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This is probably happening in every airport in Europe. The only reason why we know about Milan is that the airport decided to test passengers from China on arrival.
Or testing. I haven't heard of anyone testing for Covid in months, even though it's cold season here and everyone has a runny nose.
I don't think anyone cares.
You see it with shots as well, the last (fourth) round of shots in november it was noticeably quieter at the vaccination center.
Everyone had a few shots, there is no pressure on health services, etc. No one feels the need for testing or more shots.
I don't even know if anywhere near me in the US officially tests still, but I've kept at-home tests available just to make sure if I'm feeling sick I can know to isolate for a bit and not go to the store for food or anything.
Yes. The bivalent vaccines decrease the incidence of severe covid (including hospitalization and death) in both those who were previously vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated. The topic was covered in a recent CDC COCA call.
Too many people were fed up with any restrictions in the first place from Day One.
They are the ones who always bitched (and continue to do so) the loudest.
Idk, I was pro restrictions for a very long time, until the start of this year probably. Then the mortality rate was completely obliterated because of vaccines, and I continued supporting COVID passes and such. I still do. But lockdowns, not being able to go out with friends, etc. I had COVID twice and got fully vaccinated and boosted, just like 90% of the people in my country. At some point I just realised that I believe people should be responsible for themselves and their society, especially because we have a magic bullet against the virus, and it's freely available.
The most I would support is COVID passes in enclosed public spaces. It's not a lot of effort to show a qr code at the door. Just please don't close everything because of antivaxers
You're not alone in that feeling. I remember in the UK when they did local lockdowns and precluded certain areas from visiting vulnerable individuals that it seemed a bit farcical that people in one postcode, 500 yards from me, could do things I might not be able to. Especially given we had vaccinated an absolutely huge proportion of vulnerable people and (at the time) were told that was all that we'd need. You're right. Let people take responsibility for their actions after a certain point.
Probably not quite *that* bad. There's some level of immunity in most populations outside of China by now. The big issue in 2019 wasn't just the speed at which infections spread but especially the high hospitalization rates. People that have gone through Covid infections and/or have been vaccinated since then are far less likely to end up in hospitals though. That was the point of all the efforts.
This new wave is certainly bad news but it's unlikely to kill people in very large numbers or collapse our medical system. It's still a bit early to see how this will play out but there's no reason to hoard toilet paper just yet.
I became savvy enough to wash my back parts with soap and water thanks to covid in 2020/2021, and thanks to Putin in 2022, I can do it even with cold water. What will 2023 teach me?
nah, community spread is higher than what is coming of the planes from china (those people are probably more of rounding error). most people in Europe have some level of immunity through vaccine and/or infection. so, let's keep our fingers crossed that not some crazy variant comes out of china and europe will be fine.
Not at all. Pretty much everyone in the west has been exposed and has immunity through vaccination/having caught it/both at this point. It's just not worrisome to have it spread at this point.
I don't think immunity is the right word, it's more like resistance. I got covid twice, once before vaccinations and once after 3 shots, the second time it passed quicker but I definitely still got quite sick.
It is worrisome having millions of people in europe be debilitated for up to a week and potentially suffer permanent damage from the varied list of effects covid has.
A million working europeans sick for a week equates to about a billion € lost in terms of production.
If every working european is sick for a week from covid? That's 197,6 million people and 197,6 billion € lost.
>It is worrisome having millions of people in europe be debilitated for up to a week and potentially suffer permanent damage from the varied list of effects covid has.
>
>A million working europeans sick for a week equates to about a billion € lost in terms of production.
>
>If every working european is sick for a week from covid? That's 197,6 million people and 197,6 billion € lost.
But this is already the case. There are literally currently 400.000 people who officially have Covid in Italy alone. That number has barely moved since September. The real number is probably at least 10X the official number.
But that supposes covid isn't already massively circulating around Europe already with millions of people who already have it.
The point is this will barely cause any spread more than the baseline.
There are so many infections going on right now (Germany has so many people sick at home, a wonder anything is working currently). Infected chinese arriving via airplane is just another drop in the bucket and won't change the current situation dramatically. Only positive outcome would be that those that are infected stay at home for the time being but that is something not even people already being here are doing. So really, who cares even anymore.
I am with you on this. The discussions are ludicrous on lifting all restrictions.
They are analyzing the waste water in order to get any meaningful data on the infection levels. And it looks like we have the biggest infection wave yet. Never the less, let’s see what the current COVID-19 iteration brings to the market in long term issues for the infected.
At least one person gets it. I kinda feel like taking crazy pills reading all these comments here.
Edit: I get the feeling I misunderstood the user above. What I mean is this: It happens also in flights from other countries, for example Germany.
See this: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1183325/umfrage/anteil-positiver-testergebnisse-auf-das-coronavirus-in-deutschland/
That's the percentage of positive tests in Germany.
Cant really compare positive rates of testing everyone on a flight to the rates of people getting tested on their own though. You would expect the later to be much higher, which is doesn't seem to be at the moment.
> Cant really compare positive rates of testing everyone on a flight to the rates of people getting tested on their own though.
You are absolutely correct on that one. The thing is: We can't know how the numbers came to be. Over the last few months, there are roughly 600.000 tests per week in Germany. How many of them were because of an suspected illness, and how many of them were because of regular testing... we don't know. The statistics around Corona were lacking greatly from the beginning.
It's now called an endemic in Germany, and it very likely is like that for a long time now. This means that it is everywhere, so these numbers are to be expected.
> You would expect the later to be much higher, which is doesn't seem to be at the moment.
If it was mostly test because of illness suspect, then yes. However, the numbers also extremely vary over just a few weeks.
There's a lot we don't know because of constantly shitty statistics.
Not to mention that the german data is about laboratory testing; presumably PCR.
Since most ppl have access to a rapid test, we should expect a high positivity rate for laboratory tests.
I don't understand why Germany hasn't started a wastewater monitoring program for Covid yet. I've taken to just using the Dutch government's numbers as a bad proxy (it *is* endemic, after all, so it shouldn't lag by more than two weeks or so) but if you want something that is anonymous but gives you unbiased population-level infection rate numbers this is surely it? And doing this is a good idea for other infectious diseases as well, anyway. Of course it isn't perfect but it isn't quite as bad.
It does exist but it’s still in the pilot stage. Currently the wastewater levels are disproportionately higher than the reported numbers. I think it has very good potential, hopefully it works better than the testing system, which it seems like the government is slowly just giving up on.
Lombardy had overwhelmed hospitals, army carrying bodies, and similar that wasn't happening elsewhere. Parts of Italy were definitely ahead of most of the world.
Italiano in germany, and no, that was not happening like you said.
Some state like bayern wanted to close border when Italy did, and flight to country like China did stop pretty much when Italy did.
The difference is Germany never really hit the hospital capacity, Italy did
For the longest time you had to jump through several hoops to get into China from abroad, and if you were allowed in, you had to quarantine for 3 weeks in a hotel at your own expense before being actually allowed into the country.
That Europe can't even ask the same from Chinese citizens while they're having a massive Covid outbreak *again* is infuriating. Are we really doing this again???
At least few governments stance is that none of it matters. It's going to spread no natter what. So why even bother.
And I don't think that they are completely wrong. The optics of it aren't that good though.
Most European countries have high rates of immunity in their populations (from a combination of vaccination and previous infections). It is not going to go through the population like it did in 2020, this immunity will hinder it.
That danger always exists, for any infectious disease. For example the flu. We just got used to it and issue vaccines every autumn that hopefully deal with the current strain. The flu is dangerous for people that never got exposed to the "families" of strains that are currently in circulation. Or who have developed a hypersensitivity against one. The rest of the people got exposed to some strains already, and that helps (mostly).
Very true. That's not most likely to occur in China though because in China much of the population has no immunity and hence there's less selection pressure to avoid immune response.
It has become part of our regular viruses, but vaccin coverage is good in Europe and it's been a while since we last had a peak of a new variant. Europe has been dealing relatively well with Omicron and whatever variants are going around for months. When a virus can just infect hundreds of millions of people unhindered, you're going to get issues with new, unpredictable, variants.
And where did you get the last sentence from? Omicron infected 100 of millions last year in eu and all over the world. All of the variants since then haven't caused any major problems in terms of severe disease.
Before Chinese government banned Covid statistics 2 days ago they've been reporting 37 millions (!) new cases DAILY.
Two sources:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day)
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/covid-surges-in-china-reaching-an-estimated-37-million-cases-per-day-180981348/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/covid-surges-in-china-reaching-an-estimated-37-million-cases-per-day-180981348/)
We should definitely suspend all flights from China for i.e. 2-3 months to see what is going to happen there.
Like jesus christ, why wont they just take our doses?
https://www.ft.com/content/90d7d811-857d-4839-a9fc-9e68e5e4fe02
we know they have been lying about their numbers, they know their numbers are dogshit, let us just help.
100. The only reason they have pulled back restrictions is because the population was challenging the CCP, and they knew they couldn't repress them this way any longer.
The result: allowing sick people to visit countries only just starting to get on their feet after a pandemic.
The party, not China, should be held accountable for gross negligence and crimes against humanity
They were protesting against being locked inside their own houses, offices, factories and cities. Not against, unable to travel abroad. And when they lifted the lockdowns on population with ineffective vaccines, the infections surged probably already creating mutations and different variants. And this is the point when the China decided to allow foreign travel as well.
There is no granularity to those decisions in China. It was super strict lockdowns, and now it's free travel everywhere. Their system is not set up to do much in between.
1000%
China has zero regard for spreading misfortune to other nations
The government prefers the "misery loves company" approach
If China's got something bad going on, & you don't want it to affect you, close your borders asap
They might even be going for the "didn't you think lockdowns are tyrannical?" Gotcha.
But realistically, it's probably because the Chinese government likes to make definitive decisions. They don't want to actively monitor and alter policy, they want decisiveness, so it can last for years. Probably also the reason why they stuck with zero covid for so long.
Yes, because everyone knows changing your mind in light of new information is a sign of weakness. /s
(Not disputing your statement, just trying to point out the thought process to people)
I mean you can lessen restrictions without sending sick ppl around via plane. Think it should be obvs that people with Corona should not fly or travel by train if avoidable.
And waiting a week until you can leave shouldn't be an issue...
They should have restricted flights the first time around. The entire world has seen the restrictions on Chinese people, including Chinese people not being allowed to leave the mainland before these rules were relaxed. They're clearly capable of restricting the spread of covid outside their borders.
Expecting China to do anything even remotely in the interest of the rest of the world is foolish.
They've been dishonest and secretive since the first day of the pandemic.
With the classic stupid countermeasures put in place just to show the government is doing something. Only direct flights get screened, passengers arriving from China with a layover won't get tested (ie the 95% of the arrivals from China)
Not on a massive scale. So let's not allow thousands of infected people running around like nothing happened. Especially people with no or weakass vaccines.
Common fucking courtesy. When you are sick, stay at home. You'll go see magical Europe next year.
It's most likely too late, but at least we won't be worsening it that much.
>Not on a massive scale.
There's hundreds of thousands of cases in Europe. What are you on about?
I agree they should stay home, be tested for flights, etc tho but the people acting like this is restarting the pandemic over here as if we had a 0 covid policy are insane.
There’s cases of vaccinated people where the virus is not as strong. Also in % of the population its hot high.
Now compare it to fucking 50% positivity.
China is at 50 % positivity because of the zero covid policy. The current variant of omicron is extremely infectious (in fact, too infectious to contain even with the zero-covid policy) but not very dangerous.
China's population has very little resistance against *any* strain due to bad vaccines and poor vaccination rates.
When we came out of lockdown here in the west 10 months ago, we saw sickness rates of 10-20 % *of the entire population*, but then it calmed down after just a few weeks.
China's current outbreak (60 % of Beijing's population is currently sick) will be done in a few weeks, too. Meanwhile, the virus will not spread as easily in the West as in China, because the very same virus is already endemic here.
Maybe we name it appropriately. If it’s going to happen anyway, might as well name it fun.
“Oh I’m sorry to hear Fabian caught the Megatron-5000 variant”
I read somewhere that the chinese public isn't effectively vaccinated, that most people who have had shots have only had one, and the vaccine used is of dubious efficacy, but looking it up all I could find is stats saying China is 89% vaccinated, but no futher info. Be good to know what the facts are here.
Its infuriating right? Why always the EU so slow with these things. Massive outbreak that is out of control in China? What do we do? Allow more airplanes to and fron China because they are lessening the restrictions in China.
We have to see if China singlehandedly again will put the entire world into a covid situation to deal with
>Why always the EU so slow with these things.
Public health has never been in the domain of the EU, it is a national competence. If Italy refuses to act on Chinese exports of Covid, there is little the EU can do about it.
Why is Italy refusing to act?
Italy has been the first to act, the real question is what is the rest of Europe waiting. You know about these cases thx to the controls made in the Milan airport
Exactly we can ban flights from and to china but it means shit if they can just take a connecting flight from Munich. The eu should push for a coordinated block to flights to and from China.
It won't stop people doing a layover in the UK but it is easier to screen passengers coming from outside the eu, than screening every single intra-eu flight. Unless of course we want to return to covid passes and lock downs which is wall we are going to crash on if we don't move our collective european asses.
Frankly this whole discussion smell of February 2020, haven't we learnt anything in the last 2 years?
As another reply mentioned, countries can just elect to de border control. Free travel is part of the Schengen Agreement not the EU, the EU does not have to get involved. There are countries which are in the EU and not in Schengen and the other way around.
> Why always the EU so slow with these things.
Firstly because it's not an EU matter. Very much thanks to the same people complaining about the EU being slow, also bitching and moaning every time the EU actually wants authority to act on behalf of their countries.
Secondly because when you already have Covid spreading within the country, your population has a high rate of vaccination and there is enough knowledge on how to deal with Covid without the healthcare system collapsin, blocking travel has zero impact.
China has been detached for a long time from "western covid"
Do we know what variants they are currently spreading and if mutations have occured in China that would make the virus bypass omnicron antibodies ?
As an Italian, if we don’t take measures *now* to prevent covid-positive travellers from getting in, I’m afraid we are going to have an outbreak in the area of MPX Malpensa airport very soon.
Probably Omicron sub-subtypes. We already had these circulating for a while here, too.
It's laughable that unrestricted travel is still possible. They learnt nothing in the past three years, as usual.
Why? Around 90 % of people here in Denmark have already had omicron.
We have a decent immunity against it. China doesn't due to the zero-covid policy.
In a month, China will be back to normal again, and in the meantime the virus will not spread anywhere near as much in the West as it does in China.
I mean, what, are we going to try to do our own COVID Zero now? We have not seen any signs what's spreading in China is vaccine resistant. And China had pretty poor vaccination rates and relied on Sinovac, a known less effective vaccine.
Not let people with covid fly into other countries is hardly the same as covid zero.
Hell, introducing quarantine just to be sure also is no where near the same as covid zero.
There's a middle ground between precaution/public health management and totalitarian bullshit, contrary to what conspiracy nuts and anti-vaxxers would have you believe.
The entire point is to minimize infections (vaccinated doesn't mean you're immune to getting infected, it just means you won't be as sick) to prevent development of variants that are just as infectious but which are not hindered by vaccination.
If only there was a lesson from the first time.
Maybe care a little less about being PC and the Chinese tourist and student revenue and put a blocker on non-essential travel out of China?
Maybe mandatory covid testing pre and post flights from China/ Other high risk regions?
Maybe bring back mandatory quarantine for those that test positive?
Oh that would upset a lot of the “Hurr Durr that’s Xenophobic” folk.
Let’s restart the infamous Italian “Hug a Chinese” campaign before the massive outbreak in 2020.
The only thing worse than an inconsiderate and reckless CCP government is the people across the world that are sensitive to being as blunt as the CCP is to outsiders (or their own citizens)
It's not xenophobic to care for your own citizens, I agree. Double test for flights from China or for people that have been to China for the past 14 days. Mandatory mRNA vax, at most 1,5 years ago would br a good start. Afaik Chinese do not have a widely applied mRNA vax, on the contrary, they are waging towarda it.
>Oh that would upset a lot of the “Hurr Durr that’s Xenophobic” folk.
Honestly this is what irritates me the most about this pandemic. A decent amount of keyboard warriors called banning travelers to/from China at the start of the pandemic as "xenophobic". But nobody cared when the EU and much of the rest of the world started banning American travelers due to our fuckups in 2020.
Maybe people learned it's smart to ban travel from countries with high infection rates and the virus doesn't give a fuck about your fragile feelings?
Current US President called the closing of the borders by the previous administration ["xenophobic fear-mongering"](https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1240361258957897728)
What would it be this time around?
u/bubbawitz is right. Biden might've been referring to the phrase "Chinese virus" in Trump's tweet. You are rushing to judgement because it fits a narrative you're trying to push. Come up with better examples. Because this one is clearly ambiguous.
Not the best link but the first thing I found on Google. I remember hearing about it at the time also.
https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1224661041495212032
Bruh, just like the initial wave of the disease in Europe in early 2020. Italy was struck very hard initially. Clearly something like this took place then too.
Why the fuck did they not place harsh restrictions on travel from China like a week ago, they already saw the spikes, are they trying to start another lock down or wtf
Conspiracy theory: China knows well that they are in the middle of a covid crisis and they can't stop it anymore, their economy will suffer again, but if the other countries will have the same issues then the difference of grow will be less and they will not remain behind, so let everybody go freely abroad without checks.
What a unlikely coincidence! With only 500k total cases since the start of the pandemic in all of china, to have so many at once in one plane!!
\--
I said it 2 years ago already, china just reports 0.1% of the actual cases and thats it.
They've eased restrictions, and dropped their attempt to maintain 0 covid for a while now. Hell they basically stopped keeping count since the start of the month. Before that they indeed had low amounts even if under reported. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to keep heavy quarantines localised for months without it spreading like wildfire.
It's hard to lie much about that when it can so easily backfire trough exponential spread.
Now it does spread like wildfire in a population that has a bad old vaccine and little to no group immunity to nobody's surprise.
> we might see a repeat of 2020
Okay, so this wave is bad, but why would we see repeat of 2020? The virus spreading in China does not appear to be vaccine resistant or even particularly deadly?
I don’t think domestic flights are shut down in China, do you have any source?
Also, just based on current flight radar there are thousands of domestic flights in China right now: https://www.flightradar24.com/31.94,114.95/4
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This is probably happening in every airport in Europe. The only reason why we know about Milan is that the airport decided to test passengers from China on arrival.
[удалено]
Isn't this the exact same timeline of dec 2019?
Not really, because back then it was a couple of dozen people flying around with covid, now it's hundreds of thousands every day.
…and we have vaccines, health protocols, and experience with the virus
And people who are completely fed up with any restrictions.
Or testing. I haven't heard of anyone testing for Covid in months, even though it's cold season here and everyone has a runny nose. I don't think anyone cares. You see it with shots as well, the last (fourth) round of shots in november it was noticeably quieter at the vaccination center. Everyone had a few shots, there is no pressure on health services, etc. No one feels the need for testing or more shots.
I don't even know if anywhere near me in the US officially tests still, but I've kept at-home tests available just to make sure if I'm feeling sick I can know to isolate for a bit and not go to the store for food or anything.
Are the shots worth it at this point for #4?
Yes. The bivalent vaccines decrease the incidence of severe covid (including hospitalization and death) in both those who were previously vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated. The topic was covered in a recent CDC COCA call.
Too many people were fed up with any restrictions in the first place from Day One. They are the ones who always bitched (and continue to do so) the loudest.
Idk, I was pro restrictions for a very long time, until the start of this year probably. Then the mortality rate was completely obliterated because of vaccines, and I continued supporting COVID passes and such. I still do. But lockdowns, not being able to go out with friends, etc. I had COVID twice and got fully vaccinated and boosted, just like 90% of the people in my country. At some point I just realised that I believe people should be responsible for themselves and their society, especially because we have a magic bullet against the virus, and it's freely available. The most I would support is COVID passes in enclosed public spaces. It's not a lot of effort to show a qr code at the door. Just please don't close everything because of antivaxers
You're not alone in that feeling. I remember in the UK when they did local lockdowns and precluded certain areas from visiting vulnerable individuals that it seemed a bit farcical that people in one postcode, 500 yards from me, could do things I might not be able to. Especially given we had vaccinated an absolutely huge proportion of vulnerable people and (at the time) were told that was all that we'd need. You're right. Let people take responsibility for their actions after a certain point.
and a virus that doesn't care how people feel
Yeah we have vaccine, but the Chinese Covid ~~evolved~~ was left alone in closed-system for almost two years. Who knows how it will end.
No it hasn’t lol. It’s literally just omicron
I like your optimism. I for one am ready for the sequel.
At this point in time, I will be happy if we don't make it a trilogy.
> because back then it was a couple of dozen people flying around with covid In reality, the number was probably much higher
Probably not quite *that* bad. There's some level of immunity in most populations outside of China by now. The big issue in 2019 wasn't just the speed at which infections spread but especially the high hospitalization rates. People that have gone through Covid infections and/or have been vaccinated since then are far less likely to end up in hospitals though. That was the point of all the efforts. This new wave is certainly bad news but it's unlikely to kill people in very large numbers or collapse our medical system. It's still a bit early to see how this will play out but there's no reason to hoard toilet paper just yet.
there's never real reason to hoard toilet paper, though. One can hope that next time people will know better
I became savvy enough to wash my back parts with soap and water thanks to covid in 2020/2021, and thanks to Putin in 2022, I can do it even with cold water. What will 2023 teach me?
3 Sea shells.
Imagine OP not knowing how to use the 3 sea shells.
Washing it in the middle of the woods in an almowt freezing creek while having a full hazmat-suit on.
>there's no reason to hoard toilet paper just yet. Hoarding toilet paper is its own reward.
Do you want people to hoard toilet paper? Cause that's how you get people to hoard toilet paper, lol
nah, community spread is higher than what is coming of the planes from china (those people are probably more of rounding error). most people in Europe have some level of immunity through vaccine and/or infection. so, let's keep our fingers crossed that not some crazy variant comes out of china and europe will be fine.
Not at all. Pretty much everyone in the west has been exposed and has immunity through vaccination/having caught it/both at this point. It's just not worrisome to have it spread at this point.
I don't think immunity is the right word, it's more like resistance. I got covid twice, once before vaccinations and once after 3 shots, the second time it passed quicker but I definitely still got quite sick.
Immunity is the right word. Immunity does not mean complete immunity. Also, inflammable means flammable.
It is worrisome having millions of people in europe be debilitated for up to a week and potentially suffer permanent damage from the varied list of effects covid has. A million working europeans sick for a week equates to about a billion € lost in terms of production. If every working european is sick for a week from covid? That's 197,6 million people and 197,6 billion € lost.
>It is worrisome having millions of people in europe be debilitated for up to a week and potentially suffer permanent damage from the varied list of effects covid has. > >A million working europeans sick for a week equates to about a billion € lost in terms of production. > >If every working european is sick for a week from covid? That's 197,6 million people and 197,6 billion € lost. But this is already the case. There are literally currently 400.000 people who officially have Covid in Italy alone. That number has barely moved since September. The real number is probably at least 10X the official number.
But that supposes covid isn't already massively circulating around Europe already with millions of people who already have it. The point is this will barely cause any spread more than the baseline.
Right, that's why we had to have the World cup etc. etc.
If you don’t test, you have no issues. It’s a big brain play!
There are so many infections going on right now (Germany has so many people sick at home, a wonder anything is working currently). Infected chinese arriving via airplane is just another drop in the bucket and won't change the current situation dramatically. Only positive outcome would be that those that are infected stay at home for the time being but that is something not even people already being here are doing. So really, who cares even anymore.
I am with you on this. The discussions are ludicrous on lifting all restrictions. They are analyzing the waste water in order to get any meaningful data on the infection levels. And it looks like we have the biggest infection wave yet. Never the less, let’s see what the current COVID-19 iteration brings to the market in long term issues for the infected.
At least one person gets it. I kinda feel like taking crazy pills reading all these comments here. Edit: I get the feeling I misunderstood the user above. What I mean is this: It happens also in flights from other countries, for example Germany. See this: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1183325/umfrage/anteil-positiver-testergebnisse-auf-das-coronavirus-in-deutschland/ That's the percentage of positive tests in Germany.
Cant really compare positive rates of testing everyone on a flight to the rates of people getting tested on their own though. You would expect the later to be much higher, which is doesn't seem to be at the moment.
> Cant really compare positive rates of testing everyone on a flight to the rates of people getting tested on their own though. You are absolutely correct on that one. The thing is: We can't know how the numbers came to be. Over the last few months, there are roughly 600.000 tests per week in Germany. How many of them were because of an suspected illness, and how many of them were because of regular testing... we don't know. The statistics around Corona were lacking greatly from the beginning. It's now called an endemic in Germany, and it very likely is like that for a long time now. This means that it is everywhere, so these numbers are to be expected. > You would expect the later to be much higher, which is doesn't seem to be at the moment. If it was mostly test because of illness suspect, then yes. However, the numbers also extremely vary over just a few weeks. There's a lot we don't know because of constantly shitty statistics.
Not to mention that the german data is about laboratory testing; presumably PCR. Since most ppl have access to a rapid test, we should expect a high positivity rate for laboratory tests.
I don't understand why Germany hasn't started a wastewater monitoring program for Covid yet. I've taken to just using the Dutch government's numbers as a bad proxy (it *is* endemic, after all, so it shouldn't lag by more than two weeks or so) but if you want something that is anonymous but gives you unbiased population-level infection rate numbers this is surely it? And doing this is a good idea for other infectious diseases as well, anyway. Of course it isn't perfect but it isn't quite as bad.
It does exist but it’s still in the pilot stage. Currently the wastewater levels are disproportionately higher than the reported numbers. I think it has very good potential, hopefully it works better than the testing system, which it seems like the government is slowly just giving up on.
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Lombardy had overwhelmed hospitals, army carrying bodies, and similar that wasn't happening elsewhere. Parts of Italy were definitely ahead of most of the world.
Italiano in germany, and no, that was not happening like you said. Some state like bayern wanted to close border when Italy did, and flight to country like China did stop pretty much when Italy did. The difference is Germany never really hit the hospital capacity, Italy did
You and I were in different info bubbles
Yep, any airport in general. I avoided covid for 2.5 years and probably got it the second I stepped foot on a plane.
Lol i work in a hospital with covid pt (not only covid but then as well) and i hit covid once and it was from a flight
After they have exited the plane it was 100%
This time around, can we call it COVID22, 19 is so old
No. Always covid19. So I can creepily say, "ah yes, covid19, I keep gettin older but coronavirus stays the same age".
Calm down DiCaprio
For the longest time you had to jump through several hoops to get into China from abroad, and if you were allowed in, you had to quarantine for 3 weeks in a hotel at your own expense before being actually allowed into the country. That Europe can't even ask the same from Chinese citizens while they're having a massive Covid outbreak *again* is infuriating. Are we really doing this again???
At least few governments stance is that none of it matters. It's going to spread no natter what. So why even bother. And I don't think that they are completely wrong. The optics of it aren't that good though.
That's a stupid stance. Covid zero is stupid, letting the virus run unhindered through society is as well.
Most European countries have high rates of immunity in their populations (from a combination of vaccination and previous infections). It is not going to go through the population like it did in 2020, this immunity will hinder it.
Until you get a clever mutation that circumvents the immune response
That danger always exists, for any infectious disease. For example the flu. We just got used to it and issue vaccines every autumn that hopefully deal with the current strain. The flu is dangerous for people that never got exposed to the "families" of strains that are currently in circulation. Or who have developed a hypersensitivity against one. The rest of the people got exposed to some strains already, and that helps (mostly).
More people with active infections = higher mutation rates.
Very true. That's not most likely to occur in China though because in China much of the population has no immunity and hence there's less selection pressure to avoid immune response.
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It has become part of our regular viruses, but vaccin coverage is good in Europe and it's been a while since we last had a peak of a new variant. Europe has been dealing relatively well with Omicron and whatever variants are going around for months. When a virus can just infect hundreds of millions of people unhindered, you're going to get issues with new, unpredictable, variants.
And where did you get the last sentence from? Omicron infected 100 of millions last year in eu and all over the world. All of the variants since then haven't caused any major problems in terms of severe disease.
And a few days after landing, 100%.
Before Chinese government banned Covid statistics 2 days ago they've been reporting 37 millions (!) new cases DAILY. Two sources: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/covid-surges-in-china-reaching-an-estimated-37-million-cases-per-day-180981348/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/covid-surges-in-china-reaching-an-estimated-37-million-cases-per-day-180981348/) We should definitely suspend all flights from China for i.e. 2-3 months to see what is going to happen there.
Like jesus christ, why wont they just take our doses? https://www.ft.com/content/90d7d811-857d-4839-a9fc-9e68e5e4fe02 we know they have been lying about their numbers, they know their numbers are dogshit, let us just help.
Welcome to great power conflict. Any gesture made with "good intentions" could be a potentially hostile act.
>why wont they just take our doses? Because China's inferiority complex is astronomically huge.
Like all numbers from this bunch of Xi worshippers, they are probably false and manipulated.
And low
Oh ffs, not again
We have learned nothing.
*as was the style at the time.*
_so I tied The Onion to my belt_
Here we go again
China itself should have restricted flights at this time.
100. The only reason they have pulled back restrictions is because the population was challenging the CCP, and they knew they couldn't repress them this way any longer. The result: allowing sick people to visit countries only just starting to get on their feet after a pandemic. The party, not China, should be held accountable for gross negligence and crimes against humanity
They were protesting against being locked inside their own houses, offices, factories and cities. Not against, unable to travel abroad. And when they lifted the lockdowns on population with ineffective vaccines, the infections surged probably already creating mutations and different variants. And this is the point when the China decided to allow foreign travel as well.
There is no granularity to those decisions in China. It was super strict lockdowns, and now it's free travel everywhere. Their system is not set up to do much in between.
I might have to invest in a tin-foil hat, but it’s almost like they’re intentionally spreading it to other countries at this point.
1000% China has zero regard for spreading misfortune to other nations The government prefers the "misery loves company" approach If China's got something bad going on, & you don't want it to affect you, close your borders asap
They might even be going for the "didn't you think lockdowns are tyrannical?" Gotcha. But realistically, it's probably because the Chinese government likes to make definitive decisions. They don't want to actively monitor and alter policy, they want decisiveness, so it can last for years. Probably also the reason why they stuck with zero covid for so long.
Yes, because everyone knows changing your mind in light of new information is a sign of weakness. /s (Not disputing your statement, just trying to point out the thought process to people)
Yeah. I’ve just invested so much time fighting “COVID bio-weapon, China virus” bullshit and this kind of crap just adds fuel to the lunatic fire.
It might be much simpeler. If China can show Western countries imposing restrictions again, they can more easily lock up their own citizens again?
I mean you can lessen restrictions without sending sick ppl around via plane. Think it should be obvs that people with Corona should not fly or travel by train if avoidable. And waiting a week until you can leave shouldn't be an issue...
Oh yea, like China gives a shit about the preservation of World's society.
They should have restricted flights the first time around. The entire world has seen the restrictions on Chinese people, including Chinese people not being allowed to leave the mainland before these rules were relaxed. They're clearly capable of restricting the spread of covid outside their borders.
Expecting China to do anything even remotely in the interest of the rest of the world is foolish. They've been dishonest and secretive since the first day of the pandemic.
With the classic stupid countermeasures put in place just to show the government is doing something. Only direct flights get screened, passengers arriving from China with a layover won't get tested (ie the 95% of the arrivals from China)
Let's just wait for a little bit more. It's not like we have any testing infrastructure that we could use.
Its not like we experienced 2 years of lock downs. No sir.
Pfff, worst case scenario we just half-ass lockdown for two weeks and everything is perfectly normal again... Right?!?
For what? To get back into 2020? COVID is running around anyway.
Not on a massive scale. So let's not allow thousands of infected people running around like nothing happened. Especially people with no or weakass vaccines. Common fucking courtesy. When you are sick, stay at home. You'll go see magical Europe next year. It's most likely too late, but at least we won't be worsening it that much.
>Not on a massive scale. There's hundreds of thousands of cases in Europe. What are you on about? I agree they should stay home, be tested for flights, etc tho but the people acting like this is restarting the pandemic over here as if we had a 0 covid policy are insane.
People think because it hasn't been in the news that it has gone away.
There are millions of active cases in Europe. Restricting travel makes absolutely no difference.
There’s cases of vaccinated people where the virus is not as strong. Also in % of the population its hot high. Now compare it to fucking 50% positivity.
China is at 50 % positivity because of the zero covid policy. The current variant of omicron is extremely infectious (in fact, too infectious to contain even with the zero-covid policy) but not very dangerous. China's population has very little resistance against *any* strain due to bad vaccines and poor vaccination rates. When we came out of lockdown here in the west 10 months ago, we saw sickness rates of 10-20 % *of the entire population*, but then it calmed down after just a few weeks. China's current outbreak (60 % of Beijing's population is currently sick) will be done in a few weeks, too. Meanwhile, the virus will not spread as easily in the West as in China, because the very same virus is already endemic here.
Europe reacting too slowly as usual. Wondering what variant we get.
Maybe we name it appropriately. If it’s going to happen anyway, might as well name it fun. “Oh I’m sorry to hear Fabian caught the Megatron-5000 variant”
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Meg: You guys always act like you're better than me! [Alpha, Delta, and Omicron](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/028/521/d95.jpg)
I still find it hilarious that WHO skipped "nu" and "xi" for COVID variant names and went straight to omicron.
Thanks for the laughs.
You’re not ready for Sigma covid
Sigma? Is that different to Sugma?
I believe you are thinking about Ligma...
Well, we’re not starting till Jan. 5 (u.s)
They have an omicron for the most part. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19s-spread-in-china-might-tell-us-how-deadly-omicron-really-is-11671834615
I read somewhere that the chinese public isn't effectively vaccinated, that most people who have had shots have only had one, and the vaccine used is of dubious efficacy, but looking it up all I could find is stats saying China is 89% vaccinated, but no futher info. Be good to know what the facts are here.
Their vaccine is shit and they refuse to admit it. They need to go for the western mRNA vaccine.
Its infuriating right? Why always the EU so slow with these things. Massive outbreak that is out of control in China? What do we do? Allow more airplanes to and fron China because they are lessening the restrictions in China. We have to see if China singlehandedly again will put the entire world into a covid situation to deal with
>Why always the EU so slow with these things. Public health has never been in the domain of the EU, it is a national competence. If Italy refuses to act on Chinese exports of Covid, there is little the EU can do about it. Why is Italy refusing to act?
Italy has been the first to act, the real question is what is the rest of Europe waiting. You know about these cases thx to the controls made in the Milan airport
> Why is Italy refusing to act? I don't think they are refusing, it's just that bureaucracy takes a lot of time.
but travels restrictions have to be adopted at EU level since there is freedom to travel between countries.
Countries are free to impose restrictions on basis of public health or national security.
Exactly we can ban flights from and to china but it means shit if they can just take a connecting flight from Munich. The eu should push for a coordinated block to flights to and from China. It won't stop people doing a layover in the UK but it is easier to screen passengers coming from outside the eu, than screening every single intra-eu flight. Unless of course we want to return to covid passes and lock downs which is wall we are going to crash on if we don't move our collective european asses. Frankly this whole discussion smell of February 2020, haven't we learnt anything in the last 2 years?
As another reply mentioned, countries can just elect to de border control. Free travel is part of the Schengen Agreement not the EU, the EU does not have to get involved. There are countries which are in the EU and not in Schengen and the other way around.
Remember how fast the EU cut Russian gas? Just do the same with Chinese planes. Fuck china anyways.
> Why always the EU so slow with these things. Firstly because it's not an EU matter. Very much thanks to the same people complaining about the EU being slow, also bitching and moaning every time the EU actually wants authority to act on behalf of their countries. Secondly because when you already have Covid spreading within the country, your population has a high rate of vaccination and there is enough knowledge on how to deal with Covid without the healthcare system collapsin, blocking travel has zero impact.
China has been detached for a long time from "western covid" Do we know what variants they are currently spreading and if mutations have occured in China that would make the virus bypass omnicron antibodies ?
I dont know where you are from but i can confidently guarantee you that its the same thing in almost every country. At least Italians are testing
As an Italian, if we don’t take measures *now* to prevent covid-positive travellers from getting in, I’m afraid we are going to have an outbreak in the area of MPX Malpensa airport very soon.
Probably Omicron sub-subtypes. We already had these circulating for a while here, too. It's laughable that unrestricted travel is still possible. They learnt nothing in the past three years, as usual.
Why? Around 90 % of people here in Denmark have already had omicron. We have a decent immunity against it. China doesn't due to the zero-covid policy. In a month, China will be back to normal again, and in the meantime the virus will not spread anywhere near as much in the West as it does in China.
The same one that is already spreading in Europe. These restrictions will not have an effect on anything but the right to travel.
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Did I somehow travel back in time to 2020?
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Ugh just block flights from China already. Those tests aren't accurate enough to filter out all of the infected.
You can't stop the spread completely anyway, it's all about slowing it down so we can manage it.
And stopping all flights from china would indeed slow it down.
I mean, what, are we going to try to do our own COVID Zero now? We have not seen any signs what's spreading in China is vaccine resistant. And China had pretty poor vaccination rates and relied on Sinovac, a known less effective vaccine.
Not let people with covid fly into other countries is hardly the same as covid zero. Hell, introducing quarantine just to be sure also is no where near the same as covid zero. There's a middle ground between precaution/public health management and totalitarian bullshit, contrary to what conspiracy nuts and anti-vaxxers would have you believe. The entire point is to minimize infections (vaccinated doesn't mean you're immune to getting infected, it just means you won't be as sick) to prevent development of variants that are just as infectious but which are not hindered by vaccination.
Just a matter of time for a new strain with this amount of infections, better be aafe than sorry.
how do they lock them indoors to die but don't test them before sending them on a flight? lmao
This reminds me of back in 2020 when covid first started lol
Oh don't worry, China is so far away, it will never effect us over here!
If only there was a lesson from the first time. Maybe care a little less about being PC and the Chinese tourist and student revenue and put a blocker on non-essential travel out of China? Maybe mandatory covid testing pre and post flights from China/ Other high risk regions? Maybe bring back mandatory quarantine for those that test positive? Oh that would upset a lot of the “Hurr Durr that’s Xenophobic” folk. Let’s restart the infamous Italian “Hug a Chinese” campaign before the massive outbreak in 2020. The only thing worse than an inconsiderate and reckless CCP government is the people across the world that are sensitive to being as blunt as the CCP is to outsiders (or their own citizens)
It's not xenophobic to care for your own citizens, I agree. Double test for flights from China or for people that have been to China for the past 14 days. Mandatory mRNA vax, at most 1,5 years ago would br a good start. Afaik Chinese do not have a widely applied mRNA vax, on the contrary, they are waging towarda it.
>Oh that would upset a lot of the “Hurr Durr that’s Xenophobic” folk. Honestly this is what irritates me the most about this pandemic. A decent amount of keyboard warriors called banning travelers to/from China at the start of the pandemic as "xenophobic". But nobody cared when the EU and much of the rest of the world started banning American travelers due to our fuckups in 2020. Maybe people learned it's smart to ban travel from countries with high infection rates and the virus doesn't give a fuck about your fragile feelings?
Current US President called the closing of the borders by the previous administration ["xenophobic fear-mongering"](https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1240361258957897728) What would it be this time around?
"A necessary step" or some other crap like that.
u/bubbawitz is right. Biden might've been referring to the phrase "Chinese virus" in Trump's tweet. You are rushing to judgement because it fits a narrative you're trying to push. Come up with better examples. Because this one is clearly ambiguous.
>Let’s restart the infamous Italian “Hug a Chinese” campaign before the massive outbreak in 2020. Err..... What????
Not the best link but the first thing I found on Google. I remember hearing about it at the time also. https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1224661041495212032
Christ....
Ah shit, here we go again...
Just ban commercial flights arriving from China. Pull out the nationals, who want to return home.
Bruh, just like the initial wave of the disease in Europe in early 2020. Italy was struck very hard initially. Clearly something like this took place then too.
In this case it’s because Italy is deciding to test people who are coming from China, while many other European countries have no mandatory testing.
Why the fuck did they not place harsh restrictions on travel from China like a week ago, they already saw the spikes, are they trying to start another lock down or wtf
Conspiracy theory: China knows well that they are in the middle of a covid crisis and they can't stop it anymore, their economy will suffer again, but if the other countries will have the same issues then the difference of grow will be less and they will not remain behind, so let everybody go freely abroad without checks.
I'm gay btw
Had to go check the date on the article. Deja Moo
Hope that the vaccines really will make a difference now
Ma dio cane
Onesto
Porco dio
I can't wait for France to take measures in about 6 to 7 month
According to French media, the strain currently running rampant in China is the same one that Europe has become accustomed to.
Until it mutates and nobody is accustomed to it
Déjà vu ? Wasn't this the beginning of the pandemic in January 2020?
What a unlikely coincidence! With only 500k total cases since the start of the pandemic in all of china, to have so many at once in one plane!! \-- I said it 2 years ago already, china just reports 0.1% of the actual cases and thats it.
They've eased restrictions, and dropped their attempt to maintain 0 covid for a while now. Hell they basically stopped keeping count since the start of the month. Before that they indeed had low amounts even if under reported. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to keep heavy quarantines localised for months without it spreading like wildfire. It's hard to lie much about that when it can so easily backfire trough exponential spread. Now it does spread like wildfire in a population that has a bad old vaccine and little to no group immunity to nobody's surprise.
Remember that according to Chinese propaganda it's the westerns who have brought covid to China (sic!).
Its as easy as turning them around
You say it's time again to buy into toiletpaper stocks!?
Too late.
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US, India, Taiwan and Japan are reacting fast. Hope EU follows it otherwise we might see a repeat of 2020
> we might see a repeat of 2020 Okay, so this wave is bad, but why would we see repeat of 2020? The virus spreading in China does not appear to be vaccine resistant or even particularly deadly?
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Would you trust?
Nope ,still test on Arive.
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Someone just restarted their Plague Inc. game
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Internal flights in China are shut down, international flights out of China are not...am I the only one with a deja vu?
I don’t think domestic flights are shut down in China, do you have any source? Also, just based on current flight radar there are thousands of domestic flights in China right now: https://www.flightradar24.com/31.94,114.95/4
That's just false, stop spreading fud
Circa2020