Do 10,000 extra infections matter?
JoNova — cheaper and faster than a Parliamentary Report — said two months ago that it was baffling that the UK locked everyone down, but kept flying in the virus. Now British MP’s are saying the same.
UPDATE: Given Boris Johnson suddenly changed policy on flights from Spain last week, immediately adding a mandatory quarantine, what’s the bet someone told him this report was coming?
No 10’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift quarantine at height of pandemic: MPs’ damning report condemns ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK
David Barett, DailyMail
Delaying quarantine measures at the border was a ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK accelerated the virus spread, a major report by MPs says.
The cross-party inquiry is highly critical of the Government’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift its initial quarantine measures in mid-March, ten days before lockdown.
Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated that up to 10,000 infected people, largely from Spain, France and Italy, imported the virus into the UK.
Viruses can only survive in people temporarily, so to beat a rogue chemical code, we just stop feeding it new bodies. The cheapest, natural gap between networked, gregarious humans is at international borders. Every smaller border partition is harder, more complicated and more expensive. If state borders are a headache, suburban borders are a migraine. And when they fail we have to put a border around every single house.
More flights speeds up the peak… and the death toll.
The sheer size of the UK air traffic is something to behold:
Arrivals by air to the UK totalled 7 million in January, 6.8 million in February and 3.8 million in March before falling to just 112,000 in April, the report says.
Nearly every other nation in the world closed borders. Haiti, Cuba, Nigeria, Eritrea. Pick a country, nearly any country. They almost all closed borders.
A hard border is the first lesson in baby epidemiology classes. But somehow the two greatest nations on Earth both failed to get this right. Which brings me to my Swamp hypothesis — namely that the two oldest, strongest democracies on Earth also have the most mature Swamps. They have the most red tape, the most complex incentives, and the deepest well of conflicts of interest. All of which makes possible, the dumbest decisions.
In this case, the clues suggest it was the 1918 flu model and the quest for herd immunity that led the UK down this deadly path.
The publicly funded Swamp may feel more incentive to help leaders who hand out more public funding.
… 67 million people are living under expensive and strict lockdown conditions, and the thing stopping that from eliminating the virus are the 10,000 or so people who arrive daily without quarantine.
For people who want strong borders, this is the biggest chance to get them since WWII. Where are the sovereign battlers who want border controls?
—————————————————–
- Quarantines work: 12 days after lockdowns, quarantines and isolation, Coronavirus slows. This is text book microbiology.
- Coronavirus can affect brains, may increase stroke risk.
- Solve Vitamin D deficiency first to help beat Coronavirus.
- Coronavirus may be man made. Why did the CCP destroy the evidence?
- Looks like we can extinguish Coronavirus: Australia and NZ tracking to zero.
- Read Crush the Curve — save the economy
In Canada, it is the Province’s that are in charge of the healthcare and they pretty much forced Trudeau to close the boarders and flights. We had no to very little PPE as we were all in globalization and relied heavily on China and the US. Our Province’s very quickly switch over to produce our own with everyone locked down and waiting for massive shipments from China as the US turned back shipments from its boarders.
They now want to experiment with school openings with different health and distance parameters as before this Pandemic, our schools were packed with kids. Some wearing masks and some not. It really is a disaster waiting to happen as the spending is really historical on more staff and health products. Many parents are holding back.
Rather than try to change the school system, our government is all in on a wonder cure.
Trudeau gave billions for Pandemic research in many research institutions and has signed deals with the 2 largest drug corporations. Wasting money is now a normal thing with our governments.
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Governments are clueless as to what to do. The so called experts are not clueless but their are major differences of opinion about what to do and how. Hence, we are in a huge mess. We are are walking partially blind on a field with mines and deep sink holes, and they are getting more dense. Governments also think they can spend their way out of this current slump, just like the recent ones (eg, GFC). What happens when we have another pandemic or some other world-wide disaster? Like a ship being fired upon it will eventually sink. The only solution is a complete reset, which necessitates a depression to wash out the c0rrupt practices, bad policies and the like out of the system, just as all the other depressions in the past. The emission reduction nonsense is just one example of many. The problem this time around is it is well overdue, and probably should have happened a couple of decades ago but the Western governments with the help of the central banks have been postponing it. They are doing it again and so far it’s working. It can’t go on forever though. The pied piper has to be paid at some stage.
101
PeterS you are right that governments are clueless. But that reflects the state of knowledge, apart from fast border closing. It would be better if government decisions reflected low knowledge, what they do however is to act -decisive, take tough decisions, they say, and use fake data to prove that outcomes would have been worse. It would be better if governments used a dart board, but politicians love throwing weight around, and unfortunately, some of the public lap it up.
10
Same in the Commonwealth of Australia, Federation of States.
30
globalisation doesn’t stop anyone from keeping an emergency stockpile of ppe
44
“As the US turned back shipments….”. An American company made PPE in China for the American market. However when China was raiding every country it could for PPE, it took over the American company and ordered a ship carrying PPE sailing toward the US to turn around and return to port.
America then had it’s own PPE problems.
We could assume this was a deliberate act to infect everyone or we could assume the Chinese carried out these raids as their own manufactured equipment was rubbish as the Italians, British and Spanish found out when they paid good money for it
Andrew Forrest bought a few million dollars worth for Australia but I believe it is packed away in some warehouse . Our WA hospitals didn’t want it.
Failing to procure Chinese PPE was a blessing in disguise for Canada.
70
International flights in and out of Canada were restricted to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, but there were still daily flights between Canada and mainland China. Border with the U.S. remains closed except for exceptional cases.
10
Notice the peak in the lower red area marked “or crush the curve” occurs earlier than the two higher peaks. Reducing the average growth and spread to below r of 1 does not “flatten and lengthen” the curve. It shortens and peaks earlier. The “flatten the curve” mantra was wrong and led many into confusion thinking mistakenly that letting it rip would end it sooner. No it prolongs things.
Notice how Sweden’s “Daily New Cases” is increasing again. Don’t be fooled by the chart of “Daily Deaths” it is slow to update and also just passing a summer minimum though delayed. Soon to rise again also.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
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Ok, I ignored the peak in mortality as directed and I can see a slight increase in the number of positive tests.
My question is did a truck load of test kits arrive or was there a change in the testing regime?
81
More like a low rate of testing hiding an even worse problem. Can you provide evidence of increased testing? You were not directed to ignore like the three monkeys but instead to pay attention to the slow updating and delays. The opposite of not thinking.
Rather than looking for excuses try providing evidence that Sweden has addressed its poor testing rate problem.
27
On the up side….its a voluntary DNA sampling of the population…imagine what you could fo with that info DNA profile of an entire population…make DNA targetted drugs ..or….
Amazing how people have been deliberately scared into not only giving up thier freedoms for something thats a bit nastier than a flu, but now they are handing over thier DNA. I shake my head….the stupidity is apalling.
Nuff said.
164
OriginalSteve, it’s a lot worse than that. More and more people are welcoming such draconian measures. Look at the example of micro chipping people. It’s becoming popular in Sweden. I suspect the same pattern will be seen elsewhere. Stupid is as stupid does.
171
So hypothetically, just say there was a real pandemic with a death rate like 0.26% — which means potential deaths in Australia of up to 65,000 people. Plus an unknown number with permanent lung/heart damage. (Remember the study that shows 78% of mild moderate cases show heart damage on MRI? That’s theoretically “a lot” as in millions of people.)
If we can reduce thousands of deaths/morbidity by RNA testing, should we do it? Remember, everyone is going to die someday. 😉
Is there any evidence the government is capable of keeping all the RNA tests and conducting DNA tests on them? Any hints of storage programs? Any whistleblowers?
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Why are we not pushing the 10 min paper test? Cost is one hundredth of the PCR test, results immediate, and will spot anyone that will be in the transmissible shedding phase. We could literally test workers, school children etc daily and get back to work and school thus avoiding economic catastrophe.
And yet everyone harps on about the gold standard test which often takes days for a result when case loads are high, and gives too many positives for people who are on the long tail of recovery and no longer a threat for transmission.
See Dr Mina arguing the case here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seIAs-73G8
It’s almost as if people want the high non-transmissible case stats just to be able to take draconian measures to FUBAR the western economies. Notice also the emphasis on case numbers rather than active cases? I don’t need to know there were a few hundred in WA half a year ago. That is entirely irrelevant today, but still that is teh reported stats in order to maximise angst.
Also, isn’t it a tad early to call permanent damage to hearts and lungs after a few weeks to months of study? I haven’t read into it, but how is it determined that such damage is permanent?
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Thanks Bulldust,
there’s been too much histrionics in this analysis.
The facts are always hidden under a pile of ” data” of indeterminate reliability.
KK
20
No worries KK. I have to admit I was on the shut it down hard train at the start, and it seemed to work for Australia, but now we realise there is no dodging the bug, so we need a better strategy before there isn’t much of an economy left to save. We are in the “we had to burn the village to save it” scenario, and I don’t buy it.
We need the quick testing, quarantine the shedders, isolate the weak (as necessary) and let the healthy get back to school & work. Mortality rates with the young are negligible. With the ‘horrific’ outbreak in VIC we still haven’t lost the average number of deaths in WA for a week (40 per day for those that missed it, from the usual causes in a normal year), for all of Australia to this CCP virus.
We are literally punishing the young right now (I doubt they will show us the overdose/suicide rates any time soon) for something that largely affects the elderly.
Another stat that is starting to cheese me off is “excess deaths.” I wonder how many are caused by “elective surgeries” that are being prevented…
70
Another good summarisation.
We need solid national border screening.
We need immediate real quarantine for active cases, not the token high rise incubators we currently use.
Those left, the CV19 free should be at work, school or play immediately.
Of course, this is all a pipe dream because our “leaders” couldn’t care less.
KK
30
Bulldust, have you got any links to that particular instant paper test? We’d need to know sensitivity/ false neg /false pos. That sort of thing. Some quick tests I’ve read of only have an 87% success rate. And bear in mind that no RNA test will work in the first few days of incubation. We need numbers.
But yes, in our wildest dreams we’d know who had it and who didn’t.
Regarding “Permanent damage” — obviously we won’t know what the rates of 2 or 5 year recovery are for 2 to 5 years. However, the doctors who raised concerns are used to treating people with similar levels of damage seen in Troponin and MRI from heart attacks. Recovery from Covid damage may be better, or it may be worse.
Regarding Excess Deaths: it is notable that they only occurred in county’s and cities which also had an excess of covid deaths, and the peaks I’ve seen matched the timing of the covid peaks. If they were due to fear of hospitals we’d expect the peak to occur in other towns as well and not necessarily with the exact same timing. Furthermore in other counties with lockdowns but not an excessive covid death rate, the mortality rates were below normal levels ~ 95% of normal.
32
Evening Jo,
I think this Medcram episode, #98, answers your questions about the paper tests. 17 minutes, and well worth watching. For everyone, in my view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Sv_pS8MgQ&feature=youtu.be
Cheers
Dave B
10
References would be listed in the MedCram video KK linked. There are links in the description as well. I’d say this is one of the key papers:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.20136309v2
00
Another summary video by Dr Mina. There is a push to get the politicians to recognise the significance of the paper testing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ&t=0s
If Trump promotes it, however, the MSM response will be predictable as clockwork. They will say it is not as sensitive and that he wants to downplay the size of the case load. Never mind that a large chunk of the positive cases are no threat to others at all.
20
I have had an ongoing cold or some virus for weeks, while not being particularly sick from it. I haven’t had tests, but we work from home and do most of our stuff online, so no need to bother people or infect them.
We do go for a walk and a swim at the beach early each morning, because salt water is the great cure for all sorts of conditions.
30
Hi Maree,
I’ve had something unusual for the last 3 weeks and am having a short daily walk from Bar Beach car park to Dixon park and back. Half an hour.
Can’t face that cold water.
🙂
20
I wanted to say I have piles to get on this here bus, but unfortunately it is much worse, I am struggling with regulation overload. It used to be Gypsies blamed for bringing the flu, then ‘Showies’ now it is just someone without a mask from Victoria.
I hope to God the half -witted squad throw throw Trump out and he lands here in Australia. We could all get back to being productive human beings focused on something other than ourselves.
21
Why does everyone criticize Sweden. Euromomo has Swedens all cause mortality lower than many countries with similar demographics. https://www.corona-stocks.com/destroying-western-medias-swedish-public-health-disaster-narrative-in-two-simple-charts/ . https://www.euromomo.eu/ . Portugal looks like having a post lockdown surge.
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[Snipped on request of OriginalSteve – Jo]
30
Sweden has one of the highest per-capita rates of confirmed cases in Europe, the seventh-highest number of Covid deaths per capita in Europe, closing in fast on Italy for sixth place, and one of the lowest rates of testing in Europe. Public Health authorities (FHM) in Sweden have been downplaying the use of PPE, even in health- and elder care.
My sister-in-law is a nurse at a moderately large regional hospital in Sweden and has had to work at times in the ICU with COVID patients. There is a shortage of some critical staff now, with no less than three of the hospital’s anaesthetists positive for COVID-19.
11
Here we go again Siliggy. You draw attention to a graphic, a graphic that could be cherry picked to say anything you like.
I labour a simple statistical point. If you are looking for a trend in positive results you will need to at the very least present these as a proportion of the tests taken. Let us agree to eliminate this simple factor that would influence the result.
Then if there is some trend you may like to look at other factors. Were they able to enter Malmo to test after a lathe in the Grenade factory broke down? Is the test a false positive to throat irritation caused by vomiting. Something as simple as the Ferries to Denmark resuming service could bring a positive result increase. Ever heard the expression ‘as pissed as a Swede in Denmark’. Many Aussies present as sick in Bali for the same reason.
I’ll wait for you to present the trend noting any factors that may affect that perceived trend. In the meantime you may like to plot this as I have from when Washington State was declared an epicentre. Still averaging %5 positive of those presenting with Flu like Symptoms. Sorry I can not point you to COVID19 for previous years or before February as nobody appeared to be testing.
40
” I can see a slight increase in the number of positive tests.” Says Broadie.
How exactly can you see it? Hallucinogenics?
24
Straight from the Silly Gees Gees mouth
22
” However, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell pointed out that the increase among young adults is still cause for concern.”
“It’s a bad sign, because this is how it started once upon a time and there is a clear risk that it starts to spread in that group but then spreads to other groups that could get significantly more ill,” he told the bi-weekly joint press conference held by Swedish health authorities.”
https://www.thelocal.se/20200806/its-a-bad-sign-sweden-sees-renewed-rise-in-infections-among-young-adults
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As an Englishman, and retired engineer, I must confess that my jaw has been damaged by the number of times it has hit the floor after listening to policy decisions from the Mother of all Parliaments. “Lockdown – but keep the airports open”. “Masks not required – masks mandated, with possibly gloves and goggles to follow”. “If schools open, we’ll have to close the pubs”. “May have to keep over-50s at home because second wave”. WTF?
There was a cartoon recently depicting a government minister throwing darts at a dartboard, festooned with various ‘actions’. Judging by the gibberish emanating from ‘our leaders’, this is probably their modus operandi. The desire to avoid blame when the dust settles is so palpable, I can smell it.
PS The over 50’s scenario would also affect Boris 😎
PPS In the Netherlands, there is no mask mandate and very few are worn. What do they know that our shower don’t?
211
Well, sweden appears to have admitted it bungled handling aged care quarantine at the start of the covid mess, but with no lockdown in place , thier infections are constantly trending down and they still have an economy. This good outcome of course upsets the MSM and thier globalist handlers which is partly the reason the press pillors Sweden.
They guy who masterminded it all has worked with Ebola, so knew what he was doing.
Clearly, places like the failing state of Victoria here, is basically collapsing internally and people are seething angry at no use of an alternative like HCQ and heavy handed nazi style lockdown edicts….people have had enough.
I had a conversation with my sister who is high up in private industry and she concurred lockdowns are going to kill all economic activity in Victoria and likely kick off a Sovereign debt problem as well. It could become our Zimbabwe. Given there may be no vaccibe for 12 months, the current handling of the problem is wrong headed and not workjbg, and your population is broke and seething angry and wont take mych more of it.
Dangerous Dan has appears to have pursued the globalist agenda of trying to make a population desperate and cry out for a vaccine, but its backfired on them. Times up. Tine to embrace the swedish model, or use HCQ….or both.
212
To complete the picture, PM Morrison will come to the rescue yet again and hand out more money. It’s leading to a death spiral for the economy of the whole nation, not just Victoria. The blind leading the blind. What else does one expect when they are all proven to be clueless about power generation, all for the sake of reducing our emissions endlessly to the point of crashing what’s left of our industries and jobs. One could be excused wondering if it’s all a deliberate plan to crash and burn our economy but I don’t give them that much intelligence or credit. I put it all down to stupidity, pure and simple.
100
The advantage that some nation states have is they don’t have to contend with federation. Mistakes were made that need punishment- heads must roll(figurative) and blame apportioned. People in positions of responsibility and power have failed. As for divergent strategies that is a failure at all levels of the polity. Now we have the Premier of QLD breast-beating before an election in order to save her clutch from infection. Save us! Save us all! They cry.
30
Could you give China that credit?
They sell us engineering monstrosities for wind and solar that are the complete antithesis of every item they are supposed to tick on the environmental list for “saving the planet”.
They are laughing at us for having been a hard working, decent, law abiding nation because they are now in the process of siphoning off all the value we have added to our home: oops, not so, their home.
They’ll no doubt up the rent next year.
Australia, the Laughing Stock of the CCP, the WHO and the IPCCCCC.
KK
110
Yes China would be laughing at us. I suspected they knew the West was on a decline from within decades ago and planned their affairs accordingly. Russia would have come to similar realisation after the Soviet regime collapsed and Putin came to power. In fact I would not be surprised if the two colluded in some way to sketch out a grand plan decades ago when Putin first visited China.
60
Sure China is laughing. They know more about the nature of the likely leaked bioweapon than any other nation.
They told us “it’s the flu” and “it’s treatable” and then shut down 80% of their own economy for a month to stop it spreading. And with every new outbreak they lockdown more people as fast as they can.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8425311/China-reimposes-travel-restrictions-amid-fresh-outbreak.html
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/chinese-city-of-harbin-goes-into-lockdown-as-new-coronavirus-clusters-emerge/news-story/dfe6b292820844f7553525806e49e59a
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China has a different view of the world than we do. Trump tried to make peace with them and North Korea. They virtually spat at his face. It goes to show China doesn’t trust the West, and to a certain extent I don’t blame them. The problem though is China is likely to have exaggerated mistrusts towards the West to the point it will make matters worse eventually. It’s another death spiral for the world. Perhaps it’s worse than that and the CCP have evil intentions much like Hitler did but it’s too early to tell if that’s the case. Time will tell. Their actions over HK is a concern. Let’s wee what they do with Taiwan. That could be the litmus test.
50
Both sides want to avoid a hot war over Taiwan and the South China Sea. The US is very firm with Beijing, we want to see your Covid data.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3096386/china-us-defence-chiefs-discuss-escalating-risks-over-taiwan-south-china
‘ … the CCP have evil intentions much like Hitler …’
Xi is not a WW2 dictator and Beijing has no intention of taking over the world by force. They are pretty hard on their own people, but that has nothing to do with us.
06
That’s what they initially said about Hitler. In fact much of the British Royalty liked him before his true colours were displayed.
50
Imagine if you came out of the Bush after six months with no communication?
40
Thanks for that common sense comment.
Essentially the CV19 crisis has been caused by the overpaid, underqualifed and grasping politicians and public servants hired to provide expert guidance.
Why Britain’s borders, U.S. borders and Australian borders were not sealed is a financial story waiting to be told.
Money governs everything.
We had a cruise ship offloading CV19 infected passengers because “someone” “misread” the passenger illness sheet.
It was an honest mistake, honest, they really did mistake the CV19 diagnosis for the flu. No money was involved, honest, cross my heart and hope to die.
And none of those involved are in gaol?
Isn’t democracy great.
KK
110
Yes democracy is great and far better than the alternative but thus far it hasn’t been exercised properly by the voters. So in the end it makes little difference whether we have a democracy or a dictatorship, especially if voters keep repeating the same voting pattern.
70
Peter, apparently the leaders who stop the virus have soaring approval ratings, and the leaders that fail, don’t. Most polls show repeatedly that people don’t want to let this virus run uncontrolled, they mostly like the older generation, and don’t like the 15% mortality rate in seniors, not the death rate in health care workers. Voters also like hard borders.
When you say “democracy hasn’t been exercised” what are you referring to?
106
I mean for democracy to be exercised as intended the voters need to be knowledgeable of the facts and make sound decisions based on them, not on emotions or allegiances to a party. Also, if the majority of the voters are disgusted with both major parties as I keep hearing from some, then why don’t more vote for a minor party that makes more sense to hold the balance of power and force one of the major parties to reach a compromise. For example, when Cory Bernardi was leader of the Australian Conservatives (albeit just in the Senate) it was sad to see such a lack of support given the vast majority of his policies were ideal only to see the party being de registered. I much preferred his party to One Nation. That to me spells voter apathy and a general dislike to his style of conservative politics here in Australia.
60
So PeterS, you are able to judge the risks accurately, but the voters are wrong? Great dictorships have been built on similar feelings.
What if the average voter has a different risk profile to you, or is more attached to humans aged 60+ than you are? Should those people have any say in the lifestyle we lead as a nation or are some old dead rellies, anxiety and fear a fair price in a democracy because “the economy”?
Should we hold a referendum on getting rid of the virus?
14
So are you saying we as a community shouldn’t learn from our mistakes? That’s the real issue – we don’t hence we keep repeating them. Education in history should begin at school but isn’t. Instead children are being trained to be SJWs.
50
“Should we hold a referendum on getting rid of the virus?”
and to stop global heating, and, to get rid of racism, and for free beer?
But voting will not stop the real problem, that governments and politicians have too much power. The voters grumble and still give support, they complain about the selfish lock-down evaders, the real problem is the power to impose lock-downs.
Deranged power hungry demagogues make speeches and the sheep accept. The slogans go- lives matter, people over the economy, protect the aged..
We do not need lock-downs, or voting, we need liberty. Else, there will be a vaccine, compulsory, we have been warned, it is not to stop a virus, but to tag us, and make us even more compliant.
51
PeterS, as usual, you avoid answering my questions. This is not an honest nor productive conversation. Just more predictable nhilistic cynicism.
“Lucky” both you and Peter apparently only believe the voters have value when they vote the same way as you. What does “liberty” even mean if it isn’t “the wishes of the voters”?
00
what I don’t get is that suddenly the sheeple who were against you are now the voters who are with you.
10
Just goes to prove how dumb the UK numpties really are. They actually needed a written report !
As soon as Tony Blair opened his mouth on this issue the whole UK population knew it was a gigantic mistake! And current MPs need a report to tell them?? And the open border policy is STILL IN PLACE!!
92
Someone must have told Boris this was coming last week, which presumably is why he suddenly stopped free travel to Spain.
Remember that?
83
Why is anyone surprised? Governments too often do the wrong thing. Witness the nonsense over emission reductions. Time for a reality check. Governments too often are own worst enemy, with the support of the voters. We live in a democracy but it doesn’t work properly as intended when most voters don’t use their brains when voting.
130
Democracy makes us feel like we are in control of our political destiny, but obviously half the population is always miffed after elections. Don’t wish away our flawed democracies just yet, the alternative is a larger swamp which we have no control over.
Beijing applied draconian measures to limit the impact of Covid-19, while the western democracies are relatively undisciplined and paid the price.
45
It is the illusion of Democracy considering no matter who you vote for, they all still follow what American Democrats want…globalization.
112
Large transnational corporations want globalisation, because its in their best interest as free marketeers, so the US Democrats are in accord with big business.
‘Though many scholars place the origins of globalisation in modern times, others trace its history long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, some even to the third millennium BC. Large-scale globalisation began in the 1820s.
‘In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectivity of the world’s economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalisation is recent, only establishing its current meaning in the 1970s.’ wiki
The fault is not with democracy or globalisation, the MSM is corrupted. The backbone of democracy is an informed society, not just an opinionated one.
13
“The fault is not with democracy or globalisation, the MSM is corrupted. The backbone of democracy is an informed society, not just an opinionated one.”
The core of the issue.
80
We are ill informed because of inherent bias, which has the ability to replicate until it becomes the accepted paradigm. Infecting the whole education system and the general masses, but I’m optimistic about Australia’s media future.
22
Get a grip el gordo. There is no way the education system can be made fit for purpose and the media has no future (which makes me somewhat optimistic).
70
I beg to differ, the media landscape is changing dramatically and the void will be filled by pro bono reporters. Nothing to lose and everything to gain.
The education system should fall into line when the ABC tells them that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming and the science is flawed.
I have a timeline.
03
Serp’s right, your waiting for poison to turn into punch mate.
22
I’m basing my hypothesis on a serious change in the weather, too big to ignore.
‘If you thought it was cold this morning, spare a thought for Liawenee in Tasmania’s Central Highlands, it is already one of the coldest places in Australia and has just broken its own record.
‘Temperatures dropped to -14.2 degrees Celsius just after 6:00am, a new record low for the state and even colder than Antarctica.’ Weatherzone
21
Odd isn’t it,
Most new “hottest evah” records are by small fractions of a degree.
That temp at Liawenee was a full 2ºC lower than the previous record.
Must be gerbils !!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-07/record-low-temperature-at-coldest-tasmanian-town-liawenee/12533394
40
On another island far far away, the hottest evah is coming up.
‘Temperatures could even climb above the all-time UK record of 101.7F (38.7C), which was set last July. But unlike last Friday, when cloud and drizzle followed, this time the heatwave is here to stay until at least Tuesday. Bournemouth council warned as early as 10am that eight beaches were already categorised as ‘avoid, social distancing not possible’ on the Dorset coast – including Sandbanks, Mudeford, Highcliffe and Durley Chine.’ UK Mail
01
I’m optimistic about it too. I expect it to crash and burn to flush out the c0rrupt practices and start again.
00
Thank God for Sky News. In Australia, the government broadcaster, the ABC, and the free-to-air media are severely left wing.
30
Indeed. We all know here that the human instinct to collectivism, obedience ,adherence outnumbers the notion of individualism. I am of the latter, but that does not mean that I lack empathy or co-operation.Poor judgment on the part of our leaders who lack any common sense means that we are always going to make mistakes. Trust them not to deliver you from harm.
40
It’s not half the population but the cast majority that keep voting the wrong way. Both major parties are as bad as each other in many respects. People think they are voting for the lesser of two evils. What they don’t realise is the lesser of two evils is till evil. Stupid is as stupid does. A reset of the whole system is well overdue. It will come.
50
‘A reset of the whole system is well overdue. It will come.’
You may have missed my previous lecture on this subject, in the new world order the majors will be abolished. Capital against labour is the old world order.
12
Your lecture was invalid because it doesn’t take into account history. All civilisations collapse eventually. Resets are a given.
20
This thread is on the subject of borders, do you think arrivals to Australia should remain in quarantine for two weeks?
Civilisations come and go mainly because of climate change. To disprove my theory you’ll need to do some broader reading.
01
No, they should be in quarantine for a month, at taxpayers expense. It has been shown that some who left after two weeks were later found to have the virus. Still two weeks is better than nothing.
To disprove your theory I would have to regurgitate millions of words written in the pages of history. Read and study it yourself as I have. None are so blind as those who don’t study history only to repeat it.
60
Okay, we’ll have this out on the next open thread, give us time to ponder the meaning of civilisation.
On the post, tight borders are politically popular and medically sound, but maybe the Queenslanders are being a little too precious?
23
More deliberate misinformation from the chinese or the real deal? I wondered , given how good the chinese security services are, how she escaped from HK and that this may be a way of goading the US into attacking china?
I guess we will see.
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/bombshell-chinese-scientist-who-fled-from-country-claims-covid-19-was-created-in-military-lab/
“Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a former virology specialist for the Hong Kong’s School of Public Health forced to flee to the US to protect her safety, has claimed that COVID-19 was “created in a military lab” as a possible bioweapon.
“Li-Meng told the Taiwan News Agency Lude Press that she “had clearly assessed that the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab” and the “Wuhan wet market was just used as a decoy.”
71
Meanwhile the testing in New Zealand that place with the early peak is not finding anything. The numbers did change there though. One less active case as one more incoming traveler recovers without having infected anyone.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases
41
I take it the red thumb is for the politically incorrect pointing out of reality.
23
Yes Siliggy, in some circles it is politically incorrect to want zero WuFlu.
76
Jo that’s a silly comment to make. Of course we all want to eliminate the virus. Lockdowns only slow it down. We need a vaccine or a cure, and even then there is no grantee it will be eliminated. Perhaps it will mutate itself out, but then again it could mutate to something far worse, or another one arrives to the scene. Do we keep locking down? If we do then we might as well stop working and let the government pays us to stay at home for a year or so. I’m sure a lot of people would love that and the government would become very popular, at least at first.
72
Rubbish, if you weld people inside it ends. So lockdowns absolutely work.
It’s the excuse making selfish a-holes who break the lockdown who are the actual problem, and who keep feeding it new bodies, thus maintaining a ruinous suppression, instead of elimination, and people let them off the hook by claiming lockdown don’t work!
Remember the Italian town of Vo? You don’t want to, right?
66
Can you explain how well Sweden is doing then?
Right now, they are laughing. They admit they botched protecting the elderly initially ( hence the high death count amongst that cohort ) but their pubs and clubs are open, and unlike Victoriastan, they don’t have people being arrested with knees on necks for refusing to wear a mask…..I’d say we’ve failed and failed miserably.
Unless they release HCQ Victoria runs a Soverign Risk for debt default, and my sister who is high up in a large food plant management agrees with me that unless they take the brakes off soon, Victoria will have no economy.
India used HCQ to control infection in the densists populated place in the world, Dharavi
If they can do it with a huge slum, Victim-toria can too *if* Comrade Andrews actually *wants* to solve the problem. It doesnt seem like he really wants to.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/what_made_asias_largest_slum_a_success_model_for_treating_covid19.html
“”Reports credit the huge turnaround to various factors. Most focused on Dharavi’s use of widespread testing and contact tracing. One is the use of an anti-malarial drug. But they ignored the policy most responsible. Indian doctors used hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for prophylaxis (preventive) treatment — the same drug the American media have politicized.
“Dharavi’s COVID-19 infection rate dropped drastically from April through June. In July, new infections were very low, almost reaching zero on July 9.
“Officials have credited this turnaround to “[a] combination of hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, and zinc tablets along with homeopathic medicines.”
“HCQ has been widely used across India to treat early-stage COVID-19. It is also prescribed for prophylaxis among those who have come into contact with people who have tested positive.
We look like right chumps right now, globally. Even down to the Chinese style plod & ADF paramilitary forces crawling the streets looking for naughty people who have gone stir crazy being cooped up and making them even poorer with monster fine when they are unemployed….it appears to be one huge act of bastardry.
91
OriginalSteve
Can you explain why your information is out of date about Sweden?
Rather than the infection rate decreasing as the failing theory of “herd immunity”would have it and rather than it being mainly among the elderly the Swedes are beginning to worry about a sudden end to the downward trend of infections due to an increase in the young adult infection rate.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200806/its-a-bad-sign-sweden-sees-renewed-rise-in-infections-among-young-adults
24
Silligy,
O.K. the young Swedes are now getting it.
Two things are important now;
# what is the “young” death rate, and
# do the survivors have any serious lasting damage?
KK
60
Those are issues KK but not the most important. Possibly even misleading. History shows that in other pandemics all these things changed. So if you know what the “young” death rate was this may not tell you what it will be. Also if you know how many survivors have any serious lasting damage, this may not be what will happen. Countries that have eliminated it and continue to put out spot fires are not going to be the first to find out the hard way. Sweden is. Also any country that risks opening borders to Sweden will find the virus coming in with these young adults.
As explained by the architect of Swedens experiment Tegnell at that link “it starts to spread in that group but then spreads to other groups that could get significantly more ill,”
11
If lockdowns “didn’t work” Queensland would have over 50,000 cases today.
Get a grip on the truth Peter.
25
Funny how places like Sweden are now laughing…..perhaps Swedes are smarter than us collectively….
52
Wrong.
I think it would have been closer to 389,000.
This is a very serious disease. Tedros Anhydrous from the WHO stated that the likelihood would have been 399,000 but my figure is more realistic given that he was speaking from New York which is currently experiencing the northern summer.
41
Correlation is not causation. I would have thought everyone here would have learned that lesson from the CAGW saga.
00
LOL. Lock downs were a massive fail in Vic.
31
OK smart@ss, explain why QLD’s numbers fell to 2 active from over 1,000, if the lockdown didn’t work?
(I know I’ll be waiting a very long, loooooong time for you to face the facts, and stop trying to talk Australia into failure)
13
I agree Peter,
The politically inspired lockdowns and pseudo quarantines failed.
On the other hand real isolation of cases and real quarantine is a winner.
It’s all about the implementation.
30
Hi Siliggy, it wasn’t me but am curious.
I can’t pick out the point you are trying to highlight.
🙂
31
Oh yes it hard to spot up there at the top of the page “Open Border was a ‘serious mistake”.
22
To be fair KK there were multiple arguments addressed but the all lead back to one point.
22
O.K., so New Zealand is CV19 free.
When the rest of the world starts moving NZ will have to keep its borders locked or cop the intense wave of infection for those with no residual immunity.
There’s no escape: in the end everyone must face the Virus.
The whole initial concept was to slow down the rate of infection to allow good treatment of those infected and even out the pressures on hospitals, equipment and medical staff.
Then political fantasy took over.
KK
41
It was the great Professor Ferguson who strongly advised the UK government that closing borders was not necessary. He has a lot to answer for.
60
Stan, I believe PAtrick Vallance has a lot to answer for as a key proponent of the “herd immunity” theory.
The only medical justification possible for open borders is that they were aiming to spread the disease through the whole population and that would happen faster if they flew the virus in.
But the full lockdown makes no sense if that were the aim. I like Boris but the conflicting aims in the two policies are obvious. I am somewhat flummoxed that he did not join these dots and get better advisors. Would he really fall for the line that it only made sense to close borders if there were more infections in other nations?
Was there any no sign the Labor MP’s back then joined those dots? Were they criticizing the open border policy, or are they every bit as guilty? And where was the BBC?
Re Herd immunity, the quotes from “experts” are at the link to http://joannenova.com.au/2020/05/uk-expert-swamp-sabotage-close-borders-3-months-and-10-million-visitors-too-late/.
35
The BBC is a tool of the conservatives. The voices that most resembled yours Jo, were in academia. I think I even shared one of the twitter feeds that dated back to Feb if I can dig it up again…
010
You are good with the satire today Gee Aye on the BBC. 🙂
The voices I most opposed were the Chief Medical Officers. Especially Brendan-kill-them-Nelson, and Patrick-herd-immunity-Vallance. Though Deborah Birx may have achieved the most in the death stakes by far.
64
I was referring to British academia btw.
16
The BBC is a tool of the ‘conservatives’! Thanks for one really good laugh today GeeAye 🙂
110
An attempt at humour Gee Aye ?
60
He wings it well, but I think this is the indication that Boris actually is just as silly as he looks.
11
Boris is a great disappointment and given the wife’s greenness and his father’s flirtation with XR there’s bound to be worse in store; recall Cameron promoting renewables with a baby wind turbine strapped to his house thirteen years ago –the climate mountebanks roam free in the UK.
30
Yes, it is utterly unbelievable that our UK Government allowed 18 million people to fly into the country without any checks, while the epidemic was raging elsewhere in Europe: only after that did they stop flights. They even allowed flights bringing football supporters to Liverpool from Madrid for a football game at the time when the news was already full of the unfolding epidemic in Spain. The Swamp that needs draining in Britain is almost bottomless now.
61
The swamp that needs draining.
It’s everywhere.
The cause is obvious to older viewers and revolves around the propagation of the idea that “social security money” can be used at the politicians whim without any social cost.
The huge social cost is not hidden, it is there but nobody wants to touch it.
They see Bob Carter, Peter Ridd and make the necessary choice.
The only thing that separates Victoria from the other states is the present degree of arrogance; they’re all inherently the same.
KK
70
Spot on. After all we are told we are all in it together, right?
50
We are all in this together especially in Victoriastan , trouble is what we are in is a canoe far up a brown creek without a paddle !
50
Jo,
What intrigues me is that in voting for Brexit, the British people were effectively voting for the UK to go back to being an “island” but then even before implementation their Government “builds/allows” an air bridge to allow in disease. Go figure?
91
Good observation. It’s more evidence Western governments have lost the plot and are on the decline. Ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and other similar characteristics are the only things they are good at surpassing these days. Of course the voters have to share much of the blame for letting things get thus far. Now if voters stood up and demanded politicians fix things instead of spending too much of their time covering up their mistakes and pretending everything is OK then we might start to get somewhere. Victoria’s Premier is a classic case in point.
40
A sailing ship will forever sail into the wind without an experienced captain and crew.
12
It ends up ‘in irons’ then…
10
A nuclear powered sub would eat it for breakfast.
20
It is now quite clear why Melbourne needed the stage 4 restrictions.
Some hospitals already have serious staffing issues. Locums are being offered good money for temporary positions in hospitals serving the northern and western suburbs of Melbourne. Registrar level can now get $160/hour in Melbourne.
The number of daily COVID cases in the hundreds has overwhelmed the contract tracing system in the State. It is shambolic. From the sort of mishaps occurring it appears there is no single database. The wrong people are being informed they have COVID and people with COVID are being given the all clear. Tracers in multiple States working on Victorian cases are phoning the same person a number of times in a single day.
The case loads in some Melbourne suburbs are at a level considered devastating in other countries but Melbourne is doing more testing so at least picking up a lot of cases in the community that do not end up in hospital.
85
Where does “globalism” start?
Part of the answer is in the surplus produced by those areas which are blessed with natural resources, or large scale agriculture.
When did “globalism” Start
The best examples are all from the colonial era eg the triangular trade, or the Belgian Congo.
Could you stop “globalism”?
Only if you can produce everything you need within your borders, and are willing to lose all export revenue.
26
Globalism is capitalism and large organisations expand if given the opportunity. Laissez-faire capitalism, so popular in the 19th century, is now relaced by an orderly, transparent international trade system. We have reached the dizzy heights of world civilisation.
Globalism cannot be stopped.
13
Are you being optimistic or pessimistic, el g
Trade is the economic lifeblood of all levels of society, and that includes the trade of labour in a capitalist economy. I’m less supportive of the middle man market capitalism, where as an example – Amazon stands between buyers and sellers.
07
Without middle men, we would be back in a country fair situation of the middle ages.
Perhaps that is what leftists like you want !
Are you saying companies like Coles and Woolies stand between the buyers and the sellers !!
Petrol stations stand between the buyer and the oil companies that make the petrol.
Bunnings stands between the people making the products and the people buying them..
right ? Is that what you are saying ?
Yet I bet you use them all regularly… hypocrite !!
40
The middleman is known as the service industry, we cannot do without them, they have been around since Adam was a boy.
11
We cannot do without them?
Why?
There are alternatives – for example many european countries including Britain run village markets, The internet is the equivalent of the travelling peddler, and in Australia Farmers markets are becoming increasingly popular
Just because you are comfortable with something does not make it necessary.
I’m happy to pay a fair price for a service, but market capitalism always forms oligarchies, predatory pricing (US pharma for example) cartels and domination by a few, to big to fail, monopolists.
That is why I don’t like market capitalism all that much
02
el gordo are you supporting globalism?
00
Jo, I love your hypothesis.
Swamp hypothesis — namely that the two oldest, strongest democracies on Earth also have the most mature Swamps. They have the most red tape, the most complex incentives, and the deepest well of conflicts of interest. All of which makes possible, the dumbest decisions.
The aphorism in your blog header sums it up.
This swamp thing has been driving me nuts for years and I wrote a three part post about it, relative to Australia, on my own blog back in Feb/March.
I, like many others here, share your frustration.
61
“it was baffling that the Daniel Andrews locked everyone down, but kept flying in the virus.”
Never has there been a less qualified politician, except perhaps Bill Shorten. Without any job outside the Labor party, any position where he was accountable for his actions he is now prepared to say he has no idea how it happened but he is prepared to take the blame. So whose fault is it?
Resign. Take your utterly useless ministers with you. But you won’t do it will you? Because you did nothing wrong. You’ll just ride this out. And those ten deaths a day and endless misery throughout the state and a whole state out of work are someone else’s fault but you haven’t identified the culprit yet. And how’s that fake inquiry going? The one which means you and your ministers cannot and will not answer questions because it’s sub judice except the judge says it’s not.
This is the same man who tore up a $1.2 Billion contract for a road we desperately needed, threw away $2.5Bn in Federal assistance and said it was not worth the paper it was written on. That cost us $3.7Bn. Forcing Hazelwood to close. Banning rock climbing. Banning high grazing. Building useless railways as if it was 1870. And not a very fast train in sight. And if that didn’t wreck the place, now we are all locked in our homes because of your need to control contracts and favors and votes.
Just resign. Take your pension and go home and lock yourself indoors like everyone else. You’ve had your fun playing boss. Remember the people who will had died and will die every day so unnecessarily just to prove you utterly devious and inadequate, another Labor party apparatchik who has never had a job and rose to Premier without any qualifications or experience or clearly any sense of what is right. The Labor party has stopped representing anyone. It now represents the Labor party and jobs for you and your friends.
111
Or perhaps Dan you should start your own movement, Your Lives Don’t Matter. Locking down the people of Victoria costs nothing. Locking down virus carrying travellers for two weeks is just too expensive and there must be a cheaper way.
91
🙂 🙂 🙂
50
Many of the incoming flights from Europe and East Asia probably carried SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 infected UK citizens back from their Xmas, New Year and/or recreational breaks, alongside other returners, and newcomer travellers to our islands. The numbers infected wouldn’t have to be large since many would have travelled on public transport (et cetera) with a capacity to further spread any efficient infection mechanism. The problem from my perspective was twofold: 1) Our health service was not capable of surviving any epidemic and had no readily available means of isolating an infectious disease of any significant scale; and 2) We had not built effective isolation tactics into our care homes systems which had, over the years, become the generic models imported from abroad and not the models the UK used to have.
We once invested in solid public health, isolation units, fit for purpose residential homes and preventive medicine and had systems designed to cope with infectious disease but generic modelling based upon flawed economic measures slowly eroded the systems as cheapness of product replaced solidity. I’d say we have seen the results of all that illogic loud and clear, and it completely buckled under the first signs of trouble. I still hold onto the simple fact that the virus could have been contained without any new measures had earlier models been allowed to survive intact.
The sad thing is wiser people than I have been saying what I am saying now for years. This virus is not going to be beaten but it can be lived with and contained without hysterical overreaction.
70
“This virus is not going to be beaten but it can be lived with and contained without hysterical overreaction.”
Thank you again for a well reasoned comment.
In the end there’s only one path through this problem and few governments have followed it.
Politicians make for inadequate doctors.
KK
20
Victoria utterly mismanaged its border security. Other states did better.
Current result (Friday 7 Aug 2020):
ACT: 0 new cases
NSW: 11 new cases
NT: 0 new cases
QLD: 0 new cases
SA: 2 new cases
TAS: 0 new cases
VIC: 450 new cases
WA: 0 new cases
No wonder Victoria is isolated and shunned!
NSW should be able to manage 11 new cases with good quarantine of the infections. Vic needs a total shutdown just to try to get on top again.
TdeF is right.
51
Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t most international flights to Oz land in NSW eg Sydney, so that being the case why hasn’t this blown up in Sydney and not Melbourne?
Could it be that Victoria has a much more pronounced winter flu season? Because of it’s colder climate?
If you think that curfews, lockdowns, house arrest(!) perhaps look at Peru, harshest lockdown on the planet and 20,000 deaths and still 200 dying per day, much worse than neighboring Brazil.
10
Colin, we have other international airports. The thing that makes Melbourne Airport leaky was unionized security guards that sleep with quarantined guests.
It’s possible that every case spreading in the Australian community came from this breach. The gene studies are suggestive.
We know lockdowns works because 12 days after they start the exponential curve decays.
See here http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/ancient-technology-wins-quarantine-and-isolation-still-work/
Lockdowns also stop the flu and other respiratory diseases.
We know there are many ways to stuff up a lockdown.
33
You do realise once the lockdowns are lifted such issues will return, or are you suggesting we have permanent lockdowns?
60
PeterS, “or are you suggesting we have permanent lockdowns?”
Your repetition of the same inane question, despite my personal answers, is troll-like behaviour.
For the 400th time, to restate the bleeding obvious, if we crush the curve, and eliminate the virus, we need no further lockdown. Can I suggest, for the first time, you read my blog posts or my replies to your comments?
The PEterS wisdom of callously ignoring the hospitalization rate, the morbidity, the effect on health workers and the aged, and the democratic wishes of the citizens makes an excellent recipe for repeated rolling disruptive lockdowns.
Please raise the standard of your comments. This is timewasting.
00
Hi Jo,
Perhaps PeterS’s comments are being over-interpreted.
I’m certain that all he wanted was clearer thinking, or even some thinking, from politicians and the well paid “experts” hiding in the Public Service at state and federal levels.
Suggesting that he doesn’t care about old people dying?
The very pertinent outline from the Lass sums it up for me:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/major-report-by-mps-in-uk-found-open-border-was-a-serious-mistake/#comment-2352878
Sooner or later we are all going to face the Virus and to see some false political machinations deny access of friends and relatives to the dying in their last days is disgusting.
Added to that inhumanity there’s still the largely hidden tale of human destruction resulting from the ridiculously imposed “lockdowns”.
KK
00
Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t most international flights to Oz land in NSW eg Sydney, so that being the case why hasn’t this blown up in Sydney and not Melbourne?
Could it be that Victoria has a much more pronounced winter flu season? Because of it’s colder climate?
If you think that curfews, lockdowns, house arrest(!) perhaps look at Peru, harshest lockdown on the planet and 20,000 deaths and still 200 dying per day, much worse than neighboring Brazil.
30
Yes. Good question. I have written the answer. Nothing to do with the flu season. There is no flu this season, unless it is brought in, like all the viruses.
We are all now under police patrolled house arrest because the incoming people were not. Almost all businesses are closed. And that because of the utterly arrogant incompetence of our Premier, who is in the job because he has always worked for the Labor party and otherwise someone who has never had a real job and worked a few deals and sidled his way to the top.
And of course he takes full responsibility, which considering he is absolutely useless, means nothing. Anyone else would find someone half way experienced and put them in charge. Anyone who had a job with responsibility before. A policeman, a truck driver, a pilot, a surgeon, a GP, anyone, a small business, a shop keeper, a station master, a farmer, a nurse, a teacher. You know, people who work hard, take their responsibilities very seriously and are examined every day for competence. So unlike professional numbers men, politicians who have never had a real job, who have no care, no responsibility. Not my problem. Your fault.
And now we are told 500 people are going to be prosecuted for not obeying their lockdown conditions. What a total waste of police time! It’s all about blaming the people after the total disaster, so the politician responsible can get off lightly.
It’s as if Melbourne had the explosion at Beirut. And probably with a higher number dead. Both utterly and totally avoidable disasters.
82
Clearly you can stop something like covid-19 if you close your borders, obviously if your borders go beyond a certain size (eg China’s) the effectiveness of this strategy are likely to be reduced somewhat. So closing the borders of Iceland or New Zealand will likely work. And to take an example from Scotland, the Western Isles, six cases of covid-19 in a population of 25000, comparable to NZ, same lockdown as England, state action has a trivial effect compared to geography.
As for Oz… I would posit that you’re too big to stop covid by shutting the borders, you’ve never got the cases down below 10 a day, and you’re a Little Ozlander half wit if you think those cases came from overseas. As for quaranting the well, in Scotland 99 percent of deaths occurred after the lockdown, draw your own conclusions!
40
All the cases now wrecking Victoria came from a total failure to lock down thousands of incoming passengers in anything like the conditions we are all now experiencing. Without those, we were under 10.
It was a matter of trust. We trusted the Premier. He did some deals.
Now the police are being used to harass and fine and prosecute the horse after it has bolted. What a frustrating time it must be for the police. A few could have controlled the hotels. Now thousands are being used to harass people who have done nothing wrong and enforce conditions not experienced by the returnees.
Quarantine is not a new idea. Every country had quarantine stations. It is very strict. Usually not City hotels with students keeping an eye on things. These were military establishments with wire and gates and guard posts. We still have them for cows, pigs, horses, chickens.
Now don’t try to get into Australia with an apple. There is no way we will let fruit fly into the country. But a deadly virus which can kill hundreds or thousands. No problem. Our Premier will find a way to work a deal. That’s what he does. And of course he is very, very concerned at the behaviour of some of these people.
81
And Devious Dan’s new story is that he and his ministers are going for suppression rather than elimination as a strategy. This feeds into the narrative that you cannot stop this thing, so it’s not his fault. Or his ministers.
Except that it is. No other state has it and Queensland and New South Wales have more people. And because the RNA virus is short and mutates, they can easily trace the individual infections and the evidence points straight back to the quarantine hotels tended by unqualified contractors who spent their nights on their mobile phones while their charges went shopping. We would be free and clear without his private deals. So it’s his fault.
Do we really have to wait another two years to get a Premier who is competent? The many bad and costly and mad decisions we can tolerate but this bit of unexplained deal making is killing people. And the excuses are on a par with his new Belt and Road friend President Xi whose story is that the virus came from the American military. No, it didn’t. And every day we lose another ten people for nothing at all.
We need someone in charge now, not to live through this again for nothing. It’s been six months now.
51
Colin. There’s a 2 – 4 week delay for deaths.
03
The question that remains, however, is, “At what point do you open the borders?” No matter what we do, there will always be countries that have poor standards that will spread the disease.
Sooner or later (prefer sooner) the management of WuFlu is going to have to change. We can’t just keep locking down every time someone sneezes, and social distancing is impractical in the long term.
The only practical measure that has surfaced is to isolate the most vulnerable groups, cop a few deaths of the weakest in the remainder, and shoot for herd immunity.
It is the only option that actually has anything like an end game target. All else is only crisis management, not a plan for economic recovery.
30
“Viruses can only survive in people temporarily, so to beat a rogue chemical code, we just stop feeding it new bodies.”
In most cases, but there are exceptions. Most herpes viruses and Epstein-Barr, for example remain in the body more or less for life, lying dormant but with the potential to become re-activated.
60
Sounds like the Greens’ solution; depopulation.
20
Hmm! I wasn’t going to bother to comment, but there’s just too much demonstrably wrong.
A ‘speed up the peak’ cartoon that people are/might seriously analyse as data based!
Failure to the mention:-
“However, it[the report] stopped short of saying lives had been lost as a result.”
And that although it is a ‘cross party’ report, it is not in anyway neutral/unbiased/apolitical.
Crazy mortality rates. Your senior rate is the same as ALL deaths in the UK to JUST positive tests. The point with OAP deaths in care homes especially; their death IS IMMINENT – it is an END OF LIFE move in the vast majority of cases.
The CDC is using an Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) of 0.005 – 0.008 here.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
Repeat claims about post viral organ damage which is not unique or on a different scale. e.g. Chinese published research paper showed:-
“Cardiac injury is a frequent condition among hospitalized patients infected with influenza A (H7N9) virus.” [203 of 321 patients (63.2%)]
The architect of the Swedish response was on the BBC again last night and he is much more comfortable that he was essentially right. The presenter tried to corner him into saying that they were considering using lock downs to combat spikes in the future, but he made it clear that they were only considering closing individual schools/establishments etc. if they were associated with a cluster. The Swedes are fear free and essentially leading normal lives with sensible precautions only, and not dehumanized with face masks. This must be the model for the future. Everything else is insane.
But yes, UK government decisions defy all logic, no matter where you stand. If this particular decision made matters worse or better or no significant difference (the least likely) is very much open to sensible debate.
30
No mention of Nigel Farage. He has been onto the UK government negligence by letting illegals flow over the Channel with RN and French naval assistance.
When he started exposing this practice months ago on his radio show, he was harassed by police for breaking lockdown regulations, even though he was entitled to because of he was acting as a journalist. His latest report:
‘Coming to a Hotel Near You?’ – Farage Releases Video of Migrants Being Loaded on Coaches at Dover
50
ok no prob
from here sounds pretty crazy down there and this blog was the only direct source I have at my limited disposal
funny, we just had a crazy person that wouldn’t get out of the car under police direction
resulted in widespread rioting and burning … er, I mean peaceful protests
and societal split of historic proportion
30
The virus is so old now it has mutated a million times. Three million? Or perhaps we can keep having the same corona flu over an over again for the first time in history? It probably even has wrinkles by now..
10
There’s HCQ plus zinc plus Zpak. Also vitamin C, vitamin D.
Now budesonide (if covid19 is further along)
https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/dr-richard-bartlett-budesonide-cured-100-of-my-patients/
Only the medical establishments have kept Covid19 in play (for political reasons).
20
I remember working in Singapore as a junior geologist in 1968/1969 during the Hong Kong Flu ‘Pandemic’. However, I do not have much recollection of it, except for certain minor articles in the Strait Times. Nobody was talking about it at all and there were certainly no masks or social distancing on the buses. Most news was about the Vietnam War and and protest marches, withdrawal of British forces from Singapore, Malaysian & Singapore politics and the Apollo space program. Among my colleagues, we talked mainly about planning field exploration trips and staying safe from mosquito borne diseases. Nothing about the danger of a flu. Remember this was a time when the Hong Kong flu (pandemic) supposedly caused the death of over 80,000 people in the UK.
I think we are worrying our young people unnecessarily about something that will not kill them, and, if they do get it, they will recover rather quickly without long term effects. Surely we should have not have destroyed our economy for such few deaths, mainly of the sick and aged.
I will be interested to see the excess death figures from normal at the end of the year. Since over 900 Australians died (in all age groups) from influenza last year, I expect there will not be such a large spike. For example, 4 persons have died from the COVID-19 flu in South Australia (one 62 year old, Ruby Princess passenger, and 3 in their 70s), yet about 35 died of the flu in 2019, as of the 27th May of that year. Maybe at the start of every future bad flu season (eg 2019, when 900+ victims died and 2017, when 1100+ died), we should lockdown again and save another 1000 lives (sarc). The ABC will love that because they will all still keep their jobs.
If I worried about all the stuff during my life, such as, TB, the Cold War, Asian Flu, HIV-AIDS (when they had the Grim Reaper ads on TV trying to scare us), Hong Kong Flu, Mad Cow Disease and SARS, I would have died from depression a long time ago. I want my children, grandchildren etc to live in a thriving economy and not a banana republic run by over-zealous politicians and bureaucrats. And the band played Waltzing Matilda (until the PC crowd bans that too.
50
Thanks for that very relevant perspective.
Politicians and the “Public Service” no longer serve us:
They serve themselves.
50
I would respectfully point out that your graphic is misleading, as crushing the curve does not reduce the total number of cases. If the area under each curve is the total number of cases, when you crush the curve, it shoves the tail out a long way to the right. One of the problems we are having here in the US is that states who were pretty good at the lockdown shoved the curve out to the right well into summer. Those states who had awful experiences early on are doing relatively well this time around as they have managed to achieve some sort of herd immunity. Cheers –
40
agimarc, I thought of the same thing a long time ago but didn’t bother to mention it as many people would not understand it. It’s also possible “flattening” the curve might allow other peaks to appear which otherwise would not occur. It goes to show all we know for certain is lockdowns work for the short term. Whether there is any real net benefit longer term is still debatable. When one takes into account the deaths caused by other causes, such as suicide, delayed tests for other diseases, etc., the whole thing becomes even cloudier.
10
Well! No Schist Sherlock, any one with a single brain cell knew this months ago. The incompetence is inexcusable these idiots need to be locked up for their own as well as our protection.
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“The number of people in hospital in England with COVID-19 has fallen 96 per cent since the peak of the pandemic, official data reveals.
Hospital staff are now treating just 700 coronavirus patients a day in England, compared to about 17,000 a day during the middle of April, according to NHS England.”
“Last week, some hospitals did not have a single coronavirus patient on their wards, with one top doctor suggesting that Britain is “almost reaching herd immunity”.
On Thursday last week, there were just five hospital deaths across the entire country. It represents a fall of more than 99 per cent from the height of fatalities during the crisis.”
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