[alancalverd]

magine you where a fit cancer patient

Let's start with a simpler exercise. Imagine a four-sided triangle.

[Bored chemist]

Imagine you where a fit cancer patient in April 2020, who had incurable cancer. They receive a letter telling them to isolate as they are vulnerable and are not allowed to go out and enjoy themselves.

And, because they are sensible, they ignore it.
What is the government going to do about it? Execute them?

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

magine you where a fit cancer patient

Let's start with a simpler exercise. Imagine a four-sided triangle.

Again you show your lack of knowledge, reasonableness and empathy. I have known leukemia patients manage their condition for 25 years and live to 95.  Is it hitler again Alan?

[Bored chemist]

Is it hitler again

It never was.

[alancalverd]

There is a considerable difference between advising people who are immunocompromised (or suffering from cardiac or respiratory disease) to strenuously avoid contact with potential sources of COVID infection, and imposing a statutory curfew on practically everyone to prevent the general spread of the disease.

Given the infectivity of COVID, and the general expectation that anyone seriously affected will be treated in a hospital,  it could be considered antisocial for a person who knows he is particularly susceptible to expose himself to infection, because in so doing he is placing a burden on the health service and putting his carers at elevated risk. This is an order of magnitude more antisocial than skiing or overdosing on heroin because the treatment for a broken leg or overdose does not put NHS staff in danger.

[alancalverd]

So another interesting question is why the news articles are not full of questions about Boris killing thousands by being incompetent.

Because the predominantly socialist Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, and red-to-the core BBC and ITV....oh dear.  My resident apoplectic Tory back bencher, having voted to defund the Beeb and control the Press,  seems to have lost his own argument.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

The only legal and justifiable quarantine enforcement by legal means, as in that at the ports is working as you would expect.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9162883/Coronavirus-UK-Border-Force-fine-30-arrivals-500-not-having-negative-Covid-test.html

January 25, over 3 months since the problem became apparent, still a waste of time.

[alancalverd]

The problem was apparent in 2019. Wuhan seems to have solved it by quarantine, just like everyone else who took it seriously.

[evan_au]

An independent think-tank (the Lowy Institute) tried to rank the COVID response of various countries....

Comparing the ranking of Nordic countries:
Iceland 7
Finland 17
Norway 18
Denmark 23
Sweden 37

Comparing the primarily English-speaking countries:
New Zealand 1
Australia 8
Canada 61
UK 66
USA 94

An interesting comment from one of the investigators:
- It seems that countries with populations < 10 million seemed to do better, perhaps because they could pivot more flexibly.
- One reason Australia performed so well is because health is handled on a state-by-state basis, so each state acted like an independent country with border controls; each state has a population < 10 million
- Megacities with population > 10 million are hotspots. I guess that's why the mayor of New York had to act on his own. 

Play with the statistics here:
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

[alancalverd]

Nicely presented but a bit superficial.

Knowing that the vector (outside of Wuhan) is human, the key factors in transmission must surely be population density and intercity commuting. Back in the good old days, villages would shut the gates to keep the plague at bay, but whilst very few people commute regularly between, say, Sydney and Brisbane, or New York and Chicago, it's no big deal to live in Manchester and go to Birmingham or Liverpool once a week for fun, profit, or a lungful of  whatever is fashionable.

There are more cats in London than people in Sweden, which has twice the land area of the UK, so the  incidence of COVID in Sweden seems to belie the stereotype of a reserved and distant population - was there a national barn dance?

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

An independent think-tank (the Lowy Institute) tried to rank the COVID response of various countries....

Comparing the ranking of Nordic countries:
Iceland 7
Finland 17
Norway 18
Denmark 23
Sweden 37

Comparing the primarily English-speaking countries:
New Zealand 1
Australia 8
Canada 61
UK 66
USA 94

An interesting comment from one of the investigators:
- It seems that countries with populations < 10 million seemed to do better, perhaps because they could pivot more flexibly.
- One reason Australia performed so well is because health is handled on a state-by-state basis, so each state acted like an independent country with border controls; each state has a population < 10 million
- Megacities with population > 10 million are hotspots. I guess that's why the mayor of New York had to act on his own. 

Play with the statistics here:
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

For the happiest places on earth the nordic countries have a suicide problem. Better these days but if lockdowns rock the boat it could lead to an upswing again. At 1000 extra suicides a year in Finland in 1990 could really mount up, considering that would scale to 12000 suicides in Britain per year.

As a balance I will say that I do not know of other deaths related  to depression, drug alcohol bad health, but if the swedes are saved from mental illness by being relaxed, you have to reconsider.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

An independent think-tank (the Lowy Institute) tried to rank the COVID response of various countries....

Comparing the ranking of Nordic countries:
Iceland 7
Finland 17
Norway 18
Denmark 23
Sweden 37

Comparing the primarily English-speaking countries:
New Zealand 1
Australia 8
Canada 61
UK 66
USA 94

An interesting comment from one of the investigators:
- It seems that countries with populations < 10 million seemed to do better, perhaps because they could pivot more flexibly.
- One reason Australia performed so well is because health is handled on a state-by-state basis, so each state acted like an independent country with border controls; each state has a population < 10 million
- Megacities with population > 10 million are hotspots. I guess that's why the mayor of New York had to act on his own. 

Play with the statistics here:
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

For the happiest places on earth the nordic countries have a suicide problem. Better these days but if lockdowns rock the boat it could lead to an upswing again. At 1000 extra suicides a year in Finland in 1990 could really mount up, considering that would scale to 12000 suicides in Britain per year.

As a balance I will say that I do not know of other deaths related  to depression, drug alcohol bad health, but if the swedes are saved from mental illness by being relaxed, you have to reconsider.

For further balance, up until new year, only 377 people who where in good health beneath 60 had died of corona, if we scale this for Finland it gives us 35 people under 60, if we say only 5 percent of the populace have contracted corona virus it total 700.

[alancalverd]

Death isn't the measure of the harm of COVID. It makes political headlines but, particularly among the over-80 cohort, has very little impact compared with chronic disability at any age.

Anyway if you want to compare deaths, the UK total for 2020 was about 7,000 suicides and 100,000 COVID deaths. In a "normal" year the figures would be about 6000 and 0 respectively. The effect of relaxing quarantine restrictions too early can be seen by looking at the January 2021 figures:  30,000 COVID deaths in one month, attributable to Christmas alone.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Balance again

https://www.statista.com/statistics/911228/drug-related-deaths-number-finland/

https://nordan.org/finland-sharp-increase-in-drug-experimentation-from-one-generation-to-another-nearly-half-experiment-with-drugs/

https://www.stat.fi/til/ksyyt/2018/ksyyt_2018_2019-12-16_tie_001_en.html

So suicides are down but drugs are up, read into that what you will, maybe drugs are helping people cope, perhaps a good shot of vallium isn't such a bad thing.

[alancalverd]

The data you quote ceases in  2018, so has nothing to do with COVID quarantine.

And remember that suicide is a solution, not a problem.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

The data you quote ceases in  2018, so has nothing to do with COVID quarantine.

And remember that suicide is a solution, not a problem.

For balance of suicide rates versus drug dependancy mortality and usage, basically the picture is suicides down, drugs up. Probably more toward the uk situation, so the suicide rate in Finland was not that high in the 1990s if taken in consideration that they had far lower drug use. Drug use is a problem because it isn't controlled, by prohibition or allowance.

[alancalverd]

Drug use is only a problem if you make it one. As long as he doesn't drive under the influence, it is of no concern to me what anyone shoves up his nose or in his veins, but as long as the supply is illegal the police waste time and resources chasing dealers, and users often resort to crime to pay for the stuff. If clean stuff was available over the counter to registered users, it would boost the economy of Afghanistan and Colombia and put a lot of very nasty people out of business. Tax cocaine, heroin and marijuana like alcohol and tobacco and let the money flow into  public services instead of criminal lifestyles.