Indeliblelink
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The global death toll hit 6 million today.
Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more
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Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
The government didn't make vaccinating older people a big priority, and older Hong Kongers were more likely to be worried about side effects.
Maybe older people were also more likely to believe the government line, handed down from Beijing, that its policies could keep COVID away permanently.
Stephanie Law, an executive committee member from the Elderly Services Association of Hong Kong, said for many older residents, concerns about Covid vaccine side effects outweighed the risks of getting the disease.
"In the past, a lot of people felt that it's not a priority to have the vaccine," she said. Now, care workers feel "helpless" as the virus spreads through homes, where some residents live four or six people to a room, she said.
Karen Grepin, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, said the narrative in the city had evolved to the point that people had started to believe Hong Kong could keep the virus out forever.
"People really started to believe that even the miniscule risk associated with vaccination was higher than the risk of Covid," she said.
"We are paying for that complacency."
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2hats
Dust.
It's almost as if omicron isn't "mild" for those with no prior immunity.
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belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Mate of mine got omicron two weeks ago after being triple jabbed. Relatively fine for ten days but then rushed into hospital cos she’d got a blood clot on her lungs.
2hats
Dust.
SARS-CoV-2 infection (whether serious, mild, or even asymptomatic) now known to have potential implications for later vascular, cardiac and cognitive issues (at least) beyond that of the initial respiratory episode (in some cases can be irrespective of degrees of immunity, though as previously discussed, immunoresponse to vaccination, like exposure to the virus itself, is heterogenous).
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
That’s scary. How long after her third dose did she get ill?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
When did they start giving them out? she was in early cos she’s a nurse so would have got it pretty much straight away
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
I’m not sure, but sounds like it was a while between vaccination and infection then. They say the protection from the vaccine against omicron only lasts 2-3 months, so I guess she’s been caught out by that. They should really be giving nurses jabs every couple of months perhaps.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Indeliblelink
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This article by Ed Yong is well worth reading
www.theatlantic.com
How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?
The U.S. is nearing 1 million recorded COVID-19 deaths without the social reckoning that such a tragedy should provoke. Why?
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Not really; it looks like an indication of spread associated with carnival celebrations, which don't take place exclusively outdoors.
Indeliblelink
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18 million dead is the real figure they recon
Covid deaths probably three times higher than records say
Official records say six million have died, but the true figure may be over 18 million, say researchers.
www.bbc.co.uk
18 Million Dead because of Covid
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I see China is having trouble now keeping up its total closures. They have lots of new cases and have just closed access to some large areas of the country.
www.theguardian.com
China locks down province of 24m as new Covid infections rise
Jilin residents ordered to stay at home and reservists sent to disinfect streets as 1,437 new cases reported across China
miss direct
misfungled
I'm in Bangladesh. Our company policy is masks to be worn in classrooms, which I'm pleased about because it's cramped and we can't open the windows (it's 40C, dusty and noisy)
Outside the classroom, very few bother. It's as though the virus doesn't exist here. Personally, I have managed to avoid it so far and have no intentions of catching it here, where healthcare is dire, and I'll be confined to my room and not get paid. I will continue with careful masking and constant reminding certain students repeatedly to wear their mask properly. Bored of being the mask police.
Outside the classroom, very few bother. It's as though the virus doesn't exist here. Personally, I have managed to avoid it so far and have no intentions of catching it here, where healthcare is dire, and I'll be confined to my room and not get paid. I will continue with careful masking and constant reminding certain students repeatedly to wear their mask properly. Bored of being the mask police.
Cloo
Banana for scale
Interesting piece from NYT on Africa - younger demographic or poor recording can't really account for why deaths have been so low, so it sounds like no one really knows why the toll across the continuent hasn't been greater. The other thing that's then a mystery is why just South Africa - again, they don't think it can rest solely on recording of cases; as the article explores, there would be a lot of 'social' signs, if nothing else, if large numbers were dying in other countries.
www.nytimes.com
Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates (Published 2022)
The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.
Mation
real life adventure worth more than pieces of gold
I can't read the article as I've reached my free limit, apparently. But it doesn't seem that much of a mystery that countries with really good public health/infection control programmes might fare well. HIV, as a sexually transmitted infection, is perhaps a different beast.Interesting piece from NYT on Africa - younger demographic or poor recording can't really account for why deaths have been so low, so it sounds like no one really knows why the toll across the continuent hasn't been greater. The other thing that's then a mystery is why just South Africa - again, they don't think it can rest solely on recording of cases; as the article explores, there would be a lot of 'social' signs, if nothing else, if large numbers were dying in other countries.
Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates (Published 2022)
The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.
Yossarian posted an article in 2020 about the racism in covid coverage when, again, the NYT was mystified by Africa. Here:
Still seems relevant.
My company's head office is in Germany. Everyone's still meant to be wfh but if anyone does need to go into the office there, there's mandatory PCR testing. So you turn up, PCR, results in an hour and only then (if negative) are you allowed in. And once in, people have to wear masks.
I've no idea if this is required now in that part of Germany (BavarIa) or if my company is being specially strict but bit of a contrast to what's going on here.
I've no idea if this is required now in that part of Germany (BavarIa) or if my company is being specially strict but bit of a contrast to what's going on here.
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Twitter thread on the damning report into Sweden's hands-off approach to controlling Covid:
teuchter
je suis teuchter
This bit though
To me it shows that countries like Norway and Denmark did well, as much as it shows Sweden did badly.
How badly Sweden has done (so far) depends on which countries you compare it to. It's not done much worse than Germany, and it's done better than the UK, France, and the EU average. At least in terms of recorded deaths.
To me it shows that countries like Norway and Denmark did well, as much as it shows Sweden did badly.
How badly Sweden has done (so far) depends on which countries you compare it to. It's not done much worse than Germany, and it's done better than the UK, France, and the EU average. At least in terms of recorded deaths.
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Worldbeating.
So maybe my company are just being super-strict then?!
elbows
Well-Known Member
Well we know that there are many complications with comparisons, due to the large number of factors, some of which are still poorly understood, which affected the how badly different countries fared in each wave.
But its clear that aspects of population are a factor, as well as structural and economic issues, travel links to other places, and the size of the nations in question.
When we try to limit ourselves only to some of the most prominent of those, it is understandable that Sweden is compared to its neighbours and is judged to have perfomred very poorly by having suffered death rates more comparable to some very large countries. But in some respects I might cut them a degree of slack by acknolwedging for example how badly Belgium fared on such charts.
Beyond judging which comparisons are 'fair', its completely understandable that Sweden has this much attention on its performance because a) they went out of their way to go on about how they were taking a different approach, b) shitheads who favoured that approach were keen to hold Sweden up as an example of success, until such vile propaganda became unsustainable, and c) the shitheads will always be looking to rewrite history and restore such claims. So its important to dwell on the detail of how Sweden attempted to pursue the herd immunity approach, and ponder how different it could have been there if they had not.
Even though we are not going to be able to properly tell these complex stories neatly using a single set of data, we can still look at cumulative mortality over time and see some rather obvious patterns which very much relate to pandemic policy and policy timing. And since policies have changed in many places in the Omicron wave, we can also see some new patterns showing up in data for the Omicron wave. There is a bit of 'transmissibility of Omicron' in that recent picture, and in places like Hong Kong we can also see the horrific implications of inappropriate vaccine uptake showing up clearly. But all the same we can see how a 'living with Covid' policy in various countries where this change stands in contrast to their earlier policies and timing of measures, has propelled some countries up the leaderboard compared to where they sat after the first few waves. Well actually due to them waiting till this phase of the pandemic, a bunch of them havent actually seen their ranks climb relative to others, but they've still seen notable increases to their deaths per million, via increases that were sustained for longer periods than in previous waves where they slammed on the brakes. And o er a much longer period we can see the consequences of the brakes not being applied consistently in countries like the USA and Russia. And we have the UK as an example of late braking the first few times, and only mild braking during Delta and Omicron, albeit coupled with good vaccination rates.
And yes this data isnt perfect, for example Russia fares even worse when using overall excess mortality instead, but its good enough to see certain relevant patterns and draw some basic policy conclusions. An alien armed only with this data could make some pretty good guesses about each countries policies and timing of actions they took, or failed to take, that were designed to limit the spread of the virus during different waves. But I couldnt make that claim with such confidence if I had included the entire dataset, rather than what I've actually done which is leave out various countries (eg in Africa) that in some ways 'confounded' expectations, probably due to factors that arent easily reflected by studying policy alone.
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
What are the obvious patterns that actually tell us much useful about Sweden though?
(By the way, I suspect the reason that Sweden didn't do loads better or worse than say UK or Germany, despite apparently taking a very different approach, is that actually, the bits of its approach that were significant weren't really as different from other countries' as seems to be the general assumption)
