5 ms·

Plenty of islands are inundated: the UK, Singapore, Ireland, Indonesia, Philippines.

by 2019-nCoV 6y ago

dboreham 6y ago
UK is a pretty big island.
- jussij 6y ago
  I think there is an advantage to being an island state when it comes to handling Covid-19 as both New Zealand and Australia have show. However, the UK which is smaller than both, lost that advantage only because of their botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
  - Normal_gaussian 6y ago
    Look at the population and population distributions of GB, NZ, and AUS. It becomes pretty clear that the uk stands apart from the other two in these respects, and it is common sense that this makes it more susceptible. Regardless of how badly we're handling it, our risk was vastly different to the others.
    - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      Japan invalidates this narrative.
      - Normal_gaussian 6y ago
        No it doesn't. Its a very different comparison. NZ and AUS are very similar to GB culturally and politically. Its very notable that most countries that experienced SARS and MERS (burning it into their cultural and political will) are dealing with COVID very well.
        2019-nCoV 6y ago
        > NZ and AUS are very similar to GB culturally and politically. Maybe a century ago. Governments of neither country ever entertained the idea of herd-immunity. Elimination was always the goal. Both were early to restrict international arrivals. The UK lagged behind. Both countries were leading the world in per capita testing March through April — i.e. when it mattered. Again, the UK lagged behind. Both Australia and NZ are almost back to BAU, again, the UK will lag behind.
        gg82 6y ago
        I will just speak for Australia... but Elimination was not the initial goal. It was just to ensure the hospitals could cope. It is true that Australia never entertained the idea of herd-immunity. I think some of the state governments later moved towards an elimination idea when it appeared possible. I think that is not likely going to be possible now, since people were beginning not to accept the lock down like they had in the past. When you have a small number of cases in the hundreds for the whole of Australia, people had already started to change their behavior even before lock down restrictions had began to be lifted.
        nl 6y ago
        I can confirm this is accurate. No Australian government has made any kind of indication that elimination is a goal, and nor was herd immunity a goal. The goal was time to prepare the country, and to minimise the death toll. As it happens, it has been functionally eliminated in SA/NT/WA with no new cases in May and zero active cases. But the expectation is that new cases will arise as travel restrictions ease but contact tracing will be sufficient to control them.
        SyneRyder 6y ago
        > Both were early to restrict international arrivals. The UK lagged behind. This was a big factor. When Australia started closing its borders (on Feb 2), it was being condemned by the WHO and China for doing so [1]: "WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva that despite the emergency declaration, there is "no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade"." I was tracking conferences in the UK at the time (I run a website with conference listings), and one of the UK conferences kept quoting that WHO statement as a reason to insist their conference was still happening and people should fly to the UK for it... for another six weeks, right up until the UK lockdown. Meanwhile conferences in the rest of the world were cancelling themselves "out of an abundance of caution". The UK was one of the countries that took the longest for their conferences to cancel (Germany was the other). [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/coronavirus-china-slams-us-ban-as-who-warns-local-outbreaks/11921416 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/coronavirus-china-sla...
    - nl 6y ago
      The population density of the Australian East Coast between Melbourne and Brisbane is comparable to the UK. For example, the greater Sydney area has 400 people/km^2 while the UK is 259/km^2.
      - ascorbic 6y ago
        You're right that comparing population centres is more helpful, but London has a total population around half that of the whole of Australia with density over 4500/km^2. Even if you expand to the whole of south east England, there's a population density of 450/km^2
        2019-nCoV 6y ago
        While counterintuitive, Australia is more urbanised than the UK. 60% of Australians live in 1M+ cities, while only 27% of Brits do. That's 15M dwelling in big Australians cities. Only 17.65M in the UK. https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization
        bigiain 6y ago
        We have a _lot_ of empty space here. Our biggest cattle station (think "cow farm" for non-Aussies) is almost 10% of the land area of the UK. We have ~20 cattle stations larger than 10,000 square kilometers. You'd only need to aggregate the top 15-17 biggest farms to get the same amount of land area as the entire United Kingdom. (Admittedly, far far less productive land, most of which probably qualifies as desert, but still...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_i...
        nl 6y ago
        I think everyone understands that. The point here is the opposite: that the east coast is reasonably dense and useful for comparison purposes. Central Australia has pretty much the density of the North Atlantic...
    - ascorbic 6y ago
      It's not just the fact there's 66 million people in a country smaller than Michigan either. The UK is a major transport hub. Heathrow is one of the busiest international airports in the world, both for visitors to the UK and as an international hub. London is one of the world's top tourist destinations. It's also very close to continental Europe, with tens of millions of people travelling between them by train and boat every year. The government's response was badly botched, but a fairer comparison is New York not New Zealand.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      > it is common sense that this makes it more susceptible If you’re saying that the British attitude of “use common sense” is what made it more susceptible, then I agree.
    - jussij 6y ago
      > Look at the population and population distributions of GB, NZ, and AUS. The disparity in population distribution is no where the near the massive disparity seen in COVID 19 outcomes. Australia has a population of 25 million which makes in more than one third the size of the UK with its population of 66 million. Also 10 million of that 25 million live in just the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne which I'm sure are just as densely populated as cities like London, Liverpool etc. To date UK COVID deaths total 34466 or 508 deaths per million. By comparison Australia has 98 or 4 deaths per million. There is more than population distribution at play here.
- ulfw 6y ago
  It's not exactly much larger than South Korea which for effective purposes could be treated as an island too.

Plenty of islands are inundated: the UK, Singapore, Ireland, Indonesia, Philippines.

dboreham 6y ago

UK is a pretty big island.

jussij 6y ago
I think there is an advantage to being an island state when it comes to handling Covid-19 as both New Zealand and Australia have show. However, the UK which is smaller than both, lost that advantage only because of their botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Normal_gaussian 6y ago
  Look at the population and population distributions of GB, NZ, and AUS. It becomes pretty clear that the uk stands apart from the other two in these respects, and it is common sense that this makes it more susceptible. Regardless of how badly we're handling it, our risk was vastly different to the others.
  - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
    Japan invalidates this narrative.
    - Normal_gaussian 6y ago
      No it doesn't. Its a very different comparison. NZ and AUS are very similar to GB culturally and politically. Its very notable that most countries that experienced SARS and MERS (burning it into their cultural and political will) are dealing with COVID very well.
      - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
        > NZ and AUS are very similar to GB culturally and politically. Maybe a century ago. Governments of neither country ever entertained the idea of herd-immunity. Elimination was always the goal. Both were early to restrict international arrivals. The UK lagged behind. Both countries were leading the world in per capita testing March through April — i.e. when it mattered. Again, the UK lagged behind. Both Australia and NZ are almost back to BAU, again, the UK will lag behind.
        gg82 6y ago
        I will just speak for Australia... but Elimination was not the initial goal. It was just to ensure the hospitals could cope. It is true that Australia never entertained the idea of herd-immunity. I think some of the state governments later moved towards an elimination idea when it appeared possible. I think that is not likely going to be possible now, since people were beginning not to accept the lock down like they had in the past. When you have a small number of cases in the hundreds for the whole of Australia, people had already started to change their behavior even before lock down restrictions had began to be lifted.
        nl 6y ago
        I can confirm this is accurate. No Australian government has made any kind of indication that elimination is a goal, and nor was herd immunity a goal. The goal was time to prepare the country, and to minimise the death toll. As it happens, it has been functionally eliminated in SA/NT/WA with no new cases in May and zero active cases. But the expectation is that new cases will arise as travel restrictions ease but contact tracing will be sufficient to control them.
        SyneRyder 6y ago
        > Both were early to restrict international arrivals. The UK lagged behind. This was a big factor. When Australia started closing its borders (on Feb 2), it was being condemned by the WHO and China for doing so [1]: "WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva that despite the emergency declaration, there is "no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade"." I was tracking conferences in the UK at the time (I run a website with conference listings), and one of the UK conferences kept quoting that WHO statement as a reason to insist their conference was still happening and people should fly to the UK for it... for another six weeks, right up until the UK lockdown. Meanwhile conferences in the rest of the world were cancelling themselves "out of an abundance of caution". The UK was one of the countries that took the longest for their conferences to cancel (Germany was the other). [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/coronavirus-china-slams-us-ban-as-who-warns-local-outbreaks/11921416 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/coronavirus-china-sla...
  - nl 6y ago
    The population density of the Australian East Coast between Melbourne and Brisbane is comparable to the UK. For example, the greater Sydney area has 400 people/km^2 while the UK is 259/km^2.
    - ascorbic 6y ago
      You're right that comparing population centres is more helpful, but London has a total population around half that of the whole of Australia with density over 4500/km^2. Even if you expand to the whole of south east England, there's a population density of 450/km^2
      - 2019-nCoV 6y ago
        While counterintuitive, Australia is more urbanised than the UK. 60% of Australians live in 1M+ cities, while only 27% of Brits do. That's 15M dwelling in big Australians cities. Only 17.65M in the UK. https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization
        bigiain 6y ago
        We have a _lot_ of empty space here. Our biggest cattle station (think "cow farm" for non-Aussies) is almost 10% of the land area of the UK. We have ~20 cattle stations larger than 10,000 square kilometers. You'd only need to aggregate the top 15-17 biggest farms to get the same amount of land area as the entire United Kingdom. (Admittedly, far far less productive land, most of which probably qualifies as desert, but still...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_stations_i...
        nl 6y ago
        I think everyone understands that. The point here is the opposite: that the east coast is reasonably dense and useful for comparison purposes. Central Australia has pretty much the density of the North Atlantic...
  - ascorbic 6y ago
    It's not just the fact there's 66 million people in a country smaller than Michigan either. The UK is a major transport hub. Heathrow is one of the busiest international airports in the world, both for visitors to the UK and as an international hub. London is one of the world's top tourist destinations. It's also very close to continental Europe, with tens of millions of people travelling between them by train and boat every year. The government's response was badly botched, but a fairer comparison is New York not New Zealand.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > it is common sense that this makes it more susceptible If you’re saying that the British attitude of “use common sense” is what made it more susceptible, then I agree.
  - jussij 6y ago
    > Look at the population and population distributions of GB, NZ, and AUS. The disparity in population distribution is no where the near the massive disparity seen in COVID 19 outcomes. Australia has a population of 25 million which makes in more than one third the size of the UK with its population of 66 million. Also 10 million of that 25 million live in just the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne which I'm sure are just as densely populated as cities like London, Liverpool etc. To date UK COVID deaths total 34466 or 508 deaths per million. By comparison Australia has 98 or 4 deaths per million. There is more than population distribution at play here.
ulfw 6y ago
It's not exactly much larger than South Korea which for effective purposes could be treated as an island too.