Coronavirus - Overall
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@nzzp said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:
Their was not enough critical thinking of the decision by the govt, so any accusation of not using hindsight rings incredibly hollow. The govt panicked, and they panicked because we have a prime minister who listened to her mates overseas and to people with no financial skin in the game.
Thinking about this some more, I'm going to use the cricketing analogy, between umpires making the 'wrong' decision and making a 'bad' decision.
In hindsight, you might say that going to L4 wasn't the optimum decision. However, that doesn't make it a 'bad' decision. IT's like in the 2005 Ashes Flintoff being given out off a ball that flicked his glove when it was just off the bat. It wasn't the 'right' decision, but it wasn't a 'bad' decision.
Same thing here I think, given the lack of slo mo replays and the uncertainty involved at the time.
I would equate skipping level 3 as umpire Ardern reacting to a loud appeal by looking at her mate working in the hot dog stand who gives an out signal. So she forgets protocol and doesn't use DRS and just raises the finger.
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@shark Good post, but sadly I think the backlash will be minimal because the media has totally bought into the lockdown, and convinced most people that blind acceptance of govt control is a virtue.
I think that effect will only last until unemployment starts to bite deeply.
Bill Clinton's "it's the economy, stupid" campaign maxim looms increasingly large later in the year.
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@Nepia said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@shark said in Coronavirus - Overall:
. Australia - and others - may well be in a far better economic position with a similar per capita death rate and some very difficult questions will need to be answered.
Worth noting the Aussie economy is still going to be pretty rooted by the time this is over. Our lockdown is a fair bit looser than NZ, but our retail, bar, dining, entertainment and sporting industries are cactus.
And one look at the Aussie corona thread here shows that our Govt isn't getting a standing ovation either.
Yep, there's a bit of mythologising going on here about how well the Australian economy is doing. The economy was basically rooted even before the govt(s) here started implementing their various partial lockdowns and there were a swath of job losses at that time (and not just in the above mentioned industries either, two of my mates who lost their jobs in that first wave were in IT in the steel and gaming industries).
Technically Australia would have entered this Covid mess in a recession if it wasn't for the astonishing levels of migration.
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@shark Good post, but sadly I think the backlash will be minimal because the media has totally bought into the lockdown, and convinced most people that blind acceptance of govt control is a virtue.
I have stated for quite awhile that the govt panicked, it basically skipped stage 3, and went straight to 4. If you look at the criteria , we should never have left 3I don't really agree. I don't think the media has a lot of sway with the general population. Most people that actually vote don't appear to pay them much mind.
The election before last they were fiercely critical of Key and if you went by social media, his days were numbered and a change in government was coming. He won the election in an absolute fucking landslide.
Last election it was all Jacindamania leading into it, gushing story after gushing story. At the end of the day English absolutely smashed her, it was only an unexpected unholy alliance between a far left and far right party that got them over the line.
If people don't think this was handled well, IMO no amount of media propaganda is going to help them when it comes to the next election.
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@No-Quarter said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@shark Good post, but sadly I think the backlash will be minimal because the media has totally bought into the lockdown, and convinced most people that blind acceptance of govt control is a virtue.
I have stated for quite awhile that the govt panicked, it basically skipped stage 3, and went straight to 4. If you look at the criteria , we should never have left 3I don't really agree. I don't think the media has a lot of sway with the general population. Most people that actually vote don't appear to pay them much mind.
The election before last they were fiercely critical of Key and if you went by social media, his days were numbered and a change in government was coming. He won the election in an absolute fucking landslide.
Last election is was all Jacindamania leading into it, gushing story after gushing story. At the end of the day English absolutely smashed her at the polls, it was only an unexpected unholy alliance between a far left and far right party that got them over the line.
If people don't think this was handled well, IMO no amount of media propaganda is going to help them when it comes to the next election.
When the dust settles people will go back to worrying about things they always worry about, especially money. A recession and people on the unemployment line will not be looked on favourably
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It's things like this that are going to be the game changer I think. Rapid, cheap testing... wait until the production of this type of unit scales, combine with 'group' swabs, and away you go
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/spartan-covid19-test-kit-new-1.5530669?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback so much this. My kids have been unbelievable considering the circumstances. 3 weeks with no one but their sibling. Everything cancelled. School camps. All sports. No friends.
I get the shits sometimes, but i have to realise, they are being pretty unreal, in ridiculous circumstances.
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback so much this. My kids have been unbelievable considering the circumstances. 3 weeks with no one but their sibling. Everything cancelled. School camps. All sports. No friends.
I get the shits sometimes, but i have to realise, they are being pretty unreal, in ridiculous circumstances.
And we thought society had an issue before with kids being addicted to screens social media....
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An excellent (IMO) article by Adam Creighton in The Australian:
We may be over-reacting to an unremarkable coronavirus
Stay safe. Keep well. Perhaps a hysteria has gripped the nation, at extraordinary cost, when we’re telling each other to take special care over a disease that in three months has killed about 60, in the main quite unwell elderly people.
Even in coronavirus hot spots in Europe and the US, there’s greater chance of being killed in a car accident than being harmed by COVID-19, according to research published last week by Stanford scientist John Ioannidis.
“The risk of dying from coronavirus for a person under 65 years old is equivalent to the risk of dying driving a distance of nine to 415 miles by car each day during the COVID-19 fatality season,” he concluded.
Yet many of those under-65s have had their lives pulled apart, including loss of 195 million jobs around the world this quarter, according to the International Labour Organisation.
In Australia at the very least, with so few deaths and infections, the response to the virus is starting to appear to be a damaging over-reaction. Last month’s draconian response by officials — inducing a recession, destroying millions of jobs and businesses, and locking us all up — was at least politically understandable. The hankering for total lockdown, cheered on largely by those who would be relatively unaffected by it, was irresistible.
Yet as more real data rolls in — as opposed to the wildly inaccurate epidemiological forecasts of millions of deaths globally and many thousands locally — justifications for massive interventions, fiscal and civil, are dwindling.
We were told lockdowns were needed; otherwise hospitals would be swamped. But during the first 11 days of the month, the number of people in intensive care in NSW has fallen to 30, of whom 21 were using ventilators. That’s 2 per cent of available ventilators, even before 3000 more arrive.
Fears of a Spanish flu-like pandemic, which killed almost 40 million people a century ago, are looking exaggerated as the global death toll from COVID-19 approaches 120,000, which is 0.2 per cent of the 60 million people who will die this year from all causes (including more than three million from respiratory infections).
Yes, the lockdowns and social distancing in theory must have slowed the spread. But evidence is thin. Sweden and Japan, for instance, have not imposed lockdowns yet have far fewer deaths as a proportion of their populations than Spain, Italy or France, which have.
The Spanish flu killed 1.2 per cent of Italians, according to new research by Harvard economist Robert Barro, equivalent to 720,000 people today. Almost 20,000 Italians have died of (or with) COVID-19 so far, putting the virus more on par with flu pandemics of the late 1950s and 60s, when governments refrained from destroying their economies. The weakness of the virus itself, rather than wise government action, is the likelier reason the death toll is not as grim as first predicted.
“The likelihood of someone dying from coronavirus is much lower than we initially thought,” Ioannidis told Greek media this week, forecasting that “the mortality rate will be slightly — but not spectacularly — higher than the seasonal flu.”
Indeed, almost 80 per cent of the population of Gangelt, a German town highly exposed to COVID-19, was recently tested to see if they had had the virus. About 15 per cent had, without any symptoms, implying an infection death rate of 0.37 per cent — about four times as bad as seasonal flu but much lower than figures of 1 per cent to 3 per cent first feared.
The first officially detected case of COVID-19 in Australia was in January, eight weeks before lockdowns took effect. Does anyone seriously think only 6400, yesterday’s domestic tally, have been infected? It’s the infection fatality rate — not the official rate of infection — that matters: official tallies are meaningless when so many are asymptomatic.
“I am much more concerned about the consequences of blind shutdowns and the possible destruction of a (Greek) economy where 25 per cent of the GDP is based on tourism,” Ioannidis said.
For the Australian economy, the costs of the response to COVID-19 will be profound too, quite aside from the significant additional debt burden. Joblessness soon will likely double, based on a Roy Morgan survey for last month. The costs of loneliness and inactivity are harder to measure.
“Another month of mass isolation will cost the West at least the equivalent of a million deaths in terms of reduced quality of life,” says Paul Frijters, a professor of economics at London School of Economics using his index of wellbeing. That’s too bad for Victoria, where Premier Daniel Andrews has extended the nation’s most severe lockdown for another four weeks.
If Austria and Denmark — each with many more total deaths and more new infections than Australia — can see the sense in beginning to lift restrictions, so should we. Hospitals have plenty of capacity and new infection rates have tumbled.
Everyone has a right to a view on this fundamental question. Disease experts’ forecasts have proved hopelessly wrong anyway.
It’s not certain a vaccine will ever emerge, but we obviously can’t stay locked down for six months. The longer it lasts, the harder it will be to switch the economy back on. The businesses won’t be there. The economy isn’t a machine like the bureaucracy but a complex set of relationships that will atrophy.
Why not let sport occur without crowds, parliaments sit, young people swim at the beach, businesses reopen, provided they observe social distancing principles? No one is saying “let it rip”; clearly insulating the vulnerable from this virus is a high priority. But it appears less likely the virus will wipe out 5 per cent of India, or 3 per cent of Indonesia, as the Spanish flu did.
We urgently need randomised testing to see how widespread the coronavirus already is. The Prime Minister has said COVID-19 is akin to a one-in-100-year event. It’s unlikely that’s true of the virus, but it’s looking true of damage caused by hysteria.
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I don't disagree with the broad themes of the article, but calling the initial political reaction 'hysteria' is a little much.
As you said on another thread Antipodean I think Governments made the decisions they had to given the models/predictions that were being made by experts in March. But the question is if they now have the intestinal fortitude to wind some of those back based on the developments of the last week.
It was reported this afternoon that Morrison wants schools to go back at the start of Term 2, or at least by week 3. I think that would go a long way to helping achieve some sense of normality.
But you've got Dan Andrews who seems intent on keeping kids at home for the foreseeable future, and Anastacia who doesn't want the State of Origin played at all this year. Gladys has made some promising noises about rolling things back, but still seems set on keeping things as they are for a while yet.
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@pakman said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Duluth said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Duluth said in Coronavirus - Overall:
Worth checking in on Sweden. Yes, the numbers are larger than their Scandinavian neighbours.
Actually the cases per million is not that different (so far)
Norway - 1,211 (cases per million)
Denmark - 1,091
Sweden - 1,084But you are a lot more likely to die in Sweden for some reason
Sweden - 91 (deaths per million)
Denmark - 49
Norway - 25Good graphs. Sweden has twice population of Norway and of Denmark. Norway closed borders early and followed NZ like strategy. But can't reopen borders as no herd immunity.
Sweden looks to me to be past peak. And has kept schools, pubs and restaurants open (table service only) so is shooting for herd immunity.
IMO Sweden will come out of this better.
Thank goodness someone tried this, otherwise we would have been stuck listening to the moronic argument that we were destined to be like Italy if we didn't shut down our entire economy
We did in the end and we are.
Pretty sure behind the doors the real strategy in the UK is herd immunity.
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@barbarian to be fair you've misquoted the author.
"Perhaps a hysteria has gripped the nation, at extraordinary cost, when we’re telling each other to take special care over a disease that in three months has killed about 60, in the main quite unwell elderly people."That's not an unreasonable opening sentence. Toilet paper was hysteria
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@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Overall:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback so much this. My kids have been unbelievable considering the circumstances. 3 weeks with no one but their sibling. Everything cancelled. School camps. All sports. No friends.
I get the shits sometimes, but i have to realise, they are being pretty unreal, in ridiculous circumstances.
What you could do, is cut off the internet, de-tune the TV so that it's barely comprehensible, and order in some flared pants - and play "This is the '70s"!
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In the 70s they could play outside with their mates
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@mariner4life Not if they lived on a farm.
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Sob...
Coronavirus: Over 50 million pints of beer go to waste during lockdown
“The beer had been sat there for two weeks so it had gone off,” he said. “There was no easy way to do it so the beer was thrown down the drain. It was difficult to know what to do as I don't normally get wasted beer.”“If lockdown lasts for three months all the beer in my cellar will go out of date. Beer kegs have a shelf life of not much more than three months while my other kegs will last for one month maximum.”
Disposal of beer must normally be overseen by a brewery representative because alcohol duty is not paid if it is thrown away with good reason, such as spoiling.
As a temporary measure HM Revenue & Customs is allowing breweries to appoint a publican to dispose of spoilt beer, with a video an acceptable form of proof.
The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) estimates that of the 39,000 UK pubs and clubs with liquor licences, on average each has about 15 barrels in its cellar. With the average keg holding 88 pints this means around 51 million pints could be currently spoiling in cellars.
Tom Stainer, the chief executive of Camera, told the BBC: “It’s a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer. People won’t get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing.”Keris De Villiers, landlady of the Ram Inn, the Old Sergeant and the Pig and Whistle in Wandsworth, south-west London, told the BBC that barrelled beer worth about £10,000 could go off in her cellars. A further 1,760 pints remain in vats at the SlyBeast microbrewery she set up with her husband, Lee.
With pubs closed drinkers have turned to supermarkets. Sales of alcohol increased by 22 per cent in the last month with an additional £199 million spent on booze, according to the retail analysts Kanter.
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Unless you've been directly affected by Covid-19 - the death of a parent, sibling, spouse/partner, child - it's very easy to Monday Morning Quarterback the no-lockdown / partial lockdown / lockdown strategies.
As has been mentioned above, we're far better off finding solutions going forward than apportioning blame. There'll be plenty of time for that.
The 'game' isn't over, and as we used to see week-in week-out, if you don't play what's in front of you and adapt your gameplan then you will lose.
Rarely is victory determined in the first 10 minutes.