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

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by dannc

The only instance I have read where not enough was done to limit/prevent the spread of the virus in nursing homes was the infections in Washington state at the start of the pandemic. More could/should have been done but there was a failure to communicate.

Then I read this today in the Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...d=hp_lead_pos5. This is likely behind a pay wall.

What is in the story is flat out criminal. The state of New York REQUIRED nursing homes to take in "recovering" virus patients.

This is a big percentage, look like 24%, of the number New York fatalities and it should not have happened. Preventing the virus from getting into nursing homes is difficult, but REQUIRING homes take in people who had, and likely still have the virus, is criminal, if not worse.

This policy has been changed but the damage has been done.

The WSJ reported this requirement, and it's dangers, back on March 26th, https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-mandates-nursing-homes-take-covid-19-patients-discharged-from-hospitals-11585228215?mod=article_inline

It is shocking that this was mandate, and once required, it stayed in affect for this long. Just unreal. When the virus was causing havoc in Italy, the reports were talking about the death toll of the elderly. How anyone could have mandated this policy, how it was approved, and how it stayed in place this long, is shocking.

Later,
Dan

A lot of mistakes were made, all over the world. We were not well prepared for this, as a planet.


One profound problem with protecting the elderly in care homes is that running a care home is a labor intensive operation, so often the cheapest labor available is used. This is true in the U.S. and it's true in Europe. In Sweden most of the staff are immigrants, and many of them don't have good language skills. There were big problems explaining the protocols, which did not get well implemented. I'm sure similar things happened in the U.S. and in a lot of other countries too.


It does beg questions about how we deal with the old age of our parents, doesn't it? Sending them off to care homes to be taken care of minimum wage workers?

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

A lot of mistakes were made, all over the world. We were not well prepared for this, as a planet.


One profound problem with protecting the elderly in care homes is that running a care home is a labor intensive operation, so often the cheapest labor available is used. This is true in the U.S. and it's true in Europe. In Sweden most of the staff are immigrants, and many of them don't have good language skills. There were big problems explaining the protocols, which did not get well implemented. I'm sure similar things happened in the U.S. and in a lot of other countries too.


It does beg questions about how we deal with the old age of our parents, doesn't it? Sending them off to care homes to be taken care of minimum wage workers?

Not quite right, anyway what comes to Sweden. There were several problems considering nursing homes and none of them has nothing to do with immigrant staff.
First, there were no masks. Second, most employees work with so called "zero hour contracts" ie they are paid only the hours they work without a minimum pay, thus they can have only for the minimum sick day benefits. Third, if they were sick due Covid19 they were ordered to stay home and only if the sympoms were becoming severe to get medical help. Thus they didn't get the proof of sickness and therefore no benefits whatsoever. Fourth, no test were taken.

What all this means, nobody knew if they had corona virus or not, people were "encouraged" to stay at work even if they were not well and they couldn't protect themselves nor the elderly they worked with.

Dunno if the situations is now better but this was about it a month ago..

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Not quite right, anyway what comes to Sweden. There were several problems considering nursing homes and none of them has nothing to do with immigrant staff.
First, there were no masks. Second, most employees work with so called "zero hour contracts" ie they are paid only the hours they work without a minimum pay, thus they can have only for the minimum sick day benefits. Third, if they were sick due Covid19 they were ordered to stay home and only if the sympoms were becoming severe to get medical help. Thus they didn't get the proof of sickness and therefore no benefits whatsoever. Fourth, no test were taken.

What all this means, nobody knew if they had corona virus or not, people were "encouraged" to stay at work even if they were not well and they couldn't protect themselves nor the elderly they worked with.

Dunno if the situations is now better but this was about it a month ago..

There were many problems, and those don't exclude the other ones. Bit of a cluster fumble.


Similar stories in other countries. We failed the elderly.

[Muaddib1116]

It looks like Sweden has taken the EU's recommendation and is going to maintain its non-EU entry ban until June 15th.

[GTom]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Not quite right, anyway what comes to Sweden. There were several problems considering nursing homes and none of them has nothing to do with immigrant staff.
First, there were no masks. Second, most employees work with so called "zero hour contracts" ie they are paid only the hours they work without a minimum pay, thus they can have only for the minimum sick day benefits. Third, if they were sick due Covid19 they were ordered to stay home and only if the sympoms were becoming severe to get medical help. Thus they didn't get the proof of sickness and therefore no benefits whatsoever. Fourth, no test were taken.

What all this means, nobody knew if they had corona virus or not, people were "encouraged" to stay at work even if they were not well and they couldn't protect themselves nor the elderly they worked with.

Dunno if the situations is now better but this was about it a month ago..

Does a Swede take a job like that?

[Montanan]

No more than five per cent of the population of France and Spain, two of the countries hardest hit by coronavirus, have contracted the disease, two new studies have found in a major blow to hopes of "herd immunity".

A mere 4.4 per cent of the French population – 2.8 million people – have been infected, according to findings by the Pasteur Institue, published in the journal Science and based on models applied to hospital and death data. Even in the worst hit parts of France, the eastern area and the Paris region, the infection rate only reaches between nine and 10 per cent on average. Such figures are considerably higher than the official count of cases but far too low to effectively stop the spread of the virus through group immunity.

"Around 65 per cent of the population should be immune if we want to control the pandemic by the sole means of immunity", it said. Herd immunity refers to a situation in which enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading.

Strict confinement led to a drastic decline in the coronavirus reproduction rate, which went from 2.9 to 0.67 over the 55-day virtual standstill, said the researchers. However, their findings suggest that "without a vaccine, the herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lockdown. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld




The prevalence of infection revealed by the survey means the mortality rate in Spain is 1.1 per cent, and may be closer to 1.5 per cent if suspected Covid deaths not confirmed by testing are included. Most scientific estimates had placed the mortality rate at below one per cent. Of those who tested positive in the survey, 26 per cent had not noticed any symptoms. Of all the symptoms reported, including coughing, diarrhoea and headaches, the most prevalent among people who tested positive was the loss of smell, which appeared in 43 per cent of cases. Among children, prevalence was three per cent among the five-to-nine age group, and just under four per cent among pre-teens and teens.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/france-sp...092626231.html

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Montanan

No more than five per cent of the population of France and Spain, two of the countries hardest hit by coronavirus, have contracted the disease, two new studies have found in a major blow to hopes of "herd immunity".

A mere 4.4 per cent of the French population – 2.8 million people – have been infected, according to findings by the Pasteur Institue, published in the journal Science and based on models applied to hospital and death data. Even in the worst hit parts of France, the eastern area and the Paris region, the infection rate only reaches between nine and 10 per cent on average. Such figures are considerably higher than the official count of cases but far too low to effectively stop the spread of the virus through group immunity.

"Around 65 per cent of the population should be immune if we want to control the pandemic by the sole means of immunity", it said. Herd immunity refers to a situation in which enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading.

Strict confinement led to a drastic decline in the coronavirus reproduction rate, which went from 2.9 to 0.67 over the 55-day virtual standstill, said the researchers. However, their findings suggest that "without a vaccine, the herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lockdown. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld




The prevalence of infection revealed by the survey means the mortality rate in Spain is 1.1 per cent, and may be closer to 1.5 per cent if suspected Covid deaths not confirmed by testing are included. Most scientific estimates had placed the mortality rate at below one per cent. Of those who tested positive in the survey, 26 per cent had not noticed any symptoms. Of all the symptoms reported, including coughing, diarrhoea and headaches, the most prevalent among people who tested positive was the loss of smell, which appeared in 43 per cent of cases. Among children, prevalence was three per cent among the five-to-nine age group, and just under four per cent among pre-teens and teens.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/france-sp...092626231.html

Bad news that so few people have been infected, but otherwise I think everything here is fairly uncontroversial and unsurprising. It's early days yet and this thing is not going to just disappear. We are very far away from herd immunity alone resolving this crisis and I don't think anyone has seriously hoped for that happening soon since early March.



Note however that acquired immunity amongst the population will slow the spread down even if there is not enough of it to produce full herd immunity. That's why there is an infection curve at all in an otherwise uncontrolled epidemic. So the more people who have had it, the easier it becomes to control. We see that in Lombardy and in New York City -- which is not to say that the epidemic is over there -- no -- just that r0 is naturally reduced and the spread is slower.

[Montanan]

The USA Center for Disease Control has finally issued its guidance for specific mitigation strategies for various venues and activities, titled:

Communities, Schools, Workplaces, and Events
Guidance for Where You Live, Work, Learn, Pray, and Play

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...ity/index.html

[Macblaze]

Originally Posted by Montanan

The USA Center for Disease Control has finally issued its guidance for specific mitigation strategies for various venues and activities, titled:

Communities, Schools, Workplaces, and Events
Guidance for Where You Live, Work, Learn, Pray, and Play

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...ity/index.html

I think you're lost

[tp12]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I did answer it.

I said -- vaccines work on a population level, by creating herd immunity in the population. That's how they stop epidemics. I gave links to more detailed information on the subject, too.

Vaccines work on an individual level by giving the vaccinated person acquired immunity, by the same principle that people who have been infected get acquired immunity. If you don't become immune from having been infected, you won't become immune from getting vaccinated, either. I gave a link to more detailed information about this, too.

"Acquired immunity creates immunological memory after an initial response to a specific pathogen, and leads to an enhanced response to subsequent encounters with that pathogen. This process of acquired immunity is the basis of vaccination." op.cit.


So if you don't become immune from getting sick and recovering, you won't become immune from any vaccine, either. Both effects come from the same mechanism -- acquired immunity.


There is certainly acquired immunity after having been sick and recovered, to some degree or another. You wouldn't recover at all, if your immune system were unable to defeat the virus. The question is how long lasting the effect is, and whether the virus is mutating fast enough to invalidate your acquired immunity (as GTom said). We don't have a lot of knowledge about this yet in this particular case, because this is a completely new virus.

There's false statements here. Let's look at your statement in context of mine.


I was replying to a statement that said, paraphrasing, Sweden has only had 1/5th of its population exposed to the virus so is still a long way from herd immunity. My response was that there's no evidence to suggest that herd immunity will be a thing. People are being reinfected - this goes against some of your comment above. In this context your statement of 'if there's no herd immunity there'll be no vaccine' is incorrect. The bodies ability to naturally generate immunity is not the same as a vaccine engineered to do the same thing. Please note that there are vaccines in trial as we speak.


Also, let's look at the example of the flu. We have vaccines for the flu. We have multiple because the flu virus mutates. We don't have acquired immunity because it mutates faster than our 'identify new strain, develop new vaccine, manufacture new vaccine, distribute new vaccine and vaccinate the population' process and also, vaccination coverage is low for a lot of reasons. Some medical, some not. So here's an example of us not having herd immunity yet having effective vaccines.


I think it's important to keep the discussion as evidence based as possible as opinions, especially when stated as fact, can derail a useful conversation.

[tp12]

In terms of responses, some countries took pandemic planning seriously and others did not. A good example of countries that took that planning seriously, and listened to experts in that process, and took immediate, or very close to, action are Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia.


Only countries that didn't take their pandemic planning seriously and their apologists are saying that everyone was not well prepared. This is simply not true.

[tp12]

For example, Trump disbanded the team responsible for the response and didn't follow the plan. Apparently because it was developed under Obama.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by tp12

. . . The bodies ability to naturally generate immunity is not the same as a vaccine engineered to do the same thing. Please note that there are vaccines in trial as we speak.. .

Yes it is. On the contrary. Vaccines merely train the body's own immune system. Vaccines do not act against a virus directly. So if the body's own immune system can't act against the virus then a vaccine has no effect. Read the linked article.



Don't confuse herd immunity on the population level, with individual immunity. Related but not the same. Herd immunity is the result of a prevalance of individual immunity. It's a simple concept -- enough individuals are immune, there are fewer paths of infection. That's where infection curves come from. Again, read the linked articles, to acquire basic knowledge.

[tp12]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yes it is. On the contrary. Vaccines merely train the body's own immune system. Vaccines do not act against a virus directly. So if the body's own immune system can't act against the virus then a vaccine has no effect. Read the linked article.



Don't confuse herd immunity on the population level, with individual immunity. Related but not the same. Herd immunity is the result of a prevalance of individual immunity. It's a simple concept -- enough individuals are immune, there are fewer paths of infection. That's where infection curves come from. Again, read the linked articles, to acquire basic knowledge.

Vaccines can trigger an immune response where the body wasn't naturally doing that.


I'm not confusing herd immunity here, I detailed both separately. This is your misunderstanding of my response.

[stevensuf]

The test for antibodies gives a high percentage of false negatives and most younger people tackle the virus without making antibodies, so we may well find the infected percentage is a fair bit higher than 4.5% in France, it could easily be double that number. My bet is 0.7% death rate for the infected in Western nations, probably lower in, Asian nations and much lower in Africa. The younger the population the lower the death rate and the less obese the lower the death rate. We have countries like Qatar and Singapore, showing death rates of 0.1%


There is also lots of evidence coming in now suggesting they should be looking more into blood clotting as the main driver of death,The ventilators are useless if they cannot stop the blood clots blocking the oxygen pathways in the lungs,so hopefully better treatment will come along very soon as the actions are better understood and medical approaches to treatment change and become more effective.