5 ms·

It's a nice idea but I haven't heard anyone describe an infection control approach that could have prevented the spread of this virus, short of isolating every

It's a nice idea but I haven't heard anyone describe an infection control approach that could have prevented the spread of this virus, short of isolating every single person in the world in their homes including all medical and food production workers, which is obviously impossible. What's the system you know about?

somewhereoutth 4y ago
Their methods are particularly draconian, but China has managed it. To my knowledge without the mass starvation or collapse of their medical systems alluded by your comment. Probably they couldn't go to Wendy's for a bit though.
- pavlov 4y ago
  It's been a bit worse than "not going to Wendy's". Starvation is not an exaggerated description of some of the Shanghai lockdown experiences: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/03/shanghai-food-shortages-covid-lockdown-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/03/shanghai-food-shortages...
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    The major of Shanghai let the outbreak get out of control because of concerns over "the economy". On the other hand, the border across the Amur in Heilongjiang province is porous, there is no shortage of imported cases. Any outbreaks in Heihe across the river from Blagoveshtshensk are brought under control swiftly and without fuss.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >The major of Shanghai let the outbreak get out of control because of concerns over "the economy". What are some examples of lapses of judgement to support the claim that he "let the outbreak get out of control "?
      - HarryHirsch 4y ago
        Here: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shanghai-communist-party-chief-li-qiang-his-shanghai-covid-policy-failed-but-he-is-still-xi-jinpings-top-choice-2957908 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shanghai-communist-party-chi... Shanghai health officials tried to control the outbreak with testing and neighbourhood-wide lockdowns; in hindsight they should have done the full lockdown earlier.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tomhoward 4y ago
  Yeah, as the sibling comment said, "couldn't go to Wendy’s" is a pretty flippant way to describe what was imposed on Shanghai residents this year. I'm in Melbourne, Australia, which locked down hard to suppress the virus in 2020, then for several more months attempting to suppress it again in 2021. Since everyone had had the chance to be vaccinated by Nov last year, restrictions have been lifted and the virus has been allowed to spread, and almost everyone is much happier living with the virus than continuing to be locked down. What is China going to do? Keep locking everyone down every few months forever? For myself, having a young child at daycare means getting exposed to infections and being sick with something different almost every week, which is of course annoying but it's a part of life. I had covid for the second time last week (must have been BA.5 as it's dominant here), and it was no big deal; I felt a bit off for under 48 hours. It certainly felt like my body knew what to do with it having first encountered an earlier omicron variant in Feb. How is shutting down all of society for weeks/months at a time preferable to that?
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    - _yoqn 4y ago
      I think I am the conspiracy theorist of this thread but even this seems far fetched...
    - tomhoward 4y ago
      I'm not going to let you get away with pretending that this discussion is about the lab leak theory and some weird conspiracy theory about special knowledge China has, rather than your suggestion that a smug-but-vacuous XKCD cartoon is making an important point.
- treeman79 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/5LouYOdroKs https://youtu.be/5LouYOdroKs People screaming and begging for food and basic supplies may disagree
- ehnto 4y ago
  Now what? It's not going away. As soon as they open up, it'll spread again.
maxerickson 4y ago
Reducing the spread is preventing it, for a lot of reasonable definitions of preventing (where incidents of spread are prevented vs all spreading). Better testing, giving people options to isolate from their household, etc, all could have reduced the spread. I think they don't make as much sense after vaccines are widely available (but we haven't necessarily hit that point globally). Figuring out how to do good public health messaging would also probably be worthwhile. Vaccine uptake in lots of places was pretty bad.
- tomhoward 4y ago
  > Reducing the spread is preventing it No, it's kicking the can down the road. The virus is highly infectious, always was. There's no prevention, just delaying the inevitable, and possibly waiting for a variant that is more severe (to someone without any prior exposure), and not having any protection other than vaccines that are based on much earlier/different strains. I'm a little worried about this for my parents, for what it's worth.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    Dealing with viral infections is all about timing. The further you kick that can, the better.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Yes, if you read my comment I sort of discuss how kicking the can down the road can be a good thing (you can change the vulnerability of the population!). The Omicron targeted vaccines likely provide a worthwhile improvement in protection against the recent variants. Hopefully the public health apparatus chooses to release them, rather than doing nothing.
    - tomhoward 4y ago
      The whole point of the phrase "kicking the can down the road" is that it's not something you should do forever. As difficult as it was to live through, I'm supportive of what was done here in Melbourne to suppress the virus in 2020-21 when the variants were more severe and the vaccines weren't around. It's what enabled our fatality rate to be kept to one of the lowest in the world. It doesn't make sense to keep doing it now, and doing so could make the problem worse. In a complex system these issues aren't without tradeoffs. Luckily our health officials agree so we're all good. (Btw saying “if you read my comment” is poor conduct here as I’m sure you know.)
ehnto 4y ago
Isolation only serves to slow spread to a level that your health care system can accommodate. We've tried isolation in a bunch of places. In my state in Australia, we even isolated with nearly zero cases all the way up until 90% vaccination rates. But once you open up, it still spreads. Most of our cases were for vaccinated individuals, who surely were better off for being vaccinated, but it didn't stop the spread. Unless you want to stay isolated for the rest of eternity, the best we can do is be hygienic and get vaccinated, and take care around vulnerable people.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Australia really messed up. They had it eliminated from their population entirely, but then let it back in by not screening or quarantining people coming in from the outside. Australia could have had zero restrictions and zero covid.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    I think you're overestimating how tight a border can be while still allowing movement. Even when we had 14 day police enforced mandatory quarantine and no international travel, cases still got through from returning Australians. There is also all the staff at the interface, cleaners, hotel staff, security, airport staff, screeners, it was not a foolproof system. With that in mind, it was only a matter of time. The only reason it didn't spread as fast in spite of that leaky interface, was because of the lock downs. Even in spite of those knockdowns it spread, and in spite of high vaccination rates it spread. It's not a solveable problem, citizens would not (did not) accept the terms necessary to be covid zero forever, so why delay it once everyone is vaccinated? I was on team Covid Zero to begin with, but it was never meant to be a long term strategy. You can't exile a whole country while the rest of the world moves on and expect people to accept that.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > I think you're overestimating how tight a border can be while still allowing movement. We have the technology to lock things down at borders as hard as we'd need to, if Australia doesn't have that capability now they'd better start working on it. COVID-19 has (so far) only ranked as the fifth deadliest pandemic in human history, but it was the perfect opportunity for Australia to test and evaluate their ability to defend against deadly viral outbreaks which would rank much much higher. Experts agree that global pandemics will be increasingly more common in the future and that it's only a matter of time until we face something else like this or worse. We couldn't even make it through this pandemic before seeing another one starting! Cleaners, hotel/airport/quarantine center staff, security, staff, screeners, etc. could have been in full HAZMAT etc. just as they'd absolutely have to be if the virus were much more deadly anyway. It would have been better to make sure they could do it right last year when the cost of failure would have been limited to locking down one city for a few weeks to contain the spread than to scramble to figure it all out when a single fuck up could wipe out a huge percentage of the country's population. > You can't exile a whole country while the rest of the world moves on and expect people to accept that. As long as people were still coming in and out of the country (albeit with a 7-14 day delay for those coming in) the nation wouldn't be "exiled" and it would have been the people of Australia who got to "move on", by living their lives without the virus, while the rest of the world was stuck in our ongoing cycle of wave after wave of infections, new variants, new/lifted/renewed restrictions, increases and decreases in hospitalizations, increasing numbers of deaths/disability, exhausted healthcare workers, economic uncertainty, etc. all while we try our hardest to just pretend that the virus around us doesn't exist. I'd gladly trade the mess we have now for making entering the country a little more obnoxious by tacking on a short, enforced, unexciting, but all expense paid mini-vacation onto the itinerary of anyone coming in.
ipaddr 4y ago
That's easy banning all air travel would have stopped this in the beginning.
tunesmith 4y ago
R0 above 1 means there's a doubling rate. A doubling rate means it doubles within a period of time. Let's arbitrarily pick 10 days as a doubling rate. If, at a time when the doubling rate was 10 days, a particular mitigation measure had been taken, sufficient to knock R0 below 1, ten days earlier than it actually happened, then for the population in question, the situation is half as prevalent. Project that forward, everything that happens since that point flows from a situation that is half of what it actually was. It's a huge difference. The situation isn't discrete, it's continuous. Getting hung up on 100% prevention is beside the point. Knocking it back by 50%, or even 20%, or 10%, is huge compared to the alternative. People check the weather every day. I wish our nation had developed a very clear signal that everyone could check every day. Just check it in the morning to know whether it's advisable to wear a mask that day. Back in the post-Delta pre-Omicron days, I did a project of my own to develop something I could check every day. (https://tunesmith.github.io/covid-dashboard/ https://tunesmith.github.io/covid-dashboard/) It's messy and hacky and some of its math is out of date and I haven't gotten around to updating it for omicron, but imagine something like that that is funded, tailored for everyone's county, and really easy to report and communicate. It would have helped, just to know whether today is a mask day or not.
- moistly 4y ago
  That’s all I want: a report on how prevalent communicable respiratory disease is in my community, so that I can make an informed decision. I don’t need it to be covid-specific: I don’t want the flu either. It has been really nice not catching cold this past few years.

somewhereoutth 4y ago

Their methods are particularly draconian, but China has managed it. To my knowledge without the mass starvation or collapse of their medical systems alluded by your comment. Probably they couldn't go to Wendy's for a bit though.

pavlov 4y ago
It's been a bit worse than "not going to Wendy's". Starvation is not an exaggerated description of some of the Shanghai lockdown experiences: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/03/shanghai-food-shortages-covid-lockdown-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/03/shanghai-food-shortages...
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  The major of Shanghai let the outbreak get out of control because of concerns over "the economy". On the other hand, the border across the Amur in Heilongjiang province is porous, there is no shortage of imported cases. Any outbreaks in Heihe across the river from Blagoveshtshensk are brought under control swiftly and without fuss.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >The major of Shanghai let the outbreak get out of control because of concerns over "the economy". What are some examples of lapses of judgement to support the claim that he "let the outbreak get out of control "?
    - HarryHirsch 4y ago
      Here: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shanghai-communist-party-chief-li-qiang-his-shanghai-covid-policy-failed-but-he-is-still-xi-jinpings-top-choice-2957908 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shanghai-communist-party-chi... Shanghai health officials tried to control the outbreak with testing and neighbourhood-wide lockdowns; in hindsight they should have done the full lockdown earlier.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tomhoward 4y ago
Yeah, as the sibling comment said, "couldn't go to Wendy’s" is a pretty flippant way to describe what was imposed on Shanghai residents this year. I'm in Melbourne, Australia, which locked down hard to suppress the virus in 2020, then for several more months attempting to suppress it again in 2021. Since everyone had had the chance to be vaccinated by Nov last year, restrictions have been lifted and the virus has been allowed to spread, and almost everyone is much happier living with the virus than continuing to be locked down. What is China going to do? Keep locking everyone down every few months forever? For myself, having a young child at daycare means getting exposed to infections and being sick with something different almost every week, which is of course annoying but it's a part of life. I had covid for the second time last week (must have been BA.5 as it's dominant here), and it was no big deal; I felt a bit off for under 48 hours. It certainly felt like my body knew what to do with it having first encountered an earlier omicron variant in Feb. How is shutting down all of society for weeks/months at a time preferable to that?
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  - _yoqn 4y ago
    I think I am the conspiracy theorist of this thread but even this seems far fetched...
  - tomhoward 4y ago
    I'm not going to let you get away with pretending that this discussion is about the lab leak theory and some weird conspiracy theory about special knowledge China has, rather than your suggestion that a smug-but-vacuous XKCD cartoon is making an important point.
treeman79 4y ago
https://youtu.be/5LouYOdroKs https://youtu.be/5LouYOdroKs People screaming and begging for food and basic supplies may disagree
ehnto 4y ago
Now what? It's not going away. As soon as they open up, it'll spread again.

maxerickson 4y ago

Reducing the spread is preventing it, for a lot of reasonable definitions of preventing (where incidents of spread are prevented vs all spreading). Better testing, giving people options to isolate from their household, etc, all could have reduced the spread. I think they don't make as much sense after vaccines are widely available (but we haven't necessarily hit that point globally). Figuring out how to do good public health messaging would also probably be worthwhile. Vaccine uptake in lots of places was pretty bad.

tomhoward 4y ago
> Reducing the spread is preventing it No, it's kicking the can down the road. The virus is highly infectious, always was. There's no prevention, just delaying the inevitable, and possibly waiting for a variant that is more severe (to someone without any prior exposure), and not having any protection other than vaccines that are based on much earlier/different strains. I'm a little worried about this for my parents, for what it's worth.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Dealing with viral infections is all about timing. The further you kick that can, the better.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Yes, if you read my comment I sort of discuss how kicking the can down the road can be a good thing (you can change the vulnerability of the population!). The Omicron targeted vaccines likely provide a worthwhile improvement in protection against the recent variants. Hopefully the public health apparatus chooses to release them, rather than doing nothing.
  - tomhoward 4y ago
    The whole point of the phrase "kicking the can down the road" is that it's not something you should do forever. As difficult as it was to live through, I'm supportive of what was done here in Melbourne to suppress the virus in 2020-21 when the variants were more severe and the vaccines weren't around. It's what enabled our fatality rate to be kept to one of the lowest in the world. It doesn't make sense to keep doing it now, and doing so could make the problem worse. In a complex system these issues aren't without tradeoffs. Luckily our health officials agree so we're all good. (Btw saying “if you read my comment” is poor conduct here as I’m sure you know.)

ehnto 4y ago

Isolation only serves to slow spread to a level that your health care system can accommodate. We've tried isolation in a bunch of places. In my state in Australia, we even isolated with nearly zero cases all the way up until 90% vaccination rates. But once you open up, it still spreads. Most of our cases were for vaccinated individuals, who surely were better off for being vaccinated, but it didn't stop the spread. Unless you want to stay isolated for the rest of eternity, the best we can do is be hygienic and get vaccinated, and take care around vulnerable people.

autoexec 4y ago
Australia really messed up. They had it eliminated from their population entirely, but then let it back in by not screening or quarantining people coming in from the outside. Australia could have had zero restrictions and zero covid.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I think you're overestimating how tight a border can be while still allowing movement. Even when we had 14 day police enforced mandatory quarantine and no international travel, cases still got through from returning Australians. There is also all the staff at the interface, cleaners, hotel staff, security, airport staff, screeners, it was not a foolproof system. With that in mind, it was only a matter of time. The only reason it didn't spread as fast in spite of that leaky interface, was because of the lock downs. Even in spite of those knockdowns it spread, and in spite of high vaccination rates it spread. It's not a solveable problem, citizens would not (did not) accept the terms necessary to be covid zero forever, so why delay it once everyone is vaccinated? I was on team Covid Zero to begin with, but it was never meant to be a long term strategy. You can't exile a whole country while the rest of the world moves on and expect people to accept that.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > I think you're overestimating how tight a border can be while still allowing movement. We have the technology to lock things down at borders as hard as we'd need to, if Australia doesn't have that capability now they'd better start working on it. COVID-19 has (so far) only ranked as the fifth deadliest pandemic in human history, but it was the perfect opportunity for Australia to test and evaluate their ability to defend against deadly viral outbreaks which would rank much much higher. Experts agree that global pandemics will be increasingly more common in the future and that it's only a matter of time until we face something else like this or worse. We couldn't even make it through this pandemic before seeing another one starting! Cleaners, hotel/airport/quarantine center staff, security, staff, screeners, etc. could have been in full HAZMAT etc. just as they'd absolutely have to be if the virus were much more deadly anyway. It would have been better to make sure they could do it right last year when the cost of failure would have been limited to locking down one city for a few weeks to contain the spread than to scramble to figure it all out when a single fuck up could wipe out a huge percentage of the country's population. > You can't exile a whole country while the rest of the world moves on and expect people to accept that. As long as people were still coming in and out of the country (albeit with a 7-14 day delay for those coming in) the nation wouldn't be "exiled" and it would have been the people of Australia who got to "move on", by living their lives without the virus, while the rest of the world was stuck in our ongoing cycle of wave after wave of infections, new variants, new/lifted/renewed restrictions, increases and decreases in hospitalizations, increasing numbers of deaths/disability, exhausted healthcare workers, economic uncertainty, etc. all while we try our hardest to just pretend that the virus around us doesn't exist. I'd gladly trade the mess we have now for making entering the country a little more obnoxious by tacking on a short, enforced, unexciting, but all expense paid mini-vacation onto the itinerary of anyone coming in.

ipaddr 4y ago

That's easy banning all air travel would have stopped this in the beginning.

tunesmith 4y ago

R0 above 1 means there's a doubling rate. A doubling rate means it doubles within a period of time. Let's arbitrarily pick 10 days as a doubling rate. If, at a time when the doubling rate was 10 days, a particular mitigation measure had been taken, sufficient to knock R0 below 1, ten days earlier than it actually happened, then for the population in question, the situation is half as prevalent. Project that forward, everything that happens since that point flows from a situation that is half of what it actually was. It's a huge difference. The situation isn't discrete, it's continuous. Getting hung up on 100% prevention is beside the point. Knocking it back by 50%, or even 20%, or 10%, is huge compared to the alternative. People check the weather every day. I wish our nation had developed a very clear signal that everyone could check every day. Just check it in the morning to know whether it's advisable to wear a mask that day. Back in the post-Delta pre-Omicron days, I did a project of my own to develop something I could check every day. (https://tunesmith.github.io/covid-dashboard/ https://tunesmith.github.io/covid-dashboard/) It's messy and hacky and some of its math is out of date and I haven't gotten around to updating it for omicron, but imagine something like that that is funded, tailored for everyone's county, and really easy to report and communicate. It would have helped, just to know whether today is a mask day or not.

moistly 4y ago
That’s all I want: a report on how prevalent communicable respiratory disease is in my community, so that I can make an informed decision. I don’t need it to be covid-specific: I don’t want the flu either. It has been really nice not catching cold this past few years.