Quote (dro94 @ 7 May 2020 19:35)

FYI the UK does now include care home deaths as well as deaths in homes. Clearly though, with the chronic lack of testing here so many coronavirus deaths have flown under the radar, as shown by the number of excess deaths.

Quote (Saucisson6000 @ May 7 2020 09:45pm)

They added 4k people last time, from "care homes", but this does not seems to be a complete total because "care homes" are at least 1/3 in others countries.

Deaths at home is even worse, it's not included here in france yet, will be in june, estimation is arround 9k people.

Quote (dro94 @ 7 May 2020 23:24)

That's because our care home outbreaks have been speeding up instead of slowing down. While other countries had care home outbreaks from late March to early April, ours started to get worse from the middle of April. That's why our daily death toll now is still really high despite the R number being very low in the community.

Deaths at home only make up a tiny proportion here and they are included in the figures. It might have something to do with the sheer number of people in rented flats in France, but who knows.

Quote (dro94 @ 7 May 2020 23:24)

That's because our care home outbreaks have been speeding up instead of slowing down. While other countries had care home outbreaks from late March to early April, ours started to get worse from the middle of April. That's why our daily death toll now is still really high despite the R number being very low in the community.

Deaths at home only make up a tiny proportion here and they are included in the figures. It might have something to do with the sheer number of people in rented flats in France, but who knows.

Quote

Russia’s new move to strip Ukrainians of their own land in Crimea is in flagrant violation of Ukrainian and international law and will bring consequences, both for Russia and for those Russians who ‘buy’ land illegally expropriated from Ukrainians.

At a joint briefing on 6 May, the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office, Office of the President’s Representative on Crimea and human rights groups spoke of methods to protect Ukrainians from losing their land following the illegal decree issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 20 March 2020.

As reported, the decree makes amendments to a list of “coastal territories” which “foreign nationals, stateless persons and foreign legal entities” cannot have land rights to. The list includes most parts of occupied Crimea, except for three regions without access to the Black Sea. Since Russia, as invader and occupying state, is treating Ukrainians as ‘foreign nationals’, the decree effectively strips Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians who have not taken Russian citizenship of their land rights.

Russia’s new move is in breach of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians which expressly prohibits the destruction or expropriation of property by occupying powers. The trouble is that Russia is brazenly violating all international treaties with its ongoing occupation of Crimea, and simply stating this will not help the Ukrainians who now face having to sell their land, or have it forcibly sold, almost certainly for very little money, by 20 March 2021.

Anton Korynevych, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Representative on Crimea, immediately condemned the move and his Deputy, Darya Sviridova pointed out at the briefing that all Ukrainians whose land is expropriated are victims of an armed conflict. As reported earlier, the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor has recognized Russia’s ongoing occupation of Crimea as an international armed conflict. Sviridova stressed that Ukraine must now create effective procedure for reinstating all documents confirming ownership rights; establishing the principles for returning expropriated property; and recording all such cases of expropriation, destruction of property, etc.

Ukraine has clearly stated that it does not recognize this ‘decree’ and that the latter therefore carries no legal consequences. That means that, even if the property is expropriated and Russians consider themselves to be the new owners, the land remains the property of those who were illegally stripped of their rights.

In theory, the law is not retroactive and should only apply to land which became ‘a foreign national’s’ property after it came into force. However it was noted that, if Russia obeyed such fundamental principles of law, there would have been no need for the briefing. In fact, there has already been widespread expropriation of land on the basis of court rulings which illegally reassessed the legitimacy of pre-annexation land allocation according to Russian legislation, and the same thing will doubtless happen here.

Russia has made it virtually impossible to live in occupied Crimea without Russian citizenship, however those who have refused to take such citizenship now risk losing their property. The decree will also negatively affect the large number of Ukrainians who were forced from their homes and who now live outside Crimea.

Nor are those who were forced to take on Russian citizenship necessarily protected. There have been a number of cases where Russia’s migration service have illegally invalidated such citizenship. The prospect of being able to illegally purchase choice pieces of land could lead to such illegal practices becoming more widespread.

According to Vitaly Sekretar, Deputy Crimean Prosecutor, as many as 10 thousand Ukrainians could suffer as a consequence of this decree and its implementation.

People are advised to first exhaust all (supposed) legal remedies in first-level; appeal and cassation ‘courts’ in occupied Crimea. While the outcome can be predicted in advance, this is required in order to then lodge individual applications against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights. Such applications should not be made in private. It is important that people collect all documentation confirming their ownership rights and that they inform the Ukrainian enforcement bodies of the situation. Cooperation is also valuable with the Crimean Prosecutor who will be sending all information about such evident violations to the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Quote (dro94 @ 9 May 2020 11:12)

Momentum have actually come up with a very strong ad here: https://twitter.com/ThatTimWalker/status/1258891604301099008

Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 9 2020 10:48am)

There's no denying that New Zealand has nailed its coronavirus response giving the circumstances they faced, and that the UK has badly botched its response. The comparison is still unfair because NZ was in a much much MUCH better position than the UK to begin with.

They are a sparsely populated island on the edge of the world, far away from the virus hotspots, with relatively little international travel, and they started with a low number of cases when they enacted their lockdown.
By contrast, the UK is much more densely populated, it has several magnitudes higher international travel and interconnected economy, and they are in close proximity to the European hotspots.

In NZ, there was a realistic chance to erradicate the virus with a strict shutdown plus subsequent strict quarantining. Under these circumstances, it was worth it to "go for the kill".
In the UK, attacking the virus with a similarly strict shutdown wouldnt have helped.
First, even this degree of shutdown isnt enough to erradicate a virus in a country of the size and density of the UK, it would have taken China-levels of strictness to do so. Second, all the containment fails and has been futile as soon as one single case is imported and slips through the cracks. Given the amount of travel to and from the UK, strict 14-day quarantining of everyone entering the country would not have been feasible, and economically crippling.


Another thing that really bothers me is that Australia is always ignored in conversations like this. Australia has pretty much exactly the same numbers as New Zealand both in terms of total infections and of total deaths once you account for its 5 times bigger population, and that's despite reacting less quickly and with a less strict shutdown. The similarities in the covid-19 curves between Australia and New Zealand suggest that their geographic isolation is one of the main drivers of these two countries' success.

It really bothers me that all the focus is always on New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern, while Australia and Scott Morrison get no credit. I guess praising the anti-migration, climate-sceptic right-winger Morrison for a successul handling of coronavirus wouldnt fit the narrative as nicely as praising the hijab-wearing, gun-grabbing lefty Ardern...

Quote (dro94 @ 9 May 2020 12:02)

Agree with you on everything. I didn't suggest we could have achieved the same success as NZ, but it's clear we could have severely limited the number of deaths by following a track and trace strategy, coupled with an earlier lockdown and in conjunction with stricter border control.

What you have to consider in comparing Australia with NZ though is how much the heat is helping. AUS is a much hotter country which has almost certainly helped to slow the rate of COVID infection.