10 ms·

I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Eur

by arxv33 6y ago

I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Europe were open with a few exceptions and I didn’t see much difference other than people wearing masks and social distancing between tables. I think in US everything is polarized and politicized. To the point that wearing masks is somehow considered against freedom. I believe health officials have some blames to share. They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I think health authorities will have long time to regain trusts in US. I also feel we don’t quite understand the transmission mechanism fully yet. It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor.

divbzero 6y ago
Europe can be lax now precisely because it was strict early enough and long enough to bring prevalence down to a safer level.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  I think that is a mistake. Exponential math doesn't fail to work just because you delay it for a while. Everyone started with just one case.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - FabHK 6y ago
    That is true. One cannot completely relax. The point is that Asia and Europe has by and large managed, after the big initial outbreaks, to keep R in check with moderate, yet consistent measures (social distancing, no large events, masks). When people get careless, it flares up, but can (thanks to decent testing meanwhile) typically be suppressed again with regional lockdowns before it gets really bad.
gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
Most places in Europe locked down early and harder than the US. We got damn close to elimination in many areas. This meant that many countries have been able to broadly reopen their economies. Sadly not every country played ball and it is spreading again.
- thelastname 6y ago
  > We got damn close to elimination in many areas. Where? Poland took some early actions but there are no covid free areas. Infections rates have plateaued but remain on a more or less constant levels. And people are getting upset. It will be really hard to keep them homes during the second wave... Same seems to be true for Czech Ostrava region.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    Norway. I agree another strict lockdown will be difficult to enforce. We are looking at a second wave more like the US's ongoing first wave. BUT treatment is seriously improved since March. The IFR is now lower. So that lockdown will still have saved many lives even if the second wave saturates the population.
jkrems 6y ago
> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I'm not sure I follow here - what is missing on that front? They have explained why the mask recommendation changed and how they got to their initial recommendation. Not sure how much more they could do there.
- streb-lo 6y ago
  The unwashed masses just looking to blame anybody but themselves at this point.
- nyhc99 6y ago
  What was the explanation again? The only one I've heard is that they lied to us so that medical first responders would have masks available. Which seems strange and unforgivable if true, seeing as how a simple piece of cotton fabric easily made at home (not fleece, as we've learned) would still have been a massive improvement over nothing at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
svnpenn 6y ago
Europe has twice the population of the United States. Yet despite this, United States has 4 TIMES the cases per day. Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. The US never did that, most states (like my home state of Texas) did a half-assed closing for 3 weeks, so the numbers never really got under control.
- csomar 6y ago
  The US is doing way more testing than most of the populous countries in the EU.
  - u801e 6y ago
    What's the percentage of positive test results out of all test results in the US vs most of the populous countries in Europe?
    - FabHK 6y ago
      Higher. US positive rate is 6.9%, Europe is mostly quite a bit lower (Austria 2.5%, Belgium 3%, France 2.4%, Germany 0.9%, Italy 1.9%, Scandinavia <1% except Sweden 3.5%, UK 0.7%) except Spain (7.2%) and Croatia (10.3%). https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing
- djsumdog 6y ago
  It varied and we're seeing more cases in the EU coming out of the lockdown. Hell, NZ went for total elimination and they got more cases (possibly due to freight?) When this is over, I bet the entire planet will have rates similar to Sweden. My theory is lockdowns delay the inevitable. We should protect the most at risk (95% of fatalities in the US are ages 55+), but we also need to realize there is no way to really stop a virus in circulation. I wrote a while back about how we just need to come to accept our life expectancy is just lower now: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...
dsego 6y ago
Oh really? Croatia couldn't afford to lose the tourist season. As a result the number of cases is skyrocketing. The daily reported cases are much worse now then were at the time of the first lockdown. (see koronavirus.hr for the graph).
djsumdog 6y ago
> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong I don't think they were. There is a 2013 study that shows cloth masks would be ineffective at preventing spread of respiratory illnesses, and posts by UIC Health early on that said they weren't necessary (which they've added a notice to). I wrote about this here: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-hurt-our-perceptions-of-one-another https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-... Fauci originally said masks were not very useful (quite convincingly I might add) and then turned around and said they were. When pressed, he said he was afraid of health professionals running out of PPE. He admitted he made a noble lie. So if he was lying then ... how do we know he's not lying now? How do we know he's not pushing masks because it's causing political strife and fear? After all, his wife has a major role at the NIH for approving emergency drugs and vaccines, and Fauci has vested interested in big pharma. You cannot trust a liar and he admitted to lying directly to us! In Canada, a man was pepper sprayed at a Tim Horton by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another man refused to wear one, went home, and the cops came to his house. The resulting altercation lead to the cops fatally shooting him. A woman with a medical notice in Melbourne was choked by cops and arrested (granted she did flip them off instead of handing them her note like she should have). Masks have really torn everyone apart, and have been used as a big source of shame. By mandating them, you break the social contract, and you're asking people to accept certain beliefs, for which there are 10+ scientific papers published on both sides of the fence. They make it harder for us to "see" one another. The hurt our trust because we evolved to depend on facial expressions. And if they don't do very much as far as preventing spread of infection, than they might even cause more harm than good. Am I the only one who sees the normalization of the mask as contributing to those who are rioting? There are plenty of nations and States within the US without mask mandates and we see similar infection rates based on population density. In the end, I think they'll end up being a political statement. Nothing more, and everything less.
- obmelvin 6y ago
  >Am I the only one who sees the normalization of the mask as contributing to those who are rioting? Please, just no.
  - 6y ago
rconti 6y ago
The initial mask guidance was pretty clearly wrong, and there was plenty of griping at the time that they were trying to conserve supplies for front line workers (and rightly so) by spreading FUD. Huge numbers of people were wearing masks back then, against the guidance, because it was pretty obviously better than not wearing one. In my "bubble" the experts have been proven right, time and again. Again, the mask thing is about the only piece of bad information I can remember being spread. And yet, all over the internet, 6+ months into this, we have a bunch of people who deliberately misinformed themselves for months, complaining that "the experts have been wrong over and over again".
bonestamp2 6y ago
> the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor One know mechanic is the virus's half life when airborne. We know that the airborne virus can be killed/filtered when there is enough UV light and/or a fine enough particulate air filter in place. In other words, indoor safety can be improved with better filters. Without the proper filtration, HVAC circulation can help circulate the virus, which could be the problem in nursing homes and at parties. Meanwhile, outdoor air is relatively safe when there is enough distancing as sunlight will take the virus's half life down to 90 seconds at 20% humidity and 70-75 degrees [1]. 20% humidity is pretty low, but the good news is that half life gets even shorter as humidity goes up. Sunlight doesn't even contain the best frequency of UV light to kill the virus, but it's intense enough that it still works fairly well. 1) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-sunlight-coronavirus-quickly-scientists.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-sunlight-coronavirus-...
pdonis 6y ago
> It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor. No, the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties indicate that airborne transmission is a lot easier when you have high risk people who can't avoid close contact with others, or a lot of people in close contact in a small space, in a closed environment where air is recirculated.

by arxv33 6y ago

divbzero 6y ago

Europe can be lax now precisely because it was strict early enough and long enough to bring prevalence down to a safer level.

rootusrootus 6y ago
I think that is a mistake. Exponential math doesn't fail to work just because you delay it for a while. Everyone started with just one case.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- FabHK 6y ago
  That is true. One cannot completely relax. The point is that Asia and Europe has by and large managed, after the big initial outbreaks, to keep R in check with moderate, yet consistent measures (social distancing, no large events, masks). When people get careless, it flares up, but can (thanks to decent testing meanwhile) typically be suppressed again with regional lockdowns before it gets really bad.

gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago

Most places in Europe locked down early and harder than the US. We got damn close to elimination in many areas. This meant that many countries have been able to broadly reopen their economies. Sadly not every country played ball and it is spreading again.

thelastname 6y ago
> We got damn close to elimination in many areas. Where? Poland took some early actions but there are no covid free areas. Infections rates have plateaued but remain on a more or less constant levels. And people are getting upset. It will be really hard to keep them homes during the second wave... Same seems to be true for Czech Ostrava region.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  Norway. I agree another strict lockdown will be difficult to enforce. We are looking at a second wave more like the US's ongoing first wave. BUT treatment is seriously improved since March. The IFR is now lower. So that lockdown will still have saved many lives even if the second wave saturates the population.

jkrems 6y ago

> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I'm not sure I follow here - what is missing on that front? They have explained why the mask recommendation changed and how they got to their initial recommendation. Not sure how much more they could do there.

streb-lo 6y ago
The unwashed masses just looking to blame anybody but themselves at this point.
nyhc99 6y ago
What was the explanation again? The only one I've heard is that they lied to us so that medical first responders would have masks available. Which seems strange and unforgivable if true, seeing as how a simple piece of cotton fabric easily made at home (not fleece, as we've learned) would still have been a massive improvement over nothing at all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

svnpenn 6y ago

Europe has twice the population of the United States. Yet despite this, United States has 4 TIMES the cases per day. Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. The US never did that, most states (like my home state of Texas) did a half-assed closing for 3 weeks, so the numbers never really got under control.

csomar 6y ago
The US is doing way more testing than most of the populous countries in the EU.
- u801e 6y ago
  What's the percentage of positive test results out of all test results in the US vs most of the populous countries in Europe?
  - FabHK 6y ago
    Higher. US positive rate is 6.9%, Europe is mostly quite a bit lower (Austria 2.5%, Belgium 3%, France 2.4%, Germany 0.9%, Italy 1.9%, Scandinavia <1% except Sweden 3.5%, UK 0.7%) except Spain (7.2%) and Croatia (10.3%). https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing
djsumdog 6y ago
It varied and we're seeing more cases in the EU coming out of the lockdown. Hell, NZ went for total elimination and they got more cases (possibly due to freight?) When this is over, I bet the entire planet will have rates similar to Sweden. My theory is lockdowns delay the inevitable. We should protect the most at risk (95% of fatalities in the US are ages 55+), but we also need to realize there is no way to really stop a virus in circulation. I wrote a while back about how we just need to come to accept our life expectancy is just lower now: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...

dsego 6y ago

Oh really? Croatia couldn't afford to lose the tourist season. As a result the number of cases is skyrocketing. The daily reported cases are much worse now then were at the time of the first lockdown. (see koronavirus.hr for the graph).

djsumdog 6y ago

> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong I don't think they were. There is a 2013 study that shows cloth masks would be ineffective at preventing spread of respiratory illnesses, and posts by UIC Health early on that said they weren't necessary (which they've added a notice to). I wrote about this here: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-hurt-our-perceptions-of-one-another https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-... Fauci originally said masks were not very useful (quite convincingly I might add) and then turned around and said they were. When pressed, he said he was afraid of health professionals running out of PPE. He admitted he made a noble lie. So if he was lying then ... how do we know he's not lying now? How do we know he's not pushing masks because it's causing political strife and fear? After all, his wife has a major role at the NIH for approving emergency drugs and vaccines, and Fauci has vested interested in big pharma. You cannot trust a liar and he admitted to lying directly to us! In Canada, a man was pepper sprayed at a Tim Horton by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another man refused to wear one, went home, and the cops came to his house. The resulting altercation lead to the cops fatally shooting him. A woman with a medical notice in Melbourne was choked by cops and arrested (granted she did flip them off instead of handing them her note like she should have). Masks have really torn everyone apart, and have been used as a big source of shame. By mandating them, you break the social contract, and you're asking people to accept certain beliefs, for which there are 10+ scientific papers published on both sides of the fence. They make it harder for us to "see" one another. The hurt our trust because we evolved to depend on facial expressions. And if they don't do very much as far as preventing spread of infection, than they might even cause more harm than good. Am I the only one who sees the normalization of the mask as contributing to those who are rioting? There are plenty of nations and States within the US without mask mandates and we see similar infection rates based on population density. In the end, I think they'll end up being a political statement. Nothing more, and everything less.

obmelvin 6y ago
>Am I the only one who sees the normalization of the mask as contributing to those who are rioting? Please, just no.
- 6y ago

rconti 6y ago

The initial mask guidance was pretty clearly wrong, and there was plenty of griping at the time that they were trying to conserve supplies for front line workers (and rightly so) by spreading FUD. Huge numbers of people were wearing masks back then, against the guidance, because it was pretty obviously better than not wearing one. In my "bubble" the experts have been proven right, time and again. Again, the mask thing is about the only piece of bad information I can remember being spread. And yet, all over the internet, 6+ months into this, we have a bunch of people who deliberately misinformed themselves for months, complaining that "the experts have been wrong over and over again".

bonestamp2 6y ago

> the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor One know mechanic is the virus's half life when airborne. We know that the airborne virus can be killed/filtered when there is enough UV light and/or a fine enough particulate air filter in place. In other words, indoor safety can be improved with better filters. Without the proper filtration, HVAC circulation can help circulate the virus, which could be the problem in nursing homes and at parties. Meanwhile, outdoor air is relatively safe when there is enough distancing as sunlight will take the virus's half life down to 90 seconds at 20% humidity and 70-75 degrees [1]. 20% humidity is pretty low, but the good news is that half life gets even shorter as humidity goes up. Sunlight doesn't even contain the best frequency of UV light to kill the virus, but it's intense enough that it still works fairly well. 1) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-sunlight-coronavirus-quickly-scientists.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-sunlight-coronavirus-...

pdonis 6y ago

> It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor. No, the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties indicate that airborne transmission is a lot easier when you have high risk people who can't avoid close contact with others, or a lot of people in close contact in a small space, in a closed environment where air is recirculated.