Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So basically, permanent lockdown. Because that's going to happen after a vaccine, too. This doesn't seem very well thought out.
I didn't make that clear, but those were two different news. The lockdown decision was not based on this study, but on the evolution of the number of cases.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
short-term and long-term antibodies
My understanding is that long-term would be IgA, but those are mainly expressed on the mucous membranes and cannot be easily detected from just a drop of blood.
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@Bulb When I get tested for autoimmune disorders, they measure specific varieties of IgA from a blood sample.
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@HardwareGeek But it is a “large” (1–2 ml) sample drawn with a needle into a test tube, not just a drop, isn't it?
Also, some IgA are present in the blood, but possibly not in all cases, so it might work in some cases better than in others.
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@Bulb Never mind the curfew, didn't they also ban shopping on Sundays? I'm guessing the shops weren't sufficiently overcrowded on Saturdays?
Then there's the complete ban of farmers markets, unless you are selling fruits, vegetables, meat, milk or eggs .
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@Deadfast said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb Never mind the curfew, didn't they also ban shopping on Sundays?
Heh, funny thing. In Poland, the upcoming corona law will unban it!
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@Deadfast said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
didn't they also ban shopping on Sundays? I'm guessing the shops weren't sufficiently overcrowded on Saturdays?
Yeah, that's more of a rocking horse logic.
Also in the spring there was some kind of survey and they found basically no cashiers were infected, which should be taken as evidence that (grocery) stores are not a high risk environment and closing them shouldn't be expected to have significant effect.
@Deadfast said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Then there's the complete ban of farmers markets
There was that photo of that “crowded” market, which I suspect was in large part due to the viewing angle. I'd really like to see a photo from a more representative angle (like from the street above it on the embankment).
@Deadfast said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
unless you are selling fruits, vegetables, meat, milk or eggs .
… so they basically didn't close them after all.
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also in the spring there was some kind of survey and they found basically no cashiers were infected, which should be taken as evidence that (grocery) stores are not a high risk environment and closing them shouldn't be expected to have significant effect.
Considering the test availability problems back in spring, I don't trust that study one bit.
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...and here we go again. Lockdown II: Electric Boogaloo. Restaurants and non-essential stores have to close. People need to fill forms to be allowed outside. Etc.
But schools will remain open, because despite breaking every rule in the book (not enough face masks, lack of hand-cleaning, high crowdedness and insufficient air renewal), they're somehow considered "safe". Why? Just because, that's why.
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@Gąska Cases were found in some of the other groups, and it's unlikely any test shortage or unreliability would affect that group specifically. So I do trust the study (to the extent it deserves, because it didn't seem to be all that rigorous).
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska Cases were found in some of the other groups, and it's unlikely any test shortage or unreliability would affect that group specifically.
It would affect the potential sample size, to the point that the result is barely significant. And let's not forget the still ongoing replication crisis (specifically, all the shitty practices and mishandling of data, so prevalent in the scientific community, that caused the replication crisis).
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
… so they basically didn't close them after all.
Of course they didn't.
If they did, they'd piss off the farmers. But if they didn't, it'd look like they're not doing anything. So in a typical absurdistanian fashion they did both.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
But schools will remain open, because despite breaking every rule in the book (not enough face masks, lack of hand-cleaning, high crowdedness and insufficient air renewal), they're somehow considered "safe". Why? Just because, that's why.
Some officials are at least honest on that and saying that the "why" is not about schools being safe but rather that closing them would create too many problems (for the well-being of everyone, for the education of children and for keeping the parents at work). I also hear more and more officials repeating that what matters isn't so much whether activity A (banned) is creating more contacts than activity B (not banned), but that some activities (i.e. social contacts) are banned, and that picking which one can be done for any non-medical reason.
Of course, that doesn't prevent everyone and their dogs being whining morons about anything that affects them. I heard this morning someone from the arts saying "supermarkets are open but not concert halls, how can the government dare to think that culture is non-essential??!?" (well, duh!), followed by a head-teacher saying "school restarts (after half-term) on Monday (so in 4 days), it's now 8am the day after the lockdown was announced (i.e. just 12h after) and we still have no detailed rules!" (as if schools hadn't been (on paper at least) following strict rules since September). But then again, people being morons isn't news.
I guess we'll see how the lockdown-which-isn't-a-lockdown will work (be accepted, and have an impact), but I'm not overly confident this time round (on both fronts).
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
But then again, people being morons isn't news.
Not in itself. A very large fraction of the news is a single step removed from that though; people are morons, so they do moronic things, and that's the news right there…
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Some officials are at least honest on that and saying that the "why" is not about schools being safe but rather that closing them would create too many problems (for the well-being of everyone, for the education of children and for keeping the parents at work).
As you say, "some". And only after repeating for months that schools were totally safe, based on a single flawed study that wasn't even peer-reviewed, while multiple other studies concluded the opposite.
And they wonder why people don't trust politicians...
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf I think France added “black” after red, but now everything’s black.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
they wonder why people don't trust politicians
Who are "they"? I find the reasons for mistrusting politicians (of every party) so self-evident that it's hard to imagine anyone wondering about them.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
they wonder why people don't trust politicians
Who are "they"?
Journalists.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Who are "they"?
Nobody. “they” are how everybody thinks other people think, but nobody actually thinks that way.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Journalists
Ah, the people almost as untrustworthy as the politicians they report on.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Journalists
Ah, the people almost as untrustworthy as the politicians they report on.
I'd say that in the us, the journalists seem to have overtaken the top spot for being untrustworthy now. I mean, the politicians at least have a reason to be corrupt, lying scumbags. What's the journalists excuse?
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@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
What's the journalists excuse?
Paycheck.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Who are "they"?
The politicians themselves. But yeah, "journalists" is a pretty good answer, too.
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"Keep asking yourself: Do I really have to go outside?". Ptuh.
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So who all has been grounded again?
Britain
France
Czechia
Poland (?)
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So who all has been grounded again?
Poland (?)
Not yet and not until after the 11th.
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@boomzilla We haven't, but they're closing just about everywhere we could be going to, and anywhere else it's facemasks strongly-recommended-and-will-be-mandatory-soon. Service industry (hairdressers &c) staying open this time, but travel is being strongly discouraged.
There's this big PR war going on here with travel agencies claiming "only 2% of infections are caused abroad; home is 51%". But a single teen going on party holiday in the summer can easily infect 5-10 (extended) family members.
Plus I'm not certain on right now, but in the summer they would only count 'clusters', so the single teen abroad wouldn't even count because he was alone. Only him infecting his family would count, since that's multiple cases, and that would be a 'home' case.The other thing that's slowly coming into awareness is work situations where the employer isn't following the work-at-home recommendation - under Dutch law, even now, working from home is at the grace of the employer. The government says work at home if at all possible, but the final word is with the employer and if the employer is telling someone with a 100% desk job to come to the office they don't have a choice.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So who all has been grounded again?
BritainEngland (from Thurs) & Wales (until Sun)
France
Czechia
Poland (?)
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
There's this big PR war going on here with travel agencies claiming "only 2% of infections are caused abroad; home is 51%". But a single teen going on party holiday in the summer can easily infect 5-10 (extended) family members.
Plus I'm not certain on right now, but in the summer they would only count 'clusters', so the single teen abroad wouldn't even count because he was alone. Only him infecting his family would count, since that's multiple cases, and that would be a 'home' case.The first part is the wrong metric to look at, the cluster metric is the important one.
Of course "most" infections happen at home, because that's highly connected and mostly unavoidable. As you said, if that "single teen" is bringing it in from abroad and then infecting 5 of his family members, then that completely skews the ratio, but the former infection is the crucial one because it's what's bridging very loosely connected clusters. So the first infection is what needs to be counted.
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@topspin And the opposing point I've read is that there was absolutely a lot of holiday import last summer, and based on that they really don't want winter holidays happening this year.
Of course the travel agencies points are understandable. They had to cancel almost everything last summer plus repay initial payments. They set up a voucher system for it but Brussels nixed that. They're hoping for government support in the form of loans, and I expect they'll be getting it - the entire sector's gonna go bankrupt otherwise.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So who all has been grounded again?
Britain
France
Czechia
Poland (?)This reminded me to check Flandersnews.be, so here goes:
Meanwhile in B*****m:
Telework is strongly recommended. Some school grades can go to school, all other kids must stay home. Lots of places are closed, and the entire country has a curfew in force.
Another article seems to indicate that they imported some of Wales' craziness where some shops are open but can't sell whatever they want. Seems Christmas is cancelled:
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@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So who all has been grounded again?
Poland (?)
Not yet and not until after the 11th.
Yeah, but restaurants and pubs are closed, so there's no reason to go outside.
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@MrL said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So who all has been grounded again?
Poland (?)
Not yet and not until after the 11th.
Yeah, but restaurants and pubs are closed, so there's no reason to go outside.
Well, moonshine is a thing.
Fake edit: I mean, moonlight!
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@JBert said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Some school grades can go to school, all other kids must stay home.
Most kids (up to around 14 years) can go to school but the point is because it's currently fall break and they extended that with a few days
Wales' craziness
Unfortunately ... the basic idea is that shops who can remain open can't sell certain stuff because the specialized shops are forced closed, they thought about stuff like clothes or electronics being sold in supermarkets. But as usual there are some side effects like banning the sale of christmas decorations. Except living trees because those are obviously plants.
the entire country has a curfew in force
bars, pubs and restaurants are closed, here curfew goes from midnight to 5am. In Brussels and Wallonia it is more restricted.
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@Luhmann said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
the entire country has a curfew in force
bars, pubs and restaurants are closed, here curfew goes from midnight to 5am. In Brussels and Wallonia it is more restricted.
If the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would exist and ever contain a sub-entry on B*****m then it would just be this:
"It's complicated"
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@JBert said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Seems Christmas is cancelled:
One of the things which doesn't really get any direct measures here but is strongly recommended against is 'recreational shopping'. In extension of that banning sale of Christmas decorations is understandable - it's completely optional, as people can just as well set up last year's decorations again.
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
people can just as well set up last year's decorations again
But then they won't be On Trend!
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
people can just as well set up last year's decorations again.
Do people not do that?
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Eventually we know how that corona entered the world, but back then it had a different name:
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As many as 17 million minks are to be culled in Denmark after a mutated version of the coronavirus that can spread to humans was detected on mink farms.
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@loopback0 said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
As many as 17 million minks are to be culled in Denmark after a mutated version of the coronavirus that can spread to humans was detected on mink farms.
It's 2020. What did you expect...
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@loopback0 In the Netherlands, there have been fairly regular reports about mink farms having outbreaks of Covid-19 for about six months or more. The response is always to cull all the animals at the farm and, IIRC, to close it. Though it’s not proven, there is speculation that some or even many of these outbreaks were caused deliberately, since all mink farms in this country are to close before 2024 — and a convenient outbreak brings compensation money for the owner.
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@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
there is speculation that some or even many of these outbreaks were caused deliberately
How do you do that in practice?
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
there is speculation that some or even many of these outbreaks were caused deliberately
How do you do that in practice?
Same as how we used to get immunity to Chicken Pox: find a sick mink, throw it in with the ones at your farm, profit. I would be completely surprised if someone whose farm was just shut down was able to find you a sick one off-the-record.
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@Parody said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
there is speculation that some or even many of these outbreaks were caused deliberately
How do you do that in practice?
Same as how we used to get immunity to Chicken Pox: find a sick mink, throw it in with the ones at your farm, profit. I would be completely surprised if someone whose farm was just shut down was able to find you a sick one off-the-record.
AKA the Cuomo Quarantine.
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So, we're officially past the worst of wave 2. Measures reduced from partial-lockdown-plus to partial-lockdown. Numbers still pretty bad, and this week they're stabilizing instead of going down.
Of course, in the middle of all this the cabinet has an election to win this March.
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Of course, in the middle of all this the cabinet has an election to win this March.
I just realized - our spike must have begun on election day! BAN ALL ELECTIONS!