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[Badgers]

Not ideal

India's Kumbh Mela begins amid Covid concerns - BBC News

Thousands of Hindus arrive for the bathing festival despite warnings to stay away during the pandemic.

www.bbc.com

 

[frogwoman]

Now over 2 million dead worldwide (and that's only the official number). Absolutely horrible and awful.

 

[elbows]

Covid-19 patients in hospital. Three different sorts of awful. I havent had time to look into Spain for months.

 

[William of Walworth]

Not ideal

India's Kumbh Mela begins amid Covid concerns - BBC News

Thousands of Hindus arrive for the bathing festival despite warnings to stay away during the pandemic.

www.bbc.com

WTF??? + 10,000 (+ more 's!!! )

"Glastonbury 2021" (not happening etc. ) would be safer, and not just because of relative size

The Kumbh is Fucking Ginormous -- my co-travellers to India, 2018, have been -- back in the day etc. (2011?) , and well** though they know and understand India, they said the overwhelmingness of this event was utterly scary!
(There's a BBC 2 or 4 documentary about it somewhere ...... and 'A Suitable Boy' describes how it was back in 1948!)

**V & A South Asian Department, , one still there, one retired now.

Both know their Indian history, religions, antiquities and all the rest ......

One is Hindi-fluent these days, and the other can even read Sanskrit!

But, allowing a fest like that to happen this year of all years, makes Modi worse than Trump in India-specific respects IMO x more .......

 

[William of Walworth]

Saying that ... ( )

Hundreds bathed on day one of the festival, seeking to wash away sins.

and

The mela (meaning "fair" in Hindi) is being held in the northern holy town of Haridwar in Uttarakhand state.

That reference to 'hundreds' above, make me doubt severely whether it can be a Full-Mela this year, or even a half-Mela .......

And the recent year-dates referenced (first bit, above the contents box) in this long and fascinating Wiki article about the Kumbh, make me even less well informed I think!

Apologies for my misleading reactions in my previous post above .......

 

[ice-is-forming]

Shit, someone working at a quarantine hotel in Brisbane has tested positive for the uk variant. They've been out and about in the community for six days. Brisbane to lock down for 3 days from 6pm today ( Friday)

That was from Jan 7th, and it now seems to be more or less done and dusted

"There is every chance we have contained this cluster. It's a little bit too early to say.

"It is looking promising, but I still ask anyone with any symptoms anywhere in the state at all, please, just come forward and get tested."

 

[weltweit]

Indian vaccination program started today with first individual getting a jab.

 

[The39thStep]

A couple of snippets of life with covid in Portugal
Firstly in the cities enforcement is quite prompt

Homem recusa usar máscara e acaba detido pela GNR. Veja as imagens

Detido foi advertido pelas autoridades mas continuou sem colocar a máscara.

www.cmjornal.pt

Secondly in the countryside its very often a different story

Coffee parties, spit pork, card games and lots of other fun that ended up with half the infected village.

They arrived from France and joined the cafe. They ate and drank, roasted a pig, passed the dishes from hand to hand. They played cards - in the good Trás-os-Montes way - late into the night. They wet their fingers with saliva to shuffle. They laughed a lot, had fun. And then they got sick. Even before the New Year - they should only return on January 3rd, 4th - they were already traveling to French lands.

The elderly were left behind contaminated, spreading the virus along the way. Most traveled by car, so as not to be caught by the authorities, the rest remain in the village. It is in Campanhó, Mondim de Basto, Vila Real district, a village that has just over 40 inhabitants and that more than half of them are positive.

"Those who came from France to spend Christmas were all sick. And then they left. They were afraid of having to quarantine," says Arlindo Neves, a resident of Campanhó, the son-in-law of an 86-year-old man who became infected.

 

[The39thStep]

Blimey I wonder if my stuff from Amazon Spain and Next will arrive.....

Prime Minister António Costa has announced new tougher lockdown measures for the country following the consistent rise in the number of cases in the country.

In his speech to the nation Costa stated that it is “unacceptable to maintain the levels of circulation within the public as was seen over the weekend”. He highlighted data from public transport and mobile networks which showed that over the past weekend there was only a reduction of around 30% in the circulation of people in Portugal.

The new rules include:

The prohibition of the sale or delivery or click and collect service of any non food goods, including clothing stores.

All food areas in the shopping centres are to be closed, even for take away.

All promotional campaigns and sales are prohibited that would encourage the movement of people.

Parks may remain open but nobody may stop in these areas.

Local councils are to limit access to areas that attract large concentrations of people such as riversides or sea fronts. The use of benches, play parks, sports equipment, even tennis and padel, are prohibited.

All workers who have to work outside the home must have a valid declaration to go to work. All service companies with more than 250 employees have 48 hours to submit a list of their essential workers.

It is prohibited to move between municipalities during the weekend.

All establishments of any type must close at 8pm on week days and at 1pm on weekends, with the exception of food stores that may remain open until 5pm on weekends

The government will now also reinforce the presence of police on the streets to enforce the lockdown rules across the country.

“This is not the time for parties or birthdays, the safety of the country is dependent on everyone, use a mask, wash your hands, maintain social distance, protect yourself and others, our health and that of everyone else is at stake,” said Costa.

 

[frogwoman]

The prohibition of the sale or delivery or click and collect service of any non food goods, including clothing stores.

Delivery?

That's getting close to the Wuhan lockdown isn't it?

 

[Badgers]

 

[sideboob]

I`d be curious as to who makes up the remaining people who are still traveling during a pandemic. Must be important people. I haven`t seen my family for 2 years and it`s probably going to be at least 1 more. I could fly "home", quarentine for 2 weeks, have a nice visit, then fly home and quarentine for another 2 weeks, if I was made of money and didn`t give a fuck about possibly assisting in spreading the plague around the world.

 

[prunus]

I`d be curious as to who makes up the remaining people who are still traveling during a pandemic. Must be important people. I haven`t seen my family for 2 years and it`s probably going to be at least 1 more. I could fly "home", quarentine for 2 weeks, have a nice visit, then fly home and quarentine for another 2 weeks, if I was made of money and didn`t give a fuck about possibly assisting in spreading the plague around the world.

I think you may have identified a substantial chunk of those still travelling.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Delivery?

That's getting close to the Wuhan lockdown isn't it?

Asked my ex, who lives in Lisbon, and she says schools, nurseries, and universities all fully open, and plenty of people still having to go to work.

 

[2hats]

 

[fishfinger]

He's doing a good job at promoting sensible behaviour towards covid. He said this in reply to one of the comments on his facebook page:

 

[cupid_stunt]

He missed the opportunity to comment on his second jab - I'll be back.

 

[The39thStep]

Asked my ex, who lives in Lisbon, and she says schools, nurseries, and universities all fully open, and plenty of people still having to go to work.

schools closed now

 

[elbows]

I still havent had time to look for Spain news but whenever I update my usual graph of people in hospital with Covid-19 it looks worse there, their trajectory is terrible again and they've exceeded levels seen in November.


For Germany I still just have intensive care figures from DIVI Intensivregister

 

[Mation]

He's doing a good job at promoting sensible behaviour towards covid. He said this in reply to one of the comments on his facebook page:

View attachment 250423

If ever I get to teach a face to face class again, I'm going to use that text for about five gazillion purposes.

 

[William of Walworth]

I'm putting this story into Urban's 'Worldwide' coronavirus thread because, erm, 'elsewhere in the world' is where this story is set.

(Maybe this post would be just ba appropriate in one of the vaccines threads though )

Anyway, it seems that India is seeing pretty low percantages of early take-up of both their vaccines
NB : Article is also attributed to "Amrit Dillhon in Delhi' [byline] as well as the usually excellent Hannah Ellis-Petersen.

Indian hesitancy sets back world's biggest Covid vaccination drive
Low uptake fuelled by fears over safety of vaccine and spread of misinformation

So far the overall national turnout has averaged a lacklustre 64%, while in states such as Tamil Nadu and Punjab, uptake of the vaccine was as low as 22% and 23% in the first two days of the vaccination drive.
The low turnout was attributed to a nervousness about safety among the healthcare workers who were first in line to receive the vaccine, as well as technical difficulties with the app designed to alert people to their vaccine appointments.

and :

Two Covid-19 vaccines have been approved for emergency use in India, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – known as Covishield in India – and a domestically developed vaccine called Covaxin, produced by Indian company Bharat Biotech.
Covaxin has not completed phase 3 trials, and so there is no final data on its efficacy, making India one of the few countries rolling out a vaccine still in its trial stages. However, the drugs controller of India said interim data from an ongoing trial of more than 22,000 people showed it was “100% safe” and effective.
Nonetheless, some healthcare professionals in India expressed concerns that they had not been provided with enough data on the vaccines’ safety and efficacy and were nervous at the speed the vaccines were being rolled out.

 

[Numbers]

New China virus: Cases triple as infection spreads to Beijing and Shanghai

This comes as China confirms that a new strain of coronavirus can pass from person to person.

www.bbc.co.uk

Bit scary, new virus which seems to have started in China seems very infectious and might be spreading.

Over a year since this first post about the virus. Crazy,

 

[2hats]

Latest mortality z-scores. "Extraordinary high excess".

Graphs and maps

www.euromomo.eu

 

[teuchter]

Latest mortality z-scores. "Extraordinary high excess".
View attachment 250512

Graphs and maps

www.euromomo.eu

I happen to notice in the per-country graphs that Ireland appears to have a period of negative excess at the end of 2020...nowhere else does. What's that all about?

 

[elbows]

I happen to notice in the per-country graphs that Ireland appears to have a period of negative excess at the end of 2020...nowhere else does. What's that all about?

I am not experienced with Ireland mortality data but I had a quick look and it sounds like death registrations happen slowly there, so that may have an impact. And even if it hasnt impacted whats shown in those charts, its impacted my ability to analyse it. Those charts show z-scores which are not raw numbers, and I would normally want to look at the raw data to compare.

But I cannot do that due to the slowness of their data. In fact that side of their system is so slow that earlier in the pandemic the official stats body felt the need to come up with some quicker way of getting estimates by proxy. It seems they had success by analysing the death noticed posted on rip.ie as explained in these articles which I found interesting:

Measuring Mortality Using Public Data Sources 2019-2020 - CSO - Central Statistics Office

www.cso.ie

Excess mortality of between 876 and 1,192 recorded during March and September, CSO data shows

The excess mortality for the period March to September this year is estimated to be between 876 and 1,192.

www.thejournal.ie

 

[elbows]

Without the raw data of deaths by all causes for the period in question, all I can do is reort to my stock answer. You probably know the one by now, that less deaths from other causes are happening, and this will have a more profound affect on excess mortality stats at the time of year where deaths from flu normally hapen. In the case of Ireland we might expect that effect to be more pronounced if they had managed to keep Covid-19 deaths very low during the period in question. And certainly if I just quickly go by deaths data on Worldometer, it seems that Irelands Covid-19 deaths only started picking up again in a significant way much more recently.

 

[The39thStep]

Serious figures over here, In the last seven days, the country with the highest infection rate per million inhabitants worldwide is Portugal.,The same is true with mortality. Portugal has become the worst country in the world in deaths per million inhabitants, having overtaken the United Kingdom, with 18.24 deaths per million, while the United Kingdom has 18.10 per million.

Portugal set a new national record 274 more dead and 15,333 cases , Lisbon and the Tagus Valley have the highest number of fatalities and new cases, with 122 deaths and 6,135 new cases , North region, with another 55 deaths and 4,992 cases. In Alentejo 23 more deaths and 651 new cases, Even here in the south, the Algarve there were over 400 new cases.

The UK strain is in Portugal (this is the one that is driving the numbers) and now the South African strain

Preliminary data shows that the South African mutation is more dangerous than the one that emerged in the United Kingdom.
It is transmitted more easily, especially among the youngest, can cause reinfections and may be able to resist vaccination.

The Brazilian strain is expected to be identified at some point here as well.

And there's a Presidential election going on .

 

[elbows]

Another classic.

Sri Lanka Minister who promoted 'Covid syrup' tests positive

Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Sri Lanka's health minister, tested positive for Covid on Friday.

www.bbc.co.uk

Sri Lanka's health minister, who endorsed herbal syrup to prevent Covid, has tested positive for the virus.

Pavithra Wanniarachchi tested positive on Friday, a media secretary at the Ministry of Health told the BBC.

She had promoted the syrup, manufactured by a shaman who claimed it worked as a life-long inoculation against the virus.

Ms Wanniarachchi is the fourth minister to test positive. A junior minister, who also took the potion, tested positive earlier this week.

The health minister had publicly consumed and endorsed the syrup as a way of stopping the spread of the virus. The shaman who invented the syrup, which contains honey and nutmeg, said the recipe was given to him in a visionary dream.

Doctors in the country have quashed claims the herbal syrup works, but AFP news agency reports thousands have travelled to a village to obtain it.

 

[two sheds]

AFP news agency reports thousands have travelled to a village to obtain it.

 

[ice-is-forming]

Another classic.

Sri Lanka Minister who promoted 'Covid syrup' tests positive

Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Sri Lanka's health minister, tested positive for Covid on Friday.

www.bbc.co.uk

Wtaf! Is this the same Sri Lanka which is reported on as being infamous, because of its large capacity to design and manufacture.copious amounts of dark web drugs !