The Dutch high council of law recently made euthanasia in cases of dementia legal by refusing to prosecute a doctor who euthanized a patient for this reason. At the patient’s request obviously.
This is the News… THIS IS THE NEWWWWWWWS!
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NI hasn’t been doing great before their last lockdown either
I think that’s the point – they managed to go from a very high reproduction rate to below one and get themselves some breathing space, which is what we tried and didn’t manage to.
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Yeah I think a lot is in direction of travel as much as absolute numbers. It is so hard to measure though with so many variables. Wales went into a strict 2 week lockdown in October when cases started to surge and it was advised by the Sage advisory board and did it quickly while England followed reluctantly 3 weeks later.
Wales’ numbers dropped and were being lauded as the model, however now they have gone off the scale, higher than before and are the worst in the UK. I’m not sure anyone exactly knows why. Was it complacency when they came out? A feeling of ‘we’re out and now anything goes’? Will the trend be repeated 3 weeks later in England? Are nationwide or locally focused measures the best?
Here we’ve had a resurgence starting in October too albeit the numbers are still way lower than in Europe. We had extra restrictions nationally for a month but it didn’t really make any difference to the infection rates. Now they are micro targeting, a block just a mile from me had a cluster of cases and they have blocked it off completely. So I can go to the pub but they can’t leave the block without police permission. We shall see if that works.
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Wales’ numbers dropped and were being lauded as the model, however now they have gone off the scale, higher than before and are the worst in the UK. I’m not sure anyone exactly knows why. Was it complacency when they came out? A feeling of ‘we’re out and now anything goes’? Will the trend be repeated 3 weeks later in England? Are nationwide or locally focused measures the best?
That’s interesting. Looking at the numbers, it seems like it was indeed complacency:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/003F/production/_116036000_walescaserate.jpg
The growth after the firebreak is pretty much the same as before, only when they hit the point where the firebreak was introduced the first time round, they didn’t do it again. So it seems like the lesson is that it’s really hard to keep numbers down, even if you’ve managed to reduce them for a while.
Here we’ve had a resurgence starting in October too albeit the numbers are still way lower than in Europe. We had extra restrictions nationally for a month but it didn’t really make any difference to the infection rates. Now they are micro targeting, a block just a mile from me had a cluster of cases and they have blocked it off completely. So I can go to the pub but they can’t leave the block without police permission. We shall see if that works.
Yeah, that’ll be interesting to see.
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Responsibility? From this government? All their focus is going to be on not being the ones who cancelled Christmas, at any cost.
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Responsibility? From this government? All their focus is going to be on not being the ones who cancelled Christmas, at any cost.
Besides, isn’t Brexit more important than a few million human lives?
Priorities, Ben. Priorities.
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That vaccine had better start rolling out pretty damn fast.
When a vaccine is the only real hope for a solution, it really makes a poor argument for the contemporary democratic, western consumer culture we have. It’s practically the same with individual medicine.
“Mr. Jones, you have high blood pressure and early signs of arteriosclerosis, but you can manage these with a change in diet, reducing alcohol consumption and some exercise.”
“That’s not gonna happen, doc. Isn’t there a pill for this?”
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When a vaccine is the only real hope for a solution, it really makes a poor argument for the contemporary democratic, western consumer culture we have.
I don’t see how “I want to see my friends, hug my parents, and allow my children to play in the park” is anything to do with consumer culture. Cases aren’t going up because people are rushing to the shops (round here, shops are still comparative ghost towns), they are going up because interacting with other people is a fundamental human need.
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I don’t see how “I want to see my friends, hug my parents, and allow my children to play in the park” is anything to do with consumer culture. Cases aren’t going up because people are rushing to the shops (round here, shops are still comparative ghost towns), they are going up because interacting with other people is a fundamental human need.
It somewhat defeats the purpose of interacting with people if you know you’re putting them and yourself at risk. If people cannot assert enough discipline in a global pandemic to put off personal self-gratification then it is a sorry state for our society.
Hugging one’s parents gives that person some emotional satisfaction that they think they need or deserve. But it puts an individual’s desires above the healthy and safety of everyone else including their own family and friends. Consumerism isn’t about simply buying things. It prioritizes personal satisfaction and often temporary and inconsequential gratification over anything else no matter the circumstances.
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When a vaccine is the only real hope for a solution, it really makes a poor argument for the contemporary democratic, western consumer culture we have. It’s practically the same with individual medicine.
“Mr. Jones, you have high blood pressure and early signs of arteriosclerosis, but you can manage these with a change in diet, reducing alcohol consumption and some exercise.”
“That’s not gonna happen, doc. Isn’t there a pill for this?”
To be fair though, what you’re talking about there is countering unhealthy effects on your body with responsible behaviour. That is not really possible with the pandemic, just like it isn’t possible with many individual diseases to fix them by changing your behaviour.
Well, if every acts responsibly, there is a chance of keeping the numbers down, but it’s not a long-term solution. Yes, China’s non-democratic consumer culture has managed to control the virus, but it’s not like they’ve completely eradicated it and don’t need any counter-measures at all anymore.
The only real hope to defeat this kind of infectious disease has always been a vaccine. It’s how we eradicated smallpox, still the only human infectious disease that we stamp out of existence. And conversely to your view, you could also see it as a testament to modern society that we seem to have managed to achieve the ability do defeat the pandemic in such an amazingly short time.
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Hugging one’s parents gives that person some emotional satisfaction that they think they need or deserve. But it puts an individual’s desires above the healthy and safety of everyone else including their own family and friends. Consumerism isn’t about simply buying things. It prioritizes personal satisfaction and often temporary and inconsequential gratification over anything else no matter the circumstances.
Hugging people, showing affection, being with your loved ones isn’t about “inconsequential gratification”. They’re about what makes us human. These are essential, humane needs, that we’re wiping off the table.
It is a bit sneaky to call it”personal satisfaction”, basically calling it egotistical, when it is a need that is common. (I think most people need companionship, although maybe not everybody.) When you are together with people, it is not just about you feeling good, it is about making others feel good, about shared moments. It is like calling a need for water egotistical when everybody needs it.
The destruction this social distancing etc is causing is very real. There will be a big price to pay.
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I have had face-to-face contact with exactly two people (one of them on only three occasions) since 22 March, and I know people who have had less than that. I call myself an introvert, and usually shun social activities anyway, but even I feel this unnatural way of living having an effect on my mental health. My sleep has suffered, I lie awake worrying about my friends and family, I know the quality of my work has suffered, and I am not able to rouse myself to do any of the few (normally) enjoyable activities that are still allowed to me. I wouldn’t say I’ve been “happy” at any point over the last eight months.
If that’s how it affects a self-proclaimed “anti-social” person, how are the rest of the population coping? How are the elderly who live alone coping?
Maybe everyone else is fine and I’m just a wuss?
But I think — without denying the seriousness of Covid-19 — that our current actions are destroying the mental health of an entire generation, and we’ll be feeling the consequences for many years to come.
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I presume though that you consider these measures a necessary evil in the current circumstances, given that you could have legally gone much further than that in terms of meeting up with people and seeing them face-to-face over the past year. It seems as though you’re erring on the side of caution. (Rightly so, I would suggest.)
I don’t disagree that there will be a huge health impact from all of this, both mental and physical (hospital visits are way down which is leading to delayed treatments and diagnosis). But at the same time there has to be a trade-off so that our health and the healthcare system is not overwhelmed here and now.
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I have had face-to-face contact with exactly two people (one of them on only three occasions) since 22 March, and I know people who have had less than that. I call myself an introvert, and usually shun social activities anyway, but even I feel this unnatural way of living having an effect on my mental health. My sleep has suffered, I lie awake worrying about my friends and family, I know the quality of my work has suffered, and I am not able to rouse myself to do any of the few (normally) enjoyable activities that are still allowed to me. I wouldn’t say I’ve been “happy” at any point over the last eight months.
If that’s how it affects a self-proclaimed “anti-social” person, how are the rest of the population coping? How are the elderly who live alone coping?
Maybe everyone else is fine and I’m just a wuss?
But I think — without denying the seriousness of Covid-19 — that our current actions are destroying the mental health of an entire generation, and we’ll be feeling the consequences for many years to come.
Do you live alone? I think there is a difference between people who live with families and people who live alone. Obviously if you live alone there may be increased feelings of isolation with the lockdown measures, people who live with others still have the contact with those people.
For your own mental health I would advise at least having a chat with someone every now and then. For me going to the shopping center to get my groceries is an opportunity to have some contact with other people.
And no, everybody else is not fine. There is a huge increase in diagnoses for depression and anxiety.
When I walked to the shopping center today I saw someone put his arm around someone else and I cried, because I realized I hadn’t had any physical contact with anyone since over half a year.
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I think it’s unarguable that there are and will be more major mental health impacts from the social distancing needed to contain Covid.
But we’ll be here to work on responding to them due to having done that social distancing.
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In Canada, the worst two Provinces are the largest (Ontario & Quebec). Just is.
3rd largest is the furthermost western, British Columbia, and after being exemplary everyone dropped their guard, fucked it up, and now X-mas with your immediate household only. No travel, visiting, etc., but on the honor system.
Side note: shame that we fucked up, but everyone else did too.So in between B.C. and Ontario are the ‘Prairie Provinces‘ Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
These numbers are a shitshow when you look at ‘per capita’
Alberta’s population is 4th (but numbers worse than B.C.)So they’ve had to go a little extreme to get to the younger crowd.
Alberta unveils menacing COVID-19 mascot in new ad campaign
That pic just creeps me out. I hope it works.
_________________________________________________________So, in general I hope we can hold on and do good for just a little while longer.
But on the subject of how this is affecting some people, well, I may say things like “I know this is hard…” but the truth is I don’t know. I may need to be told some things, but old enough to know that when some verbalize it they have actually been screaming it in their own way.
(hard time getting perfect and politically correct, so I’ll just type)
It’s okay to ask for more from (I’ll say people like me). More communication, or plan it out and set aside time for it.
Not just Gramma. Check on everyone.
And if you are just kind of waking up, help another to wake up too.Some generations have had great things asked of them, and they responded.
Here, it felt like the world was ending, but how many only have the accomplishment of hoarding some toilet paper and whining about their printer running out of ‘cornflower blue’?Ah! I’m serious, just not good at being preachy.
But be good to each other. -
I think it’s unarguable that there are and will be more major mental health impacts from the social distancing needed to contain Covid.
Yup. Unfortunately in the case of something as major as a pandemic or war the hard truth is there isn’t an outcome that isn’t shitty. I think people imagining otherwise are probably not happy facing that reality because in truth whatever logical path you go down ends that way.
Covid itself is shown to cause depression and also PTSD. So you relax to alleviate mental health issues and then cause some more, obviously serious illness and death in loved ones will also cause problems for those around them.
I had a friend the other day go into the oft heard argument that concentration on Covid is hampering treatment of other conditions, I agreed but then the question he couldn’t answer is what you can do about that? We can magic up money and build field hospitals in a week but we can’t do that with medically trained staff. So essentially you are left with two answers:
1) Decrease Covid levels so that burden is small on the healthcare providers, which we know is very hard to do once it is in a country.
2) Just ignore Covid patients and leave them untreated to suffer and die in higher numbers.
That really is all there is outside wide release of a vaccine, the people calling out about mental health or cancer have valid points and are usually coming from a good place (some are using it as a cover for economic arguments) but they never proffer an answer to that fundamental problem. There isn’t a happy answer to a new condition that sweeps your society, there’s just a balance of bad things.
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I don’t think it’s selfish. Everything is a balance to be struck but I just mean to emphasise there is no good answer. Isolating is bad for your mental health, especially for single people, it can affect the economy and jobs which is also bad for mental health. Getting Covid-19 is proven to cause depression, anxiety and sometimes PTSD as well as physical damage, loved ones dying and suffering alone is bad for mental health.
Everyone is trying to find a balance in the middle of these bad outcomes because there are no good outcomes in a global pandemic. That’s why we do have bubbles and reduced numbers that can meet up, why governments (in Christian countries anyway) are going all out to have as limited restrictions as possible at Christmas because it’s an important time for social interaction.
We may never know the correct balance because variables are so huge in each country but the reason nobody is ignoring it but taking various measures in the middle is because that outcome is awful too. It means your psychiatrists get drafted into Covid wards and ICUs as their caseloads pile up, this happened with Mike back in April, he’s a sleep specialist but was intubating on the ICU instead.
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Honestly I have very bad ideas about all this, we’ve got a new strict lockdown and I’m just waiting for society to collapse. I believe we’re making all the wrong choices.
As Gar said, there really is no perfect solution to this. There were always going to be sacrifices and costs regardless of the path taken.
I think now that vaccines have started rolling out, it will eases some of the psychological pressures on society. We can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
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We can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
A very looooonnnnnnnggggg tunnel.
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New Zealand keep being awesome. Announced their Covid vaccine plan and said they have acquired enough that everyone in NZ would get one but they’d also provide them for all their neighbours in the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu free of charge.
Why can’t we all have a Jacinda?
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Ghislaine Maxwell Calls Jail Oppressive. Prosecutors Say She Has It Easy.
Uh, it’s jail.
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I’m a bit jealous that you Anglos have already started vaccinating. It feels a bit scary now. Lockdown and I hear ambulances here a couple of times a day. If all goes well we’re supposed to start vaccinating in the first week of January or maybe the last week of 2020.
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Ghislaine Maxwell Calls Jail Oppressive. Prosecutors Say She Has It Easy.
Uh, it’s jail.
My feeling is she’ll get bail and follow the Polanski path.
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She’ll become a director?
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Ghislaine Maxwell Calls Jail Oppressive. Prosecutors Say She Has It Easy.
Uh, it’s jail.
My feeling is she’ll get bail and follow the Polanski path.
Or more likely she’ll be “suicided”.
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I’m a bit jealous that you Anglos have already started vaccinating. It feels a bit scary now. Lockdown and I hear ambulances here a couple of times a day. If all goes well we’re supposed to start vaccinating in the first week of January or maybe the last week of 2020.
We’re supposed to start from the 27th. My dad’s over 80, so he should be amongst the first to get it… it’s mind-boggling to imagine that maybe in a few weeks he can meet his newest grandchild after all.
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One thing to bear in mind is even though the UK and then the US have some head start it will help in the rollout the smaller your country is. 130,000 were vaccinated in the first week in the UK, it’d take 515 days at that rate to do everyone. It would take 130 days for the Netherlands or 38 for New Zealand.
I’ll be very surprised if I get the vaccine before summer. And bear in mind this is a two-part vaccination, so they’ve only started rolling out half a vaccine so far.
I don’t really understand the logic of giving it to the oldies first. They’re probably far less likely to go out and about spreading it. Vaccinate the healthcare workers and people whose job requires that they meet lots of people – teachers etc. – to help arrest the spread of the disease. The US does at least appear to be doing that much right.
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It’s a contentious one. Was looking at a debate from the US side today that argued the other case and old people should go first like in the UK.
I guess it depends on the goals you have. To reduce the death rate you go for the most vulnerable, to reduce the spread you go with the ones in frontline roles with a lot of contact. The other thing is you’ll be quite far down the list before you really see a significant impact on transmission.
I tend to think NHS frontline staff should be in with the first tranche but I’d leave the rest the same. The critique of the US rollout was the definition of ‘essential workers’ was incredibly wide. No offence meant to Todd but I don’t think sewerage departments are in that position and they can wait for their age group to come up.
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No offence meant to Todd but I don’t think sewerage departments are in that position and they can wait for their age group to come up.
Oh, none taken. I’m in the Finance department but because I work for a municipal government, I’m considered “essential personnel”. I can understand Fire and Police getting it. If I get moved up the line, I’m not saying no but I really could wait.
A coworker in my department is on the board of a retirement community and because elder care facilities are receiving priority status he will be receiving the vaccine (1st shot on December 30, 2nd shot on January 20). This board meets every few months and I don’t think he even goes on site that often but because he’s associated with this type of facility, he gets moved to the front of the line.
In the rush to get the vaccine out, some details were genuinely not thought through.
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What is the contact tracing like where you all are?
Pretty much nonexistent. Due to right wing, conservative factions, that’s considered “unamerican” because that buts the government in your personal business and it will lead to them monitoring all aspects of your life.
Republicans are total fucktards.
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Contact tracing has been a complete shit-show here. The government’s response was so shambolic, when they did finally get an app out it was far too late and too few people downloaded it because they didn’t trust that it would work. Their lack of faith was well placed.
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The government’s response was so shambolic, when they did finally get an app out it was far too late and too few people downloaded it because they didn’t trust that it would work.
Yup. For some context the government here had a QR app up and running in early May at a cost of ₤7,000, the UK one cost ₤11 million, appeared several months later and nobody is using it. Shit-show is probably a gross understatement.
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What is the contact tracing like where you all are? It has been the key here; I know we’re a small population, on an island, but there have been relative flare-ups and in my state anyway they’ve all been managed and stamped out pretty quickly thanks primarily to contact tracing – this also avoids the need to introduce mass lockdowns.
It’s a problem. The local health departments manage to trace contacts up to an incidence of 50 in 100.000; above that, they lose control of the situation. Which is why getting below 50 again is kind of the aim of the current lockdown.
It’s a shame that the app never caught on. It’s a good app, and it’d completely solve the contact tracing problem if people actually used it, but when it came out in early summer, the pressure wasn’t there, and now it feels like they’ve given up on it.
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fines of $1,000
mass collective acceptance
I smell causation.
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I’m not that convinced contact-tracing works to any great degree. I spoke to a friend in Australia, and they had an app up and running in late April and were confident it would keep things under control. It didn’t work out that way at all.
The app launched by the Federal government is useless, but it’s not the primary Contact Tracing tool (I’ve never downloaded it; wife did and then deleted it). Contact Tracing is absolutely the key here in NSW; it’s a step-down from a targeted lockdown but potentially almost as effective.
Measures differ from state to state here, and some of the differences highlight which strategies and approaches work.
NSW/Sydney is the primary overseas arrival point, so we always carried the most risk – based on decades of reforms and changes our health department is pretty well organised, so as soon as cases started appearing contact tracing was up and running – it wasn’t app or QR code based at all; just literally interviewing positive cases to find out where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, connecting the dots between people.
Meanwhile limited restrictions were introduced in NSW; X number of people in shops at a time, X number of people on public transport, for a time restaurants/pubs were open for takeaway/delivery only. Masks strongly recommended where you can’t socially distance, but not mandated. When things got a bit dicier they asked people to avoid non-essential travel – for about 6 weeks wife and I barely left our local area. International travel was banned for all but returning Australians (there are still tens of thousands stranded overseas to this day due to the minimal flights), all arrivals must carry out 14 day hotel quarantine on arrival, and various border states were closed at different times depending on “outbreaks”.
NSW had all but eliminated local transmission in July, until one fellow from Melbourne drove up for a work function; he was ill and didn’t know it, and passed it on to many people at a fairly large pub/club (not too far from me). As soon as it became known to authorities a few days later the pub was temporarily closed, subject to a deep-clean, converted into a pop-up drive-through test centre, and all patrons there on the night (and subsequent nights) were tracked down for tests. Because they were considered close contacts even if they tested negative they still had to self-isolate at home for two weeks (a pal was one of them). The spread was stopped due to tracing.
What happened in Victoria, where a full hard lockdown was needed came as a result of sorely inadequate contact tracing – they started the pandemic with 14 (!) tracers – they quickly fell behind the workload meaning people were infected and not contacted until more than two weeks after being infectious; they went about their lives passing it on to others.
Arjan, while venues in NSW have to have a QR code login system, we know not everyone has phones so pen and paper options are still available; the venue then has to upload the details to a NSW Health portal themselves. Other states are still not really using the QR code method, annoyingly.
Anders, the mask mandate and fine only applied in Victoria during their hard-lockdown phase. We don’t have one here; masks are strongly encouraged where spatial distancing isn’t possible, and now that there’s a new mini-outbreak the message is even sterner, but not enforced. Most people have been doing the right thing – as soon as this mini-outbreak began on Friday, restaurants around the city reported mass cancellations, even those not anywhere near the outbreak.
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How does it even work? Do you have to register if you do something like going to the supermarket?
Yes, there is a QR code outside every venue and you scan it with your phone, if you don’t have a smartphone there’s an old fashioned paper log to fill in. Here it’s mandatory every business has a unique QR code, log book, a temperature check and hand sanitizer at the entry point or they get shut down.
I agree with Andrew that contact tracing is useful. The ability to focus closely on risk areas has kept the numbers down in places where it’s used. While Malaysia, South Korea and Australia have outbreaks at the moment the numbers are a fraction of what we’ve seen in Europe and America. Deaths are still counted in the hundreds rather than thousands or tens of thousands. Unless you have complete eradication then having the virus ‘under control’ is a subjective measure.
It’s naive though to think tracing alone will stop the virus as Steve’s friend did, it’s just one tool of many and basically only one small country, New Zealand, has been able to claim something close to eradication and it’s sneaked back in there a couple of times. Tracing has been done in conjunction with pretty much a shut down of international travel without mandatory quarantine (not self quarantine) which is probably more important.
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Tracing isn’t the be all, end all but I do think it’s the most important aspect. We have mandatory Hotel Quarantine but there have been leaks as would always be the case (cleaners, drivers, guards, etc.) – this current outbreak has clearly been imported from the US (genomic tracing has proved it), so it’s a HQ breach. They’re still trying to connect it all up but in the meantime the entire Northern Beaches area (two pubs/clubs there are the site of seeding events) is in some form of lockdown, and mass testing is underway. Some 38,000 test results were processed overnight with only 15 cases identified – crucially all 15 can be contact traced to the Northern Beaches cluster; it’s all under control.
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How does it even work? Do you have to register if you do something like going to the supermarket?
I don’t have a smartphone so I would be royally fucked.
Well, like I said, as far as here is concerned, not enough people use the app so most of it is being done the old-fashioned way: if you’re positive, the health department calls you and asks for your contacts in the last few days. Then, they call them and tell them they should isolate and get a test. It’s a lot of work, obviously, thus the problem of only being able to handle it up to a certain point.
When the cafés and restaurants were open, they’d do it with lists that you’d write down your name on. There were also app solutions, but most people used those lists.
If everybody was using the official corona tracing app (yes, with a smartphone), things would be far easier; the app uses bluetooth to figure out and remember which user was in contact with you and if you’re positive, everybody who was around you gets a message automatically. It’s a great solution really, but after years of using Google Maps and Alexa and putting their data all over the internet, people have decided that this is where they suddenly become overly cautious about their personal data. (None of which is actually being revealed at any point with this app.)
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So, now everybody is panicking because there’s supposedly a new mutated variation of the virus in the UK and continental Europe is shutting down travel to the UK and whatnot. But it’s not even clear if the mutated virus is all that different at all, whether it really is more infectious and actually, it might be less harmful than the original so this might all be a good thing. (This was always one of the things that could happen, a more harmless version of the virus mutating into being and out-evolving the original, as not damaging the host so severely is actually a survival trait.)
Less than two weeks later, that variant is causing mayhem in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. Yesterday, U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson announced stricter lockdown measures, saying the strain, which goes by the name B.1.1.7, appears to be better at spreading between people. The news led many Londoners to leave the city today, before the new rules take effect, causing overcrowded railway stations. Also today, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy announced they were temporarily halting passenger flights from the United Kingdom. The Eurostar train between Brussels and the British capital will stop running at midnight tonight for at least 24 hours.
Scientists, meanwhile, are hard at work trying to figure out whether B.1.1.7 is really more adept at human-to-human transmission—not everyone is convinced yet—and if so, why. They’re also wondering how it evolved so fast. B.1.1.7 has acquired 17 mutations all at once, a feat never seen before. “There’s now a frantic push to try and characterize some of these mutations in the lab,” says Andrew Rambaut, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh.[…]
In a press conference on Saturday, chief science advisor Patrick Vallance said that B.1.1.7, which first appeared in a virus isolated on 20 September, accounted for about 26% of cases in mid-November. “By the week commencing the 9th of December, these figures were much higher,” he said. “So, in London, over 60% of all the cases were the new variant.” Boris Johnson added that the slew of mutations may have increased the virus’s transmissibility by 70%.
Christian Drosten, a virologist at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, says that was premature. “There are too many unknowns to say something like that,” he says. For one thing, the rapid spread of B.1.1.7 might be down to chance. Scientists previously worried that a variant that spread rapidly from Spain to the rest of Europe—confusingly called B.1.177—might be more transmissible, but today they think it is not; it just happened to be carried all over Europe by travelers who spent their holidays in Spain. Something similar might be happening with B.1.1.7, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University. Drosten notes that the new mutant also carries a deletion in another viral gene, ORF8, that previous studies suggest might reduce the virus’s ability to spread.
Drosten is our superhero virologist. If he says this may all turn out to be nothing much, that’s probably how it’s going to go.
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There’s lots of talk in the UK at the moment about exactly when this variant made itself known. The prime minister talked on Saturday about it having manifested since September but suggested that the nature of it wasn’t fully known and understood since late last week, and that it’s only recently that it has been linked with the explosion of cases in London and the south east.
Meanwhile some are suggesting that the UK government is overplaying the significance of it a little bit to justify reversing its Christmas free-for-all, which it probably realised had to happen irregardless of the new COVID variant.
(If so it’s obviously a strategy that has backfired spectacularly given the knock-on effect on international travel and the chaos at key ports today.)
Either way it’s not a great start to Christmas week.
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One result of having a pigheaded leader is that the US has no national strategy in place to ban flights coming into the country from Europe in general or UK in particular, nor any measures mandated to screen or test passengers coming off those flights. In other words, this new strain of the virus is probably already in the US and spreading through those cities that receive frequent flights from London.
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Okay, before you guys start calling this new strain the “British Virus”, as somebody posted elsewhere, several new strains have been reported throughout Europe since September, so there’s absolutely no doubt that this is already rife in the US.
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Okay, before you guys start calling this new strain the “British Virus”, as somebody posted elsewhere, several new strains have been reported throughout Europe since September, so there’s absolutely no doubt that this is already rife in the US.
Sounds like something a British Virus spreader would say!
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before you guys start calling this new strain the “British Virus”,
Don’t worry, people here won’t call it that, they will be much more rude.
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I’m really concerned about this Nigel Farage virus that everyone is talking about.
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Then I should probably not tell you about the Boris Johnson Strain
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Then I should probably not tell you about the Boris Johnson Strain
I always get that after a curry the night before.
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Almost put this in the Weird News thread, but unfortunately it is too relevant.
Alexei Navalny Uncovers FSB Officer Involvement in Plot to Poison Him (esquire.com)
Not long ago, Vladimir Putin’s FSB allegedly failed to poison Alexei Navalny to death. They came close, but Navalny has survived, and now he’s doing his own undercover work to try and prove that it was the FSB who did the deed. And he is very, very good at it. The folks at Bellingcat have the skinny, and it is amazing. It seems that Navalny, posing as someone else, got the leader of the plot to kill him to confess over the phone. Navalny is absolutely brilliant. He convinces his mark that he is operating under orders from higher up, and he reels the sucker in by talking matter-of-factly about the attempt to murder him. It surely must’ve been surreal to chat up the plot to kill him as though it happened to someone else.
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In other words, this new strain of the virus is probably already in the US and spreading through those cities that receive frequent flights from London.
I was listening to The Guardian podcast on the subject earlier today and they quoted the expert on the panel that discovered the new strain on whether it could be contained in the south east of England. He laughed and said it’s all over the UK and dozens of other countries already and others weren’t reporting on it as ‘they weren’t looking’. Apparently his lab in Cambridge that discovered it are world leaders in this area which is the main reason they discovered it first.
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So there’s no point keeping those poor lorry drivers stuck here for days, or the flight bans then. Great.
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All for the sake of macho politics!
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I was listening to The Guardian podcast on the subject earlier today and they quoted the expert on the panel that discovered the new strain on whether it could be contained in the south east of England. He laughed and said it’s all over the UK and dozens of other countries already and others weren’t reporting on it as ‘they weren’t looking’. Apparently his lab in Cambridge that discovered it are world leaders in this area which is the main reason they discovered it first.
Yeah, that’s the first thing Drosten was quoted as saying a few days ago, that this variation was already found in the Netherlands and that the pandemic wasn’t behaving any differently there than anywhere else. And that it’s also in Denmark and Belgium and that he expects that it is also in Germany.
So yeah, cutting off contact to South Africa and the UK is probably all nonsense. But after Johnson’s big announcement of a new mutation that’s 70% more infectious (and that’s another thing Drosten mentions, that it’s completely unclear where that number comes from and what it’s supposed to be telling us), I suppose that’s what happens.
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Yeah absolutely. I agree with you and Dave on that. Johnson has had to make a massive climbdown (one of many this year) after promising everything would be opened up for Christmas and in fact having to do the opposite and lock down even further. I think the narrative of the ‘virulent new strain’ offered him a good excuse for that without admitting he’d totally miscalculated what was happening – ‘our plan was correct but the new strain came out of nowhere). Once you put that narrative out there loudly though others are going to react to it. The UK government are not particularly bright and seem to stumble from one cock up to another and this fits that MO.
Funnily enough as I first heard of Drosten with you mentioning him this week he got a namecheck in that Guardian podcast with a paraphrased endorsement of ‘this guy knows what he’s talking about, listen to him’.
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But after Johnson’s big announcement of a new mutation that’s 70% more infectious (and that’s another thing Drosten mentions, that it’s completely unclear where that number comes
I think it’s usually obvious where Johnson’s numbers come from.
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For two days in a row more than 40,000 tests have been processed in the state, with only 8 positives each day – comfortingly contact tracing has already linked all of them to the existing cluster, so it does all appear to be under control; it’s all still localised to one wealthy, already insular part of Sydney. Folks in that area will be locked-down, as in they can’t leave the area, but it’s a pretty nice place to be stuck (it includes the beachside setting for the TV soap Home and Away).
For the rest of us in NSW, we are not allowed to leave the state, and can only host groups of 10 per day over the coming three days including Christmas.
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I think it’s usually obvious where Johnson’s numbers come from.
Imaginationland is not a real place.
Stop talking down Britain, we have an oven-ready trade deal with imaginationland that will be world-beating. I know because one of my mates from school is in charge of it.
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I think it’s usually obvious where Johnson’s numbers come from.
Imaginationland is not a real place.
Stop talking down Britain, we have an oven-ready trade deal with imaginationland that will be world-beating. I know because one of my mates from school is in charge of it.
That “mate” wouldn’t happen to be a girl from Canada that is super sexy but none of us know, right?
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I think it’s usually obvious where Johnson’s numbers come from.
Imaginationland is not a real place.
Stop talking down Britain, we have an oven-ready trade deal with imaginationland that will be world-beating. I know because one of my mates from school is in charge of it.
That “mate” wouldn’t happen to be a girl from Canada that is super sexy but none of us know, right?
It would be great if all of Johnson’s chumocracy mates were imaginary. Sadly they’re real.
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Luke Letlow, Congressman-elect From Louisiana, Dies From COVID-19 : NPR
Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, who won a runoff earlier this month to represent Louisiana’s Baton Rouge area, died Tuesday from complications of COVID-19.
Letlow was set to be sworn in as U.S. representative for the state’s northeastern 5th congressional district on Jan. 3.
(CNN)A woman who said she was the girlfriend of the man who set off the Christmas Day explosion in Nashville told police last year he was making bombs in his recreational vehicle, according to a statement and documents the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department provided to CNN.
On August 21, 2019, police received a call from an attorney representing Pamela Perry, the woman who said she was the girlfriend of the bomber Anthony Warner, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement Tuesday. Her attorney, Raymond Throckmorton, said she had made “suicidal threats to him via telephone.”
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I’d be more sympathetic if there weren’t lots and lots of campaign pics where he’s meeting people without masks on his twitter. Like this one.
We brought the kids and had a great time at the LFRW fall board meeting today in Alexandria, LA. These #RepublicanWomen dedicate their time and effort to help elect conservatives who get results. Thanks for all that you do! #StartLuke2020 #LA05 pic.twitter.com/7QRyyjdZFO
— Luke Letlow (@LukeLetlow) November 15, 2020
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CNN)A woman who said she was the girlfriend of the man who set off the Christmas Day explosion in Nashville told police last year he was making bombs in his recreational vehicle, according to a statement and documents the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department provided to CNN. On August 21, 2019, police received a call from an attorney representing Pamela Perry, the woman who said she was the girlfriend of the bomber Anthony Warner, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement Tuesday. Her attorney, Raymond Throckmorton, said she had made “suicidal threats to him via telephone.”
There remains an incredible double standard here. Any terrorist attack is equally damaging but Trump right at day one set a different standard and response to Muslim extremists and white supremacists extremist who were removed from surveillance.
I am neither (and that puts me in a position shared by 99% of the population) and it makes no difference to me which one kills people or wrecks property.
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Of course, violence carried out by Christian extremists is about three times more frequent in the US than that carried out by Muslim ones, and somehow they don’t give Christianity a bad name…
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Call him for what he really is: An American suicide bomber.
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Tsk tsk tsk… Something Q something George Soros something Bill Gates something.
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Of course, violence carried out by Christian extremists is about three times more frequent in the US than that carried out by Muslim ones, and somehow they don’t give Christianity a bad name…
True. On the other hand, there are about 70 fundamentalist Christians for every 1 fundamentalist Muslim in the United States so a record of 1 in 3 attacks is actually quite pretty serious. It’s like in basketball. Hundreds of players can dunk the ball, but if you’re a 5 foot tall player dunking the ball, you get noticed.
Seriously though, White Nationalism is obviously the far more likely ideology to lead to violence than Christian or Muslim fundamentalism – though, especially in Muslim communities, it is certainly important to identify fundamentalism’s role in political violence, oppression and extremism.
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Dancing robots? What are we talking about? Are you referring to white people? If so, then YES, they totally freak me out when they “dance”.
It’s interesting to see how for those Boston Dynamics models have come. Spot – the dog-like one – is being released into the market right now. I suppose it’ll be used for drone-like delivery jobs and whatnot. But I don’t see a lot of valid applications for the human-shaped ones apart from the field they were originally designed for: the military. The dancing makes it look like they’re at this point pretty good at keeping their balance in all kinds of territory, so robot soldiers are becoming more feasable. Honestly I’d be surprised if we don’t see them in ten years or so.
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Maybe if the Terminators had busted out some cool dance moves we’d all have been a lot happier with Judgment Day.
Never mind Arnie-style quips, they should be programmed to do a little victory dance after each termination.
