Mar 11, 2020, 10:13 am
Last edit by: Ocn Vw 1K
In order to reduce noise in the Coronavirus / Covid-19 : general fact-based reporting thread, and to create a central place to invite any member to ask a basic question about the impact of COVID-19 on travel, your moderators have decided to open this separate "lounge" thread for related discussion that isn't strictly fact-based reporting.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
COVID-19: Lounge thread for thoughts, concerns and questions
Aug 8, 2020, 6:44 pm
#3811
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: May 2015
Location: BOS, YVR, ZRH
Programs: *G
Posts: 17,405
I don't think the poster has any idea of what live in other countries has been like - Sweden hasn't been "open like nothing is happening" and other countries with lockdown measures haven't been "home arrest".
Life for me here in Canada has been essentially the same (as an essential worker), only I've been eating out much less and practicing cooking. And I'm taking the car instead of public transit everywhere.
Our incidence/case load has been minimal because we have competent political and scientific leaders in charge with clear, coherent messaging that everyone gets on board with - from every side of the aisle. Left-wing and right-wing politicians have all come together and done a reasonable job by listening to scientists.
Life for me here in Canada has been essentially the same (as an essential worker), only I've been eating out much less and practicing cooking. And I'm taking the car instead of public transit everywhere.
Our incidence/case load has been minimal because we have competent political and scientific leaders in charge with clear, coherent messaging that everyone gets on board with - from every side of the aisle. Left-wing and right-wing politicians have all come together and done a reasonable job by listening to scientists.
Aug 8, 2020, 7:34 pm
#3812
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: VIE
Programs: SAS EBS / *A Silver, Hilton Diamond, Radisson VIP, IHG Platinum Ambassador
Posts: 3,786
Not being subjected to draconic restrictions on freedom of movement (essentially put under house arest), seen in at least dozen other EU states, having proper unrestricted access to health care and ability to have a reasonable level of social life.
Personally, I'm in a situation when I essentially gave up on holiday this year in order to be able to temporarily relocate into a less restrictive place than my home state. From my perspective, having a fairly normal day-to-day life is far more important than being able to go on a holiday, so I'd much prefer Sweden over my low-risk home country, even if it meant losing ability to travel all over Europe.
Personally, I'm in a situation when I essentially gave up on holiday this year in order to be able to temporarily relocate into a less restrictive place than my home state. From my perspective, having a fairly normal day-to-day life is far more important than being able to go on a holiday, so I'd much prefer Sweden over my low-risk home country, even if it meant losing ability to travel all over Europe.
Aug 8, 2020, 8:31 pm
#3813
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
Not being subjected to draconic restrictions on freedom of movement (essentially put under house arest), seen in at least dozen other EU states, having proper unrestricted access to health care and ability to have a reasonable level of social life.
Personally, I'm in a situation when I essentially gave up on holiday this year in order to be able to temporarily relocate into a less restrictive place than my home state. From my perspective, having a fairly normal day-to-day life is far more important than being able to go on a holiday, so I'd much prefer Sweden over my low-risk home country, even if it meant losing ability to travel all over Europe.
Personally, I'm in a situation when I essentially gave up on holiday this year in order to be able to temporarily relocate into a less restrictive place than my home state. From my perspective, having a fairly normal day-to-day life is far more important than being able to go on a holiday, so I'd much prefer Sweden over my low-risk home country, even if it meant losing ability to travel all over Europe.
Aug 8, 2020, 9:01 pm
#3814
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 179
If I may vent a little:
What really makes me mad about the state of the pandemic in the U.S. is that this is not rocket science. Other countries have done it. It's actually pretty simple: 1) shut everything down to stop the spread. We did step 1. Then as we re-open we 2) require masks and social distancing 3) offer aggressive widespread testing with fast results 4) ramp up contact tracing to understand where the virus has spread and stop it. Very straight forward. But in the U.S. we did step 1 and zero of the steps that were supposed to come next, which rendered step 1 absolutely worthless. Now, no one seems willing to start over and try to do this again the right way. Instead, it's no mask requirements and packing kids into schools like sardines. How does this make any sense whatsoever?
The irony is that these re-openings are under the guise of getting life back to "normal" and turning our economy around. But the more we try to re-open and make things "normal" again, the more hospitalization and death goes up. The more people are scared to resume normal life. The more people are put out of work or bankrupted by healthcare costs. The more our economy is destroyed.
Of course other countries won't let us in. We have waved a white flag and given up, content to let the virus spread and content to let someone die every single minute in the US. It's a sad state affairs because I can raise the alarm all I want, but some people just refuse to take it seriously. It's simultaneously depressing and infuriating. Not caring about the virus or not believing it needs to be addressed starts at the top, but it has trickled all the way down and is part of American culture now. Other countries think we're nuts. Tough times to be an American, sadly.
/end rant
What really makes me mad about the state of the pandemic in the U.S. is that this is not rocket science. Other countries have done it. It's actually pretty simple: 1) shut everything down to stop the spread. We did step 1. Then as we re-open we 2) require masks and social distancing 3) offer aggressive widespread testing with fast results 4) ramp up contact tracing to understand where the virus has spread and stop it. Very straight forward. But in the U.S. we did step 1 and zero of the steps that were supposed to come next, which rendered step 1 absolutely worthless. Now, no one seems willing to start over and try to do this again the right way. Instead, it's no mask requirements and packing kids into schools like sardines. How does this make any sense whatsoever?
The irony is that these re-openings are under the guise of getting life back to "normal" and turning our economy around. But the more we try to re-open and make things "normal" again, the more hospitalization and death goes up. The more people are scared to resume normal life. The more people are put out of work or bankrupted by healthcare costs. The more our economy is destroyed.
Of course other countries won't let us in. We have waved a white flag and given up, content to let the virus spread and content to let someone die every single minute in the US. It's a sad state affairs because I can raise the alarm all I want, but some people just refuse to take it seriously. It's simultaneously depressing and infuriating. Not caring about the virus or not believing it needs to be addressed starts at the top, but it has trickled all the way down and is part of American culture now. Other countries think we're nuts. Tough times to be an American, sadly.
/end rant
Aug 8, 2020, 10:05 pm
#3815
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 38,413
Except we didn't--there wasn't meaningful enforcement.
Aug 8, 2020, 10:13 pm
#3816
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 179
That is totally fair. Step 1 was half-hearted at best. Where I live, it was a legit shutdown, and now people are like "wait, why did we do this if everything is bad again?" So the rest of my comment still stands. The roadmap is very clear but our government refuses to do it. In fact, the one person we need to set the tone has been hostile to essentially every single part of it. Just stunning, really.
Aug 9, 2020, 12:15 am
#3817
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,095
Commuter traffic across the bridge continued — at depressed levels — during all of this year to-date.
Aug 9, 2020, 4:30 am
#3818
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Between Seas
Posts: 4,753
Pointing out all the deaths is hardly an "appeal to sentiment" -- it's reality that you want to ignore.
You're basing your argument on the man who refuses to admit his error. Not quite compelling, nor is your attempt to bury us with words yet again.
You haven't shown any expertise that proves your arguments any more compelling, nor are you quoting anything that actually constitutes proof of your position, and your personal attacks are simply invalid. You haven't proved anything -- you just have an agenda.
You're basing your argument on the man who refuses to admit his error. Not quite compelling, nor is your attempt to bury us with words yet again.
You haven't shown any expertise that proves your arguments any more compelling, nor are you quoting anything that actually constitutes proof of your position, and your personal attacks are simply invalid. You haven't proved anything -- you just have an agenda.
Anders Tegnell, the man behind Sweden's contentious coronavirus plan, has a legion of fans — and critics
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-...virus/12384966
- Unlike Sweden, the other Nordic countries swiftly imposed tough mandatory lockdowns. Today, the Swedes have double the number of confirmed cases as Denmark, Norway and Finland combined. And the fatality rate is even worse — more than 5,200 have died from a population of just 10 million. That's five times the combined total of the other Nordic nations.
Tegnell admits there have been failures. One of the relatively few government directives was to lock down aged care facilities. He concedes the order came too late and casualties have been high — of the 5,000 deaths, 88 per cent have been people aged over 70, many of them in retirement homes. Exactly how many elderly Swedes have died of COVID-19 has been difficult to determine. During the first couple of months of the crisis, there was a lack of comprehensive testing making it hard to know the cause of death. "We are doing a lot of things now and we see that the number of cases in those facilities is slowly falling," says Tegnell, "so we believe that even that can be rectified and our strategy will be even more sustainable."
To date, around 7 per cent of Sweden's population has been infected and developed COVID-19 antibodies, well short of the so-called "herd immunity" rate of at least 70 per cent, where so many people in the community become infected that the virus is theoretically controlled. Swedish public health experts, critical of the Tegnell plan, say herd immunity was always the implied cornerstone of the national strategy. But Tegnell denies this was ever his goal. -
Last edited by FlitBen; Aug 9, 2020 at 4:49 am
Aug 9, 2020, 4:48 am
#3819
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
The reality is that your appeal to sentiment falters in good discussion about scientific and governmental responses to 100-year pandemics. And the falsehoods you attempt to spread about public health officials are as useful as your pretextual and premature bashing of Sweden's 'most infections, most deaths, most unserious, most incompetent' response.
I can always point to the considered positions of the most knowledgeable and authoritative ID experts. Whereas, you resort to imputing doubt and distrust about competent scientists who you apparently know little about yet assail politically, just because "X country approach failure".
I can always point to the considered positions of the most knowledgeable and authoritative ID experts. Whereas, you resort to imputing doubt and distrust about competent scientists who you apparently know little about yet assail politically, just because "X country approach failure".
Nor is what I say falsehoods -- you just don't like me saying it.
Last, Your claim that I assailed scientists politically and said "most infections, most deaths, most unserious, most incompetent'" are flat-out lies, which you should be ashamed of posting.
Last edited by PaulMSN; Aug 9, 2020 at 4:54 am
Aug 9, 2020, 5:00 am
#3820
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: VIE
Programs: SAS EBS / *A Silver, Hilton Diamond, Radisson VIP, IHG Platinum Ambassador
Posts: 3,786
Aug 9, 2020, 5:23 am
#3821
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
Last edited by PaulMSN; Aug 9, 2020 at 5:29 am
Aug 9, 2020, 7:23 am
#3822
Community Director
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Norwich, UK
Programs: A3*G, BA Gold, BD Gold (in memoriam), IHG Diamond Ambassador
Posts: 8,479
Folks, it’s necessary to close this thread for mod review. The current exchanges are unedifying, to say the least, and there’s a definite need for some to stop piling on here.
/mod
/mod