The UK and Europe’s response to COVID vs the Far East and China.

[Puffing Devil]

Do they really expect many people to follow these rules now? Looking at how many were out and about today suggests many are fed up and just past point of caring about rules now. Just business will suffer further. More proof there is absolutely no scientific reasoning for any of this just a bunch of buffoons in charge who have no idea what they're even trying to deal with. If they understood anything about virus transmission then they wouldn't carry on the way they're going. I'm at the stage now, call me selfish if you like but I've had enough of all this, that infections go through the roof and can get back to normality quicker.

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

 

[bengley]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

This of course only worth worrying about if the figures released by China can be trusted. Which they can't.

 

[The Decapod]

This of course only worth worrying about if the figures released by China can be trusted. Which they can't.

While it's possible China's true figures are under-reported, it's also just as possible they are correct. But even if the official stats were only one tenth of the true numbers, those would still be very low.

 

[bb21]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

Trouble is we are not doing that (lock down hard and fast), and it is far too late now to do that after the government pretty much lost all credibility in its handling of the pandemic, nine months into it. In any case we don't have the resources to enforce a genuine full national lockdown.

This of course only worth worrying about if the figures released by China can be trusted. Which they can't.

No need. We cocked it up. Whether China's figures are believable or not is irrelevant. Life is starting to slowly get back to normal there, whereas we are still stuck in a dizzying puddle with no sense of direction. We really are quite arrogant, refusing to acknowledge others' success, even if only success on relative terms.

 

[RPI]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

Yeah and China have a great record on releasing accurate information to the outside world. Im beyond caring now, I really couldn't give a t**s, if it wasn't for work I'd probably have cracked up by now

 

[yorksrob]

Trouble is we are not doing that (lock down hard and fast), and it is far too late now to do that after the government pretty much lost all credibility in its handling of the pandemic, nine months into it. In any case we don't have the resources to enforce a genuine full national lockdown.



No need. We cocked it up. Whether China's figures are believable or not is irrelevant. Life is starting to slowly get back to normal there, whereas we are still stuck in a dizzying puddle with no sense of direction. We really are quite arrogant, refusing to acknowledge others' success, even if only success on relative terms.

I'm not sure I'd call having three lethal outbreaks in twenty years (SARS, Bird Flu, Covid) a success.

I'm more inclined to acknowledge the success of other countries in Asia who've had to deal with the same problem from outside of their borders time and again, such as South Korea and Vietnam.

 

[HSTEd]

No need. We cocked it up. Whether China's figures are believable or not is irrelevant. Life is starting to slowly get back to normal there, whereas we are still stuck in a dizzying puddle with no sense of direction. We really are quite arrogant, refusing to acknowledge others' success, even if only success on relative terms.

Back to normal in China would not be too dissimilar from a lockdown in the west.

 

[RPI]

Back to normal in China would not be too dissimilar from a lockdown in the west.

Hit the nail on the head there

 

[cactustwirly]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

Hmm I must have been imagining the lockdown in March and November that completely got rid of the virus....

 

[bb21]

I'm not sure I'd call having three lethal outbreaks in twenty years (SARS, Bird Flu, Covid) a success.

I'm more inclined to acknowledge the success of other countries in Asia who've had to deal with the same problem from outside of their borders time and again, such as South Korea and Vietnam.

Why not? We are not talking about preventative measures here. We are talking about dealing with the outbreak.

In any case, people in glass houses and all that...

Back to normal in China would not be too dissimilar from a lockdown in the west.

I am quite speechless at the ignorance.

 

[HSTEd]

I am quite speechless at the ignorance.

Because I understand that not only we cannot really trust any figures coming out of China, but also understand what life in side a total surveillance state such as China actually is like?

 

[bb21]

Because I understand that not only we cannot really trust any figures coming out of China, but also understand what life in side a total surveillance state such as China actually is like?

I'm sorry. I have no comeback for that.

We must live on different planets.

 

[yorksrob]

Why not? We are not talking about preventative measures here. We are talking about dealing with the outbreak.


I am quite speechless at the ignorance.

And why should I be expected to consider the response, in isolation to the outbreak ?

It is clear that nothing was done about conditions in the wet markets or what was sold in them following on from the previous two.

The best way to deal with an outbreak is not to have it in the first place

 

[Darandio]

I'm sorry. I have no comeback for that.

We must live on different planets.

I'm unsure why you believe you are on a different planet. Are you suggesting China isn't a surveillance state?

 

[bb21]

I'm unsure why you believe you are on a different planet. Are you suggesting China isn't a surveillance state?

No, because that being used as justification for the claim that "Back to normal in China would not be too dissimilar from a lockdown in the west."

If anyone truly believed that, they really need to open their eyes.

 

[Bertie the bus]

While it's possible China's true figures are under-reported, it's also just as possible they are correct. But even if the official stats were only one tenth of the true numbers, those would still be very low.

It isn't possible anything China says is true. Only today the number of infections in Wuhan magically multiplied by 10. When Trump said a few months ago you can't trust anything China says, surprise, surprise a couple of days later they discovered a large number of additional dead bodies. Not the true amount but a number they thought might be almost believable.

And speaking of China if people think we should have locked down harder and for longer as they did perhaps they think we should also adopt their policy of "re-educating" Muslims seeing as China is such a shining beacon?

 

[yorkie]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

How is that a valid comparison?

We did not lockdown in the way China did and we could never have done so; people who had symptoms that indicated they might have had the virus were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in huge halls. People could not leave their house for any reason. Food had to be delivered. No exercise, and so on.

The original D614 strain which caused the epidemic in Wuhan was less transmissible than the G614 strain which became dominant in Europe.

Many reports claimed the D614 strain, which is the strain that drove the high rate of infections in Italy, was up to 10 times more transmissible than the original strain.

This report includes a graph showing how the G614 strain came to dominate:

Tracking Changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G Increases Infectivity of the COVID-19 Virus

A SARS-CoV-2 variant carrying the Spike protein amino acid change D614G has become the most prevalent form in the global pandemic. Dynamic tracking of…

www.sciencedirect.com

A SARS-CoV-2 variant carrying the Spike protein amino acid change D614G has become the most prevalent form in the global pandemic. Dynamic tracking of variant frequencies revealed a recurrent pattern of G614 increase at multiple geographic levels: national, regional, and municipal.

The shift occurred even in local epidemics where the original D614 form was well established prior to introduction of the G614 variant. The consistency of this pattern was highly statistically significant, suggesting that the G614 variant may have a fitness advantage. We found that the G614 variant grows to a higher titer as pseudotyped virions.

In infected individuals, G614 is associated with lower RT-PCR cycle thresholds, suggestive of higher upper respiratory tract viral loads, but not with increased disease severity. These findings illuminate changes important for a mechanistic understanding of the virus and support continuing surveillance of Spike mutations to aid with development of immunological interventions.

So, at the time European countries were imposing lockdowns, they were never going to work because:

• the lockdowns could never be anywhere near as strict as the Wuhan lockdown; and
• the new strain was far more transmissible and could not so easily be eliminated by lockdowns.

@Puffing Devil Do you deny that the D614 strain in Wuhan was less transmissable than the G614 strain faced in Europe?

Healthy Wuhan residents say they were forced into mass coronavirus quarantine, risking infection | CNN

Three weeks ago, Lisa Wang was fighting a high fever when she was turned away from an overflowing hospital in Wuhan, the central Chinese city mired in a deadly coronavirus crisis.

edition.cnn.com

Wang, who rose through the ranks as a police officer, ordered a city-wide, three-day roundup of people possibly sickened with the coronavirus. That was a response to the central leadership's decree last week to "round up everyone who should be rounded up" -- an attempt to prevent further cross-infection in families and communities.

Would you agree to be rounded up and forced to live here? Would others agree? Or should we just force it on people, like China did?

China's coronavirus lockdown strategy: brutal but effective

The world was astonished by the Wuhan quarantine but it seems to have worked

www.theguardian.com

Initially people were allowed out of their homes, but restrictions soon tightened. Some areas limited outings to one family member every two days to buy necessities. Others barred residents from leaving, requiring them to order in food and other supplies from couriers.

Later the policy became even more aggressive, with officials going door to door for health checks, and forcing anyone ill into isolation. A disabled boy reportedly died after he was left without food, water or help when his his father and brother were quarantined.

It's also amusing and bizarre that you quote the deaths per million for the entirety of China (a huge landmass of over 9.5million km² and a population of around 1.4 billion), which is irrelevant, even if you trust the figures!

 

[bb21]

And why should I be expected to consider the response, in isolation to the outbreak ?

It is clear that nothing was done about conditions in the wet markets or what was sold in them following on from the previous two.

The best way to deal with an outbreak is not to have it in the first place

I don't think even world leading scientists are confident about the origin of the outbreak yet. I really don't know how you are so sure it came from the wet markets. Shall we wait for the WHO investigation to conclude first before pointing the fingers?

Yes, the Chinese government are poor excuses themselves in many respects, but they evidently got something right in dealing with it. We can choose to refuse to acknowledge that. If China managed it badly, do you seriously think the likes of Vietnam and South Korea would have escaped lightly with their close ties, and extensive land borders in the case of the former? It is a collaborative effort and the whole region did very well in that regard compared to Europe.

 

[RPI]

I don't think even world leading scientists are confident about the origin of the outbreak yet. I really don't know how you are so sure it came from the wet markets. Shall we wait for the WHO investigation to conclude first before pointing the fingers?

Yes, the Chinese government are poor excuses themselves in many respects, but they evidently got something right in dealing with it. We can choose to refuse to acknowledge that. If China managed it badly, do you seriously think the likes of Vietnam and South Korea would have escaped lightly with their close ties, and extensive land borders in the case of the former? It is a collaborative effort and the whole region did very well in that regard compared to Europe.

Thats a bit like saying that at least the Nazis made the buses run on time

 

[Envy123]

With the London centric economy, a Chinese style lockdown would not work. Another one of the decisions made by the government which bit back during the pandemic.

 

[bb21]

It isn't possible anything China says is true. Only today the number of infections in Wuhan magically multiplied by 10. When Trump said a few months ago you can't trust anything China says, surprise, surprise a couple of days later they discovered a large number of additional dead bodies. Not the true amount but a number they thought might be almost believable.

If you don't test, you don't have the numbers. That doesn't mean anyone lied. In the early days, when resources were scarce, there wasn't the capacity to test everyone, and medical resources were focused on hospitals to save lives.

That is no different to what happens here.

The true scale of infection is probably many times the reported numbers in most countries, due to the fact that we are not going to test everyone and that not all infected are going to be symptomatic.

I won't even bother responding to your second point. I don't even know how that is relevant or how you even had the audacity to make that sort of connection.

 

[bb21]

Thats a bit like saying that at least the Nazis made the buses run on time

Come again?

 

[duncanp]

Hubei province, where Covid started, has 57m people and cities of 11m

They locked down completely, closed airports, roads, schools, business for 16 weeks, then opened up

Deaths per million:

China: 3.3
UK: 676 and rising

Uk economy fell over 20%
Hubei is growing at 4%...

But as you say, no reason at all to lock down hard and fast.

And according to Worldometer, China has had 87,027 cases of COVID-19 in total, and 4,634 deaths.

If those figures are correct, then Elvis Presley is still alive, driving a routemaster bus on the moon (which is made of green cheese) with Lord Lucan as the conductor.

 

[Richard Scott]

And according to Worldometer, China has had 87,027 cases of COVID-19 in total, and 4,634 deaths.

If those figures are correct, then Elvis Presley is still alive, driving a routemaster bus on the moon (which is made of green cheese) with Lord Lucan as the conductor.

Is Shergar on board too?

 

[RPI]

Come again?

You basically state that they're not perfect but they got this right. As Yorkie pointed out, China forcefully quarantined people who had symptoms in large government run buildings, people weren't even allowed out of their house to go to the shops or exercise, a case of the "cure" being significantly worse than the disease.

And according to Worldometer, China has had 87,027 cases of COVID-19 in total, and 4,634 deaths.

If those figures are correct, then Elvis Presley is still alive, driving a routemaster bus on the moon (which is made of green cheese) with Lord Lucan as the conductor.

You my friend have just won the Internet lol

 

[yorksrob]

I don't think even world leading scientists are confident about the origin of the outbreak yet. I really don't know how you are so sure it came from the wet markets. Shall we wait for the WHO investigation to conclude first before pointing the fingers?

Yes, the Chinese government are poor excuses themselves in many respects, but they evidently got something right in dealing with it. We can choose to refuse to acknowledge that. If China managed it badly, do you seriously think the likes of Vietnam and South Korea would have escaped lightly with their close ties, and extensive land borders in the case of the former? It is a collaborative effort and the whole region did very well in that regard compared to Europe.

Live animal markets and the wildlife trade were implicated in the previous two outbreaks that I mentioned, so it would have seemed reasonable for the Government in Beijing to have acted on them then, rather than waiting for a global pandemic. If they had have done, it would have avoided this conversation.

The likes of Vietnam and South Korea didn't "escape lightly", they've learnt from bitter experience.

It'll be a long time before I join the Xi Xing Ping congratulation committee, I'm afraid.

 

[Puffing Devil]

How is that a valid comparison?

We did not lockdown in the way China did and we could never have done so; people who had symptoms that indicated they might have had the virus were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in huge halls. People could not leave their house for any reason. Food had to be delivered. No exercise, and so on.

The original D614 strain which caused the epidemic in Wuhan was less transmissible than the G614 strain which became dominant in Europe.

Many reports claimed the D614 strain, which is the strain that drove the high rate of infections in Italy, was up to 10 times more transmissible than the original strain.

This report includes a graph showing how the G614 strain came to dominate:

Tracking Changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G Increases Infectivity of the COVID-19 Virus

A SARS-CoV-2 variant carrying the Spike protein amino acid change D614G has become the most prevalent form in the global pandemic. Dynamic tracking of…

www.sciencedirect.com

View attachment 87906


So, at the time European countries were imposing lockdowns, they were never going to work because:

• the lockdowns could never be anywhere near as strict as the Wuhan lockdown; and
• the new strain was far more transmissible and could not so easily be eliminated by lockdowns.

@Puffing Devil Do you deny that the D614 strain in Wuhan was less transmissable than the G614 strain faced in Europe?

Healthy Wuhan residents say they were forced into mass coronavirus quarantine, risking infection | CNN

Three weeks ago, Lisa Wang was fighting a high fever when she was turned away from an overflowing hospital in Wuhan, the central Chinese city mired in a deadly coronavirus crisis.

edition.cnn.com

Would you agree to be rounded up and forced to live here? Would others agree? Or should we just force it on people, like China did?

China's coronavirus lockdown strategy: brutal but effective

The world was astonished by the Wuhan quarantine but it seems to have worked

www.theguardian.com

It's also amusing and bizarre that you quote the deaths per million for the entirety of China (a huge landmass of over 9.5million km² and a population of around 1.4 billion), which is irrelevant, even if you trust the figures!

Perhaps, instead of China, we could look at the response of Australia, New Zealand or South Korea? Countries who locked down early, closed their borders quickly, tested & tracked and traced and effectively. They also had a dry run with SARS and saw the importance of investment and training for future pandemics. Our government knew the risks and chose not to invest.

And to answer your question - would I have accepted a painful period of lockdown in return for a swift return to normality? Yes I would. I also believe the majority of the country would happily accept that now in exchange for the mess we're now in. Instead, we had delay, complaints and dithering which continues even now.

We have a government of incompetence who have "had enough of experts". Look where we are.

 

[bramling]

Perhaps, instead of China, we could look at the response of Australia, New Zealand or South Korea? Countries who locked down early, closed their borders quickly, tested & tracked and traced and effectively. They also had a dry run with SARS and saw the importance of investment and training for future pandemics. Our government knew the risks and chose not to invest.

And to answer your question - would I have accepted a painful period of lockdown in return for a swift return to normality? Yes I would. I also believe the majority of the country would happily accept that now in exchange for the mess we're now in. Instead, we had delay, complaints and dithering which continues even now.

We have a government of incompetence who have "had enough of experts". Look where we are.

The question is would an Australia, New Zealand or South Korea response have worked as effectively here? I can't help but think the answer is no.

Another problem is that strategy gambles on a vaccine. Even now there's no guarantee that any of the vaccines are going to be effective in the medium term, though naturally we hope that's going to be the case.

 

[HSTEd]

Schools won't be back before easter and masks will never be going away.

This is how we live now.

Perhaps, instead of China, we could look at the response of Australia, New Zealand or South Korea? Countries who locked down early, closed their borders quickly, tested & tracked and traced and effectively.

How many battalions would you propose deploying to Northern Ireland to enforce a border closure and maintain order?

 

[Puffing Devil]

The question is would an Australia, New Zealand or South Korea response have worked as effectively here? I can't help but think the answer is no.

Better to try and to fail than to leave our borders wide open and have people roam freely around the country?

Schools won't be back before easter and masks will never be going away.

This is how we live now.



How many battalions would you propose deploying to Northern Ireland to enforce a border closure and maintain order?

Why the need to maintain order? I don't see massive civil unrest in other European countries that closed their land borders. What are you suggesting about the Irish?