Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[Baronkrak]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Here’s what it means, state-by-state:

Can be fined: could result: the maximum penalty: or possible: could attract.

Does not mean: 6 months in jail

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Baronkrak

Can be fined: could result: the maximum penalty: or possible: could attract.

Does not mean: 6 months in jail

Tell that to the first person jailed...

[goboatingnow]

Just a note. Any one travelling into Ireland fron Friday next Dec 3 will need a 42 hour professionally applied antigen test or 72 hour PCR test before being allowed in . This is irrespective of vaccine status. The mandatory hotel legislation that lapsed is being signed back into law this week.

I suspect we will see large restrictions on travel again on a country by country basis.

[laird]

Well the UK is pushing out more of the vaccine ,the gap between 2nd jab and booster , Down to 3 months ,they are planning to use the local pharmacy on the corner to roll it out .I've been busy today helping to get the ball rolling

Politicians continue to blow smoke up our ***** in the hope that it keeps the NHS happy ,give us a decent pay rise instead

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, the analysis in this study is deeper than that.

Yes, the analysis and modelling was extensive, but it is only as good as the data it is based on. Better data would be from groups matched as closely as possible (eg age and sex and health). Better still the trial should be double blind: both the participants and those collecting data should not be aware who received the actual vaccine. This has been known to alter behaviour and skew results.

I do actually suspect it is mainly the unvaccinated responsible for the spread. I don’t know what the stats are like in Germany, but in the UK and Australia the numbers are driven by children and young adults. It is not unexpected given these are the most mobile people, interacting with large numbers either through school, work or socially, and also the ones least likely to socially distance so spread is more likely. They are also the groups least vaccinated.

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, I respectfully disagree. When policymakers need to act, they take the best information available, even if it's not perfect proof of something. It's not a court of law; it's legislation. This study gives considerable backing to the idea that the current outbreak in Germany is MOSTLY driven by the unvaccinated, and to the idea that increasing vaccination rates, imposing NPI's on the unvaccinated, and/or reducing contact between vaccinated and unvaccinated, will have a significant beneficial effect on the dynamic of the outbreak. Remember, it's gotten to the point in Germany where health care systems are under stress -- something needs to be done, and this shows some good options besides imposing restrictions on the whole population, which will be very difficult politically.

The vaccinated are still having breakthrough infections and transmitting the virus, albeit more slowly. To help reduce spread would not daily lateral flow testing for everyone be more appropriate temporarily if hospitals are close to being overwhelmed rather than the draconian move of mandating vaccination?

Unfortunately there is no certainty with any measures taken, and with the virus mutating the goals are constantly shifting. I think that taking on the minimal amount of measures and ones that are least likely to have adverse impacts long term is the most prudent think to do, not that our opinions here on CF will make a scrap of difference to how this is managed .

I am just super glad I am not the one needing to be making decisions during this pandemic. Much of what is being done is being based on guesswork.

SWL

[goboatingnow]

I don’t see how testing in itself reduces hospital admissions.

The data in Ireland shows that 10x hospital admissions are coming proportionally from the unvaccinated.

Secondly random testing is showing that the unvaccinated particularly children are acting as both reservoirs of infection and are spreading it both to unvaccinated and to vulnerable vaccinated particularly older vaccinated.

This data isn’t debatable. The issue now is what to do about it. The mask advise extending down to 10 year olds is partially a response

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I don’t see how testing in itself reduces hospital admissions.

The data in Ireland shows that 10x hospital admissions are coming proportionally from the unvaccinated.

Secondly random testing is showing that the unvaccinated particularly children are acting as both reservoirs of infection and are spreading it both to unvaccinated and to vulnerable vaccinated particularly older vaccinated.

This data isn’t debatable. The issue now is what to do about it. The mask advise extending down to 10 year olds is partially a response

As I posted above, I don’t doubt that the unvaccinated young are becoming infected and transmitting the virus. However, the vaccinated are also responsible for transmission, although less so.

Mask wearing by the vulnerable (whether vaccinated or not) and by those interacting closely with them may help. Keeping this group isolated as much as possible would definitely help. It is now accepted that poorly ventilated public indoor spaces pose the worst risks for this group.

Test everyone interacting with others indoors (and have these isolate until recovered) and spread will reduce and hospital admissions will decrease. There are alternatives to mandating vaccination for all and this is just one option.

Expanding hospital facilities and staffing is another means of coping with severe illness. We are now approaching the third year of the pandemic and it puzzles me why some countries have still not dramatically expanded the capacity for critical care. Simply oxygen improves survival. Several good treatments have now also been approved. Hospital space is just needed to administer this.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

. . . I do actually suspect it is mainly the unvaccinated responsible for the spread. I don’t know what the stats are like in Germany, but in the UK and Australia the numbers are driven by children and young adults. It is not unexpected given these are the most mobile people, interacting with large numbers either through school, work or socially, and also the ones least likely to socially distance so spread is more likely. They are also the groups least vaccinated.

The vaccinated are still having breakthrough infections and transmitting the virus, albeit more slowly. To help reduce spread would not daily lateral flow testing for everyone be more appropriate temporarily if hospitals are close to being overwhelmed rather than the draconian move of mandating vaccination?

Unfortunately there is no certainty with any measures taken, and with the virus mutating the goals are constantly shifting. I think that taking on the minimal amount of measures and ones that are least likely to have adverse impacts long term is the most prudent think to do, not that our opinions here on CF will make a scrap of difference to how this is managed .

I am just super glad I am not the one needing to be making decisions during this pandemic. Much of what is being done is being based on guesswork.

SWL

Indeed, especially at the beginning. But this study, added to everything else we already know by now, is a vastly better basis for policymaking than what we had at the beginning.


I wholeheartedly agree with this:


"I think that taking on the minimal amount of measures and ones that are least likely to have adverse impacts long term is the most prudent think to do, not that our opinions here on CF will make a scrap of difference to how this is managed ."


But just keep in mind that as common sense as that is (all policies have costs, and there is no such thing as policy without balancing of costs and benefits), what concerns the pandemic, this is not uncontroversial. Some people, including some on CF, get irritated at the very mention of the costs of measures (by which I don't mean only financial cost, but cost in terms of collateral harm), as if it were somehow inhumane to even think about it, and from that it logically follows (to them) that you just do everything, just in case.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Baronkrak

Can be fined: could result: the maximum penalty: or possible: could attract.

Does not mean: 6 months in jail

Read further up the thread and you will see links to sources for a number of people actually jailed (usually with part of the sentence on probation, but some several months hard time) for such violations.

[Seaworthy Lass]

As a break from all our speculation , here are yesterday’s figures for COVID-19 related hospitalisations and deaths in the UK.

I have marked the point on the two curves two weeks after government mandated restrictions were dropped in England. The numbers have cycled and in general gone up a little, but not by much considering restrictions were dropped at the height of summer and it will be winter tomorrow.

Mask wearing on public transport and stores has been temporarily re-introduced in England in response to the Omicron variant, but other than this people have been left to handle the situation as they see fit and the sky has not fallen.

69.4% of UK’s total population has been fully vaccinated, on par with the EU average.

One thing to note is that a much lower % of those hospitalised are now dying, compared to the the two other waves.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Zippee

I will not pretend to be a epidemiologist, but as reported earlier - the table has been cleared and this is a whole new ballgame. There are however qualified opinions that this is akin to a whole new disease, with a great risk of being massively more transmissible, and quite possibly more severe. There are early indications that the young are much more vulnerable, and that vaccination will not prevent infection or transmission. Nor re-infection.


All the previous data and speculations just became dated and unreliable. The reaction of now 70 countries, plus cases showing up worldwide (and due to spread at warp speed) indicates to me anyway that the jig may be up, and the health departments of these countries know or suspect things that we are yet to learn. The answer will lie in the improbable likelihood of a unified world response, as yet still prevented by corporate control of the most profitable drug/vaccines in their history.


We are left to wait, and join the Neptune Society...

You are correct that this is one scenario at this early juncture which epidemiologists have opined on, but many of those very same experts have also decried the unjustified panic at this point, while others have pointed out that if this latest variant follows the historical pattern of becoming more contagious but less lethal, then it could actually hasten the end of this thing since almost everyone will become infected at some point, meaning that almost everyone will have antibodies to fight against it. In other words, it's premature to make definitive predictions.

I certainly would never pretend to be an epidemiologist either by making predictions which the experts themselves are unable to do at this point, but as a reasonably informed layman I can employ some diligence to try and see both scenarios. By failing to do so you are revealing the same lack of objectivity and entrenchment you so cavalierly accuse others of, the only difference being that they have a different opinion which happens not to coincide with yours. This is exactly the approach we see so often in other discussions involving complex science-based policy issues, most notably climate change, where advocates wrap themselves in their own preferred version of the "science" to advance their own preferred conclusions. But most such areas of science involve an assortment of well-established facts a convincing consensus of experts agree on, a more divergent consensus on ultimate conclusions & remedies, but also imperfect information which policymakers may have to nevertheless act on (or not) before such open-ended questions can be more definitively resolved.

Simply presenting the most dire scenario here -- all based on very preliminary information on this latest variant -- amounts to the same sort of alarmism we so often see with CC and other issues. It's not an absence of scientific support that's the problem, but rather the failure to also consider scientific support for alternative conclusions or courses of action. Unfortunately, and like many forms of mis or even disinformation, it all too often produces the opposite intended effect when uncovered, sowing even more public distrust with scientific experts & policymakers, along with lending unjustified credibility to conspiracists & outliers which social media so often bestows with disproportionate influence.

The bottom line is whether its mandatory vaccinations or more voluntary measures, the more credibility public health officials & policymakers have with the public the more the citizenry will trust and hopefully be swayed. This is especially important here, since even the most draconian compulsory measures may not result in as many people getting vaccinated as may be necessary to achieve the desired goal.

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

The data in Ireland shows that 10x hospital admissions are coming proportionally from the unvaccinated.

If I understand your use of "proportionally" correctly, then in a country of 5 mil of which 94% are vaccinated, the numbers of admissions for the unvaccinated would still come out smaller in absolute terms, even at a 10 fold greater rate.

Something like 37% fewer unvaccinated admission in absolute terms, meaning that 2 out of 3 beds are occupied by a vaccinated person.

So, can we not say that although proportionally the unvaccinated are way too much of a burden on hospital resources, equally, at this point, the reality of breakthrough infections is actually the greater issue in absolute terms?

That's, of course, assuming that I understand your use of the term proportional correctly, and my math is not terribly dodgy... neither of which I am terribly confident about.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Just a note. Any one travelling into Ireland fron Friday next Dec 3 will need a 42 hour professionally applied antigen test or 72 hour PCR test before being allowed in . This is irrespective of vaccine status. The mandatory hotel legislation that lapsed is being signed back into law this week.

I suspect we will see large restrictions on travel again on a country by country basis.

Portugal has closed her land borders till April 15th.. not sure what sea entry is like right now..
Mind.. it is winter..

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Read further up the thread and you will see links to sources for a number of people actually jailed (usually with part of the sentence on probation, but some several months hard time) for such violations.

Oh, come on , help the poor man.
It was three men ( there was a fourth but he skipped back to the east before they could catch him) who went to great lengths to falsify documents so they could get to Perth to watch a football match.
Two separate incidents were involved.
If they had been trying to get back to Perth to see their dying mum it would have been a different matter.
They didn't get 'hard time' whatever that may be, they got a jail sentence. They didn't get probation, they got part of their sentences suspended. Ten months with seven months suspended.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-...erms/100532080

The third bloke got seven months of which six were suspended, so one month inside in one of the nicer prisons. He will already be back home.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/thir...25-p592wf.html

You make an example of the few, the rest will comply.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Oh, come on , help the poor man.
It was three men ( there was a fourth but he skipped back to the east before they could catch him) who went to great lengths to falsify documents so they could get to Perth to watch a football match.
Two separate incidents were involved.
If they had been trying to get back to Perth to see their dying mum it would have been a different matter.
They didn't get 'hard time' whatever that may be, they got a jail sentence. They didn't get probation, they got part of their sentences suspended. Ten months with seven months suspended.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-...erms/100532080

The third bloke got seven months of which six were suspended, so one month inside in one of the nicer prisons. He will already be back home.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/thir...25-p592wf.html

You make an example of the few, the rest will comply.

You skipped the lady who was in one city to take care of her sick sister, who then snuck back to another one, was nicked, and thrown in jail for months. Without infecting anyone.


I know this all seems normal to you -- "They knew! Serves them right!". And that's fine. We know your opinion. Some other people are pretty horrified. That's a different opinion. For the record, it is exceptionally rare, all around the world, outside of places like North Korea and China, to give hard jail time to people without prior criminal records, for nonviolent crimes, nor is that kind of harsh punishment considered by criminologists to be useful at reducing crime. "Make an example of the few, the rest will comply", could be a quote from Stalin or Beria. It's about a century out of date, and half a hemisphere out of place.