“vaccine comes out is it worth pinning our hopes on?”
There are 70 prototypes under developement now, most likely they will come too late in 12-18 months and high likely it will make lot of difference for those at risk or health workers, the rest has to wait maybe up to 3 years and count on protection/treatment, immune system or other luck factors (better mutation in 6 months or the heatwave kill it)
Let’s drop the government for a while. Do you agree that effective handling of an epidemic like this would require some coordination at a level above individual communities? If yes, who or what would provide that coordination? If not, why not?
At least someone must protect people who act irresponsibly from harming themselves. This sounds quite strange and I am the last one who thinks these people don’t deserve their fate but in the end I’m the one who will suffer if I break my arm in an accident and the hospitals won’t take me because they are full of party people from a bar in Ischgl.
Rwy20 wrote:
Closing borders is at this stage a purely symbolic act with no epidemiological benefit and should be abandoned as quickly as possible, as the outbreak has never stopped at country borders. It is just something for politicians to show they are “doing something” and that the problem really comes from elsewhere.
I absolutely agree with this statement, at least as far as intra-EU borders are concerned. Closing borders does more harm than good.
If everybody behaved sensibly and followed basic hygiene rules, like keeping your distance to others, don’t touch your face unless you have just washed/desinfected your hands and touched nothing inbetween, cough/sneeze into your elbow instead of your hands and optionally wear a mask, then many of the restrictions could be lifted. The degree of compliance with these rules more or less dictates the course this will take (I’m well aware I’m not posting anything new in this post, but repetitio est mater studiorum.
Closing borders must logically work to stop spreading the virus.
If it doesn’t actually work that simply means the closure didn’t actually happen.
We are seeing islands everywhere closing their ferry and aircraft traffic in their effort to stop it getting there and trash their often minimal hospital facilities, and some will probably succeed. Land borders are harder because people can walk across most of them – at least on mainland Europe.
Peter wrote:
Closing borders must logically work to stop spreading the virus.
Yes. But also logically, once the virus has spread to a country there is no point in closing its borders.
There is if the characteristics of the spread are different (faster, slower, etc).
If the population density and interaction is below a certain figure, relative to the incubation time and other factors – these taken together is what defines the R number – the epidemic will die out by itself (R < 1). I have seen no evidence that this very basic rule does not apply to this one.
Most of Europe is way too densely populated and has way too much travel to make R < 1 likely with the current level of social interaction, but that doesn’t mean you should do nothing. I think everybody agrees that not doing a quarantine on the 6 digit number of skiers returning from the Alps in Feb and particular March was particularly dumb.
My neighbour proposed that if a large swathe of Mid-Wales had been closed off a few weeks ago, by now we would have been able to lift all restrictions, other than travelling outside the county. He’d even worked out how many roads we would have needed to blockade: 11.
At first the suggestion startled me, and I’m not sure that he’s entirely correct. But in spirit there’s some truth in what he says.
MedEwok wrote:
I absolutely agree with this statement, at least as far as intra-EU borders are concerned. Closing borders does more harm than good.
I’m not sure why borders are treated totally different to quarantine by people. Surely if we’re saying that keeping people inside and locked down is the worthwhile action to be taking now to save lives, closing borders fits in with that.
Saying having people traveling around freely surely can only increase the risk compared to not traveling unrestricted. The assessment has to be, by how much and if it is worth it.
Relatively long but insightful
Very few people 80+ will get ICU. It helps to explain why the average ICU age is much less.
No doubt every country has something like this, and it’s obviously very useful for preventing ICU overload. It just doesn’t get talked about…
