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

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Yes.
A deep and prolonged slow down very likely for EU economy. I guess not much better outlook elsewhere. It is all linked now.
There is always hope for the Nordic parts that have relatively high 'work and save' culture still somewhat present. But cases like Greece, Italy or Spain, I fear to think. I can only think that perhaps the forecasts are blacker that the reality will be.
What I fear most is that this 'stay home and get paid for that' situation will further demoralize already not at all too high morale here (in the EU South).
It hurts me to say this, as we live here because we do love the benevolent attitude, the openness of local people. Still, if I were to bet money on economies, I see the North pulling thru, much as it will take a big effort and plenty of social tensions. But not the South. Not this time.
My worries are not made any less when I read that the Nordic states have already opposed the Franco-German proposal to issue EU debt to be given (non-return basis) to the Southern economies. In fact at least one Northern country voiced this along the lines of "not helping AGAIN countries that did not care to get prepared for bad times". A brutal statement that exposes (for the n'th time) the gaping and widening chasm between North and South of the EU.
I am truly sad because of this situation and I do feel for the Southern states. Even as I mentally understand and share the hard worded Northern concerns.
I would say this is the end of the EU as we know it. And I do not feel fine.
b.

I wish there were something I could argue with here, but there isn't. Southern Europe has been in a downward spiral for decades and this looks very much like the last straw. It's doubly disastrous (if you can even wrap your mind around DOUBLING a monster like this) for Italy, Greece and Spain because of the very high proportion of GDP in those countries which comes from the very industries which are -- devastated is not the word -- wiped off the face of the earth -- by this crisis. The EU has been a lot more resilient than many predicted but I guess the chances that it will simply fall apart now are quite significant, and the consequences of that could be . . . .

As you say, we are all interlinked, so I don't think there is any reason for optimism for Northern Europe, either. Southern Europe may just drag the whole continent into the abyss.
I hope I'm wrong. God help us that this is over sooner rather than later and that the economic recovery starts sooner and is stronger, than it looks. Economic recovery after the Spanish Flu was quite sharp, but this is very different, and we live in a vastly more interconnected world than then.

There is no reason to assume that deaths and destruction of human lives resulting from the economic collapse, will be less than the number who will die from the virus, or even the number who would have died from the virus if we had done nothing to contain it. We don't have any idea yet how bad this is going to be.

[Montanan]

As the David Bowie song goes: Ch ch Changes.

Covid 19 seems to be changing.

The novel coronavirus is behaving differently in patients in northeast China who have contracted it recently compared with early cases, indicating it is changing as it spreads, a prominent doctor said.
China, which has largely brought the virus under control, has found new clusters of infections in the northeastern border provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang in recent weeks, raising concern about a second wave.
Qiu Haibo, an expert in critical care medicine who is part of a National Health Commission expert group, said the incubation period of the virus in patients in the northeast was longer than that of patients in Wuhan, the central city, where the virus emerged late last year.
"This causes a problem, as they don't have any symptoms. So when they gather with their families they don't care about this issue and we see family cluster infections,". Patients in the northeastern clusters were also carrying the virus for longer than earlier cases in Wuhan, and they were taking longer to recover, as defined by a negative nucleic acid test. Patients in the northeast also rarely exhibited fever and tended to suffer damage to the lungs rather than across multiple organs

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-rep...004214565.html

[Montanan]

Sweden becomes country with highest coronavirus death rate per capita.

Sweden has now overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium to have the highest coronavirus per capita death rate in the world, throwing its decision to avoid a strict lockdown into further doubt.

According to figures collated by the Our World in Data website, Sweden had 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants per day on a rolling seven-day average between May 13 and May 20.

This is the highest in the world, above the UK, Belgium and the US, which have 5.57, 4.28 and 4.11 respectively.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sweden-be...133234368.html

[Montanan]

A sobering and enlightening assessment as to a second wave.


‘The 1918 Spanish flu’s second wave was even more devastating’: Americans brace for another coronavirus outbreak in the fall.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we...of2&yptr=yahoo

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Financial Times that he “can’t guarantee” more stay-at-home requirements in the winter or the fall. “We are committed to using the time that we have now to get this nation as over-prepared as possible.”
“We’ve seen evidence that the concerns it would go south in the southern hemisphere like flu [are coming true], and you’re seeing what’s happening in Brazil now,” Redfield told the U.K. paper, “and then when the southern hemisphere is over I suspect it will re-ground itself in the north.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases declared, “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.” He previously said the “ultimate game changer” will be a vaccine, but that could take 12 to 18 months.

“If we’re not expecting a second wave or a mutation of this virus, then we have learned nothing,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

First, the bad news: “The four seasonal coronaviruses do not seem to induce long-term immunity,” said Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“We will not have a vaccine by next winter,” Poland added. “The Southern Hemisphere is just starting their fall and winter. They will have a severe course of this disease due to less preparedness, less medical infrastructure and less public infrastructure.” “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,”

How do other coronaviruses compare to SARS-CoV-2? People infected by SARS-CoV, an outbreak that centered in southern China and Hong Kong from 2002 to 2004, had immunity for roughly two years; studies suggest the antibodies disappear six years after the infection.
For MERS-CoV, a coronavirus that has caused hundreds of cases in the Middle East, people retain immunity for approximately 18 months — although the long-term response to being exposed to the virus again may depend on the severity of the original infection.
The world, Poland said, should brace itself for round two: “We will start moving into our summer when they’re moving into their winter,” he said. “If, as is likely, we don’t restrict all travel, cases will start coming back into the Northern Hemisphere and we’ll have another outbreak this fall.”


“There’s no chance that immunity is going to be high enough to reach herd immunity,” Poland said. “With influenza, you need herd immunity of 60% to 70%. With measles, you need about 95%. With COVID-19, it’s somewhere in the middle.” In the absence of a vaccine, Poland said several conditions are necessary for herd immunity to work: a very high level of population immunity, for that immunity to be durable, and for the virus to not mutate. “None of those seem to be operational at present,”


In addition to the level of herd immunity (or lack thereof) to protect those who are most vulnerable, people will have to be cognizant of the disease spreading through asymptomatic carriers — that is, people who are infected but show no signs that they’re ill.


Lessons in immunity from the Spanish flu of 1918
So what will happen if or when SARS-CoV-2, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, returns? “We’re just 14 weeks into this, so no one knows,” Poland said. If it has a slight mutation, he added, the response of our antibodies will be “moderately irrelevant.”

We can’t expect to have the same “herd immunity” or “original antigenic sin” — the ability of our immune systems to remember a virus that is similar, but not the same, as a previous version — as influenza. Influenza, after all, has been around for 500, if not 1,000 years.

“During the great influenza pandemic of 1918, the age group that disproportionately died were young people, not older adults,” Poland said. “Older adults had seen previews of this virus in earlier years, probably in the late 1800s, so they had immunological memory.”


A more virulent, mutated strain of the novel coronavirus would be a worst-case scenario for a second wave of SARS-CoV-2 this fall or winter.


And the second wave of SARS-CoV-2? “It will likely hit harder in areas not severely impacted the first time in the interior of the U.S., where there’s a lot more susceptible people,” Kullar said. “COVID-19’s sweet spot could be October to May, with it peaking, likely, in October and November.”


What else, aside from social distancing to “flatten the curve” of new infections, can be done between now and then? While scientists work to crack the code of the novel coronavirus, the government and members of the public can work together.
“It all comes down to testing,” Kullar said. “We really need to have wide-scale testing available, and contact tracing to find everyone who has been exposed and get them to self-isolate for 14 days. We don’t have a system like that in the U.S. at present.”


In Europe, Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told The Guardian newspaper that she too expects a second wave. “The question is when and how big,” she said, adding that 85% to 90% of the population is still susceptible. Ammon said SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to just go away. “The virus is around us, circulating much more than January and February,” she said this week. “I don’t want to draw a doomsday picture but I think we have to be realistic. That it’s not the time now to completely relax.”

In the meantime, a lot will come down to the public. “How we behave will really determine how big this virus is going to get,” she said. “Maintain social distancing and wear masks in public until we see infection rates go down, and keep doing it until we get enough testing.”

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Sweden becomes country with highest coronavirus death rate per capita.

Sweden has now overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium to have the highest coronavirus per capita death rate in the world, throwing its decision to avoid a strict lockdown into further doubt.

The word "overtaken" implies that the death rate is rising. But that is not the case. More "quality" journalism from Yahoo. Here is what it actually looks like:


https://www.ft.com/content/46733256-...0-8cce9d4095e4

The death rate is slowly falling in Sweden. But the death rate is a trailing indicator. The rate of hospitalization is falling fast, the number of patients in ICU is now below 400, less than 1/3 of capacity. The measures are clearly working, which is why Sweden sticks with them, and why the public supports them.

And the big difference is that the UK (and Italy and Belgium) are at the end of an unsustainable hard lockdown, with people ordered to stay at home. The hard lockdown is being lifted now, and there will be a second wave -- see Montanan's immediately preceding post on this. So let's revisit these graphs in a month or two. Read the Harvard study for what second waves after hard lockdowns look like.

Sweden on the contrary is lifting nothing, is maintaining in full its sustainable measures, and there is nothing whatsoever which could cause a second wave in the next months. As the Swedish Prime Minister said yesterday, "this is a marathon, not a sprint".

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Montanan

A sobering and enlightening assessment as to a second wave.


‘The 1918 Spanish flu’s second wave was even more devastating’: Americans brace for another coronavirus outbreak in the fall.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we...of2&yptr=yahoo

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Financial Times that he “can’t guarantee” more stay-at-home requirements in the winter or the fall. “We are committed to using the time that we have now to get this nation as over-prepared as possible.”
“We’ve seen evidence that the concerns it would go south in the southern hemisphere like flu [are coming true], and you’re seeing what’s happening in Brazil now,” Redfield told the U.K. paper, “and then when the southern hemisphere is over I suspect it will re-ground itself in the north.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases declared, “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.” He previously said the “ultimate game changer” will be a vaccine, but that could take 12 to 18 months.

“If we’re not expecting a second wave or a mutation of this virus, then we have learned nothing,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

First, the bad news: “The four seasonal coronaviruses do not seem to induce long-term immunity,” said Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“We will not have a vaccine by next winter,” Poland added. “The Southern Hemisphere is just starting their fall and winter. They will have a severe course of this disease due to less preparedness, less medical infrastructure and less public infrastructure.” “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,”

How do other coronaviruses compare to SARS-CoV-2? People infected by SARS-CoV, an outbreak that centered in southern China and Hong Kong from 2002 to 2004, had immunity for roughly two years; studies suggest the antibodies disappear six years after the infection.
For MERS-CoV, a coronavirus that has caused hundreds of cases in the Middle East, people retain immunity for approximately 18 months — although the long-term response to being exposed to the virus again may depend on the severity of the original infection.
The world, Poland said, should brace itself for round two: “We will start moving into our summer when they’re moving into their winter,” he said. “If, as is likely, we don’t restrict all travel, cases will start coming back into the Northern Hemisphere and we’ll have another outbreak this fall.”


“There’s no chance that immunity is going to be high enough to reach herd immunity,” Poland said. “With influenza, you need herd immunity of 60% to 70%. With measles, you need about 95%. With COVID-19, it’s somewhere in the middle.” In the absence of a vaccine, Poland said several conditions are necessary for herd immunity to work: a very high level of population immunity, for that immunity to be durable, and for the virus to not mutate. “None of those seem to be operational at present,”


In addition to the level of herd immunity (or lack thereof) to protect those who are most vulnerable, people will have to be cognizant of the disease spreading through asymptomatic carriers — that is, people who are infected but show no signs that they’re ill.


Lessons in immunity from the Spanish flu of 1918
So what will happen if or when SARS-CoV-2, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, returns? “We’re just 14 weeks into this, so no one knows,” Poland said. If it has a slight mutation, he added, the response of our antibodies will be “moderately irrelevant.”

We can’t expect to have the same “herd immunity” or “original antigenic sin” — the ability of our immune systems to remember a virus that is similar, but not the same, as a previous version — as influenza. Influenza, after all, has been around for 500, if not 1,000 years.

“During the great influenza pandemic of 1918, the age group that disproportionately died were young people, not older adults,” Poland said. “Older adults had seen previews of this virus in earlier years, probably in the late 1800s, so they had immunological memory.”


A more virulent, mutated strain of the novel coronavirus would be a worst-case scenario for a second wave of SARS-CoV-2 this fall or winter.


And the second wave of SARS-CoV-2? “It will likely hit harder in areas not severely impacted the first time in the interior of the U.S., where there’s a lot more susceptible people,” Kullar said. “COVID-19’s sweet spot could be October to May, with it peaking, likely, in October and November.”


What else, aside from social distancing to “flatten the curve” of new infections, can be done between now and then? While scientists work to crack the code of the novel coronavirus, the government and members of the public can work together.
“It all comes down to testing,” Kullar said. “We really need to have wide-scale testing available, and contact tracing to find everyone who has been exposed and get them to self-isolate for 14 days. We don’t have a system like that in the U.S. at present.”


In Europe, Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told The Guardian newspaper that she too expects a second wave. “The question is when and how big,” she said, adding that 85% to 90% of the population is still susceptible. Ammon said SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to just go away. “The virus is around us, circulating much more than January and February,” she said this week. “I don’t want to draw a doomsday picture but I think we have to be realistic. That it’s not the time now to completely relax.”

In the meantime, a lot will come down to the public. “How we behave will really determine how big this virus is going to get,” she said. “Maintain social distancing and wear masks in public until we see infection rates go down, and keep doing it until we get enough testing.”

I think this is generally all correct -- I don't think there is much controversy about how long this pandemic will last. We are just at the beginning of it. We're still in the first wave in most parts of the world.


I did think it was weird though that this guy talks about spreading between Northern and Southern hemispheres, and restricting travel. Travel between North and South must be a trivial vector compared to community spread inside each country. The virus is quite prevalent in most Northern Hemisphere countries; travelers from Australia or South Africa are going to have zero impact on the spreading of the disease in the U.S., where there are now and will continue to be millions of cases. So I thought that was just weird.


We will see when winter hits in the Southern Hemisphere whether there is seasonal forcing or not. Let's hope there isn't too much. Seasonal forcing has a huge impact on the second wave; Harvard predicted that the second wave this fall in countries which had hard lockdowns may be worse than the first wave would have been without any controls at all. Shudder to think.


As to the durability of immunity -- it's true that we don't know yet the extent or durability of immunity resulting from either a hypothetical vaccine or from infection. Most scientists are assuming that immunity will be like our immunity to the flu -- lasting maybe a year and being fairly effective. The Harvard study assumes two years.


But there is actually some good news on the immunity front, which bodes well for the chances of having an effective vaccine, and which bodes well for natural immunity working longer, a new study from last week, and teh most extensive one to date on immune response to the virus: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...he-coronavirus


"So overall, this paper makes the prospects for a vaccine look good: there is indeed a robust response by the adaptive immune system, to several coronavirus proteins. And vaccine developers will want to think about adding in some of the other antigens mentioned in this paper, in addition to the Spike antigens that have been the focus thus far. It seems fair to say, though, that the first wave of vaccines will likely be Spike-o-centric, and later vaccines might have these other antigens included in the mix. But it also seems that Spike-protein-targeted vaccines should be pretty effective, so that’s good. The other good news is that this team looked for the signs of an antibody-dependent-enhancement response, which would be bad news, and did not find evidence of it in the recovering patients (I didn’t go into these details, but wanted to mention that finding, which is quite reassuring). And it also looks like the prospects for (reasonably) lasting immunity after infection (or after vaccination) are good. This, from what I can see, is just the sort of response that you’d want to see for that to be the case. Clinical data will be the real decider on that, but there’s no reason so far to think that a person won’t have such immunity if they fit this profile."




Many people are deeply confused about the significance of natural immunity. Many people think that it doesn't matter unless we reach full herd immunity, but this is not true at all. If natural immunity works in a more or less normal way, and there is absolutely no reason so far to think that it doesn't, then this epidemic will progress like all other epidemics in history have -- it will have peaks and then fade off as more and more people have been infected and have gained immunity. That's the "curve". If there weren't ANY natural immunity the curve would turn down only after everyone dies. So it means that as the virus spreads the rate of infection will naturally come down, and populations which have had a certain amount of infection will become less and less vulnerable. We should certainly hope that this effect is strong.

[tp12]

More 'good news' from Sweden

https://amp.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...mpression=true

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by tp12

More 'good news' from Sweden

https://amp.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...mpression=true

Do you get all your information about the pandemic from the "Lifestyle" sections of tabloid sites?


You would understand a lot more if you would read some actual scientific literature.

[Dockhead]

Harbourmaster in the Danish port where I am told me yesterday that they have had a 30% increase in the number of visiting pleasure vessels so far year on year.

Finnish friends have told me that they see the same thing in Finland.

So a couple of months ago when we started this thread, we wondered whether there would be any sailing this summer. Now we know the answer to this question -- a ton of it.

Only problem for cruising is the borders are still closed, even among Nordic countries The EU has recommended opening them, but it's not clear what's going to happen now. The Danish prime minister has promised a decision by 1 June, which is still more than a week away.

So I don't know about the rest of you, but my cruising plans are still in complete limbo. At the moment although local boats are having a ball, my UK flagged vessel should stay in port -- under advice of the harbourmaster. I would like to cruise the West coast of Norway this summer, but still no idea whether it will be possible. If not I guess it will be maybe the Swedish West and South coasts, where I can cruise regardless of what happens with the borders, but only with Europeans on board, as non-Europeans are still not allowed in.

Interesting times.

[tp12]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Do you get all your information about the pandemic from the "Lifestyle" sections of tabloid sites?


You would understand a lot more if you would read some actual scientific literature.

So the numbers aren't real, then? Oh wait, they are and you're just indulging in a cheap shot to avoid addressing the actual point. I'm SO surprised you'd do that [emoji3]

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by tp12

So the numbers aren't real, then? Oh wait, they are and you're just indulging in a cheap shot to avoid addressing the actual point. I'm SO surprised you'd do that [emoji3]

Not a cheap shot at all. The numbers don't mean anything if you don't know what they mean, and you're not going to figure that out from Lifestyle Section fluff pieces.


If you want to contribute something meaningful to this discussion you should do a little work like the rest of us, and do a little reading. If you don't read much or don't like to read, you can even get really solid, actual scientific stuff on Youtube. The Lockdown TV channel which several participants in this thread have commented on, is superb, with a variety of serious scientists representing a whole spectrum of different opinions: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...xePlpuPWom3vK0

[tp12]

Hahaha, sure mate, keep doubling down.

It's a pretty obvious statistic, this one. If you're struggling with understanding it yourself your comment could almost make sense. But it's another Teflon answer from Sweden's Chief Propaganda Officer.

[tp12]

Anyway, thanks for all the LOLs but the constant stream from you is getting on the nose. It's the block for you

[Wotname]

For an Australiacentric view on the second and third waves, listen to Dr Norman Swan's coronacast (from 6.30 to 9.20).
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/program...doors/12270656

He predicts the second wave will likely to be no more than a series of ripples but the third wave could be really bad and the infection rate will worse than the original outbreak.

His assumptions and logic sounds reasonable to me.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Wotname

For an Australiacentric view on the second and third waves, listen to Dr Norman Swan's coronacast (from 6.30 to 9.20).
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/program...doors/12270656

He predicts the second wave will likely to be no more than a series of ripples but the third wave could be really bad and the infection rate will worse than the original outbreak.

His assumptions and logic sounds reasonable to me.

I listened to it; thanks for posting it. Sounds reasonable to me too.


I don't think any informed people think that we are out of the woods yet, or will be any time this year. We've bought some time, and the first wave is dying down everywhere. But that's not victory, not anywhere.


Any country which has not used this time to intensely prepare sustainable measures to control the coming future waves of the pandemic, will get whacked. As Swan says, Australia (like other countries who have not had much infection yet) is particularly vulnerable. But the measures he proposes sound reasonable; hopefully they are being implemented; hopefully they will work.



The Nordic countries seem to me to be doing a good job. They are all rapidly ramping up testing to huge capacities -- today Denmark announced that there are tests available for any adult who wants to be tested, in any of the numerous white tents which have been erected all around the country. The Norwegians are also bracing for a second wave, while concentrating on testing and contact tracing: https://www.thelocal.no/20200520/int...ig-second-wave. Similar measures are being implemented in Sweden and Finland.



Denmark is the world leader in testing among non-micro states with 7.3% of the population already tested (Australia by the way is not bad with almost 4% of the population already tested, more than most European countries).