In Europe,France now has the highest number of people in intensive care units since the start of December. The country is not under national lockdown, but infection rates have stayed stubbornly high despite an overnight curfew and other curbs.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
I don't understand why they haven't had another lockdown in France as the infection rate has been static for months and now well above the UK, Switzerland etc - I desperately want to go to France this summer, but it won't happen unless that 7day average falls significantly
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iainm wrote:
I don't understand why they haven't had another lockdown in France as the infection rate has been static for months and now well above the UK, Switzerland etc - I desperately want to go to France this summer, but it won't happen unless that 7day average falls significantly
It was a political decision. Pres. Macron believed that another lockdown at the time of the winter holiday break would not be accepted and there was also the cost factor.
Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Tue 23-02-21 13:28; edited 1 time in total
France is worried about a new infection hotspot – the northern port city of Dunkirk. The infection rate there is more than 900 per 100,000 inhabitants, so a local lockdown is now being considered. On Monday the focus was on Nice, a southern resort city, where the rate is above 700. A weekend lockdown has been imposed there and in nearby areas. These surges have been blamed on the highly contagious English variant. France is trying to avoid a third national lockdown
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To be honest France looked reasonably good - until comparison with the UK was no longer in their favour. Both had an autumn second wave and had to apply measures to bring it down: France then graded their restrictions to hold cases steady while our UK government essentially took off the brakes and let cases go up fourfold in a month and necessitate a third lockdown.
However with our current lockdown now taking cases well below France's, and vaccination now delivering measurable benefit, anyone this side of the Channel has to be concerned about France. Unless they sort out their vaccination system quickly (and it didn't help shooting themselves in the foot over AZ) they will still be in difficulty in the summer.
We're still hoping summer visits will be on the agenda, but one can't be at all confident about early summer.
In Europe,France now has the highest number of people in intensive care units since the start of December. The country is not under national lockdown, but infection rates have stayed stubbornly high despite an overnight curfew and other curbs.
Rather worryingly the ICU occupancy rate in PACA where we are is 101.5%.............
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And scenarios like this from Val d’Isere are not helping.
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After all it is free
@muppet, Outside and wearing masks...?.
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@snowhound, Masks are legally required even outside in Val d’Isere for everybody aged 6 and above. Also no more than 4 people are allowed to be grouped together while enjoying a takeaway drink/snack.
This rule was brought in at the start of the month when the covid cases in Val d’Isere rapidly increased.
Sorry if the photo quality is poor but when you zoom in on photos on the Radio Val d’Isere website a large amount of people are not wearing the legally required masks, possible they are wearing the new fashion accessory of a chin diaper aka mask round the neck.
The police in town have received a large amount of abuse from the holidaymakers over the last few weeks despite handing out fines.
I fear more lockdowns are on the horizon.
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Final line....quite possible but all the evidence is that transmission risk outside is very low indeed, even without masks. I’m not a fan of this COvid shaming of people being out and about in fresh air. More likely the risk comes from more people being in local supermarkets etc.I
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snowhound wrote:
Final line....quite possible but all the evidence is that transmission risk outside is very low indeed, even without masks. I’m not a fan of this COvid shaming of people being out and about in fresh air. More likely the risk comes from more people being in local supermarkets etc.I
According to the "experts" the main transmission vectors currently in France are work, schools, university and hospitals.
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I'm not too OTT with the restrictions but that picture alarms me, even if it is outside. That's a lot of people in each others' space and crossing paths, touching the same things etc. Being outside does help, as does hands, face, space etc, but the more people brought into a small area, the higher the aggregate transmission. Maybe I'm just bitter that they're in the mountains..!
I watched a YouTube video of some people skinning up in Courch and then supping some vin at the top. I think it was Chenus, not that it matters, but there were several groups there, all sat around picnic benches, not wearing masks.
So from looking at the picture above and that video, I draw the conclusion that they're more relaxed about transmission over there, which does not bode well. Add in the supposed higher reluctance to take the vaccines and I do fear for them (and to a lesser extent my ability to get over there).
Hopefully the Spring and Summer will save them.
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
I think the problem with that picture is many of those folk will be living cheek by jowl in small apartments on multi generational family holidays and using small unventilated lifts etc.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
@chocksaway, You're absolutely right.
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Ryunis wrote:
I watched a YouTube video of some people skinning up in Courch and then supping some vin at the top. I think it was Chenus, not that it matters, but there were several groups there, all sat around picnic benches, not wearing masks.
The thing about mountain tops, is that they tend to be windy. They are also about as outside as you can get. There is no evidence that people skiing/picnicing on a mountain/walking through towns are spreaders of disease. Touching stuff is also low risk. Better to concentrate on the high spread areas (care homes, offices, transport etc.) and leave the low risk areas alone.
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@Scarlet, Is there no evidence? Or have you just not seen it? I have a friend who used the same sentence when discussing transmission in gyms. Even though it's obvious that several people touching the same equipment and breathing heavily will raise the chance of transmission, he said there was no evidence to support that, and therefore they should remain open..
Whilst skiing itself may be low risk, the associated activities certainly raise the prospect of transmission; travelling to and from resort; travelling around resort-both of which tend to involve a lot of passenger dense environments; accommodation, which again tends to be denser than other walks of life; queues. At an aggregate level this affects hospital admissions and then what we are allowed/not allowed to do.
It's because of all of this that the WHO issued specific guidance for ski resorts and this was borne from the fact that it is known that ski resorts (unluckily) played a significant role in seeding the pandemic across Europe.
It looks to me like France might be on a different trajectory to the UK and that could lead to the scenario where the UK is back up and running but a trip across the channel won't be possible for a while. IMO what's happening in ski resorts right now will not help this situation.
As I said, hopefully Summer weather will have a dramatic impact
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Quote:
it is known that ski resorts (unluckily) played a significant role in seeding the pandemic across Europe
Indeed. But it is improbable that people sitting around a bench at the top of a mountain contributed much to that.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Has anyone figured out why cases stayed low all summer after the first lockdown, despite open bars and restaurants and quite extensive travel, at least in the EU?
- is it because the baseline of cases by the end of the first lockdown was so low that it took 3 months for a significant % of the population to get the virus? (seems unlikely to me but logically it's a possibility)
- is it because the virus is less infectious in higher temperatures?
...or it is because most activities involving lots of people took place outside where transmission is dramatically lower?
I respect the rules on wearing a mask outdoors. That said, if I had to put my own money on a guess, I'd say that virus transmission outdoors is a couple of degrees of magnitude less likely than indoors.
Of course, getting to an outdoors space in a resort may involve travel on public transport, and cramped accommodation may increase transmission. But these were also factors last summer...
@Scarlet, Is there no evidence? Or have you just not seen it? I have a friend who used the same sentence when discussing transmission in gyms. Even though it's obvious that several people touching the same equipment and breathing heavily will raise the chance of transmission, he said there was no evidence to support that, and therefore they should remain open..
Whilst skiing itself may be low risk, the associated activities certainly raise the prospect of transmission; travelling to and from resort; travelling around resort-both of which tend to involve a lot of passenger dense environments; accommodation, which again tends to be denser than other walks of life; queues. At an aggregate level this affects hospital admissions and then what we are allowed/not allowed to do.
It's because of all of this that the WHO issued specific guidance for ski resorts and this was borne from the fact that it is known that ski resorts (unluckily) played a significant role in seeding the pandemic across Europe.
It looks to me like France might be on a different trajectory to the UK and that could lead to the scenario where the UK is back up and running but a trip across the channel won't be possible for a while. IMO what's happening in ski resorts right now will not help this situation.
As I said, hopefully Summer weather will have a dramatic impact
Academic research published recently showed that there were no examples of outbreaks stemming from Britain's crowded beaches last summer. Outdoors really is very safe. The issue with crowds outdoors is how they get there and where they are going next, particularly if the weather turns...
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jedster wrote:
Academic research published recently showed that there were no examples of outbreaks stemming from Britain's crowded beaches last summer. Outdoors really is very safe. The issue with crowds outdoors is how they get there and where they are going next, particularly if the weather turns...
I also read an article that said that despite virus being detectable on surfaces there’s only been one recorded case of fomite transmission anywhere in the world - presumably helped by better hand hygiene etc, but the vast, vast majority of transmission appears to be airborne transmission in poorly venitilated indoor settings. But they’re not visible, so people get aeriated about busy beaches and parks (exacerbated by the use of long lenses to make people look closer together than they really are).
Is there no evidence? Or have you just not seen it?
The reason ski resorts were allowed to open in Austria, is because there has been found to be very little transmission outside at all, including in ski resorts. You can be damn sure that if there was any transmission, federal govt would have shut them down, as they have been threatening all winter.
Quote:
It's because of all of this that the WHO issued specific guidance for ski resorts and this was borne from the fact that it is known that ski resorts (unluckily) played a significant role in seeding the pandemic across Europe.
If it hadn't been ski resorts, it would have been clubbing in Ibiza. Transmission was due to crowding large numbers of people together in bars, hotels and buses, things that are just not happening this year, and have little to do with a few people enjoying a buttie on a mountain top.
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horizon wrote:
Has anyone figured out why cases stayed low all summer after the first lockdown, despite open bars and restaurants and quite extensive travel, at least in the EU?
- is it because the baseline of cases by the end of the first lockdown was so low that it took 3 months for a significant % of the population to get the virus? (seems unlikely to me but logically it's a possibility)
- is it because the virus is less infectious in higher temperatures?
In some areas, infections were significantly lower than in the Autumn, so it never got too bad. I don't think temperatures have been proven to have any significance, with regard to the virus itself.
Quote:
...or it is because most activities involving lots of people took place outside where transmission is dramatically lower?
Boom, baby! In October, there was a significant drop in temperature across Europe. Everyone had been told that washing your hands and staying 2m apart was “covid secure”, so they closed all the windows and stayed indoors all day. Europeans don't seem to like working from home, either, and there is little push from governments to do so. It's not really a surprise that the ball was dropped.
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Quote:
But they’re not visible, so people get aeriated about busy beaches and parks (exacerbated by the use of long lenses to make people look closer together than they really are).
True. It's all about "the other" who everybody likes to blame. Mask are not required outside in the UK but I read some highly judgemental posts on social media about people without masks. And people talk of going for walks and making critical comments about "crowds" oblivious of the fact that they were part of the crowd. It gets up my nose (easily, as I don't wear a mask outdoors...).
It's likely that most people have caught Covid from someone they know quite well. Just easier to blame a jogger or somebody who passed on a bike.
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horizon wrote:
Has anyone figured out why cases stayed low all summer after the first lockdown, despite open bars and restaurants and quite extensive travel, at least in the EU?
- is it because the baseline of cases by the end of the first lockdown was so low that it took 3 months for a significant % of the population to get the virus? (seems unlikely to me but logically it's a possibility)
- is it because the virus is less infectious in higher temperatures?
...or it is because most activities involving lots of people took place outside where transmission is dramatically lower?
I respect the rules on wearing a mask outdoors. That said, if I had to put my own money on a guess, I'd say that virus transmission outdoors is a couple of degrees of magnitude less likely than indoors.
Of course, getting to an outdoors space in a resort may involve travel on public transport, and cramped accommodation may increase transmission. But these were also factors last summer...
Observation from Switzerland this year: basically no restrictions all summer. Hardly any COVID cases either. I spent a fair bit of time out and about both here in Basel and in the mountains. There was little in the way of social distancing outside, hundreds of people lining the Rhine on an evening and we even had a music festival in the city. No spike in cases. But I was always outside, and as far as I saw, so was everyone else. I didn’t eat inside a restaurant all summer for example, only on terraces. I took gondolas, but it was quiet, so I didn’t share them with anyone outside my household. On the 25th September, temperatures dropped 10-15 degrees across the country and stayed low. People, used to hardly any restrictions and hardly any COVID, went back inside. From 1st October, cases shot up dramatically and we had a significant second wave.
I also noticed that back in the UK, none of the fuss about thousands of people on beaches or on protests translated into an increase in case numbers.
Summary: I think your third point is the big driver. Transmission outside is really minimal risk. Inside is a big problem, even with masks.
I’m a bit conflicted about skiing. I’ve only been on one trip this year so far. I see the skiing itself as low risk, but I found being in small gondolas with other random people and being in cable cars at 2/3 capacity felt really close and risky after nearly a year of not traveling on any kind of public transport. Plus, resort buses are not capacity restricted and neither are the trains which thousands of people use to get to the Swiss resorts. Having the resorts open does encourage a lot of travel across Switzerland. There are so many day trippers and local skiers that it may be difficult to attribute a case of COVID to any particular resort or area, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t catching it on the overcrowded Sunday afternoon trains home.
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31,500 cases in France, seems they are definitely on upward trajectory, this time with B117 variant.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
horizon wrote:
Has anyone figured out why cases stayed low all summer after the first lockdown, despite open bars and restaurants and quite extensive travel, at least in the EU?
- is it because the baseline of cases by the end of the first lockdown was so low that it took 3 months for a significant % of the population to get the virus? (seems unlikely to me but logically it's a possibility)
- is it because the virus is less infectious in higher temperatures?
...or it is because most activities involving lots of people took place outside where transmission is dramatically lower?
I respect the rules on wearing a mask outdoors. That said, if I had to put my own money on a guess, I'd say that virus transmission outdoors is a couple of degrees of magnitude less likely than indoors.
Of course, getting to an outdoors space in a resort may involve travel on public transport, and cramped accommodation may increase transmission. But these were also factors last summer...
It looks to me like the kids went back to school and, allowing for a lead time of 2-3 steps* of infection the rate spiked pretty well immediately.
*Kids are more likely to be asymptomatic so nobody notices them all passing it around as they flick bogies at each other
I WAS socially distancing Miss, I flicked it from 2 metres away!
- older siblings, parents, grand-parents each group more careful/protected than the last and each increasingly likely to show symptoms or suffer severe symptoms. Hence by the time enough people have started getting positive tests to show up on the figures, the little petri dishes on legs have done their bit and the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
Gov.UK says it's not the kids but 3 things:
1) They've not been testing kids.
2) The timing of the numbers.
3) Every year, the kids go back after Summer and the bugs go round - EVERY YEAR! Every parent knows this... well, every parent that doesn't leave the parenting to nanny, or pack them off to boarding school.
That's what I think anyway
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Case numbers were rising from 20th July right through to 2nd lockdown. Exponential rises from a very low base do seem to come out of nowhere.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Castex giving an announcement tonight, hopefully just a warning shot across our bows..........
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Areas like SW France & Brittany etc were in the Green zone in France before the Summer Holidays, and likewise, I'm pretty sure the Hautes Alpes.
Then after the Summer Holidays, those regions became Red.
If you could see just how busy everywhere here is currently, and how people, as their areas go on holiday travel en masse (number plate thing again) it is mildly bonkers, and like I said here Macron was never going to deny the middle classes their February break and it's going to come back and bite him.
I'm out and about a lot and keep on seeing big groups, teenagers congregating etc and I know that groups are booking 12+ into big apartments (households mixing etc).
At 17:45 as people try to get home before curfew it's crazy, the only sensible place seems to be an orderly queue outside the boulangerie in the morning.
If I compare this to what I've seen on the UK South Coast over the Summer and over Christmas it's off the scale, more like rule of 12+!
As for that Val D'Isere photo, it's very easy to create a busy shot like that using depth of field, akin to those images of Oxford Street and Brighton beach, I might try later when I go out and shoot a couple of examples.
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Hopefully the ICU trend continues to decrease for ARA
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Thu 25-02-21 9:15; edited 1 time in total
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ringingmaster wrote:
Case numbers were rising from 20th July right through to 2nd lockdown. Exponential rises from a very low base do seem to come out of nowhere.
This is an important point that I think is often overlooked. It might appear that nothing is happening with the spread of the virus, but the reality is that the seeds of its exponential growth to very large numbers in two or three months are being sown.
There were more than a few commentators last summer who took the low numbers of confirmed infections, threw in a bit of misdirection by talking about false positive tests and hidden T-cell immunity, and made the claim that there would be no second wave on infection. The reality is that during July, August and September the seeds were sown for exponential growth of a second wave of infection at least as bad as the first wave. Those lockdown sceptics who argued last summer that there was no need for further lockdown measures could not have been more wrong. The challenge that France, and many other countries, are now facing originated in decisions taken early last summer.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
It's almost as if you can't stop a virus, only slow it down with draconian measures which in themselves are timebound and not a long term strategy. I'm not sure anyone has the answer to this, government or scientist. Does look like France is heading toward a third lockdown which could halt any summer plan for Brits hoping to travel into France.
In the UK we will see case rises once we 'unlock' and whilst we're focussed on cases (or positive tests) we'll never be free of restriction nor will any other country. The vaccine wont save us from future draconian measures but at least that will stop people dying or requiring hospital treatment which is what we were sold as our key to freedom.
Is the French up take of vaccine still very low of has new information about the Ox/AsZ virus helped matters at all?
Any thoughts on how we learn to live alongside and still have 80-90% normality back?
@James77, the Covid virus is going to do what other very infectious viruses do: spread from person to person when those people breath in proximity to each other. The answer, it seems to me, is the effective deployment of effective vaccines. I think when that happens it will save us from draconian measures which are necessary to inhibit the spread of infection.
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A better approach would be to have short circuit breaker lockdowns when the cases are at very low levels but starting to rise. Taking it from 1000 a day to 500 a day is much less damaging to the health service and economy than taking it from 80,000 to 1,000.
I am confident that with good vaccine uptake we are seeing in the UK we will fine to live with it, and be largely 'back to normal' by mid 2022.
Is the French up take of vaccine still very low of has new information about the Ox/AsZ virus helped matters at all?
it is very low because there are no supplies due to govt. incompetence. I'm happy to be vaccinated. Once a number of people have been vaccinated and not died the weak skeptics will fall into line. Of course things haven't been helped by Pres. Macron reading all his alt-right conspiraloon antivax stuff and repeating it in the press.
There are plenty of countries who have apparently "beaten" covid. Even China doesn't seem to have a problem now having gifted it to the rest of the world.
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ringingmaster wrote:
A better approach would be to have short circuit breaker lockdowns when the cases are at very low levels but starting to rise. Taking it from 1000 a day to 500 a day is much less damaging to the health service and economy than taking it from 80,000 to 1,000.
I am confident that with good vaccine uptake we are seeing in the UK we will fine to live with it, and be largely 'back to normal' by mid 2022.
I agree with that, the challenge is managing our frustration levels in the meantime. We have all the tools we need to control and 'learn to live' Covid: high uptake vaccination with currently approved and in the pipeline vaccines; global cooperation for roll-out of vaccines to poor countries; intensive surveillance especially for new variants; localised surge testing and ring vaccination; very early localised lockdowns; and prepare the ground for rapid development, approval and deployment of new/revised vaccines if new variants shown signs of vaccine escape. If all those measures are put in place I don't see Covid having more impact on day to day life than things like flu. The question for me is whether there is political and public will to do all of that.
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I think it’s more accurate to say that China have held covid at bay (by border controls and testing the @@@@ out of it when they get the whiff of a positive) than ‘beaten’ it. They seem to be making little attempt at mass vaccination yet?
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snowhound wrote:
I think it’s more accurate to say that China have held covid at bay (by border controls and testing the @@@@ out of it when they get the whiff of a positive) than ‘beaten’ it. They seem to be making little attempt at mass vaccination yet?
That's right, and some of their lockdown measures were (and I think continue to be) well beyond what would be acceptable in the UK to the majority of the population. They have currently vaccinated less than 3% of their population (although it's a huge population), according to Our World in Data.
That might be seen by some as a brutal way of dealing with the virus, but we don't know all the facts. China has had a no nonsense policy with the virus from the start. We will never know the full number of cases or deaths, either directly from the virus, or as a result of their lockdown policies. (We do know that food supply was a very serious problem for many).
As we have reduced cases in the population, and try to regain some sort of normality, the question of enforced quarantine as the only effective strategy left in some cases may well crop up in the Western world at some point.
How should we deal with somebody who has symptoms, tests positive, but refuses to quarantine and still goes to the pub, Nightclub, Football match, concerts etc.?
One idiot could easily create conditions for a local spike, and restrictions, and even cause deaths.