BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

in other news:

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN2021122400 … l/politics
S. Korea in final stage of signing contract for Pfizer's oral COVID-19 pill: PM

but wait, i thought we were all doomed to a future of endless boosters and hopeless struggle? doesn't korea know that it's futile to use oral antiviral medication to try and return things to normal?

i received this email from the korean embassy last week:

Starting Dec 28 the government is planning on introducing new regulations regarding the re-entry permits. While the government has no plans on getting rid of the re-entry permit requirement as of yet as the number of new Covid-19 cases is still very high, they will instead be introducing these multiple re-entry permits valid for one year for anyone fully vaccinated allowing foreigners to come back to Korea multiple times without having to apply for a new re-entry permit each time. It will be possible to apply online starting Dec 27 (or in person at the immigration office) and the necessary documents are the "Certificate of Vaccination", "Consent of Confirmation Form Covid-19 PCR negative certificate" and the "re-entry permit application form".

multiple re-entry permits without any need for the usual paperwork? but why would they make it easier for fully vaccinated people to travel during this time? omfG! mind melt!

Dilderp wrote:

Don't they know travel restrictions and quarantines are a waste of time?

NOW, why don't you answer the following, as you have persistently ignored these things every time you champion your asinine tourism bans:

• israel totally banned travel as soon as omicron was announced and is now awash in omicron. what's the deal?
• france introduced a 3-day quarantine (lmao) on travel from the UK but their cases are peaking and growing at an exponential rate. what's the deal?
• the minimum quarantines previously for the less-infectious waves was 15 days. now countries are regularly using 10 or even 7 day quarantines, for dominant variants that we know are much more transmissible and much more infectious. if these measures 'aren't a waste of time', as you say, then what's the deal?
• omicron is expected to become the dominant variant globally in january, including in places with travel restrictions like korea. what's the deal?
• south african nations which dutifully reported on their cases/genomic sequencing transparently were slapped with irrational travel bans and punitive measures, whilst the rest of the world went on sharing omicron between themselves with friction-free travel and/or evidently ineffective travel measures. what's the deal? surely that encourages good sharing in the future, right?

and, by the way, 'we didn't travel ban good enough' isn't an answer, before you try. some countries really did respond with measures as soon as omicron hit the scientific preprint servers and world cables. some places really did react as soon as we had any information.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-25 00:43:31)

So we're agreed, travel needs to be restricted from everywhere and there needs to be effective quarantine for everyone.

Dilbert_X wrote:

So we're agreed, travel needs to be restricted from everywhere and there needs to be effective quarantine for everyone.

quarantines only make sense if you're trying to curb a specific outbreak or achieve some proximate, well-defined end.

it's quite obvious that, in the long-view, we are not going to enforce the recommended 15-day quarantines on anyone who ever crosses a national border. (and why stop arbitrarily at national borders? why shouldn't there be quarantines enforced between people travelling from high-incidence regions to low-incidence regions? like from NSW to SA? the virus doesn't operate on a nation-state basis. to emphasize national borders makes as much epidemiological sense, when it comes to containing spreads, as 9pm curfews.)

korea did pivot to using vaccination passes and testing regimes, rather than indiscriminate quarantining for all arrivals. this didn't apply to tourists and short-term travellers because the korean CDCA didn't have a system in place to recognize foreign vaccinations - only doses administered in the country. and this worked fine for months. the spread of a new variant, plus a unique set of circumstances within korea's own polity, i.e. complications with their own re-opening policy, led them to reintroduce quarantines for everyone. but, again, it will be gradually phased out. no government on Earth is intending to keep eternal quarantines, dilbert. i don't know why this has to be stated to you.

the emergence of new variants which can lead to high rates of breakthrough reinfection are worrying and do deserve moments of pause and analysis, to reassess that 'fluid' situation. but in this regard it will just be much like flu. the world hasn't shuttered down because of the highly reinfectious and hardy flu, dilbert. people have become accustomed, instead, to getting a yearly shot and being prepared to occasionally suffer mild illness.

the vaccines we have for covid are much more effective than what we have ever had for flu. we have medications for covid now which have never been possible for flu. the reported coverage from some mRNA vaccines is so comprehensive and total that they even block out asymptomatic, 'passive' spread of the disease. science really has delivered us from this pandemic and we should be very relieved and very grateful indeed.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-25 02:38:26)

i mean in perpetuity, not during emergency measures. are you seriously advocating for checkpoints between every major city? every state? every nation? forever?

or how about you just take your booster, stock up on your antiviral medication, practice better sanitation and hygiene, and socially distance when prudent? no?

why is it you prefer the most authoritarian, heavy-handed, and also mostly ineffectual measures? (you still haven't answered a single question above about the total non-effectiveness of recent travel measures on halting omicron's spread.)

uziq wrote:

are you seriously advocating for checkpoints between every major city? every state? every nation? forever?

During an outbreak - yes

Didn't Britain have that, then they didn't, then they did, then they didn't etc?
This is why we're fucked.

uziq wrote:

with the advent of delta (and now omicron), the ability of quarantine and test+trace to contain outbreaks has gone out the window.

Worked perfectly here.

Melbourne
was
retarded
and
never
really
went
into
lockdown

But they didn't, every outbreak stemmed from a gross quarantine fuckup.

Aus went for quarantine very early and it worked, most places were business as normal for months and years with the occasional outbreak which was squashed. Victoria grossly failed in their quarantine through stupidity and paid the price, NSW failed to do lockdown properly and never squashed their last outbreak.
Coupled with a large proportion of the population being lazy and dumb.

Its only now that we've 'decided to live with covid', for reasons known only to the Liberal party, that everything has gone wrong.
Now we're screwed, letting in a small number of people 'because travel' has given us lockdown by default.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-26/ … /100724074

Great job chaps, things were going great. Public response is overwhelmingly negative.

How many reports of quarantine fuckups delivering outbreaks would you like to be given?

Literally every outbreak in Australia.

Er, wasn't New Zealand a quarantine fuckup?

Seems pretty simple

International passengers and crew entering the country who caught COVID-19 overseas or during the journey
People exposed to international returnees - includes close contacts, other returnees in managed isolation or quarantine, and staff working at the border or in managed facilities
Caught COVID-19 from someone locally
Caught COVID-19 within NZ (hadn't travelled overseas recently or been in close contact with someone who travelled recently) but source is unknown
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/dis … urce-cases

my point being that heavy, permanent restrictions to travel and near-permanent states of lockdown don't make any sense because they don't work.

the trade-off with liberty, the cost to businesses, the closure of schools, the suspension of civil society, etc,  made some sense and could be justified when we were keeping covid at bay. in countries with hard suppression strategies, they could at least, once upon a time, say that they were working and that covid was 'contained' or 'kept out'.

but that doesn't work anymore. cities stay in lockdown for 250 days and it still can't adequately be contact traced and snuffed out. new variants emerge, and your best suggestion is that we need 'permanent travel bans and heavy measures before their emergence'. for fucking what?!? they don't work anyway with new variants – even with a bare minimum of people coming and going between borders, with all precautions taken, outbreaks HAVE STILL OCCURRED.

you really reminds me of that fucking Einstein fridge-magnet quote, about the true definition of insanity being repeating the same process over and over and expecting different results.

every country to attempt to keep covid outside of its borders using total travel bans, partial travel restrictions, long quarantines, short quarantines, multiple testing regimes, high-tech phone tracing schemes, etc, -- every single one HAS FAILED and abandoned this strategy. learn to read the fucking writing on the wall, dilbert.

please tell me again how china 'fucked up' their quarantine in the case of the guy who did THREE WEEKS and took no less than about 6 negative tests. how is that a fuck up or incompetence? every protocol was followed, everything was compliant, every test came back with the negative result. +2 days out of quarantine, bam, positive test and a cluster-spread scenario.

it's like you just don't listen. rant about the illluminati instead.

vaccination and exposure to the previous variant not offering great protection apparently.

ehm, vaccination and exposure to previous variant(s) do offer great protection? why do you keep MAKING SHIT UP? a recent vaccination offers very high protection against delta/omicron. very few people have died of omicron. like, hardly anyone, despite it firestorming around the globe.

you are an hysterical idiot.

Last edited by uziq (2021-12-26 20:08:13)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Thats an extreme case, every other has been straightforward ineptitude and either poorly designed process or failure to follow process.

it
only
takes
one
case of escape
with delta/omicron
to confound all contact tracing
and create
uncontainable spreads

any quarantine system that deals with 10,000s of people a week is going to come across a fair few 'extreme cases'. that's just how it works, dilbert. and even one unnoticed case can create a system-defeating problem. that's what happened in china and new zealand.

WHAT don't you fucking get about this?! ffs