Just in: Austria imposes 24/7 lockdown

Just in: Austria imposes 24/7 lockdown

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norman lebrecht

November 14, 2020

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tonight asked the public ‘not to meet anyone’ in Europe’s toughest lockdown, starting Tuesday.

‘One contact is one contact too many,’ said Kurz. People will be allowed to leave their homes only for essential food purchases and emergency medical care. Schools have been shut.

Austria has the highest number of new infections in Europe.

The Salzburg Festival has postponed next summer’s rollout event until mid-December at the earliest.

Comments

  • Eli says:

    Why not just say nobody leave their house until 2021 and stop this circus act.

  • Tim Turkey says:

    Lockdown is definitely going to work this time, I can feel it!

  • Brian says:

    How the mighty have fallen. I’m reminded of the many photos of mostly unmasked people wandering through the crowded streets of Salzburg and packing into its beer gardens this past summer.

    Could this latest lockdown have been avoided if they – and events of similar scale – had reopened with more caution?

    • Alan O'Connor says:

      No. What a remarkably daft statement. Incubation period is two weeks. The festival ended on August 31st. Do the maths. This is how viruses work. There is no getting away from a second wave. It’s how you handle it is the issue

    • Doc Martin says:

      Yes having summer holidays helped buck up cov-19 infections no end. Had they all stayed at home and ate bread and cheese, infections rates (R) would be <1.0 by now.

    • Brian says:

      The lockdown could be avoided by not locking down. Not a single lockdown has done anything but postpone infections.

    • Giora says:

      And in the meantime Vienna Philharmonic is on tour in Japan playing unmasked and without distancing.
      Doesn’t this look weird and improper?

    • Petros LInardos says:

      That’s more or less the kind of argument many experts are making here in the US: the spread presently is due to those who flout the rules. Little or no spread happens in well regulated areas like, say, grocery stores.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    You reckon there’ll be an international economy left after this? Working age people locked away to protect (mostly) those who’ve retired? Older people need to make their own protective arrangements because the global economic system isn’t structured in a way which is going to survive millions of people being in hibernation. It is predicated on everybody working just as hard as they possibly can, all the time, and as many people as possible doing that.

    Governments can always print more money (cough; ‘quantitative easing’) but you’d better have your wheelbarrows at hand if you want to buy bread. Or be prepared for your asset values to tank. There WILL be a financial opportunity cost to this!!

    • Arthur Bliss says:

      Who cares about money you stupid woman! You are talking bollocks as per usual, go and plague some udder website.

      • Hayne says:

        Arthur is right Sue. Nothing cures better than poverty and despair.
        “Who cares about money?” I’m sorry but that is imbecilic.

  • Anonymous Bosch says:

    The new, stronger lockdown is only in place through 06 December. Depending on the infection rate in the coming weeks, we will either have a partial reopening, or a continuation of the new rules. Norman missed one exception: you are allowed to exercise outdoors, keeping proper distance of course. Theatres, concert halls, and opera houses are scheduled to update their policies on ticket-buying on Monday (they have been frozen for the last two weeks).

  • Doc Martin says:

    Here is some recent comparative data from European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control (ECDC)

    Austria

    Sum of Cases 191,024
    Sum of Deaths 1574
    14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 cases /100 000 1011.2
    14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 deaths/100,000 5.6

    Ireland

    Sum of Cases 67 099
    Sum of Deaths 1972
    14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 cases/100,000 123.2
    14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 deaths/100,000 1.3

    UK
    Sum of Cases 1 317 496
    Sum of Deaths 51,304
    14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 cases/100,000 491.8
    14-Day cumulative number of Cov-19 deaths/100,000 7.6

    Sweden

    Sum of Cases 177 355
    Sum of Deaths 6 164
    14-day cumulative numbers of Cov-19 cases/100,000 511.9
    14-day cumulative numbers of Cov-19 deaths/100,000 1.7

    Ireland the first country to go back into lockdown in Europe is leading the way in Europe for decreasing infections, while Austria is showing a steady linear increase. Sweden’s 14-day cumulative number of Cov-19 cases/100,000 is close to UK.

  • Doc Martin says:

    Cov-19 has effectively become endemic across mainland Europe, partly due to the following reasons:

    1. Freedom of movement- Schengen
    2. Each member state pursues its own public health policy on Cov-19 (some better than others)
    3.Lack of a co-ordinated public health plan across EU (especially mainland)
    4. Summer holidays! Once the first lockdown ended, the multitude insisted on having holidays, mingling in bars, pubs restaurants, this helped cov-19 no end, so by September the infection rate had gone way up again.
    5. Lockdown fatigue, some folk are still not wearing masks, SD and using tracking apps and thus help to keep it going.
    6. Badly organised test, track and trace plans eg UK.
    7 Asymptomatic cases not tested.

    • Hayne says:

      A lot of what you’re recommending is very totalitarian with its restrictions on
      free movement, tracking, and “uncoordinated” planning, etc. Freedom means
      nothing to you. I’m just going by what you’ve said with forced lockdowns. Who cares about the poverty, deaths, and depression this causes. Why not keep the vulnerable sequestered? You have ignored evidence of cheap medication that can help. Also vitamins and zinc to take especially in winter when vitamin D is depleted because of less sun? Prove me wrong but I’m beginning to think you’re a shill for the state/big pharma.
      I apologize if I’m wrong.

      • Doc Martin says:

        Here is John Campbell showing that the Pfizer vaccine is in fact only 50% effective not 90%!

        No published evidence to support Pfizer’s Cov-19 vaccine claims at all.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smm_ZvJqJk4

        • Morgan says:

          The move should be towards an efficient/on the spot test. Thereby some sense of normality can be achieved . The vaccine is far in the distance.

        • Hayne says:

          So what? You’re not going to get an effective vaccine. Sorry.
          Why do you continue to ignore the obvious evidence on other cheap drugs
          that can help?
          On this site people can agree or disagree on many topics but when an “expert”
          like you recommends authoritarian measures, I want a few people who think critically to see what this is really all about.

      • Doc Martin says:

        Doc has no connection with Big Pharma at all. He does not believe in snake oil remedies.

        Politicians across EU and UK are hoping that a vaccine against covid-19 will be the solution to the ongoing pandemic

        Pfizer’s claim their Covid-19 vaccine “may be more than 90% effective.” (see Mahase, BMJ 2020;371:m4347, November 9). However, the specific data are not given, but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000.

        This yields a Covid-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a “vaccine effectiveness” of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039).

        The number needed to vaccinate (NNTV) is 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them.

        We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?

        We already know that current Covid-19 vaccine trials are unlikely to show a reduction in severe illness or deaths. (see Doshi, BMJ 2020;371:m4037, October 21) Will they be like seasonal influenza vaccines, which have not proved to be lifesavers, and may even have increased overall mortality in the elderly? (see Anderson et al, Ann Intern Med 2020;172:445)

        We need a lot more time and a lot more data, especially in view of massive uncertainties about Covid-19 case definitions and statistics before embarking on a mass vaccination campaign.

    • Brungus Johnson says:

      Get a life! Nobody cares.

  • Greg Bottini says:

    ” ‘One contact is one contact too many,’ said (Chancellor Sebastian) Kurz.”
    Finally, someone with a functioning brain in his head.

  • Jbl says:

    While all rehearsals in Theater an der Wien–Giasone and Platée–are going according to plan …

  • Doc Martin says:

    Evidence for Cov-19 circulating in Italy since September 2019.

    Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the prepandemic period in Italy
    Show all authors
    Giovanni Apolone*, Emanuele Montomoli*, Alessandro Manenti, …
    First Published November 11, 2020 Research Article
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0300891620974755
    Article information

    This does not really surprise me, given North Italy has an ethnic Chinese population in the textiles sector commuting to and from PRC.

    More evidence has emerged of organ damage in patients with “Long Covid”.

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