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Denmark is lifting all Covid restrictions.
The Scottish government is making their oppressive temporary covid powers permanent.
Dr John Campbell – Denmark ends pandemic (3 Feb 2022) – YouTube, 18m 10s
Denmark may regret that decision; daily deaths in Israel, the most highly vaccinated population in the world, have just broken the record set during all previous waves:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/#graph-deaths-daily
If Scotland had gone independent in 2014, it would have been free of the insidious, authoritarian SNP long since.
Denmark may regret that decision; daily deaths in Israel, the most highly vaccinated population in the world, have just broken the record set during all previous waves:
Denmark is expecting cases, so presumably therefore deaths, to rise in the short term. Their reasoning is that it is pointless causing harm to people and the economy just to prolong the inevitable. They are looking at the bigger picture.
If Scotland had gone independent in 2014, it would have been free of the insidious, authoritarian SNP long since.
Like independence in Southern Ireland put an end to Sinn Féin.
My view, for what it is worth, is that the horse has bolted and that therefore it will make no difference if the stable door is locked now. Stringent lockdown with proper isolation is the only way that zero covid could have been achieved. Half-hearted measures for political expediency has led to the current mess. My worry now is that if we have another epidemic everyone will be saying that lockdown is futile and the death rate will be enormous.
“Like independence in Southern Ireland put an end to Sinn Féin.”
Well, it kinda did. The original Sinn Féin split over the original treaty into pro and anti treaty parties and there was a civil war over it. Those split factions morphed into Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael, the two main parties for years, and the Sinn Féin as it is now came about after a further split from the “official” Sinn Féin and they became the provisional Sinn Féin with Adams and the rest. Sinn Féin has never been in government in the Republic of Ireland unless you count the original provisional Dail which sparked the war of independence from the Kingdom of Great Britian and Ireland. Well done for spelling Sinn Féin correctly with the fada accent.
As for Sars-Cov-2 many countries have relaxed the restrictions to the point of them not being any concern. The Republic of Ireland has pretty much dropped them all. The balance of probabilities may well favour Denmark’s decision. Let’s hope so. I read today of a new HIV variant causing more severe disease and more rapid progression of disease. It isn’t guaranteed that mutations will be a milder disease all of the time.
I read today of a new HIV variant causing more severe disease and more rapid progression of disease. It isn’t guaranteed that mutations will be a milder disease all of the time.
No, unfortunately it doesn’t apply to all diseases but does tend to be true for rhinoviruses. Someone with AIDS can be symptomless yet infect others for years.
My view, for what it is worth, is that the horse has bolted and that therefore it will make no difference if the stable door is locked now. Stringent lockdown with proper isolation is the only way that zero covid could have been achieved. Half-hearted measures for political expediency has led to the current mess. My worry now is that if we have another epidemic everyone will be saying that lockdown is futile and the death rate will be enormous.
The only virus we ever managed to eradicate in humans was smallpox and that was only possible because an effective vaccine was available.
We can’t lock down the entire planet forever and we can’t keep injecting the entire population with an ineffective vaccine every few months indefinitely.
– “My worry now is that if we have another epidemic everyone will be saying that lockdown is futile and the death rate will be enormous.”
I very much agree, and the same holds for an attack with an actual bio-weapon. The effective bio-security of every government is right there for anyone who cares to look at the statistics. The UK government has just trashed the UK’s bio-security under the gaze of every hostile actor in the world.
Fred: “…just to prolong the inevitable”, and
SA: “…the horse has bolted”It’s still worth slowing the spread. The UK is in a perilous state with hospitals overloaded, a huge proportion of staff in all sectors falling ill, delays, shortages, backlogs etc. Spreading out the damage over time is a way of diluting it.
Fred
“ it doesn’t apply to all diseases but does tend to be true for rhinoviruses”.
I thought until now we were talking about Coronaviruses.
“The only virus we ever managed to eradicate in humans was smallpox and that was only possible because an effective vaccine was available.”
We were talking about containing and eradicating a new virus not an established one. In which case many viruses have been contained including SARS-1, MERS, Ebola and many of the viral haemorrhaging fever viruses. Many others circulate locally like Yellow fever and Marburg virus.
It’s still worth slowing the spread.
If the huge financial burden of implementing lockdowns means countries no longer have the means to implement a net zero policy, will you still think it was worth it?
Fred, can’t you get anything right?
– “Someone with AIDS can be symptomless yet infect others for years.”
You mean HIV. AIDS means symptoms are evident.
– “We can’t lock down the entire planet forever…”
If we locked down the entire planet, it would virtually eradicate covid in humans in mere weeks, so where do you get this “forever” from? Did you just invent it for rhetorical purposes? That the UK governments have bungled lockdown into three month endurance ordeals simply shows how ideologically myopic they are. Look at the history of effective lockdowns – start immediately upon detecting an infection, be thorough, and use proper quarantine – and you can go back to normal in days, by enabling trace, test and quarantine to be effective.
But why did you bang on about “lockdown” anyway, when I didn’t even mention it? What I actually said was that it is still worth slowing down cross-infection – you know, with ventilation, carbon dioxide monitoring, masks, working from home, testing and self-isolation, limiting social contacts; just generally being careful – there are whole hosts of measures we should be taking that would barely inconvenience us. You troll like this so consistently – exaggerating to extremity the position you’re attacking and then ridiculing the straw man you’ve thereby erected – that I believe it’s a deliberate rhetorical ploy crafted to appeal to the unthinking.
– “The only virus we ever managed to eradicate in humans was smallpox…”
In addition to SA’s examples, we damn nearly eliminated polio, and will probably succeed in a few years if we don’t let covid disrupt everything we do. But polio control was scuppered by conspiracy theory of just the sort you incessantly pander to.
– “If the huge financial burden of implementing lockdowns…”
You’re referring to crap, bungled lockdowns. The (mostly East Asian) countries which have controlled infection the best have also protected their economies the best. Their populations don’t need to be told to stay in their homes because people have sufficient sense of community and mutual care to be careful, mask up, limit social mixing and thereby protect each other from cross-infection.
I have never been much in favour of lockdowns. I have always advocated good information, with personal responsibility leading to social self restraint – a very socially conservative attitude, but with the arguably politically socialist proviso that governments should enable, encourage and enforce these through providing direct media access for scientific institutions, universal basic income, suspension of fixed costs such as rent, and some broad but basic emergency enforcement to handle the socially inept (whereas in fact, our governments consist of the socially inept).
But the claim that lockdowns do not work is dangerously misleading nonsense; it’s bad information, as if “keep your distance, don’t catch my cold” didn’t work and viruses were delivered directly into the atmosphere from comets or something, and as if we hadn’t just seen lockdowns crush infection prevalence twice in the UK alone. Lockdowns work, but they’re a dreadfully blunt instrument compared with good understanding, widespread personal responsibility, and appropriate government support for and encouragement of sensible behaviour.
– – – – – – –– “I have never been much in favour of lockdowns…”
Having read these paragraphs, you should now post that you had misunderstood my position, and will proceed more cooperatively henceforth. Sadly, my experience suggests that you will instead seize upon some phrase I haven’t worded carefully enough, and polarise it to the extreme in order to depict me as some crazed authoritarian, in an appeal to your audience of conspiracy theorists. I respect your motivation of stimulating debate. The trouble is that it takes you seconds to blurt some tabloid-inspired rhetoric, whereas it takes me hours to tease apart the false impressions you’ve imparted, mulling over every word and phrase of my reply to deny you the opportunity of doing the same again. There are already too many voices with too much amplification doing what you do. Change sides 🙂
Net zero policy, or its neoliberal way of operating net zero is another opportunity to fleece the population and pretend that price hikes and other ways of money extraction are justified. I do not understand why we have an energy crisis with price hikes following the lockdown stagnation. Nobody has explained it in any convincing way. A group of spot traders have decided to fix the price of gas upwards to make a killing, and the politicians do not want to end this scam. They would rather blame Putin as usual.
SA, the energy shortage is being caused by resource depletion. It sneaked up on us while demand was suppressed by widespread lockdowns. When demand attempted to return to normal, it couldn’t. Yes, neoliberal market worship is making matters worse, and massive investment could boost supply, temporarily. But we need a permanent solution.
https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-346-the-end-of-growth-ten-years-after
…and any number of other well researched and referenced articles.
SA, sorry for posting so many links, but energy is a big topic in its own right. Russia’s super-giant gas fields are in terminal decline; their maximum output is now only a third of what it was in their prime. European gas production is even worse, essentially a thing of the past:
https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Russian-gas-amid-market-tightness.pdf
Fred, the things we need to do to slow down covid are the same as those to reduce emissions – re-localise our economies, decentralisation, less international movement of goods and rushing around the world by the affluent. Did you notice back in February and March 2020 that before anyone you knew, or anyone contributing to the comments had personally encountered a single case of covid, the news was full of people who’d got infected, and they were politicians, celebrities and sports stars – in other words, the Jet Set.
During the first so-called lockdown, some 1.5 million people entered (mostly returning to) the UK – this “control our borders” Brexit government refused to control our borders with quarantine. The “lockdown” indeed crushed infection prevalence, but it never stood a chance of eliminating infection because it was coming in through the ports and airports. In the second lockdown a friend’s daughter and her partner turned up at mine directly from Stansted Airport – having flown from Poland, where prevalence was breaking records. Zero checks at the airport – they were merely told to register the addresses they were heading for online when they got there. The partner was spouting the usual half dozen denialist snippets – “died of or with covid”, “28 days after a positive test even if hit by a bus”, “Bill Gates and GAVI funded ICL” etc. until I got cross and told him he was lucky I’d let him in and he’d better shut up or I’d chuck him out again.
The government can’t claim ignorance. Taiwan (or was it South Korea?), famous for the success of its extensive testing and quarantine programme, announced in mid March 2020 that cases entering the country outnumbered community transmission.
Our armchair virologist:
– “Coronaviruses; sorry, I mean the ‘flu; no sorry I mean rhinoviruses… Look, it doesn’t matter what I mean; there’s nothing to worry about and we shouldn’t take any precautions because there’s an immutable law of evolution, well folklore actually, that viruses always mutate towards less severe disease…”
Grigorios D. Amoutzias and Marios Nikolaidis, Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly, Greece; Eleni Tryfonopoulou and Katerina Chlichlia, Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece; Panayotis Markoulatos, Microbial Biotechnology-Molecular Bacteriology-Virology Laboratory, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly, Greece; Stephen G. Oliver, Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, UK; Academic Editors: Ioannis Karakasiliotis, Apostolos Beloukas and Serafeim Chaintoutis:
The Remarkable Evolutionary Plasticity of Coronaviruses by Mutation and Recombination: Insights for the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future Evolutionary Paths of SARS-CoV-2 on Pubmed
Final paragraph of section 10. Evolution by Intratypic Homologous Recombination:
– “Recombination between members of the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 lineages within the sarbecoviruses has also been observed [52,76,111]. This is a matter of great concern, since it demonstrates a potential for the future emergence of a SARS-CoV-3 that may combine the high pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-1 with the high infectivity of SARS-CoV-2.”
Clark
February 5, 2022 at 17:14Thanks for the links, they are very useful. But as the authors point out these explanations have not found their way to the mainstream. I wil comment again after reading them properly.
In addition to SA’s examples, we damn nearly eliminated polio, and will probably succeed in a few years if we don’t let covid disrupt everything we do. But polio control was scuppered by conspiracy theory of just the sort you incessantly pander to.
I have nothing against vaccines which work. The vaccines which do not stop you getting the disease and don’t stop you passing it on I prefer to think of as medicines you have to take before you get ill.
Fred, the vaccines against covid work; they reduce the chances of the recipient getting infected, reduce the chances of passing it on, and greatly reduce the chances of severe illness and death. And they are very safe; the chances of a severe adverse reaction are minuscule, especially when compared to catching covid unvaccinated; this is easily observed from the curves of the hospitalisation and death statistics.
The vaccines are doing remarkably well, especially considering that they were developed in about one third of the expected time, and were designed against the original strain from Wuhan. They help enormously, but they are not effective enough to solve our problems.
It’s what you might call “the few percent problem”. For instance, people think of LED light bulbs as “highly efficient” and they do get much less hot compared with incandescent bulbs, but in fact they turn only about 20% of the electricity they use into light, ie. they’re 80% inefficient. But the incandescent bulbs we’re comparing with are only about 2% efficient. So for the same amount of light, an LED bulb uses only one tenth of the power, produces one tenth as much heat, but could still be five times more efficient.
Another analogy is littering. 95% of everyone may conscientiously use the bins, but the remaining 5% make such an obtrusive mess that it looks as though the whole population must be selfish slobs.
Say we have two vaccines; one is 96% effective against infection and the other is 98%. Only 2% difference; little to choose between them? Wait. The first leaves a 4% chance of infection, the second a 2% chance; it’s twice as good.
SA, let’s not call it the “mainstream”; it does not promote the prosperity of the majority. It promotes the world-view, mindset and prosperity of corporatism, of capital, and the impossible fantasy of ever increasing profits. It’s the corporate media, the capitalist media, the billionaire press, and a few state broadcasters.
“I have nothing against vaccines which work. The vaccines which do not stop you getting the disease and don’t stop you passing it on I prefer to think of as medicines you have to take before you get ill.”
It is great Fred that you get to define what is useful and what is not. But the nature of immunity is such that it can be a complete immunity which stops you getting the disease and transmitting it completely, to what is called an antitoxic immunity which prevents the serious effects and death from an infection but does not prevent you being ill or transmitting the disease. These are recognized processes in immunity. So the Covid-19 vaccines are second best in that they don’t stop catching the disease completely or transmission but the reduce death from the virus drastically and so they are still very useful. Fred I would like to know the source of your information because it is sort of basic but you state it in such an authoritative way.
SA: “Fred I would like to know the source of your information because it is sort of basic but you state it in such an authoritative way.
It’s a good question, but bear in mind that slippery Fred behaves this way in all subjects. He is proven wrong almost 100% of the time, but never admits it. He will tell quite obvious falsehoods, so clearly so that it could not be expected to be taken seriously. But it was not a joke either. He’ll switch subjects rather than get pinned down on any topic about which he was supposedly concerned.
Why would someone consistently behave like this? I suggest this is a better question than simply asking such an individual for their source on just one subject.
Reckoning on such lacking in the character of such an individual is also more worthwhile than constantly explaining, as Clark continually does, as if there was a hope in hell that a reasonable consensus might be reached.
Glenn_nl, fred likes lively debate, but unfortunately all the “cut and thrust” tends to preclude more precise surgery. It has its value because the debate proceeds in public, but I do find it frustrating and tedious going over the same, well established points time after time.
Israel’s death figures that I referred to above have turned out to be erroneous; some data got counted twice. The death rate still broke previous records but not by nearly as much, and for a much shorter time than the previous waves, resulting in fewer deaths overall. This is encouraging. Denmark’s death rate is still climbing (though from orders of magnitude lower than the UK’s), but their infection rate has started falling. I’ll be watching Denmark’s figures; hopefully the death rate should start falling within about a week. Denmark’s current wave is Omicron BA.2, so that would be very good news for the UK where BA.2 is displacing the BA.1 variants even while prevalence continues to fall.
He is proven wrong almost 100% of the time, but never admits it.
Remember back in 2020, in another place, when I said that viruses which kill their hosts don’t last long on the evolutionary tree and pointed out how the flu virus of 1918 didn’t die out but evolved to a milder strain?
Are you going to admit I got it right? Will you admit I predicted Omicron over a year in advance?
Fred
Before I congratulate you for your amazing clairvoyance, could you please link to your original post to see the context?
Ta
