4 ms·

I'm from Australia where our government is slowly easing restrictions because our daily case count has been in the single digits for multiple consecutive days n

I'm from Australia where our government is slowly easing restrictions because our daily case count has been in the single digits for multiple consecutive days now, and even then it is very gradual. Reopening resturants and bars is still very far on the horizon. In the US, even with full lockdown restrictions for several weeks now, the daily death count has hovered at 2,000 for almost two infection cycles (first >2k death day was Apr 7th). If 'full' lockdown only achieves stabilisation of the death rate, how is easing restrictions, which as far as I can see only rationally relies on the still-shaky evidence from serology studies, what exactly is the plan? I genuinely ask this in a state of disbelief at the current "end lockdown" narrative circulating in the US. Here in AUS/NZ the Gov didn't fuck around; we locked down, had brutally strict measures for 6 weeks now, and at this point nobody is rushing to re-open (except for a few regional cities that haven't even had cases), while the US has been at 2,000 deaths a day.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zaroth 6y ago
As long as you can keep your borders effectively shut for the next year or so I think you’ll be in great shape. That ship has sailed in the case of the US. As I understand it, there is a bimodal approach to managing an epidemic. You’re on a totally different pathway of successful suppression, where you’ve never actually seen exponential community spread. Your endpoint is not herd immunity. The US probably was seeing uncontrolled exponential community spread in ~January. There are major metro areas which have 20%+ prevalence. The only endpoint left for the US is herd immunity. So you would not expect the same measures to be taken, as long as AU is striving to maintain suppression I think that means your local measures will have to remain quite a bit stricter than a country trying to obtain herd immunity as quickly as possible. EDIT: (Since HN won’t let me reply) You’ve had a total of 6,700 detected cases and 63% of those were imported. Your total community spread over this entire time was what we see in two days in Massachusetts. You’ve done 500k tests total, the US is presently running 160k tests a day. Harvard just came out with a study saying they thought we would need to get to 5 million tests a day. This is what I mean by bimodal.
- genidoi 6y ago
  We had an R0 greater than 1 for a long enough period that if the response wasn't on point, we'd be in a similar position to the US. One aspect that's missed is our testing rate - 500,000+ tests performed so far with a 1.2% positive rate. That's half of South Korea's. None of this is to blow my Aussie horn. Whilst I'm proud to live in a country that handled this crisis well, I can't help but feel frustration at many of the remarks that Trump has said, particulary comments such as "can you really believe the numbers coming out of these countries?" it's just baffling considering that the AU-US alliance is unshakeable and there is no reason to mistrust our figures. All stats sourced here: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir...
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's difficult for us to believe any country's officially reported test numbers because ours (and most European ones) are known to be at least order of magnitude below the actual number of infections.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  Show me evidence that there is 20% prevalence please. What I have seen so far has been very limited study with very shaky evidence (the RKI in Germany back pedalled pretty quickly on the results of the antibody test for example)
  - zaroth 6y ago
    NYC's initial antibody study tested 3,000 people and came back with 21.2% positive. NYC expanded their antibody testing to 7,500 people last week and as of Monday it had come back with a 24.7% positive rate. > Building on an initial testing run of 3,000, another 4,500 random New Yorkers have been screened since last week for antibodies, which would indicate that their immune system battled the bug, the governor said in his daily Albany press briefing.... Some 24.7-percent of those tested in the city were found to have antibodies, up from 21.2-percent in the first round. https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/cuomo-says-nearly-25-of-nyc-residents-may-have-had-coronavirus/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/cuomo-says-nearly-25-of-nyc-re...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zaroth 6y ago

As long as you can keep your borders effectively shut for the next year or so I think you’ll be in great shape. That ship has sailed in the case of the US. As I understand it, there is a bimodal approach to managing an epidemic. You’re on a totally different pathway of successful suppression, where you’ve never actually seen exponential community spread. Your endpoint is not herd immunity. The US probably was seeing uncontrolled exponential community spread in ~January. There are major metro areas which have 20%+ prevalence. The only endpoint left for the US is herd immunity. So you would not expect the same measures to be taken, as long as AU is striving to maintain suppression I think that means your local measures will have to remain quite a bit stricter than a country trying to obtain herd immunity as quickly as possible. EDIT: (Since HN won’t let me reply) You’ve had a total of 6,700 detected cases and 63% of those were imported. Your total community spread over this entire time was what we see in two days in Massachusetts. You’ve done 500k tests total, the US is presently running 160k tests a day. Harvard just came out with a study saying they thought we would need to get to 5 million tests a day. This is what I mean by bimodal.

genidoi 6y ago
We had an R0 greater than 1 for a long enough period that if the response wasn't on point, we'd be in a similar position to the US. One aspect that's missed is our testing rate - 500,000+ tests performed so far with a 1.2% positive rate. That's half of South Korea's. None of this is to blow my Aussie horn. Whilst I'm proud to live in a country that handled this crisis well, I can't help but feel frustration at many of the remarks that Trump has said, particulary comments such as "can you really believe the numbers coming out of these countries?" it's just baffling considering that the AU-US alliance is unshakeable and there is no reason to mistrust our figures. All stats sourced here: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's difficult for us to believe any country's officially reported test numbers because ours (and most European ones) are known to be at least order of magnitude below the actual number of infections.
cycomanic 6y ago
Show me evidence that there is 20% prevalence please. What I have seen so far has been very limited study with very shaky evidence (the RKI in Germany back pedalled pretty quickly on the results of the antibody test for example)
- zaroth 6y ago
  NYC's initial antibody study tested 3,000 people and came back with 21.2% positive. NYC expanded their antibody testing to 7,500 people last week and as of Monday it had come back with a 24.7% positive rate. > Building on an initial testing run of 3,000, another 4,500 random New Yorkers have been screened since last week for antibodies, which would indicate that their immune system battled the bug, the governor said in his daily Albany press briefing.... Some 24.7-percent of those tested in the city were found to have antibodies, up from 21.2-percent in the first round. https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/cuomo-says-nearly-25-of-nyc-residents-may-have-had-coronavirus/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/cuomo-says-nearly-25-of-nyc-re...