RobertL18C wrote:
On whether the Sceptered Isles were average or not: if the current border measures had been in place throughout, the UK would have played to the advantage of being an Island. It should be quite straightforward to model this without controversy, and no doubt in a post Johnson era this will be done, and the results will show that performance is well below the average which was possible with some common sense measures.
I don’t know. Border measures are low on the scale of political acceptability, especially post-Brexit. Even now the fragile relationship with Europe prevents Johnson putting France on the red list when, from a purely technical standpoint, he clearly should.
Even if we’d gone tough on passenger travel we’re still faced with the problem of thousands of lorry drivers (crossing both ways every day) who just aren’t going to comply with whatever restrictions you try to impose on them. The great advantage Australia has is that no-one enters and leaves that country repeatedly, day after day, in the course of their work.
Johnson, like every PM, has the problem of needing to view every decision through the prism of an upcoming popularity contest for his job!
172driver.
Thanks for that, is it possible to add New York to that, and possibly Michigan?
My understanding is Florida has had very few restrictions and has half the unemployment of california. Yet they also had a far lower and prolonged spike.
Graham wrote:
The great advantage Australia has is that no-one enters and leaves that country repeatedly, day after day, in the course of their work.
Exactly. You cannot compare isolated islands at the end of the world with a country (the UK) that’s heavily integrated into Europe. There may be the Channel, but in reality the UK is as integrated into cross-border travel (be it biz, commerce or leisure) as any other European country.
Off_Field wrote:
Thanks for that, is it possible to add New York to that, and possibly Michigan?
Yes. You can do that on the FT Corona tracking website which is not behind the paywall. It’s prob90 the best source of Covid data that’s easily and publicly available.
Link to the top level site here (you have to drill down yourself, that’s why I posted a screenshot rather than the link): https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Thanks for that, I didn’t realise that it wasn’t behind the paywall.
It is interesting to see Texas and Florida continuing the downward trend on deaths despite lifting lots of their lockdowns. Although perhaps I’ve not waited long enough to see the incoming big spike. There are bound to be lots of factors, but it doesn’t appear to me now to be absolutely clear that lots of the restrictions are that helpful. Especially when weighed against the damage that they’re doing to the economy and peoples mental health / purpose.
@Off_Field, you are using deaths (which lag by about 2-4 weeks) whereas I was using cases. In the case of cases (isn’t that a wonderful turn of phrase?), you can clearly see Florida going up again. As this obviously has to do with Spring Break, IOW mostly young people, we’ll have to see how that affects mortality.
As an aside, the ‘lockdown’ here in CA wasn’t anywhere near what’s going on in Europe. By now we’re pretty much back to normal, except the wearing of masks.
Off_Field wrote:
It is interesting to see Texas and Florida continuing the downward trend on deaths despite lifting lots of their lockdowns.
There will be a couple of reasons for this:
1. vaccination: nearly all the vulnerable people are vaccinated (e.g. my mother in law in Houston).
2. outdoor weather season: this time of year in Texas (and no doubt in Florida) is the best bit of the outdoor season: the weather is generally good but it hasn’t become hotter than hell yet. By June it’ll be intolerably hot to spend a lot of time outside in the major popualtion centres like Houston and Dallas. We know that the risks of spread are much lower if people aren’t cramming themselves indoors.
Airborne_Again wrote:
There have been too much focus on the formal difference between measures legislated by governments and measures recommended by governments.
Maybe, but also too little focus on what is actually going on.
This is the latest map from ECDC
Clearly the national borders is a factor here.
Compare this with that “stringency index”:
What Sweden did wrong was to act with snail speed during the first wave.
Anyway, yet another vaccine “on hold”, The Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Same stuff as AZ. Moderna and Pfizer have no such complications.
Moderna and Pfizer have no such complications.
Pfizer just gives people heart attacks 
A very very tiny % but if one is speaking in “media language”, this is ok.
I know a young guy who spent 3 days in hospital, from an allergic reaction to Pfizer.
But nobody in Europe talks about this, because after they slagged off AZ, and now that J&J have pulled the plug, Pfizer is all they’ve got.
172driver wrote:
@Off_Field, you are using deaths (which lag by about 2-4 weeks) whereas I was using cases. In the case of cases (isn’t that a wonderful turn of phrase?), you can clearly see Florida going up again. As this obviously has to do with Spring Break, IOW mostly young people, we’ll have to see how that affects mortality.
Yes, I didn’t see the cases graphs on the site. And also think that deaths are surely a better measure of what we’re concerned about. If lots of young people get it with essentially no deaths, then it’s not a big deal.
I do wonder about the effects of the weather as usual with the flu season.
On the local news show this evening they mentioned in passing that over the last week there had been 0 deaths for the entire county. For the first time since Sept, it seems to me that the rapid rollout of the vaccine has helped and I do wonder combined with those that have had it how close we are getting to herd immunity.
