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-   -   All borders to reopen. (https://www.pprune.org/australia-new-zealand-pacific/632861-all-borders-reopen.html)

slats11 22nd Dec 2022 11:21


COVID in China is about to be a huge test!!
Not really. China is relatively protected against C19. Not resistant. But far better protected than western countries.
1. A small % of population > 75
2. A very low mean BMI
3. Genetic selection thru millennia of coexistence with coronaviruses.

Join the dots
1. Virus appears in Wuhan
2. China throws out the pandemic playbook and implements measures which were specifically refuted when pandemic plans were reviewed / revised as recently as 2019.
3. China leads WHO astray, then Italy, then UK (with Ferguson’s wildly over the top models). Then the rest of the world falls into line like dominoes.
4. We then realise the virus is dangerous, but by 1-2 orders of magnitude less than initially suspected. Nowhere outside Wuhan did young and middle aged drop dead in the street. It was all propaganda. The infection fatality rate has now been revised to be around 0.1%. And way less if < 60. And these figures are pre-vax.
5. The direct and indirect costs of lockdown start to emerge. They are frightening, locked in, and will play out for decades. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
6. The rest of the world opened up. Partly because shielded by vax. Partly because we realise we got it wrong. Guess which explanation is emphasised and which is downplayed.
7. Things are not back to normal, and likely never will. Things got so broke we can’t fix it. We aren’t going back to 2019. We will need to find a new normal.
8. There is now significant excess mortality - a minority appears due to C19. The majority is due to the effects of lockdown, delayed medical care, and possibly due to the vax.
9. China enters another lockdown, but this time the rest of the world ain’t buying it. China scores own goal with civil unrest and ongoing reduced integration with global economy.
10. Painted into a corner, Xi pivots. Because that’s all he can do.

We will see what happens next.

What we won’t see is millions of Chinese dying.

slats11 22nd Dec 2022 12:21

Consider the US experience
https://elliottmiddleton.substack.co...lockdowns-kill
So looking at excess deaths in 2020, perhaps 58% were due to Covid and 42% were due to our various mitigations - lockdowns, deferred medical care, and probably also the vax.

Here’s the thing though
Covid deaths were overwhelmingly in the elderly. The average age of death from Covid was slightly above life expectancy.
Non-Covid deaths were overwhelmingly much younger.

Now some people argue that every life is equal. And it is in some respects. But not so when there is an opportunity cost - when spending $ and resources trying to save some people means others will die.

QALY (quality of life years) is the most accepted way to add sone objectivity to a fraught area.
QALY calculations mean that with limited resources or when a policy will benefit sone and harm others, decisions should favor those with the most time to live - not those with the least.

So although US likely prevented more deaths overall through these measures, total years of life lost were higher.

something to contemplate. And that does not even take into account the harms to the young due to reduced education, reduced social interaction, and losing those all important rites of passage.


Australia was in a different situation. We could ;and did) close our borders until we had a vaccine. It was a hell of a gamble which paid off. But contemplate the awful political conundrum had there been no vax (remember efforts failed with SARS in 2003, and there was no guarantee we would succeed this time).

Having closed the border however, internal mitigations probably did more harm overall than good.

slats11 22nd Dec 2022 19:27

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-...st-generation/

This is what happens when you pursue one KPI to the exclusion of all others.

History will not judge us well. Nor should it.

Wizofoz 15th Jul 2023 01:30


Originally Posted by slats11 (Post 11352813)
Consider the US experience
https://elliottmiddleton.substack.co...lockdowns-kill
So looking at excess deaths in 2020, perhaps 58% were due to Covid and 42% were due to our various mitigations - lockdowns, deferred medical care, and probably also the vax.

.

You might have had a point till you said this- ABSOLUTLEY no evidence of that.

BUT now that we have the virus under some semblance of control, BOTH Covid and ancillary deaths can fall. If we had NOT taken measures to mitigate Covid deaths, that 58% would be much higher- you are looking at deaths that happened, not those that were prevented.

Ladloy 15th Jul 2023 02:57

This thread needs to be locked and left to die.

MalcolmReynolds 15th Jul 2023 13:01

No! Never again! Never Forget what these asshole politicians did to this country.


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