I'm in Austin and most folks seem to be generally following social distancing guidelines, but you also have random mask protests and tons of folks out at bars and restaurants that aren't trying too hard. And there's photos all over social media of youth sports tournaments with crowded stands.

It feels like we may be swinging back towards responsibility after everyone kind of abandoned the concept in June, if people had been responsible all along we wouldn't have the case numbers we have.

SirLurksALot said:

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fig96 said:

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I'm in Austin and most folks seem to be generally following social distancing guidelines, but you also have random mask protests and tons of folks out at bars and restaurants that aren't trying too hard. And there's photos all over social media of youth sports tournaments with crowded stands.

It feels like we may be swinging back towards responsibility after everyone kind of abandoned the concept in June, if people had been responsible all along we wouldn't have the case numbers we have.

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Aren't Bars closed everywhere in the State, so how are people in Austin going to them?

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Sorry, restaurant bars, to clarify, I was surprised to see folks hanging out drinking when I picked up food last week. And there's a reason Texas had to close bars in general.

SirLurksALot said:

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fig96 said:

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SirLurksALot said:

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fig96 said:

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I'm in Austin and most folks seem to be generally following social distancing guidelines, but you also have random mask protests and tons of folks out at bars and restaurants that aren't trying too hard. And there's photos all over social media of youth sports tournaments with crowded stands.

It feels like we may be swinging back towards responsibility after everyone kind of abandoned the concept in June, if people had been responsible all along we wouldn't have the case numbers we have.

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Aren't Bars closed everywhere in the State, so how are people in Austin going to them?

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Sorry, restaurant bars, to clarify, I was surprised to see folks hanging out drinking when I picked up food last week. And there's a reason Texas had to close bars in general.

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Yeah, weak politicians.

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That applies across the country from the top down.

fig96 said:

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SirLurksALot said:

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fig96 said:

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SirLurksALot said:

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fig96 said:

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I'm in Austin and most folks seem to be generally following social distancing guidelines, but you also have random mask protests and tons of folks out at bars and restaurants that aren't trying too hard. And there's photos all over social media of youth sports tournaments with crowded stands.

It feels like we may be swinging back towards responsibility after everyone kind of abandoned the concept in June, if people had been responsible all along we wouldn't have the case numbers we have.

---

Aren't Bars closed everywhere in the State, so how are people in Austin going to them?

---

Sorry, restaurant bars, to clarify, I was surprised to see folks hanging out drinking when I picked up food last week. And there's a reason Texas had to close bars in general.

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Yeah, weak politicians.

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That applies across the country from the top down.

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I completely agree.

It's pretty much over in Sweden. Let's hope it stays that way.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

" More than 5,500 people have died with Covid-19 in this country of just 10 million. It is one of the highest death rates relative to population size in Europe, and by far the worst among the Nordic nations. Unlike Sweden, the rest all chose to lock down early in the pandemic. "

"Despite this, various forecasts predict the Swedish economy will still shrink by about 5% this year. That's less than other countries hit hard by Covid-19 such as Italy, Spain and the UK, but still similar to the rest of Scandinavia. Sweden's unemployment rate of 9% remains the highest in the Nordics, up from 7.1% in March."

"Norway, Denmark and Finland opened their borders to one another in June, but excluded Sweden due to its high infection rate, although Swedes from less affected regions have since been given more freedom to visit Denmark."

" Just 45% of Swedes now have confidence in the government's ability to handle the pandemic, according to a Novus survey last month, down from 63% in April. "

www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53498133

A costly strategy with minor benefits.

I just looked at that worldmeters link... Sweden has had 5,600 deaths while all of their neighbors had 600 or less. Denmark, Finland and Norway all are doing considerably better than Sweden. And they have lower unemployment rates than Sweden. So how is this the best approach?

In Denmark, they opened K-5 schools in on Apr 15 and older grade on May 18. In Finland, they opened K-9 on May 1 (ref https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/07/06/reopening-the-world-reopening-schools-insights-from-denmark-and-finland/).

Norway opened schools for 10 year olds and younger in late April. Older kids in mid-May (ref: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-schools-rekindled-epidemic-norway.html)

I doubt they'll see any long term effects from closing for a few weeks.

That's great info, thank you

Jmiller said:

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" More than 5,500 people have died with Covid-19 in this country of just 10 million. It is one of the highest death rates relative to population size in Europe, and by far the worst among the Nordic nations. Unlike Sweden, the rest all chose to lock down early in the pandemic. "

"Despite this, various forecasts predict the Swedish economy will still shrink by about 5% this year. That's less than other countries hit hard by Covid-19 such as Italy, Spain and the UK, but still similar to the rest of Scandinavia. Sweden's unemployment rate of 9% remains the highest in the Nordics, up from 7.1% in March."

"Norway, Denmark and Finland opened their borders to one another in June, but excluded Sweden due to its high infection rate, although Swedes from less affected regions have since been given more freedom to visit Denmark."

" Just 45% of Swedes now have confidence in the government's ability to handle the pandemic, according to a Novus survey last month, down from 63% in April. "

www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53498133

A costly strategy with minor benefits.

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There is one thing people seem to overlook. Lots of European countries utilized a direct payment to companies to pay their employees to prevent layoffs and unemployment. Not sure if the their Nordics used a similar approach, but when they did it makes the "unemployment rate" a bit misleading. Governments were paying out lots of cash for people not working but not reflecting that in unemployment rate. It was probably a much better approach than the little bit of everything approach taken by the US.

Looking at just GDP change or unemployment numbers misses the effect on govt budgets. However, it could be hard to judge how much that increased debt drags on the economy going forward.

For the Sweden did it better crowd I'll link the following research report
https://blog.argonautcapital.co.uk/articles/2020/07/27/the-biggest-fraud-part-1-the-hocus-science-behind-lockdown/

Part 1 is about the 'science' that dictated lockdowns and Part 2 about how pharma and govt are using fear and poor science to promote a possibly unnecessary vaccine

I havent read all of the citations as I don't have access to all of them, I'm not going to translate to English and I'm not going to recreate data but I found most of it reasonable but also in full disclosure it affirms my priors. (Also I linked one chart and footnote on another thread.)

I also think places like TX, FL, AZ and CA shut down too early which diminished the physical, mental and political capital of those locations and lead to a false sense of safety.

One idea about a possible vaccine that popped out for me that I hadnt considered before... The issue that people most in need of a COVID vaccine, may be the ones least likely to get one due to impaired immune systems. From Part 2:

Quote:

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Reports of successful antibody responses amongst healthy adults in vaccine trials should be viewed with more scepticism111. It is also almost certain that any antibody response would be more difficult in population samples with impaired immune systems that are most at risk from COVID. Even an efficacious vaccine might have to be ramped in dosage that would be intolerable to those most likely to benefit from vaccination. Leading Swiss epidemiologist Pietro Vernazza has demonstrated that the high-risk group is least likely to respond to the vaccine since their immune system is already impaired112.

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Do we see similar issues with other vaccines (i.e. flu shot) or are these concerns more short run in nature and as herd immunity increases, the vaccine dosage can decrease to offset over time?


edit to add: I particularly like footnote 53 for which a chart is credited
https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/covid-19-resources-make-sense-numbers-test/how-have-covid-19-fatalities-compared-other-causes-death/

Totally agree with that, so many people in Houston came out of the lockdown with "summer is back on" type mentality and all we did was burn our one shot at that

With having a meaningful lockdown