erik123

No. The virus disappears with a very high level of vaccination. The key to protecting vulnerable populations means vaccinating as many people as possible.

the810

That's only true if the vaccine prevents transmission. And it's doubtful whether we ever reach levels of herd immunity needed to "get rid" of the virus due to reluctance of public to get vaccinated in certain areas (for example, some health care facilities in Germany reported as many as 50% of their staff refusing the vaccine).

We're talking about a virus that causes next-to-nothing to majority of people. Eradication is not needed, this is not a plague (nor is it achievable in a medium term). We just need to make sure the number of people who become ill after getting infected is as low as possible.

Humans only erradicated one dissease in the whole history. We didn't manage to get rid of the flu despite having had vaccine for decades and despite flu being supposedly much less contagious than this.

gruimed

Where do you see that information on the website?

invisible

Three.

erik123

You confuse eradication with elimination. E.g. measles used to be eliminated in the Western Hemisphere - but is now making a comeback. Eradication is extremely difficult to achieve (see polio) - but elimination doable - and I suspect will be the goal for most countries.

GUWonder

To further your point about distinguishing eradication and elimination:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su48a7.htm

Didn't Germany just adjust rules to enable easier travel in a way for those with a proof of being vaccinated by a vaccine accepted by Germany?

supine

Given that the summer 2020 opening up set the stage for the disastrous second wave, I think we need to see a lot of progress on vaccination if politicians are going to be brave enough to do something similar in summer 2021.

supine

The opposite in fact. Germany is discussing why differentiating based on vaccination status is extremely problematic and is highly unlikely to do anything that would appear to privilege those who are vaccinated.

GUWonder

Some were covering it as if Germany had decided to allow vaccination to make some kind of limited difference to enable travel to Germany. That's why I asked.

Dubai has been international party central around the peak vacation period that covers Christmas and New Years; and it was so even earlier in December. And over 70k Israelis went to the UAE in December before Israel frustrated the Israeli travel demand (to visit Dubai) by putting in tighter restrictions in Israel. For partying Swedes who wanted to get away from alcohol restrictions, a whole bunch of them flooded into the UAE especially. Mexico was the other popular spot for international mingling by partying Swedes and others this season.

Given all the partying going on in the UAE and the UAE's openness in the past several weeks, it's not surprising that the UAE and Israel are seeing a case surge now -- even as vaccinated citizen populations have been the highest in the world. Israel, Bahrain and the UAE seem to be the leaders in getting the highest proportion of their citizens vaccinated so far.

The UAE has been using a lot of one of the Chinese vaccines.

radonc1

Haven'y you heard??

For the partying set, Corona is more than just a beer ,

yvrcnx

It was there when I first posted it a few days ago but LH must have have taken it down since it didn't correspond with what the government had decided.

lobo411

Did the Summer opening set up the stage for the Second Wave? I don't think that's established at all. How many people actually visited the EU from non-EU countries? A lot of the countries on the "Allowed to enter" list didn't allow their own nationals to depart, like Australia or China. And the second wave didn't start until mid to late November. Isn't the timing problematic? Correlation does not establish causation. In this case, we haven't even got correlation.

It seems far more likely that the second wave was caused by the natural ebb and flow of viral infections, including mutations.

HAudidoody

As long as I have to wear a mask at a given location, I'm not traveling to that location for vacation. As long as the place I get to is restricted in some way: closed restaurants, shut museums, unavailable amenities, etc. I'm not traveling to that location for vacation.

In that sense, the vaccination status of the place I'm traveling to is far more important than where I'm coming from with respect to when flying will come back. I expect to be vaccinated in May but I'm not sure that will have any effect on my actual leisure travel schedule.

As far as business travel is concerned, I don't expect my company to let us go anywhere until months after we're vaccinated, probably close to 2022, and even then, it will be heavily restricted. Why? Because I don't think they like paying for travel and will look for any excuse to stop it. And so goes my career down the toilet.

supine

While there were some non-EU tourists still making it over here (Croatia comes to mind as one country that still let them in) the main problem was the increased mobility of EU residents who were encouraged to travel during the school holidays.



https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/...ml#Entwicklung

That's the number of new cases in the German state of Hessen where I live just outside of Frankfurt/Main. School holidays were most of July and the start of August. You can see the slow ramp through the holidays followed by a peak in the couple of weeks after they ended.

The increased prevalence in the community might have been containable with swift action but state and federal governments were reluctant to trigger any new lockdowns. We never got it under control and then it got away from us through October. Finally in November we got "lockdown light" which only stopped things getting worse, new cases per day leveled off. Only stricter lockdowns mid/late December (still ongoing, now till mid-February) really made a persistent downward trend happen.

The experience varies by state and country but they mostly rhyme.

So yes, I stand by my observation that the loose rules in summer 2020 set the stage for the second wave

QT31415

It's the opposite for me!