Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

.

This is just guesswork, but I tend to think that the prediction that at some stage everyone will contract this virus is correct. If so, although the % of unvaccinated vulnerable is very low in many countries, the numbers themselves may be high and if roughly 10% of these are likely to die, then COVID deaths will continue to occur for months / years to come until everyone has either survived or succumbed.

I think your guess is pretty logical SWL.
It jives with my own gut feeling that this type of virus will survive as a chronic threat of death to those less healthy and/or old, for years to come.

It may become seen as part of the family of "natural causes of death" as sick or older bodies with diminished immune systems succumb to Covid induced failures.

Once accepted, the positive side is we can now get on with living our lives and that this becomes a powerful incentive to stay or become fit.

[Montanan]

Russia moving to harshly restrict the unvaccinated.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe...-to-cut-deaths

New pandemic restrictions prepared by Russian authorities will go into effect next year, a top government official has said, reiterating the need for vaccine-hesitant Russians to get immunised against the coronavirus.

Two bills outlining the measures were introduced in the Russian parliament on Friday (local time). They would restrict many public places, as well as domestic and international trains and flights, so only those who were fully vaccinated, had recovered from Covid-19 or were medically exempt from vaccination would have access.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who heads Russia’s state coronavirus task force, said the restrictions on public places would take force on February 1, 2022. After that, Russians would need to present QR codes proving their status from a government website. . . .
Until then, people who can present a negative coronavirus test taken within the previous 72 hours still can enter all public settings. It will be up to regional governments to decide which public places to include in the QR-code system.

“People need to be given time to get vaccinated and complete the necessary paperwork,” Golikova said. “All of our citizens have an ... opportunity to get vaccinated in the meantime.”

. . .


Fewer than 40 per cent of Russia’s nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated, even though the country approved a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine months before most of the world. In total, the coronavirus task force has reported more than 8.9 million confirmed infections and nearly 253,000 deaths – by far the highest death toll in Europe. Some experts believe the true figure is even higher.

[goboatingnow]

This is not looking good for the winter , rolling partial lockdowns etc.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

This is not looking good for the winter , rolling partial lockdowns etc.

Ireland is now considering re-introducing some measures around work at home procedures and potential limit on gatherings

I think we are way way from being clear of this pandemic. I’m beginning to form the view that the vaccine benefit is very short lived. The public will be very dubious if regimes of poorly performing vaccines continues.

In the meantime the oppression of the unvaccinated continues here in Greece. I’m not a fan of this singling out of a group. It’s too convenient a hook to hang the blame on

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Russia moving to harshly restrict the unvaccinated.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe...-to-cut-deaths

New pandemic restrictions prepared by Russian authorities will go into effect next year, a top government official has said, reiterating the need for vaccine-hesitant Russians to get immunised against the coronavirus.

Two bills outlining the measures were introduced in the Russian parliament on Friday (local time). They would restrict many public places, as well as domestic and international trains and flights, so only those who were fully vaccinated, had recovered from Covid-19 or were medically exempt from vaccination would have access.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who heads Russia’s state coronavirus task force, said the restrictions on public places would take force on February 1, 2022. After that, Russians would need to present QR codes proving their status from a government website. . . .
Until then, people who can present a negative coronavirus test taken within the previous 72 hours still can enter all public settings. It will be up to regional governments to decide which public places to include in the QR-code system.

“People need to be given time to get vaccinated and complete the necessary paperwork,” Golikova said. “All of our citizens have an ... opportunity to get vaccinated in the meantime.”

Fewer than 40 per cent of Russia’s nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated, even though the country approved a domestically developed Covid-19 vaccine months before most of the world. In total, the coronavirus task force has reported more than 8.9 million confirmed infections and nearly 253,000 deaths – by far the highest death toll in Europe. Some experts believe the true figure is even higher.

The situation in Russia is dire, much worse than what you can read about. I have ties there. They already incurred 3000 excess deaths per million, about double the official COVID deaths, and they are in the middle of the biggest outbreak of the pandemic with no end in sight. Hospitals are overflowing and people with underlying conditions are being triaged.



What the authorities are doing, is a very Russian way to handle the situation. Next they will simply require everyone to be vaccinated. This will save a ton of lives. They developed an excellent vaccine, actually the most effective non-mRNA vaccine of all. They developed it and ramped up production in record time. Back in March, when Americans were still standing in line to be vaccinated, anyone in Moscow could walk in and get a jab, even illegal aliens. And yet they are only 34% vaccinated -- as of the middle of November. It's crazy and horrible. This is shaping up as the worst outcome in the developed world.

[Baronkrak]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

This is just guesswork, but I tend to think that the prediction that at some stage everyone will contract this virus is correct.
SWL

I do not think so
Until we discover a vaccine that really immunise against Covid the population of the world needs to decrease to 4 billions for Covid to disappear by social distancing like the Spanish flu did. Or achieve a population density of 92 per Km2 and distance accordingly.
Gubernya population: 1918 3 800 000 area: 41 300 death 65 000

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Baronkrak

I do not think so
Until we discover a vaccine that really immunise against Covid the population of the world needs to decrease to 4 billions for Covid to disappear by social distancing like the Spanish flu did. Or achieve a population density of 92 per Km2 and distance accordingly.
Gubernya population: 1918 3 800 000 area: 41 300 death 65 000

Population density in Finland 8 per km2, in my whereabouts 0,5. We still have Covid also here..

[El Pinguino]

I find it interesting that countries that many would consider '3rd world' and a bit backward - possibly even 'banana republics' - are doing so well compared with eastern Europe and even countries such as Germany and Austria.
Take Ecuador f'rinstance

https://cuencahighlife.com/pandemic-...endemic-stage/

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...untry/ecuador/

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I find it interesting that countries that many would consider '3rd world' and a bit backward - possibly even 'banana republics' - are doing so well compared with eastern Europe and even countries such as Germany and Austria.
Take Ecuador f'rinstance

https://cuencahighlife.com/pandemic-...endemic-stage/

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...untry/ecuador/

It depends what statistics you look at when proclaiming countries have done “so well” during the pandemic.

% excess deaths in Ecuador have been dramatically higher than in the US and UK:
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

Most deaths in Ecuador have been in the 60-64 age group.

This “middle aged” group has been hit hard in a population with a low median age (28):
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig1_348226388

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

It depends what statistics you look at when proclaiming countries have done “so well” during the pandemic.

% excess deaths in Ecuador have been dramatically higher than in the US and UK:
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

Most deaths in Ecuador have been in the 60-64 age group.

This “middle aged” group has been hit hard in a population with a low median age (28):
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig1_348226388

Um .... there is a big difference between 'are doing' and 'have done'. Pretty much 'the present' and 'the past'.
Now you may having to rely on stats to know what has happened and is happening in Ecuador and elsewhere.
I tend to rely more on reports from friends that are there plus news reports from reputable sources. Which is why I tend not to comment on countries I have never been to.

Yes, Ecuador was probably hit as hard as or harder than anywhere else on the planet at the start of the pandemic. People dropping dead in the streets of Guayaquil and bodies lying in homes for days before collection because the numbers were so overwhelming.

That was last year - look at how they have done this year - what some of us call 'the present'.

You don't think they are doing well - on either a 'stand alone ' basis or when compared with eastern Europe, Germany, Austria at the present time?

OK, whatever.

[El Pinguino]

The present

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

The present…..

Current excess deaths during a pandemic are affected significantly by the number of excess deaths that have already occurred. If a large percentage of the vulnerable have already died during the pandemic then this will result in less deaths later. Excess deaths would in fact be expected to be negative once the crisis is over.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Um .... there is a big difference between 'are doing' and 'have done'. Pretty much 'the present' and 'the past'.
Now you may having to rely on stats to know what has happened and is happening in Ecuador and elsewhere.
I tend to rely more on reports from friends that are there plus news reports from reputable sources. Which is why I tend not to comment on countries I have never been to.

Yes, Ecuador was probably hit as hard as or harder than anywhere else on the planet at the start of the pandemic. People dropping dead in the streets of Guayaquil and bodies lying in homes for days before collection because the numbers were so overwhelming.

That was last year - look at how they have done this year - what some of us call 'the present'.

You don't think they are doing well - on either a 'stand alone ' basis or when compared with eastern Europe, Germany, Austria at the present time?

OK, whatever.

These things go up and down, so comparison at one moment is not all that informative.

But there are other reasons why even excess death figures may show over a long period of time, that a country like Russia or Ukraine, may have had a lot more death than a country like Ghana or Ecuador:

1. Excess death figures are better comparable with each other and so give a better picture -- FOR DEVELOPED COUNTRIES. Less developed countries do not always have good or even roughly usable statistics even for mortality. What that means is that excess death figures reveal bad covid death figures in a country like Russia, which at least has good mortality figures, but might not say much about what is really going on in Ghana. We don't really even know how many people live in Ghana. Russia has manipulated and even faked covid death figures, but the demographic data is first class -- going back to Soviet times, every person even in the depths of the taiga are counted, registered, kept up with throughout their lives, down to how many square meters of living space each person has.

2. And anyway, different countries have different courses of the pandemic. For reasons we can sort of see and for other reasons we don't understand or just sheer chance. We've seen in Europe how a week plus or minus of timing of Spring Break in 2020 made all the difference between a huge outbreak and nothing -- that's sheer chance. For the category of "reasons we can sort of see", a country like Russia, which is highly urbanized and where people live in crowded multigenerational apartments, and almost exclusively in apartment blocks rather than separate homes, and who travel a great deal inside the country, might have a naturally much sharper pandemic dynamic, than a country like Ghana, where people don't move around much from village to village, much less city to city.

So I'm not sure what you find surprising in all this. Seems to me like kind of what we would expect. What concerns excess death over SHORT periods of time, these are much less informative than covid deaths, because demographic data is not reported every day in most countries.

And as to Germany, this is the least affected large country in Europe, and one of the least affected in the "first world". They have had only 980 excess deaths per million cumulatively, compared to 1123 official covid deaths.

As I've written, it's really bad in Russia, worse than the official reports. I have close people there. They are all vaccinated, but I worry about them. It's so bad I wonder if there might be some kind of breakdown of civic order.

[tp12]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Current excess deaths during a pandemic are affected significantly by the number of excess deaths that have already occurred. If a large percentage of the vulnerable have already died during the pandemic then this will result in less deaths later. Excess deaths would in fact be expected to be negative once the crisis is over.

This assumes that measures can’t be taken after the initial loss of lives which isn’t correct. Vaccination and other measures have been taken since then

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by tp12

This assumes that measures can’t be taken after the initial loss of lives which isn’t correct. Vaccination and other measures have been taken since then

You missed her point. She just means that once there has been a wave of death, there are fewer vulnerable people left to die. She's not talking about measures.