Canada is like the UK due to mixing vaccines and delaying the second shot, which have given more robust immunity against even Delta. However, like the UK, it would stuck in stagnation for sometime before cases start to increase again. A third dose seems to help as Israel was able to decrease the cases. Although only UAE a country with an extremely high vaccination rate and third dose is looking to truly contain the virus after opening up.
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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solarz
Brigadier
Due to 3rd world countries unable to, and the West not willing to take hard choices to end this pandemic, it is going to be endemic.
We are a regional transport hub, and depend on a huge amount of migrant workers.
I don't think we can afford the China model, unfortunately.
Its perfectly ok for me to stay at home for months, not going out of my house.
But we should not be condescending towards those living in tiny Singapore who have developed a lifestyle of going out and overseas to enjoy their wide open spaces.
I was very surprised when I found out tourists from China, Hong Kong find our place interesting.
Just as we should not chide people having height phobia( Acrophobia), crowd phobia( Agoraphobia).
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As mentioned in the article Sanofi also dropped their mRNA candidate.
Currently only Walvax and Arcturus (a U.S. company partnered with Singapore and Vietnam's Vingroup) are carrying out phase iii trials for mRNA vaccines. Arcturus uses a novel platform whereas Walvax's approach is more conservative. Walvax produces more than twice the amount of the neutralizing antibodies as CureVac did, but still just around half of what BNT-Pfizer produces. It's roughly the same level as Clover's protein candidate, and substantially lower than Livzon's fusion protein candidate V-01. Arcturus' ARCT-154's neutralizing antibodies data from monkeys seems to be really good (about 10 times better than their earlier candidate ARCT-021), but I don't know why they are only releasing monkey data when they're entering phase iii human trial.
Why should cased start to increase again? People are now starting to call it "the virus of the unvacinated"
Zero Covid is possible and "easy and relatively cheap" is the kind of view that one takes from an ivory tower totally divorced from the realities on the ground.
A big country can lock down a few cities and/or provinces and it's still only 5-10% of the country. The rest of the country and economy can chug along just fine. Singapore locks down a city, that's literally the entire country. The economy comes to a halt. Businesses shut and the govt tanks it by helping employers pay wage and rents. Consider that the SG govt has already rolled out >$100 billion in Covid support packages - that's the equivalent of an entire year's Govt fiscal budget (which is usually ~$80 billion). You want to tell me which country in the world can continue running a deficit at that rate and not have consequences?
At the business level, tight covid controls opens oppourtunities for some industries (eg. food delivery
) but has literally killed others. Take for example the travel industry - again, within a big country, domestic tourism can still go on. In a city state? Zilch, nada, zero. There is literally no inbound/outbound travel to speak of. What then if you are in the travel industry? I've watched a friend's family lay off hundreds of workers and liquidate assets just to stay solvent. The laid off workers, well I guess they can always reskill as delivery drivers (which many have). Entertainment, nightlife, social based industries have all taken a huge hit as many of them have had to shut intermittently over the last 2 years or operate under conditions that throttle their ability to remain viable (max group sizes of 2 to 5 kills a lot of activities).
At the personal level? I don't travel 12-15 times to China for leisure. I have an ongoing sports based developmental project there - all of which has largely skidded to a halt due to travel restrictions. It is hard to justify 4 weeks of quarantine just to conduct a 4 day training camp. I am sure there are others like that with long term "projects" that have been derailed due to the quarantine restrictions making the time element difficult to justify.
And ... think of the Children! Do you have kids? If you do, you care to tell me that zero covid is easy and without cost? Without cost to who? I know of working parents who are at their wits end when home based learning kicks off and they parents are not work from home. Add in ADD/ADHD to the mix? Oh happy happy joy joyu - not. My kids are in team sports that haven't trained properly for 2 years due to group size restrictions varying from 2 to 5. Try training for a contact sport when no close physical contact is allowed. I could go on about how kids are probably the hardest hit but I'm running out of steam
At the business level, tight covid controls opens oppourtunities for some industries (eg. food delivery
) but has literally killed others. Take for example the travel industry - again, within a big country, domestic tourism can still go on. In a city state? Zilch, nada, zero. There is literally no inbound/outbound travel to speak of. What then if you are in the travel industry? I've watched a friend's family lay off hundreds of workers and liquidate assets just to stay solvent. The laid off workers, well I guess they can always reskill as delivery drivers (which many have). Entertainment, nightlife, social based industries have all taken a huge hit as many of them have had to shut intermittently over the last 2 years or operate under conditions that throttle their ability to remain viable (max group sizes of 2 to 5 kills a lot of activities). At the personal level? I don't travel 12-15 times to China for leisure. I have an ongoing sports based developmental project there - all of which has largely skidded to a halt due to travel restrictions. It is hard to justify 4 weeks of quarantine just to conduct a 4 day training camp. I am sure there are others like that with long term "projects" that have been derailed due to the quarantine restrictions making the time element difficult to justify.
And ... think of the Children! Do you have kids? If you do, you care to tell me that zero covid is easy and without cost? Without cost to who? I know of working parents who are at their wits end when home based learning kicks off and they parents are not work from home. Add in ADD/ADHD to the mix? Oh happy happy joy joyu - not. My kids are in team sports that haven't trained properly for 2 years due to group size restrictions varying from 2 to 5. Try training for a contact sport when no close physical contact is allowed. I could go on about how kids are probably the hardest hit but I'm running out of steam
Bottom line, zero covid is not without cost. It may be "easy" from a superficial point of view, but it is not without cost.
Consider China. What China has done and is continuing to do is remarkable and enviable. But it is not a path that everyone can take. Just like how democracy is not always the correct solution for every country. Even China, for all the discipline and resolve, has to balance the mental well being of the population against the physical well being and tread the line where there is popular support of what the government is doing/has achieved.
IF China had been in a constant state of restriction over the last 2 years - with travel restricted to only 50km of where you live, quarantine for travel outside your city, restricted activities and social groupings - it is arguable that the population will be a seething pot of discontent and there will be outbreaks of protest.
The west may have screwed up the containment but they aren't the only part of the world that matters. The rest of the world probably wants to go back to a life of normalcy too no? The Africans, the South Americans, the rest of Asia, etc ... are they all to be considered part of the west or only capable of making decisions that ape the west?
Neither is China the only part of the world that matters. China is probably the only part of the world capable of doing this indefinitely. Will it be fair to expect the rest of the world to follow China's model when it doesn't have the ability to?
Ultimately, as countries achieve their goals of fully vaccinating their populations, you have to consider what is the ultimate purpose of that vaccination drive? To reduce covid deaths to zero? Or to allow life to resume some normalcy? Or a mix of both?
162 deaths is not a price to pay for a holiday. 162 deaths is part and parcel of living. There are thousands of deaths each year, in Singapore, related to smoking and drinking. Do we take a zero tolerance policy and ban all alcohol and drinks? Any idea what that does to the mental health of population and their acceptance of the government? We have approx 1,600 deaths from flu over the same period - should we then be not more alarmed?
So no, 162 deaths is part and parcel of living and dying from the myriads of things people die from.
Extremisim exist not only in religious dogma but in our response to Covid as well.
One extreme is of course the let it all burn, forget and the mask and vaccines, damn the cost.
The other extreme is that zero covid is the only way, despite there being real costs in human and economic capital.
I am in neither extreme. Where do you stand?
It is a society run by an elite that is neither Chinese in thought or in culture no matter what their outward appearance may seem.
50 years of being fed a pro-west agenda through the state media and education system has also delivered a majority Chinese population that neither values their cultural history nor view China with objective eyes.
Ultimately, Singapore is an open economy that depends on externalities to prosper. It will tread the line between China and the West because it has to. But I have no doubt that the ruling elite will be much more comfortable with west than China.
in the US/Canada I hear people call these types of Asians 'bobas'. it means that they are only superficially Asian, like boba - a cheap food item easy to digest with little cultural depth.
SteelBird
Colonel
Sorry that I break into your discussion.Zero Covid is possible and "easy and relatively cheap" is the kind of view that one takes from an ivory tower totally divorced from the realities on the ground.
A big country can lock down a few cities and/or provinces and it's still only 5-10% of the country. The rest of the country and economy can chug along just fine. Singapore locks down a city, that's literally the entire country. The economy comes to a halt. Businesses shut and the govt tanks it by helping employers pay wage and rents. Consider that the SG govt has already rolled out >$100 billion in Covid support packages - that's the equivalent of an entire year's Govt fiscal budget (which is usually ~$80 billion). You want to tell me which country in the world can continue running a deficit at that rate and not have consequences?
At the business level, tight covid controls opens oppourtunities for some industries (eg. food delivery
At the personal level? I don't travel 12-15 times to China for leisure. I have an ongoing sports based developmental project there - all of which has largely skidded to a halt due to travel restrictions. It is hard to justify 4 weeks of quarantine just to conduct a 4 day training camp. I am sure there are others like that with long term "projects" that have been derailed due to the quarantine restrictions making the time element difficult to justify.
And ... think of the Children! Do you have kids? If you do, you care to tell me that zero covid is easy and without cost? Without cost to who? I know of working parents who are at their wits end when home based learning kicks off and they parents are not work from home. Add in ADD/ADHD to the mix? Oh happy happy joy joyu - not. My kids are in team sports that haven't trained properly for 2 years due to group size restrictions varying from 2 to 5. Try training for a contact sport when no close physical contact is allowed. I could go on about how kids are probably the hardest hit but I'm running out of steam
Bottom line, zero covid is not without cost. It may be "easy" from a superficial point of view, but it is not without cost.
Consider China. What China has done and is continuing to do is remarkable and enviable. But it is not a path that everyone can take. Just like how democracy is not always the correct solution for every country. Even China, for all the discipline and resolve, has to balance the mental well being of the population against the physical well being and tread the line where there is popular support of what the government is doing/has achieved.
IF China had been in a constant state of restriction over the last 2 years - with travel restricted to only 50km of where you live, quarantine for travel outside your city, restricted activities and social groupings - it is arguable that the population will be a seething pot of discontent and there will be outbreaks of protest.
The west may have screwed up the containment but they aren't the only part of the world that matters. The rest of the world probably wants to go back to a life of normalcy too no? The Africans, the South Americans, the rest of Asia, etc ... are they all to be considered part of the west or only capable of making decisions that ape the west?
Neither is China the only part of the world that matters. China is probably the only part of the world capable of doing this indefinitely. Will it be fair to expect the rest of the world to follow China's model when it doesn't have the ability to?
Ultimately, as countries achieve their goals of fully vaccinating their populations, you have to consider what is the ultimate purpose of that vaccination drive? To reduce covid deaths to zero? Or to allow life to resume some normalcy? Or a mix of both?
162 deaths is not a price to pay for a holiday. 162 deaths is part and parcel of living. There are thousands of deaths each year, in Singapore, related to smoking and drinking. Do we take a zero tolerance policy and ban all alcohol and drinks? Any idea what that does to the mental health of population and their acceptance of the government? We have approx 1,600 deaths from flu over the same period - should we then be not more alarmed?
So no, 162 deaths is part and parcel of living and dying from the myriads of things people die from.
Extremisim exist not only in religious dogma but in our response to Covid as well.
One extreme is of course the let it all burn, forget and the mask and vaccines, damn the cost.
The other extreme is that zero covid is the only way, despite there being real costs in human and economic capital.
I am in neither extreme. Where do you stand?
My stance is: everybody has rights to choose, just do not force your own choice onto others. As a Chinese proverb says: 己所不欲，勿施于人. The West doesn't do this. They choose to live with the virus and criticize China's Zero-Covid policy.
I can see the eager to reopen of countries like Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand... to save their economies. Generally, I have no problem with them choosing to do so because my own country, Cambodia, is also desire to reopen our country but very cautiously. If we reopen and something goes wrong, the country maybe shut off again. However, the phrase "to live with the virus" is not valid to me because if you choose not to do anything, Covid-19 will not become an endemic but it will be a disaster. Finally, the people will be the one who suffer. Further, your example of smoking and alcohols is not valid in this case because those who smoke and drink may get sick and die but just themselves only. Covid-19 will spread around and make others sick and die.
The bottom line is: If one nation can get Covid-19 under control, it can choose to reopen and do not force any other country to follow your method.