BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

uziq wrote:

dilbert people have already told you how restricting travel increases the costs of doing businesses. there have been oodles of reports on this.

the effects to the economy are huge and yet you keep trying to make out they are, quote, non-existent. what utter tosh.  as if suddenly decoupling from the global system will have no negative effects on the economy/business/trade (take your pick). i mean what an entirely farcical argument to pursue. ‘travel is only for tourists and salesmen’.

no country on earth is still pursuing zero covid or a heavy suppression strategy. even china are talking about gradually reopening borders after the olympics.

uziq wrote:

it’s like you don’t even read. a temporary shutdown at the most afflicted time of the year is not an advertisement for a return to frequent lockdowns, dilbert.

Dilbert_X wrote:

If you have travel bans you typically don't need pre-emptive lockdowns, dur.
The economy can tick along nicely without pandering to morons.

we will see more air travel

this ‘winter’ shutdown was always coming, considering that europe has been RETURNING TO NORMAL for the last several months with hardly a shit given about daily case loads.

more open public venues, much wider rollouts of vaccine passes, etc. return to normalcy and ‘living with covid’

Omicron is “not the same disease we were seeing a year ago” and high Covid death rates in the UK are “now history”, a leading immunologist has said.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, said that although hospitalisations had increased in recent weeks as Omicron spreads through the population, the disease “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. Fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was down to three days, he said.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The horrific scenes that we saw a year ago of intensive care units being full, lots of people dying prematurely, that is now history, in my view, and I think we should be reassured that that’s likely to continue.”

He said that over the course of multiple waves of Covid, including Delta and Omicron, “the incidence of severe disease and death from this disease has basically not changed since we all got vaccinated”.

NHS staff absences caused by having to isolate over Omicron are also causing strain on the health service, with experts predicting up to 40% of staff in London could be off in a “worst case scenario”.

“We’re now seeing a significant increase in the level of staff absences, and quite a few of our chief executives are saying that they think that that’s probably going to be a bigger problem and a bigger challenge for them than necessarily the number of people coming in who need treatment because of Covid,” said Chris Hopson, NHS Providers chief executive

Speaking on Tuesday, Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said people with Covid should eventually be allowed to “go about their normal lives” as they would with a common cold.

“This is a disease that’s not going away. Ultimately, we’re going to have to let people who are positive with Covid go about their normal lives as they would do with any other cold,” he told BBC Breakfast. “If the self-isolation rules are what’s making the pain associated with Covid, then we need to do that perhaps sooner rather than later. Maybe not quite just yet.”

Hunter said Covid would one day be regarded as a cause of the common cold and would not warrant the reporting of daily case numbers. “Once we’re past Easter, perhaps, then maybe we should start to look at scaling back, depending on, of course, what the disease is at that time,” he said.

Speaking after the government’s announcement on Monday that they would not be introducing any more Covid restrictions this year, Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, warned that the latest data was incomplete.

He cautioned that the latest case figures did not include data for samples taken between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, and that it would become clear how the virus had moved through the population over the Christmas period in the coming week or so.

“While nobody wants to live under tighter controls, the public need to realise that if we end up with a significant problem of hospitalisations and mass sickness, it will be worse than if authorities had acted earlier,” he said.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-28 03:11:58)

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-28 04:10:17)

maybe leave this kind of thing to someone else.

Rich countries must open the way to cheaper mass-produced COVID-19 vaccines in order to protect every person in the world and avert a $9 trillion “worst case” global economic catastrophe, said Oxfam today. They should also agree this week to inject $650 billion more into the global economy to help developing countries cope with the pandemic’s already devasting effects.

The International Chamber of Commerce estimates that vaccine inequality at today’s scale could cost the world around $9.2 trillion in economic losses, in the worst-case scenario, with rich countries suffering half of that blow. Drawing on the findings of this study, Oxfam calculates that these losses are equivalent to:

   

• The United States could lose up to $2,700 per person in household spending in 2021, which is $1,300 more than the recent stimulus cheque that each received from President Biden’s administration. Overall, the US could lose as much as $1.3 trillion in GDP as its share of the cost of vaccine inequality.   
• The UK could face up to a $1,380 loss in spending for every person. Similarly, a $1,239 loss in 2021 per person in France, roughly equivalent to a monthly rent bill.   
• Per capita losses in household spending in Japan and Italy in 2021 could amount to around $1,451 and $1,495 respectively.   
• Canadians could miss out on $1,979 this year in spending as a result of global vaccine inequalities.

Yet these same rich countries are among those now opposing moves by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to break open the monopolies of big pharmaceutical companies, a move that would help other manufacturers to mass-produce more and cheaper vaccines.“The US, UK, Germany, France, Japan and Italy together could lose as much as $2.3 trillion in GDP this year unless they stop fighting on behalf of a handful of big drug companies to retain the intellectual property of the vaccine —despite this status quo plainly failing both them and everyone else,” said Marriott. “It totally beggars belief.”Vaccine inequality is hitting low- and middle-income countries even harder:   

• India could lose as much $786 billion, or over 27 percent, of its GDP due to global vaccine inequities.   
• South Africa could see 24 percent wiped off its GDP, losing the equivalent of nearly $874 per person in household expenditure in 2021.   
• The Philippines meanwhile could be stripped of up to 18 percent of its GDP this year due to vaccine inequity, equivalent to around $450 per person in household spending.

“This is a stark reminder that vaccine inequality has a real economic impact on us all, even as a solution stares our leaders in the face. The richest people can cope better with this cost but every person, in every country in the world, is being expected to pay and struggle —the poorest people most of all,” Marriott said.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-29 02:23:09)

- spend 3 years getting a degree
- spend 2 years getting a masters

Ah so we're not talking about the cost to vaccinate the world, we're talking about the cost to not vaccinate the world.
And vaccinate doesn't mean provide enough vaccine to vaccinate people, it means not provide enough to vaccinate people.

uziq wrote:

you and larssen keep prattling on about this. as if trying to get refrigerated vaccines to most of the global south's major cities is like trying to colonize mars. the numbers of people vaccinated even in the metropolitan areas of the global south is PITIFULLY small. we are not talking about reaching isolated tribal communities in the hinterlands. get a fucking grip and stop deflecting with these utterly fatuous 'arguments'.

Dilbert_X wrote:

^ This is all great but completely unrelated to the issue



What is the cost of giving every Ukrainian a panzerfaust?

What is the cost of not giving every Ukrainian a panzerfaust?

They're two unrelated questions with two unrelated answers.

Larssen wrote:

But even if hospitalisation rate is cut in half that won't mean much if twice as many people are getting infected.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-29 11:05:19)