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Daily coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - April 20
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIZUgv7wQoU - Merkel's Statement regarding the current situation. Notable points:
One 5-person contact tracing team per 20000 people - in progress. More staff for related public health measures, e.g. more staff for the RKI(our CDC) as contact points for local health authorities.
=> That signals to me a commitment to a hammer-and-dance style approach of getting this thing back into containability.
She states that the first relaxations, effective today (and partially in two weeks) should not lead to a landslide of overzealous relaxations.
Merkel is relatively worried about the current public discourse snowballing into the above. In other words: Last week's commitment to first relaxation measures started people talking and now they can't shut up. I agree; I think the public discourse has headed into a direction where it will lead to people to be careless.
Regarding homebrew masks: She's in favor, but the main reason use isn't mandatory federally is because they can't reliably be supplied. Regions can establish stricter rules, but federally, it's a "strong recommendation" to wear them when safe distances can't be kept up, i.e. public transport or grocery stores.
Bolsonaro and other Brazilians protest in favor of the end of shutdown and in favor of AI-5
The Institutional act number 5 basically:
Allowed the president (now Bolsonaro) to close the Congress if he so desires and gain the legislative power that body was formerly responsible for
Made political protests illegal if they weren't authorized by the police (how ironic)
Allowed the President to destitute (fire) Any public worker (most importantly other politicians and judges)
The preemptive censure of the press, theater, music, cinema
Allowed the president to declare the suspension of the political rights of citizens considered 'subversive' and remove them of the right to vote or be voted on
All in all, a pretty based bunch /s
Is there any chance of that passing? Seems... Just out of the prequels of Star Wars.
Sorry if it's an ignorant question, I don't know much about Brazilian politics.
...Probably not. He won the 2018 election by 10 million votes, there are some 30 parties in our Congress and there is no real leader on the left I think right now. (This is the moment I need to clarify that I don't know a lot about Brazilian politics either, something which bothers me.) But then again they were asking for military intervention so this is not exactly a bill to law type thing. (I mean, come on.)
USC's testing estimates that ~4.1% of LA County's population have the disease, 28-55x more than what's currently reported.
Hmm, I looked for the preprint but I couldn't find it yet. It seems unfortunate that they're doing press releases first?
According to the Q&A by Neeraj Sood (who is also the third author of the Santa Clara county study), the antibody test is the same one used in Santa Clara. So if there are issues with false positives for the test then it would apply to both studies.
On the other hand, since results are broadly similar for Santa Clara and LA, it seems like biased sampling is less of a concern?
Well, the USC testing is being done on a random groups so I'd imagine it'd be less biased. The Q&A you referenced has more on the process.
Here's a claim (via Matt Levine) that in New York State, it is now both required and forbidden to wear masks in public places.
I feel like someone is not taking the law seriously, but I'm not sure who.
5 new cases here in New Zealand today (but also 1 more death; now 13 total). That's a pretty huge deal. Sentinel testing carried out at several grocery stores across the country revealed all negatives on the 400+ swabs.
The PM announced that NZ will move out of its Level 4 lockdown on April 27 at 11:59PM—this is a one week extension to ensure the virus has the lowest possible chance of spreading. Supposedly modelling done during the lockdown showed the R0 of SARS-CoV-2 had been reduced to 0.48 during this period.
Level 3 lockdown begins for two weeks when Level 4 lockdown ends—and has been described as some as Level 4 lockdown plus McDonalds (limited takeout and delivery for restaurants can begin, plus workplaces with no public entry can start operating again).
Still tho: Stay home, save lives. There has never been an easier solution to solving a complex problem.