Re: CV and mad panic behaviour
Reply #3569 –
The real risk is exposed in those countries without a valid response, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, they show the fundamentals.
Here the apparent reduced risk a result of the lockdowns and other measures to restrict the R0, you can't remove those controls and expect the numbers to remain low, the suggestion the response can be scaled back and it'll still be OK is the exact opposite of what the rest of the globe is experiencing.
A massive tell is how quiet some wealthy influential regions have become, in particular some that were initially loudly sceptical and propagated herd immunity as the only solution have almost disappeared from the debate, that is in part because they are now falling like dominoes into the line with the reality of the pandemic situation.
The fundamentals are the same everywhere, restrict or slow the transmission, keep the case numbers low allowing hospitals to deal with he ill in sensible levels and death rates are reduced.
Even in it's heavily vaccinated environment, the UK which has almost 70% of it's population vaccinated, is predicting 50000 Delta variant cases a day in the coming weeks as lockdown is removed. I don't know what that translates to in Australia's environment if you open up and only have 15% of the population vaccinated, but the risk indicates it is potentially devastating for our tiny economy. Interesting too, in the UK the critics are nervous Boris is not accounting for the costs and effects of long COVID in his sums, he just wants the economy back to normal as quickly as possible. If the numbers remain as is, and the Delta variant hits 50,000 cases a day, that's still about 30 to 50 deaths per day in unvaccinated individuals. It's not hard to see what Boris has done, he has basically initiated a get vaccinated or suffer the consequences policy.
Keep in mind, because the Delta variant R0 is much higher, the resistance levels for herd immunity must be greater than 90%, so 70% vaccination doesn't cut it!