Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

The coronavirus is spreading ...
Take care.

Rutte’s most important adviser in the corona crisis -- Jaap van Dissel, Director of the Center for Infection Control at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment -- holds views on the disease similar to his prime minister. Van Dissel explains that the virus must not be allowed to spread freely, otherwise the health system would be overwhelmed. And that herd immunity is not the goal. But he says it could become a weapon in the fight against the epidemic.

Belgium is currently the worst hit country in relative terms. Are those Brussels politicians slowest to comprehend that there is a corona pandemic about as serious as Spanish flu a century ago?

Because this is damaging our country's image, the health ministers have asked for the number of deaths to be counted differently from now on. Because compared to other countries, the ministers argue, we count more deaths because of our different way of counting.

Until yesterday, most deaths in residential care centres were linked to the coronavirus, even if they were not tested for corona. This is not possible, because there are too few tests available in our country. But now the deaths from residential care centres will no longer automatically be included in the corona statistics.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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From now on they'll only count the "over death rate" to prevent it looking higher than elsewhere to people abroad, because that's closer to what everybody else is doing.

Het levert een vertekend beeld op, want in de meeste landen worden vermoede gevallen helemaal niet meegerekend. België staat dus vooral „op de eerste plaats qua transparantie”, aldus viroloog Steven Van Gucht van het Nationaal Crisiscentrum deze week. De voorlopige cijfers van oversterfte, het aantal mensen dat overleed in vergelijking met de normale verwachting, lijken te bevestigen dat het land het in werkelijkheid niet slechter doet dan andere landen.

[…]

Maar wetenschappers zijn vooralsnog niet van plan om hun manier van tellen aan te passen. Viroloog Van Gucht is er in Het Nieuwsblad duidelijk over: „Van de scheefgetrokken internationale ranking trekken we ons – cru gezegd – best geen fluit aan.” Deze manier van tellen is volgens hem de beste om snel eventuele problemen te signaleren en dan te kunnen bijsturen.

It gives a distorted picture, because in most countries suspected cases are not taken into account at all. Belgium is therefore "first and foremost in terms of transparency", according to virologist Steven Van Gucht of the National Crisis Centre this week. The preliminary figures of mortality, the number of people who died compared to normal expectations, seem to confirm that the country is not in fact doing worse than other countries.

[…]

But scientists are not planning to change their way of counting for the time being. Virologist Van Gucht is clear about in Het Nieuwsblad : "From the skewed international ranking we don't care - crudely put - about a whistle. According to him, this way of counting is the best way to quickly identify any problems and then make adjustments.

Germany Seeks EU Sanctions for 2015 Cyberattack on Its Parliament

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there is hard evidence that Russia was behind the 2015 cyber intrusion on the German parliament.

Russian hacker in question has also been indicted for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election

[...]

Estonia, which suffered a major cyberattack in 2007 that breached government, bank and corporate websites, has been particularly active in discussions about cybersecurity with EU countries and at the United Nations. The country will support Germany's bid for sanctions, said Heli Tiirma-Klaar, Estonia's ambassador-at-large for cyber diplomacy.