re. post #56
@Tim Cullis. Thanks for this reasoned, intelligent post.:thumbup1:

So any info on people coming into Denmark (from the UK specifically). My son and his wife live in Malmo, so fly in and out of Copenhagen airport. They're here with us at the moment but heading back in a few days. They have to get into Denmark and then cross the bridge into Sweden.

I apologize if it seems I'm "accusing you" of anything at all, Tim. I believe that we all fall prey to confirmation bias, and therefore attend preferentially to information which supports our desires and worldview. I'm not "accusing:" I'm merely stating one of my own biases, which is that we're all susceptible and that this sometimes interferes with our ability to see things clearly and make wise decisions.

Of course I was responding in part to your statement that your family intended to go ahead with existing plans regardless of what you heard from the government. You may have meant something different, but what I heard was "We intend to ignore any information contrary to what we've already decided." In your post quoted above, you say instead that you "*hope* to be able to go ahead" [emphasis added], which seems to me quite different. Again, I'm just stating how I interpreted your words; I'm not trying to tell you what you meant, felt or believed when you wrote them.

I was also responding to the conclusions I thought you were drawing from some--not all--of the statistics you quoted. For example, statements that a case rate is doubling every couple of days can't be disproven by projecting that rate into the indefinite future. Both can be true: case rates are currently doubling, and they can't continue to do so without exceeding our population.

This is, in fact, the norm: in the beginning of an epidemic there might be one, five, or ten known cases, but in a couple of days there might be ten times as many.--that is, five, fifty or a hundred. Obviously, that doesn't mean the case rate will continue to expand by a factor of ten; that would be absurd. Anyone--politician, health "expert," or reporter who thinks that numbers works this way is suffering from a failure of critical thinking.

I've already pointed to the lag times between increases in infections, hospitalization, ICU admissions, and death rates. You said that "CURRENT FIGURES: are not showing any sign of recent increase..." but this has been true during all surges of this pandemic; first infections increase, then after a bit so do hospitalizations, eventually ICU admissions, and finally death rates. Whether this will be true during the current phase remains an open question. If we're lucky, predictions that this variant is less virulent will prove out. At the moment, the people I trust more rather than less are offering very mixed predictions; one stated this morning that he expects record death rates in the US this winter. I hope he's wrong.

Yes, I'm aware of those controversies (and we've had our share of similar events). I'm also aware of a range of irritated responses, including a distinct deterioration in trust. As one who never particularly believed anything your prime minister said in the first place--and who felt the same except even more so about my previous president--that seems to me a reasonable response.

But the fact that a bunch of politicians held Christmas parties last year doesn't mean much when it comes to my own decisions; why should it? I don't trust them, their ability to make wise decisions, their propensity for telling the truth or ability to predict the future. A prominent politician from my neck of the woods--a Trump campaign organizer and COVID denier--just died of COVID after traveling to El Salvador under bogus pretenses during an intense outbreak there. Am I going to model my own life after his?

I don't know whether this clarifies my earlier post, but I hope it does at least to some extent. Meanwhile, here's to a happy, stress-free holiday for you and your family!

Mark

As far as I understand it, a max 72 hrs negative PCR is needed for transiting Denmark.

https://reopen.europa.eu/en/map/DNK/7004

https://en.coronasmitte.dk/travel-rules

time will tell
 

I have been waiting a long time For the Canadian Government to accept the Sinovac Vaccine I was inoculated in may and June this year in South America and finally dec 1 the feds recognized sinovac as a acceptable vaccine
Wow I thought I can come home without quarantine and all the hassles associated with entering Canada I d guess I am not coming back to Canada with this new strain on the horizon My god this shite never ends
Landing in Toronto in the mid winter you are guarantied to get some sort of cold virus or worse
It happened to me in 2019 after 2 years in the tropics
its been quite a adventure since march last year when I landed in Colombia

I prefer to be objective and rely on reported data. You are reading far too much into what I have written which was after all a simple relating of facts, as follows...

People wouldn't remember the statistics from the January 2021 peak so I related those click on data on each heading then scroll for Jan 21. Then I gave the current figures (same link, click on data for each heading) prefixing these with the factual comment that no recent increases had been recorded. The important bit you seem to have missed is that I then wrote that next week will bring the first real indications of what is to come in the UK hospital statistics.

I don't profess to know the relative infection/serious illness rates of Omicron vs Delta in the UK and have no idea how next week will play out. The whole point of my post was to highlight that at the moment we just don't know whether the SA experience of moderate illness relates to the UK, but next week will be our best guide.

No bias. No need for confirmation.

I also have no opinion as to whether there will be a lockdown in the UK. I appreciate the arguments for no lockdown in terms of protecting the economy and mental health, conversely I appreciate the arguments for preventing dramatic spikes that the NHS can't handle. Glad I don't have to make the decision.
______________________________

In the meantime it has been reported that SAGE (emergency committee) has been discussing some extremely worrying models that predict dangerous outcomes. However when the minutes of the meeting were leaked to the media, what wasn't admitted was that the government had asked the modellers to assume Omicron was no different from Delta in terms of serious cases and deaths.

It took JP Morgan (merchant bank) to discover this. So these SAGE models were about as far from an independent viewpoint as it's possible to get. I'm not saying the SAGE predictions will turn out to be incorrect, but the fact that the government had set strict parameters should have been declared.

Link to Spectator article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...ling-committee

I don't know what tomorrow's papers will make of this—Boris and his team have suffered one credibility setback after another just recently. (And that's an objective view, not confirmation bias).

Ok, so it looks at present as though they won't have any problems in Copenhagen. They just have to get out of Denmark asap and without visiting any shops etc. Quite how it'll work out after Christmas is another matter as my son lives in Malmo but works in Copenhagen.

They can continue and exceed our population by double or tripple infecting a person which are actually proven cases in South Africa. Omicron is an Escape-Mutation which means it is infecting people who were e.g. infected and recovered from the Delta variant.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/2326...ity-from-past/

A pandemic situation is marked through its dynamic behavior. A pandemic rule says: Never say never. This you can observe by omicron and its much higher potential to infect compared to Delta variant.

It`s imaginable that a case rate can continue to expand by a factor of ten as well as it is imaginable that it can continue to expand by a factor of 100.

Omicron is in 77 countries with a spreading rate (exponentially growth) no other corona variant showed up to now. Even if it will be evidentially true that omicron infects people with mostly mild symptoms the sheer number of cases could overcome health systems of these 77 countries.

Check this graph and compare the share and growth of omicron variant in all analyzed sequences in South Africa/Botswana starting at Nov 1, 2021 to other countries starting at Nov29, 2021.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/c...SA~ZAF~BWA~AUS

The fear of a exponentially case growth like this accelerated through omicron is actual the reason why Austria tighted their rules and why The Netherlands went into lookdown and why many other countries will follow with different measures in the next weeks.

I've said it before...
 

Chin up, we're doomed!

Sorry, but this is not the way mathematics work. Start with a hundred cases. Sustained expansion by a factor of ten exceeds the population of the entire world in 8 days. In 9 days it exceeds the population of the world by a factor of ten. No matter how many repeated or "multiple" infections you imagine, this is not possible. If you doubt this, just keep going: ten days, or eleven.

Theoretical expansion of this sort works in a very limited way--the first couple of days, the first week. After a certain point it become impossible to sustain, no matter what sort of system you're describing. This includes pandemics, multi-level marketing schemes, gifting circles, you name it.

The same applies when you apply lesser expansions--say, a daily doubling of cases--but more slowly. I'm too lazy to figure it out precisely, but if you start with, say, 64 cases it only takes a bit more than a month before you've again exceeded the population of the world. Keep going and...well, you get the picture.

Mark

It is a little more complicated to forecast a pandemic developement with mathmatic models than you think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathem...ctious_disease

Of course. I know that. I was merely responding to what you posted, which was:

Originally Posted by Rapax View Post
It`s imaginable that a case rate can continue to expand by a factor of ten as well as it is imaginable that it can continue to expand by a factor of 100.

If my stomach continues to grow exponentially....
I'll never get off my sofa by Xmas
Stop feeding me toad-in-the-hole woman!
(Between you and me....I think it's a plot!) ;)

Interesting article on the fine difference between a mutation (many) and a variant (few), How come Omicron mutated locally in Morocco

(Morocco now has 28 confirmed Omicron cases and another 46 suspected.)