Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Montmorency]

Next excess deaths analysis: in 14 countries assessed, up to 60% (120K EDIT: Sorry, that's the total number of excess deaths, so 45K) more excess deaths than expected but not accounted for by confirmed CV19 deaths.
https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-...9-0d5c6fac846c

Reinfection vs. reactivation/relapse: recovered patients putative lack of immunity probably not a big problem, or at least it isn't in South Korea.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/...235141488.html

Long article with more on how the West Coast's initial pandemic response was much superior to the East Coast's (i.e. New York). To Cuomo's marginal credit he actually stepped up and improved, which is a rare thing these days.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-yorks-did-not

About the more general failure of American government and civilization.
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/27/ame...e-whole-world/

O'Hehir rightly observes that empires inevitably collapse, but America's almost childlike inability to admit it even is an empire, even as it crumbles, may be unique in human history.
[...]
Now the country that sent men to the moon and brought them home again, all the way back in the 1960s, is a fumbling mess, unable to manage the simple logistics of getting supplies from one place to another or coordinating a national set of guidelines in a public health crisis. The vaunted CDC, long thought of as the greatest scientific disease research facility in the world, fumbled in making a test that had already been produced in other countries.
[...]
But it’s not just him, is it? The U.S. government seems to have lost its capacity to act, and the private sector is so invested in short-term profit-making that it’s lost its innovative edge. The result is that the United States of America, formerly the world’s leader in science and technology, now only leads the world in gruesome statistics and body counts.

It’s still unclear exactly why the CDC felt it had to make its own test when another test, created by a German lab, was already available. According to those in the know, Americans just don’t use tests from other countries, ostensibly because our “standards” are so high. Apparently, they aren’t. In this case, the test we created was faulty, causing weeks of delay, and there was some kind of contamination in the lab. How can this be?

The government’s inefficiency and ineptitude in producing, locating and distributing needed medical supplies, combined with Trumpian corrupt patronage toward his favored states, is staggering. Stories of FEMA commandeering shipments of gear that were already paid for by states, and governors having to bid against each other for supplies because the federal government refused to use its power to take control in a global emergency, are simply astonishing. The country that planned the D-Day invasion is incapable of coordinating the delivery of medical supplies to New York City?

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a rising Republican leader, evidently wants to ensure that American never attracts any expertise again:

"If Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that’s what they need to learn from America. They don’t need to learn quantum computing. It is a scandal to me that we have trained so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s brightest minds."

[Spoken like a true troglodyte.]

The rest of the world is moving on without us. This week 20 global leaders held a conference call pledging to “accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe.” No one from the United States was among them.

frankly - i still think the UK approach is closer to Sweden than the countries that have attempted to crush the outbreak.

That's debatable, but also subjective in that depends a lot on your value of "close." The UK imposed heavy restrictions on business operations (extended well into May), as did most of continental Europe. Sweden basically didn't at all. I don't know about Germany, but the main difference between France/Spain/Italy and either the UK or Sweden is that the former are much stricter about individual movement.

stated policy is to "squash the sombrero", and while health service capacity for covid19 has been massively increased the gov't seems extremely comfortable in using that capacity. and quite content to keep using that capacity at 95% for the foreseeable future!

Every country almost by definition has the same goal. But the tendency, after a spell, is to seek a less chaotic and lethal approach. These distinctions are measured in thousands of lives. Even in Sweden's example, as I understand it to the extent their strategy would be working (and it's not clear that it is) it is to the extent Swedes are obeying anarchist principles - non-coercion, independent concerted action toward common good - by individually deciding to drastically curtail consumer and commercial activity as a solidarity measure. (Very fascinating that Sweden's pandemic response has become a de facto case study in anarchism; I never would have predicted it.)

If you want a picture of shocking laxity however, look at Japan.

A source for UK healthcare capacity (beds? ventilators?) being used at 95%, please. I can't find anything from more recent than early April (though I did find some articles on UK's difficulty expanding testing).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/w...y-test-uk.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51943612
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...acity-11977115 [Seriously, how can the UK be testing below-par with a US state with 1/3 the population (with the exception of this past weekend)?]
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-testing

But if true, it would be horrifying, comparable to Soviet shenanigans with the Chernobyl reactor configuration.

so rather than crushing the outbreak and investing in track-n-trace to squash new outbreaks - the aim [remains] to keep processing the population through to the other side of antibody resistance as fast as that expanded health service capacity allows.
in this vein - i rather suspect that primary schools will reopen outside of urban hotspots after half-term.

kids do not seem to 'suffer' much from covid and they do not appear to be very contagious - so they may well be the perfect vector to keep spreading low viral-loads around in the community.

That sounds grossly irresponsible. The whole premise of suppressing the outbreaks to the point of containment is so that we can buy time to establish these guidelines as the new normal:
https://www.propublica.org/article/c...heir-economies [Recommended for Samurai]

1. Contact tracing at scale.
2. Mass testing at scale.
3. Isolation of confirmed and suspected cases AWAY from family.
4. Protect health care workers
5. "Normalcy" is a mirage.
6. Be prepared for future waves.
7. Communicate clearly and truthfully with the public.

Allowing the virus to 'burn' through a population unchecked is national self-harm to a degree not even Johnson's government seems willing to contemplate.

[Furunculus]

"A source for UK healthcare capacity (beds? ventilators?) being used at 95%, please."

That is not intended to be factual statement. :) Merely to convey that available capacity is to be expanded and used, rather than left underutilised because we've squashed it SK stylee.

"That sounds grossly irresponsible. The whole premise of suppressing the outbreaks to the point of containment is so that we can buy time to establish these guidelines as the new normal:
1. Contact tracing at scale.
2. Mass testing at scale.
3. Isolation of confirmed and suspected cases AWAY from family.
4. Protect health care workers
5. "Normalcy" is a mirage.
6. Be prepared for future waves.
7. Communicate clearly and truthfully with the public. "

That's an interesting view, and yet the UK is not doing: #1 and #3.
There is clearly a difference between those countries that have attempted to squash the outbreak vs those those that have attempted to manage the outbreak.
And as you say, there is a continuum along that spectrum from sweden to taiwan, rather than an absolutist binary choice.
I merely suggest that UK sits closer to Sweden than is commonly recognised...
The UK doesn't even want to 'know' if you have Covid19 - merely stating that if during your self-isolation the symptoms become bad enough to require hospitalisation then please "give us a call".
Ringing your GP won't result in an appointment and an official diagnosis based on symptoms; "yeah, sounds like Covid, take a paracetamol and put your feet up."
Ringing 111 won't result in being sent to a testing centre; "please don't call this number unless your are struggling to manage at home, take a paracetamol!"
So from a management perspective the gov't doesn't know or much care about containing the outbreak, it's stats are purely focussed on NHS demand in order to calibrate NHS capacity.

"Allowing the virus to 'burn' through a population unchecked is national self-harm to a degree not even Johnson's government seems willing to contemplate. "

I would agree, but I have not suggested that anyone does or should follow such a policy.
If you presume - as I do - that there is no solution to this beyond a vaccination program that covers the whole population in approximately two years time, then any attempt to squash the outbreak - with massive contact tracing and full carrier isolation - while maintaining 'normal' economic activity is likely to resemble riding-the-clutch with countries lurching into and out of lockdown in a most disruptive manner. i.e. we'll all end up with similar numbers two years down the line (excepting where a health system has been overwhelmed), its just a question of how much damage the economy suffers in the interim.
What i describe 'might' be a smoother process of just managing the progression of the disease so economic activity can achieve a new equilibrium...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Monty:

Liked your jibe at Cotton. The use of USA universities by many Asian countries has been a brain-drain for those countries. A notable percentage come here, learn, love our comparative freedom and lack-of-graft, and decide to make a future here.

Link

[Viking]

Even in Sweden's example, as I understand it to the extent their strategy would be working (and it's not clear that it is) it is to the extent Swedes are obeying anarchist principles - non-coercion, independent concerted action toward common good - by individually deciding to drastically curtail consumer and commercial activity as a solidarity measure. (Very fascinating that Sweden's pandemic response has become a de facto case study in anarchism; I never would have predicted it.)

You have instructions from a state institution in combination with legal enforcement of specific measures. Behind the instructions is also an implicit threat that more legal enforcement could start if the spread of the virus is not adequately contained. It is pretty far removed from anarchy.