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I wouldn't be surprised if the variant is already global. There is a known case in Belgium from November 11th. Travel restrictions are mainly political at this

by yosito 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the variant is already global. There is a known case in Belgium from November 11th. Travel restrictions are mainly political at this point.

ogogmad 5y ago
What about testing and tracing? And doing travel bans.
- yosito 5y ago
  What evidence do you have that travel bans stop covid?
  - ogogmad 5y ago
    Infectious diseases spread by human contact. Reducing contact between infected and uninfected people should therefore slow down spread. We can use this time to gather information about this variant in order to make better decisions about how to deal with it. The precautionary principle dictates that we act by assuming that a very bad outcome is likely until we get more information. A very bad outcome (which we don't have enough information to rule out) is hospitals being overwhelmed with sick people, so that some patients are left untreated, with a greatly increased rate of dying as a result. The reason this is possible is because there are a large number of mutations in this variant, which might allow it to bypass people's immunity. This can make immunity acquired through previous infection or vaccination ineffective.
    - yosito 5y ago
      Last time I checked, there were infected people on both sides of the border.
      - ogogmad 5y ago
        Which border? What infections? I'm not living in Belgium.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    There is none. There is scant evidence that any of these NPI's do anything at all besides give the appearance that government is "taking this serious". People that claim this kind of stuff "just makes sense" aren't taking into consideration the second order effects on human behavior that might make things even worse. For example closing outdoor parks probably made things much worse because people would meet inside instead...
    - threeseed 5y ago
      This comment is simply wrong. Health professionals were factoring in second order effects. The problem is that there isn't a wealth of research or evidence which shows which option is more likely to work. So a lot of at least in the early days was trial/error. What would do know is that increased mobility translates to increased cases. And so opening parks whilst much safer than being inside results in increased mobility as people need transport to/from those parks.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    In Australia at least we had mandatory hotel quarantine for all foreign arrivals with many of them being infectious. If you didn't have that quarantine they would be out in the wild infecting people. Not what you want when many parts of our country e.g. Western Australia had zero community transmissions. Without some sort of travel bans there is no way you could manage that level of inflow.

by yosito 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the variant is already global. There is a known case in Belgium from November 11th. Travel restrictions are mainly political at this point.

ogogmad 5y ago

What about testing and tracing? And doing travel bans.

yosito 5y ago
What evidence do you have that travel bans stop covid?
- ogogmad 5y ago
  Infectious diseases spread by human contact. Reducing contact between infected and uninfected people should therefore slow down spread. We can use this time to gather information about this variant in order to make better decisions about how to deal with it. The precautionary principle dictates that we act by assuming that a very bad outcome is likely until we get more information. A very bad outcome (which we don't have enough information to rule out) is hospitals being overwhelmed with sick people, so that some patients are left untreated, with a greatly increased rate of dying as a result. The reason this is possible is because there are a large number of mutations in this variant, which might allow it to bypass people's immunity. This can make immunity acquired through previous infection or vaccination ineffective.
  - yosito 5y ago
    Last time I checked, there were infected people on both sides of the border.
    - ogogmad 5y ago
      Which border? What infections? I'm not living in Belgium.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  There is none. There is scant evidence that any of these NPI's do anything at all besides give the appearance that government is "taking this serious". People that claim this kind of stuff "just makes sense" aren't taking into consideration the second order effects on human behavior that might make things even worse. For example closing outdoor parks probably made things much worse because people would meet inside instead...
  - threeseed 5y ago
    This comment is simply wrong. Health professionals were factoring in second order effects. The problem is that there isn't a wealth of research or evidence which shows which option is more likely to work. So a lot of at least in the early days was trial/error. What would do know is that increased mobility translates to increased cases. And so opening parks whilst much safer than being inside results in increased mobility as people need transport to/from those parks.
- threeseed 5y ago
  In Australia at least we had mandatory hotel quarantine for all foreign arrivals with many of them being infectious. If you didn't have that quarantine they would be out in the wild infecting people. Not what you want when many parts of our country e.g. Western Australia had zero community transmissions. Without some sort of travel bans there is no way you could manage that level of inflow.