Spain relaxes lockdown as daily coronavirus death toll falls to 517

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

Spaniards were being handed masks at transport hubs on Monday as the government relaxed some tough lockdown measures and a few businesses including from the construction and manufacturing sectors tentatively reopened.

With Spain entering its second month of lockdown, firms that cannot operate remotely were allowed to resume work, sparking criticism from some regional leaders who fear a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak.

The majority of the population are still stuck in their homes. Shops, bars and public spaces will remain closed until at least 26 April. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said on Sunday the country remained firmly in lockdown despite the easing of restrictions on non-essential workers.

The partial relaxation came as Spain’s overnight death toll from the coronavirus fell to 517 on Monday from Sunday’s 619, bringing the total death toll to 17,489, the health ministry said. It was the smallest proportional daily increase since tracking began. Overall cases rose to 169,496 from 166,019.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/spain-relaxes-lockdown-as-daily-coronavirus-death-toll-falls-to-517

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This seems optimistically early to me - their peak in daily deaths was about 10 days ago, and they're now at the rate of about 20 days ago (graph at link), but, per capita , 517 for Spain is equivalent to about 3,800 for the USA. It's possible true positive cases are declining fast, but without truly representative testing, which few countries have achieved, you can't tell.

[progree]

1. Graphs galore at Worldometers

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

(I didn't see a graph in the Guardian article -- it looks like there was something there, but not being displayed. I clicked on it to no avail)

[yaesu]

2. We have a large food manufacturer in our town, employs about 1500 give or take & they

have been going full out though we are in a very strict lockdown. They may be just opening up what thy need to survive taking all the precautions they can. They will be seeing spikes again in 10 days just like China is seeing it now but they probably figure their healthcare system can handle it.

[IronLionZion]

3. Too soon

sounds like risky business.

They still need social distancing for these workplaces and the public transit systems they would take to work.

Being handed masks at transport hubs is fantastic. Here in the US we are being told to make them ourselves as Trumpsters harass us for wearing masks. Just last week a Trumpette neighbor teased me in the elevator for wearing a cloth mask my Mom stitched for me saying that sunshine and White Claw will kill the virus (it doesn't)

[47of74]

4. White Claw??? Schlitz will listen to me now

[durablend]

9. Should've told her

Drink Clorox...that'll kill the virus

[Thyla]

5. I'm in Spain

And think it is probably too early but that said nothing changes for us, we will still be under lockdown.
I think they should of waited to the 26th when the current state of alarm is due to expire(they can only mandate it in 15 day blocks) and then apply these slight easing off measures. To be fair most of the population are still officially on lockdown mode.

[sakabatou]

6. Hmm, part of me thinks there will be a second wave in Spain as the worst outcome.

[Igel]

7. Whether or not the prediction's right

depends on how you define "wave".

If it gets down to a small number with occasional flare-up, each flare-up'll be recorded as a wave. That might be a business, a part of town, or an entire town.

I'm close to being downright optimistic. All the worst-case scenarios are not happening, and the real scenario so far seems to be under many of the older best-case scenarios. Either social distancing and other steps taken really altered R0 or the original estimate was wrong. Having a bunch of asymptomatics walking around infecting people might just have caused that.

As for all the "this could have been prevented," day by day that claims undercut by science. Infection not from direct from China but via Europe, not (just) by Chinese nationals but by US nations, asymptomatics that nobody would have tested with a uselessly large false negative rate for the PCR tests that were done. I really think China saw the problem and realized the only way was to assume everybody was infectious and everybody at risk of contagion, so shut everything down to stop all the transmission they couldn't account for. As soon as they started testing they ran into asymptomatic infected folk--they just didn't report the numbers. It made the caseload less (so the PCR looked less bad), but at the same time people in the West thought for another month that containment was possible.

[sakabatou]

8. A flare-up is not a wave to me

I'm thinking about the 1918 influenza.