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I think it may have more to do with us holding a Chinese CFO(?) for several years while the US decided whether or not to extradite her.

On that count, I agree with them.
Its pretty standard for them to combine multiple objectives into the same propaganda campaign. And to make use of sentiments they already stoked previously.
 
Mostly thats as a result of the latest evolution of their propaganda which has sought to blame other countries for Covid. A new variant of the propaganda they've used to deflect away from their role in the pandemic arriving in the first place.
I don't get this line of argument, clearly any omicron cases in China must have originated outside the country, so either came in via a person entering the country or on the surface of an object. As I understand it in this case no transmission chain was identified and the virus was found on a recently delivered package. Plenty of cases have been reported as coming through the quarantine system leading to local transmissions so it's not exactly like they are unwilling to admit that cases get through sometimes. As I think you pointed out a number of times earlier in the pandemic there was an overemphasis on surface transmission, whereas now the dogma seems to have swung the other way that surface transmission does not occur. Recently 5 cases were reported at a Beijing cold storage facility. It's possible they had an unknown transmission chain to an incoming but arriving on imported frozen goods does seem much more likely.
 
When I use the word propaganda I am not actually saying something is or is not possibly true, I am just pointing out that something is being used for propaganda purposes. Sometimes the best propaganda is truth, sometimes not. But propaganda does tend to be more effective if it has some plausibility to it.
 
The "omicron arrived in Beijing on mail from Toronto" claim is pure propaganda and nobody should believe it for a second - there have been omicron outbreaks in multiple cities in China, including Tianjin, less than 30 minutes away from Beijing by train.

An outbreak in Anyang was linked to a student who traveled 260 miles from Tianjin to the city on Dec. 29, more than a week before the first omicron case was detected in Tianjin. In Hong Kong, they've found omicron cases spreading through multiple floors in apartment buildings and as far as they can figure out, one person was infected in the few seconds they walked past a masked infected person in a subway tunnel.

But instead of concluding that this woman was infected from an unknown source during her extensive travels around the city, these clowns in Beijing expect people to believe that it's more likely that she got omicron from an infectious dose of the virus that survived on the outside of mail that traveled from Canada to Beijing in a four-day journey that took it through the US and Hong Kong. :D

Even if they're not just completely making up the stuff about finding the virus on an envelope, is it not just a tiny bit more likely that the infected woman contaminated her mail rather than the other way around?

With the number of people with British connections down there, there must have been a fuck of a lot of mail going from omicron-saturated Britain to largely omicron-free New Zealand in December, you'd expect at least a few cases in NZ to have been caused that way if this was a remotely plausible method of transmission.
 
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Omicron has got loose in NZ, it was always going to eventually, we're at 93.7% double jabbed and boosters started this month and we're at 22% for that.

Red level, which means vaccine passes and masks in public. Schools stay open.

Here it goes again .

Their PM cancels her wedding. Boris gets married and has another few kids while he's at it, and then pisses it up in the heart of government to celebrate. It's unreal.

The outbreak has also forced the prime minister to cancel her wedding to Clarke Gayford, which was due to take place in the coming weeks at Gisborne on the North Island’s eastern coast.

Ardern said on Sunday the country would try to slow the spread of Omicron but it was expected New Zealand would reach 1,000 cases a day in the coming weeks and thousands a day after that. New Zealand has not previously reported that level of infection.
 
Tbh we bought ourselves time to get the vaccine developed, get our order in after the countries who were being slammed by it, get high vax rates, buy the new treatments that came online, vaccinate the Cook Islands and Tokelau and others.

When Delta emerged we struggled to stop it but it still didn't kill thousands and things have been pretty normal here for the last two and a bit years.

With Omicron it was just a matter of time, and the messaging here has been "get jabbed, get boosted, get ready, it's coming" for the last two months.

We're as well prepared as 5,000,000 folks can be, only had 15000 cases so far since February 2020 and 51 deaths. That's going to change a bit now, but hopefully we won't tank as much as the UK and Aussie have.
 
Tbh we bought ourselves time to get the vaccine developed, get our order in after the countries who were being slammed by it, get high vax rates, buy the new treatments that came online, vaccinate the Cook Islands and Tokelau and others.

When Delta emerged we struggled to stop it but it still didn't kill thousands and things have been pretty normal here for the last two and a bit years.

With Omicron it was just a matter of time, and the messaging here has been "get jabbed, get boosted, get ready, it's coming" for the last two months.

We're as well prepared as 5,000,000 folks can be, only had 15000 cases so far since February 2020 and 51 deaths. That's going to change a bit now, but hopefully we won't tank as much as the UK and Aussie have.

I don't think you could possibly get a different style of 'leadership' than what we're dealing with here.

Asked about her wedding cancellation, Ardern said: “Such is life. I am no different to, dare I say, thousands of other New Zealanders who have had much more devastating impacts felt by the pandemic. The most gutting of which is the inability to be with a loved one sometimes when they’re gravely ill. That will far, far outstrip any sadness I experience.

“My wedding won’t be going ahead but I just join many other New Zealanders who have had an experience like that as a result of the pandemic. And to anyone caught up in that scenario, I am so sorry. But we are all so resilient and I know we understand we are doing this for one another and it will help us carry on.”

I'm glad your strategy has worked out anyway. 90% double jabbed aint bad so I'm sure you'll ride this one out. We're being sent back to work here with still over 100,000 cases a day, so our glorious leader can placate the right wing nuts in his party. Personally I've told my boss no fucking way I'm going back in yet.
 
Looking at Danish figures, where our new cases peaked around New Year, theirs have just kept on going up after momentarily slowing at New Year.

But their health indicators remain pretty good despite this - deaths reasonably low, hospital occupancy around half what we have here (they may be measuring more accurately, though, I don't know - ie excluding incidental covid): around 900, which is equivalent to about 11,000 in the UK. Intensive care and respirator use also lower than here.

They seem to be keeping it reasonably well away from vulnerable old people.

Experience
 
Well in regards 'incidental' Covid, this was said in regards Denmark on January 17th. I expect that figure may have changed by now, if the UK is anything to go by it will have increased further.

Still, health authorities said earlier this month that the now-predominant Omicron variant was milder than initially thought and that around 29% of those in hospital were there due to reasons other than COVID-19.

 
Neil Young trying to pull his songs from Spotify because they’re pushing Covid misinformation and it’s killing people, specifically the Joe Rogan podcast.

Better music than Clapton/van Morrison and also a better human.

 
Neil Young trying to pull his songs from Spotify because they’re pushing Covid misinformation and it’s killing people, specifically the Joe Rogan podcast.

Better music than Clapton/van Morrison and also a better human.

Thanks for that - it reminded me to uninstall spotify that had been auto-running since some podcast or other.
I'm so relieved he hasn't gone to the dark side on this :)
 
Well in regards 'incidental' Covid, this was said in regards Denmark on January 17th. I expect that figure may have changed by now, if the UK is anything to go by it will have increased further.



The other thing of note for me is the way omicron has taken over in countries that had relatively high rates of delta when omicron entered the scene, which includes both the UK and Denmark. Both countries now have 99% omicron, same as South Africa and Botswana, which had relatively low rates of delta pre-omicron. The absolute number of delta cases is going down rapidly - well under 1,000 a day now in the UK. Two months of omicron, and delta seems to be toast. It does appear that it is swiftly being pushed towards extinction worldwide.

Latest figures here:

Share of SARS-CoV-2 sequences that are the omicron variant
 
Looking at Danish figures, where our new cases peaked around New Year, theirs have just kept on going up after momentarily slowing at New Year.

But their health indicators remain pretty good despite this - deaths reasonably low, hospital occupancy around half what we have here (they may be measuring more accurately, though, I don't know - ie excluding incidental covid): around 900, which is equivalent to about 11,000 in the UK. Intensive care and respirator use also lower than here.

They seem to be keeping it reasonably well away from vulnerable old people.

Experience
I havent had time to look at the data for myself, but I understand that the BA.2 variant of Omicron seems to be dominating in Denmark. Its on the rise in the UK too, some think it will be the dominant Omicron version here by mid Feb if current trends continue, but again I havent done such analysis for myself. I dont think there is a proper handle on whether there will be any important implications.
 
In the first wave we heckled the IHME model here a few times.

Looks like these days people still find opportunities to poke fun at it.

 
Looking at Danish figures, where our new cases peaked around New Year, theirs have just kept on going up after momentarily slowing at New Year.

But their health indicators remain pretty good despite this - deaths reasonably low, hospital occupancy around half what we have here (they may be measuring more accurately, though, I don't know - ie excluding incidental covid): around 900, which is equivalent to about 11,000 in the UK. Intensive care and respirator use also lower than here.

They seem to be keeping it reasonably well away from vulnerable old people.

Experience

I've now taken more time to look at their hospital data.

I've been comparing hospital and intensive care figures to the levels they had in past waves. Their numbers in hospital have started increasing again and are comparable to the numbers that they had a year ago.


However there are obviously different implications when comparing the numbers in hospital now and in the wave a year ago, when looking at countries that did relatively well at protecting a lot of people in that wave compared to counties that ended up having the sort of numbers the UK had a year ago.

Also their intensive care graph shows the 'Omicron drop'.


And that drop is leading to policy decisions that may seem strangely timed when looking at all the other data we are used to looking at, but makes more sense when we see the ICU data and consider what fears forced countries to act strongly in this pandemic in the first place.

And so we now have stories like these about Denmark announcing that they are dropping remaining restrictions at the start of February:


“Tonight we can shrug our shoulders and find the smile again. We have incredibly good news, we can now remove the last coronavirus restrictions in Denmark,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference, following recommendations from the Epidemic Commission and with all the main political parties’ support. The last restrictions will be dropped on February 1.

The announcement comes as a new subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is gaining a foothold in Denmark and driving infections up, with 46,000 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Wednesday.

“Recent weeks have seen very high infection rates, in fact the highest in the entire pandemic,” Frederiksen said. “Therefore, it may seem strange and paradoxical that we are now ready to let go of the restrictions.”

Health Minister Magnus Heunicke added: “The situation in Denmark is that we have this decoupling between infections and intensive care patients, and it is mainly due to the large attachment among Danes to revaccination. That is the reason why it is safe and the right thing to do now.”


Denmark currently requires face masks on public transportation, in shops, for standing clients in restaurant indoor areas, and for people entering hospitals, health care facilities and retirement homes. As of Feb. 1, the government will only recommend mask use in hospitals, health care facilities and homes for the elderly.

Frederiksen said that while the omicron variant is surging in Denmark, it is not placing a heavy burden on the health system and the country has a high vaccination rate.

“It may seem strange that we want to remove restrictions given the high infection rates,” she said. “But fewer people become seriously ill.”

Denmark has in recent weeks seen more than 46,000 daily cases on average, but only 40 people are currently in hospital intensive care units — down from 80 a few weeks ago — Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said.

Heunicke urged Danes to get tested regularly. ”We continue with a strong epidemic surveillance. Then we ... can react quickly if necessary.”

The latter article also covers Sweden extending its measures for a few more weeks.

I wouldnt call the Danish approach entirely risk free, but I'm not going to talk much about such risks unless they show clear signs of materialising.

By the way, Denmark also presented some initial estimates in regards BA.2 transmissibility and severity, which I've mentioned here: Covid Mutations
 
The other thing of note for me is the way omicron has taken over in countries that had relatively high rates of delta when omicron entered the scene, which includes both the UK and Denmark. Both countries now have 99% omicron, same as South Africa and Botswana, which had relatively low rates of delta pre-omicron. The absolute number of delta cases is going down rapidly - well under 1,000 a day now in the UK. Two months of omicron, and delta seems to be toast. It does appear that it is swiftly being pushed towards extinction worldwide.

Latest figures here:

Share of SARS-CoV-2 sequences that are the omicron variant

These days this site is especially good at showing variants over time per country. I'm looking at it now because it shows BA.2 as well, most obviously in the chart for Denmark:

 
Denmark has regularly been one of the first countries to lift restrictions. It lifted all restrictions around end of August last year, citing the vaccination rate, before bringing some back in November, and was earlier than most in reopening schools in 2020.

It benefits from a healthier political culture than here. Politicians don't have to pretend they get everything right all the time in quite the same way.

Thing about risks in removing remaining restrictions is that Denmark has really high rates (which can't be sustained for long, regardless) and isn't in trouble from those high rates. The risk was that high rates would cause big problems. They now know that high rates haven't caused big problems. It seems a pretty rational decision to me. Otherwise what? We have restrictions every winter from now on? There's a nasty bug around most winters.
 
I'm not actually being critical of their approach in the way it sounds like you think I am. I reported their explanation for the dropping of restrictions with a pretty straight face and spoke of how the intensive care data can explain that decision in the ways other data cannot if people just use what they've learnt to expect from soaring case rates in previous waves as their main guide.

Keep in mind how angry and blunt I get when I think a complete pandemic catastrophe of timing or strength of measures is happening somewhere. I am a long way away from that position at the moment, even when it comes to the current UK approach to an extent at least. But also consider that I'm not exactly a cheerleader for establishment attitudes, priorities etc when it comes to public health in non-pandemic times, so even when we arent in an acute phase of the pandemic I'm not likely to be in 100% approval mode.

And I'm not inclined to talk about no risk when there is still some lurking in theory with this virus due to ongoing unknowns about the future. For this reason I'm not going to make claims about what will be normal or necessary in any future winters, and I would suggest that my stance that is actually not very far removed from the rhetoric of many governments. They reserve the right to act if the shit were to hit the fan again in future, and the door is still open to that even at times like these when they have the numbers more on their side than before, and are confident enough to speak of 'the end' in various ways. Its the end with an asterisk and some small print. And there will be various opportunities to see how much that evolves during 2022, eg we will eventually discover to what extent the powers that be in various countries are prepared to scale back on mass testing.

Declaring the acute phase of the pandemic to be over is a tricky business because the pandemic description is a global thing, and because of the usual variant uncertainties. What we are starting to see is that the current circumstances start to allow more and more individual countries to see themselves as moving beyond the acute phase of the pandemic, largely because they've had the lions share of vaccine supply. Assuming such progress holds, much of the old normal returns, a slightly modified version of the old orthodox approach but with some lessons learnt and much enhanced testing and still plenty of public attention that will fade gradually in the absence of notable setbacks.

When countries reach that phase and manage to sustain it for a while, we move on to questions such as how high levels are when in states approximating 'endemic equilibrium', and whether that requires any new ways of organising health services etc to cope at the same time as dealing with other health backlogs. eg in the UK, the ambulance service buckled a fair bit even in the vaccine era, and that may require some ongoing work to rectify fully. And then assuming these endemic periods will be punctuated by epidemic waves from time to time, authorities will want to consider the potential of each epidemic wave as it arrives, via variables such as the disease severity of the virus at that time, and how well they think vaccine and other immune protections will hold up on that occasion. If those factors deem it still likely that things will stay within the range that the orthodox approach can deal with, then we wont be asked to make very heavy changes to our behaviour. But things like public health guidance, press attention and mood music changes will still be part of our lives because they were before this pandemic, they are part of the old normal, as is me talking about them here. But the volume will be lower than that which was deemed essential by people like me and the authorities during the pandemic. And the audience will be smaller and compromised of a greater proportion of people who have personal, professional or political reasons to pay much attention to the plight of those still vulnerable to severe health outcomes from this virus beyond the acute pandemic phase.
 
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Oops I forgot to include vaccine waning uncertainties in that description.

Will Israel continue to provide early clues about such matters? I'm not sure. Their intensive care data trends didnt look great when I looked at them briefly using the site I linked to earlier when talking about Denmark. But I need to augment such data with quotes from their authorities, news reports etc to see what the actual story is and/or how its being presented.
 
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I've only had a brief chance to look at news from Israel. Much of it is from around 3 weeks ago when they were talking about the massive increase i cases to come, plus the easing of restrictions.

But here is a sample of some more recent news. Its the same sort of picture as has being presented for other countries, including confidence that systems wont be overwhelmed, also featuring some comparisons to the UK. But since their booster timing was ahead of ours, and this wave is behind us, there is also an expansion of their 4th dose campaign, but not to the extent some recommended:




I wouldnt describe their intensive care numbers as mirroring the pattern seen in the UK, they havent seen an 'Omicron drop', but they were starting from a different point before the Omicron surge, having dealt with the previous wave quite differently to how the UK did. All the same this picture requires further explanation.


Screenshot 2022-01-27 at 13.39.jpg
 
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