Happier Abroad Forum Community

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 3:36 am

No. The rate in Germany might be, say, 20% higher than Italy because of the slightly older Italian population, but not 10000% higher (100x). The Italians (and Spanish) have simply decided to go crazy, probably related to the tense political situation. Northern Italy is where Berlusconi came from.

I am not there but, from what I read and what I know, German has a younger population than Italy, meaning there are less old people who are at risk of dying of any disease, including Covid. They were particularly efficient in testing for the disease, which means the number of total cases diagnosed that did not result in death is much higher and that brings down the mortality rate. Finally, that I didn't know until they stated it, it seems that Germany has more ICU beds than Italy, which helped absorbing the spike in severe cases and improved survival.

Italians and Spaniards might be less disciplined than the Germans, but they're not stupid. We didn't "go crazy" because of a political agenda, we went crazy when we saw a lot of our elderly parents and relatives dying like flies. You could say those people were fragile and with debilitating conditions and would have died anyway, even from a seasonal flu, yet we are not as cynical as the Brits and the Americans. Our elderly's lives matter.

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 3:36 am

As an Italian, you know there is constant traffic between north and south Italy. If tjis covid19 is really do contagious, surely the disease would have spread all over Rome and Naples and other crowded cities of the south. So why is only north Italy so badly affected? Answer: crazy Italian politics mixed with mass hysteria.

Sure, there have been hundreds of thousands of people who moved back south a few days beforre the government started the lockdown in Milan and other northern areas. That surely contributed to the spread of the disease down south. There ar plenty of cases in Rome, Naples and virtually any southern city. Many of them are undetected or asymptomatic. The northerners have been far more diligent and efficient in testing the population, which resulted in many more officially reported cases. If they had been as good down south, you would have seen a multiple of the cases there, too.

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 3:36 am

As for your grandparents, the worst evil you could wish upon them is to be dragged off to a hospital and spend their last days with a tube shoved down their lungs pumping air in and out like in some horrible torture chamber. Best thing is for old people to remain quarantined at home while young people deliberately get sick then recover so as to create herd immunity, which will take several months. Then the epidemic will fade away and the quarantine of old people can end.

Yes, that is the strategy. Most young people are avoiding contact with their parents and elderly relatives. My brother keeps working in his own bakery and hasn't seen my parents for 2 weeks. I even taught them how to do some of the accountancy on Google Sheets, so they didn't have to meet to check the books.

It's a tragedy alright, but a tragedy for old people. We love them, down there...

hypermak wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 6:26 pm

Italians and Spaniards might be less disciplined than the Germans, but they're not stupid. We didn't "go crazy" because of a political agenda, we went crazy

Different cultures more than lack of discipline or stupidity. Germans went apeshit crazy in the 1930's, whereas Italians and Spanish and Portuguese also had fascism but not so crazy as Germany.

Note that there is no quarantine in Sweden or Japan or South Korea and even China is almost back to normal. These countries figured out that covid19 is not that serious, so quarantine no.longer justified. Also, as of 19 March 2020, covid19 is no longer considered a "high consequence infectious disease" in the UK, because fatality rate is so low, though there is a disconnect between scientists and politicians there, same as in Italy, so crazy shutdown continues:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-conseq ... f-covid-19

As I wrote before, the pandemic of craziness might be necessary to develop herd immunity to future outbreaks of craziness, since we can't continue to shut down the economy every few years.

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 11:52 pm

.....Note that there is no quarantine in Sweden or Japan or South Korea and even China is almost back to normal. These countries figured out that covid19 is not that serious, so quarantine no longer justified.

Opinions are divided if the situation is serious or not in Japan, but all agree, that restricting the movement of people within Japan is not an option.

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h0 ... cture.html

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/tags/82/

You can see the recent statistic about the corona-virus in Japan when clicking on these websites in English.

Japan has around 127 million people. About 1000 cases are known presently with active corona-virus infection.

Generally said, the problem is mainly in the large cities, but not in rural provinces - Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka and cities next to them because of commuter traffic.

The infections in Hokkaido were caused by a Chinese group. In Oita almost all infections were related to one elderly care home.
The highest number of infections were on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, it is now over, out of 712 infected people, only 9 remain in intensive care, 10 died and 597 fully recovered and/or left Japan.

Including infected Japanese coming back from China, Wuhan with a special charter plane the number of infected people so far is 1313, of them 57 are in intensive care, 45 died, and 310 recovered fully and left the hospitals.

In rural areas most people are not living so close to each other, are moving around with their own small cars and are not using public transport. It is now school vacation time in Japan (beginning of spring)

So far, what I can say about the area where I am living (Okayama province, about 7 million people), a bit outside of the center of Okayama-City (800.000 people) there are very few foreign tourists, just local people and not so many are interested in travelling to abroad - there are no restrictions, no supply shortages, just nothing except some events were cancelled - life more or less the same, as always.

So far, out of 7 million people in Okayama, only 1 person is known to be infected with the corona-virus after she came back from a one week vacation in Spain.

One important question is this. Who is going to pay for the damage to the economy, and subsequent bailout, caused by the shutdown? IMO since the elderly benefited most, they are the ones who should pay, such as by taxing all pensions by several thousand a year (exemption for first X dollars) or raising monthly medicare premiums. Some might ask, why should the elderly pay when they didn't vote for all these shutdowns and bailouts? Because their representatives voted on their behalf. That is how representative democracy works. We elect representatives (Congressmen, Senators, President, etc) who then vote on our behalf about details of public policy. In this case, their elected representatives ordered all seniors a nice juicy steak, so to speak, versus something cheaper, so now these seniors have to pay the bill for that steak.

Anyway, all seniors who were saved should be grateful to be alive. Plus we can't put a price on human life, can we? Not even people who are on death's doorstep and would have died of something else if covid19 didn't kill them. No limits on money spent to extend life by another month or two. However, those who benefit from such limitless spending should pay, assuming they have the means.

I'm posting this so as to go on the record as being among the first to propose this controversial idea. Anyone who uses twitter is welcome to steal my idea and post there (though please mention HA, unless you're ashamed to be associated with this forum and its motley crew of members).

The question is who wins or loses as the global order breaks down?

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 11:52 pm

hypermak wrote: ↑

March 25th, 2020, 6:26 pm

Italians and Spaniards might be less disciplined than the Germans, but they're not stupid. We didn't "go crazy" because of a political agenda, we went crazy

Different cultures more than lack of discipline or stupidity. Germans went apeshit crazy in the 1930's, whereas Italians and Spanish and Portuguese also had fascism but not so crazy as Germany.

Note that there is no quarantine in Sweden or Japan or South Korea and even China is almost back to normal. These countries figured out that covid19 is not that serious, so quarantine no.longer justified. Also, as of 19 March 2020, covid19 is no longer considered a "high consequence infectious disease" in the UK, because fatality rate is so low, though there is a disconnect between scientists and politicians there, same as in Italy, so crazy shutdown continues:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-conseq ... f-covid-19

As I wrote before, the pandemic of craziness might be necessary to develop herd immunity to future outbreaks of craziness, since we can't continue to shut down the economy every few years.

Same here in Taiwan. Everything is open and operating as normal. Not much effect. Nothing is shut down. A few restaurants don't allow dine in, only take out. But that's it.

Why can't the US and other countries just do whatever Taiwan did to contain the virus? The US ought to be far more advanced than Taiwan at controlling things. Maybe the US is experimenting to see how much control they can get away with using this virus as an excuse?

I guess Asians don't need much government control because Asians tend to police themselves and obey everything in their culture. There are no true rebels in Asia or individualists, so no need for a police state. Only in America where people want to be free and individual, do they feel that a police state is required to control people it seems.

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 26th, 2020, 10:54 am

One important question is this. Who is going to pay for the damage to the economy, and subsequent bailout, caused by the shutdown? IMO since the elderly benefited most, they are the ones who should pay, such as by taxing all pensions by several thousand a year (exemption for first X dollars) or raising monthly medicare premiums. Some might ask, why should the elderly pay when they didn't vote for all these shutdowns and bailouts? Because their representatives voted on their behalf. That is how representative democracy works. We elect representatives (Congressmen, Senators, President, etc) who then vote on our behalf about details of public policy. In this case, their elected representatives ordered all seniors a nice juicy steak, so to speak, versus something cheaper, so now these seniors have to pay the bill for that steak.

Anyway, all seniors who were saved should be grateful to be alive. Plus we can't put a price on human life, can we? Not even people who are on death's doorstep and would have died of something else if covid19 didn't kill them. No limits on money spent to extend life by another month or two. However, those who benefit from such limitless spending should pay, assuming they have the means.

I'm posting this so as to go on the record as being among the first to propose this controversial idea. Anyone who uses twitter is welcome to steal my idea and post there (though please mention HA, unless you're ashamed to be associated with this forum and its motley crew of members).

Why should retired seniors pay? The fault of this is China. They are the ones who should pay. They are the ones who have a lot of money. Why doesn't the world make them pay? Isn't it because they own too many powerful people in the UN? Does China buy off people to get its way? Isn't the world gonna demand compensation and retribution from China after this is over?

Winston wrote: ↑

April 5th, 2020, 5:21 am

Why should retired seniors pay? The fault of this is China. They are the ones who should pay. They are the ones who have a lot of money. Why doesn't the world make them pay? Isn't it because they own too many powerful people in the UN? Does China buy off people to get its way? Isn't the world gonna demand compensation and retribution from China after this is over?

For sure the corona virus disaster is NOT the fault of ordinary retired seniors worldwide.

However China will not pay even a single Yuan - this is for sure. Even going so far to say, this is all the fault of others, like US-soldiers visiting China, or punishing their medical doctors instead of supporting them - some of them disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances. Chinese policy is to silence any opposition.

However the question is what are doing US-soldiers in Wuhan? Who is this idiot who sent them to China for friendly visits? For doing what?

The only what can be done is slowly to move foreign owned businesses/production to other cheap countries nearby, like Vietnam, Bangladesh or Philippines... this would send 100.000s of Chinese factory workers jobless into the streets and will cause the Chinese government a huge financial loss.
Another step might be to refuse any Chinese citizen to enter Western universities or to work in Western countries in sensitive jobs, like development of new technologies etc.

But otherwise... not much what can be done ... we have to do the best to get rid of this corona virus - and do not expect any help from China - you cannot trust this communist government whatever it it is telling you or not telling you. it just don't care. You cannot expect China to respect any international law or to admit full responsibility of this corona disaster.

The Chinese did proper lockdown - most people stayed in their house, many stayed there for the full two months - requiring a mental strength completely lacking in my country - people are cracking up and about to resort to violence after a week.

The reason why the death rate is so high in the UK is because people refuse to do the lockdown - these will be the same people who will be suing the government when it is all over because they caught the damn thing. The summer is what should save us - the warming up of the weather here in China is what got rid of the bug more or less.

yick wrote: ↑

April 5th, 2020, 5:44 pm

The Chinese did proper lockdown - most people stayed in their house, many stayed there for the full two months - requiring a mental strength completely lacking in my country - people are cracking up and about to resort to violence after a week.

The reason why the death rate is so high in the UK is because people refuse to do the lockdown - these will be the same people who will be suing the government when it is all over because they caught the damn thing. The summer is what should save us - the warming up of the weather here in China is what got rid of the bug more or less.

Nah, China covered up the death rate in China. It was more like 100k dead.

Shemp wrote: ↑

March 26th, 2020, 10:54 am

One important question is this. Who is going to pay for the damage to the economy, and subsequent bailout, caused by the shutdown?

That's a good question, I was thinking the same thing.

StanfordGuy wrote: ↑

April 5th, 2020, 6:05 pm

yick wrote: ↑

April 5th, 2020, 5:44 pm

The Chinese did proper lockdown - most people stayed in their house, many stayed there for the full two months - requiring a mental strength completely lacking in my country - people are cracking up and about to resort to violence after a week.

The reason why the death rate is so high in the UK is because people refuse to do the lockdown - these will be the same people who will be suing the government when it is all over because they caught the damn thing. The summer is what should save us - the warming up of the weather here in China is what got rid of the bug more or less.

Nah, China covered up the death rate in China. It was more like 100k dead.

I don't think it was over 3000 - more like 20-30000 - I doubt it was 100000 but who knows...

yick wrote: ↑

April 6th, 2020, 1:11 am

I don't think it was over 3000 - more like 20-30000 - I doubt it was 100000 but who knows...

Likely a typing mistake in the above sentence,

about however how many people really died -solely because they were infected with the coronavirus - in all China nobody really knows, even not the Chinese government - just unconfirmed reports from everywhere in China, any source, difficult to co-ordinate.

You cannot trust such reports. However governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are not into secrets and cover-up the situation.
We here in Japan look more to South Korea and Taiwan, which are similar in many aspects, including population density, healthcare, considering it as normal wearing masks, food safety, general cleanliness etc. and the results concerning the coronavirus are also quite similar.

Not so many people are infected, many recovered, and the big problem now is about people traveling back to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea after spending a while overseas for holidays or for business. Some of these people import the virus and infect healthy people who never had any contact with China or Spain/Italy or USA.

Another still unclear situation is about recovered patients, who are testing again positive with the coronavirus, despite tested 2 times after recovery and found to be free of this virus and released from hospitals - how long does it take until the human body after recovery is creating antibodies, so that such a person cannot be infected again, and how long will these antibodies protect this person against re-infection - is the question...

South Korea found 19 people, who recovered, were re-infected (maybe from other people, maybe some virus was hiding in their own bodies after recovery and they might infect again other healthy people. That's really bad, but it will take a while to find out relevant data about re-infection.

It's incredible how so many countries in the world went into lock down so quickly. Just imagine if Marshal Law is enacted and there is a curfew for all citizens. Now I see how a new world order and a one world government could be implemented across the world and enacted very quickly.

jamesbond wrote: ↑

April 6th, 2020, 8:43 am

It's incredible how so many countries in the world went into lock down so quickly. Just imagine if Marshal Law is enacted and there is a curfew for all citizens. Now I see how a new world order and a one world government could be implemented across the world and enacted very quickly.

The countries aren't really independent. They are already in control of them all, behind the scenes, through their secret ancient bloodlines. Much of politics is just for show.