4 ms·

Going back to normal: how Iceland has dealt with the coronavirus

13 points by yardie 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago
Interesting story about the one day test, with an incubation time of two weeks how big are the chances that if contracted on the plane that would show up in a test done the same day?
- Swenrekcah 6y ago
  They just changed the rules so that now you have to self quarantine for 4-5 days and then get another test. This is after two cases of people testing negative, then feeling ill and testing positive a few days later. This is just for residents though, tourists can still get away with the single test, reasoning being they don't mingle as much.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Tourists tend to mingle as much or more as normal people do, that may be a mistaken assumption, they also tend to get around a lot. That new test regime + quarantine makes more sense though.
    - Swenrekcah 6y ago
      I suspect that in an ideal world this rule would apply to everyone, but a lot of practical realities drive this decision making in my opinion. There are some reasons to vindicate it though, as a tourist you mostly keep with your group, if you mingle it's mostly with other tourists I suspect, you don't have all your close friends and relatives or colleagues that you would really spend a lot of time with in variously intimate contact. On the other hand, as you say they travel a lot more than locals in any given time period. Time will tell if this makes sense.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > with an incubation time of two weeks Can we stop perpetuating this myth? 14 days is when 99.5% of the people show symptoms. The median, which is far more important, is between 2 to 4 days.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Only it isn't a myth. "The typical incubation period for COVID‑19 is five or six days, but it can range from one to fourteen days with approximately ten percent of cases taking longer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019 I could have been more correct by writing 'up to', but if 10% of the cases take longer than 14 days then 99.5% within 14 days should be 90%. Playing it safe with the incubation time around international arrivals is what has led to authorities the world over adopting the 14 day quarantine.
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      I've looked up some papers on the maximum incubation period (by no means a comprehensive search): - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32594928/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32594928/ (14 days in 99.5) - https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa106/5864951#205111148 https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa106... (this one says 95% within 14 days) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302302/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302302/ (preprint, says median is 5.35 days, and says the data support the 14 day intervention policy but gives no data about why so) Most of the studies are with "old" outbreaks so likely more data is needed. Yet the median is still around 2-6 days. > Playing it safe with the incubation time That is, applying the precautionary principle. Not very scientific, but understandable (although I don't agree with it). Personally, now that we're well into the epidemic, I'd expect a little more rigor, though.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Well, given the cost associated with dealing with outbreaks it would make sense to play it safe, precautions have a cost near zero and an outbreak has a fairly large cost especially if not detected soon enough.
qeternity 6y ago
Every time I read an article about Iceland I feel the need to remind people that it’s a country that is smaller than most medium sized cities. You don’t see articles written about how Aurora, Colorado dealt with covid, despite the fact that they are the same size. Things that work for small, homogenous systems rarely work 1:1 on large, heterogenous scales.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  We know because the most common comment on anything done by any non-American place that is superior to an American place is to remind us that the achieving place is: more diverse, less diverse, larger, smaller, denser, sparser, more homogeneous, more heterogeneous, or whatever. Fortunately, the reason I love America (the real culture of aggressive exploitation of gaps and inefficiencies) is alive and well in the real world as much as the culture of excuse-making is alive on the Internet. In time, I wonder if Americans will split into categories of low-agency online commenters who believe that the greatest factors are environmental and high-agency real-life operatives who believe the greatest factors are things they can control.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    This is an absurdly loaded response. I never said anything about America being great. I live in London. I was just making a point for a largely American readership which has a tendency to presume the rest of the world is far better (as you do) without having actually experienced anything else but the US. There are many small cities in the US fairing very well, just as there are here in the UK. But you’d never read about them because they aren’t sovereign nations. Sweden is a great example of this. Typically held up by Americans as some sort of utopia, until they became the poster child for cavalier covid handling. Now people just move on and pick some other new comparison.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      I've lived in London, Mumbai, San Francisco, and many American cities. Your original comment is nothing more than the standard "Correlation is not causation" comment of these stories. It's exceedingly low information content and ever-present.

13 points by yardie 6y ago

Interesting story about the one day test, with an incubation time of two weeks how big are the chances that if contracted on the plane that would show up in a test done the same day?

Swenrekcah 6y ago
They just changed the rules so that now you have to self quarantine for 4-5 days and then get another test. This is after two cases of people testing negative, then feeling ill and testing positive a few days later. This is just for residents though, tourists can still get away with the single test, reasoning being they don't mingle as much.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Tourists tend to mingle as much or more as normal people do, that may be a mistaken assumption, they also tend to get around a lot. That new test regime + quarantine makes more sense though.
  - Swenrekcah 6y ago
    I suspect that in an ideal world this rule would apply to everyone, but a lot of practical realities drive this decision making in my opinion. There are some reasons to vindicate it though, as a tourist you mostly keep with your group, if you mingle it's mostly with other tourists I suspect, you don't have all your close friends and relatives or colleagues that you would really spend a lot of time with in variously intimate contact. On the other hand, as you say they travel a lot more than locals in any given time period. Time will tell if this makes sense.
lbeltrame 6y ago
> with an incubation time of two weeks Can we stop perpetuating this myth? 14 days is when 99.5% of the people show symptoms. The median, which is far more important, is between 2 to 4 days.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Only it isn't a myth. "The typical incubation period for COVID‑19 is five or six days, but it can range from one to fourteen days with approximately ten percent of cases taking longer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019 I could have been more correct by writing 'up to', but if 10% of the cases take longer than 14 days then 99.5% within 14 days should be 90%. Playing it safe with the incubation time around international arrivals is what has led to authorities the world over adopting the 14 day quarantine.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    I've looked up some papers on the maximum incubation period (by no means a comprehensive search): - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32594928/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32594928/ (14 days in 99.5) - https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa106/5864951#205111148 https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyaa106... (this one says 95% within 14 days) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302302/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302302/ (preprint, says median is 5.35 days, and says the data support the 14 day intervention policy but gives no data about why so) Most of the studies are with "old" outbreaks so likely more data is needed. Yet the median is still around 2-6 days. > Playing it safe with the incubation time That is, applying the precautionary principle. Not very scientific, but understandable (although I don't agree with it). Personally, now that we're well into the epidemic, I'd expect a little more rigor, though.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Well, given the cost associated with dealing with outbreaks it would make sense to play it safe, precautions have a cost near zero and an outbreak has a fairly large cost especially if not detected soon enough.

qeternity 6y ago

Every time I read an article about Iceland I feel the need to remind people that it’s a country that is smaller than most medium sized cities. You don’t see articles written about how Aurora, Colorado dealt with covid, despite the fact that they are the same size. Things that work for small, homogenous systems rarely work 1:1 on large, heterogenous scales.

renewiltord 6y ago
We know because the most common comment on anything done by any non-American place that is superior to an American place is to remind us that the achieving place is: more diverse, less diverse, larger, smaller, denser, sparser, more homogeneous, more heterogeneous, or whatever. Fortunately, the reason I love America (the real culture of aggressive exploitation of gaps and inefficiencies) is alive and well in the real world as much as the culture of excuse-making is alive on the Internet. In time, I wonder if Americans will split into categories of low-agency online commenters who believe that the greatest factors are environmental and high-agency real-life operatives who believe the greatest factors are things they can control.
- qeternity 6y ago
  This is an absurdly loaded response. I never said anything about America being great. I live in London. I was just making a point for a largely American readership which has a tendency to presume the rest of the world is far better (as you do) without having actually experienced anything else but the US. There are many small cities in the US fairing very well, just as there are here in the UK. But you’d never read about them because they aren’t sovereign nations. Sweden is a great example of this. Typically held up by Americans as some sort of utopia, until they became the poster child for cavalier covid handling. Now people just move on and pick some other new comparison.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    I've lived in London, Mumbai, San Francisco, and many American cities. Your original comment is nothing more than the standard "Correlation is not causation" comment of these stories. It's exceedingly low information content and ever-present.