https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-53954562

They were supposed to be over the hump. What gives?

Spain also trending up.

Have they started to ease restrictions?

Moxley said:

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Curious if these are taking place in different regions that dodged the original spike. That seems to be what happened in the US.

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this

There was always going to be a second wave.

Repositioning of first wave

China released coronavirus 2.0

During their peak France saw 1,000+ a day dying, now they averaging less than 20 a day for the past month. By percentage the serious cases is less than 1%, Worldmeter list it as zero. While they may be getting another surge it is likely the younger crowd that is not getting very sick.

While they are experiencing an increase in infections, it appears they are still have a relativity low death rate. Especially compared to their original peak infection/death rates. Not sure about hospitalizations.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/

Is that the genetic sequencing for Corona?

Good point. A year or more is probably too long for impacted hospitals but if it took us 6 months to go through less than 10 % of the population, it would take 3 years to get to only 60% at that rate. I see that if we opened up completely, we'd get to herd immunity faster than that, but we would still have to go through that period where the hospitals are impacted unless I'm missing something.

What is that something? Or are people just thinking that going through that rough period of high death rates is preferable?

I agree that most coronaviruses are seasonal but they are worse in the winter not the summer. That would suggest that the seasonality aspect would make things worse than in the summer if we were to open up all the way now.

California's surge was about half of Texas on a per-capita basis (from eye-balling the charts here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage, go down to the "where cases are decreasing" section) and places like the Bay Area where people complied with the restrictions had much smaller surges than places where they didn't, like the Central Valley.

(edit to take out an accidental emoji)

BANA89 said:

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France probably let them Covid walk right in over the border without putting up a fight.

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Vintage Rifle for Sale: French Military issue Fusil MAS36 World War II rifle. Never been fired, only dropped once. $500.00 or best offer.

Sisyphus said:

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I agree that most coronaviruses are seasonal but they are worse in the winter not the summer. That would suggest that the seasonality aspect would make things worse than in the summer if we were to open up all the way now.

California's surge was about half of Texas on a per-capita basis (from eye-balling the charts here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage, go down to the "where cases are decreasing" section) and places like the Bay Area where people complied with the restrictions had much smaller surges than places where they didn't, like the Central Valley.

(edit to take out an accidental emoji)

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Even so you have to admit latitude and climate play a huge part in how this spreads. Houston is a large international city, high population density, and very social in March. Yet they didn't see the high spread until months after many similar northern cities did.

Sisyfuss

What's interesting is if you look at France and Spain they are both having big spikes but both their death rates are very very low. Especially compared to the initial hit. We may find that there is a set of people that are going to be really hurt by this virus and the rest will not. Lockdowns cannot stop the spread because you can't stay in them. Look at the horrible damage they are causing world wide when smart countries like Sweden let in run, should have protected elder homes better, but they are now looking very good now and their economy hasn't been hit near as bad as it's neighbors.

Time will tell. Hopefully with colleges and schools open the younger can gain immunity quicker and we can get over this faster now.

Sisyphus said:

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We just need to go back to an almost complete pre-Covid normal, no masks, 100% capacity at restaurants but maybe something less for sports games , maybe restrict bars and nightclubs, and have high risk people stay home and/or wear N95 masks.


The goal should always be to not overwhelm our hospitals while protecting the very vulnerable, not to minimize total infections until a vaccine is available.

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I'm trying to understand this viewpoint

After the restrictions started to roll back (but not as far as you're proposing), Texas started to approach hospital capacity in a lot of places (like Harris Country and the RGV). If we went back to "an almost complete pre-Covid normal, no masks, 100% capacity at restaurants" what keeps us from seeing the same thing? Is it that we're closer to herd immunity? Or are you saying we should open up and then pull back again when the numbers start to go up again? Something else?

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The concerned citizen in me wants to open everything back up and just take our lumps because the economic fallout from what's been shutdown so far is likely worse than the virus

The physician in me realizes that we would have to back off that statement if hospitalizations go up so much that hospitals will be overwhelmed if we don't. But I would do that on a county by county basis.

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Even so you have to admit latitude and climate play a huge part in how this spreads.

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There's a fair amount of data that contradicts that. New Orleans was hit hard in the initial wave. LA was hit harder than the Bay Area in the initial wave and in the second surge. The Modesto area in California had really high numbers through the late summer while the Bay Area had relatively low numbers and most of the Bay Area is at the same latitude as Modesto and are about 50 miles apart. Iowan and the Dakotas are seeing big surges right now and they're at high latitudes.I see a much higher correlation with resistance to restrictions and mask wearing.

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Sweden let in run, should have protected elder homes better, but they are now looking very good now and their economy hasn't been hit near as bad as it's neighbors.

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The last I saw Sweden's GDP had dropped as much as its Scandinavian neighbors but they had a death toll 10X higher. But that was months ago and I haven't really been following them. If you have a link handy showing their economy rebounding faster than their neighbors, I'd like to read it.

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One thing stated early on was that these novel virus pandemics (1918, late 50's, late 60's, 2009) usually last 10-18 months globally, we are about at 10 months and I think on the downside of incident rate and impact.

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That's a good point and one that should give us hope. A virus that doesn't take its host out of circulation has a better chance of propagating so it should evolve toward innocuousness. I don't think it's at all clear that we've reached that point yet though. I worry that if we open up too much too fast we'll see death tolls rise sharply and when we do reach the point that we can open up safely, people will still have the death of their favorite aunt burned in their memory. When the government sounds the all clear, people will say, "you said that the last two times" and remain hunkered down and keeping the economy suppressed.

On the flip side, if everything is closed down, people will find clandestine ways to do their nails, drinking, gyms, etc so their won't be any way to regulate them (or collect taxes). I'm not saying don't open up at all. I'm saying open up slowly, continue encouraging masks for the time being and focus on increasing testing so no one will be surprised by an increase in hospitalizations.

(edit for typos. re-edits for fixing typos I made while fixing the first typos)

I don't know where you got your economic data on Sweden but they are doing way better than their neighbors. Hard examples are included in the Sweden thread if you want to look.