Coronavirus - Australia
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@mariner4life the ages groups of those that died yesterday we like the second bullet point on the article i read
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I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@Kiwiwomble said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian hearing more and more people say we should have done the full lockdown like NZ, keeping takeaways and malls etc open for the sake of the economy looks a bit silly if they have to keep extending this version of lockdown
which is stupid. what we did was fantastic. Letting nearly half a million people come back to Australia, most in Vic and Sydney, was the "error". And even then with a better run quarantine...
Not much choice in the matter when they're Australians.
The simple and obvious issue is only one jurisdiction completely shat the bed on this. Even now Covid-19 related hospitalisations are still only about two per cent of Victoria's public bed capacity.
I was just about to post on this. I was trying to find out, given the 10k total cases and 5k active ones, how much of VICs ICU capacity is actually being used. It's not easy to determine, but sure it's important in any effort to understand what level of transmission and new cases we can live with
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
also, you won't hear that last stat in the media. Like you never hear the ages of the people who died, without digging
Andrews says the ages of the dead up front in every one of his media conferences.
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
also, you won't hear that last stat in the media. Like you never hear the ages of the people who died, without digging
Andrews says the ages of the dead up front in every one of his media conferences.
admission. i don't listen to the press conferences.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
There's a growing body of evidence that while most young people are fine, in some cases it can lead to chronic fatigue, heart problems and other lifelong issues.
The idea that it just hurts oldies and the rest of us are 'fine' is not true at all.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
There’s sensationalist headlines every 5 minutes it seems.
I’ve heard a doctor from Northern Hospital was admitted to ICU last night with COVID. He’s in his 30s.
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
There's a growing body of evidence that while most young people are fine, in some cases it can lead to chronic fatigue, heart problems and other lifelong issues.
The idea that it just hurts oldies and the rest of us are 'fine' is not true at all.
Did I say "hurts" or did I say die?
And outliers with comorbidities are going to suffer regardless. Public health policy shouldn't be run by outliers.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
There's a growing body of evidence that while most young people are fine, in some cases it can lead to chronic fatigue, heart problems and other lifelong issues.
The idea that it just hurts oldies and the rest of us are 'fine' is not true at all.
Did I say "hurts" or did I say die?
And outliers with comorbidities are going to suffer regardless. Public health policy shouldn't be run by outliers.
Thanks for the bolding, it really helps make your point. Strong!
Public policy shouldn't be run by outliers, but with a full picture of risks to all ages. Lifelong effects to some affected people (without comorbidities, I might add) is clearly a part of that.
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I do wish the media pointed out the obvious - old people in nursing homes are going to die of this if it gets in there. The rest of us are fine. I read some drivel in the ABC with a clickbait headline that "young people are going to die". Not so far they haven't so stop criticising young people from making logical choices - they're fine but the measures we're taking are heavily swayed to the generations that have had the deck loaded for them all their lives.
There's a growing body of evidence that while most young people are fine, in some cases it can lead to chronic fatigue, heart problems and other lifelong issues.
The idea that it just hurts oldies and the rest of us are 'fine' is not true at all.
Did I say "hurts" or did I say die?
And outliers with comorbidities are going to suffer regardless. Public health policy shouldn't be run by outliers.
Thanks for the bolding, it really helps make your point. Strong!
Well since you failed to deal with what I actually said the first time I thought it might help.
Public policy shouldn't be run by outliers, but with a full picture of risks to all ages. Lifelong effects to some affected people (without comorbidities, I might add) is clearly a part of that.
So we're agreed it shouldn't be run by outliers. Great. Now it's a simple discussion about risk benefit. Some old people dying, a few people with complications and millions out of work, hundreds of billions added to public debt, tens of thousands of businesses failing etc.
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@antipodean Why? We've done this before. I fundamentally disagree with the idea we could have avoided the debt and the unemployment.
Do you think the Melbourne lockdown should end?
I genuinely think there's a direct link between consumer confidence and the spread of the virus. If there were no lockdowns and the disease spread, do you really think people would still eat at restaurants, or go on flights, or go to footy games?
Sure a few might, but most wouldn't. They'd go into a kind of self-imposed lockdown. So you'd get the same result, with or without Government action.
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean Why? We've done this before. I fundamentally disagree with the idea we could have avoided the debt and the unemployment.
Yet again you make it a binary issue; "either or". It's not.
What the policy response has shown is that the first round of restrictions in Victoria didn't achieve their stated aim if they have to do it again, let alone apply a harsher regime the second time. If you bought time to add health care capacity, why is it necessary now?
Why is it necessary to impact people in such a manner when they bear almost no risk? For a relatively small pandemic by historical standards; first recorded case on Australia Day and we've added 188 deaths as of yesterday since the first recorded at the beginning of March. Meanwhile creating the deepest economic recession since the 1930s.
Restaurants and cafes, etc. could have stayed open catering to the customers that still wanted to frequent them, obeying social distancing. That alone negates the hypothesis that the same result would've been realised.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean Why? We've done this before. I fundamentally disagree with the idea we could have avoided the debt and the unemployment.
Yet again you make it a binary issue; "either or". It's not.
What the policy response has shown is that the first round of restrictions in Victoria didn't achieve their stated aim if they have to do it again, let alone apply a harsher regime the second time. If you bought time to add health care capacity, why is it necessary now?
Why is it necessary to impact people in such a manner when they bear almost no risk? For a relatively small pandemic by historical standards; first recorded case on Australia Day and we've added 188 deaths as of yesterday since the first recorded at the beginning of March. Meanwhile creating the deepest economic recession since the 1930s.
Restaurants and cafes, etc. could have stayed open catering to the customers that still wanted to frequent them, obeying social distancing. That alone negates the hypothesis that the same result would've been realised.
The first lockdown wasn't just about buying time to add healthcare capacity, though. It was about reducing the virus numbers as well. The success of that second measure made it the clear choice of policy makers to implement again when the virus came back (through a policy failure in the quarantine hotels).
And yes it's been relatively small in Australia so far, but clearly it can get a lot worse if it spreads. If other countries had outbreaks only on our scale then it would be an entirely different debate.
Even if you allowed restaurants and cafes to remain open, in a mass outbreak where the disease was spread primarily in indoor venues, they would still suffer massively with their doors open. Run on tight margins at the best of times, many would still fail.
If NSW gets to 200+ cases a day but say 'restaurants are still open', I certainly wouldn't be going down to the local for a feed with my mates. And I think the vast majority of people would be like me.
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- The first policy response was based on flawed modelling.
- The majority of the cases were acquired OS.
- Time to build capacity:
“In about a month from now there will be changes to the baseline restrictions that we put in place a few weeks ago,” Morrison said in a press conference, adding that three benchmarks would need to be met before that occurred. “When we have in place the broader testing regime surveillance, the automated contract regime in place, and we have scaled out our capacity to respond to outbreaks, that is what we are looking to do in the next four weeks.
- So that clearly hasn't come to pass in Victoria.
- We weren't affected like other countries for the Spanish Flu either.
- 0.06% of the country is a confirmed case after more than six months.
- 0.0007% of the country has died from Covid-19
- People can make their own choices about whether they bunker down with 800 rolls of toilet paper or go out.
- Businesses can decide if and how they'll adopt to respond to demand.
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@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
- People can make their own choices about whether they bunker down with 800 rolls of toilet paper or go out.
- Businesses can decide if and how they'll adopt to respond to demand.
OK, but can't you see the possibility that most people will bunker down, and said economic ruin would still be realised?
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
- People can make their own choices about whether they bunker down with 800 rolls of toilet paper or go out.
- Businesses can decide if and how they'll adopt to respond to demand.
OK, but can't you see the possibility that most people will bunker down, and said economic ruin would still be realised?
As I said - it's not a binary issue. While a majority of the economic impact would have still happened, in certain regions and industries, there's no compelling reason for the ongoing restrictions (nor the heavy handed reintroduction). The impact for younger people is going to be economically debilitating; already burdened with declining opportunity they now face an even worse future.
I perfectly accept that governments made decisions (as we expect them to do) based on the information they had at the time. What's disturbing is that WA still doesn't have an open border with SA or NT, despite SA not having a hospitalised case of covid-19 since mid May. Why?
Why didn't Victoria use the time to build capacity, review and respond to criticism of their previous effort? If they did, why this response?
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During the initial lockdown, my company had about a 1-week lull. Then once the construction industry was declared essential we took off like a rocket. We hired 3 new staff and took on 3 new subbies crews.
Since the second wave in VIC we've been hit hard. All of our national contracts are all basically on hold or canceled altogether.
Our retail sales tripled in April, May & June. All the DIYers stuck at home wanting to finally finish the project they'd been putting off or never had the time to complete. Added that many people took out $10k of their super as well.
This time though, if it had not been for a massive Chinese contract paid in full I think we'd be reassessing that 3 people hire. It's slim fucking pickings as people wait for the QLD border to close and potential mass infections.
The pre-tax spend did not eventuate and the last time I remember that happening was in 2008/2009.
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@antipodean I agree a region-by-region approach is appropriate, which so far is what we are seeing by and large.
WA is on its own planet as usual, which Clive fkn Palmer may be about to change. Ludicrous there is no open border with SA.
And agree with the criticism of Victoria. The nursing home situation especially reflects really poorly on them and the Federal Government. If I were NSW I'd be looking very closely at how it happened, and making some changes to ensure it's easy to quickly lock them down without so much staff movement in, out and around the sector.
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@barbarian the fact that McGowan keeps digging the boots in when the WA government legal defence is pretty weak. Their chief medical officer who was an expert witness during the high court hearing had to make a couple of big concessions that only helps the Palmer case.
And anyone that knows anything about potentially significant constitutional matters that go before the highest court in the land, will know the Commonwealth Attorney General should be there as an interested party or intervener.
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In related news, the Army in Victoria have done around 1300 doorknocks of confirmed COVID cases, and found around 400 people not in their homes. That is unfathomable to me. They have tested positive, but just popped down to the shops, gone to work, hanging with friends.
Should be a 10k fine. That is just reckless behaviour, akin to high range drink driving IMO.