Meanwhile in NL... lockdown started dec 15, just before that last major peak. Going to be extended by 3 weeks on jan 19. Expected to be extended again after that. Our neighbor Germany expecting to be in lockdown till at least early April.
Total cases dropped from over 10k to 5k so far, though back at 6k today (always higher from infections in weekend). Hospital bed occupancy remains stable, but new admissions declining so it’s at least going in the right direction. Though, it’s hard to be sure. Number of tests per day is less than half too compared to dec peaks.
It should be no surprise the worst areas have the highest concentration of active church/mosque goers.
Although they call it a hard lockdown this time, that’s only relatively compared to the first one in march. Schools, gyms, bars, restaurants and non-essential stores still closed. churches open with 30 people max. Max 2 visitors at home per day. Yes, that’s dumb.
In some areas in Germany medical grade masks are mandatory. While I typed that I’m watching the debate on CNN and some House member is grabbing his too large cloth mask to pull it back over his nose every 10 seconds... Exactly the type of behavior that actually contributes more to the spread than not wearing a mask symbolicall would. And there’s another one on now... red with white polka dotted mask that has zero effect (breathing along the sides and along his nose instead of through the mask). It’s a damn shame corona doesn’t just kill the dumbest among us. Oh ffs, 4th house rep who keeps grabbing her/his mask to pull it back over the nose. 5th... (Omar, I can see her nostrals... might as well wear a viking hat).
Currently we have roughly a 100 cases of the British variant of the China virus, which is expected to become the dominant variant regardless of the lockdown. Hopefully the astrazenaca vaccin wil perform as good as its ceo recently claimed (numbers still to be published) instead of the 60-70% the tests showed initially. Else, considering the dense population and the for now low availability of other vaccins, we’re fucked.
In conclusion, half assed lockdowns still work but too slow to combat a variant that bumps the R rate significantly.