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

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

I think now that vaccination programs are starting and the situation is likely to improve dramatically over the next month or two, given a particularly infectious strain is circulating then tightening borders is reasonable. There is no need for measures at the moment to be sustainable given the situation is going to improve swiftly.

I mentioned earlier that from first hand reports in the UK it seems that no proof of vaccination is being given and to take your yellow book in with you if you have one, or ask for it to be recorded for your personal use. I imagine that with medical facilities overloaded it would be hard to retrospectively get this.

Yes, I didn't say the border controls are unreasonable. I guess on the contrary that tight border controls are very much the right thing to do at this moment, to try to keep out the new strains until people can be vaccinated. Just a big PITA for people like me whose lives are spread out around several countries.

I'm start to face that I will have to curtail travel for a while and I'm trying to rearrange my life to allow for that. Sigh.

[laird]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

If anyone is interested in what it is like to cruise the lower latitudes of Northern Europe in winter, below are a few photos I took this morning.

It looks like fairyland here . I awoke late, as we had been kept awake half the night with the rumbling of ice moving past our hull. I tried to record the sound, but as with photos of big seas, it was not nearly as impressive as the real thing.

The third photo of our solar panels was taken just minutes ago. Not much output can be hoped for today.

On recent walks we've been so lucky to witness what wildlife photographers spend endless hours trying to capture: mother and cub otters. Two were fishing near the shore last week. Further along another otter carried a crab out of the water and proceed to break it up. It then scurried up the bank to its nest that turned out to be about a metre from where we were standing. We could hear the young squeaking as mum approached and passed directly in front of us. A magic experience, particularly as they are generally so shy! We were downwind and she probably couldn’t smell us, plus vision is apparently poor and we had frozen in place.

Voyeurism is not usually my thing, but two seals were mating off the point yesterday and it was mesmerising watching .

Your making me envious , I miss the wild life and the few numbers of people that you meet and witness in Northern climates during winter , I remember well the noises that the sea offers make when they use stones to break open the shellfish

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by laird

Your making me envious , I miss the wild life and the few numbers of people that you meet and witness in Northern climates during winter , I remember well the noises that the sea offers make when they use stones to break open the shellfish

Hi Laird
Your homeland is an indescribably beautiful cruising ground.

In the midst of this pandemic, nature is oblivious to the crisis and it is very uplifting to experience. It gives me a strong sense that “this too shall pass”.

I had a grin from ear to ear stomping through dry, powdery virgin snow yesterday. It is just like seeing it for the first time on a ski trip at the age of 16 . Today we had heavy snow all day with the fat flakes drifting down creating “white-out” conditions at times.

Although we only barely hit double digits inside by lunchtime, I was toasty warm in the pilothouse with a hot water bottle on my lap and a single goose down quilt over me. I had mixed up a batch of vanilla extract and the heady fragrance was still in the air. Fairy lights from Christmas are still up so the interior feels particularly snug and cheery.

Here are a few more photos for you. I think an occasional break from gloomy news does us all good:

[Montanan]

The global vaccine rollout is racing against the clock: New, more infectious variants of the coronavirus are spreading worldwide, and it's unclear how well existing vaccines work against these strains. For now, vaccines seem effective against the strain identified in December in the UK, called B117. But preliminary research suggests vaccines may be less effective against B1351, the strain identified in South Africa.

"It is all the more reason why we should be vaccinating as many people as you possibly can," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Thursday. "Viruses don't mutate unless they replicate, and if you can suppress that by a very good vaccine campaign, then you could actually avoid this deleterious effect that you might get from the mutations."

Of keen concern is that mutations will arise that will require yet further development of vaccines and it becomes a perpetual race and need for inoculations, like dealing with the flu. A nd that more virulent variants may develop with worsening outcomes.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Vaccinations are up to 65+ million doses worldwide:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...-distribution/

The latest figures for Northern Europe (total number of doses and number per 100 people) indicate the numbers are changing only slowly:

Denmark 203,166 (3.5)
Lithuania 67,036 (2.41)
Finland 110,054 (1.99)
Estonia 25,964 (1.96)
Sweden 146,775 (1.42)
Norway 73,844 (1.38)
Latvia 19,022 (0.99)


In comparison the UK and US are proceeding at a quicker pace:
U.K. 6,822,981 (10.21)
U.S. 22,396,673 (6.82)

Regarding deaths in the England, thankfully it looks like the curve may be starting to flatten. The rate of increase has at least slowed. Scotland is still avoiding England’s recent surge in cases detected and deaths.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Vaccinations are up to 65+ million doses worldwide:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...-distribution/

The latest figures for Northern Europe (total number of doses and number per 100 people) indicate the numbers are changing only slowly:

Denmark 203,166 (3.5)
Lithuania 67,036 (2.41)
Finland 110,054 (1.99)
Estonia 25,964 (1.96)
Sweden 146,775 (1.42)
Norway 73,844 (1.38)
Latvia 19,022 (0.99)


In comparison the UK and US are proceeding at a quicker pace:
U.K. 6,822,981 (10.21)
U.S. 22,396,673 (6.82)

Regarding deaths in the England, thankfully it looks like the curve may be starting to flatten. The rate of increase has at least slowed. Scotland is still avoiding England’s recent surge in cases detected and deaths.

I think the summer will be a wash out , but hopefully if it remains just pcr pre travel testing , I can get to Greece , then I’m staying on the boat till this is over !!

I dont think any form of multi country cruising will be practical till 2022

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I think the summer will be a wash out , but hopefully if it remains just pcr pre travel testing , I can get to Greece , then I’m staying on the boat till this is over !!

I dont think any form of multi country cruising will be practical till 2022

This does bring us back to the original topic.

Several Baltic Sea countries even now have a total exemption for cruisers arriving by yacht from any quarantine and testing requirements, including Finland. Don't know about the Med, but I expect Baltic cruising should by quite normal in summer 2021, as it was for most of summer 2020.

[laird]

Thank you SW lass , I do miss looking down into the water and seeing the bottom , gin clear

On a slightly brighter personal note , in was told by my boss this morning that if I got to a certain vaccination centre and produced my I.D. ,I would receive the shot , it all took about 30 mins and I Had the first of the two Astra vaccine shots , the official.gov leaflet states that the second shot just be given between 4 and 8 weeks , I've been booked in for April 13

I did not cry, honest lol

[GordMay]

Politicians and local leaders on Monday condemned rioters who clashed with police in about 10 towns and cities across the Netherlands a day earlier, on the second night of a coronavirus curfew.
Worst hit was Eindhoven, where police clashed with hundreds of rioters who torched a car, threw rocks and fireworks at officers, smashed windows and looted a supermarket at the southern city's railway station.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by laird

Thank you SW lass , I do miss looking down into the water and seeing the bottom , gin clear

On a slightly brighter personal note , in was told by my boss this morning that if I got to a certain vaccination centre and produced my I.D. ,I would receive the shot , it all took about 30 mins and I Had the first of the two Astra vaccine shots , the official.gov leaflet states that the second shot just be given between 4 and 8 weeks , I've been booked in for April 13

I did not cry, honest lol

Congratulations!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Montanan

The global vaccine rollout is racing against the clock: New, more infectious variants of the coronavirus are spreading worldwide, and it's unclear how well existing vaccines work against these strains. For now, vaccines seem effective against the strain identified in December in the UK, called B117. But preliminary research suggests vaccines may be less effective against B1351, the strain identified in South Africa.

"It is all the more reason why we should be vaccinating as many people as you possibly can," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Thursday. "Viruses don't mutate unless they replicate, and if you can suppress that by a very good vaccine campaign, then you could actually avoid this deleterious effect that you might get from the mutations."

Of keen concern is that mutations will arise that will require yet further development of vaccines and it becomes a perpetual race and need for inoculations, like dealing with the flu. A nd that more virulent variants may develop with worsening outcomes.

A somewhat more optimistic set of data:


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/h...fee6102b823658


Research showing that at least one of the vaccines, the Moderna one, is fully effective against the UK variant, less effective against the S. Africa one but still effective enough.


This is good news.

[laird]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

A somewhat more optimistic set of data:


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/h...fee6102b823658


Research showing that at least one of the vaccines, the Moderna one, is fully effective against the UK variant, less effective against the S. Africa one but still effective enough.


This is good news.

I agree that that is good news

Imho I think that the reason that the uk is rolling out the vaccine quicker than Europe is down to the logistical problems with the Pfizer vaccine , I know that they have been using dry ice (co2) to store the vacine , this creates an issue with releasing large quantity of carbon into the atmosphere

Whilst Pfizer is arguably more effective than the AstraZeneca vacine ,its the transportation and storage that's causing issues

It's all still too complex a situation to predict when we will return to some kind of normality

[goboatingnow]

Has anyone seen any data on how long the immunity lasts.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Has anyone seen any data on how long the immunity lasts.

Apparently, immune cells ‘remember’ COVID for at least half a year.
The immune system remembers how to make antibodies, that can fend off the new coronavirus, for at least six months, after the initial infection.

“Evolution of antibody immunity to SARS-CoV-2" ~ by Christian Gaebler et al
Preprints:
Abstract ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03207-w
Full, but not typeset ➥ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...67391.full.pdf

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by laird

. . . It's all still too complex a situation to predict when we will return to some kind of normality

Well there are some predictions on that:



https://covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-immunity/

From a very sophisticated AI-based model by a serious data scientist. The gray area is "dry tinder" in the population available to infection. Provided the vaccine does suppress spreading (which surely it must at least to some degree or another), then by 1 April we will be more than halfway on the journey from now, to full herd immunity, which should have a radical effect on the dynamics of the pandemic.

When we think about herd immunity, we sometimes forget that natural immunity also works.

The UK should be far ahead of the U.S. with fast vaccination and more nautral infections.

So if this guy is right, then then UK should be OK by summer with the pandemic very well suppressed -- all the basis for life back to normal.

The Nordic countries with less natural immunity might take longer, but the pandemic measures are much less costly and oppressive, so probably no one will care much. And it doesn't take full herd immunity anyway, to seriously alter the dynamics of the pandemic.

The main thing, I think, is for the vaccine to at least bite hard before the autumn so that there is not a big autumn wave. In that case the wave we are experiencing now might really be the last big one, subject to outbreaks here and there.

We can hope!