Isnt that the expected result? Did anyone think something else would happen? The original communication everyone was fed was "hospitals arent ready, close down to flatten the curve to buy time." They asked for a delay, not spread prevention. Spread prevention being, stay locked down forever until everybody gets its slowly.
When Australia went into the first lockdown they had essentially no community transmission.
It is unclear that the lockdowns had any impact at all.
Now that there is significant community transmission in Melbourne we can see if the second lockdown is effective.
Sydney and Melbourne are much like any other large city in the world and, at around five million people each, combined they represent ~40% of the country's population.
The early success Australia saw in dealing with this pandemic had nothing to do with sparse population.
Doing something similar in the US would never work. We don't have a culture of social responsibility. It's why draconian measures were required. Recommendations don't work and laws/ordnances only work to an extent. In essence, the US has such a self-centered culture that the only option to combat a pandemic like this is draconian lockdown that borders on infringing on individual rights.
Sounds backwards to me. I'd bet a logical approach like Sweden's would have been much better tolerated and observed, especially in the long term. The current "new plan of the week" here in California is for the birds.
Not to mention that a significant portion of US deaths were a direct cause of NY forcing sick into nursing homes.
Also, folks do comply voluntarily when they see local stats and people around them getting sick. Yes, scolding when statistically no one in a rural state has it is not surprisingly effective in the short term.
Locally I often see folks hiking alone in the sun wearing cloth masks and it is clear they don't understand when they are actually useful or not. Anti folks don't appear to either.
From 18 July Wall Street Journal:
Face Masks Really Do Matter. The Scientific Evidence Is Growing.
New research suggests that face coverings help reduce the transmission of droplets, though some masks are more protective than others.[1]
Face masks are emerging as one of the most powerful weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, with growing evidence that facial coverings help prevent transmission—even if an infected wearer is in close contact with others.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believes the pandemic could be brought under control over the next four to eight weeks if “we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.” His comments, made Tuesday with the Journal of the American Medical Association, followed an editorial[2] he and others wrote there emphasizing “ample evidence” of asymptomatic spread and highlighting new studies showing how masks help reduce transmission.
%< snip %<
Researchers say the benefits of widespread mask use were recently seen in a Missouri hair salon, where two stylists directly served 139 clients in May before testing positive for Covid-19. According to a recent report[3] published by the CDC, both wore either a double-layered cotton or surgical mask, and nearly all clients who were interviewed reported wearing masks the entire time.
After contact tracing and two weeks of follow-up, no Covid-19 symptoms were identified among the 139 clients or their secondary contacts, the report found. Of the 67 who were willing to be tested, all were negative for Covid-19.
%< snip %<
Wearing a mask is “one of the most urgent things we can do to get our country under control,” said Melanie Ott, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology. “We’re all waiting for the vaccine, we’re waiting for therapeutics, and we’re not there.”
“We have masks, we have social distancing, and we have testing,” she continued. “But there’s not much more in the toolbox here.”
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/face-masks-really-do-matter-the...
2. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532
Conquer with Inaction
Do not control the people with laws,
Nor violence nor espionage,
But conquer them with inaction.
For:
The more morals and taboos there are,
The more cruelty afflicts people;
The more guns and knives there are,
The more factions divide people;
The more arts and skills there are,
The more change obsoletes people;
The more laws and taxes there are,
The more theft corrupts people.
Yet take no action, and the people nurture eachother;
Make no laws, and the people deal fairly with eachother;
Own no interest, and the people cooperate with eachother;
Express no desire, and the people harmonize with eachother.
-- Lao Tse, "Tao Te Ching"While it is true that community spirit can thrive under pressure, we should not be seeking to attain community spirit at the cost of overall quality of life. We should not allow COVID-19 to run rampant so that people learn the usefulness of masks. This falls into the same trap that Lao Tse fell into, thinking that the perceived causative opposite will result in the opposite outcome. If this were true, then the Sudan and Somalia would be the happiest places on Earth.
Do you have any example of such a civilization-destroying reaction to basic public health measures?
I mean, Spain was locked down for a long time, and they did had armed forces personnel patrolling the streets, and Spain didn't descended into chaos although they still remember quite well what's it like to live in a dictatorship.
I also learned in this thread they happened in other countries like Serbia.
I would expect them to happen in more european countries if there is indeed a second wave, and they do not have the foresight to deploy soldiers in the streets.
For example, I found an article called "Coronavirus: Are Australia's numbers at risk of escalating?"[0] (to me, the headline itself seems a strange question to ask, since the answer is obviously 'yes').
From the article:
"Australia has reported just over 7,400 cases, far fewer than many nations. It has seen 102 deaths - the last was a month ago.
Since May, the country has entered a phased exit from lockdown restrictions as the curve flattened.
But in the last week there's been a rise in cases in Victoria, mostly in the state capital Melbourne.
Concern has crept back into public conversation: Is this a small setback, or could it be something more sustained?"
To me there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding, perhaps perpetuated by the media, that locking down the country would stop the spread of the virus entirely.
It was also mentioned by the Victorian Premier yesterday that roughly 90% of people who felt sick were still out and about in the community and that roughly 50% of people who got tested for Covid were still active in the community before they got their results. Some of this would have been because they couldn't afford to miss work etc, but it's still disappointing.
Now you have places like New Zealand that appear to be trying to keep themselves COVID-free forever, without any clearly articulated path out of the restrictions.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
Germany is currently socially distancing at a similar rate as Sweden.
They previously had stricter social distancing and have far fewer per-capita infections and deaths, but the model says they’ll hit a nasty second wave in mid October.
Time will tell whether Sweden’s bet pays off in the long term.
Sweden has a worse death rate than its comparable neighbors, it’s economy has been hit as much if not more, and it has no greater “herd immunity” than the rest.
And the neighbors are opening up in a way Sweden cannot.
Essentially, Sweden did go into lockdown, and the difference from its neighbors were at the very margins. The economy was affected linearly by the additional activity at the margin, in other words, not by much, but on the other hand the virus growth was impacted exponentially, causing a significantly higher infection and death rate.
And this is Sweden, a country with a highly educated population, extremely good social and health systems, that was far better equipped to implement voluntary measures than the vast majority of the world.
I am wary of modeling "that far" in time, because while vaccines may take a little more to get ready, there are plenty of trials starting or going on for pharmacological treatments, which may give readouts as early as September.
While perhaps they won't be able to avoid infections, they might change clinical management significantly, in particular monoclonal antibodies.
If this is exactly how it’s supposed to be working I shudder to think what the bad case scenarios would have been.
Sweden’s betting on long term recovery in light of second/third/etc waves. As much as it detracts from the catastrophic fear and loathing narrative, it has sound economic and epidemiological foundations.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-s...
That's more than we can say for US/China. They keep up the appearance of being "the best". While the approach of Sweden was much more measured and transparent in my opinion.
Also, Sweden left it's constitution in full effect. Most countries did not, which I find VERY problematic. Constitutions should be pandemic proof.
Constitutions provide freedom of movement/association/gathering, usually, putting a fine on being close to others or gathering is messing with the constitution.
It's okay to do so, but only in real crazy events. A virus with a 99+ survival rate is not such event IMHO. We need to make our constitutions virus-proof.
Suspensions of rights in exceptional cases is granted only in the case of war, or by law (and that means going through the parliament).
https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/1992/03/17/092G0253/...
Starting from article 5. It seems that any such state of emergency can last up to 12 months and be extended for 12 more months. The current state of emergency is going to last until the end of July, and there are discussions about extending it.
That's a regular law, not part of the constitution, article 77 of the constitution provides further rules:
https://www.senato.it/1025?sezione=127&articolo_numero_artic...
It's not clear, and I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I found some interesting articles that describe the situation:
https://www.agensir.it/italia/2020/05/07/dpcm-e-coinvolgimen...
Context: the emergency acts are "decreto legge" and "dpcm" they are listed here:
http://www.governo.it/it/coronavirus-normativa
And this explains what dpcm are:
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreto_ministeriale_(ordina...
Apparently, article 77 describes 2 deadlines: 5 days for the parliament to vote on the decrees and 60 days for the laws to be finalized.
I think that the crux of the issue is: whatever is inside those "decreto legge/dpcm", it has to be approved by parliament... There have been multiple such decrees, and the only controversial point is for how long can a parliament decision be delayed (in theory only for up to 5 days, but I'm starting to get lost in details).
Due to how many decrees have been created, I'd need to check for when each one of them has been (or is being planned to be) voted on
I admit I worded my post poorly: a state of emergency exists, but limiting constitutional rights is, AFAICS, only permitted through law.
"DPCM" are mere administrative acts, and a few people expert in the judicial system have raised objections about their use in this way (including the head of the constitutional court). In particular, the debate is whether they can or can't limit constitutional rights.
By indirectly I mean something akin to the USA executive order, but agreed upon the cabinet, not the PM, then countersigned by the President, who can veto it. Then it lasts 60 days and must be confirmed by the parliament, or becomes void.
Keep in mind the constitution was written right after WW2, so the writers were carrying the scars of "emergency measures" going into dictatorship.
There are a few things that can be done by the health ministry, but nothing as big as a country wide lockdown.
It really depends on your personal definition of "ditched their constitution".
For example, Spain "declared state of alarm" which suspends temporarily some constitutional rights.
A procedure that is presumably permitted by said constitution, right?
Yes, the Spanish constitution does explicitly support state of alarm, which is a way to suspend constitutional rights.
https://english.elpais.com/politics/2020-03-13/what-is-a-sta...
The interment of Japanese citizens during WW2 is one example.
The only way good things get done is if people continually fight and push for them. Laziness will doom you, no matter what pretty words are on a paper somewhere.
And in a pandemic, "good things get done" has a very different definition than it does at other times, something no static set of law is going to be able to anticipate. You have to be active and you have to be flexible.
Certainly, many rights need not be affected by a pandemic at all, and countries that have tried to use it as an excuse to crack down on those rights should be condemned. For example, the Indian government has threatened freedom of the press by trying to censor news coverage of the pandemic. [1]
On the other hand, as an opposite extreme, freedom of movement is something that in normal times is considered a right, but absolutely can and should be limited during a pandemic.
Other rights are somewhere in between. For example, in the U.S., the use of the Defense Production Act to compel ventilator production could be considered a violation of economic freedom (which has often been thought of as a right, though it's not a Constitutional right), and it wasn't strictly necessary. But in practice there wasn't too much controversy over it; most people seem to tolerate the idea of the government temporarily commandeering the economy in emergencies, especially for something as obviously beneficial as making ventilators. (Though there might have been more controversy if a Democratic president had done it, but that's getting into the political weeds…)
[1] https://cpj.org/2020/03/indian-supreme-court-denies-governme...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_issues_related_...
Most European states, including Russia have also signed the European Convention on Human Rights.
All of these countries had troubling human rights issues pre-COVID.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/27...
> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone Sunday and agreed to open a dialogue to avoid further diplomatic fallout following Poland’s initial approval of a law making it a criminal offense to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.
I believe they backtracked a bit on that one after the outcry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_ideology-free_zone
> An "LGBT-free zone" (Polish: Strefa wolna od LGBT) also referred to as "LGBT free zone" (Polish: Strefa wolna od LGBT) refers to some regions of Poland which have declared themselves unwelcoming of an alleged "LGBT ideology." As of June 2020, some 100 municipalities (including five voivodships), encompassing about a third of the country, declared themselves "LGBT-free zones".
The highlighted issues make it clear Poland was willing to infringe on speech/expression rights even without the excuse of COVID.
Great show of good faith there /s.
That appearance is long gone in the US. Last week Trump complained to the press that the US isn't doing as bad as we think because Mexico and Brazil are also doing poorly.
So there's a long way between "we are the best" and "hey, maybe just maybe we don't suck as much as other countries that are doing awfully bad".
But in that case they'll also have to explain what their strategy will be at the end of summer.
This is a very concise way of putting what some believe is the best plan, thanks.
So I was "surprised" to not even see that fact be mentioned in the article and would be cautious about attributing this to the Swedish strategy. Did they make any policy changes in the days leading up to the 24th?
During summer, Swedes are spending as much time as possible outside (to make up for the dark cold winter months). Most offices are closed anyway, and unlike many other countries in Europe which have removed their previous limits, Sweden still has a 50 people limit on public gatherings and strict rules for how restaurants and bars can operate (for example, only table service, no bar service, even for outdoor venues). Amusement parks are closed. The authorities still ask people not to use public transport if they don't have to. Plus, people in risk groups (who don't have antibodies) are still asked to limit their interactions with others and to limit their mobility.
So considering that infections are happening mostly indoors, that Sweden nowadays has more restrictions in place than many European countries that locked down and then opened up, and that Swedes generally protect their personal space and don't get too touchy with others (in comparison to some other cultures), it's not a surprise that the numbers in Sweden are going down.
I'm happy about this trend. The way I see it, the country gets a second chance now to get things right ahead of fall/winter. Sadly, considering that the state epidemiologist and his team still are the same (and that he evidently mostly cares about telling everybody how great his strategy is/was), I guess they'll find ways to screw things up again.