Coronavirus in Poland

I missed nothing.
You are not talking about WW2 here....

But the OP seemed to think that Spain had not suffered any trauma and.... yeah, it did. Technically right but also completely stupid and missed the point.

There's certainly a lot yet to be understood about the pandemic, why some places are affected more than others, even though their response is similar. Plus the 'long tail' symptoms, something which people are only just picking up on.

Latest figures for May 16, hospitalization (running total): a total of 2407 people are now hospitalized, 172 less than yesterday's 2579 fatalities (daily numbers): 8 have died (down from yesterday's 24)

Something maybe for Atch.... A Polish woman working as a paramedic in Ireland...

podroze.onet.pl/ciekawe/joanna-machado-opowiada-o-pracy-ratowniczki-medycznej-w-irlandii/rhpwp4n

Thank you very much Maf :)

At this point, I'm seriously starting to wonder if there won't be a tremendous backlash against PiS. People are suffering financially because of this, and numbers are going down despite people going back to their pre-corona ways of invading other people's personal space and generally not giving much of a toss about social distancing.

@delphiandomine
You must be joking. PiS will control Poland as long as Kaczyński is leading them. He is a master manipulator and half the adult population supports them. Unemployment will not go above 10% this year it seems, so it is hardly going to be at a level to threaten social stability. They'll even increase the dole a bit soon to a more humane 1200 złotych to be able to say they did something, watch this space.

Let me tell you something and it's the truth: Don't let the anti government comments of some young people or disaffected workers fool you, most people who vote, the caveat being the who vote part but it may even be most people, support the whole backward mental worldview the government under the de facto leader Kaczyński espouses, that Putin and PO murdered his brother in some crazy conspiracy(yeah , notice how he/they never talk/talks about all the other people that died in that plane crash any detail?), that the Ukrainians are the animalistic subversive enemy within(The movie Volhyn was an attempt to provoke anti Ukrainian sentiment in Poland, not to actually tell the story of what happened), that gays are pedos(but don't mention what happened in the church), that Arabs/Africans/refugees are subhuman, that Europe wants to take Poland over, that the Courts are Communist hacks impeding 'the will of the people'(well they are now all PiS hacks since that last most eminent judge stepped down lately). Poland would be a socially incohesive mess if the people were not so easy to manipulate. A lot of people(half of the actual voters) are just morons, and almost as many just don't vote.

It is also the only place I have seen women be as racist as men, (in other societies as times change, the women are typically more progressive at first), but here they are often louder in their prejudice and it happens in larger numbers and in weirder settings such as professional settings too, and they would not understand why that would be strange for someone from a country where you'd be fired for that(it was often like oh yeah I just said it about X or Y group or X person, but it is not about you Pat so just please laugh and how dare I ask her/them to keep that to herself/themselves).

No, the govt. will not get unpopular.

He would not be the unelected leader of the country if he wasn't great at manipulating every situation. Watch the second wave of the Coronavirus be blamed on foreign students or Gays or Ukrainians or something retarded like that.

@PatClarke

Unemployment is already at 10% and climbing. Kaczyński is certainly a master manipulator, but the people are longer buying the PiS line. When the opposition says they wont take away any of the 500 plus money they have been given, a temporary bump in unemployment benefits isnt that effective. People are figuring out that eventually someone has to pay the bills based on their own financial situation, and its pretty easy to see someone is eventually going to have to pay the PiS bill.

I found it hilarious that the Prime Minister was in Katowice yesterday talking about the "professional" measures taken to jumpstart the economy while protests were taking place in the streets of Warsaw because small business didnt get the money the government said they would.

I find it even funnier that when COVID infections are continuing to decline except in the coal mining industry that PiS sends the miners back to work this week! Nothing says "hey we need your votes, so get back to work, and lets hope you dont die". It will take one coal mining family to have a death based on a new infection after they are sent back to work for the whole union to turn on PiS.

I live in an old neighborhood in Krakow. One thats in the natural transition of older members dying and younger people moving in. I would say its a pretty good split down the middle of 40's and under and 50's and older. Not a single PiS sign hung anywhere. Plenty of opposition signs hanging on peoples balconies and posted on buildings. Lots of business owners in the neighborhood who are being crushed because of the virus that never exploded. PiS handled a lot of this pretty poorly. The only thing they got right was a quick lock down, but the duration and extent of rules is completely wrong.

And the worrying thing is that some people will actually believe this, rather than admit that it was caused by selfish, non abiding people who are happy to forget the virus is still around and ignore social distancing so they can pretend to continue to live their lives as though nothing is happening....they will believe it like they believe that the 500+ scheme will continue as a regular benefit....However, hopefully people will see through all this 'smoke and mirrors' that one day all this will have to be repaid, and the bubble will burst....and will wake up and steer well clear of PIS who to be honest haven't exactly shared a great deal of information about how the hospitals are coping and what steps are being taken to test people etc...

Governments. In case you haven't noticed, a new Great Depression is brewing. Do you know what ended the first one? Massive public spending. And now we have the perfect pretext for that: the goal of increased self-sufficiency.

Well yes but a lot of that spending was on tanks and planes and ammo. This time round let's just do the dams and roads

Latest figures for May 17,

hospitalizations (running total): a total of 2459 people are now hospitalized, that is 52 more than yesterday's 2407

fatalities (daily numbers): 10 have died (up from yesterday's 8 but still less than half of the daily fatality rate a couple of days ago)

Just be aware Maf that there can be a considerable delay not only in reporting deaths, but in updating figures. With PIS at the helm I wouldn't place too much faith in the numbers we're given, but thank you for the updates.

The bottom line though is that the R0 number - yes, I know, you think it's nonsense - but it's the transmission rate, and it's still well above 1.0 in Poland. It needs to be near to 0.5 before you can say that transmission is under control and the virus is near elimination.

It wouldn't surprise me if in time, there will be quarantine for people travelling abroad from countries where the R0 number is above 1.0.

I don't think it's nonsense in the abstract, but with a virus that is very non-dangerous to the vast majority of people it's kind of irrelevant.

I kind of get the idea it was chosen in Ireland as a toy to make people feel safe... as it is, it's probably not the worst idea to go for herd immunity* (while doing what can be done to protect the vulnerable)

If the virus were more... consistent in being life-threatening or even made a larger percentage of people seriously ill then it would be a lot more important.

I'm choosing the running hospitalization and daily fatality rates because those are harder to conceal** (I do realize the delay in deaths happening vs being reported and put into the totals).

Policy in many countries is still based on fears from early March when it seemed far more deadly than it has proven to be (and far more contagious than it appears to be).

Where are you getting your current number? The resource I was using hasn't been updated since May 13.... :(

*which is probably closer to 20 percent of the population as no virus seems to ever affect much more than that...

**a nice project for someone who's concerned about possible under-counting of deaths and with time on their hands would be to compare the weekly or monthly death rates from 2018 and 2019 with this year to see if there's anything out of the ordinary

@Atch

According to the ministry RO is less than one. I am not buying the panic any more. The great majority of infections were in confined spaces, like nursing homes, and now mines. The vast majority of people dying or having serious problems are those with underlying conditions. PiS may be a lot of things, but they arent dumb enough to kill off the ones most likely to vote for them.

But they're telling porkies.


It's not irrelevant Maf from the point of view that people who live in countries who haven't 'eliminated' the virus may well end up having their ability to travel internationally affected for some months to come. Also, if the infection starts rising again, we could have another lockdown because they can't risk the healthcare system collapsing. Bear in mind that Poland's borders are still closed. What will happen to the infection rate when they reopen them? How efficient do you think the Polish government will be at checking people on the borders? Not sure.

I can believe that, but what's your source?

that tells more about your prejudice against PiS than anything else

I actually believe the numbers PiS is giving. I dont think there is enough testing, but I think they are reporting accurately. They need these accurate numbers to use in the election and show how well they did. The problem is the economy, it is getting worse daily. Until borders are open and tourism returns the economy will decline. Poland can not support itself being isolated. That type of economy hasnt worked so well for Russia.

Polish economy doesn't rely on foreign tourism perhaps with an exception of Kraków and Gdańsk

I'm a bit ambivalent, I don't trust PiS at all, but I'm taking the numbers at face value until there's evidence that they're being fudged (as they have been in just about everywhere*).

If anything they have more motivation to inflate the numbers to justify the lockdown, one reason so few people are distancing (or even wearing masks correctly) anymore is that the numbers have been so low... "We stayed at home and lost our jobs and went into massive debt...... for this?!??"

*in the US CDC guidelines inflate the numbers by about 25% while possible democratic dark horse nominee Cuomo has tried to cover up deaths from his policy of shipping infected senior citizens into locked down care homes...

@gumishu

Sorry I should have been more specific. Poland depends on foreign money. Foreign tech business, foreign car manufacturing, foreign phone banks, and foreign tourism. What happens when foreign investors cant get in and out of Poland? The same thing when tourists cant get in and out. They take their money someplace else and spend it. The authoritarian threat in Poland alone is scaring foreign investment. This Pandemic is nothing short of an economic killer more than it is a people killer.

From the beginning I was sure that the economic consequences of the Wuhan flu would be far more severe than the public health consequences....

I was wrong about the reasons, I was mostly thinking of broken supply chains... I hadn't realized the twin blows of governments overplaying the lockdown card and the fact that the powers that be are convinced that the best response is de facto austerity - buffered by lies about debt relief and/or social benefits that will never appear....

The economic logic of German housewives wasn't enough to sell the public on austerity and they rejected Greta's appeals to a peasant lifestyle so they're exaggerating the health dangers to scare the European public into adopting the lifestyle of a peasant from 500 years ago....

What do you mean by that?

Look at Greta's agenda....

don't fly - achieved

don't leave your neighborhood - achieved

stop eating meat - on the way (you may have missed all the articles over the past year or so about how people should start eating bugs and processed plant goop instead)

forget about your own living space - on the way (again, you may have missed all the articles about how young people in the US are being pressured into the modern equivalent of PRL worker hotels)

Also, see here:

telesforomonzonlab.eus/covid-19-the-eu-has-failed-a-test-of-solidarity-the-price-will-be-more-austerity-and-worse/?lang=en

I can kind of agree with the flying and leaving neighborhood but meat and living space?
Meat is still plenty (way too much in fact in developed countries) although let's assume they can blame shortages on pandemic ( I think they would have done that already) but living spaces? What connection can you find there?

living space

richardvanhooijdonk.com/blog/en/from-tiny-houses-to-pods-and-capsules-these-are-the-living-spaces-of-the-future

or just googling "living in a pod"

eating insects...

theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/03/insects-likely-approved-human-consumption-by-eu

or google "cockroach milk"

The US is ground zero for this stuff but the articles have been coming out a steady pace over the last couple of years.

Also, there's a push for remote education (watching pre-packaged videos instead of human interaction) which is terrible.

To be sure, I'm _not_ saying that coronavirus was created for this, it was an accident, but EU and western governments want to use this accident to further an agenda they've had for a long time (and which they're pretty open about).

The motivations are too off-topic but they are related to the neoliberal agenda of replacing the nation state with technocratic fluidity (see Zygmunt Bauman for more on that).

What is the agenda in your view Maf? Breaking down society by minimising social interaction and therefore making people more drone-like and compliant?? Turning us all into worker bees, working from home in 'dwelling pods'?

What do you think of this? Bear in mind, this is in Ireland where social interaction is a major part of life and First Communion is still a huge rite of passage event.

rte.ie/news/2020/0516/1138836-virtual-communion-ceremony/

The end of the nation state means the end of government responsibilities to the citizenry... things like universal education and universal healthcare and the maintenance of the police and military to protect people are all part of the nation state and are disappearing as governments are no longer interested in investing in them.

In the US this was first openly promoted under W with his "ownership society"... citizens 'own' their healthcare and pensions by paying for them... in Europe the UK is ground zero for the destruction of the nation state with massive cuts to public expenditures in education, health and the police.

Brexit was partly those who were unhappy with the process trying to fight it - as was the election of Trump in the US.

Chris Arnade on twitter has long documented the decimation and displacement of the US working class, if you don't think it's coming to Europe... I think you're mistaken.

twitter.com/Chris_arnade

The model that the English speaking world (in general) is headed for is Latin America with a small elite class, almost no middle class and a giant reservoir of disposable people whose fate is of no concern of the government (at best at worst you find governments profiting off of citizen misery - as in El Salvador) Zygmunt Bauman's "Wasted Lives" is about a lot of that. Ireland might be partially exempt because it's so small and marginal in the English speaking order (ditto New Zealand).

Again, this is off topic maybe a separate thread for it so it doesn't get stuck in random and disappear.

Keep to the topic of the thread please.

Another day, another batch (if two can be a 'batch') of numbers

Hospitalization (running total): 2544 people are now hospitalized, up 85 from yesterday's 2459

Fatalities (day totals): 11 people have died, one more than yesterday's 10....

source:
medonet.pl/koronawirus/to-musisz-wiedziec,zasieg-koronawirusa-covid-19--mapa-,artykul,54726942.html?utm_source=onetrasp&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=perfo_autopromo_hplive_zasieg_koronawirusa_mapa_aktualizacja