For my first Thanksgiving post, which somehow was both a year ago and almost a year into the pandemic, I gave thanks at the end of the post. With all that’s happened, it seems more appropriate to do this at the beginning of the post instead this year. So I’m going to do that, and deal with this week’s news - the rise in cases, the lockdowns in Europe and all that other stuff - later.
Today I read this, and realized that I look forward to each Thursday, because I'll be able to read your latest. I am very thankful for having access to your thoughtful analysis and I appreciate your unique voice.
Substack let's me feel I can give something back. I encourage all who are able to do likewise.
>Alongside the lockdown, Austria has come out and said it. Vaccines for everyone
It is more subtle than this. As far as I know, they have declared their intention to make vaccines mandatory by February. Given that they have around 30% unvaccinated people (sure, many of these are children, but still a sizeable minory), I don't know if I expect them to make the vaccine mandatory. I am not an expert on Austria, but I wouldn't be surprised if the play is "threaten mandatory vaccination so that people get the vaccine before, then cancel the threat to be able to say you never mandated anything".
That said: if boosters work so well, it seems like the obvious free-market solution is for those who don't want to get corona to avoid it by getting a booster instead of whining about the unvaccinated. In a world with a 100% effective vaccine, any coercion of the unvaccinated to get vaccinated would clearly be unethical on bodily-autonomy-style grounds. Aren't we pretty close to that now?
>Germany, where things are not as bad but where cases are also higher than ever before and rising rapidly, is calling this a ‘national emergency’ and has now also pulled the trigger on a full lockdown.
No, this is false reporting by the media. German has let it's "state of pandemic emergency" run out yesterday, and the new law that replaces this does not allow for a national lockdown. I'm also skeptical of the Bloomberg graphic on Europe given that it seems to disagree with what I know from first-hand experience from other Eurpean countries (I travel a lot with my job).
Interesting, and great news. I will keep an eye on the situation. Note that the graphic was from earlier in the week, so it could be that things have changed since then - I was unable to find an updated version, although I didn't look that hard.
Could be. Another factor is also that very similar laws are interpreted very differently "on the ground". For example, while most of Europe (excluding the Nordic countries) mandate masks, whether or not these mandates are *enforced* is a different story. In several European countries, you can walk into a shop without a mask on and nobody will care. In others, you will be asked to leave and put on a mask. Same goes for the "covid pass" countries: almost all European countries "have" the covid pass, but whether you ever need to use it away from the border varies.
You should also rethink your paragraph:
>Here it’s clear what you are hoping for. If the policy works, in two months a lot more Austrians will be vaccinated and a new drug will be available. Spread will come down a lot, and for those who still get infected, death rates will drop dramatically. So rather than kicking the can down the road, this could actually do what a lockdown is supposed to do, and get the corner turned permanently.
The Austrian vaccine mandate has been announced to come into force in February, I read your paragraph as "now vaccines have been mandated everyone will immediately get one" but vaccines have not been mandated. I've tried to follow the news on the various European lockdowns, but I haven't heard Pavloxid being mentioned in any justifications, and even an order-of-magnitude decrease in death rates may not be considered "acceptable". After all, this is what happened with vaccines and the same hysteria about "overwhelming the healthcare" is still around. In Germany, for example, politicians have followed the strategy of
(a) Not testing or quarantining vaccinated people, even after contact with positive cases, officially "because vaccinated people don't easily get infected", but obviously this is to incentivize vaccination.
(b) Gradually excluding the unvaccinated from public life, initially requiring a negative test to participate, but this option is largely gone now.
(c) Not subsidizing tests for the unvaccinated, which together with (b) leads to less tests of e.g. young people.
(d) Declaring any positive case of a hospitalized patient a "hospitalized corona patient", and looking very closely at "hospitalized corona patient" numbers.
The result of (a)-(d) has been an explosion of case numbers, together with an explosion of hysteria.
In Germany and Austria, "vaccinated/recovered" people are seen as strictly safer than "unvaccinated with a negative test". Probably this is because restrictions for unvaccinated people to incentivize them to get vaccinated would be unconstitutional in Germany, not to speak of being extremely divisive. As far as I can tell from reading their news, "preventing collapse of the health care system" is the still the stated motivation for almost all measures in Germany, but given that "avoid covid at all costs" motivates a large segment of the population; so the media is incentivized to make it look like the healthcare system is collapsing. This has been a theme throughout the pandemic, where "collapse of the healthcare system" now means "not always enough ICU beds for everyone who would need one". So even in light of fairly low death numbers (about 50 per day for all of Austria, with a population of 10 million), I'd say this new round of lockdowns is more of a case of a lie getting out of control ("coronavirus is so dangerous to society that we need to do whatever it takes to coerce the unvaccinated" mutates to "coronavirus is so dangerous that we need to do whatever it takes") than a rational response.
Thankful for your writing! Read the Immoral Mazes this year, had a big influence on how I think about organizations!
Today I read this, and realized that I look forward to each Thursday, because I'll be able to read your latest. I am very thankful for having access to your thoughtful analysis and I appreciate your unique voice.
Substack let's me feel I can give something back. I encourage all who are able to do likewise.
>Alongside the lockdown, Austria has come out and said it. Vaccines for everyone
It is more subtle than this. As far as I know, they have declared their intention to make vaccines mandatory by February. Given that they have around 30% unvaccinated people (sure, many of these are children, but still a sizeable minory), I don't know if I expect them to make the vaccine mandatory. I am not an expert on Austria, but I wouldn't be surprised if the play is "threaten mandatory vaccination so that people get the vaccine before, then cancel the threat to be able to say you never mandated anything".
That said: if boosters work so well, it seems like the obvious free-market solution is for those who don't want to get corona to avoid it by getting a booster instead of whining about the unvaccinated. In a world with a 100% effective vaccine, any coercion of the unvaccinated to get vaccinated would clearly be unethical on bodily-autonomy-style grounds. Aren't we pretty close to that now?
>Germany, where things are not as bad but where cases are also higher than ever before and rising rapidly, is calling this a ‘national emergency’ and has now also pulled the trigger on a full lockdown.
No, this is false reporting by the media. German has let it's "state of pandemic emergency" run out yesterday, and the new law that replaces this does not allow for a national lockdown. I'm also skeptical of the Bloomberg graphic on Europe given that it seems to disagree with what I know from first-hand experience from other Eurpean countries (I travel a lot with my job).
Interesting, and great news. I will keep an eye on the situation. Note that the graphic was from earlier in the week, so it could be that things have changed since then - I was unable to find an updated version, although I didn't look that hard.
Could be. Another factor is also that very similar laws are interpreted very differently "on the ground". For example, while most of Europe (excluding the Nordic countries) mandate masks, whether or not these mandates are *enforced* is a different story. In several European countries, you can walk into a shop without a mask on and nobody will care. In others, you will be asked to leave and put on a mask. Same goes for the "covid pass" countries: almost all European countries "have" the covid pass, but whether you ever need to use it away from the border varies.
You should also rethink your paragraph:
>Here it’s clear what you are hoping for. If the policy works, in two months a lot more Austrians will be vaccinated and a new drug will be available. Spread will come down a lot, and for those who still get infected, death rates will drop dramatically. So rather than kicking the can down the road, this could actually do what a lockdown is supposed to do, and get the corner turned permanently.
The Austrian vaccine mandate has been announced to come into force in February, I read your paragraph as "now vaccines have been mandated everyone will immediately get one" but vaccines have not been mandated. I've tried to follow the news on the various European lockdowns, but I haven't heard Pavloxid being mentioned in any justifications, and even an order-of-magnitude decrease in death rates may not be considered "acceptable". After all, this is what happened with vaccines and the same hysteria about "overwhelming the healthcare" is still around. In Germany, for example, politicians have followed the strategy of
(a) Not testing or quarantining vaccinated people, even after contact with positive cases, officially "because vaccinated people don't easily get infected", but obviously this is to incentivize vaccination.
(b) Gradually excluding the unvaccinated from public life, initially requiring a negative test to participate, but this option is largely gone now.
(c) Not subsidizing tests for the unvaccinated, which together with (b) leads to less tests of e.g. young people.
(d) Declaring any positive case of a hospitalized patient a "hospitalized corona patient", and looking very closely at "hospitalized corona patient" numbers.
The result of (a)-(d) has been an explosion of case numbers, together with an explosion of hysteria.
In Germany and Austria, "vaccinated/recovered" people are seen as strictly safer than "unvaccinated with a negative test". Probably this is because restrictions for unvaccinated people to incentivize them to get vaccinated would be unconstitutional in Germany, not to speak of being extremely divisive. As far as I can tell from reading their news, "preventing collapse of the health care system" is the still the stated motivation for almost all measures in Germany, but given that "avoid covid at all costs" motivates a large segment of the population; so the media is incentivized to make it look like the healthcare system is collapsing. This has been a theme throughout the pandemic, where "collapse of the healthcare system" now means "not always enough ICU beds for everyone who would need one". So even in light of fairly low death numbers (about 50 per day for all of Austria, with a population of 10 million), I'd say this new round of lockdowns is more of a case of a lie getting out of control ("coronavirus is so dangerous to society that we need to do whatever it takes to coerce the unvaccinated" mutates to "coronavirus is so dangerous that we need to do whatever it takes") than a rational response.