Coronavirus Open Thread 2021

Haven’t looked at the Swedish experiment for a while

Seems they have done fairly well in comparison to other European countries, at least not worse, and they didn’t go through the pain of lockdowns and what not.

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Denmark seems to have been looking over at Sweden’s experience too, and decided that their own (rather ‘strict’) approach was probably unwarranted. Apparently they’ll be completely opening up next month.

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Pretty much everywhere in Europe is planning to open up, no?

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Quite a lot of variation. France in particular seems to be going downhill.

Japan may be opening up to vaxxers in the near future. I’ll be first in line.

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Worse than their Nordic neighbors, according to the report.

Norway in the lead

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/

(this link has probably been posted before, whatever :slight_smile: )

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Finland just announced yesterday that when they hit 80% vaccinations all remaining restrictions including mask usage will be stopped. This is a couple months out but during the time most restrictions are already being reduced. For most society life is back to normal already. The largest newspaper and media company yesterday decided to stop daily news coverage of Covid and move to a weekly summary of situation.

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’ New ‘mu’ COVID-19 variant now found in 49 US states’

Darn Columbians, first it’s cocaine, now Mu.

Mu is very scary.

Well, that’s not good at all. Vietnam has sat on the authoritarianism fence for quite a while now, but it looks like they’ve found an excuse to head back to familiar ground. What a pity, just as it looked as if the place might actually become a normal country.

How the hell did they pin any specific death on him when COVID is supposedly rampant there?

Frankly, if this sort of shit can happen over there, it can happen in Taiwan too. Less likely, but not impossible.

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Not that I’m disagreeing, but didn’t a lot of countries jail people for spreading HIV?

If you do it purposely, you should be jailed.

That’s kinda the equivalent of getting Covid and then visiting a nursing home and purposely coughing on every resident.

Possibly. But AFAIK nobody does it now, presumably because it backfired. If you threaten to jail people for carrying disease, then obviously nobody is going to come forward and get tested (and you’ll have a suspiciously low incidence of the disease). The general HIV policy now is to try to convince people to be responsible. Doesn’t always work, but that’s life.

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I agree with what you’re saying.

It definitely was a criminal offence in Canada. So for me, it’s not unprecedented.

Yeah, well, Canada seems to be circling the drain lately. It’s funny how the most overtly liberal countries like Canada, Australia and NZ have been the ones that went down the rule-by-fiat road with the greatest enthusiasm.

Canada is actually a highly corrupt country, but the corruption is well-managed. It’s the famous politeness of Canadians again - they just go along with it and apologise for not being completely compliant. Check out how the quotas work for agricultural commodities. It’s outrageous.

I think if someone knows they have HIV and goes out to deliberately infect as many people as possible, that’s a slightly different story; it has happened, I believe. HIV is not easily transmissible, but it is a guaranteed death sentence.

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Rock Hudson’s final lover successfully sued his estate for millions, even though he didn’t contract HIV.

HIV isn’t a guaranteed death sentence these days.

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It is if you don’t know you’ve got it or can’t afford the drugs.

What I meant was that it is inherently fatal for everyone who gets it, if untreated. Unlike the disease that must not be named.

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