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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

It was in the news e.g. here.

There is pressure to make it 24/7 like Israel did so successfully.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Two good sources:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus; click on the “Coronavirus Tracker” at the top of the list on the right of the page (both not behind paywall)

Biggin Hill

Graham wrote:

Do you mean if there is some alcohol in your bloodstream but not enough to make you automatically guilty of an offence, you can still be done for driving with impaired abilities?

Exactly that – in this case such a two step limit is not present in your jurisdiction.

Silvaire wrote:

Insulting somebody is perfectly legal in the US, and protected as such.

Different countries, different priorities. As far as I know, in the US you have in some states e.g. “aggravated harassment” as an offense and in all states something like “disorderly conduct”. Therefore if you shout “you are damn idiots” at police officers you are by no means fined for the “damn idiots” but very likely for the shouting in public – doesn’t make that much of a practical difference ;-) And again: In such transgressions there is always a certain degree of “interpreting the law” by the police involved. There simply is no way to describe bullet proof in a law, in which situation it is a physical attack to put a hand on someone else’s shoulder and in which situation an affirmative gesture.

Coming back to Covid:

Fuji_Abound wrote:

My concern in the example we were discussing and generally some of the enforcement of COVID rules as opposed to legislation, is they are rules, they arent legislation.

Fully agree – as long as we have the same understanding of “legislation” that it also includes something like executive orders (which are technically also not laws).

E.g. in Hessia we have an executive order that bans meeting more than one other person in public but only a recommendation to not meet more than one in your private home (due to constitutional concerns regarding limiting meetings in private places). That leads to the situation that the police can fine you if you meet two others in public but obviously not when in your private home (you just have to make sure that you stay in the flat when the two others leave and not go with them on the street…).

For that reason I don’t particularly like when politicians talk about “rules” when referring to Covid restrictions: It’s either laws/orders or recommendations but nothing in between.

Germany

Peter wrote:

The good news is that the UK has vaxxed 2.6M people so far. This is pretty amazing. Nobody can understand it. I reckon the army must be running it and they have terminated sidestepped all the yellow jacketed NHS managers

It doesn’t always take the army. My mum’s local GP practice/NHS trust has managed to get her vaccinated with no obvious military involvement! I took her for her second Pfizer jab on Thursday :-)

2.6 million over four weeks is impressive, but in context: the cumulative Covid death toll in the UK is 80K, so dividing by an IFR of 0.5 – 1.0% means 8-16 million have already been immunised by infection and recovery. Deaths in the week to 6th Jan were 4,378 so dividing by 0.5% implies almost 900K were infected in the week before Christmas, or thereabouts. Which was still two weeks before even our government saw a national lockdown as inevitable, so it still looks like a neck-and-neck race between vaccinations and infections.

Single dose vaccination may smack of desperate measures, but I can see why they are doing it.

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

Sobering data point from my doctor here in Gloucestershire in England today ( for those not familiar, an area 100 miles WNW of London).

She has 300 patients on her roster. Approximately 90 of them came down with Covid in the last three weeks, thats 30%. As she is a private GP these tend to be better off, better educated people. Very alarming. Luckily, not one has been hospitalised yet.

Upper Harford private strip UK, near EGBJ, United Kingdom

Cobalt wrote:

Could the US provide some insight there? It has a huge mix, I just can’t seem to find any comparison…

I think the best direct comparison right now would be California (all restaurants & many businesses closed or heavily restricted, masks mandatory inside and outside, gatherings prohibited) with Florida (business largely as usual for several months, including Disneyworld etc). Weather over the past few months has been similar in both places, for reference Florida population is about half that of California. Being on opposite coasts, there is little physical connection between the two. My take on it is that the population scaled data is very similar, the legal restrictions in California have no effect in relation to Florida’s legal practice.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 13 Jan 00:16

An interesting discussion is how things are progressing in Florida as another example of other places in the world outside Europe. I would be interested to hear of the insight of our American friends. I have a particular interest. It seems to me the population in parts is reasonably dense, with, also in parts, a quite aged community. It would seem Florida has not been quite as badly “hit” as Europe. Why might this be or am I incorrect?

I also find the Windies interesting. In most places numbers are very low, and yet they have had regular flights from Europe and American throughout, although they have imposed quarantine restrictions but not unitl the virus had already infiltrated the population.

Is there some evidence that the virus spreads much less easily in a tropical climate? We were told I seem to recall this was not so, but it would seem cases rose dramtically in Europe in the winter and even before the new variant appeared on the scene.

Sobering data point from my doctor here in Gloucestershire in England today ( for those not familiar, an area 100 miles WNW of London).
She has 300 patients on her roster. Approximately 90 of them came down with Covid in the last three weeks, thats 30%. As she is a private GP these tend to be better off, better educated people. Very alarming. Luckily, not one has been hospitalised yet.

Yes; it is everywhere. I still can’t say I personally know more than a few people who have had it, but this is the life of a small business owner living in the countryside and working in an empty office in the afternoons; for example a car dealership which I work above has had a bunch of people get it. Postal services are barely running due to so many being off sick. None of this happened during the first wave. We are both trying hard to not catch it. We have some builders working outside and they are keeping 5m

The Zoe app data, which is generally regarded as accurate, suggests 1-2% are infectious at any time here (Sussex) and much of the UK is much worse. The official numbers are finally coming back down

but the hospitals will see rises for another 2-3 weeks. There are whole families in hospital, and you see them on the news wondering how it happened! I guess most people know that you can get pregnant in under a minute, but this has not really sunk in.

Just heard a story from a friend where, over xmas, restaurants would not book a table unless there were 6 people around it, so people who wanted to go out phoned around to make up the number up to six.

so it still looks like a neck-and-neck race between vaccinations and infections.

Yes indeed, though of course the latter is filling up the hospitals very fast.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

There is pressure to make it 24/7 like Israel did so successfully.

In Norway, with the current paste of vaccination, everybody will have had their two shots in 22 years according to my calculations One can only hope the needle pushers wake up from their hibernation some point in time

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

The state of Bavaria will mandate wearing an FFP2/N95/KN95 face mask when using public transport or going shopping, starting next Monday. There is a certain logic to this step, if we assume that – Germany being in lockdown for nearly a month now without new infections clearly falling (disregarding lots of statistical artifacts due to the holidays) – grocery shopping and public transport must be two of the main occasions where people catch the virus.

This will, of course, put a huge spike on the demand of the masks.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany
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