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I think one has to consider that infection waves happen at different times in different locations. Looking quickly at the graphs for cases on worldometer for Germany, France and UK you’ll see that Germany and France had many more cases during April/May/June of 2021 than did UK. So I’m not inclined to infer population civic mindedness characteristics from any of it.
As Clark keeps reminding us (not a criticism) the only things that appear to have made a significant difference is or was the early use of lockdown, effective track, trace and quarantine and border closure and those countries that did so spent much less time in lockdown.For interest here is a graph of mortality in England and Wales from the 1918 flu pandemic.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
At the above link there are buttons for cases and deaths etc where you can select the countries/regions you want to compare and see the timeline for anyone interested.– “the only things that appear to have made a significant difference…”
Arguably the most significant characteristic of SARS-CoV-2 is its lightning rapid spread; this is why it overloads health systems. The defining characteristic of politicians seems to be their depressingly sluggish minds – after a year and a half and dozens of examples from all over the world, they still haven’t appreciated this one simple fact.
When infections or admissions exceed their arbitrary threshold, the politicians set some date to have a debate about it, usually in about a week. When they debate it they set some further date to actually do anything about it, usually in about another week’s time. Meanwhile the virus has spread, outbreaks in new areas every day. By the time restrictions are actually implemented they’re already out of date.
Mr. Macron is U-Turning on some of his recent quite harsh rules
“We have entered the fourth wave of the epidemic,” Attal said after a meeting of the French cabinet.
They seem to have the highest hesitancy in Europe, in France.
Recently the numbers of covid positives have been going up but you must remember they test less than half that are tested in the United Kingdom.The more you test
the more you find
or the less you test the less you find.Waves and Waves and Waves and Waves and Waves
Some European countries are in wave two, some wave three, some wave four and some wave five.
So what separates these waves?
Mostly, partially-successful-lockdowns.
Each time a country goes for a lock down, after a while the figures drop.
Then, they stop the lock down and the figures go up.
So what wave you are in, is mostly determined by how many lock downs you have imposed.– “So what wave you are in, is mostly determined by how many lock downs you have imposed.”
Or rather, the number of times it has been permitted to get out of control. China’s had only one real wave; all others have been prevented with instant but brief and lockdowns, until trace-and-test got back on top:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/#graph-cases-daily
– ‘The more you test
– the more you find
– or the less you test the less you find.”That wouldn’t apply at all in New Zealand – no matter how many tests, you’d always find zero positives.
It would barely apply in China and most of Australia – you could test all 1.4 billion Chinese and you might find barely a handfull of positives.
I do not want to be rude Clark but you seem obsessed by China.
We do not live in China.
We live in Europe.
There is not much point trying to compare a Western Democratic country with the ruthless communist regime.
Do you recall Tiananmen slaughter?
Whatever they do in China, almost certainly would not be put up with in the U.K. or France or most ordinary European countries.
There probably is some use in comparing Spain, Poland, Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.For once Michael you hit the nail on the head. You very eloquently demonstrate why the worst countries for Covid-19 cases and deaths are exactly those beacons of democratic neoliberalism where liberty equates with freedom to infect others, where the basic rules of public health, or even common good have been jettisoned for the sake of the free market for the rich. No, we should look at China and take from there what is good and discard what is bad. WE do not need to copy Tiananmen Square tactics to be able to deal with a pandemic. Anyway if you don’t like China, what about New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Australia and Japan?
The principles here simplistically boil down to what is the value of human life versus money (dare I say, socialism or social awareness, vs capitalism and self-centred selfishness). And in eastern cultures there is still reverence and consideration and respect for older people and general better respect for others; it is not all about repression you know.
And about China , from Moon of Alabama showing the efficient Chinese system of how to keep the virus under control, amongst other things.
Not that I have ever been further East than Singapore,
I am led to understand that the most people who break into China are people from Communist North Korea, people from South Korea, hardly ever break into China.
Daily people cross the English Channel to break into the United Kingdom.– “Whatever they do in China, almost certainly would not be put up with in the U.K. or France or most ordinary European countries”
I think that if people in Europe etc. experienced the Chinese method of controlling this pandemic, they’d choose it outright. Everything is open, and people don’t need to worry. Each lockdown affects only one city at a time, and they last days not months. Most people in the West don’t even know because our news media barely report from China, but covid is under control for nearly a fifth of the world’s population.
Well over a year ago some of the initial Chinese lockdowns were quite brutal, but most weren’t – the national government delegated social restrictions to local authorities, and some were more authoritarian than others. And there was also provision for the people – a massive emergency distribution operation brought food and household supplies to the end of every street. And since then there has been no massive ongoing oppression in China to keep the pandemic under control – because there doesn’t need to be, because they act fast whenever there’s an outbreak.
The Australian government monitors China very closely because China is the locally dominant superpower, so they saw China’s method and applied it in Australia, where it has been highly successful.
I would guess the main reason people go from Sudan or Iran to the U.K. is because they do not want to be tortured/bullied/controlled, they want to be free from over repressive governments.
There is only so much Macron or Merkel or Johnson can impose on their peoples.
Macron is currently feeling out those limits.Western governments love to vilify China, so if China were implementing draconian restrictions it’d be all over the news as our politicians used it to make excuses for the massive western death toll.
If China had loads of deaths but the government was suppressing reporting, satellites would detect the organic combustion products from the crematoria like they did in March last year.
Western populations hate lockdowns because they’ve lasted three or four months at a time; people here don’t know that it can all be dealt with in six weeks and then controlled quite easily.
Lockdowns here have lasted too long because governments took half-measures:
- Lockdowns too late, while infection rocketed.
- No border quarantine.
- No quarantine facilities.
- No support below the middle classes; casual workers still forced to work and mingle.
- Travel restrictions not enforced.
- No municipal food distribution; people forced to mingle when shopping.
One thing covid has proven conclusively – if there really was a biological attack, we’d be completely fucked. We simply don’t have the self discipline to defend ourselves against it.
I guess the sort of thing you want us to do would not in the long term be any use.
There are places like Sudan where people are regularly slaughtered on ethnic or religious grounds, these people sometimes flee and then migrate to North Africa, the Middle East or Europe.
I can’t imagine the vaccine roll-Out is that good in Sudan.
There will be wave after wave after wave after wave coming our way, we must not keep locking down.
For us vaccination will be our outcome – good or bad.
The nearer we get to one hundred percent vaccine coverage, the better for us it will be.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57899843
Untill most of the World gets ninety percent coverage by vaccination, this is not going to stop, not in Australi, Taiwan or China, it will keep on coming after the unvaccinated.The purpose of trace-and-test is to avoid having to lock down.
The purpose of fast, local, brief lockdown is to get trace-and-test back into the lead.
We don’t yet know how well vaccination will work. Vaccinated people can still spread the infection, and can still get ill; this strongly suggests that people who’ve had covid before also can still get ill. Then there’s the long term damage; we can’t possibly be sure that we know all the long term effects, and the ones we’ve already seen aren’t even understood yet. Some viruses cause cancer, eg. human papilloma virus causes warts, but a few years later it can cause cervical cancer. In ten years we could be struggling under an epidemic of cancer caused by SARS-CoV-2, because we let it run riot.
It seems sad that so many people would rather just give in, to a mere virus,the most primitive life form possible. I guess our society is decadent and well on its way to collapse.
Michael
Any reason why you are picking on Sudan? Also are you aware that it is now two countries?– “There will be wave after wave after wave after wave coming our way, we must not keep locking down.”
Waves are not inevitable; trace-and-test can prevent them. Repeated lockdowns are a sign of repeated failure – ONE lockdown, done right, puts trace-and-test into the lead; China and Australia have proven it.
We’ll be a sickly society if everyone has to get covid every couple of years, especially if a proportion get damaged long term each time. Maybe not, maybe it’ll be fine, but only time will tell.
“There is not much point trying to compare a Western Democratic country with the ruthless communist regime.”
Eh, why the hell not? Isn’t that exactly what we ought to be doing, measuring the relative success of one strategy versus another.
Is the west not tending towards a ruthless totalitarianism itself? Persecution and repression of whistle blowers such as Craig Murray and Julian Assange? Extraordinary rendition and torture, forever wars in Syria, Yemen, Sudan. Repressive economic sanctions for Iran, Cuba etc. China has been enormously successful over the last 50 years or so. They gotta be doing something right.
It isn’t that many years prior to Tiananmen that in the USA similar was happening to black people (and still happening in reality). The UK’s Bloody Sunday, a massacre on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers shot 26 civilians during a protest march against internment without trial. Please tell me what the difference between that and Tiananmen square is. The west is by no means a paragon of virtue.
China’s policy dealing with covid has been way better than most of the west and we ought to be comparing what we do and what they do.
SA
“The war in Darfur began in 2003 after ethnic African rebels revolted against former President Omar al-Bashir’s Arab-dominated government.
Bashir responded by arming local Arab militias – infamously known as the Janjaweed – who targeted non-Arab tribes”
yes I am fully aware that after a lot of slaughtering Sudan has cleaved.
Largely the dry remnant North is Muslim and Arab, largely the rain forest South is Black and Christian.
The former ruler is now in prison and awaiting being transferred to The Hague
International Criminal Court (ICC) to face genocide and war crimes chargesPossibly, China is like GOD shinning light, freedom, truth and tolerance across the World but possibly not.
Ask people in Taiwan if they feel wonderful that Big Brother is watching them?While a multitude of covid reservoirs exist around the World, there seems to me two choices, shut your borders for years, like Australia or vaccinate almost everbody, then get on with life.
Japan Olympics could be super-spreader-event
The WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus withering indictment of the global effort comes as the Tokyo Games are set to open this Friday, after being postponed last year due to the PANDEMIC.
The Tokyo Games have come under fire for pressing ahead, despite cases raging in Japan.
Cases around the Japanese capital have risen by more than 1,000 new infections daily in recent days.
Now who would have thought that.
The locals did not want it but the Elite said it does not matter what the locals think, they are getting it.– “…or vaccinate almost everbody, then get on with life.”
That’s if vaccination works; only time will tell. So far it has only lessened disease severity. It hasn’t stopped people from getting ill, it hasn’t stopped transmission, and I have seen no reports about its effects upon long covid.
If a vaccine resistant or a more highly lethal variant arises, the only tools we’ll have are social measures, and we’ve just proven that we do those so badly that we just give up. Our situation looks decidedly shaky.
Let us try not to be too gloomy. It is not just vaccines that have drastically reduced mortality but better understanding of the pathological processes and counteracting them, and better general clinical care. The other development I hope would be in the field of either antivirals or other interventions that can reduce the complications and possibly long-term effects. Everyone seems to be focusing only on vaccines.
