How does evidence of Australia and New Zealand completely debunk that idea? Can you show me what the difference in R is shown to be between the two approaches I’ve set out and how it might translate to the UK?
What I’m suggesting seems to be consistently interpreted as advocating for no control on the spread of the virus - when it is patently not what I’m saying.
You’re wanting freedoms and a more normal life. I’m saying that is not possible in the middle of a pandemic but with some compromises with regards to travel the opportunity was there to get closer to normality. Plus normal for the vast majority doesn’t mean jetting off abroad every week.
The evidence lies in the raw numbers of cases, deaths, lockdown duration and performance of the relative economies.
Heavily restricting international travel and providing a strict quarantine regime should have been in place last March.
Do any of these fuckwits actually know anything about France?
Yep I certainly did. 
It’s extreme for those that are travelling. Sure. But then I’m not sure of the great urgency of travelling (FIFO jobs excepted - I believe @Dutch continually needs to enter and leave the country for work) unless you were stuck overseas at the start of the pandemic and needed to get home. If we limited international travel, we could have lived a relatively normal life domestically. Instead of going to the sunny beach of Spain in summer, we would be heading to a cold beach in the UK somewhere, but then we wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of knowing our travelling has just indirectly killed our neighbour’s grandmother.
As for PCR tests, I agree that is a much better approach today, without question. It wasn’t available to anyone though at the start of the pandemic, so the only option for a country to protect its citizens was to lock down borders and quarantine. That didn’t happen here.
I remember returning here from Australia in September. My wife’s visa ran out in Aus so we didn’t exactly have a choice but to come back. There was no quarantine on the UK side but we effectively had that anyway as the five of us had to stay in a single room Travelodge for 4 weeks straight as we waited for tenants to move out of our house. Not a fun experience. We could at least get out and go to the park though and I couldn’t imagine the prison sentence it would be if I was going the other way to enter Australia and I couldn’t leave my room at all, even if it was only 14 days.
But again I swing back to my point about the necessity of needing to leave the country. The choice was between ensuring the freedoms and reduced hardships for travellers who wished to travel internationally, and the 4-6 months house bound quarantine we are currently facing. I can imagine which of the two has more implications on mental health. Throw juggling home schooling into the mix with full time jobs and god help us all.
What I’m advocating is more stringent than what we’ve currently got so I’m not sure it’s correct to say that I’m wanting freedoms and a more normal life. What I’m questioning is the level of additional benefit such an extreme measure of enforced quarantine provides over and above the measures I’ve suggested ought to be in place.
I’ve asked for what data there is that shows the impact on the R number on community transmission between the two approaches and so far nobody’s been able to tell me. I suspect it’s negligible.
Understood, and it’s a good question to ask. It’s probably quite valid considering how late this is being considered. The real opportunity was last year and it was missed. Doing it will not have anywhere near the same affect unless the South African variant or another results in a third wave.
But I still maintain that we should do it, even though its too late but it will prevent on going infection in the un vaccinated population and I suppose also reduce the risk of a further mutation occurring in a partially vaccinated group.
I’m sorry I haven’t studied the numbers on this but to me the stark differences in the headline numbers are quite staggering are enough to tell me their approach has been far more effective. Plus there is plenty of evidence out there of UK cases increasing as a result of international travel. With regard to costs, I’m not sure they are that crazy unless they are contracting Tory party donors again. I would hope its not another Track and Trace white elephant.
Would you have advocated this approach early last year?
Which one? Enforced quarantining and/or PCR test before travel, temperature and lateral-flow tests on arrival, self-isolation for 10-14 days, negative PCR test needed to shorten that?
Last year I would have been more inclined to advocate enforced quarantining (and think that I did at the time) as there wasn’t really reliable, developed, quick PCR testing available last summer. We had that window of opportunity (during the summer months when numbers of arrivals were low as were the number of cases) where we could have put arrangements for enforced quarantining in place but we missed it. Also track and trace was a fucking shambles. There simply wasn’t adequate processes in place last year to be a reasonable alternative to quarantining.
Now, however, there are. PCR testing is much quicker and more reliable, track and trace is many degrees improved (it’s basically now as good as many other countries’ track and trace was more than 6 months ago, sigh), and the country is in a national lockdown. In my view those circumstances make enforced quarantining disproportionate for what I suspect would be negligible benefit compared with last summer when enforced quarantining would have made a significant difference to lowering the transmissions seen in the second wave.
What year do they have in mind, did he say?
I believe in the Chinese calendar he means the year of the Rat. Certainly nobody should be looking at anything from the year of the Pig. They’d only find swine flu in any case. No, before you ask, there is no year of the Bat. [Nervous laughter] And why is that? Because there are no Bats in China. None at all. No sirreee.
To add a bit more to where I’m coming from regarding whether enforced quarantine is proportionate, it’s worth referencing the Siracusa Principles. These are touched upon here and other articles you can find by Google.
Yeah it was about then, and I agree it should have been the army from the start. There was even talk of using army barracks for new arrivals but the problem was keeping people separate. It’s funny hearing the conversation about boarder control or not. The automatic reaction here in NZ is it’s crazy not to. Many don’t want any relaxing, they want it tightening further. Only allowed back for humanitarian grounds.
But there are lots of difficult decisions.
For a long time it was free. International law debates about the rights of an individual to return to nation of citizenship. You can’t put putting up economic barriers stopping citizens returning. Then there was those arriving by sea. Not just the floating petri dishes that were cruise liners but the cargo ships (traditionally its those on the ship that facilitate the unloading of cargo). It’s also costs of food, keeping airlines afloat etc. Even today there are some problems for example a friend of mine can’t see her German husband as he is not allowed into the country. It’s a tricky one, and the UK does have some unique logistics (truckers going into/out of Europe)
This was too big a problem/effort to happen in the UK last April when they were still considering herd immunity, taking it on the chin and all that nonsense. After the first wave though they absolutely should have done this. The numbers of those infected per day at one point were the same as Australia.
There was no reason the UK could not follow the AU/NZ model. Set a limit to 5,000 people a day. Madness that people were travelling for holidays and business during a pandemic. But sadly it’s no surprise they can’t organise this given they spent 12bn on track and trace, and can’t even create an app that does the same thing as Tinder.
My guess and it’s a horrible thing to say. Is that there were those in the UK government who even after the first wave were thinking either there won’t be a second wave, or that deaths will not be that high next time as all the “at risk “ people will have died (notion that excess deaths when looked at over 1-2 years will average themselves itself out as many would have died anyway).
The interesting thing is though how do they move forward in future? Despite vaccine planned to be given to everyone one in NZ. We are not talking about changing boarders. We are anticipating them staying in place another 1-2 years. I guess the fear of variants, the continued need to top up vaccine, that approx 30% after vaccination can still become infected. As well as the general population that can’t get vaccinated (pregnant,cancer treatment, HIV) or won’t (anti-vaxxers).
We have an outbreak of the the British Corona mutation in a care and nursing home in Belm (Osnabrück) in Germany , although all residents were already vaccinated twice.
In 14 seniors, the coronavirus variant B 1.1.7. has been proven. All residents were vaccinated for the second time on January 25th. (Pfizer).
So far there have only been asymptomatic or mild cases of the disease in the residents, which could be a positive effect of the vaccination.
I’d say it is definitely the vaccination. The Robert Place home in Barrie was supposed to get vaccinations about the same time, but the cancelled shipments meant their vaccination was cancelled. The B117 virus got into the home, and in a week 126 of 129 were infected. At the last count that I saw, 68 had died.
Those numbers are shocking, awful. Have to ask how the hell does it get into these care homes so easily?
It is appalling how poorly we have done in Canada in that regard. Our fatality rate (death per 10k cases) is among the very worst for precisely that reason.
Obviously the same here for other reasons that, in my opinion people should be held accountable for but crazy that there’s other places where its been allowed in like that.
Interesting point for discussion. Savings Rate during the first part of 2020 in UK was I think over 25%. By the end of the year had declined to 17% which is still well ahead of what it usually is - but that isn’t going to be evenly divided amongst the population.
I’m guessing from this that one of them may live there?