COVID-19 / Coronavirus

[beta_condition]

Baaing sheep? Clear thinkers? Did you even read this article?

He reads head lines and cherry picks information that hasn't been peered reviewed.

 

[Furn2]

Which would make the effectiveness of measures beyond Stage One even more questionable. Even the chart itself says that it takes 10-11 days for the impact of a restriction to make itself apparent, meaning that infections were well into decline before the Stage One restrictions took effect. Even accounting for the closing of overseas seeding, the Stage One restrictions clearly showed a plateau at the low level before the Stage Two and Three restrictions had a chance to take effect.

Given the results in our own state it's very apparent that Stage One can easily prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Time to trust the science.

Measures beyond stage 1 are 100% questionable, however, you yourself made a conclusion based on the available stage 1 evidence and claimed that they would have been adequate.

There's no possible way you could have known that at the time or even now based on what we know.

So even if stage 1 had been the way to go, it would take 2 weeks at least to even get a general idea whether that was the case or not and by then it may have been way too late. It makes sense to go hard when you still can.

I get what you're saying in that our government doesn't have a clear way out, and I believe they weren't expecting such low numbers as we are seeing but its definately better to be starting from where we are and make a choice than having to worry about where we keep the bodies.

 

[Hawkk]

I've seen no mention of that in coverage today.

The 20 per cent serious infection rate was mentioned on the coronacast today (that’s directly from the Doherty report)...

Oh and the modelling that Victoria used wasn't just based on data from Wuhan. There was research from Italy, Hong Kong, America etc.

Source?

Sutton’s released modeling was based on the Doherty Report which references the Wuhan data (unless there has been a later development?)

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

Oh Noes! Not the Age!

A disaster waiting to happen or a bold, evidence-based response? In Sweden, it depends who you ask

As winter fades and spring breaks over Sweden, a high-stakes experiment in self-responsibility is under way.

www.theage.com.au

If they keep letting information like this out then it's going to be increasingly hard for the baaing sheep to keep the clear thinkers silenced. I'm sure this was a mistake.

I’m hoping you posted this ironically.

Sweden is not a country we’d be wanting to follow right now.

They have 192 deaths per 1 million people from Covid-19, currently. Australia has 3.

 

[Hawk_francais]

Have you seen the model where those at risk are isolated?

Not yet seen it implemented on planet earth, no.

 

[Hawk_francais]

Oh Noes! Not the Age!

If they keep letting information like this out then it's going to be increasingly hard for the baaing sheep to keep the clear thinkers silenced. I'm sure this was a mistake.

Do you count as a clear thinker in this scenario?

I think the panic merchants here who have been vigorously arguing for mortality rates as high as 6% have some serious introspection to do. Here and in the media. Complete irresponsibility.

Death rate worldwide is currently a touch above 7% fyi. Some serious introspection to do.

 

[KermitJagger]

Death rate worldwide is currently a touch above 7% fyi. Some serious introspection to do.

This is what bothers me. It's pointless to argue death rate now, we're still square in the middle of it and we have no clue just how many people have contracted the virus. If anything, evidence coming out now is that it's probably far more than we think. That would plunge the death rate significantly.

This doesn't mean that it's nothing to worry about, but it does give valuable insight into what drives our news and reporting. Clearly panic sells papers, which means journalists spout statistics that have little other value - we constantly hear shit about how many 'cases overnight' we're hit with as though people were infected overnight, as opposed to 2 or 3 weeks ago. Death rates discussed in ways that make them seem more serious than they are, talk of 'armageddon'.

If Carl is right about anything, it's this. Reporting that 20-40% of the population could get the virus, with simultaneous reporting that there's going to be a death rate anywhere near 6%. They might not be explicitly tying them together but you can bet they're hoping the reader will.

At the end of this pandemic, I hope that people hold the media more accountable for what they push.

 

[Gralin]

The 20 per cent serious infection rate was mentioned on the coronacast today (that’s directly from the Doherty report)...



Source?

Sutton’s released modeling was based on the Doherty Report which references the Wuhan data (unless there has been a later development?)

The references at the end of the document

 

[Easy Slips Catch]

Not yet seen it implemented on planet earth, no.

It was a factor of the Swedish response. 'Protect those at risk'. The problem being they stuffed it up and did not do it. The consequence is a third of their casualties were people known to be at risk - elderly living in care homes. The British and French do not include care residents' deaths in their CoVid kill count. Which I find a bit peculiar.

 

[Hawkk]

The references at the end of the document

I noticed that too, it's just strange that the modeling is still using (almost line for line) the February Wuhan data.

Anyway these are semantics (sorry for mentioning it again) now that we have better, more transparent data coming out of Europe and the USA, I really hope that they will disclose the updated 'nowcasting' modelling with the public.

Anyway,

Coronavirus Australia live updates

A leading property analyst has warned that the coronavirus crisis could see property prices plunge in Australia.

www.news.com.au

Fears PM jumping the gun

Shannon Molloy

Australia’s success in flattening the curve has buoyed Scott Morrison, who has again hinted that some social distancing restrictions could be eased next month.

But some state health officials have reportedly expressed concern that the Prime Minister’s declaration that we’re on “the road to recovery” is premature.

Provided the number of new cases of coronavirus remains very low, and capability to deal with any cluster outbreaks is strong, it’s expected that some lockdown measures could be eased in three weeks.



I can’t post the article as it’s on the News Com Au rolling coverage but I don’t quite get this argument…

Once you flatten the curve there has to be some degree of reopening otherwise you run the risk of paralysing the economy until you ... (have a viral treatment or vaccine)

And if the curve is theoretically flat (which is distinct from Singapore which had a slow growth) how do the cases actually emerge with border lock downs etc. al?

This is actually the scenario I feared the most, a disconnect between the feds and the states and perhaps an overreach by public health officials who have an innate bias for life over balancing economic necessities.

I'll throw some silver and suggest that Sutton is in the lockdown everything for 2 years camp

 

[Hawk_francais]

This is what bothers me. It's pointless to argue death rate now, we're still square in the middle of it and we have no clue just how many people have contracted the virus. If anything, evidence coming out now is that it's probably far more than we think. That would plunge the death rate significantly.

This doesn't mean that it's nothing to worry about, but it does give valuable insight into what drives our news and reporting. Clearly panic sells papers, which means journalists spout statistics that have little other value - we constantly hear shit about how many 'cases overnight' we're hit with as though people were infected overnight, as opposed to 2 or 3 weeks ago. Death rates discussed in ways that make them seem more serious than they are, talk of 'armageddon'.

If Carl is right about anything, it's this. Reporting that 20-40% of the population could get the virus, with simultaneous reporting that there's going to be a death rate anywhere near 6%. They might not be explicitly tying them together but you can bet they're hoping the reader will.

At the end of this pandemic, I hope that people hold the media more accountable for what they push.

I think it’s pretty clear that Carl didn’t have a bloody clue about the death rate, and it was therefore pretty rich of him to ridicule those numbers put forward by epidemiologists worldwide.

Your own determination ‘not to panic’ is admirable, but there are many people in this country who clearly cannot accept any deviation from the status quo without inferring that we’ve become hysterical. People in this thread are still arguing that stay-at-home orders are unnecessary, although they cannot point to an example of another country or state where a different strategy has worked, nor can they point out how more lives can be saved.

 

[Hawk_francais]

It was a factor of the Swedish response. 'Protect those at risk'. The problem being they stuffed it up and did not do it. The consequence is a third of their casualties were people known to be at risk - elderly living in care homes. The British and French do not include care residents' deaths in their CoVid kill count. Which I find a bit peculiar.

So apart from the strategy you’re advocating not actually working in practice, why else do you think it’s a good idea?

 

[cryptor]

They've got to be really careful about when they lift lockdown and how they do it (ie. not making it open slather to go do whatever you want). As soon as people get a green light there is going to be a HUGE spike in travel and gatherings.

People will be having parties to celebrate the lifting of lockdown and to catch up with friends. There will also be plenty of people making up for missed birthdays, weddings, Easter, etc. There will even be a bunch of people who would not usually go out and do things who will actually want to get out of the house for a change. Cinemas, bars, local sports clubs, etc. will all want to reopen ASAP and will market aggressively to get people through the doors and spending money.

Feels inevitable that once restrictions are lifted they will be back again within a month due to a spike of new cases. Personally I'd rather we just keep going like this for a little longer than we think we need just to be sure.

 

[Gralin]

They've got to be really careful about when they lift lockdown and how they do it (ie. not making it open slather to go do whatever you want). As soon as people get a green light there is going to be a HUGE spike in travel and gatherings.

People will be having parties to celebrate the lifting of lockdown and to catch up with friends. There will also be plenty of people making up for missed birthdays, weddings, Easter, etc. There will even be a bunch of people who would not usually go out and do things who will actually want to get out of the house for a change. Cinemas, bars, local sports clubs, etc. will all want to reopen ASAP and will market aggressively to get people through the doors and spending money.

Feels inevitable that once restrictions are lifted they will be back again within a month due to a spike of new cases. Personally I'd rather we just keep going like this for a little longer than we think we need just to be sure.

Middle of next week we will start seeing how Easter panned out.

Tassie is now 2 weeks removed from the outbreak in NW that doubled their numbers over the past two weeks so they need some time to see if they have that under control.

It's a balancing act, too little to much, too short too long, too soon, too late.

We are a long way from knowing who has done best and the nature of the exponential growth is that you can go from not much to a lot very quick.

The flipside is the various social distancing measures can have an exponential impact the other way.

 

[Hawkk]

Middle of next week we will start seeing how Easter panned out.

Tassie is now 2 weeks removed from the outbreak in NW that doubled their numbers over the past two weeks so they need some time to see if they have that under control.

It's a balancing act, too little to much, too short too long, too soon, too late.

We are a long way from knowing who has done best and the nature of the exponential growth is that you can go from not much to a lot very quick.

The flipside is the various social distancing measures can have an exponential impact the other way.

Not to mention the Orthodox Easter and Ramadan upcoming too

 

[Lawsy]

It was a factor of the Swedish response. 'Protect those at risk'. The problem being they stuffed it up and did not do it. The consequence is a third of their casualties were people known to be at risk - elderly living in care homes. The British and French do not include care residents' deaths in their CoVid kill count. Which I find a bit peculiar.

The French didn't initially include care/aged care facility numbers but a couple of weeks ago did and saw a 17k increase in confirmed cases and, if memory serves me correctly, numbers went from ~500 deaths per day to +1000 deaths per day for almost a week as these additional deaths were recorded.
I am not aware of any reporting/non reporting of these cases in the UK though.

 

[Manila_Hawk]

Fellow lockdown Hawkers...

Apart from being a rabid Hawthorn fan, I also write trivia quizzes for several local pubs.

So, I have lots of quizzes....

A couple of times a week, me and some friends here in Philippines, plus Thailand and Australia..
All get together on a Webex conference call and I share the quiz to everyone.

It's all done in PowerPoint, multiple choice, automatically kicks to next question in 60 seconds.

Sounds weird, but lots of fun... Drinking and banter... Online. And drinking (did I mention that?)

Anyway, if anyone is interested... I'm happy to send you the power points to play against your mates.

Just PM me.

Caution.. It's for an international audience, so not really any Australian questions much.. Certainly no AFL

 

[Easy Slips Catch]

The French didn't initially include care/aged care facility numbers but a couple of weeks ago did and saw a 17k increase in confirmed cases and, if memory serves me correctly, numbers went from ~500 deaths per day to +1000 deaths per day for almost a week as these additional deaths were recorded.
I am not aware of any reporting/non reporting of these cases in the UK though.

Good. My figures came from the Economist in early April who cited France having their expected death rate plus CoVid deaths, then around another 5000 deaths that were not deemed CoVid stats. The Brits may have included the Care Home residents' deaths but have not seen it reported.

 

[Easy Slips Catch]

So apart from the strategy you’re advocating not actually working in practice, why else do you think it’s a good idea?

Not so clear their strategy is not working. There is a bit to play out. The whole idea of flattening the curve was to spread the medical load and allow us to tool up. I have not read that the Swedish health systems are failing. Their expert is backing the herd way out of this.

What is our way out? Perpetual isolation.

 

[beta_condition]

Not so clear their strategy is not working. There is a bit to play out. The whole idea of flattening the curve was to spread the medical load and allow us to tool up. I have not read that the Swedish health systems are failing. Their expert is backing the herd way out of this.

What is our way out? Perpetual isolation.

Yea the Sweden Healthcare system is doing a wonderful job. There's nothing to suggest long terms immunity either with muiltple cases of people being tested positive after recovering.

 

[Gralin]

Not so clear their strategy is not working. There is a bit to play out. The whole idea of flattening the curve was to spread the medical load and allow us to tool up. I have not read that the Swedish health systems are failing. Their expert is backing the herd way out of this.

What is our way out? Perpetual isolation.

At the moment it is too early to tell if their plan is better.
We got our first cases within a day of each other.
Since then they have recorded 10k more cases and almost 2k more deaths.
Those numbers don't add up unless one of three things has happened.

They've had significant more cases than we have, and I don't mean the numbers we are seeing recorded I mean like 30 times the cases.

They've had a disproportionate number of cases in the vulnerable compared to us.

They've been overload in hospital.

 

[Hawk_francais]

Not so clear their strategy is not working. There is a bit to play out. The whole idea of flattening the curve was to spread the medical load and allow us to tool up. I have not read that the Swedish health systems are failing. Their expert is backing the herd way out of this.

What is our way out? Perpetual isolation.

Not perpetual isolation, but perpetual work. While this remains a virus for which there is no immunity and no cure, individuals will need to do the work of a vaccine, i.e. prevent themselves getting the virus.

Australia's way out (as I understand it): use lockdown measures to limit the peak of the viral waves, and then tentatively re-open to the best possible extent when cases have declined to negligible levels for probably 2-3 weeks. Remember as recently as April 9, Aus recorded 100 new daily cases. When we previously ticked over 100 on March 18, it took only 4 days for that number to swell to 500 daily cases. Of course this is a really surface look at the problem, in reality de-confinement it will be worked out suburb by suburb, state by state. The pie in the sky scenario would be that if mitigation is really really successful then maybe re-confinement won't be necessary.

So far, not many countries find themselves in better positions than Australia, and we should certainly not have any envy of Sweden. Their number of deaths and active cases is alarming. For the last month or so their active cases have doubled every fortnight, meaning they risk running out of ICU beds in the coming weeks (they currently have 533 patients in ICU and the nation has an ICU capacity between 500-1000). Not to mention the brashness of strategically allowing your citizens to catch the virus. While there are probably no long term effects, we don't know that. I hope it works out fine for them, but I don't think I'd be trading places.

As you say, there is plenty to play out still, and it's too early to heap praise on anybody, (although I don't feel the same way about criticism). Overall, I'm preferring the general approach of "let's use the proven methods to look after people's health and welfare, then worry about the DOW index, football and golfing habits after". Honestly it's a bit sad that the priority of people's health and welfare is a novelty.

 

[Alite]

report in the paper that numbers with flu went from about 7000 to next to nothing after social distancing came in

I think of the 200+ virus’ that create the flu and common cold ARE sitting in a bar, drowning their sorrows, hating on SARS-COV-2. They are saying, “we could run around the world without anyone caring, infecting anyone we wanted and we were loving it. How good was that. But now this “Co-sh%tt for brains“ turns up, with his 7 day incubation period and higher mortality rate... and we are house bound... like the humans... CO-prick I say. He has stuffed everything up for us.“

Trump, being the moron that he is, said that if the weather gets hotter “****, the virus goes away”. He associated getting a cold (virus) with being cold. Instead of knowing being cold, with being in close proximity to others in a place to get warm and so pass on the cold (Virus). The president of the USA should know the difference... or learn it... but not this Knob-Nut.


Spit-balling here: many virus’ will be contained this year.

The Smallpox virus was officially eradicated from the worlds general public (it is still in labs) in 1979.
The Polio virus still exists but not in Australia
The measles virus still exists, again not in Australia.

The world could use this time of isolation to eradicated multiple nasty virus‘.

In crisis comes opportunity.

I hold no faith that the people in charge of the most populous nations want anything other than to stay in power.
And a brilliant opportunity, with all its terrible outcomes, will end in... more debt! And the next pandemic around the corner.

Aside: Jascinta Ardern is awesome... and ScoMo... (not my preferred PM)... has done a great job. Now someone will have to pay for the money hit... but I am OK with that. who is going to pay: everyone! But mostly those under 30.

The can has been kicked down the road.

 

[Alite]

So apart from the strategy you’re advocating not actually working in practice, why else do you think it’s a good idea?

Sweden has a population of 10 mill, less than half of Australia. Deaths from COVID-19 in Sweden = more than 2000, in Australia it is 74.

Swedon are going for herd immunity. 60% being the key number.

I hope Sweden”s concept works. No-one knows the best strategy. Personally I prefer Australia’s approach of containment, with the knowledge that new cases will turn up in the future. We are buying time for a vaccine (testing takes time) to be developed or a cure (Possibly less time but may not happen).
It is certain EVERY country in the world is looking to find a solution. I would bet that a cure is found within 12 months, but I would not bet my parent life on it.
History says that when humanity is focussed on a task, it gets done. Let’s hope history is reflective of the future.

 

[Alite]

Not perpetual isolation, but perpetual work. While this remains a virus for which there is no immunity and no cure, individuals will need to do the work of a vaccine, i.e. prevent themselves getting the virus.

Australia's way out (as I understand it): use lockdown measures to limit the peak of the viral waves, and then tentatively re-open to the best possible extent when cases have declined to negligible levels for probably 2-3 weeks. Remember as recently as April 9, Aus recorded 100 new daily cases. When we previously ticked over 100 on March 18, it took only 4 days for that number to swell to 500 daily cases. Of course this is a really surface look at the problem, in reality de-confinement it will be worked out suburb by suburb, state by state. The pie in the sky scenario would be that if mitigation is really really successful then maybe re-confinement won't be necessary.

So far, not many countries find themselves in better positions than Australia, and we should certainly not have any envy of Sweden. Their number of deaths and active cases is alarming. For the last month or so their active cases have doubled every fortnight, meaning they risk running out of ICU beds in the coming weeks (they currently have 533 patients in ICU and the nation has an ICU capacity between 500-1000). Not to mention the brashness of strategically allowing your citizens to catch the virus. While there are probably no long term effects, we don't know that. I hope it works out fine for them, but I don't think I'd be trading places.

As you say, there is plenty to play out still, and it's too early to heap praise on anybody, (although I don't feel the same way about criticism). Overall, I'm preferring the general approach of "let's use the proven methods to look after people's health and welfare, then worry about the DOW index, football and golfing habits after". Honestly it's a bit sad that the priority of people's health and welfare is a novelty.

Hawk_francais: A like was not enough. An excellent summation and I agree with your hopes.