If you look really closely around the first week of April, you can see where Taiwan bravely skyrocketed off from the x axis. 
Is that you, @lostinasia?
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Alberta bound, Alberta bound,
Itâs good to be Alberta bound.
Freedom!
But the province is currently battling the worst coronavirus outbreak in North America: this week, Alberta had an active case rate of 534 per 100,000 â more than double the countryâs average, and one of the worst in the world.
âThe reason we are at this critical stage of the pandemic in Alberta, with record high daily case counts and intensive care numbers, is precisely because, for whatever reason, too many Albertans are ignoring the rules we have in place,â Kenney told reporter on Monday, adding that it was âastoundingâ that more than a year into the pandemic, many in the province believe the virus is a hoax or government conspiracy.One recent poll found that 75% of Albertans believed the premier was doing a bad job of handling the pandemic â but a portion of that displeasure came from groups who feel Kenney has gone too far.
Even though the conservative leader has been wary to implement aggressive restrictions seen in other provinces Kenney has faced insurrection from within his own party, with 16 lawmakers recently publishing a letter criticizing restrictions on retail and dining.
But an unwillingness to bring in strict measures has led to a âpredictable and preventableâ new surge in cases, said Joe Vipond, an emergency room doctor in Calgary.
âThe science was clear from the beginning. If we didnât aim for âCovid zeroâ and if we started to relax our restrictions in the face of variants, this is where we would end up,â said Vipond. âIt was always a foolâs errand to try and vaccinate our way out of a third wave. Itâs just not mathematically possible.â
That âaim for zero COVIDâ article is one of the most outrageously daft pieces of unscientific twaddle Iâve seen for a good while. Almost all of it is demonstrably false. Professors of public health, too. Iâll have a rant about it later when I have a chance. Reminds me of the strategy outlined in the book I mentioned earlier ⌠which was a miserable failue six months down the line.
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Right. Time for a rant. {cracks knuckles}.
Are we in trouble? Absolutely.
âWe will not permit our healthcare system to be overwhelmed. We must not and we will not force our doctors and nurses to decide who gets care and who doesnât,â
What a crock of BS. This is one of the richest countries in the world that has had over a year to get itself prepared. They have been able to observe the general patterns of infection and complications both locally and elsewhere. They have access to vaccines. Albertans have made it clear they will not tolerate political grandstanding and âlockdownsâ. So there is one and only one reason why healthcare might be overwhelmed: gross incompetence.
But letâs look at what the public health experts have to say about all this.
As governments draw up their battle plans for year two, we might expect them to base their strategies on the wealth of data about what works best.
We might expect that. And, of course, we will be disappointed.
Here are 16 reasons why we think all countries should at least consider an elimination approach:
1. It saves lives. Not surprisingly, eliminating transmission of the virus minimises Covid-19 deaths. Countries pursuing elimination have Covid-19 mortality rates that are typically below 10 per million, which is 100 times less than many countries âlivingâ with the virus.
Referencing your own paper to support your argument? Itâs a bold strategy, but it just might work, because nobody bothers to read references anyway. Moving along.
Their premise is completely false. There is no correlation between death rates and government strategy. None. I wonât rehash this again because the data is out there for all to see.
What do we even mean by âsaving livesâ? Oh, there goes finley again, canât be bothered to look in the dictionary. But pre-COVID, health authorities had complex and subtle metrics for defining what âsaving livesâ means. All of that went out of the window in 2020 in favour of some easy-to-understand graphs (for the great unwashed) showing absolute deaths.
And what is an âelimination strategyâ? To quote Bakerâs own paper (again), âThere is no established definition for COVIDâ19 eliminationâ. This is hardly surprising, since such a thing is not possible, even in theory.
2. The elimination of community transmission also spares populations from âlong-Covidâ, which causes persistent health problems in survivors.
Well, theoretically I suppose it might, if we accept that âlong COVIDâ is actually a thing (as opposed to a combination of ordinary post-viral syndrome, general ill-health, psychosomatic symptoms, and stuff the media made up). The fly in the ointment is that there is no known method of âeliminating community transmissionâ.
3. Elimination is pro-equity.
One huge steaming pile of road apples. Since âelimination strategiesâ invariably involve lockdowns - ie., stamping on the fingers of those just barely clinging onto the cliff-face - the general outcome is in favour of the rich, who can ride out draconian policies. And in fact the authors know this:
â⌠particularly if a suitable social âsafety-netâ is also provided.â
Yes. Quite. And if not, it all turns to ratshit.
4. Countries that have eliminated Covid-19 are experiencing less economic contraction than countries trying to live with the virus. Mainland China and Taiwan are possibly the only places with neutral or net positive economic growth in 2020.
There is only one country that has (temporarily) evaded COVID, and thatâs Taiwan. Every other country on the planet has been hit economically and socially, including all of those that pursued an âelimination strategyâ.
China has zero cases? Time for a fredsmith, I think: hahahahahahahahaahahaaaa.
5. Elimination is achievable and works in a variety of settings. Globally, multiple countries and jurisdictions are successfully pursuing elimination approaches,
Bollocks. Thereâs no more that needs to be said there. The data speaks for itself.
6. The virus can be eliminated even after intense local transmission has occurred. Mainland China demonstrated this in Wuhan.
All together now: HAHHAHAAHAHAHAAA.
7. Itâs easier if more countries adopt this approach. Border controls can be relaxed âŚ
Erm ⌠only if it works. Which it doesnât.
8. The rollout of effective vaccines will make Covid-19 elimination easier to achieve.
Possibly. But it remains to be seen.
9. Having an explicit âzero-Covidâ goal provides a strong motivating and coordinating focus.
No, it causes people to become obsessed with something that is unachievable; they thus end up pursuing a draconian suppression strategy while pretending that elimination is just around the corner.
10. It is sustainable.
If you think that mindlessly subordinating national government to a single goal is sensible, then yes, I suppose it is.
11. If the virus mutates, elimination still works.
WTAF? If the virus is mutating, and out in the wild, then clearly elimination has not been achieved.
12. It also still works if vaccines provide only limited long-term protection. For example, if vaccines are poorly effective at preventing onward transmission then elimination methods could supplement that limitation.
What? This seems to imply that the methods that didnât work in 2020 will magically start to work in 2021 even if the vaccine turns out to be considerably less effective (in the wild) than it appears.
13. It may reduce emergence of more dangerous virus variants. Elimination approaches result in far fewer circulating viruses.
If you have âfewer circulating virusesâ then you havenât eliminated anything, and although that does reduce the raw number of mutation events, the relative survival rate of mutations is a different issue.
14. The use of lockdowns should be less necessary. A relatively short, intense lockdown to eliminate Covid-19 transmission in an area should allow control measures to be relaxed in the absence of circulating virus.
Aaaand there we are with lockdowns again. We know they donât work as described there, we know that transmission rates rise to ~100% when people are closely confined, but weâre going to keep doing lockdowns forever regardless.
15. Vigorous control of Covid-19 infection has substantial co-benefits.
Well yes. It also has substantial detrimental effects. But I suppose we can deal with that by just pretending they donât exist.
16. It provides a good interim strategy while we identify an optimal long-term approach, which is currently uncertain. One scenario could be regional elimination or even global eradication as we saw with Sars. Another plausible option is endemic infection with the health burden being managed with vaccines, as we see with influenza.
Why is it âcurrently uncertainâ? How long do we need before the experts figure out what theyâre doing? And since endemic infection is already a reality in several countries, in what sense is an âelimination strategyâ even remotely plausible?
Just to be clear: you cannot eliminate a disease that has no specific symptoms and has a long incubation period during which someone is infectious. This was true in 2019 and itâs still true today. Unless you install a PCR machine in every home, stick probes up peopleâs noses every day, and treat the ongoing slew of false positives as real, elimination is impossible.
War on Covid-19 = War on terror.
Crazy outlier ? Vaccine completely ineffective on this variant? Vaccine completely ineffective?
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No comment on this article? What should we be paying attention to?
Guy
The idea that covid is primarily a vascular disease rather than a respiratory disease.
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@cake remember that video of a nurse fake vaccinating an old fellow? Well, asked my family about it. Seems it was a scheme where the nurses and docs fake injected so they could sell the vaccines in the black market.
Iâm like, what do you mean by black market?
Yep, people are now smuggling vaccines and selling them on the internet/Facebook/Wazzup.
If we Latinos were as creative for other stuff âŚ
And on the really interesting stuff, seems that someone made an obvious discoveryâŚof something that should have been made public over a year ago. A journalist replies with all the instances where information has been blocked at the sourceâŚwell, the source unfortunately being China. Read the thread and follow the linkies. Fascinating.
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Whatâs the point of buying a vaccine on the black market? You wonât get a certificate saying youâve been vaccinated.
One can only assume that people are more concerned about being âprotectedâ (with a vaccine that almost certainly hasnât been stored correctly and is probably ineffective) than getting the Mark of The Beast stamped on their foreheads.
In S.America generally, COVID has been hyped up to the max, although even in Brazil (currently the biggest shitshow) the actual numbers are not remarkably different to anywhere else. Itâs not really surprising that people are terrified.
I canât understand the economics of this, though. Is a knock-off vaccine cheaper than the legit one, perhaps? Youâd think most people could afford to go to a government vaccination centre.
And what a surprise that is. The idea has been kicked around for several months already.
But still nobody wants to draw the obvious connections between this research and the abnormally high rate of COVID deaths among people with cardiovascular disease. No, it cannot be mentioned. Itâs not important. And the causes must not be addressed.
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As you say, people obviously think thereâs a risk to their health. Crazy stuff.
Remember our societies work on strata and showing off your benefits of being superior to others. Having a fancy car is more important than how you got it, meaning you can engage in corruption, steal, deal drugs, what matters is you have a fancy car, even if you live in a favela.
So getting s vaccine before others, before your time, is more than OK because it makes you look clever and rich and anyways your president/ministers/elite do it. You think they are going to spend money on an air ticket to the US to get vaccinated when they can do it for free because people listen to them and their orders? Poor people should die, remember?
Second, I digress with our f pal, and vaccines do protect people. In places where folk are dying left and right and you have the means to cover yourself, you do it. That is why we have high walls on houses, no social net to help people starving out of work in this crisis. Again, poor people should die, right? And they are dying, especially in developing countries with limited health access. Oxygen tank?
That is why they are making a killing selling oxygen meters in private pharmacies. Try to find one in Taiwan. We donât have it because we donât need it.
He does point to the storage issue, but people who buy fake Gucci or LV donât usually find out until they wash the item. So these people will not know until they get sick and they they will blame the vaccine does not work. Because vaccines are useless, right?
The clever folk doing the selling will keep the money, give a cut to the authorities and keep on truckingâŚ
People are dying, but the people buying vaccines on the black market arenât going to die. Unless some seriously unwell geriatrics are buying them.
Or fat. Or have an immune disorder. Or high blood pressure. Or diabetic. Or genetic pre dispositionâŚ
Not sure I follow your argument here. You seem to be suggesting that itâs better for people to be ripped off by unscrupulous ratbags selling fake (ie, almost certainly non-functional) vaccines than to receive no vaccine at all.
Scenario 1 : unprotected, unaware, and poorer
Scenario 2 : unprotected.
I know which one Iâd prefer (if those are the choices).