The big problem is that, six months in and with the endless coverage including all the back and forth that happens when science tackles a new subject, a lot of people have (understandably) been completely blunted to what is happening. They may be only 20% or 5% , but that's enough to mess up everything and endanger everyone.

Seven months here and we have been in the second full lockdown for 2½ weeks now - and yet even with reduced testing due to it being in the middle of the Festival of Succot, today's figures [or rather yesterday Monday 5th as it is already Tuesday now] were 5,534 new cases and 38 new deaths. In the middle of a lockdown?

Because as Ram said, the roads are full, everyone in town is apparently going about as if we were not in lockdown. And the newspapers are full of thousands of protestors - protesting about the Government, the lockdown, or just for the sake of protesting.

You had 10,000 cases per day just 10 days ago. Assuming around seven days for a cycle of infections (one person infected before they can pass it on), that's a quite excellent R value of around 0.65 - remember that even in a complete lockdown, you will invariably have more infections among family members or other people living together for several weeks.

Don't look at the death figures at all (yet) for judging lockdown efficiency. Deaths are lagging behind cases by at least two weeks - COVID does not kill quickly. The deaths you are seeing right now are still mostly from the peak infections that occurred just before the measures were introduced.

The thing is though Wesley that there is reduced testing at the moment due to none being carried out on the High Holy Days and Festivals so none of the figures have been really accurate since before Rosh HaShana when we went into full lockdown again.

Lockdown was originally supposed to end after Simchat Torah, which for us is on Shabbat as we only have one day for it, unlike in the diaspora where it is a two day festival, but as far as I know there is still no definite date for when lockdown will be eased, let alone completely over.

There was far too much refusal to comply with the regulations regarding the number of people allowed both inside and outside Synagogues, among other things, so the final figures are anyone's guess.

As an example, someone on an adjoining Moshav to this one went to an illegal rave there when he had been confirmed as positive. I am not sure which day it was but it only showed up on the map yesterday, with a reported date of 29th September, so it will no doubt take another few days to know if he infected anyone else. So it is not just close family members - it is all these people who are breaking the lockdown regulations.

There are two cases showing up on this Moshav, just up the road, the date showing as 25th September but I knew from Amit, who is currently i/c of Home Front Command Coronavirus Detail for this whole area, that there were ten confirmed cases on the Moshav over a week ago. He was here again this morning and I got the usual warning from him to be careful, but as I do not go out and deliveries are just put inside the door, I am not really in close contact with anyone. People walking past and waving are not a problem as my bungalow is set down a fair distance from the pavement.

OK, so Ram, my vet, came yesterday but he takes every precaution before coming so I guess it is the same risk for me as with Amit.

Yesterday there was a delay in announcing the current situation, then we found out why, cases had just about doubled since Friday. It might not sound many but 61 is substantial since we have only had 479 cases in total.

As from midnight, last night, everyone now has to isolate until the first negative test result instead of being able to go anywhere whilst waiting, they will also have to be tested again in five days, then again a few days later if not from a green zone.

Wow. That's crazy. I read an article that in a China city there were 12 cases, so they're literally going to test ALL 9 MILLION people to try and identify who has it.

Now 66 cases.

Apparently about two thirds of the people arriving in the island with the virus are actually residents returning to the island after travelling, selfish people putting their 'entitlement' before the safety of other residents.

I was gobsmacked earlier when reading on FB, a woman asked if the whole household would need to isolate when a visitor from the UK arrives for a 5 days stay. Er, this person has to isolate so that means surely that she cannot come into contact with the household? Isolate means just that. The intention is that this person will arrive and immediately move in with her family so that she can see her grandchildren - WHAT? Then when her second test is due she will fly back to the UK, possibly infected. I simply do not understand the mentality. I haven't seen my grandchildren since Christmas.

Sue - I have just about given up trying to understand the mentality of some people. I am not checking the statistics any more, and ignoring comments on any newspaper articles that I read.

I cannot believe there is so much utter stupidity in what are supposedly developed first-world countries.

This looks like an interesting thread. Glad I finally noticed it. I probably won't contribute to it much, but I will be following it as it further develops.

The problem with the old saying "you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts" is that in new, ongoing, and very complex situations it is difficult to get agreement on what the actual facts are. The old "blind men describing an elephant" story or, another old saying "Lies, d*** lies, and ...."

Here's my contribution:

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics.html

I will continue to follow as the days and months go by.

Our Landkreis (county) is steadily inching towards the 50/100,000 "red zone" designation due to "diffuse infectious activity". That means they can't trace it back to any specific events or super-spreaders. Just random, isolated cases.

On the other hand, there's almost certainly been fewer than 10 infections in theme parks in Germany all summer (the park operators' association claims 0, although I heard of one person who has been infected and says it couldn't have been any other place. That's of course no proof, but they're usually believable).

I guess I might want to be more conservative about shopping the next days/weeks and slightly less conservative about hitting the parks... brave new world.

We currently have 81 cases, as of yesterday, they announce new cases around 4pm each day. That works out at a 14 day number of cases per 100,000 population of 72.4.

There have been some stupid happenings. Some essential workers from non-green areas have been given permission to work but only after their test on arrival is negative, until that time they must isolate. Then they are permitted to work but must isolate outside of work, until two more negative tests several days apart. So then we find that one positive person didn't wait for the first negative, instead went straight to work.

Then there are/have been cases in some schools, just one in each of four. In one of those schools the school itself requires a negative test after 14/16 days before permitting a child who has been in contact with a known case, to return to school. So what happened, well it would appear that the child has a parent high in the civil service, and the track and trace told the school they should let the child return to school. It did, then within hours received a positive test. The school, a very expensive school, was furious. The other schools are State schools so go by government guidelines.

I am fine for toilet rolls if they shut us down again.

My four year old's allergies are acting up. He's coughing once in a while and was sneezing last week, but I'm trying to decide if we keep him home anyway tomorrow... Hopefully me giving him allergy medicine this morning helps. He hasn't been anywhere where he could have gotten anything besides school anyway, ad they haven't had ay cases since the one in early September.

From what I can see, things are getting worse in a good many places. I don't think we'll ever get out of it before a vaccine is found if people don't start doing their part. We are all tired of restrictions and limitations, of having parties, concerts and what not cancelled, but this thing is not going to go away because we're tired.

Well said, there are a lot of selfish people, their needs and wants come before the good of the many.

Much as I hate to say it, even if a vaccine is found the virus will not go away unless people follow the restrictions instead of flouting them, because there are too many anti-vaxxers to start with - and then there are those who are convinced that the vaccinations will contain a microchip so everyone will be under the control of... of whoever wants "world domination".

It just gets more and more idiotic every day, with more and more conspiracy theorists coming up with yet more and more nonsense.

How can people be that stupid? And yet they say that we are being brainwashed into being frightened of what is only a mild influenza. Are we the only sane ones now?

It drives me nuts. My daughter's class (the school is all virtual) were saying what they will be doing this weekend. One kid said he had a bunch of parties to go to. Who are these people with the parties?!?!

So from midnight tonight we are back on the lockdown merry-go-round here in France. That is to say lockdown on all private and free time activities, but work and school can continue. We've got to keep the economy moving, after all, don't we? (Forgive my cynicism). Essential business and commercial enterprises can remain open, everything non-essential has to shut shop.

I guess I'll find out during the day whether I'll be working from home or in the office (our company can plead "essential services"), which is great for the staff who will be less hit with part- or full-time unemployment. I really feel for the small businesses, though, who won't be able to survive this hit.

My biggest concern personally is for my boys' education - distance-learning just doesn't cut the mustard for a start, and both of my lads are looking for internships where none are available. Companies are having enough difficulty keeping their own staff gainfully employed and are not offering opportunities to interns at the moment. Without the work-experience they won't be able to validate their year's study.

I am going to make the most of my day's leave and head to the coast today while I can still do so freely. From tonight I'll need a signed paper to justify any outings.

I sincerely hope the short, sharp shock will halt the escalating figures enough for us all to return to a more regular way of life by the end of the year.

Germany will also enter a "soft lockdown" come Monday. Pretty much all shops can stay open, but all leisure activities except individual non-contact sports will have to shutter. Home office is to again be the default where possible, schools can remain open (there is a quite strong Twitter movement right now to suspend mandatory attendance and effectively apply the home office rule there as well: "Who can learn from home should do so, those who can't, for any reason, should attend school normally", but it hasn't yet been taken up by authorities). Without full details available, there are some plans to compensate all affected businesses 70 to 75% of their November 2019 gross revenue for the time which should hopefully prevent a massive wave of bankruptcy - at an expected cost of 10 billion Euro to the state.

All contact is to be minimized, gatherings larger than 10 or 2 households are forbidden even in private dwellings.

These are pretty harsh measures, intended to be limited to 4 weeks, in the hope of cutting infections by a very large factor and being able to return to the relaxed "New Normal" rules in time for Advent and Christmas. How effective they will be, however, will to a substantial part depend on how well the citizens will keep the restrictions in those areas where enforcement is difficult to impossible.

I am not a violent person but yesterday I was so tempted! It was necessary for me to pop into the office where in normal times I work as a volunteer. I decided to treat myself to some fish and chips for lunch so headed off to a fish and chip shop, I had to pass the bus station and you are not permitted to enter that, or any buses, without a mask. There was a large group (about a dozen) teenagers standing outside, really close to each other, and not a mask being worn by any of them. If they were about to catch a bus then presumably the masks were in their pockets.

The fish and chip shop was closed. I did manage to get a bacon and sausage roll, I went to a sandwich shop and placed my order to a person behind a perspex screen, was then asked to vacate the shop and wait outside and my order would be brought to me when cooked. It was pretty good, I would buy from them again.

It would appear that Jersey is helping some airports in the UK in regards to setting up the testing at Arrivals. We began trialling it at the beginning of June when we just had 'lifeline' flights to Southampton, that meant that we were ready for when we re-opened our borders at the beginning of July.

Our problem here is some places require a COVID PCR test* that is no more than a couple days old, but in the US, we don't have a lot of those. So people are on our local FB groups begging for what location has this test. And they're expensive - people are paying upwards of $400 for a rapid PCR test. I heard someone say United was helping some people whose travel destination was somewhere that required a PCR test at some airports.

*Note: There is a difference between a rapid test and a PCR test. You can run a PCR test rapidly, but that just means you bring it to the lab and do it first. A rapid test is one that can be done in a few minutes anywhere. The problem is, the rapid tests aren't very accurate. My pediatrician uses a 'good' one, but it still misses 15% of cases. The one the White House used was worse than that - ad as you saw, they had an outbreak because someone had it and tested negative, but it was a false negative.

PCR tests are what we provide at our airport and harbour in people arriving in the island, it is free to the person being tested.

We have imported a laboratory so that the tests can be processed quickly, until that came online we had to send the tests to the UK for processing and that could take 24 to 72 hours, now we can turn them around in hours.

So much for lockdown. We are supposed to be coming out of our second lockdown, not that many people have taken any notice of it, and already the new infection rates are shooting up.

15 November - 402 new cases
16 November - 1,014 new cases

Things tightening up here, trying to avoid having to go into full lockdown again. I was exposed but have gotten my test results back, negative. So I'm just waiting out my isolation period - they're asking us to stay isolated for two weeks after exposure even if the test is negative. We're only a few days into tightened rules, so too early to see if they're having any effect.
Our Thanksgiving holiday was a month ago, might have something to do with skyrocketing rates.

I hate to tell you this but don't trust those negative test results. My first test result was negative. Fortunately, my doctor didn't believe it was accurate. My second test, two months later, was positive.