (the Guardian) gets a slanted impression of the UK.
Greek opening position mentioned here.
I guess 100% temperature checks are very feasible; they were doing them at e.g. LGTS in 2009. That should catch most of the people who are travelling while knowingly ill, and perhaps most infectious.
Just heard that each day about 7k i.e. 100ppm / 0.01% of the UK gets infected, and about 1/10 of them end up in hospital. So obviously it will take for ever to achieve herd immunity.
Ahh, can freely go to/from Denmark from June 15 
Tings are indeed getting better each week.
Above post was moved to the aviation restrictions thread originally (it didn’t disappear) so we have it in 2 places now
From the Iceland Review Online:
“New data provided by deCODE Genetics shows that .9% of the Icelandic nation has antibodies for the COVID-19 virus, RÚV reports. The data excludes people who are currently infected with the virus or under quarantine.
Kári Stefánsson, the CEO of deCODE, explained that the data indicates that the vast majority of Icelanders is still susceptible to the COVID-19 virus. “A very small minority has become immune to the virus,” he remarked, “such that if we have a resurgence of infections, we’ll have to respond very quickly and decisively.”
I think it is more to it. For instance in Norway the strategy were initially only to slow down the spread for the hospitals to cope. The hospitals had been made super “efficient” during several decades, meaning about zero excess capacity. It looked like we would head into a disaster of gigantic proportions, mainly due to lack of hospital beds. After 3-4 weeks with social distancing, it became apparent that the contamination rate were easily managed (relatively speaking), and so the strategy changed from slowing the virus down to beating it completely. At that time it also became apparent that the virus were much more deadly than what was first believed, by a factor 2-3. So beating it became not only possible, but also the only logical thing to do.
It seems to me that some countries got bewildered into believing in herd immunity, and believed that way too long. It probably could have worked if it wasn’t for death rates being 2-3 times what originally believed, and the fact that beating it was much easier than originally believed. When the true deadliness of the virus became apparent, it was too late to do anything but total and severe shutdown. However, that didn’t help those who had already become infected (by the looks of it, less than 5% in Spain).
Peter wrote:
This is an interesting study for various countries.What is especially interesting is why the UK has done so badly. The article gives several factors.
Thanks for posting it.
The article mainly sees different dates of lockdowns as key to understanding different rates of excess death. In Germany we never had a true lockdown comparable to what Italy, France or even the UK had. You were always allowed to move around freely, it was only a recommendation to stay home or limit yourself to “essential” journeys. So I’m not sure if the dates can be compared like that, but certainly the real-life effect of our “lockdown” was similar to that in other countries, despite legal differences.
