How do we know a pandemic's over?

[8enotto]

I suspect deniers and minimizers have all been tossed in the same bin by now. Someone is getting frustrated by not making headway with a "maximizer" point of view on a tiny backwater forum.
Hint, take those walls of text to a larger audience somewhere where the odds of becoming the CV guru are better. Educate the public on the real dangers as your pov allows and convince them to take greater measures.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

That's utter rubbish. Hong Kong had very little covid until they lifted all precautions. UV and HEPA were still relatively rare, and mask requirements were (a) surgical masks and (b) came and went throughout the pandemic.

And it worked. In 2020 cases were in the hundreds per month. Sweden, with only a slightly larger population and far more dispersed, was having thousands of cases a day. Hong Kong, in the first 2 years of the pandemic, had 213 deaths. Sweden had nearly 18,000

It is wrong to say that Hong Kong had very little covid until they lifted all precautions.

It is right to say that Hong Kong lifted all precautions because they had an awful lot of covid.

Masking started pretty much universally in January 2020 without prompting from authorities, and then became mandatory for most of the 3 years. It didn't come and go.

For the first two years the draconian border restrictions seemed to work, we watched the cases per day at stay at 0 for months, then 0, 2, 4, 1, 4, 10, 20, 5, 4, up and down in very low figures. It seemed to be working, even though there was literally no end in sight, HK seemed to have won, as long as you didn't mind wearing a mask forever, checking in with an app to each shop or place of business you visited, or having 2 weeks quarantine in a hotel every time you returned from travel. If someone in your building tested positive, off you went to forced incarceration for 10 days.

And the cases and deaths stayed low.

And then, omicron happened.

And the cases rose. And fell! Then rose again. And rose.

And rose.

What was 10 per day on average became 20, became 50, 120, 200, 500, 2000, and then in a few weeks it was over 75,000 cases per day, that's 1% of the population newly infected per day. And those were only the confirmed cases from PCR tests, the real number was of course far higher.

This all happened whilst all those same restrictions were STILL IN PLACE.

At this point, even the Health Authority had to admit that pretty much everyone had already been exposed, but they kept on with the same restrictions. Then it emerged 200,000 people had left HK permanently in the first quarter of 2022 due to those very restrictions.

So gradually in late 2022 restrictions started to be slowly loosened, as it was clear Zero Covid was not working, and there were rising calls from the population to live with it. Again, social stability was threatened.

It was only after China turned on a dime and stopped its own zero covid approach that HK finally lost all its restrictions, and stopped mandatory mask wearing in early 2023.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china-hong-kong-sar/

There was no sudden wave of infections that happened after all the restrictions were lifted.
All the peaks on that graph? Restrictions still in place.

"Utter rubbish?" Sorry, no, you simply don't know what you are talking about.

EDIT: "And it worked". Yes, until it didn't.

 

[Roboramma]

How could we actually eliminate it?

The country who came closest to it was China, but their draconian measures were so massively disruptive to lives and economy that even they had to give up, after 3 years, and of course as soon as they open up, it flourishes again.

Sort of off topic, but having lived through China's "draconian measures" I think it's worth pointing out that for the first two years of the pandemic life here was pretty normal. Aside from not being able to travel internationally, most things weren't affected all that much. I still travelled a lot within China. We were still eating out etc. It was when they weren't able to contain it any more that those draconian measures started to be used widely, including the period when those of us in Shanghai couldn't leave our homes for three months. But it wasn't long after that that they stopped all the lock downs and daily testing and everyone I knew got Covid within about two weeks (prior to that literally no one I knew or even anyone who knew someone I knew had Covid).

 

[dann]

I suspect deniers and minimizers have all been tossed in the same bin by now. Someone is getting frustrated by not making headway with a "maximizer" point of view on a tiny backwater forum.
Hint, take those walls of text to a larger audience somewhere where the odds of becoming the CV guru are better. Educate the public on the real dangers as your pov allows and convince them to take greater measures.

Hint, take those irrelevant comments somewhere else. They are a waste of space. This is an international forum for skeptics. Its target audience isn't people who are scared of walls of text.

As for deniers, minimizers and even antivaxxers, they are often hard to tell apart.
I have noticed that minimizers who used to be provaxxers are often more than willing to buy into the ideas that 'natural immunity' is better than vaccine-induced immunity and that vaccination against COVID-19 doesn't benefit children.
Some of our resident minimizers have advocated those antivaxxer ideas.

I can recommend this article:

That’s right, radio and TV personality who’s now a podcaster, Dr. Drew, hosted longtime antivax activist and leader turned general purpose COVID-19 antimasker, anti-“lockdowner”, and antivaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on his podcast to promote the new “documentary film” adaptation of his conspiracy theory extravaganza book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, first published nearly a year ago. Seeing the Tweet about my old post just a few days after having seen Dr. Drew throw away all pretense of not at least pandering to antivaxxers—if not going antivax himself—after having been seemingly semi-reasonable in years past only told me that I really did need to discuss how so many physicians who were once seemingly reasonable turned into outright COVID-19 minimizers, antimaskers, and antivaxxers in such a short period of time.
The making of COVID-19 “contrarian” doctors - How do doctors become quacks and antivaxxers? (Science-Based Medicine, Oct 24, 2022)

But it's probably too long for you.

 

[dann]

Sort of off topic, but having lived through China's "draconian measures" I think it's worth pointing out that for the first two years of the pandemic life here was pretty normal. Aside from not being able to travel internationally, most things weren't affected all that much. I still travelled a lot within China. We were still eating out etc. It was when they weren't able to contain it any more that those draconian measures started to be used widely, including the period when those of us in Shanghai couldn't leave our homes for three months. But it wasn't long after that that they stopped all the lock downs and daily testing and everyone I knew got Covid within about two weeks (prior to that literally no one I knew or even anyone who knew someone I knew had Covid).

As far as the pandemic is concerned, those first two years sound much like New Zealand and (parts of) Australia.

 

[Chanakya]

I suspect deniers and minimizers have all been tossed in the same bin by now. Someone is getting frustrated by not making headway with a "maximizer" point of view on a tiny backwater forum.
Hint, take those walls of text to a larger audience somewhere where the odds of becoming the CV guru are better. Educate the public on the real dangers as your pov allows and convince them to take greater measures.

Sorry, I must disagree with that sentiment in the strongest possible terms.

Yes, this is indeed something of a backwaters, in fact very much a backwaters kind of place. But the reason why most of us are here, is because this backwaters punches so very much above its weight, right?

Like there's this ongoing thread right now, about that Chinese nuclear-powered battery thing. I've enjoyed reading that thread, and specifically Ziggurat's patiently presented, and yes lengthy, and very informative posts. Likewise the generally very informative and often very long posts from members like WDClinger and JayUtah. You might as well tell them that their efforts, and their "walls of text", should be taken to a wider audience and more effective (and lucrative) exposure elsewhere.

It is precisely because people who are knowledgeable, and, importantly, people who care enough to take the trouble despite this being a backwaters place, present these substantial posts here, that this forum is what it is.

By all means disagree with what dann's saying. Like I said earlier, I'm by no means firmly entrenched in the dann-camp, and am happy to be persuaded by whichever "side" makes the better arguments. But to dismiss his posts merely by virtue of their length, and/or merely because this forum is small-time in terms of numbers of people here, that, sorry, like I said, I disagree with that sentiment in the strongest possible terms.

 

[dann]

It seems there's little the individual can do except for take steps for their own individual safety. I resumed masking when going out back in December, and have not been confronted or criticized for it although I have noticed some looks. Possibly they were admiring my beautiful hair, though. I've been letting it grow out a little more than usual and if I do say so myself it's a shimmering lustrous mane of dark amber glory mingled with the radiance of purest white shooting through like falling stars across the majesty of the nighttime heavens. And it smells like coconut passionfruit peach, according to the label on the shampoo, which was seven dollars.

You could be on to something: Face masks make people look more attractive, study finds (TheGuardian, Jan 13, 2022)

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

Sort of off topic, but having lived through China's "draconian measures" I think it's worth pointing out that for the first two years of the pandemic life here was pretty normal. Aside from not being able to travel internationally, most things weren't affected all that much. I still travelled a lot within China. We were still eating out etc. It was when they weren't able to contain it any more that those draconian measures started to be used widely, including the period when those of us in Shanghai couldn't leave our homes for three months. But it wasn't long after that that they stopped all the lock downs and daily testing and everyone I knew got Covid within about two weeks (prior to that literally no one I knew or even anyone who knew someone I knew had Covid).

Thanks, interesting. Others may not be aware that HK and China had different rules.

I actually agreed with HK's approach in the first year, as it seemed that masking was potentially likely to work, better to be safe on such an unknown virus, and closing the borders and strict quarantine and restrictions led to a relative normality that you describe.

It seemed HK was doing well, and it was, in a similar way to your early experience, reducing cases and deaths whilst we waited for the vaccines to come.

But as time wore on, it was clear we were effectively in a bubble that had to keep those restrictions permanently, to maintain the political goal of zero covid, even as the rest of the world had moved on and was getting back to normal.

Even when the vaccines were available, the restrictions were still in place, and there was no exit plan, the government admitted it had no end game other than hoping it would go away. And HK being so closely tied to China's apron strings since the HK protests meant that it largely took its marching orders from Beijing, which was still full steam ahead on zero covid.

There was even a somewhat morbid joke doing the rounds:

"Save us Omicron Kenobi, you are our only hope!"

as it seems only that new highly infectious variant could shock the HK government out of its complacency, and it indeed turned out to be the case.

As I was sitting in my quarantine hotel room in March 2022, watching the cases climb to the afore mentioned 75,000 per day whilst all those restrictions were in place, it was clear something had to change, and eventually the HK government realised that the horse had left the stable, along with the shocking figure of 2% of the population leaving HK in just 3 months forced them to change tack.

So from my point of view, the UK US etc did all the wrong things early on, and HK did all the right things. Then once vaccinations were available, HK did all the wrong things, keeping the restrictions far longer than was useful, as whilst they had definitely saved lives initially, particularly during the Delta time, overall they didn't work against Omicron.

HK eventually had a death toll per capita (1898) far worse than its contemporaries Singapore (325) or Japan (595), the vast majority of them happening during the restrictions period.

HK mask mandate was in place from July 2020 until eventually being lifted in February 28 2023, by which time the peaks of deaths and cases from Omicron were long past.

https://hongkongfp.com/2023/02/28/b...s-covid-19-mask-mandate-after-over-2-5-years/

For what its worth, masking here is still probably about 15% in public, long after the mandate has gone. There is no negative connotations here with wearing a mask, its far more culturally acceptable. As in other parts of Asia it tended to be common long before covid when you had a cold, and mask wearing was integral as part of the 2019 HK protests in order to hide identities from authorities.

 

[The Atheist]

Wrong. The elimination strategy was a complete success,...

Given that a couple of thousand people died of covid, I'm intrigued as to how you think it was a success. We kept the virus aqt bay for one winter.

Maybe you struggle with the definbition of "eliminate". It's not tempoarary.

...and the dire predictions of economic damage were proved wrong.

Wow, this really is the thread for ignorant statements, eh?

Tourism is NZ's largest industry, and covid reduced intyernational tourism by 96%.

Did you not notice the billions of doillars the gov't paid to failing tourism ventures because they weren't making any money? Did you sleep through all of it or something, because suggesting the economy wasn't seriously impacted is plain stupid. The facts are available at MBIE covid was disastrous for our economy.

Take a look at our current account deficit for Zarquon's sake! https://tradingeconomics.com/new-ze... recorded a Government,percent of GDP in 1974.

We've gone from 18% of GDP to 40% in three years, and it's almost all due to covid.

I accept people's ignorance on basic economics, but if you don't know, say nothing. You just make yourself look stupid, because the data is so stark.

 

[Roboramma]

So from my point of view, the UK US etc did all the wrong things early on, and HK did all the right things. Then once vaccinations were available, HK did all the wrong things, keeping the restrictions far longer than was useful, as whilst they had definitely saved lives initially, particularly during the Delta time, overall they didn't work against Omicron.

Yeah, I feel pretty much the same with respect to the Chinese policy. It worked well and was a better response in the beginning, but once we had vaccines the focus should have shifted to getting people vaccinated and lifting restrictions at that point.


It's actually funny, I had hard time getting vaccinated because as a foreigner they would only do it at one designated spot in the city where they would vaccinate foreigners, and the app where you're supposed to make an appointment didn't have a way for me to book because you needed to input your Chinese ID card number. I spent a day being sent from office to office, "you're a foreigner, we can't take you here, go to [address]." I show up there: "you're a foreigner, we can't take you here, go to [address2]" etc. Eventually after one place sent me to somewhere I'd already been and I replied "but they send me here[/]" they took pity on me and gave me a phone number to call. The person at that number tried to send me to the place I was, so I got the person there to talk to them, and they said they'd make me an appointment and call me back. But they never called me back.
A month later I was in another city and got it done there. They had the same issue with not being able to vaccinate me because they couldn't enter my passport number in their system, but it was a smaller city and they were able to bend the rules. When I got my booster shot in Shanghai things had been straightened out and I was able to input my passport number in the app. Though, since I hadn't used the app for my first shot I had to claim this was my first shot, but I was able to bring the receipt I had to the office and they gave me the booster.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

Yeah, I feel pretty much the same with respect to the Chinese policy. It worked well and was a better response in the beginning, but once we had vaccines the focus should have shifted to getting people vaccinated and lifting restrictions at that point.


It's actually funny, I had hard time getting vaccinated because as a foreigner they would only do it at one designated spot in the city where they would vaccinate foreigners, and the app where you're supposed to make an appointment didn't have a way for me to book because you needed to input your Chinese ID card number. I spent a day being sent from office to office, "you're a foreigner, we can't take you here, go to [address]." I show up there: "you're a foreigner, we can't take you here, go to [address2]" etc. Eventually after one place sent me to somewhere I'd already been and I replied "but they send me here[/]" they took pity on me and gave me a phone number to call. The person at that number tried to send me to the place I was, so I got the person there to talk to them, and they said they'd make me an appointment and call me back. But they never called me back.
A month later I was in another city and got it done there. They had the same issue with not being able to vaccinate me because they couldn't enter my passport number in their system, but it was a smaller city and they were able to bend the rules. When I got my booster shot in Shanghai things had been straightened out and I was able to input my passport number in the app. Though, since I hadn't used the app for my first shot I had to claim this was my first shot, but I was able to bring the receipt I had to the office and they gave me the booster.

Wow, that sounds overly onerous! Whilst I criticise the HK government for many things, and deservedly so, the mechanism of its vaccine rollout was superb, for all residents.

That reminds me, just seen that the XBB shot is now available here for my age range...

 

[The Atheist]

That reminds me, just seen that the XBB shot is now available here for my age range...

Just to show up the paragon of covid virtue, NZ, and its ongoing covid response, that vaccine isn't available here until March and they're still giving the almost-worthless bivalent vaccine.

No doubt by the time the XBB vaccine is given there will be a new variant it doesn't work on.

 

[Roboramma]

Wow, that sounds overly onerous!

I remember talking to a friend of mine at the time who I knew had been vaccinated and asking him if he knew where to go: he said his company had arranged it. Probably the case for a lot of foreigners here. For most Chinese people it was actually pretty well done, they had stations on every street corner near where I live advertising vaccination and signing people up to do it, and I think they were giving 100RMB to anyone who got vaccinated. I think they also gave rice. (As a foreigner on the other hand, I had to pay).

 

[icerat]

Maybe you struggle with the definbition of "eliminate". It's not tempoarary.

Yes, it is.

The US and UK have both officially eliminated measles.

Measles is currently going rampant in both countries. The ... elimination ... of elimination status will likely soon occur.

There is however no clear definition of how long a disease needs to no longer exist in a region for elimination to be considered to have occurred, so in essence you can pick whatever definition you want to claim or deny NZ achieved Covid elimination.

 

[dann]

Wrong. The elimination strategy was a complete success, ...

Given that a couple of thousand people died of covid, I'm intrigued as to how you think it was a success. We kept the virus aqt bay for one winter.

For those of you who don't suffer from learning disabilities:
Based on this graph alone, guess when New Zealand's elimination strategy stopped!
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people.
Was it in 2020? In 2021? Or in 2022?
If the latter, was it in January '22? In February '22? In March '22? In April '22? In May '22? In June '22? Or in July '22?

Two weeks ago marked the two-year anniversary of New Zealand’s adoption of the elimination strategy and a lockdown that successfully stamped out the first wave of Covid-19. By chance, it was also the week that the government announced a major relaxation of Covid-19 control measures in response to the Omicron variant wave sweeping the country.
By most metrics, the New Zealand Covid-19 response – the initial elimination strategy which has now transitioned to a mitigation strategy – has been one of the most successful in the world. It got the country through the first 18 months of the pandemic until vaccines became widely available, giving it very low Covid-19 mortality rates. Life expectancy actually increased during this period.
New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it? (TheGuardian, April 5, 2022)

Notice that the Omicron variant had arrived in New Zealand before control measures were relaxed!

The Atheist blames New Zealand's elimination strategy for what happened when it ended!: "a couple of thousand people died"
His trick isn't even clever!

Follow-up assignment: Insert your own country in the graph above.

I did so with my own country, which never attempted to eliminate the virus. It began to relax the mitigation strategy in the winter of 2021-22 and abandoned all precautions other than vaccinations in February 2022:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people
The impact was even worse than in New Zealand. It just didn't look as dramatic because COVID-19 had taken a lot of lives in the two previous years.

 

[The Atheist]

There is however no clear definition of how long a disease needs to no longer exist in a region for elimination to be considered to have occurred, so in essence you can pick whatever definition you want to claim or deny NZ achieved Covid elimination.

As long as you add the word "temporarily" I'm good.

The idea that the world ever had a shot at elimination is idiotic fantasy. Countries with shared borders, developing countries that couldn't possibly enforce lockdowns, countries that refused to acknowledge the existence of covid... a worldwide elimination strategy would be doomed to fail, and do nothing more than hurt the poorest people.

That's why only clowns in rich countries would suggest such an outrageous idea.

 

[icerat]

The idea that the world ever had a shot at elimination is idiotic fantasy.

In normal epidemiological usage that would be eradication, not elimination, and I disagree, at least in 2020. Now we've cleverly infected a significant portion of the animal kingdom, including 8 billion people, with a virus that likely remains as a persistent infection. The mutation opportunities are unprecedented.

Countries with shared borders, developing countries that couldn't possibly enforce lockdowns

Step 1 - don't let the virus in. Elimination unnecessary. Step 2 if there's an outbreak - You eliminate by getting R_eff under 1 for long enough. How you do that is not necessarily the same everywhere.

It's not actually that complicated.

countries that refused to acknowledge the existence of covid... a worldwide elimination strategy would be doomed to fail, and do nothing more than hurt the poorest people.

Nowhere I'm aware refused to "acknowledge the existence of covid". Eradication though, yes, does require global cooperation. We managed to do it with smallpox in the middle of the cold war. We did it with SARS1.

That's why only clowns in rich countries would suggest such an outrageous idea.

And yet we have publicly stated eradication goals for at least the following that I've been able to confirm -

• smallpox
• measles
• polio
• malaria
• guinea worm
• BSE
• syphilis
• rabies
• rubella
• leprosy
• chagas
• river blindness
• lymphatic filariasis
• sleeping sickness
• cervical cancer

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

In normal epidemiological usage that would be eradication, not elimination, and I disagree, at least in 2020. Now we've cleverly infected a significant portion of the animal kingdom, including 8 billion people, with a virus that likely remains as a persistent infection. The mutation opportunities are unprecedented.



Step 1 - don't let the virus in. Elimination unnecessary. Step 2 if there's an outbreak - You eliminate by getting R_eff under 1 for long enough. How you do that is not necessarily the same everywhere.

It's not actually that complicated.



Nowhere I'm aware refused to "acknowledge the existence of covid". Eradication though, yes, does require global cooperation. We managed to do it with smallpox in the middle of the cold war. We did it with SARS1.



And yet we have publicly stated eradication goals for at least the following that I've been able to confirm -

• smallpox
• measles
• polio
• malaria
• guinea worm
• BSE
• syphilis
• rabies
• rubella
• leprosy
• chagas
• river blindness
• lymphatic filariasis
• sleeping sickness
• cervical cancer

But interestingly, not other coronaviruses, that can also be deadly.

I agree that would be a worthy goal, but I am curious as to why flu is not on the list.

Unlike the previous pandemic situation in Hong Kong, in this area I am ignorant.

Is it because those viruses are too contagious to be realistically wiped out globally, or variants emerge too fast? Is it their transfer mechanism?

And if this mean that seasonal flu cant be realistically eradicated, doesn't the same argument apply to Covid?

 

[jt512]

And if this mean that seasonal flu cant be realistically eradicated, doesn't the same argument apply to Covid?

The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 makes eradication of COVID-19 impossible.

 

[The Atheist]

Step 1 - don't let the virus in. Elimination unnecessary.

Utterly crazy.

We didn't know covid existed before it had already been shipped to all parts of the globe.

NZ couldn't keep it out in spite of spending ~$50B trying to.

Step 2 if there's an outbreak - You eliminate by getting R_eff under 1 for long enough. How you do that is not necessarily the same everywhere.

It's not actually that complicated.

I'm surprised you're that naive given I gave you the examples of countries that didn't care, or even refused to acknowledge there was a pandemic. It's way beyond complicated, it's outright impossible. You can't quarantine the entire world.

Nowhere I'm aware refused to "acknowledge the existence of covid".

Tanzania and Turkmenistan.

Eradication though, yes, does require global cooperation. We managed to do it with smallpox in the middle of the cold war. We did it with SARS1.

Two diseases which conveniently aren't contagious pre-symptoms.

measles

You really struggle with this, don't you?

The measles vaccine is incredibly efficacious at stopping the disease, with an extremely stable virus and no need for vaccine boosters over half a century of use.

As you're fully aware, none of the covid vaccines are anything like the efficacy of MMR and the virus is constantly mutating. We've already been through 3 or 4 new vaccines in 3 years and current versions have been highly ineffective against infection.

Maybe you need to put down the rose-tinted spectacles and look at reality for a while.