Coronavirus - Australia
-
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian I've been a critic of Morrison's a lot longer than the Covi 19 pandemic and I also stuck up for him during the bushfires.
OK great, but I think calling him a 'useless cnut' is pretty rough. But whatever.
It's clear to me that politicians are employing the classic tactic of 'under-promise and over-deliver'. They are setting expectations that it will be a long time, in the hope that it can be resolved faster and they receive some credit.
While the timeline is clear enough (Morrison has said six months plenty of times) I agree that the benchmarks for restrictions lifting are unclear. Is it a flatline of cases? Is it zero active cases?
Because they run the risk of seeing cases fall but restrictions remain strict. People will start to flout them (especially in non-metro areas) and then police will impose fines and you have a recipe for a real shitstorm.
Because I don't really read media/facebook etc where people bitch and moan (aside from here and specific press conferences on CV19) I haven't noticed this. I don't think the govt are doing a bad job (so far) but I do think there is a lack of clarity that isn't helpful. I don't mean stuff they can't know (how long things will last etc) but as I've mentioned (probably ad nauseam) there's a bit of wanting to have the cake and eating it too going on. Strongly advising people to do stuff doesn't work.
Anyway, I prefer to call him the Ayatollah Morrison than a "useless fluffybunny".
-
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
It's relatively simple to me:
Restriction level defined by
- New case numbers ≤ number
- Total case numbers in ICU ≤ number
Ah yes, the classic simple solution to a complex problem.
I don't think there's much point going back-and-forth on this. I'd like clearer communication but also understand it's an incredibly complex situation and reducing it to a simple metric is likely not going to be possible.
I appreciate you think it's complex but that's probably a problem definition issue. What is the problem? Largely a health and economic one. It's clear that government (Fed & State) have elected to prioritise the health and well being of citizens.
So trying to minimise the impact on health infrastructure means implementing measures that reduce transmission, hence social distancing, limiting group sizes etc.
But as John P.A. Ioannidis pointed out, we're making far reaching decisions without strong evidence:
Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?
This is evidently true here in Australia. Spooked by Italy without understanding why Italy's numbers were bad, combined with the disastrous mismanagement of the Ruby Princess has lead to unilateral action by State Premiers. Unilateral illogical action. We have Queensland closing its border despite having cases and leading to the farcical situation at the Tweed. Western Australia is now threatening to prevent its own residents from returning.
And what's the picture?
A population of near as makes no difference 25.5 million has as at 6.00am this morning 5,224 confirmed cases. Or 0.02% of which 0.44% are deceased. So are we missing the prevalence and underplaying it in Australia? With considerable confidence we can state that's not the case because we've conducted more than 270,000 tests.
So to come back to the ability of ICUs to manage an outbreak we have a declining rate of increase, extremely low case morbidity and a lower impost on critical health infrastructure due to less activities that normally consume those resources while we're all prevented from going out.
And yet against that evidence we have increasingly draconian policies being implemented. No politician has been able to enunciate what success looks like. They can't even agree to a coordinated approach. All they had to do was adopt Singapore's excellent graphic and explain what the outcome they were driving for was.
So far our politicians have demonstrated behaviour that does nothing to inspire confidence. A complete lack of leadership.
-
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
So far our politicians have demonstrated behaviour that does nothing to inspire confidence. A complete lack of leadership.
OK we will agree to disagree on this then.
-
I'm in front of a webinar with senior officials from ATO, treasury, and even bloody ScoMo
I'll pass on anything decent that comes through
-
@chimoaus GM of Services Australia says definitely continue with your Jobseeker application. And more resources are being diverted to get those through
-
@barbarian I can see a lot of parallels between the situation he finds himself in and the one George W did with 911. Morrison is an unpopular man trying to lead his country through an incredibly difficult time. The sweeping reforms in homeland security and America's everyday life were far-reaching and we are now living with many of those changes in our own countries. This will be the same. Sweeping changes to our daily and in many cases permanent.
-
@raznomore said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian I can see a lot of parallels between the situation he finds himself in and the one George W did with 911. Morrison is an unpopular man trying to lead his country through an incredibly difficult time. The sweeping reforms in homeland security and America's everyday life were far-reaching and we are now living with many of those changes in our own countries. This will be the same. Sweeping changes to our daily and in many cases permanent.
Before he was sentenced to death in 1946 for crimes against humanity, former Nazi Reichsmarschall and Holocaust perpetrator Hermann Goering explained to a US military psychologist how Nazi tyranny had emerged from crisis.
"It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship," Goering confessed.
"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.
"It works the same in any country."
Last week, this quotation circulated on Twitter, as grassroots critics of crackdowns across the world sought to draw parallels between the current crisis and the birth of dictatorships.
Like most public figures to have advocated caution, Professor Keane is not suggesting anything like that is about to occur, especially in Australia.
But he has sounded a note of warning.
"Emergency rule gets people used to subordination. It nurtures voluntary servitude," he wrote.
"It is the mother of despotism and … strangely resembles the virus it claims to combat."
-
@antipodean so given you've made your disdain for the Oz govt's course of action very clear, what mortality rate would you find acceptable and how would you feel about it if you were a 68 year old diabetic?
-
@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@antipodean so given you've made your disdain for the Oz govt's course of action very clear, what mortality rate would you find acceptable and how would you feel about it if you were a 68 year old diabetic?
I'd start with the fluffybunny who stole my pushbike, anyone doing meth, then move on to meanderthals, people who can't drive, Karen on Facebook, or were you seriously asking for a bodycount?
My own father has diabetes. My grandfather is in his 90s. I've supported measures to protect them as much as reasonably possible and determining when we can recognise the restrictions on the daily lives of almost all citizens can be relaxed. I've also pointed out previously how many people die in Australia each year and we're now facing the very real possibility that more people will suffer serious psychological distress, commit suicide etc. over the next six months than will succumb from Covid 19 if the present trend continues as we all hope it does.
We don't put these measures in place for bad influenza seasons which take much the same cohort, so at some point there needs to be a serious examination of the requirement to continue down this path.
-
to sort of add weight to that, there were 1,700 flu deaths in Australia in 2017 (my source the bureau of statistics, but i don't have a link), or 142 a month. Or 5 a day.
-
Look I realise my concern for liberty is coming off pretty poorly, but I've been WFH for over three weeks and only ventured outside my apartment to get supplies. One of the governments here has determined I can't go see my siblings or take this enforced sabbatical from the office as an opportunity to stay on the farm. I supported the initial restrictions while pointing out the behaviour of universities offering financial incentives for Chinese students to evade travel bans. I called for greater isolation and monitoring of people confirmed to have Covid 19.
All I'm saying is we're doing tremendous social and economic damage and it's becoming evident that this level of response may be massive overkill.
-
@mariner4life Thanks mate, still get the error so I am no closer to applying. The centrelink app just crashes when I try to get access.
-
@antipodean said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Look I realise my concern for liberty is coming off pretty poorly, but I've been WFH for over three weeks and only ventured outside my apartment to get supplies. One of the governments here has determined I can't go see my siblings or take this enforced sabbatical from the office as an opportunity to stay on the farm. I supported the initial restrictions while pointing out the behaviour of universities offering financial incentives for Chinese students to evade travel bans. I called for greater isolation and monitoring of people confirmed to have Covid 19.
All I'm saying is we're doing tremendous social and economic damage and it's becoming evident that this level of response may be massive overkill.
What state are you in? Queensland? I too have been WFH for over three weeks, but under the 'lockdown' we have in NSW i can - go to the office if I want to, pop into JB Hifi, grab a takeaway coffee and some takeaway Malaysian, go for a long walk, go to the supermarket, chemist and gift shop nearby, get a haircut etc. My sibling is NZ and my Mum is in Queensland so I've got no chance of seeing them anyway. We're not at NZ stage yet, maybe I will start feeling shitty about it if we do get there, but at the moment it's really not that bad.
-
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
i wouldn't mind at least some clarity around the situational requirements that bring about an end to the restrictions. They don't have to know when that will be, but surely they have some sort of idea of what the situation has to look like before we can have some shit back. I would find the fact that they don't reasonably alarming.
Fucking hell mate - he doesn't hold a test tube!
ScoMo already committed the nation to God. What more do you want? Sky Daddy is running the cutter now...
-
@Nepia said in Coronavirus - Australia:
What state are you in? Queensland? I too have been WFH for over three weeks, but under the 'lockdown' we have in NSW i can - go to the office if I want to, pop into JB Hifi, grab a takeaway coffee and some takeaway Malaysian, go for a long walk, go to the supermarket, chemist and gift shop nearby, get a haircut etc. My sibling is NZ and my Mum is in Queensland so I've got no chance of seeing them anyway. We're not at NZ stage yet, maybe I will start feeling shitty about it if we do get there, but at the moment it's really not that bad.
I think moving from current status in NSW to NZ stage would probably upset a lot of people who have done the right thing so far.
Personally: still loving it Best bit is the local Catholic Schools Diocese pulled holidays forward a week, so the kids are effectively on their screens without a need for my supervision from now!
-
@Nepia said in Coronavirus - Australia:
What state are you in?
Work in ACT. Family and farm are in QLD. We haven't adopted the lunacy of the other States and Territories (yet).
-
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Down to 91 new cases in NSW today, that's the first sub-100 number we've had in more than two weeks. In her presser the Chief Medico said rates of testing were still high, so it looks like it could be a reliable figure.
It seems with every passing day it's looking more likely we will avoid a US/Europe style medical catastrophe. Just the economic one to worry about, then...
I may have missed it, but has any official said under what circumstances the restrictions will be lifted?
-
@junior said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Down to 91 new cases in NSW today, that's the first sub-100 number we've had in more than two weeks. In her presser the Chief Medico said rates of testing were still high, so it looks like it could be a reliable figure.
It seems with every passing day it's looking more likely we will avoid a US/Europe style medical catastrophe. Just the economic one to worry about, then...
I may have missed it, but has any official said under what circumstances the restrictions will be lifted?
Welcome to the party Junior
-
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@junior said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Down to 91 new cases in NSW today, that's the first sub-100 number we've had in more than two weeks. In her presser the Chief Medico said rates of testing were still high, so it looks like it could be a reliable figure.
It seems with every passing day it's looking more likely we will avoid a US/Europe style medical catastrophe. Just the economic one to worry about, then...
I may have missed it, but has any official said under what circumstances the restrictions will be lifted?
Welcome to the party Junior
Haha yes I wrote that in response to something a couple of pages ago and then ended up reading two more pages whinging about this exact point.
-
@junior said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@junior said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Down to 91 new cases in NSW today, that's the first sub-100 number we've had in more than two weeks. In her presser the Chief Medico said rates of testing were still high, so it looks like it could be a reliable figure.
It seems with every passing day it's looking more likely we will avoid a US/Europe style medical catastrophe. Just the economic one to worry about, then...
I may have missed it, but has any official said under what circumstances the restrictions will be lifted?
Welcome to the party Junior
Haha yes I wrote that in response to something a couple of pages ago and then ended up reading two more pages whinging about this exact point.
🤣