Even though hospitalisation did go down previously with the first partial lockdown (both start going down at the start of November), it does not follow the statistics from positive tests this time around. I believe hospitalisation is a better measure of how badly a country is doing.
But I don’t know, maybe I’m not patient enough…
I mostly don’t understand why the government lifted the stricter restrictions in November when the country hadn’t recovered at all yet, and I had hoped the total lockdown would bring things down more properly than it currently seems. I’m afraid that in two weeks we’ll see it increasing more because of the holiday season. Let’s hope it won’t.
Yes, hospitalizations are probably more important, but there is some delay between (1) getting infected, (2) positive testing and (3) being hospitalized.
Eventually, excess deaths may be the most accurate reflection of the situation, but that is even more delayed. For now, excess deaths is still increasing and it will probably keep increasing for a week or two.
I think the goverment is afraid that adding restrictions early will have a negative effect on public opinion about the government. When they add restrictions early and successfully keep the infection rate down, (naieve) public opinion may well turn against them and cry out that the restrictions weren’t neccessary after all.
Also note that there are Christian parties in the Government that even wanted to ease restrictions for Christmas to allow family gatherings and large ceremonies in churches.
And the secular parties in the government wanted to ease restrictions as well, because you know, general elections are coming in a few months. Adding restrictions is not going to make you popular. They probably worry about losing votes to populist parties.
I’m indeed too impatient, I just read the news that today also the hospitalisations decreased.
I’m afraid this is the reason. I still don’t understand why the vaccination is so late, though. If anything, getting that done quickly and making sure the country can function normally would be the best boost to popularity that the current cabinet could wish for, right?
The vaccines had to be pre-ordered a while ago and I think at that time it was a bit of gamble which vaccine was going to be available first and in which quantities. The Pfizer vaccine happened to be the first while the Netherlands seems to have gambled a bit wrongly in their pre-ordering.
There is a lot of scepsis and mistrust about vaccination in the population. One of those complaints is that the vaccines are being rushed. Such complaints were forcing the government to avoid a public image of cutting corners with the vaccine approval, so maybe they felt they needed to go slow.
And then still many people will refuse to get vaccined, because of some conspiracy theory or just a tendency for defiance towards the government.
by the way, in Russia there was actual fail at testing Sputnik-V vaccine.
(Fail of process of testing. Vaccine itself may still be good)
No clear protocols at documenting who got infected.
In some cases doctors ignored when someone got side effects.
A lot of participants did antibody test. And some of those who got negative result (placebo) even managed to get real vaccine after this.
Well, I still have electricity, internet, public transport etc.
Also it would take a few pandemics like this one every year to get us where we need to be carbon-wise. Probably nothing to wish for.
Seeing though that politics and societies did not have enough foresight to avoid predictable 2nd (and sometimes 3rd) waves even in rich and comparatively well governed countries makes me ‘somewhat’ pessimistic about tackling the climate crisis, which takes a planning horizon of decades (instead of weeks, which would suffice for corona).
You see that when traveling. With the disappeared glacier on the sides of the mountains (LaPaz Bolivia) when arriving at the salt lake (Uyuni) you are welcomed by a sea of… plastic bags. And llamas die by eating them.
But I read too especially about the oceans. There is a big problem there too.
I care about the environment, but I find the negative effect of short-term use of masks/ gloves/ single-use bags and containers during a pandemic excused and understandable.
We will go fishing in clean waters when our house isn’t on covid fire (see what I did there ).
I agree with you @Gia but I do feel that some of the plastic use is because it might help with covid rather than actually being useful. This definitely makes plastic waste. I’m not convinced that the risk/harm balance is always assessed accurately.
Yes, this is certainly true. Looking at the UK at the moment where we are definitely not having another lockdown but most of England is now in tier 4 (out of 3) which is essentially the same as lockdown 2.0. Yesterday primary school definitely going to be open from Monday except a few parts of London. Today all schools in London closed for two weeks at least. I suspect by Monday we will likely be in full lockdown in all but name.
All this to say that the assessment of the risks of easing restrictions in December is now looking rather flawed…
