Macrohistory

Ending the semi-lockdown and other restrictions when there are still more than 10,000 cases each day is like throwing away the antibiotics your doctor gave you at the first sign the fever is abating.

Semi-lockdowns clearly work very, very well in the context of a steadily increasing vaccination rate. Let's hope the authorities keep the pressure on until the virus is driven into the ground. Don't listen to the COVID deniers who want to throw all the progress away just so they can go sit on a barstool somewhere. No let-up until the situation is well and truly under control and the population is safe from death by suffocation and horrible disease.

Sadly, this pandemic's not going anywhere. Not yet, at least.

Classically ridiculous.

Vaccinations at this point do not explain much of Thailand's slow decline in cases. The most vaccinated provinces still have elevated case rates. What's more, many, many people have received second-rate vaccines. The restrictions (such as they are) explain Thailand's slow decline in cases. Lockdowns -- even semi-lockdowns -- work. And thankfully, the government is backing down on its ill-conceived "plan" -- championed by the mindless COVID deniers here -- of simply opening everything up and watching what happens while grinning. The COVID-deniers will simply have to learn to live with semi-lockdowns for several more months to come.

The trend is down because lockdowns -- even semi-lockdowns -- work. Only Hello Kitty in Wonderland thinks bad things just go away on their own.

Looks like you're just going to have to "learn to live with" a delay or a going back.

Tell that to the people who are dying

I love this quotation -- it's completely classic: “From the perspective of medics, it may not be an appropriate time to open the country due to the high infection rate. But from the business side, it is very essential to resume the businesses in order to move the economy forward. The ministry is taking opinions from both sides into consideration,” said Anutin.

Put the US in there and it would be even more concerning

And by the way, this is what death from COVID looks like -- useful for the COVID-denying brigade in a country of super-low vaccination rates to ponder: LA Times 26 August 2021 Op-Ed: On the front lines, here’s what the seven stages of severe COVID-19 look like BY KAREN GALLARDO I’m a respiratory therapist. With the fourth wave of the pandemic in full swing, fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, the trajectory of the patients I see, from admission to critical care, is all too familiar. When they’re vaccinated, their COVID-19 infections most likely end after Stage 1. If only that were the case for everyone. Get vaccinated. If you choose not to, here’s what to expect if you are hospitalized for a serious case of COVID-19. Stage 1. You’ve had debilitating symptoms for a few days, but now it is so hard to breathe that you come to the emergency room. Your oxygen saturation level tells us you need help, a supplemental flow of 1 to 4 liters of oxygen per minute. We admit you and start you on antivirals, steroids, anticoagulants or monoclonal antibodies... https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-08-26/pandemic-covid-19-stages-vaccination-intensive-care-respiratory-therapist

Gotta love this line: "Director of the Department of Disease Control’s Office of Emergency Disease and Health Threats, Dr. Chawetsan Namwat acknowledged today that according to epidemiological estimations, Dr. Udom’s observation [that there may be 6-7 million asymptomatic COVID-19 infected individuals yet to be discovered within the population] is possible but not a cause for concern." Utter Orwellian nonsense.

They would be doing much, much worse in the absence of lockdowns.

This is how easy it is for Delta to start (or resume) spreading like wildfire: SCMP 8 September 2021 "Singapore on Wednesday reported 347 new Covid-19 cases, the highest since August 2020..." https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3148030/coronavirus-singapore-cases-highest-over-year-south-korea

If they had done that, they would be bragging about it, and using it to explain away the increasing case numbers.

Well, the reopening is already a week old, and Delta comes on fast, so... But I'm with you that the sudden doubling of cases in Chonburi is strange.

Gee, who could have predicted all of this with the premature reopening? And it's only 9 September.

Restrictions will be back in place by 15 October at the latest. Thanks to premature relaxation, wouldn't be surprised if schools remain closed until 2022.

A self-proclaimed man of the people who wants to unleash a deadly virus on even more people by removing all restrictions.

Once again proving that lockdowns -- even semi-lockdowns like Thailand's -- work as expected to tamp down virus transmission, no matter what the yahoos might say. Now let's see if these improvements in Thailand's pandemic situation tragically reverse now that the semi-lockdown is being prematurely abandoned.

You're being nice to him when you write "somewhat misleading." As usual with the covid-denying brigade, he offered an oversimplified, distorted interpretation of reality. You responded with a nuanced correction and he still doesn't realize he was wrong.

Try to keep up: Popular Science Breakthrough cases won’t stop vaccines from ending the pandemic BY KATE BAGGALEY | UPDATED AUG 27, 2021 6:01 AM "...another recent report suggests that vaccinated people who catch COVID-19 are less infectious than the unvaccinated. Researchers found that viruses sampled from vaccinated people replicated less efficiently than viruses from unvaccinated people. The findings, which haven’t yet undergone peer review, could mean that people who develop breakthrough cases don’t “shed” as much virus as unvaccinated people who catch COVID-19..." https://www.popsci.com/health/breakthrough-cases-wont-stop-pandemic/

???? Your rejoinder is riddled with logical flaws. The original proposition was yours: as a virus mutates, you said, it always becomes less deadly. This study provides data suggesting that in the case of SARS-CoV-2, a virus actually becomes MORE likely to hospitalize a victim -- and need for hospitalization is always correlated with more likely to lead to death. The p value does not support your case. .. That is because what you need to demonstrate to support your original wild claim that viruses always become less deadly is data showing that Delta leads to FEWER hospitalizations. If you can find that, I'll accept a p value of more than the conventional .05 and will then acknowledge that you are right about SARS-CoV-2 becoming less deadly. So go see if you can find such data. I will wait. Edit: Hang on -- it's even better (this is from the Lancet study): "‡ p values are for tests for interaction between vaccination status and variant." In other words, the p values don't even address the significance of the difference between Alpha and Delta. They say instead that the significance of the difference between Alpha and Delta holds up regardless of vaccination status.

Try to keep up: WebMD Delta Variant Doubles Hospitalization Risk, Study Says By Carolyn Crist Aug. 30, 2021 -- People who contract the Delta variant have double the risk of hospitalization, as compared with earlier versions of the coronavirus, according to a new study published Friday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Based in England, the large study found that the Delta variant led to a higher rate of hospital admission and emergency care, with fewer than 2% of infections occurring in fully vaccinated people. “The main takeaway is that if you have an unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated population, then an outbreak of Delta can lead to a higher burden on hospitals, on health care, than an Alpha outbreak would,” Anne Presanis, one of the lead study authors and a biostatistician at the University of Cambridge, told The New York Times... https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210830/delta-variant-doubles-hospitalization-risk-study

Explain the Hong Kong result. Explain the Taiwan result. All the rest is just mindless libertarian fantasy.