This is going to backfire on the EU, you can already see it now.
The optics are simply bad, and will get much worse. It’s a can of worms. AZ will simply argue developed at record speed, at cost and we made best efforts.
From vaccine stockpiles and slow roll outs AZ will simply point finger back at EU. They will claim EU damaged reputation, they will highlight carelessness of EU not redacting the contract. They will highlight vaccine only being in subset of populations or in some countries not at all. They will also question why they have been singled out.
There will be some difficult questions asked of the EU and they will need to be transparent. The whole procurement process, the decision making (who is to blame on the EU side) how much was ordered and when, how much energy was placed into ramping up the production. The legalities of seizing shipments meant for other countries and using vaccines as a political tool. I would hate to be the person on the stand for the EU !
It’s far from a one sided case in favour of the EU. The damage to both sides won’t be pretty.
I actually struggle to see any credibility in the EU claims and certainly no upside. This is up there with the worst of the EC’s behaviour over the last few months and it’s in pretty appalling company.
The development of the illness in India is concerning of course, but putting the ‘Devastating’ tag on this… I don’t know to be honest, it seems too soon for me.
Latest death toll is 2.7k per day. Total population is 1.4 billion.
Until a few weeks ago, we in Switzerland had a minimal death toll of roughly 15 per day. Now it’s a bit lower. At the height of the second wave, we had 100 deaths each day. That was a totally ‘normal’ death toll when compared to most other countries being hit by the second wave.
So, that same ‘normal’ rate would mean for India 17.5k casualties each day.
Not saying that there is no concern to have, or that there isn’t real suffering going on, as everywhere else. It’s just that India got off from a very, very low level, compared with European countries, or the US. Measured with the huge size of its population, the current death toll is still almost anecdotal.
Of course, the transmission curve is frightening at the moment, and drastic measures will no doubt be taken where needed. Then those curves will naturally flatten down after a few weeks, like everywhere else.
I think its devastating not just in the sense of numbers but even at this current moment where it might not yet have hit the peak, the daily record infections are rising and more crucially, they simply are unable to cope already with the current numbers, its going to be disastrous if it worsens. Already people are burying or cremating their loved ones in their own backyards etc…so I think its bad in that sense,…
The project is still in its early stages; the researchers are testing out various machine-learning algorithms to discover and detect biomarkers in human breath. Li and her colleagues will also have to conduct clinical trials, too.
The first question would be how many critical care beds does India have? I would imagine its a small proportion of most countries in Europe. How many healthcare workers does India have? I think in general India is not well placed to respond to this pandemic as the capacity of its healthcare services haven’t kept in step with its population growth.
You are right. I came across this tweet yesterday highlighting how behind we are in terms of bed availability. While what Hope mentioned is sort of correct that given the population we have, the number of cases can and would have gone much more higher. But on the flipside, things could really have been improved because currently the healthcare personnel and infrastructure are truly stretched.
Value of human life here sadly is very low. Neither the officials nor citizens themselves value life.
The other alarming aspect is that the numbers being reported are far below the actual deaths from covid. From the BBC article it is estimated that in Delhi alone there were 1,158 covid deaths just in the past week that have not been included in the official count.
Data on outdoor transmission has almost exclusively focused on activities that have been encouraged outside due to the ability to maintain spacing. Technically being “outside” while recreating the conditions that allows for easy transmission indoor does not come with the same risk as a walk in the park while socially distanced, or even a beer with mates in a beer garden.
The safety of crowds returning will depend on on how quickly and completely we want fans to come back (1/5 capacity, ramping up over time?) coupled with how quickly we can get the match going populations vaccinated. But I think more the Klopp’s original point is not that there isn’t a way to get fans back in the stadium, but that we shouldn’t use having done it a few months ago as a benchmark because that itself was a shit decision.
The big factor in outdoor events is the transport to the event, by buses, trains, shared cars, as well as bottlenecking at venues, train/tube stations.
Except that he was responding to @Dutch asking why we weren’t allowing stadiums to reopen now, like the Dutch are doing, given that we have an even greater proportion of our population vaccinated. It’s a fair point coupled with what we know about the low risk of outdoor transmission. @GoneKloppo responded saying it wasn’t a good idea and cited a totally different situation six months ago together with a report that was equally historic and out of date, as he tends to do. His response, purportedly to Dutch’s query, was either wrong or totally irrelevant.
This is the recent report by Professor Clive Beggs, which has a lot of useful analysis relating to transmission risk from outdoor events.
The response was that was a stupid fucking back then, the insinuation being that it is a terrible measuring stick to use for how to reopen going forward. There is little in what he said about the general idea of the risks moving forward that can be dismissed, even if you draw a different line on how reasonable the risk is. Football crowds are a terrible environment for a pandemic and while we can do things to reduce the risk, we do have to be very thoughtful about how we make the first step and how we escalate from there.
The reality is that we are in the position we could have 10,000 people in Anfield and football grounds, with social distancing, aren’t a wet dream for covid when it’s an outdoor space and 2/3rds of the population already have high protection against the virus.