Opinion Politics (warning, may contain political views you disagree with)

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After a good suggestion, we’ve decided to move all non-AFL threads to the old and dusty “Purple Horde” sub thread. The hope is it has the following effects
A) Keeps them easily available but still out of sight
B) Encourages the use of the sub-forums like they are meant to be used for and brings a bit more organisation to the forum
C) While I love how passionate everyone is on the topics and that there is terrific debate on the topics, moderating the politics thread can get... tiresome. I’ll be letting things go a bit more, however personal attacks will not be tolerated and I encourage you to report them in any shape or form.

I fully realise this will mean you now have to click a whole extra button to get to where you want to be and will take an adjustment but we fully believe it will be better in the long run.

As usual, reach out to BeinPurplenGreen, myself and Tonga Bob to discuss anything as needed. Thanks for making the forum what it is.
 
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170000 vaccine shots have landed . Whoopee enough to do a large country town. After the 170000 runs out the end of March will be for a few more of us then who knows for the rest.
Rwanda ffs is way in front of us with their rollout.
 

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salim malik said:
170000 vaccine shots have landed . Whoopee enough to do a large country town. After the 170000 runs out the end of March will be for a few more of us then who knows for the rest.
Rwanda ffs is way in front of us with their rollout.
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Rwanda started their program roll out on Sunday.
 
Taylor said:
Rwanda started their program roll out on Sunday.
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I think that puts Rwanda in front but the main problem that you seem to overlook is that thru someone's stuff up we have to endure potential further lockdown until October.
If we started with the leading western countries with our small population instead of just starting we could be on the way to finishing.
 
salim malik said:
I think that puts Rwanda in front but the main problem that you seem to overlook is that thru someone's stuff up we have to endure potential further lockdown until October.
If we started with the leading western countries with our small population instead of just starting we could be on the way to finishing.
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I think anyone looking at the impact of covid-19 on the Australian people objectively recognises that the majority, as in almost the entirety, of suffering has been due to government action - not the virus itself.

They are more afraid of the government reaction than they are of the virus, and statistically they are right to be.
Let's use the example talked about as the global worst standard - the USA.
Percentage of USA population not infected with the virus, ever = take a mental guess
91.458%
Percentage of USA population who have died with covid-19 detected = 0.15%

That's with parts of their nation considered to be wide open and spreading like wildfire.

Worldmeters puts the chance of dying if infected by covid-19 for people under the age of 50 at 0.4%. (And that's halved for everyone under 40 again)

You paid that up with the percentage of the US population that are actually caught the infection being under 9%, even with all their wildfire spread, then the chance of a person in the USA dying of covid-19 is under 0.04%.

Australia has even less community spread of the virus and will not have anything close to that level of community spread as long as there is an international quarantine system in place and close contacts of known escaped cases are traced and isolated.

I understand that you've been told how scary this is and numbers look huge, but the worst case place is still extremely safe for people in the community and Australia is even better due to the international border control.
 
Is 0.15% a small amount? As a return on money yes, as a fraction it is 1/660. So when dealing with population which is often in the millions, 10's of millions or 100's of millions, it is a huge number.
So just to be clear, for every 660 people in America, 1 dies. As of last week they had 65000 people in Hospital from COVID, at their peak in January it was double that. 65K people is 1/5000 (approx.). If we apply that fraction to Perth with 2 million people, there would be 400 people in hospital with COVID. That's 2/3 of Fiona Stanley all hospitalized with the same thing at the same time.
The US has had in total 845386 (which is no where near complete as not all states are reporting figures) hospitalisations which, as a fraction, is 1/38. So for every 38 people you know, one of them is hospitalised from COVID.
That is such a massive strain on the healthcare system.
I completely disagree that the numbers aren't huge. Looking at them in %'s does make them feel small, but populations are in the millions and so %'s aren't a good way of looking at them because if you see a 0.15%, it's hard to interpret that for the 28000000 people that live in Australia. At the US rate of hospitalisation we would have had over 735000 people in hospital since January last year in the country (this also shows how poor the US figures are, their rate would be much higher).
COVID at the rate of the US or UK or pretty much anywhere would be absolutely devastating for our healthcare system, and our business community with so many people either in hospital or just staying at home with the virus as no one could go to work.
I absolutely don't think things have been handled perfectly here but to call the US a 'safe' place is just wrong. The actual figures don't back that up in any way.
1 in 660 people in the US are dead from this virus in the last 12 months and it will continue to go up.
 
Bicco said:
Is 0.15% a small amount? As a return on money yes, as a fraction it is 1/660. So when dealing with population which is often in the millions, 10's of millions or 100's of millions, it is a huge number.
So just to be clear, for every 660 people in America, 1 dies. As of last week they had 65000 people in Hospital from COVID, at their peak in January it was double that. 65K people is 1/5000 (approx.). If we apply that fraction to Perth with 2 million people, there would be 400 people in hospital with COVID. That's 2/3 of Fiona Stanley all hospitalized with the same thing at the same time.
The US has had in total 845386 (which is no where near complete as not all states are reporting figures) hospitalisations which, as a fraction, is 1/38. So for every 38 people you know, one of them is hospitalised from COVID.
That is such a massive strain on the healthcare system.
I completely disagree that the numbers aren't huge. Looking at them in %'s does make them feel small, but populations are in the millions and so %'s aren't a good way of looking at them because if you see a 0.15%, it's hard to interpret that for the 28000000 people that live in Australia. At the US rate of hospitalisation we would have had over 735000 people in hospital since January last year in the country (this also shows how poor the US figures are, their rate would be much higher).
COVID at the rate of the US or UK or pretty much anywhere would be absolutely devastating for our healthcare system, and our business community with so many people either in hospital or just staying at home with the virus as no one could go to work.
I absolutely don't think things have been handled perfectly here but to call the US a 'safe' place is just wrong. The actual figures don't back that up in any way.
1 in 660 people in the US are dead from this virus in the last 12 months and it will continue to go up.
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Agreed, 100%

It's a miniscule fraction on it's own - but when viewed for what it is, a fraction of 350 million lives of avoidable deaths, immense strain on emergency services infrastructure etc. it's anything but miniscule. Long story short, it's unsustainable long term for them.
 
Bicco said:
Is 0.15% a small amount? As a return on money yes, as a fraction it is 1/660. So when dealing with population which is often in the millions, 10's of millions or 100's of millions, it is a huge number.
So just to be clear, for every 660 people in America, 1 dies. As of last week they had 65000 people in Hospital from COVID, at their peak in January it was double that. 65K people is 1/5000 (approx.). If we apply that fraction to Perth with 2 million people, there would be 400 people in hospital with COVID. That's 2/3 of Fiona Stanley all hospitalized with the same thing at the same time.
The US has had in total 845386 (which is no where near complete as not all states are reporting figures) hospitalisations which, as a fraction, is 1/38. So for every 38 people you know, one of them is hospitalised from COVID.
That is such a massive strain on the healthcare system.
I completely disagree that the numbers aren't huge. Looking at them in %'s does make them feel small, but populations are in the millions and so %'s aren't a good way of looking at them because if you see a 0.15%, it's hard to interpret that for the 28000000 people that live in Australia. At the US rate of hospitalisation we would have had over 735000 people in hospital since January last year in the country (this also shows how poor the US figures are, their rate would be much higher).
COVID at the rate of the US or UK or pretty much anywhere would be absolutely devastating for our healthcare system, and our business community with so many people either in hospital or just staying at home with the virus as no one could go to work.
I absolutely don't think things have been handled perfectly here but to call the US a 'safe' place is just wrong. The actual figures don't back that up in any way.
1 in 660 people in the US are dead from this virus in the last 12 months and it will continue to go up.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you agree that the USA is considered the worse case and that their death rate is still only 0.15%.

The important percentage is the chance of dying of covid-19 if you catch it for people;
10 to 40 = 0.2% (this is 52.6% of the population of Australia)
41 to 50 = 0.4% (this is 13.6% of the population of Australia)

Over two thirds of the population carrying a less than half a percent risk of death if they catch the virus should not constitute a full national shut down, especially when that doesn't first factor in your chance of catching it in the first place - because we don't have a chance of that here at all while the international border is essentially closed.

The USA is safe, in over a year they still have over 91% of their population not exposed to the virus. What they unfortunately did have was their state governors exposing the most at risk group to it by sending people into those facilities with the virus, which has heavily impacted their numbers.

To put it in perspective, you're currently only four times as likely to catch covid in your life than HIV if you're a latino male, only twice as likely if you're a black male. Granted your life is a lot longer than the year so far of covid infections but given that the death rate of age brackets listed above and the targeted protection of the elderly (finally) I expect their final death percentage to be trending far closer to that 0.5% rate overall.

The majority of Australians don't have to fear covid-19 except the government action associated with it, those that can be protected with vaccines should be.
 
Nickos66 said:
avoidable deaths
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Their data on 75+ death rates from the year prior has that age group 5x the deaths per 100,000 as the entire rest combined.

I'm not so convinced that but for covid-19 there would be extra 250,000 people alive today. (Using the NY number saying 75+ accounted for 48.7% of deaths)
 
Taylor said:
I'm glad you agree that the USA is considered the worse case and that their death rate is still only 0.15%.

The important percentage is the chance of dying of covid-19 if you catch it for people;
10 to 40 = 0.2% (this is 52.6% of the population of Australia)
41 to 50 = 0.4% (this is 13.6% of the population of Australia)

Over two thirds of the population carrying a less than half a percent risk of death if they catch the virus should not constitute a full national shut down, especially when that doesn't first factor in your chance of catching it in the first place - because we don't have a chance of that here at all while the international border is essentially closed.

The USA is safe, in over a year they still have over 91% of their population not exposed to the virus. What they unfortunately did have was their state governors exposing the most at risk group to it by sending people into those facilities with the virus, which has heavily impacted their numbers.

To put it in perspective, you're currently only four times as likely to catch covid in your life than HIV if you're a latino male, only twice as likely if you're a black male. Granted your life is a lot longer than the year so far of covid infections but given that the death rate of age brackets listed above and the targeted protection of the elderly (finally) I expect their final death percentage to be trending far closer to that 0.5% rate overall.

The majority of Australians don't have to fear covid-19 except the government action associated with it, those that can be protected with vaccines should be.
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Punch out what those numbers actually mean, rather than 0.2% of 52.6% of population. How many people would actually die and how many would end up in hospital in real terms, not percentages.
Here's one. US influenza cases in 2019, 35.5 million for 34,200 deaths. US COVID 2020 is 28.8 million cases for 488,000 deaths. There's obviously a grey area in Flu numbers within COVID, but the number of deaths is disproportionate. To put it into your terms, an increase in deaths of over 1300% for influenza related deaths from one year to the next.
Does an increase of 1300% concern you? And we not talking about starting from a low base. If there were 2 cases one day and 28 the next, that would also be a 1300% rise, we're starting from 34000 people dying up to 488,000 people dying.
Australia had 900 flu deaths in 2019, and an increase of 1300% would leave us with 12600 dead from COVID, we've had 900. The difference between 900 actual deaths and would could easily have been 12600 if we followed the same path as the US (the UK is worse if you want to start looking at their numbers the same way) is why, overall, our governments have done a good job. There's been problems along the way which should never have happened, absolutely, but the difference between 'what is' and 'what could have been' is stark.
You're very good Taylor at producing stats to back your argument but the way you present them is not telling the true picture.
I do not think 0.15% is an 'only' figure when talking about 330,000,000 people. It is a huge number.
 

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Taylor said:
Their data on 75+ death rates from the year prior has that age group 5x the deaths per 100,000 as the entire rest combined.

I'm not so convinced that but for covid-19 there would be extra 250,000 people alive today. (Using the NY number saying 75+ accounted for 48.7% of deaths)
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Maybe, maybe not - it's hard to say sans parallel universe. If it didn't you could be rest assured it sped up the process for those elderly folk.

On another note, It sounds like fun times from a couple of ER Docs in Texas that I get regular stories from - anecdotally it sounds like the most miserable, least rewarding job on the planet right now. Burnt out, resources depleted, patients that have died still believing til their last breath that it's a hoax, realising at some point they themselves have COVID antibodies - so effectively they've rode out their own bouts of the virus at work in the ER dept's without even realising or having time for a test. Insane times.
Not politicizing for either way - just sharing what i've been told by them. :)
 
Bicco said:
Punch out what those numbers actually mean, rather than 0.2% of 52.6% of population. How many people would actually die and how many would end up in hospital in real terms, not percentages.
Here's one. US influenza cases in 2019, 35.5 million for 34,200 deaths. US COVID 2020 is 28.8 million cases for 488,000 deaths. There's obviously a grey area in Flu numbers within COVID, but the number of deaths is disproportionate. To put it into your terms, an increase in deaths of over 1300% for influenza related deaths from one year to the next.
Does an increase of 1300% concern you? And we not talking about starting from a low base. If there were 2 cases one day and 28 the next, that would also be a 1300% rise, we're starting from 34000 people dying up to 488,000 people dying.
Australia had 900 flu deaths in 2019, and an increase of 1300% would leave us with 12600 dead from COVID, we've had 900. The difference between 900 actual deaths and would could easily have been 12600 if we followed the same path as the US (the UK is worse if you want to start looking at their numbers the same way) is why, overall, our governments have done a good job. There's been problems along the way which should never have happened, absolutely, but the difference between 'what is' and 'what could have been' is stark.
You're very good Taylor at producing stats to back your argument but the way you present them is not telling the true picture.
I do not think 0.15% is an 'only' figure when talking about 330,000,000 people. It is a huge number.
Click to expand...

Big numbers are supposed to scare people, remember when Malaria was killing a child every two seconds? That's 31x the number of mostly 75+ year olds who have died from covid-19 in coming up on a fifteen months.

The true picture is that the primary victims of both covid-19 and influenza are the elderly and most of those victims are already heading out the door as mentioned with their 500% larger death rate per 100,000 from regular life compared to the entire rest of the age range prior to covid.

The lives of the young are being stalled and potentially forever derailed to protect the elderly so they can have a comparatively short time extra before influenza gets them next season.

Yes, it's cold. The fact is that over two thirds of our population have a 0.2 to 0.4% chance of dying if they catch covid-19 and that gets up to 10-20% for the 75+ age bracket.

We can't save everyone from everything and if we are going to try maybe we should start with those who have the most life left in them. As a wise man told me recently "at the core of it is the fact that if people are going to be born then they are going to die".

We have had 900 covid-19 deaths, and 36 flu deaths.
The year before it was 943 flu deaths

Next flu season I expect us to catch up fast on those who benefitted from previously not enacted measures to slow down transmission into and within the country of respiratory diseases survived the year in which they would have previously died.

The measures have absolutely kept people alive, that is without question.

In five years time I expect those lives that were spared will have ended and the suffering put through by orders of magnitude more will be continuing.


So I'll reiterate my non-serious point that Australia should garnish the pensions, public healthcare salaries and super funds of the old so that the burden isn't felt by those who suffered when they had the least to gain from it and those who gained the most didn't miss out on their payments.

This is intended to challenge people. It's not supposed to be a happy discussion but avoiding it doesn't un-suicide the young people, it doesn't repair the relationships and it doesn't even save grandma because nothing will.
 
ScoMo copping a lot of deserved flak over Brittany Higgins. Can't think of anyone who has stuck their heads up over the last few days to say he's handled this well.
 
Taylor said:
Big numbers are supposed to scare people, remember when Malaria was killing a child every two seconds? That's 31x the number of mostly 75+ year olds who have died from covid-19 in coming up on a fifteen months.

The true picture is that the primary victims of both covid-19 and influenza are the elderly and most of those victims are already heading out the door as mentioned with their 500% larger death rate per 100,000 from regular life compared to the entire rest of the age range prior to covid.

The lives of the young are being stalled and potentially forever derailed to protect the elderly so they can have a comparatively short time extra before influenza gets them next season.

Yes, it's cold. The fact is that over two thirds of our population have a 0.2 to 0.4% chance of dying if they catch covid-19 and that gets up to 10-20% for the 75+ age bracket.

We can't save everyone from everything and if we are going to try maybe we should start with those who have the most life left in them. As a wise man told me recently "at the core of it is the fact that if people are going to be born then they are going to die".

We have had 900 covid-19 deaths, and 36 flu deaths.
The year before it was 943 flu deaths

Next flu season I expect us to catch up fast on those who benefitted from previously not enacted measures to slow down transmission into and within the country of respiratory diseases survived the year in which they would have previously died.

The measures have absolutely kept people alive, that is without question.

In five years time I expect those lives that were spared will have ended and the suffering put through by orders of magnitude more will be continuing.


So I'll reiterate my non-serious point that Australia should garnish the pensions, public healthcare salaries and super funds of the old so that the burden isn't felt by those who suffered when they had the least to gain from it and those who gained the most didn't miss out on their payments.

This is intended to challenge people. It's not supposed to be a happy discussion but avoiding it doesn't un-suicide the young people, it doesn't repair the relationships and it doesn't even save grandma because nothing will.
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compulsory euthanasia for those over 80?
 
Spitty_the_alpaca said:
Excellent point, there are always 2 sides to a story, his, hers and the truth.
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Security footage showed her being led to the office by him while severely intoxicated. Given the state she was found in by security and the fact he resigned I'm going to go out on a limb and say her account is pretty ******* close to the truth.
 
Spitty_the_alpaca said:
compulsory euthanasia for those over 80?
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No way, but if we identified that the elderly were going to be the only group really at risk then we should spend our money offering them a rotto holiday until it blows over, or they can choose to stay at home and live life as they please.

It would be a whole lot cheaper in both economic and social costs.
 
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