Australia remains the star Lucky Country compared to overseas. Infections are low, deaths are even lower. It’s all so much better than the desperate situation in Europe and the US. These are enviable, fantastically small numbers. Politicians are afraid to say so, lest the population relax, and party too much this Easter and the “unknowns” increase. (Which might well happen).
At the moment, the trend that matters most is the daily new cases of unknown transmission and it is trending down. There is community spread, but social isolation is shrinking it. This is what “Crushing the Curve” looks like. Right now there are still asymptomatic spreaders out there, but they are infecting less than one other person each (Ro < 1), so the infection is on its way to extinguishing itself — assuming we keep up the distancing.
But these great figures are not a reason to let up on social isolation, they’re a reason to go harder. We want to achieve the Golden Holy Grail — no new infections, and business as usual with no lockdowns, no curfews and a zone of freedom.
Australia is the Lucky Country, and doing the right thing
Why is the situation so good here:
- A giant nuclear ball cleans streets every day with infra red heat and UV sterilization.
- Indoor room temperature means viral survival time is lower, and thus less easily spread.
- The population is at its healthiest — close to annual peak levels of Vitamin D levels.
- We have a moat and borders have been shut.
- Social isolation is working. It’s easier in 4 bed 2 bath homes with gardens and a low population density.
- Deaths are lower because long distance travellers (the greatest source of infections) are a younger cohort — mainly 20 – 60 years old. Also possibly because there is less Vit D deficiency (see point 3). Though this will change with local spread and winter is coming.
After the Hammer strikes a winning blow, we can start the Dance
The states with no sign of community transmission will soon be able to start a staged return to normal business, as long as they are testing widely, and as long as they strictly guard all borders and enforce two week lockdowns. Within weeks they could open up cafes and restaurants, gyms and sporting facilities. Wearing masks would be good insurance. Schools could open after that as long as the tests continue and no community spread is seen. Finally, large events would be the delayed — they may need to wait until the chance of cases coming across borders is very low. That may be months. Obviously international travel will be the last thing to return to normal. But as each state clears hurdles and becomes a clean zone, interstate travel with only those states can resume.
At all times though, we remain only one runaway infection from the start of a new exponential curve.
The whole nation is getting it under control:
Covid19data has the graphs. But not for Queensland. There doesn’t seem to be published data.
This is just what I was hoping for. But we must aim for extinction of this dangerous rogue code.
In Australia most quarantine and isolation rules were brought in from March 11 to 21, and 12 days later the curve slows. Most cases in Australia are in NSW (navy blue/black).
Australian, Covid Cases, April 10, 2020.
In NSW notice the decline in community spread (orange segments, below).
This is excellent news. NSW needs to work on shrinking the spread from known cases, but the current measures appear to be slowing the spread from healthy carriers. The light blue transmission segments below show “Known Local transmission” — meaning probably from people just before or after they got symptoms and got tested. We need to get better at testing and isolating these cases faster. Symptomatic people likely shed more virus than asymptomatic people do.
NSW Australian, Covid Cases, April 10, 2020.
The ACT
It would make sense to close the ACT from NSW (or probably to close the rest of NSW off from Sydney, depending on regional test results). If people in the ACT understood this, they would be lobbying to do that so they could restart things sooner.
No untraceable cases at all. Remarkable.
ACT Australian, Covid Cases, graph, April 10, 2020.
In Victoria
Hopefully the latest blip in local transmission (light blue) can be crushed asap. But there are good signs that untraceable community spread is shrinking in Victoria (orange).
Victoria, Australia, Covid Cases, April 10, 2020.
Western Australia
In WA there is not as much detail. There are a few new cases of unknown transmission still ticking over (2 new “not traced yet” cases last night to add to this graph). The state has only just started testing anyone with fever, and has the second highest rate of positive tests in the nation (see below) suggesting that it needs to do more testing. No champagne yet. There are now 506 known cases — with 11 new ones overnight, nine of which were from cruise ships.
Because WA has regional quarantines, sections of the state could be reopened sooner. The price is roadblocks but the payoff is freedom within the region. The health minister said “he didn’t think it was going to be possible to eradicate the disease. “What we want to do is control it”. It’s not clear why he thinks we can’t exterminate this.
Western Australian, Covid Cases, April 10, 2020.
South Australia
In SA there appear to be 4 – 7 cases “under investigation” — which must be “unknown”. It would be good to get more specific reporting. But only three new cases in the entire state have been found in the last two days. That’s got to be good.
South Australia also appears to be doing enough testing.
South Australian, Covid Cases, April 10, 2020.
Tasmania
Tasmania is hard to analyze. It isn’t doing enough testing. There is still a recent rise in known cases and four days ago, a spate of ten or so unknown cases.
Australian, Covid Cases, graph, April 10, 2020.
The Northern Territory
No one can complain about this! The NT looks great and (see below) appears to be doing enough testing too. It’s been saved by lower incomes — not so many people could afford to fly to Aspen or London in the last two months.
Australian, Covid Cases, graph, April 10, 2020.
Testing – WA Tasmania and Victoria all need to do more
But vear in mind the WHO suggests that in countries with extensive testing only 10-12% are coming back positive.
Compared to that, Australia is only returning 2% positive in the worst case.
Tests per capita for covid-19 cases
WA and Tasmania are not doing enough testing and showing a higher positive rate per test.
NSW shows a high rate but is testing more people per capita. The most reliable results are from South Australia.
The rate of positive testing for covid-19 cases
Deaths are lower because Australians with coronavirus are younger
Demographics show that Australians who have been infected are predominantly in the 20 – 70 age group. As local transmission takes over from those who caught it on arduous long distance flights — we will see death rates increase due to the spread among the 70 – 100 age cohort.
Australian, Covid Cases, graph, April 10, 2020.
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Thanks Jo for the comprehensive roundup on the COVID disease situation
Iin Australia and in each of the states & territories.
Crushing this vile bit of RNA can be achieved !
I wonder which idiot is advising the WA minister ?
Clearly he needs to read this post by you
And get accurate information & FACTS !
73
Speaking of accumulation of data – this is the stuff of nightmares.
Opt in initially, then like most stuff, I expect it may be able to eventually activated by location or just whenever they damn well feel like it.
Seriously – ditch your phone if you want any form of privacy. I’d expect this to be eventually baked into the OS, so hard to remove.
Reckon they wont use it for non-Covid stuff later on, like who meets who and where and when? Its an Intel agencys’ dream app.
*Especially dangerous* when phones can exchange info via bluetooth etc.
When 2 largest companies work together, you know its not for our benefit.
Chinese-style surveillance in your pocket….
“Citizen…that house you went to – you were talking to 2 right wing privacy advocates – you must be careful – the Ministry of Truth has now monitored you for your own safety!”
Sometimes I hate the fact I work in IT, I can clear as day see this stuff developing.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/apple-google-bring-coronavirus-contact-tracing-to-3-billion-people-20200411-p54izb.html
“Apple, Google bring coronavirus contact-tracing to 3 billion people
“Apple and Google have unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with COVID-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.
“The technology, known as contract-tracing, is designed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus by telling users they should quarantine or isolate themselves after contact with an infected individual.
“The Silicon Valley rivals said on Friday that they were building the technology into their iOS and Android operating systems in two steps. In mid-May, the companies will add the ability for iPhones and Android phones to wirelessly exchange anonymous information via apps run by public health authorities. The companies will also release frameworks for public health apps to manage the functionality.
“This means that if a user tests positive for COVID-19, and adds that data to their public health app, users who they came into close proximity with over the previous several days will be notified of their contact. This period could be 14 days, but health agencies can set the time range.
“The second step takes longer. In the coming months, both companies will add the technology directly into their operating systems so this contact-tracing software works without having to download an app. Users must opt in, but this approach means many more people can be included. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have about 3 billion users between them, over a third of the world’s population.
“The pandemic has killed almost 100,000 and infected 1.62 million people. Governments have ordered millions of people to stay home, sending the global economy into a vicious tailspin. Pressure is building to relax these measures and get the world back to work. Contract-tracing is a key part of this because it can help authorities contain a potential resurgence of the virus as people resume regular activities.
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And yet there are plenty of folks out there who would believe that this is a good idea.
31
I hope they enjoy slavery then…
10
That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen
Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
10
Hi WX cycles,
Perhaps Qld has a different set of virus drivers to other states and territories:
Do all of our overseas visitors have any same level of concern/respect for us as hosts?
On the bikeway near Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra hospital on 12 March 2020, (about 5.15 pm) three young men shouting/yahooing in an Asian language were parked at the bikeway’s edge spitting as high as they could into the air , apparently hoping to foul passing riders.
Unfortunately in the prevailing damp and breezy conditions they were scoring some hits. They were standing by their orange (Singapore Neuron ? ) scooters, helmetless and obviously maskless. (despite Chinese volunteers telling Italians that the risk was greater if masks were not worn).
Are our tertiary institutions so hard-up that we have to accept such misfits?( I understand from an academic acquaintance that these guys could be in the ”crazy rich Asian” cohort as most of the spaces in the Asian universities are taken by hard working students from hardworking families.)
Given that we are now testing all incomers for the virus, perhaps ,when we get back to normal , we can apply a “boofhead” test to students wishing to attend our Universities?
In some previous virus and similar crises ,such foul behaviour has been treated as a criminal offence. That would seem appropriate in our current pandemic environment.
Regards
John Watt
30
Its interesting…noises are appearing in the US about making someone pay for this outbreak. Hmmm…
90
Huh!
Maybe they’ll umm, impeach someone!
Tony.
102
TOny….unlikely…no sitting war president has been defeated in an election, I doubt after the disgraceful behaviour of the Commie-crats they will get another bite of the cherry.
31
No doubt the Democrats will find a way to use the pandemic as a reason to destroy Trump (again). It will be interesting to see how far they take it. If they take it too far they risk crashing the US economy and try to blame it on Trump. Perhaps that’s their goal.
110
Not sure what would make people think the US economy hasn’t already crashed. There will be negative GDP growth for at least a couple of quarters. Unemployment is literally off the charts..
61
In case people haven’t seen it, here is an indication of the unemployment situation in the USA:
https://eresearch.com/2020/03/28/eresearch-reports/chart-of-the-day/spotlight-on-u-s-weekly-initial-jobless-claims/
Not a hockey stick, more like a set square.
41
At 5.5%, a lot lower that Australia, which I believe is over 16%, and no doubt rapidly climbing.
00
Most people haven’t factored in as yet the crash simply because people do not know how badly the economy has been impacted, not yet anyway. It takes time to realise the impacts as the bankruptcies, unemployment and many other indicators are yet to be published. I suspect they will be a lot worse than what most people are expecting. Some already realise this of course. I have no real powers to predict the future but I’m expecting another wave of strong selling to start very soon. Time will tell as usual.
01
Hopefully the Ds try to impeach Trump again. It always does wonders for his approval ratings.
Hard to pin anything on Trump. He was at least doing related activities before the WHO said anything major was underway. The funny stories are all the Democrats who were encouraging people to go out to major parades and parties during Chinese New Year, then turned around and locked everyone into their houses.
Unemployment will be a major issue, but we’ll come out of it. There’s probably some major possibilities coming up for anyone with business bent.
90
Hmmm. I think our fault lines may change.
Impeachment was non-serious political theatre before. Would not be a good look now.
The left flogged open borders….they may wish us to forget this. It is important to know who is here and where they came from.
Climate change was an existential threat, worth buggering the economy for. Now that we know what an economic shut-down looks like in real life,
you better have a stronger case than a model showing a few degrees in a hundred years. And, by the way, some of the uncertainties of modeling have had a very public airing recently.
Single sourcing things in the government will be a harder sell also….the stockpiles that were supposed to be in place; the futility of testing going through a single source,
the obvious issues with layers of red tape even in emergency conditions…..hard to sell more government as the answer, especially with no economy to tax to pay for same.
There will be a new and vigorous anti-Trump campaign –and it may require general amnesia.
I guess the thing that amazes me the most is how many political critters still don’t seem to realize that everything they say; like the go to ‘Chinatown and enjoy the parade’
speeches, are recorded. Or that they can tell a new set of lies tomorrow, and just don’t care.
100
OriginalSteve, you’ll probably recall the Chinese bought a lot of Treasury bonds from the US. You may have seen some of the thinktanks in the US speaking about reparations. Expect a deal on the bonds that will be very costly to china. It kind of solves a few problems in one go. And don’t expect the china tariffs to go away anytime soon.
110
Congress leader urges government to move ICJ against China, seek USD 22 billion compensation for “bio-war” coronavirus
Read more At:
https://aninews.in/news/national/general-news/congress-leader-urges-government-to-move-icj-against-china-seek-usd-22-billion-compensation-for-bio-war-coronavirus20200331203419/
80
The numbers I am seeing are in the trillions. This article explores some scenarios and history around same – https://www.justsecurity.org/69398/chinas-responsibility-for-the-global-pandemic/
40
” Expect a deal on the bonds that will be very costly to china.”
And do you suppose that China will take that lying down?
You’re dreaming.
13
Jo
I thought you had been commenting throughout this crisis that Australia was not doing any where near enough and its actions were far too late? Europe appears to have a different strain of Covid 19 to Australia (I posted the Cambridge University link yesterday about this.)
Also its winter in Europe and the States and that means its the flu season and we suffer tens of thousands of other ‘winter excess mortality’ deaths each and every year.
Our mortality rate is no higher than in a normal year and may well be lower, as social distancing will mean fewer people will catch flu.
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
The April 10th figures for deaths are extrapolated and probably won’t be updated until early next week.
All of which beggars the question as to whether bearing in mind the constant very high winter flu deaths and other ‘excess winter mortality’ we should be doing much more in the UK and Northern Europe to crush that particular annual curve?
Whether we should have wrecked our economy this time round for CV bearing in mind the huge implications in so many fields that will last for generations will no doubt be the subject of vigorous debate
122
Tony. I’ve smashed this.
If we’d shut those border on Feb 9th like I recommended, Australian cases would be zero.
I’ve said all along we acted too late, and still say so. If we’d locked down and closed schools two weeks earlier we might be lifting the lockdown now. Shame people didn’t listen to me, eh?
As I predicted, the exponential curve took off in Australia when we let cases in. As I predicted, because we let them fly in, we had no choice but to do massive action, which we did, one month after I said it. As I also predicted, cases would slow down with a 1 -2 week delay after we took serious action, which they did.
When everyone said it was impossible to stop this virus, I said it wasn’t. Maybe we will.
When everyone said it would take six months. I said we could do it in weeks.
If we crashed our economy it was because people aimed to do a long slow bleed, which I said was a terrible idea from the start. But if we’d aimed for a 6 week hard lockdown before there was community spread, it would have been just one long unplanned holiday. No biggie.
You can’t blame me for all the terrible decisions the bureaucrats and the PM took.
Look, it’s tough if you lost a lot on the stockmarket. You have my sympathies. Don’t take it out on me OK? I’m still trying to help you.
434
Ten gold Thumbs & elephant stamps Jo !
Thanks for going at this Virus with such determination and science based facts !
You were for a while a voice crying in the wilderness.
Until the boom in COVID 19 forced SLOMO to ull his finger out.
Don’t let the bastards wear you down !
164
Jo
I never invest in that casino known as a stock market so have lost nothing but know many who have lost everything
I wasn’t aware I was blaming you for anything as you ultimately had no power over any decisions made.
114
tonyb, you’ve confused me.
What are you saying, exactly?
That it’ll be subject to “vigorous debate” in the future?
Is that it?
So, do you think that the economy should be protected at all costs? Protected with no regard to the cost in human lives?
Your mortality rate (presumably the UK) has not stopped climbing yet. Where is the cut off to be, from your perspective. What value do you place on a human life?
Are you just seeking to start some “academic” navel gazing? Or do you have a seriously held view?
81
I didn’t remotely say that sceptical sam. Unfortunately a one size fits all approach developed spooked in many cases my absurd modelling from Imperial. It is evident that the circumstances of say Australia and the UK are wildly different as are Italy and the Uk etc.
We needed solutions that fitted our circumstances.
Bearing in mind we have literally tens of thousands of deaths every year from flu and 140000 every year from what the govt calls ‘avoidable deaths’ and a high ‘excess winter mortality rate’ I am merely asking why we allow tens of thousands to die in these other categories without crashing the economy, yet with a smaller number we have taken completely different steps to avoid. Why? Are our politicians not aware of these vast numbers of other deaths each year. Should they be doing something about them each and every year?
A severely weakened economy can not spend the money on health it once did nor on defence nor social services and people have less money to spend on the myriad goods and services they buy so there is a huge cost in human and personal lives.
124
You haven’t been paying attention Tonyb.
Flu doesn’t swamp hospitals and intensive care units and ICUs. Flu has a vaccine which is updated every year and is available to those who have the sense to use it. Flu doesn’t put 85,552 six foot under in just a couple of months. Annualize that figure and see what it looks like compared to your 140,000.
Do you for a moment think that a population which starts to see deaths at the level we’re seeing with this virus would just continue to go about its daily business, ignoring the death toll? Ignoring those dropping dead in the streets as they have been in Hubei, or Northern Italy or Spain? People would take matters into their own hands. They’d crash the economy and create pandemonium. Governments would fall. Anarchy would reign. Buildings would burn. There’d be blood on the wattle, me old matey.
That’s why governments take action.
68
Last two stanzas of Lawson’s “Freedom on the Wallaby”.
“So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
O’ those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!”
Remember that, tonyb.
30
Interesting ‘pile-on’ for Tonyb.
Sadly lacking in history or facts. I wonder what end of the political spectrum we associate this behavior with. Jo appears to have been befriended by a group of Get-up style trolls lavishing praise on her attempts to understand this ‘Panicdemic’.
‘Free for all’ medicine was a ‘still birth’ when Bill Hayden introduced the National Health System in the seventies destroying what was one of the best public health systems in the world. Our Social Democrat governments have struggled with the corpse ever since. Australia is entering a period where a large number of the population fresh from hip and knee surgery are about to die. The hospital system will not cope to the standard the ‘Baby Boomers’ lawyers will expect.
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/perth-ambulance-ramping-worst-ever-seen-as-paramedics-line-up-outside-hospitals-20190702-p5239h.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-27/patient-harm-caused-by-rah-ramping-revealed-new-documents/10851770
https://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/logan/logan-hospital-bypassing-causing-ramping-issues/news-story/30d99fde4b841788bf0392c3e5aab13c
Back to the Here & Now!
The interesting graph in this posting is in my opinion:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/graph/health/microbiology/corona-virus/medical/aust/australian-cases-april-10-tests-postive-rate.gif
Interesting to me is as at about the 23rd April, the rate of positive samples of those tested flattens. This was the similar to:
https://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/
Was this due to self isolation or does this reflect the actual proportion of RNA viruses in the population testing for Flu like systems.
Percent positve of all tests from UW dashboard.
Date %Positive
02/03/20 3.2
03/03/20 33.3
04/03/20 3.3
05/03/20 0.0
06/03/20 7.8
07/03/20 5.9
08/03/20 14.1
09/03/20 9.4
10/03/20 6.0
11/03/20 7.5
12/03/20 6.5
13/03/20 6.5
14/03/20 5.8
15/03/20 5.4
16/03/20 8.3
17/03/20 7.3
18/03/20 6.0
19/03/20 6.2
20/03/20 6.6
21/03/20 7.3
22/03/20 9.0
23/03/20 13.3
24/03/20 10.0
25/03/20 9.8
26/03/20 9.1
27/03/20 10.2
28/03/20 13.7
29/03/20 13.6
30/03/20 13.5
31/03/20 14.7
01/04/20 11.8
02/04/20 10.8
03/04/20 12.8
04/04/20 10.8
05/04/20 8.7
06/04/20 11.8
07/04/20 10.8
08/04/20 10.3
09/04/20 8.7
What is happening in Countries like Vietnam and Thailand? Should we be copying their treatment? No-one answers this question! Or,is the internet showing the mass funerals down?
32
Broadie asked
Thailand began screening at airports on 3rd January. It was only temperature so would not get the asymptomatic arrivals.
Vietnam stopped issuing visas for Chinese on 30th January.
Early action saved tens of thousands of lives. Taiwan was by far the most effective and least economically damaging. Pre-planned, decisive, effective. Taiwan set the Gold Standard for the CV19 pandemic response.
31
Great news RickWill,
The Covid-19 is no longer considered asymptomatic while virulent and can be easily detected at airports by thermal imaging.
Thailand and Vietnam must have been well organized to have detained so many of the Chinese Students. The story was they traveled to Australia via these ports on planned quarantine stop-overs.
The premise that Thailand was isolated from exposure to travelers from all points of the globe and therefore is largely unaffected by this virus flies in the face of all the claims being made by the WHO and CDC.
Does not compute!
03
“Flu doesn’t put 85,552 six foot under in just a couple of months. Annualize that figure and see what it looks like compared to your 140,000.” And that’s with taking actions that many call draconian, in order to control covid-19.
We’ve never done that for the flu.
00
Lost everything Tonyb? What were they doing? Going short on stocks? Borrowing to invest? Please explain
52
robber
They have pensions predicated on the stock market levels or they have mortgages for example based on their earnings running a small company which is now not trading and seems unlikely to ever do so again. Or they are employees who don’t meet furlough requirements, or they are getting a minimum social security benefit a quarter of what their earnings are, or they had taken out loans to support an enterprise. So we have both ends of the spectrum those with no savings at all who have run out of money and those who were running a business whose cash flow has gone to zero whilst loans to support the enterprise continue to run.
These are ordinary people not speculators getting their fingers burnt
20
So TonyB you have no super? Lucky you 🙂
10
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/world-of-warcraft-coronavirus-corrupted-blood
“World of Warcraft perfectly predicted our coronavirus panic
“An accidental pandemic in the online game offers a valuable insight into the way people are behaving during the coronavirus crisis
51
How people panic under different circumstances has been demonstrated in many ways. World of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 was just one example of many.
01
‘Panic’ is an evolved genetic response
To an emerging critical situation ..
That’s why timely & decisive government action is important.
01
Timely & decisive government action is important? Is that a joke? Governments are the last to act accordingly unless extreme pressure is placed upon them like a war situation. Even then they can react too slowly.
11
Exactly Peter !
Many people in Oz started to panic well before SLOMO pulled his finger out.
In fact the panic pushed him into pulling his finger out.
02
“That’s why timely & decisive government action is important.”
And telling the whole truth from the beginning.
00
That’s how you stop otherwise rational people from panicking.
00
Brilliant Jo. Aussie of the year stuff!
Back in February I was telling my family about your recommendations and your qualifications and said “she knows what she’s talking about”. Knowing me well they believed me.
131
Why would anyone give this comment a red thumb!!!!
I have wondered how influential this blog is?
31
Rick I’ve been wondering the same thing.
I suspect there are lurker trolls
) From China maybe )
Instructed to disrupt the blog however they can.
20
From the beggining i was looking for a well considered middle ground.
In medio stat virtus
…or “Virtue stands in the middle”
The most sensible thing continues to be a lockdown of the most vulnerable and to allow others to continue their lives in my non expert opinion (IMNEO). This is the third way that is not only ‘never’ discussed, it is even ignored.
41
Didn’t the UK and Sweden start that way. In the UK they looked at the numbers on the
Original modelling and switched quickly to general restrictions. Sweden had a holiday
for a while but is now blowing up. The Asian tigers quarantined , traced and isolated the
infected and contacts and seemed top performers, but are now getting another, more severe
wave.
All in all, we have been lucky despite the cruise boat errors because with all the feed in
of infected travellers early on, we didn’t cope a belting from community spread. Maybe our luck came from the fact that Asian or particularly Chinese tourists tend to travel in very tight units. They
don’t appear (to me) to spread far from each other. Maybe the government closed down air travel
late but the borders were closed before it was ‘acceptable’ internationally and, late or not, I don’t
think we can complain too much when we see the mayhem overseas. The cruise ships have been
Our big problem, but let’s face it, our own humanity and ethics have brought people infected
Onshore to be attended and to get their companions home overseas. That would always have
happened and earlier action could not have stopped them; they were already on the oceans.
So far , so good. Not perfect, but remember the earliest belief was that it was a pretty benign
Disease. It wasn’t until it became obvious to officialdom that enough were heading to hospitals
threatening to overrun them on the evidence , that it all hit the fan. That’s when we found
how badly prepared for gear we were, and that shut down our private hospital system for
elective surgery , after forced elective shutdown in the Public system, which has left a lot of patients in discomfort, pain and limbo. That’s even longer delays and waiting lists.
71
I agree with most of what is stated but this:
At no stage did I think it was a benign disease (nothing pretty about it). It was very clear to me from the time I heard about it that it was an ugly awful disease; my belief reinforced by China expediting the erection of a hospital in Wuhan to cope with CV19 patients in need of medical care. That was early February.
Thailand implemented airport screening on 3rd January so they knew it was ugly awful then. Taiwan banned arrivals from China on 4th February. Those actions indicate that it was known to be very dangerous as early as the beginning of January for people outside China. You can bet China knew a month or more ahead of that it was ugly awful.
20
Fair enough Rick. As far as ‘pretty’ I’ll accomodate the reader and be more
language precise in future, but most would not have interpreted the word the way
you did. I don’t know if you are ‘pretty’ or not, but I think you are ‘pretty’ ‘touchy’
to find ‘pretty’ as an adjective for visual pleasantry in place of its common usage.
BTW, I was talking official circles, not the personal, in that sentence about ‘benign’.
I wouldn’t argue about what other nations knew, especially those close to China, Asian
ones. What I would say about Australia and officialdom was that they had seen
the other viruses of the last 40 years come out of China, and in this country they really
had little effect and disappeared. We get more uptight about the Hendra virus
every time it appears. So, I believe that’s why it took time for the penny to
drop that this virus was the real (meaning something to worry about) deal.
10
I echo Rickwill: “I agree with most of what is stated but this”
“Not perfect, but remember the earliest belief was that it was a pretty benign Disease.”
I have never believed that this disease was benign, you would have needed to believe some of the commentators in the media to reach that conclusion.
00
Well, good for you.
The official WHO position was that it was benign, impossible to transfer from human to human. Nothing to see here, folks. Most governments would believe WHO official policy. After all, they are the peak world health body and it’s their job to protect the health of the world’s citizens. Nobody suspected that they were full of crap. That caused a delay before sensible governments realised that the WHO advice was completely useless and decided to take serious action. And when they did, the WHO and their lickspittles in the popular media castigated those governments for being racist.
00
Jo,
Australia is just lucky to be in the right climate zone. Policies are not better or worse than in Europe or the USA. Period.
71
Hans. Absolutely. Right time. Right geography. Right demographics got sick too. (80+ don’t fly to the US or Europe too often — its a long haul.). The 20,000 asian students who brought it here may have shared it with other 20 something people. Not many of them got awfully sick. Perhaps they didn’t shed as much virus. Perhaps it didn’t spread fast due to the climate as well. Somehow we may have dodged the bullet (for the moment).
It was luck but there are useful lessons here for all of us.
132
Jo,
Most of it is pure luck. Specific humidity (not relative humidity) is the driver for the spreading of this virus. I live in Spain where confinement measures are very strict. We are not allowed to leave the house since 13th of March and expect many more weeks to continue. The only exception for leaving the house is to go for groceries, medicines or petrol. That is to say: alone walking or alone in the car, carrying a letter that describes who you are, where you come from and where you are going; frequent police controls. Despite these very harsh measures it has taken almost 5 weeks now to bend the curve of deaths per day, and will take at least 3 more weeks to confirm a decline. We had just the bad luck that atmospheric conditions were bad during the breakout in February, resulting in a huge spread of the virus in Spain (as well as in Italy and other European countries with similar winter conditions).
Interesting reading on the subject of specific humidity can be found here: https://www.maurice.nl/category/covid-19-english/
62
Hans, we all need to learn more from the Spanish and Italian situations which horrified the world.
Obviously Spain appears to be doing the right things, but the rewards are so slow.
Is it mostly specific humidity — or are there other factors like — (I don’t know) air pollution, crowded or multi generational houses, high density living (apartments), smoking in the older gen? — high rates of ACE2 expression (genes?) — high rates of obesity, blood pressure, inflammatory disorders? Germany seems to have reduced the death rate remarkably — is that the extra ICU beds? Does Germany have anti-virals? Does Spain ? Spanish medico’s seem to have been terribly struck down — is that a lack of masks and drugs?
Are Spanish Vitamin D levels lower than Germany despite being closer to the equator. Is food fortified with D, do Spanish people have more color to their skin and thus less D?
The world really needs to unpack the factors that matter most — because we all see the pain of our Mediterranean friends.
50
Jo,
I agree with you that there are many more factors of importance in the spread and death toll of this virus. Still I think (and hope) that atmospheric conditions (low specific humidity) in combination with (indoors) group events have been the main drivers for the spreading. Italy and Spain were unfortunate to be the first European countries where the virus entered and therefore it was able to spread many weeks uncontrolled before measures were taken. Germany got their first infections later and were already alerted by what happened in Italy and Spain, so they could take measures a lot earlier in the outbreak and were also more effective because of thorough testing and isolating of patients.
In The Netherlands (my country of origin) the initial spread pattern was caused by Carnival, especially in the South-east of the country (in other parts of the country people do not celebrate this event). Now, more than 6 weeks later, the spreading pattern is still visible when looking at maps (high concentration of deaths and IC-intakes in the south-east, minor problems in big cities like Amsterdam).
If specific humidity in combination with (indoor) group events is indeed the main driver, we may see the virus fade out sooner than later, since summer is coming to the northern hemisphere. I really hope so.
00
Jo, thus in interesting.
Ive been trying to find the Sweden official figures but its been fruitless so far. Ill keep digging.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/item/35385-86-of-new-yorkers-who-died-with-chinese-virus-had-other-illnesses-conditions
Official NY stats :
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?:embed=yes&:toolbar=no&:tabs=n#/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Map?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no
“Data released from New York state show that the vast majority of Empire Staters who supposedly died from the Chinese Virus had at least one underlying disease or condition, and that almost the same number of people were more than 60 years old.
“And even those in a younger cohort who died also had other health problems called comorbidities.
“The latest data show that healthy young people aren’t likely to die from the disease, and invite the question of why quarantines are directed at the whole population, rather than the most vulnerable — the sick and the elderly.
“The Numbers
“Perhaps the most telling numbers are those that show the vast majority who have died suffered underlying illnesses or conditions: 4,732 out of 5,489 of the deceased, or 86.2 percent.
“For instance, of those victims 80 to 89 years old, 836 had high blood pressure, 488 had diabetes, and 227 had coronary artery disease. Another 157 suffered kidney disease, 148 had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 136 had cancer, and 132 had congestive heart failure.
“Those figures are similar in the 60-69 age cohort: 572 had high blood pressure and 444 had diabetes, while 133 suffered with kidney disease and 119 with coronary artery disease. Another 88 had cancer and 46 had congestive heart failure.
“Yet even younger carriers suffered with other potentially fatal diseases.
00
Jo, thanks for this. Best CV information I’ve seen.
80+ may not take a lot of overseas flights, but they do take cruises. I’m 70+ and I don’t see the attraction of cruising. It’s like a Butlins holiday camp with added seasickness. Ghastly. Anyway, we’ve had a few deaths recently in the Hunter area (Newcastle, Hunter Valley) of oldies who were on cruises. Nearly every positive case in Port Stephens, where I live, has had a connection to a cruiser. I fear that we may still get an outbreak from secondary and tertiary infections.
10
O.K.
So I’m going to see about putting up a blockade just West of Williamtown to keep you lot safely up there.
Anyone feeling cruise deprived can always go across on the ferry to Tea Gardens for a spin.
🙂
00
You seem to rule out the possibility that this is the plan. And nobody could stop it.
I’m not ruling that out , mostly because the NZ government did everything necessary to ensure that the situation you tried to avoid would come about . And it has.
62
Jo
I thought this was an exceptionally good comment of yours, although I had to think for a moment what this obviously technologically advanced ‘street cleaning nuclear ball’ was.
“Why is the situation so good here:
1.A giant nuclear ball cleans streets every day with infra red heat and UV sterilization.
2.Indoor room temperature means viral survival time is lower, and thus less easily spread.
3.The population is at its healthiest — close to annual peak levels of Vitamin D levels.
4.We have a moat and borders have been shut.
5.Social isolation is working. It’s easier in 4 bed 2 bath homes with gardens and a low population density.
6.Deaths are lower because long distance travellers (the greatest source of infections) are younger cohort — mainly 20 -60 years old. Also possibly because there is less Vit D deficiency, see point 3. Though this will change with local spread and winter is coming.
Thank the sun: the north end of Australia is only 12 degrees from the equator, and the top of Tasmania is as far from the equator as Rome is (41°). So nearly the whole nation is effectively situated between Rome the equator — with most of the big cities getting the same kind of sunlight as Athens to Jerusalem do. Compared to the US — Tasmania stretches north of Salt Lake City or New York, but Darwin is “down” in Nicaragua. Most Australians in four of the five big capitals get about the same intensity sunlight as Los Angeles and Atlanta.”
For all those reasons you state, Australia was never going to get to the very high figures often modelled. The Northern Hemisphere has many of the drawbacks of winter, little sun, Vitamin D deficiency, cold homes (due to cost of heating-thank you greens) smaller housing, more crowding, older age group with numerous health problems, a regular flu season. Despite all that we were never going to get to the excesses of the early models either.
112
I’ve talked about our summer advantage from the start. No surprises for me, except that our partial half-lock is more effective than it might have been. The virus was doubling every second day in South America til they started action to slow it. Summer alone won’t stop this.
I’ve also said “winter is coming”. If we don’t hammer this now, we might be locked down til September. The heat and UV advantage is a reason to do more lockdowns now.
“For all those reasons you state, Australia was never going to get to the very high figures often modelled.”
Nope. Summer helps, but without lockdowns and major action it just delays the weeks til our hospitals collapse under the load. I hardly mentioned the largest peak predictions. I knew that once people saw the pandemonium in the ICU units we wouldn’t let that happen.
But I am glad you like something I said. :- )
171
Channel 10 news tonight reported very low traffic volumes heading out of Sydney and police checkpoints stopping vehicles which appeared to be heading for country holidays, for both of which I’m grateful, as I consider Sydney to be the major petrie dish here. So I don’t want a lot of possibly infected people coming into our small communities.
I was, and am quite relieved that Sydney siders seem to be supporting our calls for isolation over this Easter weekend especially.
(Our local council area has had just four cases identified, all quarantined at home, with no increase for several days.)
Cheers
Dave B
70
As you know I said this all along, looking at the figures 15C seems to be a magic number. I suspect this is the temperature that microdroplet transmission mode fails and social distancing becomes effective. I still think walking in supermarket corridors through other people’s vapour trail in 18C is problematic. It’s not so much social distancing that is preventing transmission, it’s self isolation, keeping out of supermarkets.
Air conditioning should be upgraded with HEPA filters and if possible with UV decontamination of intake air.
As I said all along Summer reduces the environmental survival of the virus heat (IR) and UV reducing transmission and also seems to affect severity. Costco is spending thousands spraying trolleys which are out in the sun when they just need to queue them so there is 30 minutes in the hot QLD sun between uses.
The virus may also have mutated in our summer conditions to something that survives better in heat given that survival from heat stress is a totally different evolutionary driver than infectiousness it may well be that the resulting microbe is less deadly.
WA’s regional strategy is the right approach, WA can relax restrictions regionally and minimise economic damage, pity the Palace Chook can’t think outside the box too, Queensland should have done this too.
60
Jo, I’ve been trying to work out why the death rate in sweden is huge (79%) given the average age of swedes is only 2 years less than italy?
Japan has PCR tested 68000 cases but only 88 deaths.Its death rate is very low.
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/newpage_00032.html
What it may cone down to is “surgical” agressive contact tracking, whereas western countries use a clumsy blunt instrument of lockdown, after the horse has bolted….?
31
Original Steve ” I’ve been trying to work out why the death rate in Sweden is huge (79%) ”
I think Sweden is doing very little testing so many infected and recovered don’t appear in the statistics.
50
Yes, death rates are dependent on known cases, if the only cases you know about are the ones that end up in hospital particularly if the criteria for hospital admission is “On deaths door” then the death rates look excessive.
Because Sweden is following a herd immunity strategy we should expect a high but short curve, it’s the area under this curve that will tell the tale. IE the total deaths per unit population after herd immunity is achieved regardless of whether herd immunity is achieved by exposure or vaccine. I suspect Sweden will all said and done have a lower death rate than places that are dragging it out.
31
Sweden is NOT following herd immunity. They have implemented all the same controls, mostly earlier, as other EU countries apart from total lockdown.
The Google mobility data demonstrates that the population is self-isolating:
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-05_SE_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
20
.?..how did you arrive at 79% ?
Sweden has 9,685. Total cases,…and 870 deaths =. 8.9% (using the dumb “cases” method that most seem to use )
But remember, they would still have the same 870 deaths if they had dome 100,000 tests
Giving them <1% death rate !
As i keep saying .. these “% of cases” statistics are misleading and useless .!
11
I guess OS has used the cases that have concluded. Either recovered or died, in which case it comes to 70% just now.
If you use the CFR which you don’t like, and I also think is misleading, you get 8.9% as you have already concluded.
00
I looked at worlometer for sweden, they had stats that showed on a graph a 79% death rate. Its showing 70% now….a day later…
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
Graph is called : “Outcome of Cases (Recovery or Death) in Sweden”
00
Well ,..its a Useless statistic …….
…..like much of the other data being spruked by every man and his dog claiming to be an expert.
00
Jo
I like virtually everything you say but don’t have to agree on everything. Different circumstances and different countries warrant different approaches to a problem.
70
Thanks Tony. True. In the understatement of the day, our situation is better than Indonesia, India, Turkey, Pakistan …
61
With regard to CV19 there was only one effective approach and that could have been adopted by every country. Stop all arrivals from China as soon as the “novel” virus was identified.
The entire world, apart from maybe Taiwan, is going through economic depression because of China’s economic imperatives overriding their humanity.
30
Rick
100% agree. But China has a stranglehold on our economies and politicians are unwilling to loosen it. Not helped by advice from China’s’ stooge AKA the WHO
00
Jo, the chances of people putting up with a lockdown to september is close to zero.
My wife went to a major shopping centre today, lots of people were out and about, what social distancing? People are social animals.
The more fines that get handed out, the police will become hated…its the unspoken ugly reality. Eventually i think people will just accept that there may br another surge later in the year, but may just decide to suck it up.
Trump wants the US back on line in May, mass burials or not. Unfirtunately, I think in a time of war, keep calm and carry on….
91
By the way, Im not advocating reckless behaviour with this rotten thing, but we aldo cant stay stuck in caves fof 6 months…people will go mad.
My wife, who is truly amazing in how well she knows human behaviour, predicts the mental health damage by the brutalist and clumsy approach by govt will be huge. Not only are people suffering mentally, but you get thuggish fines and “brown shirt” behavior by govts too. All we need is the barbed wire and alsatians and we have 1940s europe….
71
Steve, we won’t need six months of this , but we know from WWII that people can do far more than be safely tucked away in a modern wifi apartment for 6 months. They lived it so much tougher.
We are a bunch of snowflakes. If people thought their lives were really in danger they would survive six months at home with deliveries.
Once lockdown is lifted, we will need to be prepared to redo lockdowns, but hopefully everyone will have learnt that there is never a “too early” scenario with germs. The sooner the better. Fast in = faster out.
81
No Jo,
That’s not sustainable, the general approach is too expensive. We need a sustainable surgical approach. should we get the caseload down to under 10 a day then we should start a geographical isolation strategy. Move sick people OUT OF CONTACT with healthy ones. As well as contact tracing, geographically quarantine 2 ha (say 5-10 houses) around each infection until that area proves infection free. Microdroplets can carry on the wind in winter.
We should also properly insulate the vulnerable.
I’m in a vulnerable category, but I can’t access safe delivery services, shortages mean I’m in an 18 degree supermarket walking in other peoples vapour trails almost every day trying to get a kilo of flour, there are no free surgical masks for the vulnerable, nor is the government helping me with HEPA filters or UV air sterilisation to clean my air.
There is no real advice on nursing a sick relative in the community. For example has the Government even suggested Vitamin D and Zinc supplementation over winter? Have they offered vaporisers to help prevent pneumonia? Have they suggested garlic, ginger or god forbid Tonic water or bitter lemon as prophylactics. What about alcohol room sprays (Glen 20) or my favourite Vaporised Tea Tree oil.
Does the community know how to drain the lungs of someone with pleurisy? It’s a simple procedure.
It’s just not good enough, do it properly, stop treating the public like it’s stupid and we can have protection, better health AND an economy.
61
Slightly off Topic :
It is with some regret that I discovered today that the Robert at Ice Age Now blog
Is refusing to allow comments which disagree with his views on this disease.
The current blog is about Sweden.and how well, supposedly it’s herd Immunity policy is working
I wrote a comment quoting the infection and death rates from Worldmeter on Sweden & comparing them with Australia.
Robert has suppressed my comment.
In fact there are NO comments
So my suspicion is that he is suppressing anyone who disagrees with him.
A real shame as he has a wealth of good information about global warming.
https://www.iceagenow.info/unlike-other-countries-sweden-has-so-far-avoided-both-isolation-and-economic-ruin/
70
His blog, his rules.
21
His rules stink !
I just checked again to see if Robert had allowed my comment.
He has allowed 15 other comments but not mine.
He is suppressing factual evidence that discredits his opinion.
Evidence based on the actual data from World meters
for Sweden & Australia .
That is an attempt to maintain IGNORANCE among his readers.
And that can only be based on a level of uninformed arrogance.
If he does this for this issue
I wonder how much is he doing it on other issues ?
12
“That is an attempt to maintain IGNORANCE among his readers.
And that can only be based on a level of uninformed arrogance.”
You’r comment is there. He posted it. It actually leads the discussion. Perhaps you should retract those aspersions on his character.
00
Jeff I wrote my comment on the 9th.
And at that time there were no comments.
yes it was the first I think.
But it was still suppressed yesterday when I checked.
Notice how there are two replies and both were made on the 11th of April.
That delay happened because my comment was suppressed for 2 days.
Maybe Rob has changed his mind ?
Maybe he’s allowed it because the parade has move don to his more recent posts about
The Freezing weather in Italy and the eruption on Krakatoa.
So no I do not retract anything.
00
Works the same way here Bill. Depends on the issue.
13
Name the issue joseph?
50
Nine eleven.
32
Mention [racial or ethnic group] would be an issue on this blogs filter.
[Due to Australia having no free speech and the ridiculous section 18C I or mods must check whether anyone offends an ethnic or racial group. You can stop that happening by donating $100m to my legal fund. People circumventing this and trying to publish a list of words that are auto filtered to help gaming trolls will get automoderated too. Understood? I asked for topics. –Jo]
61
That’s my greenie. And, it’s for Jo’s come-back.
18c needs to go.
50
I’m afraid there is another contagion sweeping around the world, apart from C-19. In much the same way that the Left has captured the public service and ‘the great institutions’, they are slowly turning the internet into a very hostile place for conservatives.
No, I don’t think this is a conspiracy, or even masterminded in some way. It is just the way that intolerant, activist Lefties operate by instinct.
One by one over the past few years, I have had to leave various non-political blogs relating to my interests, as they turn into Leftist echo chambers. I have to admit that I have fallen for a few traps over the years, when somebody will toss in an off-topic, anti-conservative rant (often attacking Trump these days), and those who respond in defence of Trump/Abbott/Johnson are then pack-attacked before the moderators ban the conservative – not the rabid lefty who started the whole thing. Happened to me again, just a week or so ago, on a photography blog. I was banned for “badmouthing another nation” when I expressed scepticism in regard to the C-19 data coming out of China. Meanwhile, fans of China were spraying the forum with praise of China’s responses and their humanitarian assistance to Italy, etc.
On a PHOTOGRAPHY blog. The internet is slowly shrinking …
60
Their ABC (Australian ABC) once ran a comments section below most of their stories.
Their ABC hated the non-lefty contributions so much that they ceased the comments section completely.
Yep. The left hate to be questioned.
50
Your comment is up there now Bill. Gotta give the moderators more time. I’ve had comments take a couple of days to show up on some sites if it’s a weekend.
10
Well we all knew this was coming. From “The Guardian”.
“Australian Health Protection Principal Committee says the anti-malaria drug must only be prescribed as part of a clinical trial, but department says doctors can prescribe.”
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee is the key decision making committee for health emergencies. Guess who chairs it. None other than Bernard Murphy.
Protocol before saving lives. Top points to the Dept. of Health though.
80
Well, in my experience, Australia’s medical doctors are a very independent and well trained lot.
In fact, a couple that I’ve spoken to already have HCQ ready to go, as soon as they get a patient that needs it.
They’ve quickly sussed out the Murphy nonsense. How was that camel designed again?
I love well educated, independent thinkers.
120
That’s refreshing news Sam.
40
Same for all the front line people I’ve talked to. Because their lives are on the line they are assessing the risks very differently from a desk jockey or modeler.
131
Spoke to a nurse friend tonight who explained the hospital where she works is working at far less than full capacity and it is a nightmare organizing staff to work shifts. The fear is huge (many are not coming in or taking leave etc) and her explanation of why so many empty beds is that they have been told it is to make room for the pandemic so far not happening.
Interesting to see if anyone can confirm this?
70
Exactly the same in NZ. But during the normal flu season down under , say June , July , August, the systems will probably overload , just like they do every other year.
40
The country’s second death attributable to ‘you know what’ occurred yesterday, an elderly woman in her 90s. The previous one was a woman in her 70s or 80s with other health complications.
Thanks to the (now silent) Climate Change Virus, our Indian summer is continuing with calm, clear, warm sunny days (apart from the odd skiff of snow on the tops down south) so our autumnal Vitamin D levels are still up there at a healthy, high level.
https://stovouno.org
“Open Letter to NZ MPs – the Lockdown is a Disastrous Error” by Barbara McKenzie, 10 April 2020
* Certificate Of Vaccination ID = COVID-19 (?)
41
What you say is correct. Australia govt stopped all elective surgery even at private hospitals a few weeks ago. None of the modelers expected the half-isolation measures to work as well as they have. But less driving and mixing and perhaps more handwashing would mean less trauma, lower infections, so no wonder hospital rooms are empty. I would hope they will restart elective surgery straight after Easter, though I think partly it was not the rooms, but the PPE they were preserving, and that situation may still be dire.
I have a friend in ICU who is ordering and paying for their own PPE.
Australia also has lower humidity levels and less cloud I expect than many places as close to the equator as we are. We also have probably the largest houses (perhaps NZ excepted) in the SH.
41
Joanne mentions this: (and I have bolded those three sections to be read in conjunction)
I’m an old guy now, so when we talk death by vehicle, I come from a time when that really was serious.
The road toll for the WHOLE of Australia last year, 2019 was 1182.
For the whole of 1970, the major morning daily in Victoria, ‘The Sun’ had a banner across the top of the front page which stated ….. ‘Declare War On 1034’ (that last usually pronounced as ten thirty four)
That figure of 1034 was the road toll from 1969, for just Victoria alone, and it was a concerted campaign to lower that road toll.
In Victoria that year, almost the same number of people died in car crashes than for the whole of 2019 for the whole of Australia.
Even though the toll increased in 1970 to 1061, it decreased virtually every year since then.
That one campaign changed thinking. Victoria was the first place in the World to introduce actual Legislation mandating seat belt usage, the Blood alcohol content was lowered, and a number of other measures were implemented.
Perhaps, now, instead of the Media playing up to people’s fear, (despite what they say) maybe they could try and implement some sort of campaign that will catch the public’s imagination like this graphic campaign for the WHOLE of 1970 did.
Tony.
Link to article on 1034
50
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anuraghunathan/2020/04/09/indias-drugmakers-ramp-up-production-of-game-changer-coronavirus-drug-hydroxychloroquine/#f669e1a5d5ad
“As the COVID-19 pandemic widens across the world, there has been a sudden interest in an anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory drug called hydroxychloroquine. It’s being touted, notably by U.S. president Donald Trump, as “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine” and a treatment for the coronavirus despite inconclusive scientific evidence.
“India, which manufactures 70% of the world’s supply of hydroxychloroquine, banned its export on March 25. But after Trump called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting for supplies, the ban was reversed on Tuesday; Trump had threatened “retaliation” if India were to refuse.
“After the ban lifted, Trump was quick to thank India on Twitter.
10
What’s the end goal? Can we get to zero cases and then isolate from the rest of the world for ever? What if a vaccine takes years? I think the virus has spread a lot more widely than initially suspected but has a lot lower fatality rate. I think we need to test for antibodies in random samples to find out. What if most people in affected countries have had the virus without enough symptoms to notice. Are we destroying the economy for nothing?
Italy’s fatalities have peaked. Could it be that Italy started getting cases in December but didn’t realise at first and is now approaching herd immunity. There’s only one way to find out: large scale randomised antibody tests.
I hate to think we’re destroying our children’s future in a hysterical response like the response to one degree’s warming.
71
End goal at the moment is just to save us from catastrophe while we prepare and learn.
If we do become a clean zone we will be the envy of the world. Then we keep the borders tight shut until other nations clean up and we reopen flights with them. We do two week quarantines with every other nation.
Vaccines are not the only ticket to freedom. We still don’t have a vaccine for AIDS. We have a treatment.
This is not a retrovirus so we probably won’t need to take drugs for years like AIDS patients do. We just need to beat it.
The virus will also mutate. It may get nicer or nastier or both. I’m happy to let other nations test out the different strains and wait to see which ones are easier to live with. Once there is a friendly strain we may (with lots of caveats) be happy to let that one in.
We will beat this — either with monoclonal antibodies, CRISPR, anti-virals, mutants, or a vaccine.
Our children will thank us for not killing their grandparents and the economy will recover if we can get rid of this virus asap.
With a deadly mass virus on the first run, there is no good economic outcome. Fear and panic would have meant cafes restaurants shops and cruise ships would get deserted anyhow.
If we all take Vitamin D and wear masks, and keep testing, soon we could trial a carefully staged path out.
184
Jo, I understand quarantine would be a default position for all arrivals. Why would Australia not simply do antibody/antigen testing on those wishing to enter the country when these test kits become less scarce? Either before getting on a flight, upon arrival or both?
81
Jo
I’m concerned that the good luck experienced by Australia and New Zealand may be the result of the season that the virus hit. Be wary of a second phase when Winter comes.
70
“the economy will recover”.
That depends entirely on the extent of indebtedness incurred during The Emergency. A global debt jubilee will fix it of course , but what will be the pre-conditions for such a jubilee?
31
The only debt increasing is sovereign debt. Private debt is reducing because very few people are buying houses right now, which is the major source of private debt and the one to worry about.
Sovereign debt just ends up as private savings – given current account is steady. Those holding the savings do not have to rely on government in their retirement.
Sovereign debt never has to be paid back. It just rolls over and there is no risk unless it drives inflation. Right now, most of the government support is being used to put food on the table and toilet paper in the dunny. Australia and New Zealand are quite able to feed themselves providing the old farmers and young pickers do not get hobbled by CV19. Australia has extended visas for backpacker pickers already in the country.
I fear some parts of the world are damaging their food production capacity due to CV19. Northern Italy, France and UK have probably lost some farmers. I heard Germany has permitted 80k Romanian pickers to enter Germany to ensure the 2020 season is fruitful – pun intended.
10
Such things are relative. For example if the worlds financial sector united they could print enough money to pay the debt but assuming everyone did it at the same time relative worth of currencies would not be affected.
02
And for all the talk of this virus killing people who were old and were going to die anyway, it may be even truer to say if it kills a debt-ridden economy then it was just a trigger for a death that was set to happen.
The inflation that results from helicopter money will share the pain widely, but as is true of all inflation, the people who benefit will be those who’ve borrowed, and the people who will be punished are the hourly wage earners who have saved.
Gold is doing very well at the moment, and there are signs the tightly controlled global markets are losing control as we speak. Spot and futures prices gapping… arbitrage struggling. Once people ask for actual delivery the gold price will leap.
32
The current situation is highly deflationary. The cost of energy is down with Russia trying to buoy the price of oil. Oil, thermal coal and gas are down to half of what they were 12 months ago. Wholesale electricity price in Australia is down, House prices are down. There is a large pool of unemployed who are only buying food. These people will be looking for work once the lockdown ends. Car yards are reducing price to move stock – not sure if this will persist after lockdown.
The period of lockdown will be sobering for many. A good number of young people, who have never experienced recession in Australia, will have a changed view about saving. That will increase propensity to save. Stock market investments will be less attractive. That means much of the new money, currently being created by the government, will just end up in bank deposits like it did after the GFC. Banks will be working hard to find projects to fund with all those growing deposits.
The retiree travellers will be less inclined to travel overseas. They will be keeping more money in the bank.
Some inflationary pressure on price of food and toilet paper. It should be a good growing season in Australia so that would be expected to reduce food prices.
Gold is not a very practical way of storing wealth. If you do not hold physical gold then you have vapourware. It can disappear for any number of reasons. Bank deposits in any ADI under the $250k cap are secure. They are backed by the money creator so can always be honored.
10
If it were not for central banks buying gold at every opportunity, the demand for gold would crater and there would be gold in the streets.
00
My non expert theory.
00
Uh oh….
http://redstatewatcher.com/aggregate.asp?id=164363
“Report says there is a mass exodus of American companies from China
“From http://WWW.THEBLAZE.COM
“The coronavirus pandemic may get American companies to do something the government has wanted for decades: return manufacturing to the United States.
“Global manufacturing consulting firm Kearney released a report Tuesday that shows American manufacturing companies are leaving China en masse, spurred first by the trade war and solidified by China’s inability to contain COVID-19 after unleashing it on the global community
00
Precious metals are indeed a good insurance product, albeit only useful in the event of a major economic meltdown – when we might see gold as the ONLY trusted ‘currency’.
I have been disappointed in the performance of silver however, once the poor man’s emergency stash. It would seem that its value these days is largely driven by demand from the manufacturing sector, rather than a wealth store for a stormy day. Instead of rising alongside gold this time around, it has stayed low. The Gold Silver ratio currently stands at around 110, the worst it has been for fifty years or more.
If another GFC ensues and silver’s price is indeed mostly driven by demand from electronics manufacturers, it could fall a lot lower yet.
10
A Tomahawk missile contains 16 kilograms of silver used in the electronics to save weight due to is excellent electrical conductivity.
00
Let’s hope the good news we’ve been seeing will continue and prompt PM Morrison to start advising the states to relax certain restrictions. Talks of keeping the economy in a coma for 12+ months are absurd. Such a length period would go a long way to destroying our economy and resulting in some form of socialist economy not much unlike that of the old Soviet Russia.
It’s interesting that I’ve been thinking for years some how the people would welcome some sort of draconian rule change lasting for a long period. I just never thought the trigger could be a pandemic. I’m still thinking this is not the case now. Time will tell soon enough.
31
Looks like there’s one person here who prefers to crash our economy sooner rather than later. I wonder who would that be?
00
As expected the CHICOMS not only didn’t count cases and deaths outside the hospitals, they also decided to exclude most of the hospitals from their official data as well. They excluded 20 out of 22 hospitals in just one of the 13 Districts in Wuhan.
It looks like the CCP didn’t want other countries to become alarmed too early and close their borders before it had time to circulate around the globe first.
“Surprise!”
The CCP don’t get trusted again, presumed guilty with wicked intent.
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While I would like to think better things of humanity WX. I have little doubt that your last two sentences are right on the money. The behaviour of the CCP was not accidental.
130
But who can blame China for giving the West a taste of blowback?
Colonialism is a very good thing, as long as it is not China doing it?
How does that work?
16
Colonialism ended before the current generations were even borne. Are we responsible for that? How does that work?
Should we mount a surprise Tora-Tora-Tora to beat back the neo-colonial fleet and empire?
There’s no excuse and no relativist justification for it.
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I think that colonialism simply changed its spots . . . into 0s and 1s.
I wasn’t trying to justify anything ; just saying that it never ended.
35
I think you sadly mistake and confuse a highly and mutually beneficial trade interaction, which NET improves and lengthens the life of everyone, rapidly eliminates poverty and destitution, for a one sided Colonial military bayonet-mediated oppression and slavery process from the 18th century.
These are not even slightly similar, and that sort of charge or portrayal is an imaginary meme.
40
WXCycles, as usual you’re missing the bigger picture. The Chinese learned from their colonial oppressors.
As for mutually beneficial trade interaction. When the Chinese recognise human rights, intellectual property, private property, democracy, etc. we can start talking about beneficial trade interaction. Unfortunately Smith and Ricardo didn’t foresee the effects on comparative advantage of communism. Ricardo published his ideas on Comparative advantage in 1817, the year before Marx was born.
00
Before ‘signing up’, I first tried to figure out the Epoch Times bona fides. First place I was taken to was Wiki. Yeah, I know, but I try to gather info from diverse sources.
Within seconds, on just the third line of text, I read this: “… it has become known for its support of U.S. President Donald Trump and favorable coverage of far-right politicians in Europe.”
When the writer (a) exposes themselves as a Trump-hater and then (b) jumps so quickly into attack-the-Right mode, in an article supposedly describing the subject in factual terms, I know all I need to know.
Duly subscribed, thanks.
30
I should add that I will treat everything in the Epoch Times with the same scepticism as I do with EVERY media source, but it’s nice to have another conservative source in a vast array of leftist outlets. Too many conservative media companies are behind paywalls, while pretty much every taxpayer-funded outlet (i.e. the ABC, BBC, SBS, etc) skews very heavily Left.
30
Found this..interesting…
https://youtu.be/Gdd7dtDaYmM
00
Dear Jo ,
Thank you for your sharp and to the point analysis . Please permit me to respond to the remarks of Bill in Oz about Robert of Ice Age Now . Personally i donot doubt the integrity of Robert , but I have strong doubts about the people operating his spam-filter . From my point of view these are Obama-like clones , uniting the islam mercyless religion and communism in a new world ordr system totally suppressing free speech only parrotting false party-line memes . The social distancing for instance with Covid19 can be considered as such as a result of this ideology .
Bill Robert himself did not block your comments , it is his spam-filter that is ideologically controlled like most of them and which has nothing to do with truth or objectivity . How deep a society can fall !
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Turn off the bloody filter then !
91
Jo – I have to say I am utterly perplexed by your views on this Covid situation. It is almost as if you are in denial of the truth. There is absolutely no ‘crushing of this virus’. It is global, it is everywhere, it cannot be hidden from. Sure, via the stringent measures Australia has reduced infections and limited deaths over the last few weeks. But what are you going to do now ? Live in isolation over the next years ? Have you not noticed what has happened in Singapore ? As soon as you release restrictions and open borders it will just come back. Even if you eliminate it completely, it just requires 1 asymptomatic carrier to arrive in Australia and 6 weeks later you are going to be having another requirement to lock everything down again.
I think the situation is even worse in NZ. Only 2 deaths, everyone locked up for a month. Now what ??? IS Jacinda going to keep Kiwis locked up forever ?
Everyone (well at least 60-70%) of the population HAS TO GET THIS. Yes, you can and must try and manage it to avoid overwhelming health services, but be under no illusion, you haven’t done anything yet. You haven’t even started.
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No, the traveler volunteers to be isolated for a set quarantine period, with no exceptions, until they can establish that they don’t have COVID-19. The onus is on the travelers, we don’t have to trust them, nor put ourselves and economy at risk once again.
If a country sends X amount of people to Australia, within X amount of time, with no new cases occurring during that period, we open to them and them alone. One slip up and we revert.
Eventually we get better faster detection, a better selection of anti-virals that we know will work, which produces a lower intensity of infection and is caught earlier.
We earn most dollars from exports and domestic activity. That will still occur. Tourism used to be a big earner but it shrank a lot after 2000. We can go with out the international element for now. The international airlines will be out for a while as well, all domestic jets now.
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I imagine one of our biggest invisible exports in the future
Will be the money that very rich people bring with them
As they seek a COVID 19 Free place of refuge.
Hummmm !
And if they are willing to pay for 2-3 weeks in quarantine
It will be an even bigger invisible export earner.
Globalisation is DEAD !
BBQ’d in the flames of Corona 19 Virus !
83
Bill in Oz, have you been reading Lewis Carroll again?
23
Your plan to compulsorily test every person in OZ for the presence of antibodies sounded more like The Gulag Archipelago than Alice in Wonderland.
What did you plan to do with the non-immune?
Harvest antibodies from the blood of those showing immunity?
Or just declare the non-immune to be expendable?
58
What you are proposing is utterly impractical. So no tourists in Australia for the next however many years ? What about Australians who visit overseas ? What about cabin crew from airlines ? Are you going to quarantine every returning Aussie for 2 weeks every time they return home ? What about people who can still infect after 2 weeks, say 3 weeks or 4 weeks ? Do we yet know exactly how long a person with this virus can be infectious ?
And all to try and protect yourself from something which has a mortality for those over 70 of about 1-2 % and very low for everybody else. Every week in Australia over 3000 Australians die for all sorts of reasons. Crikey there are about 3000 suicides in Australia every year. That’s 60 a week. Compared to 50 Covid deaths so far in total.
Life is Faustian bargain that we are all signed up to. Yes, we could protect ourselves from absolutely everything but we don’t do we ? We live and accept that people die. We could eliminate road accidents (about 20 per week in Australia) but we don’t set the speed limit at 10 MPH to do that, do we ?
The future of this virus in Australia and NZ is utterly predictable. The restrictions will be eased and sure as ‘eggs is eggs’, in a couple of months the same problem will arise. Except that this time how are politicians going to convince everyone to get back inside, when they look around the world and see that everyone else has moved on, especially in countries like Sweden who didn’t even impose a lockdown in the first place (that may change, but the virus will still go everywhere) ? The virus will go through everyone in Australia. It is impossible to stop it.
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I see you are a paid member of
The Don’t Crash the Global Economy ” clique !
Ohhh and Sweden has been stuffed by it’s herd immunity ‘policy’ mate.
Official number of infected 9,685
Number of cases yesterday increased by 544
Critically ill : 749
Number dead from COVID19 959
Number dead per million : 86
By contrast Australia has
Infected : 6203
Deaths : 53 +2 3,141 3,009
Critically Ill : 74
Deaths per million people : 2
The Federal & state lockdowns have done that mate
The FACTS show you opinion to be factless.
So please No more utter Bull sh#t.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
86
There seems to be a typo in the figures I cited for Australia
Deaths are just 53 in total
41
There are many paid up members of ‘”The Don’t Crash the Global Economy ” clique’ Bill.
Imran is just yet one more.
They’re wrong. They’re CCP zombies, academics or globalists who have skin in the game. When they start quoting that socialist nirvana Sweden to you, it’s a Lay-down Misère.
Not one of them is what you might describe as a humanitarian.
Just remind me Imran, what’s the Sweden death tally at this stage? And, as a percentage of all Swedish cases?
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200409-sitrep-80-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=1b685d64_4
62
The Swedish ‘death tally’ is about 870 which is roughly 86 deaths per million people. If you look at all the European curves, they all heading to about 200-400 deaths per million. For this first wave.
I’m not knocking the fact that if you put in place stringent measures (and earlier) you can get a much lower wave of infections and deaths. Which is what has been achieved in Australia and NZ. The point I am making is THEN WHAT ? You cannot hide from this virus. If you want to eliminate it and never have it in Australia you will be spending the next year or 2 (assuming they find a vaccine in that period) in and out of lockdowns with absolutely limited travel. Now that’s fine, and if its the choice the Australian people want to make, that saving lives is the only metric in the equation, then good luck. But that’s what it will take … and you may find this virus is much more infectious and with much lower mortality than you currently assume. As is now being discovered in Germany. Ie. much quicker to run through everyone.
And it’s no good launching ‘ad hominem’ attacks on me just for pointing this out. Sweden may have it wrong ….. but they may have it right. The comparison between Sweden and Australia/NZ is a very powerful analysis and will be key to decisions for the future for Australia. You should thank Sweden. The conversation and the discussion about those trade-offs is going to happen. Very shortly.
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Well done . Sam wanted deaths/test+ for covid. It’s a completely meaningless number when you haven’t tested the whole population.
Deaths/head population is the only number available with any certainty.
And it shows exactly the situation you described.
I think what Bill and Jo are saying is akin to the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love”.
Yep , love is all you need.
Jeez Wayne.
I think that what we will see is that nations which wish to retain their sovereignty will use the “herd immunity” approach.
I suspect most of the monarchies in Europe will go this way.
45
Sweden has let it rip !
So too have the Netherlands
And you support that policy.
Despite the deaths and the death rate.
So my remarks about you are not ‘Ad hominems’
I simply state the facts.
The people of those countries will punish those idiotic governments for doing this
When they get an opportunity.
What Jo & TdeF & Will & I and others here
advocate for Is SIMPLY what is BEST for Australia.
I imagine it would be best for New Zealand as well.
But that is up to the Kiwis to decide.
As it is the obligation of each government around the world.
53
You went too far Bill and started tilting at windmills. I didn’t support anything ; I’m just observing.
42
Bill in Oz.
The Jury is out, Just like in Global Warming noone knows the final state with any certainty, certainly not enough to dictate policy
Imran is right, what matters is DeathRate X Time, the let her rip approach, minimises the time factor, while the other approaches try to minimise the death rate factor but they do that by trying to minimise the infection rate assuming that is correlated. But these two factors interrelate, Infection Rate is inversely proportional to time.
The biggest problem is WHAT THEN, that you cant keep the vulnerable populations locked up for two years. Controlling the infection rate increases the probability that vulnerable people come into contact with the virus meaning your entire Vulnerable Cohort will probably become infected before you achieve herd immunity. You take a grand gamble on a vaccine that probably can’t be produced (Given the Common Cold Corona virus experience). In the end if the miracle vaccine does not appear then you have done considerable economic damage to ABSOLUTELY NO ADVANTAGE. Sound Familiar? Yes this is the same precautionary principle that is destroying economies over mythical global warming.
You like our government cringe and crawl into a corner at the prospect of a high death rate just like the fear of half a degree of global warming when overall it probably kills less people to compassionately let the virus go, doing what you can to insulate vulnerable people PROPERLY (which means, safe delivery, air purification, supplied masks and immediate evacuation of infected cases from around the vulnerable) therefore minimise the time to herd immunity.
Prudence typically means making no assumptions about the future, instead of speculating on a non existent vaccine, our government should be assuming no vaccine will EVER become available and try to achieve a SUSTAINABLE result without it.
Both ways work, which one is best – time will tell.
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Imrancan, great points. German research is showing interesting results on CFR’s – https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/04/09/german-study-shows-coronavirus-might-not-be-fatal-as-previously-thought.html . If these results are corroborated elsewhere, the lockdown needs to end quick smart.
I’ve put up some medical thoughts on matters here – http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/coronavirus-nearly-800-people-under-the-age-of-50-have-died-in-the-us/#comment-2308804
Have found WXcycles and Bill in OZ are big on myopic nationalism, inclusive of Ad Hominem attacks on those of us with foreign sounding Noms de Guerre. Shame on them – Shame on Australia.
Like you, i don’t underestimate the Scandinavian’s level of understanding of matters.
10
Sweden is NOT pursuing herd immunity. It implemented all the controls applied in other EU countries sooner apart from the lockdown. The mobility data ib Sweden is not a lot different to other countries that are in lock down:
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-05_SE_Mobility_Report_en.pdf
Their situation would be far worse if they were just letting it rip.
20
Rick many Swedes think their government is stupid
And been self isolating voluntarily since early Feb.
But the Swedish government ?
Bloody idiots !
They want to build up ‘herd immunity’ in 60% of the population…
And so lots of people have died.
That’s not ‘luck’.
That’s the experts & government ‘Gods’ being crazy !
32
And they will achieve that 21 months BEFORE us bill. How many lives will that save?
74
These are the controls in place in Sweden:
THE COUNCIL OF THE GENERAL
General advice from an authority is sharp and binding, and nothing you can ignore.
Stay home when you are sick
Stay at home if you have symptoms such as sniffing, coughing, fever, difficulty breathing, sore throat, headache, muscle and joint pain or nausea. This also applies to mild symptoms. Wait at least two days after you get well before going to work or school.
Have good hygiene
Avoid touching your face or eyes. Wash your hands frequently with soap and warm water, and for at least 20 seconds. If you do not have access to it, hand spirit can be an alternative. Cough and sneeze in the arm fold.
Avoid visits to the elderly and the sick
Elderly people over the age of 70 and persons with underlying illness belong to the risk group. Refrain from unnecessary hospital visits. Are you sick – give up completely.
Work from home – if possible
Work from home if you have the opportunity, so that fewer people move in public transport and in the workplaces.
Plug in remotely
You who attend high school, municipal adult education, college or university are recommended to study from home and receive distance education.
Restrict social contacts – if you are over 70 or other risk group
Limit your social contacts if you are 70 years or older or belong to another risk group. Don’t go by bus and subway, take help from relatives or neighbors to shop for food and avoid meeting your children and grandchildren. Take a walk, but keep away from other people.
Do not travel abroad
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against unnecessary travel to all countries due to the corona virus.
Do not travel domestically – unless necessary
Think about whether your planned trip to, for example, the big cities or the mountains is necessary. If not – refrain. Anyone who is sick should not travel at all.
Feel free to exercise – but do it safely
Physical activity outdoors is encouraged. Gyms, swimming pools and gyms can stay open, but the Public Health Agency advises those responsible on how to reduce the spread of infection. Keep distance. Avoid changing in public changing rooms.
Keep distance
Keep away from others in places where people gather, both indoors and outdoors. Keep away from others in public transport. Keep away from others in the bathhouse and gym.
Refrain from parties
Refrain from participating in larger social contexts such as parties, funerals, baptisms, parties and weddings.
Avoid rush hour traffic
Avoid traveling during rush hour and refrain from unnecessary travel.
THE COUNCIL OF INDUSTRIES / ORGANIZATIONS
operations
Furnish in a way that creates larger areas and reduces congestion.
Offer the opportunity to wash your hands or access to hands-on liquor.
Set up information sheets.
Public transport
Maintain traffic to the extent required to avoid congestion.
Inform passengers about ways to reduce the spread of infection.
Limit the number of passengers per vehicle.
Shopping Mall / Commerce
Limit the number of customers staying in the room at the same time.
Introduce alternative solutions to cash lines. For example, markings for distance between customers.
sports Activities
Ensure that close contact between practitioners is avoided.
Postpone matches and contests.
Avoid congestion, for example, by limiting the number of spectators.
Keep the activities outdoors as far as possible.
Avoid unnecessary trips in connection with sports.
Workplaces
To the extent possible, employers should slip out seats.
Wash your hands regularly and keep away from each other.
Work from home to the extent possible.
Avoid unnecessary travel at work.
Adapt working hours to avoid travel in rush hour traffic.
Avoid meetings or hold them digitally.
RULES
An authority provides recommendations and advice, while the government can impose restrictions.
Major events prohibited
On March 11, the government banned gatherings with more than 500 people. From Sunday, March 29, the restriction will be extended to meetings with more than 50 people. The ban applies to public gatherings and public events. It affects, for example, concerts, festivals and theaters. Anyone who violates the ban can be fined or imprisoned.
Crowding on the hook not allowed
There should be no crowding in restaurants, cafes, school dining rooms, bars and nightclubs. Neither in queues, at bar counters or at buffets. The restrictions mean that visitors are only allowed to eat and drink while sitting at a table. However, take-away food may be handed over, if it can be done without crowding.
Prohibited from entering Sweden
Sweden has not closed the borders but has an entry ban from countries outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland, starting from March 19 and 30 days ahead. All EU countries have the same ban. Swedish citizens are not covered by the entry ban.
Forbidden to visit elderly homes
There is a ban on visitors to all of Sweden’s elderly homes.
Everything short of a complete lockdown.
Their situation would be far more dire if they did not have these controls.
50
I agree with your view Rick but their politicians sure shot themselves in the foot and tarnished Sweden’s image in the media and twitter-verse on the topic, on top of the other prevailing crime, plss-weak police, spineless politicians and appalling integration matters. The lax attitude (which may be described as lefty enlightenment ‘balance’) was just the cherry on top. Either way they’re at 9% of cases died so far.
30
Bill in Oz, I thought you only cared about what was good for Australia?
00
WXcycles, what percentage of the population have the swedes tested? Was the testing randomised and broadscale?
00
1,000,000 Australians go overseas every month, half the entire population every year. Imagine if 10% of these people holiday at home?
And testing is the key. We have better and better testing. And I would hope testing for much more than this deadly virus. The flu generally, still our greatest killer and a very similar virus. Plus all those nasties which plague the world, from polio to measles, yellow fever to malaria and so many more, generally viruses. And tuberculosis. Many are coming back with African refugees and migrants. We need to stop them at the borders.
And if you do not want testing, present a current innoculation certificate, the system the world used until the 1970s.
We Australians have cared more in the last 50 years about fruit fly, apples, grapes, worms, fungus, animals than about the health of our 12 million people a year and millions of visitors. We need to learn from the past and have our old barriers back. And with our new viral detection tests, we need to stop viruses before they get in.
142
TdeF I agree completely
But I have a quibble
Returning Australians also bring these diseases back with them.
Not just migrants & refugees.
61
Agree. The incoming rules must be the same for Australians and visitors. The refugee vector though is worrying. A cardiologist friend was treating a Sudanese woman for heart problems when he realised she was an active tuberculosis carrier. We have not had to deal with such issues since the Vietnam war in the 1970s. A lot of the old diseases are making a comeback, say in destroyed Venezuela, now a third world country.
And if there were fewer children going overseas on school holiday, it would reduce the load on everyone. Personally taking young children around the world on fast trips is a huge waste of everything. And one of our biggest sources of viral infections. Reducing rapid child travel should be an aim. The days when children return with a cold and are sent to school the next day must end.
So it’s all the tools. Documentation, quarantines, testing, waiting, isolation. And Australia as a country with ultimately no Wuhan virus must be prepared for all the tourists who want to go to an exotic and safe destination. For Australians, we need to spend more on advertising Australia and keeping our own people home.
101
I thought that all persons wishing to settle in Australia had to prove that they were TB free.
My lady certainly did in 2017.
But if this woman was an active TB carrier
Her entire family were probably infected as well.
A major breach of the health precautions for migrants and others.
71
Maybe it was from within her community after arrival?
61
My wife has a small list of countries she is willing to visit. I expect the list will be shorter now.
20
My lady wants to visit her family in the Philippines
During her annual leave.
But that is now off the menu for the foreseeable future as well.
So talking via Messenger will be it for a while.
10
This is the sort of disinformation that the CCP running dogs, globalists and academic fools try to run. It’s propaganda.
They’re wrong. HCQ plus Zn plus Azithromycin is the stopper.
Read the science Imran, and weep for your Communist Nirvana.
123
I think you have put “Communism” on the wrong side of the argument. The lockdown approach is communist (authoritarian, govt. mandated control etc etc). The Swedish approach is not.
10
Possibly you are right, in the long run. However, people with this attitude seem to be blind
as to what is currently happening. Your annual deaths are still happening. Many of them
outside the hospital system eg heart attacks, strokes, cancers etc. Respiratory disease, flu,
has vaccines available ; we can do no more. They can happen despite having the vaccine, or
not having it. There is an age group problem with lower resistance and depressed immunity.
They generally don’t overwhelm the hospital system.
These COVID-19deaths are on top of those virtually non preventable deaths. Worse, even with
preventative measures they force the shutdown of elective surgery in the nation and they still
threaten to overrun the ICU system. They overwork the attending staff who themselves are
ar risk and eventually there will be a problem actually finding enough staff if this goes on for
long. even retired doctors and nurses are already being requested to return to duty. If we follow
your ideas with little attempt at real control, you risk the US problem happening and simply
forcing us back into full lockdown. You also ignore the fact that sick people don’t work, and sick
People on a grand scale can close businesses and the public gets terrified enough to not venture
Out.
Interestingly, just how long do you think you can lock away the aged and the susceptible groups.
People 70-90yr old these days can be as lucid as anyone else. If we are all to get this
disease, we could be looking at wiping out a lot of these age groups and others. I think
for ‘us’ the main hope would be for a drug or vaccine both of which look a long way off, but
really, these are the things we are all hanging out for in the long run. Meanwhile, we have to
try to get the economy running while controlling the virus and we haven’t seen that happen
anywhere, yet. Hopefully, the Lucky Country will keep its luck in and be the first.
41
Most of them do that themselves, and long before COVID-19 came along. If the potentially infected are kept at a physical distance that would be all they require.
31
You are obviously very youthful. Where do most of those cruise ships get
their income from? Who do you think are behind the wheel of most of those
caravans that annually circumnavigate this island ( and keep most of those
isolated small towns cashed up)? Seen ‘pensioner Tuesday’s at the cinemas
lately – before COVID19? Who drops dead at football matches?
12
So you admit they already self-isolate at the Cinemas and in caravans and on cruise ships, and readily drop dead when they don’t! 😉
30
Your claiming such does not make it so, we’re doing it right now, so are most countries around the world, and that will be continued – MINIMUM of 6 months.
No, they will be able to travel here on a sufficiently long visa to make it worthwhile, even work here with the usual approvals, but they will have to go through the required quarantine exclusion period (and not on the mainland either, they get to the mainland only after the quarantine period has been served).
What does anyone care about that? That’s entirely up to a .gov in another country with its own quarantine needs. THis is going to be the way it is, people will need to adjust to slower more expensive travel that takes longer, until isolation, testing and effective anti-virals until this disease’s dangerous exponential spread is able to be more easily detected, isolated and disrupted.
Airlines will be legally responsible for making sure flight and cabin crews remain in isolation from the populous when outside of Australia, and that they wear a PPE uniform at all times when outside of Australia. They get tested before each flight.
No, the .gov will do that. They’re doing it now. An at least 6 month process has already been foreshadowed. Let’s hope that can be shortened.
What about people who can still infect after 2 weeks, say 3 weeks or 4 weeks?
They don’t get out of quarantine after 14 days if their body is not clear of COVID-19. Is that so hard to understand? There’s nothing even required there but basic logic and practical public health and safety action.
A silly question, you’re just grasping at straws.
If travelers can’t prove they’re clear of COVID-19, or are infecting others at the 14 day mark entry to Australia is refused and they are deported on the next flight out, at their expense, else they remain in quarantine at their expense for as long as it takes. What do you think we’re going to do, let them walk free into the community?
The onus is not on Australia to put up with it, it is up to the traveler to prove they deserve entry. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege to move around in Australia’s population and economy. You have to be eligible, and one of the key assessment criteria is being free of a contagious deadly disease.
I’m not the slightest bit interested in if travelers find that ‘inconvenient’.
I do however find it extremely inconvenient that I and fellow Aussies will be made to live indoors for months out of this, our one and only life time, and made poorer and have less opportunities, because of tourists an cruise liners and non-essential travelers, who have already made Australia like this.
That ENDS.
You can cry a river of tears about it, but blame the Chinese Communist Party for lying to harm other countries, and the UN World Health Organization for deciding to downplaying it to help spread it for Beijing, and for being corrupt and totally failing to do their job. I’m not going to apologize for defending my personal best interests here, and those of my own country, so you’ll have to accept it.
Your very poor arguments and weak excuses for why we need to just let it back in and suffer the consequences, instead of voluntary travelers are absolutely unacceptable.
103
I missed this comment.
Sorry Imran, no offense, but that’s such fatalistic nonsense. We can’t stop death either when we’re borne, but we sure can (and do) manage it very well indeed. Death has to fight to take us away now, we don’t roll over and give it up easily. If you think we’ll get all philosophical and relativist about giving up on managing COVID-19 you don’t understand our culture and national imperatives.
71
29 out of 65 now dead at Pinecrest
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/covid-19-coronavirus-pinecrest-nursing-home-bobcaygeon?video_autoplay=true
00
WXcycles, the idea of high levels of statistical confidence as an immigration admissions policy is yesterday’s idea. Blanket testing using a testing method with very high reliability is required at the Australian border. I’d suggest this level of testing will be available in a matter of weeks.
The notion that Australia can go without the international element for now is completely rejected.
52
No, it’s required now, and will remain required.
Yes, in quarantine, as is the case now. The notion we’ll put all our eggs in a testing basket won’t be happening any decade soon.
When Sweden has that in place and feels they can open borders to all of Europe it may be taken seriously. Until then, making sure that 100% of people are not infected, via sufficiently long isolation of travelers will be the policy.
That’s not your call. Plus I already said that people can volunteer to travel here with the understanding that they serve a mandatory quarantine period,
So it is not “completely rejected”, it is adjusted to, and is the standard practice. It will be formalized more effectively and efficiently until it’s no longer required to prevent COVID-19 spread. I don’t see what’s so hard to grasp about that essential process that is imposed by the disease’s tendency to spread exponentially and a-symptomatically.
We are not going to be opening our borders without 100% assurance that travelers who gain entry, or return from other countries, don’t have it and can’t spread it. No cruise ships, no fly-in and fly out meetings, no casual 7 day holidays in Australia, no more easy entry of students from China, or anywhere else until they can prove they don’t have it.
They can get entry, but the onus is on them. It is not on the Australian population to have to constantly pay to clean up after them, to have the economy destroyed, to be made poor, and sick, and to live indoors for months and be unemployed. We aren’t going to care how either travelers, or airlines (including our own) or cruise companies feel about this.
62
WX, it’s “hard to grasp” for those who want “open borders”. Those who are supporters of whatever action weakens Western democracies. The socialists, the internationalists.
But here’s the rub. They do “grasp it”. They know full-well that to achieve their aims they have to reject national sovereignty, undermine it, sabotage it.
Does anybody seriously think that the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliates won’t be working their hardest to obtain the greatest benefit out of what they’ve unleashed? The influencers are hard at work, even as we discuss it here on Jo’s site.
31
Yes, I tend to discard the anti-border crowd as hopeless left loons (which they are) but they’re also every bit as insidious as the CCP, and are serving their interests, they’re serious about those loony destructive aims. So we will have to get more serious about suppressing and making thing more difficult for them in the Western world.
I’m hoping Trump as a fully-fledged returned national and also global leader will get serious about systematically slamming the door to UN perversions and the usurping of Sovereignty powers and policies during his next term in the same way he took a chainsaw to bad trading arrangements which were also designed to do national harm, to serve ideological power interests. We have a Diplomatic service and a Foreign Affairs and Trade Department, we don’t need the UN, and they are never going to be looking out for us. We may choose to synchronize with other countries laws and processes in mutually beneficial and necessary areas. But if the left loving EU Commission or any other country thinks they can dictate compliance standards on border controls and what we do to serve our own health and economic interests, they must be shown have no such reach or authority within our borders. The whole EU needs to do this so we end up at 2025 with all this failed nonsense swept away–no more of it.
61
WXcycles, you’re off dancing your own jig on this one. Accurate and rapid testing is all that is required. For the record i’m anti-open border and strongly pro-trump.
11
As I understand it Singapore’s recent increase is with foreign workers who live in dormitories. Not quite individual isolation centres.
Cheers
Dave B
110
In other words
Singapore abandoned it’s own quarantine procedures
And closed borders !
Pretty stupid of them !
I guess somebody listened to the
“Don’t Crash the Economy ” clique !
51
There is no country where infection is over 0.1% of the population, a direct consequence of the world wide shut down. In Australia 6,000 from 26,000,000 or 0.024%. So it is NOT everywhere. We can and must eliminate this completely. Without continuously infecting people, it vanishes completely. A fragile thing, it has nowhere to hide.
And if it comes back, swift action can shut it down because we know this enemy well. Shut it down before it gets into a community. Everyone in the country is aware of the symptoms. And social isolation works.
As for the great economy, it will come back. As long as there is food and electricity and water, what else does a society need? Foreign manufactured goods? In history humans made almost nothing and in many countries they still make nothing, but life can be good. This shutdown is one big holiday and the only downside is boredom. You would think the world had had ended because people are staying home. No, it’s all still there. Along with 99.998% of all customers.
So let’s get realistic. The Wuhan virus can be beaten, reduced, totally eliminated. And if the world had been told earlier, it would not have happened outside China.
111
Sorry ..but that is just simply WRONG again !
You are comparing the positive results FROM THE TESTED population,..with the total population.
The true known infection level in Australia is currently 1.8% ( +ve results vs tested volume )
Whilst this is likely biased due to the “targeted” nature of the test subjects, its the only data we have to estimate against, until there is a true “”Random” sampling exercise.
00
So please explain how coronavirus hides in society for more than two weeks without being seen?
I accept that 80% of infections are asymptomatic, but 20% of infections require hospitalization within two weeks and half of those require intensive care.
Your proposition is that there is a large pool of coronavirus outside the tested population. That I do not understand. Please enlighten me.
And if it cannot hide, what is the point of testing 26 million people?
00
And by large pool, a single case in society would double every 2-3 days. 21 days would be 1,000 people who have it and not tested and no one is presenting as sick. Please tell me how this works. And 21 days later, 1,000,000 people. Again not seen.
00
You are fast and loose with figures TddF..
.. of the 6200+ Of “infections” detected, fewer than 400 have been admitted to hospital. That is 6%…not 20%
..and “Critical/ICU” cases are reported at 74
So 95% of infected people either just have flue like symptoms , or none at all.!
If that is 1.8% of the full population , then it is equivalent to a “normal” flue season where 2% os the population is infected, and most go un noticed !
Do you seriously believe that the only virus cases in Australia are those detected in the 330,000 tested individuals ?
10
I have no idea where you are Imran but clearly you have strong links to countries elsewhere in the world.
And you maybe wish to preserve those links to family and culture.
Well I’m sorry old mate
But that is not going to be the case anytime soon.
Each country must destroy this virus within it’s borders.
Or become a pariah state to those nations which wipe it out.
With travel from such pariah nations subject to the strictest quarantine.
maybe that will change if a decent vaccine is developed.
But that is uncertain and ways off into the future.
51
Bill in Oz, people will be tested at their departure point and/or at the point of entry to Australia. This will be in place within the next few weeks. Its consistent with customs and quarantine legislation and practice that has been in place for over a hundred years. Australia can’t afford to do otherwise and would be in breach of international treaties if it did.
42
Tested for what? Fever? Can’t do anti-bodies at the border. Can’t do an instant virus ID at the border. So what do you mean?
33
We would not hesitate to ‘breach’ any such stupid international treaties in the face of a deadly disease being spread by travelers. And in what way is the current 14-day mandatory isolation period in breach of any treaty?
Should we call Brussels or the UN to see if it’s OK if we chose not to have granddad die 10 years earlier than he otherwise would? Maybe we want Grandma at our daughter’s wedding infinitely more than we want tourists from cruise ships running-amok with COVID-19 at a brothel, destroying our economy and making us long-term unemployed with destroyed businesses because the UN said we must?
What we do is not someone else’s call.
We won’t be listening to the EU Commission or the UN, or any other Sovereign Government. Scott Morrison made this very clear a few weeks back when he said on National TV that the government’s policy response will not be what anyone else is doing, we won’t be following what other countries or organisations do, we’ll be doing what we need to do for our own people’s needs. Externally dictated COVID-19 policy is out.
90
If we break the instructions of WHO. WHO told us officially that Wuhan virus was not able to be passed person to person. WHO told us and the Americans that closing our borders would make it worse. WHO told us that if we disagree, we should buy more body bags. Who told us the Chinese are blameless. And WHO still tells us that there is not a single case of Wuhan virus in North Korea. WHO did not tell anyone what sovereign Taiwan told them, because China has designs on Taiwan which was been a sovereign state fifty years before the Communist government in China. It is racist to say the people are Chinese so it belongs to China. Hitler did that with Czechoslovakia and Poland and look where that ended.
If WHO set these ‘international rules’, they need to be closed down. WHO has never told the truth and has been a real cause of the spread of this virus. At least the EU has apologized to the Italians for k*lling so many with their st*pid advice. WHO in the person of the Director is still backing themselves as friends of China.
50
WXcycles, now you’re off into foaming at the mouth hysteria. Elements of the way Mandatory Isolation is being implemented is in breach of the UN’s charter of Human Rights. Australia is a signatory to the UN charter under the external affairs powers of the constitution. This means that breaches of the human rights of those in mandatory isolation can be challenged before an Australian Court.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect Australian citizens to be treated with dignity and respect whilst they are held in quarantine.
01
I sincerely wish that I could hold the same view in regard to the actions of the NZ government.
To me those actions border on treason , spit in the face of those ideals that compelled my great-great- uncles to give their lives to preserve, and relegate Anzac Day commemorations, however minimal, to non-essential status.
So I hear what you are saying loud and clear; I may even be a bit emotional about it :-), and I agree that the Anzac spirit which unites Australia and NZ is probably inexplicable to those outside of Australasia.
Thanks for your efforts.
00
Even within the same nation we have States being pariahs to other States.
Starting 2 days ago Sydney was declared a COVID19 “hotspot” by Queensland and any traitorous maroons returning from consorting with the cockroaches are to be in policed home isolation until proven innocent.
51
I am surprised somebody red-thumbed that comment, as anyone here knows the term “cockroach” is used in good humour in the interstate Rugby competition, but clearly there’s just no pleasing some people.
40
You can say to the Ozzies ” Mate you’re dreaming” , but they are not listening.
So it goes.
15
Dunno but maybe “” Mate you’re dreaming” ” is not convincing.
Try some reasons maybe?
41
Maybe you missed them. But I’m happy to let time be the judge.
What I think would be helpful at this stage would be to see some clinicians notes for the people who get better by themselves.
I’m working on it.
00
The infection and death statistics don’t do a good job of revealing what is going on. If this virus gets into a home for the elderly and is spread through the residents it kills a lot of them, much higher than 1 to 2%
“45 cases of COVID-19 at Seven Oaks long-term care home, 16 deaths linked to virus”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/coronavirus-toronto-1.5526294
10
Raving, i hate to harp on about it but a good framework for understanding the risk factors is in my humble opinion;
V – Ventilation – How well ventilated is the area of contact?
D – Duration – What is the duration of contact? Is it for more than 20-30 minutes?
D – Density – How many persons are in the subject enclosed/unenclosed contact area?
P – Proximity – How close are persons to each other? Are they clustered or evenly distributed?
A – Activity – Are the area occupants talking/singing, coughing, sneezing?
M – Masks – How many persons in the contact area are wearing masks?
This pre-supposes regular handwashing.
20
You are completely correct. Its what ai am emphasizing here. Retirement homes are the endpoint. They indicate the worst case scenarios.The deaths that are reported are indicative of the virus penetration in nursinghomes and the spread of the contagion when it arrives there. This is why governments prioritize the testing of these communities. The death rate is very high for the elderly
Your risk factors are for the risk of getting infected.The risk goes up as the virus gains a stronger representation in the population
When social distancing is relaxed, the infection rate goes up. There is no broad population immunity
00
Just with regard to herd immunity and vaccinations. Reinfections occurred in Wuhan. They are occurring in south Korea. Of 175 recovered covid-19 victims tested for antibodies; one third were found to have almost undetectable levels of antibodies. A few (no specific number given) were found to have none. This makes achieving real herd immunity appear to be questionable, and also raises questions about the period of time for which a vaccination will be effective, assuming one is developed.
If I can re-locate the link about the 175 recovered individuals I will post it.
70
In moderation again, that’s twice today. Nothing defamatory or even unkind, no profanity. there’s something about that pesky filter.
50
“The coronavirus may be “reactivating” in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 51 patients classed as having been cured in South Korea have tested positive again, the CDC said in a briefing on Monday. Rather than being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these people, given they tested positive again shortly after being released from quarantine, said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the Korean CDC.”
90
Which means we need a ‘cure’.
Where is the bloody sheep dip ?
🙂
61
You mean that particular brand of Scotch?
20
My local Drysdale co-op was a purveyor. There were two variants; I don’t recall the other one.
10
Maybe The Pig’s Nose.
11
You have to wonder how they were tested? Either they have the antibodies and have stopped shedding the virus or they have not. Still a very worrying development.
The greatest problem with this virus is the long recovery period. This just makes it worse. One second to catch it. At least four weeks to be rid of it. So Australia has only 100 new cases a day, 3000 a month but a backlog of as many again. Still these are small numbers and absolute quarantine is required, perhaps six weeks rather than three.
71
Plus you have to think we will slowly work out which existing drugs slow or stop the virus’ progress in the first place. It is unbelievable that Boris Johnson received nothing, just oxygen and panadol. Or are they simply keeping quiet about his level of treatment, say plasma with antibodies from survivors, an ancient and proven solution. Otherwise everyone will want it.
70
Ted its a blood disease which is why the mataria drug works. It may look likee a corona virus but it dont act like one which is why it aint the flu
31
One post on a website said he had been given hydroxychloroquine, no mention of zinc or antibiotics. I suppose there is no chance of reliable information.
20
The evidence that hydroxychloroquine is efficacious in the absence of adequate zinc is completely non-existent.
53
Return of infection?
There is a current history of many testing kits not being up to scratch.
At one stage recently it was reported that something like 16 different
forms of tests were trialled and 11 had to be tossed as totally
inadequate for the job. False negatives in particular would be a
disaster. Just what we’re the accuracies of those very early test kits
used in the Asian tiger countries?
40
fb,
Have a look at:
Manli Wang, Ruiyuan Cao, Leike Zhang, Xinglou Yang etal. Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0?fbclid=IwAR2JbbZU_Hl7uLjuOTDhrNnmczzyEFvnIhY8QHv9ghY5fYBvX0IsmnhD07w
A study – not some anti-Trump lefty diatribe.
You might also look at:
Xueting Yao, Fei Ye, Miao Zhang, Cheng Cui et al. In Vitro Antiviral Activity and Projection of Optimized Dosing Design of Hydroxychloroquine for the Treatment of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa237/5801998
Yes, they’re both in vitro studies. However, can you show me a study that demonstrates CHQ doesn’t work in the absence of Zn?
Of course, the Marseilles (larger) trial worked without Zn as I recall.
00
Don’t get me wrong fb, I’m not denigrating Zn.
Clearly, there is good evidence that Zn increases the efficacy of the CHQ treatment.
However, the evidence is pretty clear that CHQ at the right dosage appears to have efficacy in its own right. Even better if combined with Zn.
00
> “It’s easier in 4 bed 2 bath homes with gardens and a low population density”
Yes. Self-evident, but the fact that the grass castle bogan suburbs and the “redneck” regional areas are absolute bulwarks against the spread of C19 is driving the hip urban planners and slick Professors of Town Planning completely bonkers – and their latte is cold too since the baristas are sadly out of work.
One notes that this aspect of “social distance” is not promoted by the globalist, inner-city MSM.
120
Yes, I am surprised that the ACT with high income political handshakers and frequent flyers does not have community spread.
This is very much a disease of the richest suburbs first – and perhaps Canberra was saved because although it has a very high average income — the richest people in Australia live more in Ryde and Toorak and Mosman Park. In the end it may just have been luck that the Aspen returnees didn’t visit the ACT.
Though covid will end up devastating the poor of the world. :- (
71
Despite the fact that Canberra has the highest average wages in the country and some public servants are on million dollar salaries and many on half million dollars salaries, these are not rich people on the scale of Point Piper or Toorak. The interest on the cash of people like Malcolm Turnbull is much more than any public servant earns. I would say wealthy, not rich. And worse, they live in Canberra which is not where any rich person would want to live.
21
Its not so much about wealth and more to do with the glitterati, like Sydney’s northern beaches area is populated by film stars and others in the industry. They may have visited northern Italy during Australia’s smokey bushfire season, out of the frying pan into the fire.
11
The UN, EU Commission and US Dems open-border schtick is done. It’s almost as pitiful a failure as it was entirely predictable. Strong majority population support for building real border barriers is here again already, that will be the only way to control and isolate the spread in states and to reduce further damage and get back to making a viable living once again.
151
Wxcycles, talk about smashing a walnut with a sledgehammer. Do you travel for work? Have you been out of the country in the past year? How about people who have businesses and families in multiple countries? People who go to conferences and have holidays in different countries! Do you understand that for some people that means a short drive or rail trip? Where i live a high percentage of the working population crosses a border every day. You’re saying stop all of this long term rather than manage it sensibly using testing! A little idealistic and utopian don’t you think?
42
That’s your problem for where you live
It’s not our problem here in Oz
Globalisation as you knew it is dead
States and strong borders are the new norm again.
86
Thanks for that Bill in Oz. Charming!
45
Sunni , the world can exist without movement of people across borders. But as you rightly say , it’s a very, very different world.
I don’t see a problem for perennial human settlements, but there are very few of those.
For the record , I have never left the country of my birth.
Look at what you said :-
“. Do you travel for work? Have you been out of the country in the past year? How about people who have businesses and families in multiple countries? People who go to conferences and have holidays in different countries!”
All of that has been decreed non-essential. That may well be correct. It sure as hell looks unsustainable.
Holidays? LOL. You want holidays?
Get real , real soon.
81
There are many versions of “The Good Ship Venus” but only one Captain who certainly likes to express his inner sailor at times.
30
Is it too early for a song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYBoYdc17Tw
31
?
It was a poem, but only for the school playground, not the classroom.
10
I appreciate the ?. A song for every occasion, a la Cacofonix.
11
I do not find this infectious disease very ‘Charming’ at all.
It is vile.
Destroying requires the old fashioned tools of quarantine and isolation
So this vile RNA cannot find more victims to infect.
Open borders mean the free unhindered passage of this virus & it’s disease.
The vast majority of people will not tolerate that at all.
The old order of open borders is dead.
The collapse of airline & cruise ship companies
All around the world, is just a consequence of this new reality
52
You are so wrong.
First problem is if this is a bat virus then there might well be a non-human repository for this vile piece of RNA which will make it endemic. Biggest problem I see is that the millennials don’t have the nursing and traditional medicine skills of the Baby-Boomers and as a consequence are scared of their own shadows on many topics
(It’s the same for Global Warming, the young have no experience of the various scares we have been subjected too, remember the millennium bug that was going to kill us all).
I think the assumption that the virus will become endemic is warranted at this point. We will have to learn to live with it.
32
There is related wild pool in bats caves in China
As EG says
Kill the bloody bats in China
And stop eating the bloody things as well.
Burn the dead bodies.
30
Yes, and death is certain too, but we don’t hold back from keeping it at bay. We wring every last drop of life out of a life, and I see no reason why that should change for a debt-bloated GDP economy that was always going to trip-up and fall on its face one day soon-ish.
Seriously, who here thinks that the Australian and US and EU or Asian economies were just going to just keep skipping along in the bright sunshine for another decade?
No one.
Here’s an unavoidable opportunity to sort a few things out and put together a structure that can weather another 50 years. Call it whatever you want but we jammed on the breaks for the right reasons, and now we can clean house rather than just put up more brittle structures made of debt glass.
60
Bill in Oz, old school quarantine will work and is justified until testing becomes available. The current quarantine is poorly implemented and unnecessarily brutal e.g. the quarantined are not permitted external exercise.
10
How about people who have businesses and families in multiple countries? People who go to conferences and have holidays in different countries!
Sorry, Sunni, but this is nonsense.
Queensland is a Sovereign State (a ‘country’). So is New South Wales, VIC, SA, TAS, and WA. Hundreds of thousands of people cross these Federated ‘country’ borders every day. We may all speak Strayn with a similar accent, and just happen to call these ‘State’ countries of a Commonwealth of Australia, but these have real Sovereign borders with real individual governments, with differing finicky Sovereign Laws.
Right now the borders are closed to free transit. You can still cross some without a 14 day isolation in places, but increasingly you can’t. Just today Queensland imposed a further 14 day quarantine on any returning Queenslanders who have traveled to certain higher risk infected areas of New South Wales.
Australia has been managing free open borders since Australian Federation, 120 years ago. We’re waaay ahead of Europe on this one, and we’ve never had a real civil war over territory so far. So yes, I’ve been outside of the ‘country’ that I live in, and I do have relatives in other ‘countries’ of Australia, and the people in Queensland do work daily within the despotic Mexican-infested tyranny of New South Wales.
And if the laws require a border crossing approval from here, and they do, then that’s something we’ll adjust to, and have. And indeed that’s required right now with $10,000 fines involved if you cross the QLD border without prior approval and a valid reason. So we’re not as out-of-touch with border control issues and free transit as you seem to assume.
Australia is six State ‘countries’, plus two Federal Territories and a whole bunch of external national territories also.
Crikey!
70
Fully agree. I have businesses in other countries including China. The world has changed completely. Long ago. We telecommute and have done so for many years. Now people are working from home. Some may never come back to a central office. The bulk of the people travelling thirty years ago were businessmen. I was on a plane every day. Now it is only for holidays. And that also minimizes the chance of getting ill, something the tourist industry does not want to talk about. The cruise ships are particularly notorious. And whole countries like Egypt and India and Mexico.
So it might be the end of the quick business trip or even the madness of Thanksgiving flights, but it is not a real problem. Just a change. After 911 in the US, whole sections of the community suddenly stopped flying. Airports were silent. I landed at one airport where we were the only visitors that day.
The airport was empty. But business went on. As it will.
Viruses are an old enemy. Now we have new tools, new understanding. This man made virus from the horseshoe bat is a killer, but so are all the others. It is far easier and cheaper and more sensible to stop them at the borders, so borders will return. And you will be checked by Health AND Immigration, not just Immigration. That’s the way it used to be, before we became careless.
I still say that points of entry in Australia care more about fruit fly than viruses. One threatens the apple industry. The other kills thousands of people a year. It’s a choice.
60
Wxcycles, you’ve advertised your position and state of mind very well in your comments.
Australian federal authorities will begin broadscale, randomised and comprehensive testing for Covid-19 as soon as they are able. The testing will be rapid, accurate and able to be carried out by frontline government employees.
The suggestion the above is not probable or perhaps even possible is better justified with logic, not invective and calumny.
00
But COVID deaths are about to surge here in the U.S..
Minnesota Doctor Blasts ‘Ridiculous’ CDC Coronavirus Death Count Guidelines
April 9th, 2020
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=57983
Pay VERY close attention from 3:02:
“Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000; three times as much. Nobody can tell me, after 35 years in the world of medicine, that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”
80
Amazing.
10
And here we were thinking that this mess was driven by a virus when all the time it was $$$$$$$$$$.
51
Who gets paid to fake bodies and coffins?
22
Hi Jo,
John’s comment above wasn’t about the actual death toll but about the treatment reimbursement protocol.
He seems to be suggesting that say a 95 year old person brought in with a severe head cold might be classified as a COVID19 case.
Presumably there is a difference between the US$13,000 allocated to CV19 compared to the head cold treatment.
Same number of coffins: more money in the hospital’s coffers?
No fake bodies, no fake coffins.
KK
40
Just doctors who sign off on fake Cause of Death certs.
Nope. I Don’t buy it.
Too many people would know about it. And, in the back-stabbing, anti-Trump world of USA politics, that’s a gimme.
21
Well said Sam.
I totally agree.
01
Admin, at it again:
https://www.westernjournal.com/cdc-tells-hospitals-list-covid-cause-death-even-just-assuming-contributed/
KK
30
Fake death certificates??
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5wn1qs_bBk
Published on Apr 6, 2020
Dr. Bukacek is a longtime Montana physician with over 30 years’ experience practicing medicine. Signing death certificates is a routine part of her job.
In this brief video, Dr. Bukacek blows the whistle on the way the CDC is instructing physicians to exaggerate COVID 19 deaths on death certificates.
40
KK I’m seeing the mass graves being dug on an island in NewYork and the coffins being stacked in pits , this doesn’t happen in a normal year .
10
I must admit I haven’t been watching TV so I haven’t got the full picture.
New York, Italy and China all have that massive death toll and all three have something in common: high rates of travel, presumably without too much border control on communicable diseases like TB and CV19.
These are a lot of influential factors that haven’t been teased out.
00
Trump needs to bail out the economy and the stock market and the 1%rs … and then get everyone back to work as quickly as possible to bail out trump’s re-election prospect.
Count on the economy booming come the beginning of November
00
And back to work for an even bigger dollar prize… except perhaps for pausing for a further 5 tn bailout for the poor captains of industry and commerce … but then back to work for a swift and profitable recovery
I pity a future democratic president. The cupboard will be bare
00
Came across this yesterday . . .
“The Western Journal has emailed the CDC for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication of this article.
There’s no doubt that this guidance will inflate the numbers, the only question is how drastically”.
https://www.westernjournal.com/cdc-tells-hospitals-list-covid-cause-death-even-just-assuming-contributed/
20
The epicentre in Italy was Prato, took everyone by surprise and mass deaths followed.
Australia was fortunate in having a leader who was already at war with nature: drought, bushfires and then Covid 19. So the gods were smiling on him, by quick action we truly became the lucky country (apologies Donald Horne) and special thanks to Jo for keeping us fully informed.
It’ll all be over in a few weeks, when the football season belatedly kicks off.
40
SLOMO was forced into gear by blogs like Jo’s here.
But yes he did finally pull the finger out.
92
Did he wash it with soap afterwards?
50
Before we hand out the Order of Australia to individuals who first raised concern and pursued the matter, Artificial Intelligence might be our new front line.
‘On January 9 the World Health Organization notified the public of a flu-like outbreak in China: a cluster of pneumonia cases had been reported in Wuhan, possibly from vendors’ exposure to live animals at the Hunan Seafood Market. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had gotten the word out a few days earlier, on January 6. But a Canadian health monitoring platform had beaten them both to the punch, sending word of the outbreak to its customers on December 31.’ Wired
31
“football” ? Whaddarya? 🙂
It looks as though the” loig” boys are keen to share. Hard men those .
So what about the “rewels” ( rhymes with jools) ballerinas? Are they wimps, or what?
21
ScoMo learnt one really good lesson from the bushfires. He needed an efficient mechanism to mobilise the State authorities. The National Cabinet has proven a very effective tool. It appears to work without politicing. All States and Federal government are singing from the same song book albeit with some variation in tune.
ScoMo has proven himself a great leader in responding to the CV19 threat; getting the disparate group of premiers together and aligning their approach.
I admire NY Governor, Cuomo for remaining steadfast under pressure but the State has lost a lot of people to CV19 and that is due to lack of early response. He foreshadowed that NY could be hard hit even before the first CV19 death in the State. His biggest mistake may have been waiting for the Feds action.
Boris will probably be a better leader for his experience. He has garnered considerable sympathy and has experienced first hand the situation in the trenches. I expect that experience will increase his resolve to crush CV19.
50
NY is a special case average person separation in the big apple is 3.7m Microdroplet transmission in winter 27 meters (stat thanks to Jo). Do the math. Until microdroplet transmission mode is extinguished as summer approches NY will continue to worsen (Unless of course herd immunity there beats summer, which is a fair bet)
01
NY has avoided many more deaths by acting when they did; not quite early enough though to avoid mass graves. Death toll has levelled at 800 and we should see a steady decline in daily toll in coming days:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/new-york
40
Interesting reading:
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Also
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
“A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
“Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.
….
“One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.
“In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.
“John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University.
61
The other linked video by Knut Wittkowski was very reassuring: there are still people on the Planet who are able to pull back from the media pandemic and then apply their considerable skills to the analysis.
KK
62
John Ioandonis is a 1st order dingbat incapable of seeing the bleeding obvious. There is absolutely NO need for data of any sort as simple observation reveals all that is needed to know about CV19. You only need to answer one question – why did China build a massive hospital in Wuhan at record pace in January 2020?
If you find it hard to get an answer then a second question – when was the last time a current UK PM spent days in intensive care suffering from seasonal flu?
40
Knut Wittkowski has made so many mistakes I am wondering if he is really a prof of epidemiology. Seriously. Wrong dates. Doesn’t understand viral pnumonia exists. Sigh. More junk to debunk.
53
Mistakes are ok…it’s ok to admit being wrong.
“
10
Exactly. We hope Wittkowski will correct his video.
03
Job done Jo.
http://www2.rockefeller.edu/ccts/rdbs
“Organization:
The Department of Research Design and Biostatistics is headed by the Center’s Biostatistician, Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski[my bolding], who acts as a member of the Advisory Committee for Clinical and Translational Science (ACCTS), reviews protocols for the IRB, and assists investigators with experimental design and statistical analyses. Support is provided at four levels: (1) biostatistics consultation, (2) application development for individual investigators, (3) project assistance with data entry, graphics, and analyses, and (4) data management. The Center’s Research Design and Biostatistics core includes a data manager and an application programmer (biostatistical support for Center investigators) as well as a project manager and a statistical programmer (development of knowledge based Web tools). The Biomedical informatics Core provides additional support, including (1) database design and data management, (2) data safety and security, (3) Web-based education modules, and (4) installation and support of statistical analysis software.”
30
Might as well add this link
From: https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Knut-M.-Wittkowski/3022374
“Publications 76
“h-index 23
“Citations 2,542
“Highly Influential Citations 157
20
Jo,
That is not how I read his bio and what you have insuated is insulting.
20
I phrased badly. I want to convey my surprise that someone who is a prof of epidemiology was unaware of something as basic as viral pnumonia.
I lost respect for the title “Prof” years ago thanks to Lewandowsky.
I don’t doubt that he is telling the truth about his quals, I doubt his competence.
13
Al Gore has some explaining to do. Insider trading last quarter 2019?
GuruFocus.com
February 17, 2020, 5:44 pm
Generation Investment Management, the firm founded by David Blood and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (Trades, Portfolio), disclosed last week that its four new holdings for the fourth quarter of 2019 were Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX), Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), Penumbra Inc. (NYSE:PEN) and CBRE Group Inc. (NYSE:CBRE).
50
Mesoblast is trialling its stem cell technology on patients who have COVID 19 and have reached the ventilator stage. Their technology effectively acts as a major anti inflammatory and manages to enable the lungs to function. The 240 patient trial is in the US and early indications are promising and more definitive results will be available rather quickly over the next couple of months. This would be a game changer as between 50-80 % of those that get to that stage die and if it is successful it solves a few problems. Firstly it would reduce the time that each patient needs a ventilator and secondly the number to die from it will reduce dramatically ( unless of course their other ailments get them first.). That would then mean that virtually everything could get back to normally because way less people will die ( far less than current major global diseases ) and we won’t need to wait the 12-18 months for a vaccine. The hospital systems can return to normal so that everyone else who gets sick or injured can be looked after.
Disclaimer. I own shares in Mesoblast . There was an interesting article about the trials in New York Times and an interview with the CEO on the ABC.
Disclaimer….. I hold shares in Mesoblast.
50
I’m just wondering – what if Australia could, in fact, “eradicate this virus”?
Are you proposing remaining isolated from the rest of the world indefinately? Or until there is a vaccine? That would seem to impose a significant burden on Australians’ freedoms and economic opportunity (which is going to be essential to try to recover from the catastrophic costs of the current response).
51
Mike, I think it would be prudent to stop overseas travel for non urgent purposes. Meetings can be held over the Internet. Keep crews on ships while they are in port. Closing the borders is a good idea to protect Australia.
Holiday at home, visit the GBR, the red centre, Kimberleys etc. a small sacrifice for the good of the country.
30
Mike, presumably you’re aware that outbound tourism counts as an import in the balance of payments.
Thus holidaying at home is a valuable import replacement strategy at this time. Good for the economy.
00
This is the incidence of this flu to date remember its now nearing 5 months = 2.285714285714286e-4 calculated from 1,6 millions cases NOT DEATHS / 7billion worlds population. The number is so small I can’t see the decimal point behind the zeros!. Now 90000 deaths worlwide OVER 5 MONTHS??? lets divide 90000/7billion = 1.285714285714286e-5= mortality rate. So again 170000 mostly old people with diseases die worldwide EVERY DAY! Again as Einstein stated human stupidity is infinite. I’d bet that already the lockdowns per se se are causing more deaths from suicide and hunger in poor countries than the virus which is the cold flu because there are zillch nada cases in the Southern hemisphere or warm tropical subtropical countries. This will go down as the biggest con job by WHO ect in the history of the world fanned by the Internet
65
Eliza, the con job was China. They said it was the flu while they acted like it was the plague and shut 80% of their economy. They played it down while they bought up the PPE. now they are selling it back, or not…
Please, we all understand the basic arithmetic, it’s the exponential curve we are working to stop. Is it so hard to imagine x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2…..?
116
Is Australia issuing bonds to fund the welfare of all those people who have been declared non-essential/redundant?
With the economy in ruins, those bonds will fall due, and default or rollover are the options. If rollover is denied , then who takes possession of Australian sovereignty?
32
The RBA buys bonds that are not taken up by institutions. They just increase the money supply. It is so simple and costs nothing. The new money ends up in private bank deposits.
The US federal reserve ended its bond buying program in December 2019; a little more than a decade from the start of the GFC. I expect they will be back at it in 2020 because all the new money the US needs for their CV19 battle. China will be less inclined to be buying US bonds as the trade imbalance with US should reduce. Then there is the risk of the US using those holdings as leverage for compensation over CV19.
The CV19 battle is not much different to war. During a major war, countries put their economy on hold and the entire economic output is focused on winning. Typically periods of war are also periods of rapid innovation. We are seeing that right now with many people now working from home. Global effort to understand CV19 and develop remedies. Australian companies getting together to produce medical ventilators. Small businesses learning new tricks to make money in different times.
This is the time for the UN but they have failed miserably. They acted with criminal neglect. The medical and research fraternities are acting globally, learning as fast as they can. The UN WHO is a bit player and worse than useless.
50
Jo, one thing that has been mentioned about the U.S. situation is that it hits “people of colour” disproportionately.
No doubt this would relate to the great post you did on vitamin D which brought out a lot of relevant material.
If only government agencies had been on the ball and seen this coming they might have been able to devise a preventative strategy.
Great coverage of this sad moment in history.
KK
110
That’s true. Yes we are working on cures and vaccines, and I have little doubt we would have them eventually. The problem though is when? If not for a long time, say 12 months then we can’t keep the restrictions on for that long. Our economies would collapse and we would have other potentially far more serious problems to deal with. Mass immunity then is the only option. Unless we have a vaccine very soon, hard decisions will need to be made that not many will like. Restrictions will have to be lifted soon. Talks of keeping restrictions on for even 6 months are absurd. If we do then my prediction of a crash and burn scenario will come much sooner than I excepted.
70
So why is there no talk of bolstering immune systems?
Just curious.
53
Follow the money.
31
What do you suggest as boosts to the immune system?
10
Too many to list here. Eat and sleep well, exercise, take certain vitamin supplements, etc.. Then there are a couple of other things suggested many times on this blog site. No one is suggesting they are cures specific to the virus. They aid in boosting the immune system to any disease. It’s just plain common sense but of course that’s not common.
50
Look at the new case data, its NOT geometric, Its largely Arithmetic, broadly linear growth brought about by quarantine. Yes in theory its a geometric progression, but the increase factor is pretty close to 1 in most places (1=linear growth).
12
We are no longer living in BC (before coronavirus)….we are now living in AD (after distancing)
Jo, there is no exponential curve.
34
Infections in South Australia on the th of March : 7
Infections today ( despite all the lockdowns in place ) : 428
That’s ‘frustrated’ Exponential growth rate in infections.
FRUSTRATED because our state government & SLOMO finally locked down the country.
And I’m frustrated that you ignore these facts ES with wild assertions.
20
Fergoodnesssake.
Check Worldometer. The whole world is an exponential curve.
The only places without it are in some form of lockdown. And the falls off the curve only started 12 days after major measures were put in place.
Do we deny there were exponential curves in the early stages in every country where Covid occurs?
70
After approx. 40 days the curve is for cumulative cases is flattening and the curve for cases being treated is decreasing. They are NOT exponential curves.
10
World is exponential.
tooright. For nearly two months I’ve been reporting how countries that lockdown come off the exponential curve.
They WERE exponential curves. After isolation measures they are not.
Have you read anything I’ve written?
11
On that reasoning, every sin curve is “””exponential”””.
10
tooright. Please try to make sense and I’ll reply.
Do you admit the growth is exponential in many countries?
Do you admit that it would be exponential in Western countries if they didn’t all act to slow the spread?
00
No Jo, look closely at that curve, from March 22 it’s showing a LINEAR trend, exponential would have a increasing gradient that graph is almost dead straight.
Cumulative graphs are hard to interpret, look at the new case data and subtract each day from the day before (get deltas) if the differences are increasing then it’s exponential, if the deltas are roughly the same on average it’s linear, if the deltas are decreasing it’s sub linear?
Also you need to consider scale, there are a few exponential countries, are they dominating the curve? What is the dominant trend. The Australian death rate for example is best described as a constant.
00
Eliza,
One correction.
The Flu Incidence and Mortality rate you quote has sixteen significant figures and I suspect that you did this deliberately as you otherwise seem to be a logical thinker.
🙂 Brilliant.
Another correction. You mention the lockdown being associated with suicides in poor countries. Why only those when our fearless leaders in Australia can’t relate to the damage inflicted on citizens after only two weeks.
A few days ago our city had two very visible events possibly associated with the lockdown.
The first a huge fire in a substantial abandoned building and a day later a domestic standoff, presumably armed, surrounded by heavily armed police. And that’s only the visible stuff.
Beware of Politicians who claim to be here to help us.
Keep up the good work.
KK
51
Hello Eliza, we gotta fix this. 🙂
The raw data for the second fraction has only one significant figure in the numerator and denominator. Can’t recall the rules but lets allow 4 sigs in the final result.
Your figures then are:
0.0002286 and 0.00001286
KK
22
Eliza is on to it. This has been a con job from the start.
The CDC in the US is distorting the deaths recorded as C19.
Flu and Pnuemonia death rate has dropped almost to zero.
People are only being tested for C19 if they display the appropriate symptoms.
So, the number of C19 cases is being kept down but deaths attributed to C19 is being pushed up.
This is the URL for a Youtube video https://youtu.be/O4ROuK62s84 relating to this
Something is afoot and we are being lied to, again.
63
Good. Eliza has my appreciation for bringing her perspective to the blog.
🙂
KK
52
And mine, but I hope she can deal with my responses instead of ignoring them and repeating the same trite errors and irrelevant arguments.
[And readers may not understand that Eliza is getting very angry and frustrated in comments which I haven’t published because in the cool light of day, I think she’d prefer I didn’t. The effort of repeating the same answers to no avail is not something I expected. – Jo]
25
Eliza,
Please get an education on the current issue rather then simple cut and paste from your chosen soothe sayer.
This virus renters your blood stream via the lungs and then begins destroying your red blood cells reducing your capacity to carry oxygen to your organs/muscle etc giving you ARDs like symptoms. People with A type blood seem more susceptable than O type it seems.
Q1, Why would a virus invade a red blood cell when it has no repduction capacity
Q2, why is A type blood more susceptable
Q3, why has this virus an E protein exactly like a known bat virus
Q4, how did a bat virus get the S protein from SARS virus thereby elim8nating the need for an intermediate host
Q5, have you bothered to read the published studies from the Wuhan BL4 facilities
Q6 do you have the wherewithall to comprehend the studies significance?
22
And that will still leave the question as to why healthy people with no underlying conditions do not experience ARDS in most cases.
They go home after testing positive , eat well , keep warm -a few days in bed doesn’t hurt anybody, maybe an analgesic or an anti-inflammatory on a couple of days, keep hydrated during any fever , and avoid evening chills . Don’t allow secondary infection to sneak in – an antibiotic maybe just to be on the safe side. All bog standard.
32
No reasoned response from tbe farmer, all bog standard.
Plus the usual gibberish about anti biotics even tnough they have no effect on a virus, exclamation mark, exclemation mark, exclemation mark
13
The actually daily death rate from this flu is 600 persons per day worlwide (90000 deaths/150 days)5 months so far this flu. Compare with 170000 Daily deaths of old mainly sick with respiratory, cancer ect diseases people. OK so now its 170600 per day but me thinks the 600/day actually is part of the 170000 per day my 2 cents worth. cheers and relax.
64
Eliza, it is ‘etc’, not ‘ect’. That is, an abbreviation for ‘etcetera’ which is Latin for ‘and so on’ or ‘and following’. ‘Et cetera’; two words originally.
43
‘ … from this flu …’
Its not influenza and I don’t think its a Chinese hoax, so you are talking apples and pears. The idea is that the medical system not be overwhelmed, not a good look.
21
Are hospitals empty?
‘Hospitals aren’t being overrun’ as US experts claim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgcXWXNFQ9A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIMD1enwd4&t=3s
Citizen reporters go & do what the media won’t!
40
The US Naval ship in New York has tested 150 people.
The news about mass burials on Hart Island near the Bronx is FAKE news. Unclaimed and homeless bodies have been buried on Hart Island for the past 150 years.
But what the heck – all good for MSM (and others) hysteria.
[this was caught in the spam filter.]ED
00
Excellent
00
Fox News contributor: I’m seeing videos on Twitter of empty hospital parking lots
Fox News panel questions how many deaths are really being caused by COVID-19 and whether hospitals are really full
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-contributor-i-am-seeing-videos-twitter-empty-hospital-parking-lots
40
I drove past coles today and the car park was empty which led me to ponder does coles really exist?
20
Now that you mention it there’s a train line across the road but there hasn’t been a train all day .
20
Thank you jo I thought you would ban my posting for going against your grain Im totally against lockdonws the virus must be allowed to immunize people especially young people. In my view this is just normal coronavirus flu although im sure you 100% disagree BTW I have 4 higher degrees in Biology and my journal has published 100’s of virus paper in Veterinary Science so I may have some knowledge cheers and thank you
142
Thanks for sticking with it, from one who lives and works in a cloud of virus , bacteria , fungi , algae , and weirdos like Mycoplasma.
By the way , my vets here believe as you do , and called it from the outset.
83
🙂 🙂 🙂
32
Eliza this is a site for skeptics and there is always an alternative view and opinions on every subject the host puts up for discussion .
You seem to view this virus more as cold statistics rather than the people who have and will die from this pandemic which is in itself more or less preventable but at great cost to the economy .
We can use statistics to put a dollar figure to each death saved or lost because of the virus and do a cost benefit analysis etc but in the end I’m sure the relatives of the dead don’t care much for statistics and it’s too late for the dead to have their opinion counted .
51
Hi Robert,
One of my big concerns is that people have been using dodgy statistics to justify a particular point of view.
Eliza on the other hand has used some very reasonable numbers to make a point that the process of this disease has not been thoroughly examined by those given the job of protecting us.
The consequences of this may be that the wrong direction has been taken in applying the Fix. Other highly qualified epidemiologists agree with her.
I appreciate that you are in a very difficult situation but that’s all the more reason to insist that governments get the correct picture of this tragedy.
KK
42
I think Prof Knut Wittkowski is right on the money and 97% of us are not.
20
I’ll explain soon why he’s made mistakes (is he really an epidemiologist? I mean, I was quite surprised at how careless he is?), uses the wrong assumption, gets the dates wrong, and has no data to back his big claims.
43
Hi Jo,
One of the early markers for me was the ages of the first five or six victims: mostly upper seventies to mid eighties with max of 95.
That feeling of unease has only accelerated with the recent publication in the Australian a couple of days ago of the details of the first 52 or so victims.
For this group the numbers over 75 years were the same.
The thing is that forty or fifty years ago these victims of CV19 would have been gone years earlier.
Just what was the cause of death?
This very obvious statistical irritation, for some, has been used in the “modeling” of the response for the rest of the population for whom it is irrelevant.
Isolate and protect the elderly in a scientific fashion and let the rest of the population work.
Our nation’s economic base is being destroyed by poor thinking.
KK
52
Sorry Kieth, you don’t get it.
If you don’t get the “Just sick and the old” tripe out of your brain, you never will.
The only reason the young survive is that our hospitals are not overloaded and breathing assistance can still be provided to the 40% of patients under 50 who end up in ICU.
Overload our hospitals and 40% of deaths will be healthy people with no “underlying conditions” between the ages of 20 to 50. Got it?
13
Konrad,
I guess this explains why we are constructing a $40M hospital in Canberra adjacent to an EMPTY Canberra hospital.
10
Hi Konraid,
I don’t think I mentioned people under 70?
I believe that 54 Australians have been classified as dying from CV19.
Do you have any figures on the treatment required with respect to the whole infected population with respect to age?
Age/length of stay would be a good start.
KK
01
This a “novel” virus. That means it is new and unknown in humans before. There was no human with developed immunity to this new virus.
It was bleeding obvious when China built a massive hospital in Wuhan during January that it was much more than seasonal flu. End of story.
Your numbers are meaningless. The world has never taken such decisive action to prevent the rapid spread of a virus. That action is now incorporated in any numbers.
The Diamond Princess provides a useful reference for death rates. It had about 3800 passengers and crew. It had 712 CV19 confirmed cases. So far 11 have died and 10 are critical. Assume half of those still critical die, then there are 15 deaths out of 712; 2.1%. Globally that is 150M. Some of the crew may have developed antibodies but I doubt they have been tested for that.
41
Exactly. Amazing the number who jump on the low total numbers that are still rising at a slowing rate, to claim the virus is nothing. Even Andrew Bolt is carrying on like a goose about it, and all,”… the terrible damage, and oh the humanity! …”, blah-blah-blah. The guy’s lost the plot, too many whiskeys with a mate. Just two weeks ago spreading rates of 25% to 35% per day were commonplace in countries with over 5,000 cases. Now almost every one is getting it below 10%, and dropping fairly smartly. It’s just shameless dishonesty to now invoke the resulting numbers and say, “Oh look, all the projections got it wrong!”
33
Speaking of shameless numbers etc etc..
It was just 5 days ago when you suggested the UK would be reporting 10,000+ deaths per day by April 10th !
….how did that inspired moment of exponential modeling (or crystal ball gazing ?) play out ?
10
Rick, could you run those figures again please.
Assume world population is 7.5 billion.
I get 29.5 million deaths.
00
eliza says-
‘the virus must be allowed to immunize people’ –
But is there any evidence that such immunization occurs for this virus?
In fact I think there have been cases of second infections being fatal.
‘just normal coronavirus flu’- Yes there are others but not so many that the word normal is useful.
00
MSM fake news at it again plus Fauci exposed as a fool or an extremist with an agenda:
Coronavirus: Fauci Says Never Shake Hands Again
50
You do know to shake hands with your left , in India , don’t you?
02
“Friday Funny – that crushing #ClimateChange moment, courtesy of #coronavirus”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/friday-funny-that-crushing-climatechange-moment-courtesy-of-coronavirus/
30
And
“CO2 Reaches Record High 418 PPM
Posted on April 10, 2020 by tonyheller
With the world locked down, and aviation and automobile travel at a near standstill, atmospheric CO2 has reached a record high 418 PPM.”
https://realclimatescience.com/2020/04/co2-reaches-record-high-418-ppm/
80
The Easter road toll will be the lowest in about 75 years, since WW2 ended!
20
But the evil coal is still being used to generate power.
40
BTW there should be a /sarc
30
COVID-19 stricken nursing home in Quebec like a ‘concentration camp,’ with dead bodies, feces: source
“There were (two) patients who were dead in their beds,” the source added. “Their deaths had not been recognized. There were patients who had fallen on the floor. There were patients who hadn’t had any basic care for a number of days, diapers that hadn’t been changed for three or four days, excrement that was covering their skin and patients who hadn’t been fed.”
“Their whole second floor was infested with COVID,” the source continued. “It was a hot floor. And there were just two orderlies for the entire (137-bed) institution.”
Nurses discovered that some patients were so dehydrated, their mouths so dry, they were unable to speak at first, the sources said. One patient was triple-diapered with feces seeping out. There are concerns some records on medications may have been falsified.
https://nationalpost.com/news/local-news/public-health-police-find-bodies-feces-at-dorval-seniors-residence-sources/wcm/ceef5d2d-bad8-4d26-8694-621db6e4cdf5/amp?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true
50
Seems we don’t have a scientific “consensus” on whether flattening the curve means leading to herd immunity over a longer period of time, or as Jo says crushing the curve and exterminating this virus.
Did we get herd immunity against SARS or Ebola or did they get exterminated?
Across Australia and NZ the trend lines suggest that by the end of April we may have zero new cases.
There will then be enormous pressure to ease at least some of the restrictions.
As Jo said above: “The states with no sign of community transmission will soon be able to start a staged return to normal business, as long as they are testing widely, and as long as they strictly guard all borders and enforce two week lockdowns. Within weeks they could open up cafes and restaurants, gyms and sporting facilities. Wearing masks would be good insurance. Schools could open after that as long as the tests continue and no community spread is seen.”
Governments should reject the catastrophic modelling of their medical advisers (remember 50,000 deaths?) and talk of 6 months of isolation, and implement a balanced return to normal life.
20
As far as I can see there are very few commentators who appreciate what crushing means.
Every comment I have seen about flattening includes widening. Sort of slow pulling of the bandage rather than fast. Even the forecast charts show widening along with flattening. This chart is typical of what is used to explain flattening the curve:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2yac4avAX7aT4ubQJcxF7SigKI8=/0x0:1508×841/1320×0/filters:focal(0x0:1508×841):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19874507/flattening_the_curve_2.jpg
Crushing just means it never takes hold so no need for bandages. Like Taiwan – no other action needed than closing borders to Chinese and tracking down the contacts of those with CV19.
50
Rick it still measn closing the borders to those pariah states which allow this virus to survive and spread.
Iran comes to mind along with Sweden, the Netherlands and many third world nations
20
I do not know about Iran. They have reportedly flattened their death rate out to doubling every 3 weeks.. They had help from China. Not sure if that means they are releasing “official” figures or if their figures resemble reality.
http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2020-03/24/content_75850619.htm
China is seen as the good guy in the Middle East and Italy.
00
Some experts, and self-styled experts, focus on one goal: in this case, doing whatever it takes to crush the pandemic. They appear unable to consider the undesirable consequences of the policies they advocate. (Perhaps doctors can be excused owing to their oath.) In any event, it shows why experts should not be making policy decisions – the decision makers must be able to make trade-off decisions. Too many political leaders have been panicked into ‘we must listen to the experts’ mode. This has been another case of ghastly policy responses that are cruelling the futures of everyone under the age of 50, plus their kids and grandkids, without any body of evidence to justify it. It’s like climate change modelling all over again.
73
The only body of evidence needed – China building a massive hospital during January in Wuhan to treat CV19 patients. Test that fact and that is all you need to know about CV19.
The leaders do not need to listen to experts. They simply need to appreciate the bleeding obvious. I bet Boris is now convinced that crushing CV19 is the only sensible objective; a decisive victory is needed.
The economic damage could have been avoided if all countries followed Taiwan’s lead and shut down arrivals from China in early February. Taiwan has modest economic stimulus package to offset lost tourism from China in 2020 while annual growth is projected at 2%.
11
David,
Shooshhhh, you can’t say that here. You’ll get hammered.
KK
00
“But is the growth of the #CoronaVirus pandemic really exponential?”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/but-is-the-growth-of-the-pandemic-really-exponential/
13
NO
12
“Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb
11
That via
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/m-d-case-report-on-hydroxychloroquine/#comment-128223
10
And re imbalances
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/m-d-case-report-on-hydroxychloroquine/#comment-128223
01
Any way you look at it…
… this “social distancing” thing has been a remarkable case of social engineering !
71
Globalism dead?
“Corona World Order”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB00mLArYBQ&feature=youtu.be
12
Nice video.
Global Warming 2.0?
02
While it may seem closing the ACT border would be a good idea, over 20% of medical staff working in the ACT live in the NSW region surrounding the ACT
30
Morning all,
This article reports on the amount of anti-bodies in recovered patients. It sounds to me that the concept of “herd immunity” for this virus is severely challenged.
…
Scientists at odds over study anomaly
Questions over vaccine development and whether people get lasting immunity.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/scientists-at-odds-after-study-finds-coronavirus-antibody-anomaly-20200410-p54iwm.html?btis
…
An extract:
” Some patients who recover from COVID-19 develop very few antibodies, a new early-stage study suggests, raising questions over the development of a vaccine and whether people get lasting immunity.
Nearly a third of 175 patients studied produced low antibody levels. In 10 people, antibody levels were so low they could not be detected. ”
…
Cheers
Dave B
30
Alternatively the explanation may be that fewer people had functioning immune systems than was previously thought.
It is one thing to be ” saved ” ; quite another thing to become immune.
41
Which means our gene pool is slowly but surely being mutating (ie, worsening) thus making us more susceptible to viruses and other diseases. Entropy is a fact of life as well as the non-living world.
12
So we MUST Immediately introduce all th dangerous viruses we can find
To eliminate the genetically weak
And build our generic strength !
Sounds like old fashioned Nazism to me !
33
Typical response from someone who takes things to the extreme that no one really wants and has no relevance to the topic at hand.
33
We used to think like that but then we invented vaccines, but then we invented anti vaxxers who convinced everyone vaccines kill not viruses so now we are back intentionally exposing our children to viruse
40
No moderation??????
30
Perhaps I should have said “Sarc” with my comment above ?
But I thought it was obvious !
Lol !
23
No it wasn’t obvious. Too many make assumptions when posting on blog sites thinking others can read their minds or between the lines. Clearly they can’t. Internet etiquette was established long ago one must be careful when posting a thought, comment or idea. It can easily be taken the wrong way. I discovered that the hard way back in the days even before the Usenet newsgroups were common when I was participating in a variety of FidoNet groups in the 1980’s.
21
Immune systems are so lightly challenged these days that children can have a very serious reaction to eating a peanut.
00
Maybe of interest?
20
Excellent, wonder how long it will take for the penny to drop.
00
From News.com.au this morning :
“A Melbourne hospitality worker has been identified as a COVID-19 super spreader, and is linked to four clusters of the virus in Victoria.
The worker from Melbourne is suspected to be behind dozens of cases at four separate events. He did not develop symptoms himself, fuelling fears the virus is infectious much earlier than previously thought.”
This would not have happened if he was wearing a face mask .
More evidence of dopiness by our official experts.
31
“hospitality worker” = gigolo?
30
Australia has been very lucky. We kept the borders open way too long. We didn’t do adequate screening or testing of arrivals. We let 11,000 young students with low ACE2 receptor count from the hot zone into the country. And we tried to use unsupervised “self quarantine”.
However, although the government acted late, I believe our “luck” is in large part due to many Australians being far smarter than politicians. They were already practicing social distancing and hand washing while politicians were still saying it was safe to attend football games. I know I have been rigorous on hand sanitizing since mid January. As a float organiser for Sydney Mardi grass, I observed crowd numbers around 100,000 less than last year and hand sanitizer was everywhere. People simply weren’t believing clowns like Dr Murphy parroting WHO tripe.
So in addition to our climate, sanitation and housing patterns, I would claim a large percentage of the public being smarter than politicians and establishment media as a contributing factor in our “luck”.
72
Anybody know how global warming is going?
90
Tasmania’s Mt Mawson webcam is showing freshly fallen snow on the ground this morning: VIC and NSW next in the firing line.
Our Southern Alps have had their usual April dusting(s).
If electroverse dot net is to be believed, it’s still snotting down and freezing across vast swathes of the northern hemi.
So, to answer your query: global warming? what global warming!
50
Down , last I heard.
30
What global warming? The last I heard is the alarmists are still blaming people like Trump for not doing anything about it and that it’s now more serious than ever because of the pandemic. It goes to show those alarmists don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
10
March temps are down and CO2 levels are through the roof, both unrelated to the industrial slowdown. This is our big chance to prove CO2 doesn’t cause AGW.
10
Another hundred infected Australians are about to arrive in Australia from a Cruise ship, the Greg Mortimor” anchored off Montevideo in Uruguay for the past 2 weeks.
The Australian government has arranged a charter flight to bring them home. But no one will have any contact with local Uruguayans while this takes place. They will be driven straight from the ship to plane on the tarmac and not go though the terminal.
That’s what South Americans think of this virus. They don’t want it and will take the necessary measures to stop it and destroy it.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1256930/virus-infected-australian-cruise-ship-arrives-at-montevideo-port
51
Having hammered the curve, I believe that with intelligent planning, Australia could end broad restrictions and get back to business far swifter than the government is currently suggesting. (Such planning obviously wouldn’t involve Dr Murphy, who I’m sure needs to “spend more time with his family”).
The first step is better testing. The key here will be sewage testing. This will find if a suburb has infectious persons even before they notice symptoms. Most infected persons have a large viral load in the gastrointestinal tract even before the virus is detectable in their respiratory tract.
This testing will allow temporary suburb lockdowns and targeted testing of residents with thorough blood, urine, stool and respitory swab NAT. Early detection means greater efficacy for zinc and Hydroxychloroquine.
The next step would be dedicated WuFlu isolation treatment facilities in each state. With early detection and zinc + HCQ, CPAP ventilation and oxygen would be all most patients need. Existing hospitals should be for other medical problems as their cleaning of sanitary facilities is not adequate. (No UV lights that automatically come on when bathroom is unoccupied, bed facilities not designed for VHP sterilization etc.)
The third step is to open our borders. But this requires adequate testing and screening of all arrivals, something we never came close to. 14 day quarantine is impractical, but 24 hours delay in dedicated testing hotels could work.
The trick to making the “dance” after the “hammer” less disruptive is to eliminate that two week asymptomatic infectious period from the equation.
60
All sound recommendations. Let’s see if any are taken seriously both here and by our politicians.
20
How long can the virus last in a sewer though? Could produce a lot of false positives.
31
Now that is a valid and sensible question.
The US is planning sewage testing as part of their program to end lockdown. (With MiniMal at the helm, Australia is still behind the curve).
The testing is sensitive, able to pick up 1 in 100,000. But what of eddies, pockets and delayed flows?
Well, I’m on the design and engineering side, so sod the “medical professionals ” like Dr let-them-die Murphy. Before we test a suburb, we purge from the high ground. Fresh water? Sea Water? Irrelivent! Flush then test. Think engineering. Purge that Dr Brendan Murphy thinking from your mind!! Dr Furphy is the mind killer!
22
I was thinking along the lines of flushing sewers with an antiviral fog plus a lower volume of fluid flush of bleach and water. Saltwater could be used in larger coastal cities to save water in the dams.
11
Has there been any connection with 5G and corona?
No vaccines exist that protect people against infections by coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, or the ones that cause SARS and MERS. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc,
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200407072712.htm
The 5 GHz wavelength, what tests have been done to prove the safety of the 5 GHz on the human body.
Using the scientific method to rule out 5G as a possible cause of the current lung problems some people are having.
Millimeter waves, also known as extremely high frequency (EHF), is a band of radio frequencies that is well suited for 5G networks. Compared to the frequencies below 5 GHz previously used by mobile devices, millimeter wave technology allows transmission on frequencies between 30 GHz and 300 GHz. These frequencies are called millimeter waves because they have wavelengths between 1 mm and 10 mm, while the wavelengths of the radio waves currently used by smartphones are mostly several dozen centimeters.
https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/understanding-how-millimeter-waves-power-the-5g-network_593839
26
And yet crackpottery like this is not moderated?
Kevin yiu are bombarded by electromagnetic energy every day from the sun and yet people look to 5G for answers?
70
“electromagnetic energy ” is safe?
The tumors “primarily are in the frontal and temporal lobe areas, by your ear and forehead,” which raises the cell phone suspicion, he said.
The incidence rate of aggressive malignant brain tumors in England has more than doubled in recent decades, and a new study questions what could be driving that rise.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/02/health/brain-tumors-cell-phones-study/index.html
On Wednesday, a Turin, Italy court of appeals agreed with a 2017 lower court ruling stating that excessive mobile phone usage causes brain tumors.
https://www.newsweek.com/mobile-phones-cause-head-tumors-court-rules-despite-overwhelming-contradictory-scientific-evidence-1482438
Senior scientist Dr John Bucher at the National Toxicology Programme in Durham, North Carolina:
‘Clear evidence’ mobile phones ARE linked to cancer, landmark study finds.
EXPOSURE to mobile phones could trigger cancer in the heart, brain and adrenal gland, scientists have warned.
There is now “clear evidence” that exposure to radiation from mobile phones causes the disease, a landmark new study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found.
The finding was the result of a $30m (£23m)10 year study to assess the health effects in animals exposed to radio frequency radiation from 2G and 3G phones.
00
An article by (Shey) Hakusui, President, Harmonix Corporatiion
https://www.rfglobalnet.com/doc/fixed-wireless-communications-at-60ghz-unique-0001
“Figure 1 illustrates the atmospheric absorption for millimeter wave frequencies.
At the millimeter wave frequency of 60GHz, the absorption is very high, with 98 percent of the transmitted energy absorbed by atmospheric oxygen. While oxygen absorption at 60GHz severely limits range, it also eliminates interference between same frequency terminals”.
He doesn’t suggest that 5G operating at this frequency causes health problems. Others have thought it would be sensible to carry out independent studies to determine whether or not they do or not.
01
Joseph,
There are oxygen molecules between you and the 5g antenna so what point is shey trying to make, bottom line people read too much rubbish on social media
20
Crakar,
Looks like I didn’t get it down clearly enough, sorry. Shey isn’t trying to make the point. If you had read the article that would be clear. It was me, I was trying to make the point. There have been people saying that some research should be done to determine whether or not there is an effect, from 5G at 60ghz, that might be contributing to what this doctor is describing he’s witnessing when treating COVID patients in the NYC ICU.
The video is only a few minutes long. Worth a look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9GYTc53r2o
00
Aaargh shiver me timber,
Happy Easter Joni Lass. Have sent to you 20 doublooms for Chokelatte.
Yer a treasure lass, a welcome site in me one lone eye.
[Tank ‘er muchly. :- ) -Jo]
50
Above 250 active cases and above 2.5% died:
% Died | Country | Active cases | % New v Active
14.54 … Algeria … 1,100 … 8.6
12.77 … Italy … 98,273 … 4.0
12.15 … UK … 64,456 … 13.5 (Near to 14% again, what a rubbish effort the UK is putting up!)
11.32 … Belgium … 18,080 … 9.3
10.87 … Netherlands … 20,336 … 6.6
10.57 … France … 86,740 … 8.2
10.16 … Spain … 86,524 … 5.8
9.88 … San Marino … 260 … 4.2
8.98 … Sweden … 8,434 … 6.5
8.71 … Indonesia … 2,924 … 7.5
7.53 … Egypt … 1,275 … 7.5
7.39 … Morocco … 1,219 … 6.1
6.47 … Hungary … 1,001 … 21.0
6.37 … Bangladesh … 364 … 25.8
6.21 … Iran … 28,495 … 6.9
6.02 … Honduras … 352 … 11.1
5.80 … Burkina Faso … 273 … 1.8
5.64 … Mexico … 2,614 … 9.9
5.47 … Iraq … 659 … 7.1
5.40 … Brazil … 18,548 … 8.9
5.27 … Philippines … 3,834 … 3.1
4.94 … Romania … 4,468 … 5.9
4.81 … Dominican Rep … 2,396 … 11.3
4.57 … Greece … 1,650 … 3.4
4.50 … N Macedonia … 638 … 7.5
4.33 … Andorra … 504 … 3.6
4.24 … Denmark … 3,799 … 4.8
4.15 … Argentina … 1,518 … 5.3
4.15 … Ecuador … 6,496 … 33.8 (S. America and Central America are doing poorly)
4.08 … Switzerland … 12,449 … 4.0
4.07 … China … 1,116 … 0.0
4.00 … Bosnia Herz … 736 … 5.8
3.94 … Bulgaria … 556 … 3.1
3.88 … Slovenia … 978 … 3.7
3.73 … USA … 456,091 … 7.3 (7.67% yesterday)
3.73 … Tunisia … 621 … 4.5
3.55 … Ireland … 7,777 … 19.5 (why is this so high?)
3.28 … Lebanon … 513 … 5.3
3.28 … India … 6,577 … 13.3 (doing much better)
3.23 … Colombia … 2,196 … 11.4
3.13 … Ukraine … 2,073 … 15.0
3.04 … Poland … 5,456 … 7.0
2.88 … Afghanistan … 474 … 7.8
2.87 … Peru … 4,159 … 15.4
2.83 … Mauritius … 286 … 1.4
2.81 … Portugal … 14,804 … 10.2 (Portugal continues to struggle to sufficiently isolate people)
2.66 … Cuba … 498 … 9.8
2.57 … Canada … 15,566 … 8.9 (And why is Canada struggling still? Truedough knows how to close the border, right?)
2.51 … Niger … 386 … 7.3
Australia dropped from 3.2% to 2.8% rise in new cases today. Serious/critical dropped from 81 to 74, no new recoveries were published for the 10th and 11th of April yet.
Active 3,043
Recovered 3,114
61
WXcycles, I can’t see how these longwinded death rate statistical posts are useful without randomised, broadscale testing to provide the raw data. If you are going to post this quantitative information, provide a link to the qualitative testing eligibility criteria for each data sample. Without this you’re effectively sampling those tested on the basis of undisclosed criteria versus those who died/are active.
The % New vs Active figures surely don’t account for those asymptomatics who don’t present for testing either.
Proper research from Streeck in Germany, with meaningful statistics indicate a CFR of closer .37% with approximately 15% infected/post-infection. If this information is correct, much of the concern whilst perhaps justified in the past, is now looking decidedly less justified.
10
Why is my comment at 21.5 in moderation?
40
Bjorn Lomborg comments on Covid-19 and the manic social hostage response.
20
Wny are all my comments in moderation? Perhaps i pissed a mod off thats ok after all these years it is about time i commented somewhere else. Most comments made here are now so ludicrous to make the website ineffectual
Goid bte and good luck
34
Wny are all my comments in moderation? Perhaps i pissed a mod off thats ok after all these years it is about time i commented somewhere else. Most comments made here are now so ludicrous to make the website ineffectual
Goid bye and good luck
32
I find moderation on this blog site more draconian than most. Please don’t go away. Keep trying to tell us what you think. Free speech is worth fighting for.
30
“Boris is out of intensive care ”
Great news, but what medication was he on, will this be published ?
40
Well , I hope that it was his preferred medication. Goodness me yes.
It may have been theatre 🙂
00
A point about the ‘curves’ as in this site. The guidelines underneath are to indicate not a a line to follow but a slope. You want zero slope, infinite time to double and Australia is nearly there, second in fact from what I can see of countries bigger than a tiny island. Comparable to Norway and Sweden, our slope is zero and Sweden is at doubling every 5 days.
The exponential curve is a rocket, of the sort Michael Mann made up. e+kt. A log graph gives you y=kt so the slope over time is k. A true exponential is a straight line and Sweden is on one, albeit slower than the US.
I was disappointed yesterday to see our infections jump back over 100 per day. A cell must have appeared and that is often 20 people one you track back from the primary carrier. People get really sick two weeks after infection by which time they have given it to 20 family and friends and strangers. So we can expect jumps like this, but hopefully we head back towards zero today. The Easter get away may distribute it to country areas though, starting more cells.
After this the area to watch is that of health workers and the clearly infected. The only way it gets into aged care homes is with children who break the rules. That is almost unbelievable. What sort of caring it that?
And then when our cases drop to single digits, we need to plan to free the people for work, but first in regions only. And avoid public transport. I am surprised few people use cheap disposable gloves though.
At the airports, we have to test everyone who comes in. Exotic Australia will become the worlds #1 tourist destination. Perhaps if our government spent some money on promoting Australia to Australians, we could keep some of those 1 Million people a month who go overseas at home. And open Ayers Rock for tourists. Otherwise it is just a useless rock, the tip of a mountain. And I doubt the tourists are damaging it by walking on it.
21
You know how there was this Local Govt election in QLD on Sat 28th March? And how Andrew McRae noticed shenanigans going on with QLD’s test data presentation? And now how Jo noticed above that the detailed QLD COVID-19 data was strangely absent from the “Covid19data” pages?
It’s looking a tad fishy.
30
And almost defying logic and morality, an architect of ObamaCare and special adviser to the director-general of the World Health Organization has said living past 75 is ‘too long’.
‘He once wrote a piece titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” In the 2014 Atlantic article, Emanuel made clear that he was serious about his wish to die at 75 and even argued that “living too long is also a loss.”
“It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.
Emanuel posited that “for many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.”
His argument for death at 75 is particularly instructive now that he’s joined 77-year-old Biden’s campaign.
And if Biden is elected, by nearly a decade he will be the oldest President ever elected and two decades older than most.
Advised by a man who thinks bumping off people over 75 would be a real positive, almost necessary. What’s next, the disabled, the poor, gypsies, political opponents, Jews? And when will it change to 65, to retirees, people who are not actively contributing to productivity?
You have to think these apologists for the total failure of WHO do not value human life as most people would. They would be more at home in 1930s Germany or 1920s Russia.
We in Australia have an opportunity to shut our doors to any more new viruses from other countries. It should be our aim, to stop any new virus before it runs loose in our society, not after. And people over 75 are not disposable.
30
And as a political doctor, what must he have thought of Elizabeth Warren (70), Bernie Sanders(78), Joe Biden (77) who were the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination? You get the feeling that the Elites who vote Democrat are the Eloi of North America living off the hard work of the Morlocks, Hillary’s deplorables. And the 75 absolute age limit only applies to the really deplorables who are too old to contribute to productivity to support the lifestyle of Hollywood and Silicon Valley and friends. Like Cher (73), Barbara Streisand (77), Bette Middler (74) as they abuse Donald Trump. Being an elite means not having to worry about medical costs, like facelifts. You could add Mia Farrow (75) and Nancy Sinatra (79). People with the perfect lives of the rich and famous, actors and singers all still hectoring us.
40
As the numbers of members of the public rocket down, the occupational risk takers numbers go up. 19 Qantas staff in NSW have just been reported to have the virus. And increasing numbers of health workers. These are occupational hazards but it take real bravery these days to go to work. Hopefully they are all survivors, more likely if they younger on average than most of the pilots or doctors. And it is to be hoped that these people were identified by routine testing, not by late stage symptoms.
30
What I am noticing often on TV footage of hospital locations involved with this virus, are so many attendants with no form of hair covering. Sure, I can’t say whether the people seen are directly involved with, or even working in a potentially contaminated area; or even where they are located. Further, I have not seen or heard any comment as to whether the aerosol droplets carrying this virus can survive in the hair,and if so, for how long.
There are those with large hair masses either clipped up or hanging, wearing face masks, but not hair coverage. This is a regulated OH&S requirement in the food processing industry at least. One’s hair isn’t necessarily washed every night, and often a shower cap is used to keep the hair dry. Thus, the assumption is, that as well as the potential for hands to be later contaminated when handling the hair, so too might be the pillow when sleeping on it. Hmmm?
40
Pete, i responded to one comment with the word “what” and it is in moderation. Enough…..
10
I understand your frustration but understand that all blog sites have their share of extremists, inducing here.
10
Tbe use of tbe word “What” is extremist lol. But hey its now our blog we dont make the rules and if we dont like them then we go elsewhere
20
I suggest you are tangled with the spam filter.
I’ve been there.
So have others.
Jo may have to search for your comment & release it.
Send an email with the # /// in the blog post to make it easier to find..
11
I’ve learned that if you are already in moderation for using a trigger word , and you start to post about it , then all your posts go to moderation until the auto-filter is reset. It can be hours.
10
You can exercise free speech elsewhere
10
True but giving it up here means free speech here is at a greater risk. Please keep posting even if we disagree.
30
And pete i have another comment in moderation discussing moderation this site is a joke
10
Definitely the spam filter.
It did not like me a short while ago.
I had 8 comments in moderation or just lost.
01
Do not discuss moderation! It’s very naughty.
31
Whatever DA btw you spelt my name wrong!!!!!!! Moderate that
20
Fox News contributor: I’m seeing videos on Twitter of empty hospital parking lots
Fox News panel questions how many deaths are really being caused by COVID-19 and whether hospitals are really full
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-contributor-i-am-seeing-videos-twitter-empty-hospital-parking-lots
Empty Hospitals, has anyone seen these videos?
00
Jo
I think your optimism is misplaced. Misplaced related to the relaxation of restrictions by our governments. I believe we can look to start sensibly reducing restrictions quite quickly and there are many ways we can do this WITHOUT letting the genie out of the bottle. For instance, immediately let elective surgeries begin again. Stop the bans on fishing and diving…etc
But the Dan Andrews and co crowd belong to the ” we had to destroy the economy to save it” theory. China has been reducing restrictions and we should SENSIBLY look to do so as well, but the aforementioned group seem to revel in being more hairy chested in their response to the situation.
The fact is that there will be a huge lot of suicides if we keep a lid on this longer than we have to, and domestic violence is already climbing. These are all victims, but not counted by the stats. A friends dive business will only last 2-3 more weeks in shutdown mode, another friend has been put off by Virgin and I can name many others.
We need to be vigilant particularly over Easter but we need to talk about when we can start to wind things back. At present any discussion is shut down but its a conversation we have to have, and urgently.
50
That’s the on the ground reality not seen by many.
00
It’s amazing the lengths the Democrats will go to just to call Trump names, like m*rderer. His enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquin for example. Here they have joined forces with big Pharma, also out of China.
In the Australian this morning one Wuhan doctor is quoted as saying “we didn’t see any difference between chloroquin and any of the other drugs we used”.
Now this is not the same as saying nothing worked. Or even that chloroquin didn’t work. It is actually a statement that cheap and readily available chloroquin was as good as the best, most expensive drugs they had.
And that human trial two weeks ago in New York announced by Cuomo. Why haven’t we heard about the results? If it had failed, we certainly would have heard.
Or is there a media blackout and Governor black out on news that vindicates Trump’s attempt to give people hope. Or as grandstaning and abusive reporter Acosta said, ‘false hope’.
There seems to be nothing the left of politics will not do to bring down President Trump, the most evil and lethal President in American history, apparently. There is certainly no respect for the office of President if not for the man himself. Amazing. And Obama and Clinto were saints, along with their families. It’s a Hollywood fantasyland in the Democrat party. And Hillary’s getting too old to lock up. Along with Biden.
40
Agree that crushing the curve is excellent
however that flattenned line is going to ‘extinguish ‘ the economies and social life of the world .
This is a no win situation until a cure or remedy is found .
Also geographical and climate data is not yet convincing enough to say all is well in warm climates vs cooler .
I am always the pessimist but hope I am wrong every time .
Please convince me otherwise .
20
No. Everything is in place. It will come back in a day and there is a huge and profitable resupply backlog. People will be working a lot of overtime.
In the 1930s my father used to work as a silversmith. At Christmas and New Year, everyone would get fired. After the pause for holidays, they would all get hired.
We have become complacent in the world of paid leave, in Australian even with a 17 1/2% loading for not working. And the place does not fall apart. Farmers work 7 days a week, 365 days of the year so we have food. Truck drivers work seven days a week too, so you get food. Of course the public servants keep working but as they used to say in Russia, they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.
So it is not the end. Not a single place is damaged. And it will be fine. Without hundreds of thousands of dead people, funerals and a huge loss of skills and family and even investors. A few weeks off is not the end of the world
And remember in Europe, they get 6 weeks off a year and the place still works. Amazing really.
31
I don’t know about George , but I don’t find that convincing.
It certainly will not be the case in Godzone with a good third of its economy (tourism) gone .
And the economic recession only just under way.
But over half the country now on welfare , so that’s a good start.
21
Can you possibly be a little more positive? Tourism is a fickle industry and the Greens and Al Gore and Barack Obama have done their best to drive tourists away from the Great Barrier Reef. Plus 1,000,000 Austrlians go overseas every month, half the entire population every year. Maybe if 50% of those went to the Gold Coast? Or the Great Barrier Reef. Or even New Zealand?
A businessman would not see this as as disaster but a huge opportunity. Too often we have seen tourism as Australians leaving and Chinese arriving. I think the new campaign should be “why the bl**dy hell did you leave?”. Especially with little children.
And finally welfare. We used not to have it. Being paid not to work is welfare. Annual holidays is welfare. Being paid to pretend to work is welfare. But the world goes round. There is no recession, except in the minds of economists who are as good as getting their predictions right as the Climate Alarmists who have been promising us massive sea rises for thirty years.
Frankly, my get rich quick scheme of investment in Venetian Gondalas at the beach in Melbourne is looking a bit silly.
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This is how welfare works. The government gives you money. Money which comes from taxpayers.
You spend the money and the government taxes it every step of the way. 10% just on the first expense. Income taxes, petrol taxes, windmills taxes for electricity, rates, water rates, even tolls or roads built with your money. And it all goes back to the government. And everyone is employed.
The alternative is that everyone is broke. Even the government. In the great depression, my mother said you had to be a teacher or a public servant and Australia had 40% unemployment before WWII. And that’s not even counting the women as they were not supposed to work and take jobs away from men with families.
So there is no depression. Unless someone decides to hide the money under the bed. Because then it becomes worthless.
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Sorry , I should have made clear that Godzone refers to NZ, not OZ.
And yes the government here has gone from a 7 billion surplus to 20 billion deficit in record time – less than a 3 year term.
And yes the public has maxxed out their credit, the dairy farmers have been caught well short, a number of export industries are closed, and our balance of payments just blew out very badly.
So I’m positive alright ; I’m positive that we have a real problem that will take decades to correct, if we ever do.
The NZ economy is more export – oriented than OZ as I’m sure you know.
No , I’m just being realistic.
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Business and governments do not act like personal finances. When you do not have money, you borrow, as long as you can afford the interest. The government funds itself by issuing government bonds.
This was a concept introduced to England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the new Dutch King William and Queen Mary changed England forever. A stock exchange, government bonds and the Bank of England. Suddenly the King did not have to pay the army with booty. And England could afford the world’s best fleet, previously subject to the Dutch. And they carved up Asia with the Dutch East Indies and the East India Company. The Dutch took the incredibly valuable spice market. England took the mercantile market, cotton goods from India. It was the smarter choice.
So Australia carries a massive annual deficit, growing rapidly. We keep upping the limit. America is in the trillions and yet the trillions are flowing into America. Money is a concept and often you never see it. So is debt. Australia, New Zealand and America are fine and this deficit can be managed as long as we have exports which bring in hard currency.
There is no recession and I do not expect one. It is all propped up with borrowed money because we’re worth it. That’s why we are the lucky country. Venezuela though is a disaster area thanks to socialism where the rich are now destitute and there is no power and no food. Zimbabwe too with communism. However democratic Zimbabwe is growing quickly with their diamond resources.
No, it will not take decades to correct it. But socialism will kill the country dead. That’s why neither side of politics in America want Bernie Sanders. Or Jeremy Corbyn. And the EU is just one giant socialist non democratic government, about to be killed off by the Wuhan Virus. Along with the IPCC and WHO.
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Sorry but I am a sole trader and if my clients don’t use me, I get no pay. There are a large number in this situation as casual workers and contractors.
And some friends have been told by the boss that their hours are cut and their pay is similarly cut. Others are laid off and whilst some can draw down any leave, others have little or none to draw off. There will be some assistance from the govt but that does not fully replace wages and comes at large cost to the economy, albeit delayed, but it all has to be repaid at some stage.
The idea that we can all lie around and watch Netflix then go back as though nothing has changed is badly misplaced…very badly misplaced
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https://i.ibb.co/pxTBjv0/Warm-v-Cool-Countries-Percent-Died-Covid-19-29th-March-to-11th-April.png
The hotter countries have spread the virus ~25% faster over the past 13 days. The hotter countries have finally got to case numbers where the totals will rise much faster, with about 12% new cases added each day in the hotter (but cooling) countries.
Wait and see time … nope, crush it time!
If we crush it and use stringent quarantine control on all travelers there won’t be any (already over-touted) second-coming.
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And with our new found technology to identify flu virus in under 5 minutes, stop them all. And all the other nasties. That’s the point of my story on Phylloxera. Hard borders work. And the South Australian wine industry makes 80% of all the wine made Australia and they did nothing about Phylloxera. Prevention and defence are far better and far cheaper than a cure. 80% of the crush. Which is what Wuhan virus needs. Crushing.
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WXcycles, Perhaps you could explain why stringent quarantine control on “travelers” sicwould not include testing?
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A little story from 100 years ago about another disease, phyylloxera. This small insect was killing European vines in Victoria and NSW, attacking the roots.
So the Victorian government decided to intervene and exterminate by destruction. They offered a bounty for grape growers to rip out their root stock. Most did because they calculated that there was more ready cash in destroying the vineyard than in the hard long hours and capital and risk of making wine. Only Rutherglen survived in Victoria and a bit of the Yarra valley. Little else. The great area around Geelong was wiped out and it makes great wine today, resurrected. Others repopulated at the time with Californian root stock known to be resistant to this American disease. Old varieties were grafted onto new root stock.
So an enormous amount of commercial damage was done and really the wine industry did not recover.
However in South Australia they decided on hard borders. Trucks entering were washed. And they kept going to this day, still a Phylloxera exclusion zone. And now have 50% of the wine produced and an amazing 80% of the crush for the whole country.
Borders work better than accommodation and so called herd immunity. Phylloxera is still with us in Victoria, developing new resistant strains all the time.
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I am hesitant to post a link to a Guardian article.
But this one has a very interesting report about how the CCP is treating a Wuhan resident who kept a daily dairy of the lockdown there.
” A giant sword to attack China ” !
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/chinese-writer-fang-fang-faces-online-backlash-wuhan-lockdown-diary
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Sam Vaknin the originator of BC (before coronavirus) and AD (after distancing) We are now in a period of history known as AD 🙂
“COVID-19: WHO Benefits? And Epidemiology Lesson”
18,188 views
•Apr 9, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXWqFUs8c4
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Another 100 people with Corona virus are now coming home from Uruguay, trapped on a cruise boat. Presumably at our expense.
Who would like to staff that plane? Handle those bags? Drive those cars? Greet those people?
And are they blameless? The Ruby Princess arrived in Sydney on 8th March 2020. The Yokahama Diamond Princess saga had been running since 3 February 2020.
The government officially urged people not to go overseas on March 13th. Did they ignore this?
This fly/cruise departed from the tip of Argentina for Antarctica on March 15th.
The Prime Minister legally closed our borders to Cruise ships on March 19th and to all travel on March 24th.
So are these people victims, or are we? Was it a case of you can’t stop me and d*mn the consequences?
This is the greatest problem facing any society, infected people who care nothing for the health and safety of others. It is why we still have that other bat virus, Aids.
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Tde F The Australian has an article about this with contributions from people who are on this boat.
In early March they email Aurora the company which does these cruises about a refund because of the Virus.
They were told that they would get NO REFUND of the $56.000 they had paid.
So they went and got the virus.
I suggest that BANNING the operations of this company in Australia is appropriate.
This is unconscionable conduct !
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TdeF, Who’d want to staff, handle, drive, greet………..? Probably young people at low risk armed with masks and sanitiser. If it were me i’d follow the VDDPAM protocol published in this blog to negate infection.
Seems to me they were entirely justified in travelling given the dates involved. Government advice is provided for the lowest common denominator. The cruise takers got it badly wrong. Hindsight’s 20/20 vision though. Hope the fatality rate is low.
I wonder if they were tested on the boat or diagnosed via another means?
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There is fault on all parties here.
One solution which would have been appropriate for both the passengers, cruise line organisers, and Australians like TdF,… would have been to insist that they all stay on that boat for the next 2-3 months.. ( with the usual exceptions for critical illness etc).. at the expense of the cruise line.
I do not understand anyone who thinks they are “losing money” by not going on a trip previously paid for. The funds are spent either way, the choice is simply …knowing the options and risks, which is the sensible decision ?
As it turns out, they could have saved money by not going, as they will end up paying a lot more for the trip by the time this is resolved…
Passengers have to pay for these “repatriation” flights.
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Very Good Video.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Questionable Death Certificates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfG9nmAnQp4
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Never one to walk away from a belting around the ears.
Qualification. All deaths are sad, particularly for friends and family of the deceased. They are no less sad for deaths of homeless and unwanted people.
Australia had 158,504 deaths in 2016 and in 2018 we had 158,493 deaths (434/day). These are the most recent statistics available.
Since the first death in Australia from Coronavirus, 2 people per day have died. Statistically, that is not even noise.
The number of people who intentionally take their own life is 295/day.
We don’t close down a country to attend to the poor souls committing suicide, SO is it warranted/sensible to close down a country for 2 deaths per day?
The hysterical answer will of course be that if we had not have shut down the country, the statistics due to Coronavirus would be much worse. They would need to be 150X worse to catch up with suicides.
[this was caught in the spam filter.]ED
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Greta is doomed .
Only joking .
Sail boats are too slow and we don’t have enoough 5 star speed boats , so all climate conferences have to be cancelled .
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“Bjorn Lomborg: “Save Lives,” End the Hostage Crisis”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/10/bjorn-lomborg-save-lives-end-the-hostage-crisis/
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