2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2740899 8-Jul-2021 06:46

You can make the scanning compulsory, which we should do anyway at anything above Level 0.

Even the test is considered a procedure IIIRC which is why you can't force someone to get it, but you can make them do a further MIQ stint to be sure.

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#2740900 8-Jul-2021 06:51

You could also make a variety of activities only eligible to vaccinated people. Low level carrots for low level minds

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#2740902 8-Jul-2021 06:56

WHO not happy with UK reopening

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/countries-should-not-relax-covid-rules-too-quickly-says-who-official-mike-ryan

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#2740903 8-Jul-2021 06:57

Australia sending assistance to Indonesia

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/australia-to-send-25m-astrazeneca-vaccine-doses-to-indonesia-as-covid-infections-soar

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#2740910 8-Jul-2021 07:36

antonknee:

sbiddle:

The problem I see right now is all the experts including Bloomfield now warning us of the cold hard realities of what life is going to be like here in coming years, and a Govt that's telling us the opposite.

You keep making this claim - but you have yet to back this up? I have not seen the government say anything of the sort. Nowhere have I seen a promise that all is well, land of milk and honey, we'll never see another outbreak. In fact it's the opposite - I've always seen the government say outbreaks could happen, but that we'll deal with them in line with our strategy as it applies when they happen.

Respectfully, unless you can point to where the government has told us the opposite (and actually told us the opposite, not just said "we're watching what others do" or "we're doing a vaccination program" then I would assert that you're basically just spreading unhelpful FUD or disinformation.

NZ has an elimination strategy in place for Covid. This means a target of zero cases, and this week alone we've has the PM, Covid response minister and the director general of health all double down and reaffirm this.

An elimination strategy is fundamentally at odds with any sort of border opening. Opening the borders is going to result in the introduction of cases and will have to mean the acceptance of Covid as an endemic health issue that is going to result in community transmission in the unvaccinated (and even some of us who are fully vaccinated will catch Covid also), and will result in the deaths of some people.

Bloomfield gave his speech warning about what a new normal could well look like in NZ and that it may not be with all the freedoms and lack of worries we have now. He got shut down pretty quickly by the PM for that before trying again a few days later.

Yes we need to be careful with our messaging because we risk putting people off being vaccinated, but on the other hand we need to be making people aware of the risks they are going to face going forward by being unvaccinated. There are so many people who think because we beat Covid that it's never coming back, and the reality is that is simply not true.

It's pretty clear now that it's highly unlikely the world is not going to return to a 2019 era normal any time soon - but that doesn't mean the world is going to stay shut down. The world is opening up very quickly, and people have to evolve and adapt and how that happens is going to differ depending on where they are. We're not going to be able to keep the closed sign up indefinately, and opening up is probably going to mean compromising on some of the freedoms that we have right now.

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#2740912 8-Jul-2021 07:43

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/125662926/covid19-government-considers-permanent-miq-facility-dismisses-uks-decision-to-live-with-covid

This was just two days ago, it doesn't support what you are saying re the Govt position

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#2740913 8-Jul-2021 07:45

Fred99:

Fred99:

CDC data shows that Delta was about 5% of new cases a month ago, it's >20% of new cases now, and the states where Delta variant is becoming dominant most quickly are the states with the lowest % fully vaccinated.

I posted that just over a week ago.

CDC now report that Delta variant is now 51% of new cases in the US overall, and over 80% in some areas:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/06/1013582342/delta-is-now-the-dominant-coronavirus-variant-in-the-u-s

The obsession (and criticism) of the UK opening by many people and media here really intrigues me. The US is a far bigger petri dish with far greater risks particularly in those states with incredibly low vaccination numbers.

The next month or so is going to be truly fascinating, and the simple fact is with so many experts evenly split over the opening up debate we're very quickly going to learn if vaccines really do actually work. If they don't work then we're going to be in a whole lot of brown stuff..

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#2740916 8-Jul-2021 08:01

GV27:

You can make the scanning compulsory, which we should do anyway at anything above Level 0.

Even the test is considered a procedure IIIRC which is why you can't force someone to get it, but you can make them do a further MIQ stint to be sure.

But scanning doesn't prevent Covid. All scanning does is provide a way for people who were at a location of interest to be notified of a potential contact.

It doesn't offer any ability for the MoH to actually identify those people and take extra steps (such as contacting them directly) due to the privacy based design of our system. While many people agree with this privacy model, it exposes the fundamental issue of not actually knowing who people are.

We're now seeing large numbers of Bluetooth contact notifications from app users who have Bluetooth tracing enabled, and yet this doesn't seem to be something that is being focused on by media or the AoG committee or MoH. Even our Covid ads offer inconsistent messaging re Bluetooth (some recent radio ads have included old audio about Bluetooth capabilities).

I'm still uncertain why the MoH have taken no steps towards "BLE beacons" that could be offered to businesses to install in places like doorways and lifts to trigger BLE location logging. There are many pros (and some cons) to such a solution but for a country that has high installation figures for the app (with a significant percentage who have Bluetooth tracing enabled) and yet people who can't be bothered in scanning. Walking into a store and receiving an automatic popup notification saying you've been automatically checked in and checked out of a site would give an amazing amount of location contract tracing data.

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#2740929 8-Jul-2021 09:23

So with these "BLE beacons", what are the chances of being tagged to a store with a beacon just by walking past the front of said store? That could get rather frustrating when you have to decipher which places you visited and which places you were only near or walked past.

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#2740933 8-Jul-2021 09:33

sbiddle:

The obsession (and criticism) of the UK opening by many people and media here really intrigues me. The US is a far bigger petri dish with far greater risks particularly in those states with incredibly low vaccination numbers.

The next month or so is going to be truly fascinating, and the simple fact is with so many experts evenly split over the opening up debate we're very quickly going to learn if vaccines really do actually work. If they don't work then we're going to be in a whole lot of brown stuff..

There's no doubt that vaccines work.

I think you'll find that some of the "experts" who've been pulled in by right wing / populist politicians could be compared to "experts" in climate science, trickle-down economics, reefer madness, whatever the science was, you plucked a hired gun to fight your battles. This time there's a great pool of "experts" churning out papers that haven't been peer reviewed, but still get widely publicised if the conclusion suits an agenda. When factions start throwing around labels like "doomer" you realise that if their team was in charge, they'd become much the same as Bolsonaro, Modi, Trump etc.

The political media machine is in full swing in Aus. Most of the articles in Murdoch/Channel 9 media are putting a deliberate "spin" on articles - blaming the risk that NSW may not be able to contain their outbreak on "Delta Strain" - and not on the reluctance of a conservative "business first" state government to lock down hard and fast. Entirely predictable it was too - including predicting the emergence of strains like "Delta" and what the characteristics of those strains would be.

Fred99

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#2740938 8-Jul-2021 09:47

Handle9:

You can not make a medical treatment compulsory. That would be incredibly unethical.

Well you actually can, and it's done relatively routinely through a court process when unwell people are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others due to mental health issues.

Not that it's likely to happen, but I'd be sure that if something like smallpox appeared and the only way to control an outbreak was to ringfence the location by 100% vaccination of a surrounding population, antivaxxers and "but my freedom" zealots wouldn't be given any choice in the matter.

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#2740943 8-Jul-2021 09:52

The United Kingdom has announced plans to abandon its remaining Covid-19 restrictions in favour of freedom, a move public health expert Professor Michael Baker has labelled a “barbaric experiment”.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/125675591/public-health-expert-no-we-shouldnt-aim-to-live-with-covid19-like-we-live-with-the-flu

sen8or

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#2740945 8-Jul-2021 09:57

Fred99:

There's no doubt that vaccines work.

I think you'll find that some of the "experts" who've been pulled in by right wing / populist politicians could be compared to "experts" in climate science, trickle-down economics, reefer madness, whatever the science was, you plucked a hired gun to fight your battles. This time there's a great pool of "experts" churning out papers that haven't been peer reviewed, but still get widely publicised if the conclusion suits an agenda. When factions start throwing around labels like "doomer" you realise that if their team was in charge, they'd become much the same as Bolsonaro, Modi, Trump etc.

The political media machine is in full swing in Aus. Most of the articles in Murdoch/Channel 9 media are putting a deliberate "spin" on articles - blaming the risk that NSW may not be able to contain their outbreak on "Delta Strain" - and not on the reluctance of a conservative "business first" state government to lock down hard and fast. Entirely predictable it was too - including predicting the emergence of strains like "Delta" and what the characteristics of those strains would be.

And the left wing doesn't pull in its own "experts" that will gleefully support its own position when its politically palatable to do so?

Pot/Kettle?

Fred99

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#2740950 8-Jul-2021 10:08

sen8or:

And the left wing doesn't pull in its own "experts" that will gleefully support its own position when its politically palatable to do so?

Science and "facts" tend to have a left-wing bias. Hence you'll find that academics "experts" tend to be "left wing", that follows through society where there's a strong correlation between education and political affiliation. Anyway it's the wrong thread to debate that.

ezbee

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#2740958 8-Jul-2021 10:28

We don't know how lucky we are.

Fiji announces record number of new Covid-19 cases; three deaths
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/446412/fiji-announces-record-number-of-new-covid-19-cases-three-deaths

No sign of slowing down, having made it Covid free until March this year, it must be doubly heartbreaking.

Fiji I suppose did have a lot more international contact than one would think with military having big involvements in UN peacekeeping around the world, and cultural links to countries where SARS-Cov2 is widespread.

I see there have been calls for medical staff here for a special mission to Fiji to help.

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