The good news: Lockdowns will end sooner than expected. Not soon enough for some desperate businesses, but sooner than Dan Andrew’s modelers thought.
As I predicted, Victoria is doing better than the models estimated. Many people focus on the “daily new cases” but the “unknown source cases” is a better, more forward looking tool.
In Newspoll today we find — also as I predicted from the outset of the pandemic — that health is priority one for most voters. It’s an awkward fact of democracy. As drastic as the restrictions are in Victoria, more than half the voters are happy to give up some freedom temporarily in order to save lives, hardship and unknown health effects, and the burden on healthworkers.
Right-leaning small business owners and entrepreneurs are often not at all happy about giving up freedom. They’re much more comfortable taking risks, but most of the population are not. It’s a personality type thing. It’s not going to change. (What’s obscene though, is that those comfortable taking risks are bearing more of the costs while public servants like Dan Andrews are getting fat pay rises. )
Despite the strict restrictions, fully 71% of Victorians view the restrictions as “about right” or “too lenient”. One quarter say they are “too strict”. The biggest fear at the moment, of 56% of Victorians, is relaxing restrictions too soon. Though 39% are worried things are moving too slowly. Given the poor modeling, it’s easy to understand the latter point of view. It’s virtually certain now that Victoria will emerge from the restrictions faster than the tough plan of a few weeks ago. The two groups are not as far apart as you might think. Fears of “relaxing too soon” are basically fears of a third lockdown, and nobody wants that.
Unknown source cases: the most important graph for forecasting
On Sept 8th, I said that the Victorian cases would come down faster than expected purely because the cases with unknown sources were already under control by then. Incredibly, the model used to predict how long it would take to bring cases down did not even consider whether the cases were “unknown” source or known local transmission. It makes all the difference in the world whether the clusters are trackable or not.
Here’s an update of that graph showing that for the last two weeks Victoria has been running a negative count on “unknown” source cases as finally got a grip on this epidemic and stitched together the mysterious clusters to figure out how the virus spread.
Victoria has done a lot better than NSW in the last two weeks (on unknown sources)
Victoria has 101 fewer “unknown source cases” in the last two weeks. NSW has 85 more cases.
As we’d expect — given the much stricter restrictions in Victoria — the spread of mystery infections is slowing in Victoria but continuing at a constant low rate in NSW. Based on this limited net daily data (from Covidlive) we can say that since Sept 8, Victoria has reported 8 unknown source cases but identified the source of 111 cases, whereas NSW has discovered 86 people with infections that it can’t explain. These are only “net daily figures”, but the latest press release from Vic Health shows that only 3 cases are unknown among the current 657 that are active. Though sewage tests hint that there may be an unknown outbreak in Apollo Bay.
Following the mystery cases down, the total daily new cases in Victoria have fallen: 39, 32, 27, 42, 22, 8, 9 and 28. This has prompted the Chief Medical Officer to admit Victoria would likely reconsider the roadmap.
Queensland, meanwhile, has had three unknown-source cases in the last eight weeks and found the cause of one. Two of those were three weeks ago, so if they haven’t spread, it’s happy days for Queenslanders. So far, I count ten days in a row with no mystery cases. We shouldn’t count chickens and all, but theoretically, in two and a half weeks Queensland might reach the 28 days with community transmission. Elimination.
Arguably the largest public policy failure in Australian history
The second wave was so much worse. Look at how fast that infection spread. All that second wave came from just two hotel breaches: the Rydges on Swanson and the Stamford Plaza. All of the billions of dollars lost, the restrictions, the pain, and 740+ deaths could have been avoided with a strong border.
Without those breaches NSW and Qld would have no cases now too (if only they had not let the virus in).
All states of Australia would have been flying freely right now. No internal borders needed.
Despite the extraordinary grand failure in Victoria, remarkably, somehow, 62% of voters are satisfied with Dan Andrews performance, which seems hard to believe. It’s risen 5% since July. While many Victorians feel the lockdown has been draconian, the majority support it.
Victoria, covid infection, graph, new daily cases, Sept 2020.
Arguably the biggest policy failure of all though could be the denial of benefits from so many other potential treatments, the lack of Vitamin D3 use, the political opposition to HCQ, Ivermectin, Bromhexine (cough syrup), and the many antiviral options.
The lack of Vitamin D3 is an ongoing scandal, and a travesty causing an increase in mortality from many infectious diseases, as well as likely cancer and many other causes. It’s one of the few vitamins associated with a reduction in all cause mortality.
Vaccines for the Flu have been pushed and promoted for years, but where was the campaign to make sure everyone had enough of the safe and cheap and essential nutrient? Vitamin D reduced the rate of ICU admission from 50% to 2%. Do black lives matter?
10%: The hospital burden is too much for any nation
The state of Victoria:
- Active Cases: 620
- Hospital: 80
- ICU: 8
The hospitalization rate is around 10%, and that’s with one of the highest testing regimes in the world where test positivity was 1% a month ago, but is as low as 0.2% now. Even if we ignore mortality, the hospital burden of Covid-19 is significant, and some restrictions are inevitable and necessary just to keep hospitals functioning. The toll on healthworkers has been significant too and nurses have had to be flown in from WA, SA and Qld. Clearly if all the states of Australia were dealing with major outbreaks like this one, it breaks the hospital system. And we know in other nations, death rates climb rapidly once hospitals have to turn people away.
” remarkably 62% of voters are satisfied with Dan Andrews performance”
Does ANYONE believe this?
This is incredible rubbish. I do not know anyone who knows anyone who is not absolutely wild with communist Daniel Andrews. From the most qualified academics to the highest level business people to the lowliest workers and any tradesman, we are all so angry with Dictator Daniel that it beggars belief a poll, let alone a newspoll could show otherwise?
In this world where the polls were completely wrong about the British election, the Australian election, the American election, we are used to polls being the complete opposite of the truth, but this is an extraordinary result.
I would like an explanation.
743
Sadly yes, TdeF, I do.
I think Rick Will was right. He said this was a (Great) example of democracy in action.
I disagree that it is Great. but that is not what he meant. He meant that in a democracy we have to accept the majority view. I agree with him that the majority of Victorians accept the lockdown. They may be misinformed, they maybe scared and panicked by the Premier, They may be frightened of death.
I think Dan is Wrong. But I also think I am in a minority.
228
“the majority of Victorians accept the lockdown”
Yes, but is not the same thing. And it certainly does not make Daniel Andrews a hero in anyone’s view. His deceit and total mismanagement beyond explanation is the reason we have the lockdown, not the virus itself. He lied about who decided to use outside contractors. He lied about the unnecessary and illegal curfew. And today he has tried to give his agents the same power as police but to detain people indefinitely without any oversight. That is a totalitarian state.
We need the lockdown, the longest in the world because of Daniel Andrews.
423
I agree. Australians are extremely compliant. Its why our country is so peaceful. Its the people, nothing to do with constitution and systems of government. The people are law abiding and peaceful. If there was one place where totalitarianism could thrive, it’s Australia. As ex brits, we think we’re anti-authoritarian as diggers cracked jokes at British officers in WW1. But that’s mythology, for better or worse, we do what we are told, better than anyone.
241
There is truth in this, but people are tolerant up to a point. Beyond that, things might not work out so well for the aspiring tyrant.
On another point, Jo says:
‘Right-leaning small business owners and entrepreneurs are much more comfortable taking risks, but most of the population are not. It’s a personality type thing. It’s not going to change.’
The passivity in the face of the misinformation; lack of attention to prophylactics and cures; and, oh, so many deficiencies in policy, has been driving me crazy. Nevertheless, Jo’s acceptance of different personalities is admirable. I guess one could not go in for the long haul argument against climate dogma without a cast iron patience.
111
The whole thing appears to run very deep. Victoria turned rapidly with marxists seizeing power pretty much over night. That tells you its well planned in advance for sometime with key players involved. Now propogate that globally.
Anyway, please delete the above comment.
71
I would if I could.
14
But I can’t,
So I shant.
20
In the UK we have had sweeping restrictions on our freedom which many are kicking back against. However no one seriously believes Boris is a communist or Marxist.
Are you saying Victoria is a Marxist state because of the way the restrictions have been imposed and enforced or are they GENUINELY a Marxist govt? I don’t know, merely asking
10
Tony,
Victoria has always been a heavily unionized state, so it being riddled with the scourge of marxism doesn’t surprise me.
it appears that one of the high level plod has used phrases that appear to be highly derogatory and down right un-professional to describe anyone who dares push back against draconian lockdowns, while pursuing what appears to be thuggish behaviour by Brown Pol.
As such, when I look at how things have gone, its like watching one big union stand-over session, with a harsh, communist flavour….so in some ways not a surprise, but when many of your top QCs publically sound warning bells about things, its quite bad.
50
Anyone stupid enough to vote for Dan Andrews once or twice is stupid enough to vote for him a third time.
332
And deserve it…
70
I think this letter to the Editor in today’s “The Australian” accurately explains why Dictator Dan has the numbers:
It’s no surprise that a solid majority of Victorians support the Andrews government’s draconian lockdown measures. Add together the rusted on Labor voters, public servants with guaranteed jobs, those whose income has been lifted by JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments, and an older generation fearful of the alternative following government bungling, and you have the numbers.
Paul Bailey, Auchenflower, Qld
When in doubt, back self interest.
100
Victorians do not vote Labor out, only occasionally by accident. Those numbers are true. If anybody has access to the Newspoll data, could they share the general publics satisfaction on the Morrison Government. It’s been ironic that everybody and their dog is piling on the feds’ handling of aged care as a result of the same investigation that they are willing to give the Andrews Government a free pass for the hotel quarantine stuff. These Aussies are crazy…:-)
120
TdeF; does anyone believe this
As much as I believed Hillary had a 99% chance to get elected in 2016.
70
I certainly question the integrity of these polls. I find it hard to believe that half the people of Queensland support the closure of the NSW border when all of NSW north of Newcastle is free of the disease.
As for Victoria. When Jobkeeper phases out they will blame Scott Morrison for the whole debacle.
90
As the businesses go under our health “crisis” may become less important. Meanwhile, JobKeeper will be constantly extended. The money printed as required.
It is already important to enact state lead CovidKeeper. Constant reports of yet more “potential” disease to extend fear and JobKeeper. The crucial vaccine coming “soon”.
For those who own businesses, you are the minority. As long as the print run continues Australia does not need you.
When the music stops there will be nowhere to hide. An epic socialist meltdown.
30
Sorry Jo – you need to stick to climate change.
This covid is being shown every day to be like a bad flu, and we have completely lost the plot, with false facts and hysteria being peddled by the media daily. Unfortunately you have lost it and joined them. I have sat back and watched your commentary for months, and this latest with its support of the Dan Andrews lockdown was the straw which broke the camels back.
Your “close the borders” mantra and support of discredited lockdowns is shameful and what happens if no vaccine appears?? We will have a shattered country and a whole lot of deaths from the huge increase in unemployment and the permanent loss of tourism, overseas education, aviation industries and others, and a knock on effect on others.
At present its all hidden by the Govt pouring out the money but that has to come to an end , and people will finally see the real damage at that point.
Sorry but we have to learn to live with the virus – and indications are that the world will not end. We need to stop the mad unannounced eradication program, ring fence the vulnerable and let the rest of us get on with life, and within 6 months it will all be over. The current plan, unless a virus appears (good luck with that) is that we will be shut to the world for years and have mass unemployment, and business failures at extraordinary levels.
10411
I agree with this comment. Please stick to climate change where you a beacon of reason. What you write about Covid19 is beyond bizarre.
649
Aussie may be correct.
But I think both Aussie and you (ImranCan) should respond to what she actually wrote.
That lockdowns work is beyond dispute. What we may argue about is; Is it worth it?
I will however disagree with this from Jo:
Really. Just 80 people in hospital and 8 in intensive care! It is not a hospital disaster by any means and the loss of medical intervention has likely had serious consequences, which are still to be counted.
I suppose it copuld have been worse.
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Peter C — The hospital burden is the 10% hospitalized of known cases figure. If 10% of tested cases need to go to hospital, no country in the modern world has enough hospital beds for a lot of the population to get sick at once. Hospitals run close to capacity anyhow, so there aren’t that many spare beds, and Covid could swamp them quickly if there were no restrictions (though the populace self isolates to some extent voluntarily).
Australia has 3.9 hospital beds per 1,000 population, or 0.04%.
We have only 1 ICU bed per 12,000 people.
Even from the start in Feb I predicted that hospital capacity was our main struggle.
1626
But the hospital beds are empty. Of 7000 ventilators 10 were used.
Close to a trillion dollars has been lost to save a few person years. The average age of a covid victim is 84, average lifespan 81.
It’s all so disproportionate especially the Labor states and WA in particular. Add on proper prophylaxis of vulnerable populations with ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine and zinc which in VIC and QLD have been made ILLEGAL the epidemic could have been over months ago.
The current policy of locking the healthy away from the sick rather than the tried and true process of locking the sick away from the healthy is frankly INSANE. We have enough treatments now to end all the lockdown. There are 10 minute covid tests that could be used to ring fence the vulnerable that are not used. The TGA is culpable and has completely failed.
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Jo, I want you to ponder this – cancer diagnoses are down *40%* this means thousands of people are going to die from cancer that might not have with early diagnosis. Thousands more than Covid will ever take… Given that Covid rarely kills, it’s the co-morbidities that Covid potentiates.
The epidemic of cancer and heart disease death that is coming soon is a disaster that will be the direct result of the government scare campaign. My doctor is particularly worried about this consequence of a neurotic and panicking government
90
Aussie, Imran, did you read the post? I said Dan Andrews has presided over the greatest failure in Australian public policy, and I am amazed the voters are satisfied.
Sorry if you don’t want to discuss the polls and the data. It is what it is.
I wouldn’t be much of a writer if I just said what I thought the crowd wanted to hear. I call things as I see them. You are free to persuade me.
Remember, if Scott Morrison and Dan Andrews had done what I recommended, there’d be no lockdowns anywhere in Australia, no state borders closed. That’s what I want.
If you want to stop the lockdowns, understanding virology and what the public values is the best way to start.
To save the economy, ditto.
1728
I’ll tell you what … if all states in Australia (and also NZ) now get back to normal and no further societal restrictions are necessary to limit future Covid outbreaks, then I’ll say I was wrong and you were right. But if any state now has to go back into lockdowns again to limit Covid spread then I will stick with the gist of my original statement : “lockdowns are not a solution, just a delay”.
341
Imran, that’s the question. Are our bureaucrats able to manage our national borders like every mistake is worth $10 billion? Like our freedom and businesses depend on it?
Are our medical Swamps able to rise above the inertia and Big Pharma influence to get the cheapest safe treatments in use?
I sure hope so. I want to reopen state borders by Christmas too.
“Just a delay?” — a delay might make all the difference. sometimes that is a solution.
1118
Imran with patience and perseverance the Anzac spirit will be resurrected, lockdowns were the solution to winning this Claytons war.
210
“That lockdowns work is beyond dispute. What we may argue about is; Is it worth it?”
This is very incorrect – it is very much in dispute, the ever increasing volume of accurate data is not supporting lock downs.
Please search IVOR CUMMINS – look at his covid material (he links to a dozen or more recent papers on lock downs too), see if you change your mind.
301
Locking people down is the worst thing you can do. Even Nicola sturgeon is agreeing with what I and others have been saying for months, coing people up in small unventilated homes is the worst thing you can do. They need to be in the fresh air
‘Scots will be banned from visiting each other in their own homes from tomorrow, Nicola Sturgeon said today as she reintroduced stringent lockdown rules.
The First Minister said that a ‘high proportion’ of new cases in the country were linked to transmission within private homes where social distancing and ventilation were more difficult than outdoors or public buildings.’
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Its not about the virus any more. It was the entry point, but not the destination.
The 24×7 hype is the same Establishment MO they used with 9 11.
Its about making people so frustrated and desperate, they will accept any damn thing the Elite offer them ( i.e. a likely dangerous RNA based vaccine ) to *just make it stop*
It apowars this is why OberFuhrer Andws is jerking people around with hope, only to dash it later. It makes people so “over it” they would do anything to be “normal” again….how convenient.
The Elite appear have decreed that Vic is the test run, to see how the sheep react. So far the sheep have been pretty tame especially with the NWO thugs ( who call them selves Brown Pol ) stomping on people for daring to say no and demand freedoms back by protrsting.
Funny how we see life imitating art ( like “V for Vendetta” ) – the Elite use war as a way of transforming society, the theft of freedoms under wartime provisions, the brutalization of people and society to suit thirr own deranged and sick ends. Have no doubt, these people are bad people and not right in the head.
We just have to say no, and tell them to get lost…..
200
‘That lockdown works is beyond dispute’ is eerily similar to ‘the science is settled.’
301
“That lockdowns work is beyond dispute” is a false statement. Lockdowns, counterintuitively, are associated with MUCH worse results, and terrible second and third waves. Look at Sweden, whose death rate now is the same as pre-covid, with the percentage of asymptomatic carriers down from 19%to 1.2%. Would be a great place to go on holiday, if only! But our “betters” in the public service and their ABC keep on ploughing along, like the dreadnoughts of old. Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind, and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof” . Was JK Galbraith talking about Global Warming “science”, or Covid-19 “science” ???
100
Ian the second lockdown in Victoriastan has absolutely worked and the numbers speak for themselves , TIP is correct and as mentioned at what cost .
01
Jo is quite correct. The average person cares little for business. They think BIG guv will look after them. This has NEVER been so. It has taken Australia 40 years to get to this point. The richest sovereign on Earth has destroyed its economy.
Perhaps it needed to do so, change is hard.
80
“We will have a shattered country “.
Broken businesses, broken dreams, broken minds, broken people and a broken Australia.
KK
511
At every ending there is always a new beginning.
Businesses that go broke are collateral damage and those individuals who have lost their dreams will need to reinvent themselves. Australia has survived this pandemic in good working order, even poverty was eliminated briefly, but let me assure you the future is very bright for Oz.
733
Unbelievable!
Callous.
Uncaring.
Superficial.
223
KK are you talking about the loss of a life’s work or people who don’t care about the death and disease? ;- )
Can I remind all readers who feel passionate that accurate language is the most useful.
919
Jo,
I was responding to El Gordo’s comment which I took as being real.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/09/victoria-its-democracy-and-medical-science-and-getting-better-fast/#comment-2366706
It may be that on second reading it is sarcasm of the highest order.
Jo,
I do understand your deep and extensive knowledge of this topic, but see that you haven’t given much time to assessing the environment in which the Virus propagates.
You again mention Italy, the U.S. and Britain and link their plight to what might happen here in Australia.
I don’t think that I’m being “inaccurate” or “hyperbolic” when I calmly state once more, that these countries are different to Australia.
Just a couple of factors that don’t seem to have been given much consideration;
These countries all have a history of high visitor numbers for tourism and work on top of the “immigration” issues.
How many of these visitors, especially the ones who stay behind as hidden residents, have a good health record and vaccination history that might help minimise viral damage?
Australia by comparison has a very strong vaccination programme that has made us a different target for the virus.
The notorious issue of the New York aged care establishments was a good example of politics defeating sensible medical options.
And lastly; I do care strongly about “old people” and do not want to see premature deaths in this group nor do I want to see them used as a woke shield by others.
It isn’t nice to be accused of “wanting to kill old people” because I’ve made an observation on the poor handling of the CV19 issue by the authorities.
KK
180
I may appear callous and uncaring, but surely not superficial.
My very small business fell off a cliff, but government kept us afloat and now its slowly picking up again. Other friends in VSB all say the same, only one has decided to quit for good.
64
…. and the reason he has decided to retire gives us a glimpse of the wider world. He accommodates pets when their owners go overseas, that is not going to happen anytime soon.
53
‘Your “close the borders” mantra and support of discredited lockdowns is shameful ‘
I support Jo and we should keep the borders closed until all community infections disappear.
828
Ha! Th political cynicism displayed by QLD regarding the opening of NE NSW – excising Grafton and totally disregarding rural NSW which has had NO casessince March. Contemptible , and so are the apologists. Frightened sheep.
271
Why?
142
The NSW outbreak is one of the only ones I’ve seen that “lives with the virus” in a way that appears sustainable. Though it may be luck. Here’s hoping that taxi driver was a non-shedder, not a superspreader.
Given the short timeframe til likely biotech solution, the NSW system might well be the most cost effective at this point, but given the cost of one leak, one mistake, there’s a risk. If the solution is longer than a few months at some point elimination becomes a cheaper solution. So this depends a lot of how long a reasonable solution will take.
If Gladys has closed the borders a couple of weeks sooner, probably NSW wouldn’t need small random constant school-gym-resturant closures, limits on events and QLD could have allowed NSW travellers the whole of July and August?
723
Another example of the need for the sniffer dogs. Dogs at transit hubs and depots etc and this taxi driver may have been found earlier.
21
Why wait for “a biotech solution” when they are only aiming for 50% effectiveness of their vaccines? You get better protection from the HCQ/ Zn/ Doxy I keep in my bathroom cupboard.
100
el gordo Are you referring to State borders or international? The latter will be closed for years on that criteria.
We’ve go to start living with it and being smart about it. We’ll probably never have a vaccine.
221
We may even have vaccines that make it worse. That is vaccines that work against early strains but are perpetually out of date and even encourage newer strains.
“ADE can be induced when the strength of antibody-antigen interaction is below the certain threshold.[4][5] This phenomenon might lead to both increased virus infectivity and virulence.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement
Then there seems to be a growing list of re-infections. One being the doctor in Spain that got it far more seriously the second time around. What good is herd immunity to the old strain when a new one turns up and produces that ADE effect?
Elimination, continued testing especially with the sniffer dogs and border restrictions that last until other countries do the same may be the only answer.
40
Strop. Many many options are possible that are not vaccines. Monoclonal antibodies. Nanobodies. Antivirals. mRNA and DNA. etc etc
Please can we get past the idea that vaccines are “the only” possibility?
203
Sure Jo. I’m well past the idea of a vaccine. We have options that are part of “living with it and being smart about it”. So let’s get on with it.
30
‘Are you referring to State borders or international?’
Both.
‘The latter will be closed for years on that criteria.’
Strict quarantine must prevail and Australia will be the big winner, a Covid Free tourist destination for those who have the time and money.
66
Sweden is getting pretty close to “a Covid free tourist destination” They have beaten the epidemic. We have not yet started the race.
40
A bad flu? 1,000 people a day have died in each of Britain, Italy, Spain, France and they are only twice our population. Without Daniel Andrews utter incompetence, our National total would be a mere 120. Even with his culpable and inexplicable mismanagment, we have lost fewer in nine months than Britain lost in a day. So how is it just a bad flu?
It is really insulting to think that we have sacrificed so much to stop these terrible deaths just so some could argue it’s not so bad after all. Every life is important and the last time such a virus swept through, the second wave took everyone. And twice as many people.
1714
The TGA prohibits self test kits for covid, including the antibody test that Andrew Bolt had on his show. Most people infected by covid don’t get detectable blood antibodies anyway, but I’m wondering if one reason they are banned is because they would show a higher number of infected, as antibody testing overseas has shown. That would lower the fatality rate and pollies wouldn’t be able to scare the people as much. Australia’s case fatality rate of about 3% is suspiciously high.
210
“Australia’s case fatality rate of about 3% is suspiciously high.”
Unless i am not understanding this, which is possible, Australia’s case mortality rate is below the world average. Click on “show graph” here in the closed cases box above the charts. The most recent value at the end of the orange line is 4.03% today.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
50
TdeF … the death toll is comparable to a bad flu year, where it is not uncommon to have these kind of numbers. In the UK the HongKong flu of 1968-69 killed 80,000 (genuine excess deaths). On a per capita basis this was 2.5x more deadly than Covid. Spanish flu in 1918-19 killed 10x more in the UK on a per capita basis.
And it’s not even sure that the 40,000 death toll in the UK will be a genuine excess death toll. With 95% of people dying of (or with) Covid19 also having other serious diseases and an average age of over 80, we may well find the excess deaths from Covid19 are actually much much lower. Time will tell.
And your point about having sacrificed unnecessarily is exactly right.
351
The Spanish Flu predated Penicillin, which greatly reduced deaths from pneumonia.
10
I don’t think Jo was giving Andrew’s lockdown support. She was pointing out she predicted the public would generally support it and she has posted the results of a poll that shows the majority do. (I’d be interested to see the exact questions asked in the poll)
Jo has clearly pointed the blame for the second wave and new cases in NSW & QLD on Dan.
84
Aussie,
Spot on. The MSM have half the population cowering under their beds due to the fear of catching a bad cold. Yes it kills, yes it can cause long term injury. But this cold is not going away. You’ll get it this wave, or you’ll get it next time(s). Sooner or later you will get it. We cannot afford to kill our industry, or businesses and our lifestyles every time someone gets this bug.
Just contemplate education. A school of a thousand students emptied for cleaning every time one student gets the bug. Now imagine that for the rest of time. What a crock of …
Overreaction – hell yes. And this webpage is continuing to parrot the bad news. What about the millions who have recovered? What about the millions who have had the disease and not even known it? It is highly likely that the true death rate for this disease is less than one in 10,000 infections. It would be more dangerous to allow us to drive cars, yet we don’t ban that.
Time to get back to work. Everyone.
191
Aussie, you have picked a loser here. Tell me if I’m wrong, but my memory tells me that Jo is not just a world leading science educator, (would that make her an “influencer?”), but is also a qualified microbiologist.
So that puts CV19 right up her alley. Which, no doubt, explains why she has paid so much attention to it.
As I remember Jo’s first call was to shut everything down for a fortnight. While this is a logical call I didn’t support it. I thought it would be impossible to develop a plan in a fortnight, let alone implement it. And I still believe that it is impossible to avoid confronting this disease head on. Shutting down borders will soon destroy our economy.
That puts me in the negative, twice. And I used to be such a positive bloke.
33
In China we would not be permitted to discuss our government on a public forum such as this. I value Joanne’s on-going hard work even though I do not agree with some of the details. Anyone can come here and join a dicussion. That is a real privilage to be thankful for.
40
Anyone- but anyone in Victoria should take care to be not identifiable.
20
Don’t worry , Aussie, we will have a vaccine. It may only be 50% effective, (or less!), but if our wonderful government can pay big pharma for enough doses for everyone in the country, (even though 97% plus are not at risk from the virus), we can all go back to work and happily open up all the borders. Government happy, Pharma happy, Punters happy. And if you actually have no protection from the virus you will never know, as long as you dont get tested for it. Mind you, a rapid increase in foreign tourists coming into Aus could cause a few problems to the supposedly vaccinated , safe, population….
10
Imagine a cartoon showing a simple set of weighing scales. In the left hand bowl is a tiny weight marked covid. It is clearly right down at the bottom heavily outweighing the right hand bowl. In the right hand bowl is a huge heap of very large weights marked with such things as
Deaths from cancer, deaths from heart disease, ruination of the economy, Unemloyment, mental health problems, suicide, destruction of democracy, impoverishment, destruction of social life, destruction of cultural life, rise in counter culture, no treatment for cataracts, no hip replacements, reduced budgets for social services, reduced budgets for defence, reduced budgets for health care.
I am sure without problem we can think of twenty more weights that can be placed in the right hand bowl of the scale but still they would not outweigh the lightweight covid
Sorry jo but I will use the phrase hysteria again in the same definition as I did before . We are at serious risk of blighting at least a generation with our over reaction and the west is looking very shaky against the complacent Chinese who must be looking on in astonishment and satisfaction at the way we have responded to this serious threat that has been treated as an end of the world plague rather than as one we can readily cope with without the destruction of our way of life and prosperity
422
Hysteria and hysterical overreaction has been rife in the UK throughout, and much of it is down to lack of preparedness for any kind of ‘flu episode no matter what the real magnitude of the expected viral infection rate is. We were warned in the UK in 2012 that dismantling public health structures that had been grown from structures known to work and in place for over a century (which included bespoke isolation hospitals) would result in disasters were there an occasion when an unusual outbreak occured. There were exercises available to our political classes to prove this point both before and after the changes made, with copious documentation and advice. Nobody bothered to take it all in.
The results have been precisely the insanity predicted in those very documents which focused on how an impoverished health service cannot hope to deal with surge admissions on any kind of expected scales. We had warnings in several bad ‘flu years that our NHS was overloaded with cases and unable to function properly. Then SARS-CoV-2 comes along and explodes all the shortcomings into reality. Political heads must roll and not just in the UK.
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Great comment.
Here in Australia we have large public health structures at both state and federal levels but they seemed to provide no guidance on how to deal with this.
Politicians were running this from the start and what a shambles.
If you wanted to ensure rapid transfer of the virus to the many you couldn’t go past the closed up hotel quarantine set up. Australia’s Incubators.
KK
151
Mistakes were made, there is no denying it, but where do we go from here?
21
Well you can wipe the school year despite the farce of “home schooling”.
Universities the same.
The hospitals will be busy catching up on delayed and elective surgery for those still around and many health care workers will be looking for a break after this harrowing year.
Families and loved ones may be able to be with those isolated by “lockdowns” and even be allowed to attend funerals of same.
Same Will apply when international travel is possible by way of medical certification regarding CV19 infection status.
And I don’t mean Vaccination. I am very much pro-vaccine, but have concerned about the Annual Flu vax with which there were a few bad incidents. The CV19 Vax is too highly politicised to trust at the moment.
Meanwhile, those still working and paying tax can start to pay off the Australian Debt incurred to China for the Jobby Keeping payouts which have made federal politics almost immune from criticism.
Perhaps, maybe, we could call next year 2020b.
70
They dont have much time to release people from lockdowns now. If its kept up much longer the french revolution will look like a kids party by comparison.
Just being real…
30
By way of expansion on my comment…..i personally dont advocate violence, never have.
My concern is that if people lose everything and have nothing to lose and are seething angry to core, and govt have stuffed it, well what logically, based on knowledge of human behaviour and history, do you think will happen?
I think the numpty N W O operatives who set all this up need to keep in mind is that from what I’ve observed is that an australian, when sufficiently riled and employs thier creativity, can deal with a situation highly effectively.
Message to said numpties – be smart…..
70
This year the annual flu was a no show, due to distancing and people staying home when they feel sick. We don’t need big pharma to keep us healthy every flu season, common sense will do.
‘My concern is that if people lose everything and have nothing to lose and are seething angry to core …’
Australians are resilient. Drought, bushfires and floods knock them around, some lose everything, but they battle on. This pandemic is impacting the cities and the people are under strain, but they lack political nous and won’t be mounting a revolution.
22
” remarkably 62% of voters are satisfied with Dan Andrews performance, ”
And they’ve forgotten about the bushfires too.
Maybe.
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Social media such as Facebook is full of anti Dan rhetoric and memes but I believe twitter has nothing but praise for Dictator Dan .
Since the very first lockdown I’ve only found one person that believed Dan was doing a good job and the rest think he is drunk on power .
His name is mud in regional Victoriastan and during the give Dan the boot day someone put a pair of boots outside a business he has a family interest in , I’m doubtful the polling in this case is anywhere near a reflection of reality .
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Agreed RR. I have met only one person around here who thinks Andrews did reasonably well. I know they are ropeable down in East Gippsland.
I wonder how the survey was organised, how the questions were framed and, very importantly, who did they ask? Not me, for sure. 1,000 or so city lefties?
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This statement is not a reflection of the actual question. The following is extracted from the Newspoll article:
That is consistent with the broad view that, due to Dan’s mishandling of the hotel quarantine, there was only one certain course of action available and that was severe lockdowns. If the question was about confidence in the Andrews government, the support may be considerably lower. It would be hard to support the incompetent, demented (literally) and irresponsible management of hotel quarantine in Victoria.
Ask the question – Did the Andrews Government perform well in managing the hotel quarantine? I expect support for that would be very low.
People who have claimed the lockdowns were undemocratic do not understand the meaning of democracy. Lockdowns were the wish of the majority; that is a conclusion I reached in talking to relatives and friends. It is quite clear that Australia has an abundance of dingbats willing to spread this deadly and dangerous virus. Educating dingbats is almost impossible so strict measures were required.
42
You make some good points RickWill. I do think the lockdowns should have been more focused though; we all have a good idea as to the demographics involved in the failures and everyone is being punished by them. We now have the ludicrous situation where we would be permitted to have church services outside for a handful. Right! In the sort of wild spring weather we’ve been having? Great idea for the older members of the congregation…not. We were doing the ‘right thing’ in church before this latest lockdown, complete with totally cleaning the place after each brief well-spaced surface despite no further use for a full week.
One benefit of the Melbourne lockdown though is that traffic past us is hugely reduced, back to what it was when we first bought the place! I am dreading the return to ‘normal’ on that…it was horrible between the lockdowns…it seemed as if half of Melbourne was flying past us, noisily. 🙁
42
We will never know if Brett Sutton’s words were thoughtful or accidental. They would be regarded as unwoke by the majority of the public service.
Only early signs, but it appears Australia will be a bit less woke. Still being racially tolerant but identifying those unique values that make Australia Australia.
32
Surface?! I meant service…sigh.
11
We can thank Their ABC for that.
20
Thank you so much Jo for all your Covid analyses, including this one. As a Victorian, I don’t know how I could have managed without you since it all started. Yes, the Andrews govt was disappointing in their bungling of quarantine, but now I hope they stay on track and don’t open up too soon. People like me respect you for your scientific take on one subject and are then willing to hear you out on another topic – like climate change which I used to believe in.
2521
Wirebird, thank you. That means a lot to me. :- )
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Jo, you have given us a lot of helpful information, along with various commenters and I am very grateful for that. It is a new and apparently very nasty bug. We now know a lot more and it still behoves us to be careful, without being paranoid. The work you have done is amazing. You have helped my other half and me to keep going and stay healthy. 🙂
Keep up the good work and don’t become dispirited.
Annie.
60
My turn at moderstion!
30
Annie
Congratulations! A win but not a Lotto result
An expression I heard (sanitised some)
Something being “fair and just” – “a fair bastard and just another stuff up”
20
“As we’d expect — given the much stricter restrictions in Victoria — the spread of mystery infections is slowing in Victoria but continuing in NSW.”
Maybe the next step is to continue the mimicking of the Chinese style measures and weld people into their home — ’cause that worked for the Chinese, it got the infection rate done.
What does ‘cases’ mean? Diagnosed with the virus – having identifiable symptoms, or just a rise in the flaky PCR positive test results, or a mixture of both. It should be very instructive to see if this rise in ‘cases’ translates into a corresponding rise in mortality.
200
Ooops,
Maybe the next step is to continue the mimicking of Chinese style measures and weld people into their home — ’cause that worked for the Chinese, it got the infection rate down.
80
One thing you learn with dealing with communists is that they can *never* be trusted.
About anything.
For any reason.
Ever.
Now lets talk “covid data”…..
See above.
70
‘ … mimicking of the Chinese style …’
We are a disciplined democracy and have more in common with them than the undisciplined rabble in the US and UK.
415
Welding people in their homes, people dropping dead as they walk down the street. Pure propaganda!
Facebook, twitter and all western social media is banned in China, even their VPN’s are controlled by the CCP and that is where all the BS footage came from. The penalty for doing such would be severe even if it was possible, which it is not.
People face planting as they just walk down the street, just so happens that someone had their phone recording that exact moment on that exact person and when did a mobile phone have the quality of super 8.
Welding people in their homes, yeah right. I watched that BS and it looked so staged as did all the footage that came out of China at that time.
How long were they locked down for, 2 weeks, then back to normal.
Everything out of China is propaganda and nothing else, but propaganda is the lie and the truth, you just don’t know.
It was put out by the CCP to push fear through the rest of the world.
There is an NGO, Defeatdisinfo.org, that stated on their site they had 3.4 million “social influencers” in the USA (sounds ridiculous) as part of the Covid response that are paid to push the WHO mantra, A google search shows this is world wide, even Aus.
The question is?
Everyone’s default position on any info (including the studies) out if China should be “propaganda”, because that is all it is.
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What you are suggesting is that this has been an orchestrated hoax from the outset. This seems unlikely.
02
I don’t know about that. How many people in this country have just “dropped dead” in the street, as we were treated to in these clips from China? And why did the Chinese Government allow international flights out of Chine (especially to northern Italy) but stop internal flights. I am not a “conspiracy theorist”, but you really have to wonder.
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Its a thriller and structurally sound, the northern Italy cluster originated in a Chinese manufacturing hub. Its a sort of clumsy way to start WW3, so my script is more plausible.
It took Beijing by surprise and then deep concern, a lone wolf working at the Wuhan Institute has just changed the course of history.
Developing a first strike biological weapon is frowned upon, having been outlawed by the international community back in the 1970s, Beijing is mortified.
10
MP – I agree. China converted a common cold bug with unusual effects, which has the ability to be most deadly among the elderly, into an amazing propaganda success!
The method, hype the fear of death into societies conditioned that the world is going to end in twelve years because “carbon dioxide” and there is a bogeyman around every corner.
The very first “leaked” images of people lying in the corridors of hospitals, ensuring the actual bug was well dispersed throughout the world before the images were leaked so deaths became apparent in countries other than China, gave “truth” to the Big Lie.
Manipulate the news so that effective prophylactics and treatments are discarded by authoritarian leaders in western democracies – who knew there were so many of them? ensuring many more people got sick and died than needed to. The method best used for this activity of manipulating the news is the removal of context from the numbers, i.e just report the “scary” information and never, never, ever provide any context.
A few months into the closed borders I compared the age of people dying in Australia in 2020 from/with Covid to the age of people dying in 2017 and the profile was almost identical, with not many people dying younger than 60 – most people dying in their 70,s and 80’s fewer people are left to die in their 90’s and 100’s. And, compared to the 450+ people who die in Australia each day how have the lockdowns helped them.
60
Augurs, not augers.!
[Thanks Glen. Fixed — Jo]
20
Agreed. But at what cost ? Australia has to feel the economical burden of this at some stage. Are future pensions now safe ? Who knows ? So much money has been spent and put on tab, it will have to result in a decline in something significant sometime. Or does debt just not matter anymore ? Apparently so. Interest rates are low, but will they be forever and what happens when they rise ? For me this is similar to WW2 expenditure which was the end of the British Empire, and I think this could be the end of western economies.
As for Chairman Dan, sure I don’t mind the lockdown 2 thing too much in regard to public health, but the drop in civil rights regarding police busting your door down because of a facebook post, God help us all. That’s not going to go away. The police are now political and that is a devastating tragedy for Australian freedoms. I myself do NOT comment on major social media platforms anymore, my opinions are far too radical. I dont believe in multiculturalism and mass immigration, I am racist – to their definition – and that is just not acceptable. I don’t fear police at the door now, but it could easily come. And the Chairman was the catalyst.
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Philip
Apparently each world war cost Britain the equivalent of 12 trillion pounds in today’s terms. We had to borrow money from the US and unlike Europe we did not have debts written off.
Only Norway made any efforts to pay back the financial debts we incurred to save them. I am sure Australia also spent huge sums of money and were invaluable friends and allies.
The debts the west is now building up as we focus on , apparently blind to everything else, will similarly cause problems that will reverberate through the generations and will severely weaken the west at a time it needs to be strong.
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Philip,
You raise some good points.
If it is end times for Western Civ though, the pandemic will have been one of many nails — the lack of any monetary standard, the artificially low interest rates for years leading to misspending, malinvestment, and with easy loans feeding corruption, silently stealing life savings away from hourly paid workers. The foolish attempts to control the weather with lightglobes and electricity grids, and then the loss of the independent media, and the march through the institutions, especially education, leading to a generation of snowflakes who seek meaning through destroying a past they don’t understand.
Then there is the complacency regarding China. The death of manufacturing. Mass immigration to appease property developers and left leaning parties.
The money supply was high before the GFC — then grew wildly high after the GFC, and it never came back down. Now it’s leapt again.This is one more pile on on top of the previous ones. We’ve been living on borrowed time for a long time. The stock markets are at absurd highs and react to and second guess keywords in Fed Reserve press releases instead of market news.
If there is a better way out of the pandemic it surely starts with understanding the virus, the medicine, the people, the disease, and the treatments. Any pandemic was going to cause an economic hit either way. Being brutally calculating — because Covid hurts older people the most, we could have given up on them and worn the losses and perhaps (we still don’t know) any long term disability caused by letting a bioweapon run through the population. That would have been economically better. But at what cost?
As I keep asking, what kind of civilization will young men risk their lives to defend. One that sacrifices their grandparents now, and won’t save them when they’re old?
If we become a mercenary band, rather than a one-for-all nation, isn’t that also the path to Roman ruin?
157
The last time countries spent money like water was WW11, the governments sold bonds to cover the debt and repay it back over time.
20
Philip
Your comments regarding the financial and social/political cost of the measures used to manage CoVid are spot on. The former may result in a reduction of our material lifestyle, whilst the latter has much deeper ramifications on our democratic way of life.
Now that our politicians, not only in Victoria, have discovered how easily we can frighten the populace into political compliance, it will be hard for them to desist from using such an effective bludgeoning tool more frequently, more so when main stream media actively assists with the misinformation of the public.
With regard to your fears of having become radicalized, I fully sympathize. Where some years ago I was a conservative, due to the massive shift in the political centre, I am now an extreme right wing radical.
110
Yes … that has been the tendency. Thinking in terms of political science, equilibrium should be recovered through angular momentum and you’ll become conservative again.
15
Western Australia is beginning to see the big impact of CV19. There is a shortage of manpower in rural industry to harvest crops. That work is usually undertaken by temporary visa holders. That source of labour has dried up.
Western Australia is now facing inflation in food prices. There is some indication of food price inflation in Victoria but there are also some fresh foods that have lower prices. Victorians are still not spending beyond ‘essentials’.
The only risk with Federal Government money is price inflation. If it just goes into private bank balances then it reduces the burden on future pension payments. If it fuels spending then it will cause price inflation.
22
RickWill, We saw that too last night on the news. Because of Job Seeker WA farmers cant find labor without paying far more, which as you point out, will cause rises in food prices in a month or two. It is the early sign of the inflation to come from printing money.
In a sense we’ve been getting away with past money printing by bringing in backpackers to do that work. The closed borders have exposed an inflation in some ways that has been coming for a long time.
Even without JobSeeker’s extra $ now, apparently WA farmers always needed foreign labor.
81
Australians are poised to burst out of the blocks. All the incentives on offer are going to drive inflation once people feel relaxed about moving around. There will be a sigh of relief and wallets will start to open.
I personally do not know anyone doing it tough. A few out of work may find it hard to get back into the discipline of working for a living. Those working from home are not looking forward to getting back into the rat race. Those still working normally are looking forward to having a holiday.
If there is enough manpower to harvest crops it will be a bumper season across most of Australia.
I expect growth in on-line services such as shopping, banking, insurance, medical, meetings, streaming etc will contribute to productivity improvements. There are plans to upgrade NBN with a $4.5bn budget. Just need the people to spend it.
13
And it is so annoying to listen to sports people now talking about Black Lives Matter without realising they are dupes. Actresses and actors too. Entertainers. TV late night hosts. The self appointed intelligentsia of the country. Like most journalists. Played for fools.
Of course Black Lives Matter as do all lives, but this extreme marxist movement is utterly deceitful and a front for communists. Burn Loot and Murder in fact hits the black communities hardest. They are the ones being shot, their businesses burned to the ground, their lives ruined by white fascists. They have the highest abortion rates. And the media applaud. Clearly Black lives don’t matter.
Ricky Gervais said it best when he said that actors are privileged people who spent less time at school than dropout Green princess Greta Thunberg.
It is also so disappointing to hear that our Prime Minister is still trying to pull down ’emissions’ when man made, CO2 driven global warming is a fraud. And crippling Australia is pointless even if it were true.
And the Chinese Communist Party wears no blame for wrecking every country in the world, even their own. Daniel Andrews does not enjoy massive support. He is hated by just about everyone.
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‘He is hated by just about everyone.’
Count me in.
Sadly the polls are unreliable. It’ll be interesting how the next poll-that-matters goes. I have absolutely no idea how the broader population is feeling. Most people I talk to are pretty unperturbed by (what I see as) the shambles.
120
After all these months of saturated media coverage I take away the following:
1. Way too much conjecture
2. Way too many scare stories
3. Data dredges made to fit pre conceived / idealistic positions
4. Defending opinions which seemed sensible early in the pandemic but which seem less plausible now.
The following link contains an embedded YouTube video which presents the most compelling case against further lockdowns with global data. I have yet to see a sensible rebuttal…. https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/09/rationality-lost-in-a-viral-fog/
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I’m not getting involved other than to say this. There are still far too many things about all this we do not know. Stats are as useful as climate change stats, if not worse. Not only are the available stats open to a variety if contradictory interpretations, much of it is tainted so badly with fake data they are totally useless. Good luck trying to make sense of it all.
140
“There are still far too many things about all this we do not know.”
Wise words
Perhaps some big questions like. What is the Seasonal pandemic age shift? Does re-infection take out a younger age group a few months after immunity wears off?
40
I’m in WA so I don’t know what I’m talking about (but that never stopped ANYONE). From what I can see, the big complaint in Vic is the double standards of the way the cops enforce the lockdown.
130
‘Has Australia really had 60,000 undiagnosed COVID-19 cases?’
‘A preliminary study, posted online this week by researchers at the Australian National University and elsewhere, estimates 71,000 Australians had COVID-19 by mid-July—60,000 more than official number of cases diagnosed by that stage.’
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-australia-undiagnosed-covid-cases-1.html
That brings the Australian CFR to about 0.5%.
Worldwide IFR of 0.68% from Wollongong uni:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v4
If most people infected don’t get antibodies (80% from one study), then Covid is as harmful as flu on average (but more contagious). Flu CFR is about 0.1% in the US.
Swiss study with IFR of 0.64%:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30584-3/fulltext
IFR by age from that study:
https://www.acsh.org/sites/default/files/Screen%20Shot%202020-06-23%20at%206.18.52%20PM.png
Covid might not be as bad as flu for those under age 60. I’m unable to find a breakdown by age for flu fatality rate.
30
Instead of ‘Covid is as harmful as flu on average’ I should have put ‘Covid is as fatal as flu on average’. It may cause more long term harm.
51
When I see a number given for “undiagnosed cases” I immediately think how they can possibly quantify this. Brings to mind the statement regarding likely extinction of thousands of species we haven’t discovered yet. Yet another number with which to scare the kiddies…..
130
Happens in other places and fields too
REDBACK.
Undiscovered Riches: The economists at the Canberra-based Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) have been tucking into some funny mushrooms judging by item 1003 on their 1994-95 research program. Project 1003 aims to “Develop a method of assessing the value of undiscovered mineral resources in a broadly defined mineral province as a basis of quantitative resource assessment”.
Listen fellas, how can you assess the value of something that is “undiscovered”? Redback is eagerly awaiting an explanation from ABARE’s executive director, Brian Fisher.
Australian Farm Journal November 1994.
20
The more cases there are, the lower the fatality rate – less to scare the kiddies with. Looking at overseas antibody testing, the Australian fatality rate (and the fatality rate from other places in the world with no antibody testing) is bollocks. There are heaps of undiagnosed cases. Covid is far less fatal than people are being led to believe.
80
When you look at the increasing size of the public service together with the number of people supported by job keeper and job seeker is where most of the 60% come from. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you ( even though job keeper and job seeker is federal money, Victorians aren’t that smart).
Virtually every one else hates Andrews and what he’s done to the state.
What people don’t realise as socialism becomes more of a reality and people become more dependent on the government people feel they have no choice.
If Andrews gets re-elected in 2 years time Victoria will be a dangerous place to live. The authoritarian measures he has taken so far will be just the entree before the main course.
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Autocracy/dictatorship is what it is regardless of victims voting for it or not.
Will these temporary measures be withdrawn, like income tax?
40
“What’s not fair though, is that those happy to take risks are bearing more of the costs while public servants like Dan Andrews are . . .”
Add a number of USA governors, mayors, and others from around the world to this list. Then finish with your favorite string of swear words. ” &%#@x+Z
Friends livelihoods and wealth have vanished. I’m not pleased, here in the left coast State of Washington.
100
But – –
“Absolutely Perfect – Florida Governor Introduces “Law Enforcement Protection Act”…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/09/22/absolutely-perfect-florida-governor-introduces-law-enforcement-protection-act/
40
Based on William Briggs’ latest article, it sounds like Victoria is going police state. Doesn’t sound like a good time for anyone questioning anything. How far is a Virus Denier from a Climate Denier in the eyes of the Australian STASI?
190
You are mixing apples and pears, this has nothing to do with big brother or members of the Denialati.
By Xmas some parts of the world will be fighting a losing battle against an invisible enemy, but in Australia and New Zealand, along with the rugby playing friendly islands, its a first step into a brave new world.
011
This discussion is an excellent analysis of COVID evidence to date.
https://www.thinkspot.com/discourse/pzuyqZ/post/canadianlibertarian/viral-issue-crucial-update-sept-8th-the-science-logic-and-data-explained/jltQ9O
It adds a lot of sanity to the consideration of herd immunity as well.
40
Most of the freedoms “temporarily” relinquished will not be returned. It doesn’t work like that. Once freedoms are taken away by government, especially by a communist like Dan Andrews, they are not given back. They remove freedoms at any opportune time. That’s what the “new normal” and the “great reset” constantly spoken of by the Left is all about.
And in the great words of Benjamin Franklin:
151
‘Once freedoms are taken away by government, especially by a communist like Dan Andrews, they are not given back.’
That is rubbish, the people love their freedoms, Dan would be thrown out of power.
18
Andrew Bolt video:
“Cult of Dan” is the strangest thing I have seen.
https://youtu.be/4TyRgG1XwK8
61
Video:
Why has Victoria become a totalitarian basket case?
https://youtu.be/8VXch7mULLE
31
Much of Dan’s support comes from paid CCP propagandists known as Wu Maos.
DEFINITION FROM URBAN DICTIONARY
Quote
Wu Mao
People paid by the Chinese communist regime to comment on posts about China and the Chinese people that promote the Communist party line. In Chinese: 五毛. The term actually means 50 cents.
I posted my video blog to YouTube and the Wu Mao’s came out with huge hate comments.
by CampbellFrank November 19, 2018
81
Almost all his support say I; let’s not lose sight of the fact that he has the entire resources of the CCP propping him up.
50
“CORONAVIRUS: THE DYING STOPS IN EUROPE. ARE WE MORE IMMUNE THAN THOUGHT?”
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/coronavirus-the-dying-stops-in-europe-are-we-more-immune-than-thought/news-story/ed7a2fd5f4b537af65acc81f3a5052d0
Not paywalled atm
70
Link should be
https://youtu.be/EJmni3LVK3k
20
“Melbourne looks like ‘Pyongyang by the Yarra”
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6192996216001
41
I think you’ve lost me, Jo. I was happy enough to go with the lockdown the first time–Level 3 and we had it beaten. So the second time, instead of properly enforcing Level 3, he makes us wear masks when walking out dogs–when at the same time the CHO says you’re 20 times less likely to spread the virus outside as inside–only lets us out for an hour (and that hour not at night), won’t allow sole owners of businesses of the office-based services variety to go to their offices (when businesses of such complexion are more likely to depend on their paper files than the paper-light (because no business is entirely paperless) larger firms), and on top of that ducks and weaves and plays his cards close to his chest. I don’t know anyone here in Victoria who thinks he’s got it right. I don’t know who’s being polled, but it’s nobody I know. And he has patently enjoyed the power. Still does. What I fear is that the tinfoil hat brigade will get too much credibility and once restrictions ease, people will be silly. Oh, apart from the initial locking up of tower blocks, since then there’s never been a thought of cordoning off the Labor electorates where the outbreaks are occurring. There are two active cases in my postcode. Oh, and the private mowing contractors–when persuaded to let them go back to work, he had to point out that locking them up was an important part of the initial response to the second wave. Poppycock! He’s gaslighting us.
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Sorry–and then there was the way that Dan’s Roolz changed overnight. Before the great lockdown, the day before, it was going to be one way, and we planned for it. Woke up on the first morning and the Rool had changed. By all means have rules and restrictions, but make them sensible. Target where the virus is, the activities that actually spread it. It reminds me of primary school, where we were taught by men from military backgrounds, who thought collective punishment was o.k. It’s not. It will only foment rebellion, and the hard work will be undone again.
120
The Sheeple who support Andrews are the huge and growing population of public serpents, retired public serpents, trade unionists esp. CFMMEU, a vast army of Leftist lawyers, rent-seekers, “teachers” and the students they indoctrinate, “renewables” investors, the unemployed and unemployable and those that never want to work, Antifa, BLM, Extinction Rebellion, Greens, the uneducated, the stupid and the brainwashed.
After accounting for those, there are very few sound and rational people to oppose Andrews. It’s amazing that only approx. 60% support him.
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I said I wouldn’t partake in the discussion over the virus but this is different; it’s about the politics and how Victoria is developing into a police state.
The 60% claim is not to be trusted. We all know how polls can be wildly inaccurate. The only one that counts is the election. If that turns out to return Andrews’ government then IMHO it proves beyond any reasonable doubt Victorians by and large are fools. For now I will give them the benefit of the doubt, at least until something drastically happens to force him to resign, which ought to happen today but so far the public reaction against him appears to be mediocre if not supportive. It really is a sad reflection on Australians in general if this is the norm. My fears that we are in general way too lay back and don’t use our brains enough is starting to be proven correct. There is still the opportunity to be proven wrong but something has to give sooner rather than later. Otherwise, this will set a precedent for all future governments, state and federal to allow them to turn this once great nation into a fully socialist/fascist regime. If that happens we as a nation of people only have ourselves to blame.
70
Socialism with Australian characteristics is not so bad, a good example is the way the Feds bailed everyone out during the pandemic. Also, we have never been a great nation and at the next election its highly likely that the Labor states will be returned.
‘It really is a sad reflection on Australians in general if this is the norm.’
There is nothing wrong with the electorate, but its fair to say the Murdocracy will do everything in their power to give us the hard right governments you richly deserve.
06
Everyone agree in the wonders that can be achieved with other people’s money, except the ‘other people’.
Of the Aus press, most is far left, nearly all the rest are soft-left, about the only semblance of balance is in the Murdoch group.
20
Spoken like a true ALP+Greens supporter. If you are not then you are a clueless as a rock for what you stated.
20
Maybe they need to do some more polling when the free money has run out? Once you remove the obligation to work you aren’t really polling people anymore.
And frightened people will agree to anything….
90
Sorry Jo but Andrew’s Stage 4 lockdown on Melbourne fails on facts.
Stage 3 in country Victoria produced a reduction in cases from the peak around August 11 by a factor of 25. Melbourne was 12.
Stage 3 without a draconian curfew and 5km limit gave a better result even in Geelong which is very similar in demographics to Northern Melbourne suburbs.
The erosion of freedoms and the planned suspension of the right to Habeas Corpus can never be justified. This is not a health measure but a weapon that Andrews intends to use to redeem himself from his own woeful management and the inept identity automatons he had put in key positions over Labor’s long reign in Victoria.
The DHHS is a sheltered workshop for demented social progressives. Our family unfortunately have had dealings with this outfit. They managed to lose our entire file that took six months to compile. Who on earth thought they were fit to handle a pandemic? Certainly not anyone who has had dealings with them.
You cannot champion a strategy and at the same time ignore the competency of those implementing that strategy.
Lucky that the WWII diggers are dead and don’t have to witness police acting on the say of one man, arresting women for having an opinion or telling a pregnant woman she can’t rest on a park bench.
My mother is in aged care with dementia and I’m not copping the claim that people who disagree with authoritarian excesses of a Premier in full panic mode, are effectively killing the old.
Did they bother to ask the elderly their opinion of the Stage 4 restrictions? No survey conducted there. The elderly are once again treated like toddlers who must be controlled for their own good.
The damage done by Andrews and his court of fools to this state cannot be understated.
240
Excellent point. The problem is the damage is so severe most people are still in shell-shock mode thanks to the alarmist diatribe being spewed out on a daily basis in some states. It might take another 6 months or more for most people to wake up and realise how badly our economy has been hit.
90
Well said Farmer Gez.
91
Outstanding comment.
The truth, the hard truth and nothing but the truth.
Thank you.
KK
80
“House GOP Report Reveals Extent Of China COVID-19 Coverup; Slams WHO Director Tedros Over “Gross Mishandling” ”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/house-gop-report-reveals-extent-china-covid-19-coverup-slams-who-director-tedros-over-gross
60
It is gradually becoming apparent there is a long term, lasting side effect of the Covid19 second wave in Victoria. The virus has resulted in widespread dementia throughout the Victorian Andrews Government.
The extent of this disease is evident for all too see as lawyers try to find who authorised untrained, illiterate temporary workers to supervise hotel quarantine in the State despite the Federal Government offering the services of trained defence force staff to undertake that task.
94
🙂
20
The social and economic devastation of Victoriastan abd Australia in general, is largely hidden while Jobkeeper welfare is being paid, while the dole is being paid at double the normal rate and while business support subsidies are being paid.
If the pandemic/casedemic is ever declared to be over or the welfare stops, whichever comes first, the true impact on lives and businesses will become apparent. And Australia will be effectively bankrupt by then because our borrowing capacity will be close to exhausted and we have very little viable industry left with which to generate wealth and pay taxes.
Frankly I don’t think Andrews wants to the pandemic/casedemic to ever end because it allows him to destroy small businesses (which are not unionised) and reconstruct Victoriastan according to his communist vision.
I also am not confident an effective vaccine will be developed (contrary to claims that we almost have one) and there is certainly no hope of effective early stage treatments like HCQ (Zelenko protocol) being allowed to be used in Australia.
71
You make a valid point. As soon as the pandemic is called off and the “money printing” is turned off as well, those who lost their jobs will find themselves extremely vulnerable. No doubt many more suicides will result. There is the possibility the “money printing” will continue indefinitely (which I suspect it will for a number of reasons) in which case it will end in tears for all of us down the road. Either way it’s not looking good.
70
Quantitative Easing will fix it; don’t you worry.
Australians could buy one U.S. Dollar with one of ours only a few years ago. Now we can only buy 72 cents.
It can all be rectified when our dollar goes to 50 cents U.S.
KK
11
And as soon as the populace is allowed more freedom, infection rates will rise again.
Unless the Andrews’ government gets control of contact tracing, a third lockdown is inevitable.
NSW got it right, why can’t union lackey Andrews?
61
Absolutely right, GD. Locking us all up and ceasing economic activity will halt the spread of infectious diseases, but NSW shows it isn’t the only way of managing the problem. And locking us up like school children being punished is bound to have an equal and opposite reaction once restrictions are eased and it will all be on again.
70
The new law Andrews wants.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8758579/Daniel-Andrews-demands-extraordinary-new-law-let-government-officials-arrest-Victorians.html
71
This is insane. Has anyone suggested yet to build a wall around Victoria? It needs ones to keep the despots in power from spreading their draconian nonsense to the rest of Australia. Before building the wall we ought to allow Victorians with any commons sense to flee to another state.
120
This time the cross bench in the upper house doesn’t agree. We are thankful for small mercies.
42
Let’s wait and see what happens once they get down to business. Will Fiona Patten roll over for Dictator Dan once again?
70
The problem isn’t the virus, it is the piss weak health system that cannot cope with a 10% rise in numbers of people needing hospitalisation.
Too many old people kept alive too long, with multiple co-morbidities with the wonders of modern medicine. 30 years ago a lot of them would be deceased.
I am NOT saying we should not use modern medicine to keep people alive, but it has consequences for hospitals, nursing home beds, carers etc.
41
The situation in nursing homes is often not consistent with the wish of the majority of people I know. Once you have dementia or other severe mental condition, your wishes are no longer relevant. Most kids do whatever it takes to avoid becoming orphaned. While there is a flicker of life, there is always hope that there will be a miraculous recovery.
It is important to assign a medical power of attorney while still in good health:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/hist_act/mtpoaa1990453.pdf
You need to make it clear to the appointed person what your wishes are. Once you are in treatment or care, the only thing that will prevent trying to keep you alive is if you are a danger to those treating you. That sometimes happens with male patients who are suffering dementia, usually in their 70s, but have the strength to throw nurses about. They typically get restrained and medicated. That results in pneumonia and palliative care to a calm death.
So I agree that there are people being kept alive with, what I consider, a low quality of life. But every person has their own view on quality of life. Allowing a virus to run riot through the community and wipe out residents in aged care homes and hospitals should not be an individual’s choice. Each individual has a a responsibility to look after the lives of others. Catching and carelessly spreading CV19 is an anti-social act.
28
“Each individual has a a responsibility to look after the lives of others. Catching and carelessly spreading CV19 is an anti-social act”.
More BS, your life is your responsibility, mine is mine. If that were the case, then you should be out there stopping people crossing the street, jumping out of planes, an endless list.
If I was worried about this Flu, I would be looking after myself as I am, I require nobodies help in this, nobodies mandate, nobodies laws. But that’s right, its always somebodies else’s fault, with you lot.
121
What an incredibly selfish view. Anyone who drives a car or holds a gun has a responsibility to not harm YOU. There is nothing YOU can do to avoid that. Everyone relies on other people to be law abiding and respect life.
The majority of people in aged care homes have no means of protecting themselves. In Australia, they are relying on the mandate of the people for their carers to keep them safe. Like it or not, those living in Australia enjoy a democracy where the MAJORITY of people see the need to protect those who are unable to protect themselves and support governments that follow this mandate.
Those living in Australia could always move to Brazil or Mexico or even USA where life is more an individual responsibility. You can never be quite certain that someone with a gun, knife or car is careful in its use.
413
not quite. His view is that he can’t admit to anything that sounds like it might be socialist. He’s just regurgitating the hymn book without actually thinking about it. Every man woman and child for themselves is the only way forward.
415
If you have not given someone the medical power of attorney then you may well be one of those dementia patients being kept alive so they can hurl their excreta at the nurses. You will only be restrained when you are a physical danger to the nurses. Otherwise the medical fraternity are sworn to keep you alive. You need to be deemed capable of making decisions for yourself to choose how you end your life; no one with dementia has that choice.
It appears you have never had to rely on anyone else. You magically came into existence as a grown adult who has never experienced harm or suffered health issues.
The only way you have not relied on someone else is if you have lived your entire life as a hermit. No contact with anyone; no parents, no teachers. Never been near a road where you rely on every vehicle driver to follow the road rules and not run you down.
511
You have stopped making sense, if you ever started.
I have no right to interfere with anyone’s life choices as long as their’s do not interfere with my way of life.
I live on a farm have very little contact with others, Everything I do has risk with potentially fatal consequences at times.
I believe in the right to self defence of life and property.
Your type need to be told what you can and can’t do, the rest of the world use common sense. Laws don’t stop people getting hit by cars or shot.
The gun buy back scheme, disarmed those who follow the law, the crims kept theirs, because their criminals. People wishing to harm others will not be stopped by laws.
No one I know got railroaded into the Medical, police or any other risky job, they chose as is their right, they knew the risks.
GA’s right, I am anti socialist, anti communist and with the clowns now at the wheel, anti government, the sh!t your socialist leaders hump on the farmers has got beyond the pale.
“Those living in Australia could always move to Brazil or Mexico or even USA where life is more an individual responsibility”. Those countries have laws, just as it always seems to be, its the socialist who don’t follow them.
As they say, you vote yourself into socialism, you have to shoot your way out.
Then you throw out the straw man for the rest as did GA. (If I was worried about this Flu)
Venezuela is the place for you.
111
‘ … the crims kept theirs, because they are criminals.’
Good thing too, they only kill each other.
‘ … your socialist leaders hump on the farmers has got beyond the pale.’
Does this have something to do with water buy backs or green tape?
23
Water buy back is a southern thing and I run cattle.
For me its the vegetation laws which are changing every six months, My property was carved out of the rain forest 100 years ago, I am in a cassowary area, the QLD gov wacked an overlay on my property declaring Lantana a cassowary habitat, done from a satellite, shadows from some small hills were declared the same, it is only grass. Hours on the phone fall on deaf ears, there is no logic allowed in government.
I have a small hardwood plantation which is a registered retail plot they have put an endangered species habitat on it, called a blue spot overlay which forbids harvesting or disturbing. I must get someone in a white coat to scour my land looking for endangered flora for a fee of up to $15,000.
Now they are pushing sediment laws, which will require me to fence off the creeks which is where my cattle drink, even though I have sediment traps at my boundaries, so pumps pipes, tanks and troughs. I will need dams for the pumps so another cost to build and they have to be registered for a fee and renewed, was 5 years, but that has changed to yearly.
They are trying to get water metering on pumped discharges from dams, don’t think that will fly as we have rights for domestic and live stock. But removing rights is the new normal so we will see.
As for guns I think the armed robberies and home invasions proves your opinion wrong.
80
You have not read the original post from Clinton about too many old people being kept alive that I responded to. You only need to visit a dementia ward to understand the problem. Many people are being kept alive because it is not of their choosing but rather caring family or community. The family believe it to be the right thing to do and the individual is deemed not to have the faculty to make their own decisions.
If you wish to retain control over the way you live and die then you need to get a medical power of attorney sorted and discuss the circumstances of your moving on. If you have not had the discussion then you may end up being one of those poor demented wretches being kept alive by the latest medical technology.
14
You have stopped making sense.
Each individual has a a responsibility to look after the lives of others.
50
Now you are in complete contradiction of yourself – at #35.1.1 MP wrote
Now at #35.1.1.2.1 MP has changed his view to exactly what I was stating above:
I am assuming it is the same MP. Maybe MP needs to get that medical power of attorney done as it appears MP is having difficulty remembering posts from a few hours ago.
24
That was a copy and paste from your original comment and the point of my reply, not the straw man you continue to push.
Chuckle chuckle
20
MP, your outline shows the horrific mess that sits on people On the land: petty bureaucracy and unbelievable harassment.
All of it with no benefit to the land or anyone.
KK
20
MP: More BS, your life is your responsibility, mine is mine
This has to be the start of the discussion. We are not automatons. We are not slaves. As much as your dissenters do not realise that is what they wish to allow us to be made, we are not in fact slaves or automatons.
Your dissenters are not prepared to even try to understand your POV.
Case in point: What an incredibly selfish view. Anyone who drives a car or holds a gun has a responsibility to not harm YOU. There is nothing YOU can do to avoid that.
This poster does not realise they are not only wrong, but the solution is exactly the same as the one he applauds now: you can avoid being harmed by someone else with a gun or car by not going outside.
The exact same “solution” to coronavirus that, if contravened, will nett you a heft fine. Even Grandmas and pregnant women are being harassed for being outside.
Like masks “save you” from coronavirus, you can also avoid 90% of what is deadly with car accidents – ie head injuries – by wearing a helmet whilst driving.
What’s the bet the people applauding “stay at home” orders for something that you can develop an immunity to will not wear a helmet when driving…
There are scenarios where we will have to take care, as our actions can harm others indirectly. That needs to be a discussion. Not wearing a mask while going for a walk outside is not one of those scenarios. Putting the bins out at 10pm is not one of those scenarios. Going to work as a solo operator is not one of those scenarios. Going to visit relatives (either here or interstate) who are willing to let you visit is not one of those scenarios. Going for a bike ride further than 5km away is not one of those scenarios.
Knee jerk reactions to things you are scared of are understandable, but having them be implemented as legal requirements is rank.
90
I replied to Karl, before I read yours.
These types literally are asking for enslavement, for the good of the collective.
61
MP: These types literally are asking for enslavement, for the good of the collective.
They do not want freedom. They want safety. Security. It’s understandable, and I am fine with them prioritising that over all else.
What I am not fine with is having their irrational fears forced onto the behaviours now legal for me to engage.
50
characterising slavery as the only way other than your point of view is either a lack of awareness of the human condition or you are a zealot.
310
Zealot came to mean anyone who is passionately devoted to a cause. Yep that’s me.
Your wanting everyone to follow your beliefs also makes you a Zealot. Welcome to the club, but you have always been in that club, different chapter.
What is this human condition?
41
Good question but ambiguous.
If you mean you know there is a human condition, have thought about it and concluded that it is hard to define that’s a good level of awareness.
If you’ve never heard or thought of it, what are you?
03
“either a lack of awareness of the human condition”
Thats my point, you did not define the term and it is so broad, fear, the clamouring to be led to safety, the ruling over others and on and on and on.
“If you’ve never heard or thought of it, what are you?”
I was going to say “I am the one that feeds you” but on second thoughts I don’t grow Soy or Lentils.
60
MP: I don’t grow Soy or Lentils.
Ok there’s my laughter-fueled endorphin hit for the day. Thanks MP!
20
Why don’t you grow them. I assume that you would if you could as they are a cash crop. Chick peas are making a friend huge money up Inverell way.
10
Things grow where things grow. Up to 4 meters of rain a year rules out most crops, (rot) Tea is the only crop grown in my area.
I like cattle, its a Man thing.
20
This is insane and an idolatrous obsession with C-19. Volunteers restricted from searching for the missing boy because of COVID.
https://www.3aw.com.au/search-for-autistic-boy-missing-in-the-yarra-ranges-stretches-into-second-day1/
90
Sadly the boy was found dead. Another covid death because volunteer searchers were told by police they couldn’t breach lockdown restrictions.
Note, police are now claiming it wasn’t due to the covid but there are many reports that police originally stated this as the reason.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/major-search-for-william-wall-who-didnt-return-from-daily-walk-at-warburton-trail/news-story/619b96640925443994caba56f4a15a26
60
You would think the more people searching the better .
20
Surely the unsung hero of this pandemic is death, or more precicely, the fear of death. At last this has caused most people to implement better personal and public hygeine via masks, hand sanitiser and physical distancing. In prior years many people were fairly nonchalent about the seasonal cold and flu season: take a course of cold and flu tablets if you caught the latest virus and soldier on. This fix probably helped spread the virus around more effectively than if the infectee had stayed home on sick leave, out of contact with others.
The important question for now is: have people learned to take personal and public hygeine seriously for the future? Ironically, it seems that death has given many people a reprieve.
21
I am hoping ‘soldier on’ is now condemned to history. Codral has changed it add to support self-isolating than taking illness into work places.
I have literally flown at least a million of miles but I still dread getting on an airplane and having someone near me coughing, sneezing and sniffling. It is almost certain that Covid will result in new long-term controls on air travellers for infection prevention.
One of the benefits of working from home in the final years of my career was the reduced risk of getting the office bug that seemed to get passed around at least once a year. But I was still exposed during air travel.
My big exposure now is grandchildren. My son in the UK believes his family has already had a mild dose of Covid with grandson bringing it home from day care.
15
I only wish it had SJOG. Most people are being more careful of hygiene and distancing but a sizeable minority are just ignoring it. They come near even when I try to maintain distance, don’t use the hand sanitiser supplied in shops and still handle items they are not buying.
As for those with their dirty masks slung below their noses…oh dear!
31
I hope that the courts agree with us. The Hunchback of Notre Dan need to pay for what he did to working people. Labor my butt.
80
So much hate, fear and loathing. An ideological approach to all the worlds problems is doomed to failure but admitting that the best approach doesn’t fit ones ideology is very hard for some.
Let go. Be free and happy folks.
28
The pandemic has flushed out the far right that Bill mentioned lurked here Irrationality is their MO and they believe in armageddon.
16
TdeF when I quote your “twenty-five plus” number for visits to China by Daniel Andrews people ask where I found the information and I realize it was uncited.
Now there are five official visits mentioned in this Victorian governance report, https://www.vic.gov.au/dpc-travel-outcomes-report-daniel-andrews-2019-travel-china, so I suppose of the remainder it’s all been paid for by Labor and various united front billionaires who have cultivated his company in order to pour flattery into his capacious earholes.
60
There are references to various Labor MP trips to China here. The article seems to be from 2018 so there are likely to have been more trips since then plus undisclosed trips paid for by others such as the Chi-comms. Only taxpayer funded trips are disclosed.
https://www.riteon.org.au/daniel-andrews-and-china/
50
A fine display of why you are an ex-sceptic
09
Anyone who supports these restrictions has no business asking why the German people didn’t object to the crimes of the Nazi Party. They are hereby excused from that conversation.
91
Democracy? what a joke, obviously a distant comment. If only science had played arole with hotel quarantine
60
My personal poling of friends and family has universal support for lockdowns of some form. On a broader community basis that might reduce to the quoted 62%; irrespective it appears Dan is in line with the majority of Victorians – the essence of democracy.
Those who disagree would prefer their form of dictatorship somehow disguised as democracy; as long as they were in charge no doubt it would be perfect – just like China is perfect.
On the other hand, my personal poling amongst family and friends shows universal abhorrence of Do pi Dan Amnesias’ handling of the hotel quarantine that led to the second wave. The people have not been poled on this question. I would be staggered if there was not near universal condemnation of Dan and his Government.
46
Rick
As someone contributing to a sceptical climate blog surely your comment that democracy is asserting itself over lockdown in Victoria is a little strange?
By that criteria, as an overwhelming majority of Australians say they believe in climate change and an overwhelming number support nett zero emissions by 2050-including all regions- then surely this blog ought to support the democratic will of the people and close itself down?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/feb/25/essential-poll-a-majority-of-coalition-voters-support-a-net-zero-emissions-target-for-2050
The contention by climate sceptics and lockdown sceptics is that the science is not settled and people superficially understand the complex problems involved which is why we continue to make a noise and believe the people are ‘wrong’.
60
🙂 🙂
10
I comment from a basis of data on the fronts regarding climate science, weather dependent generators and Covid19.
As far as climate science goes the fundamental error is trying to reduce the climate to a single number; namely global surface temperature. From there it is all down hill. I know from looking at temperature records across Australia that the land mass was warmer in the late 1800s than it has been since. I know how the BoM worlds best practice homogenisation has produced a trend that resembles a correlation with CO2 increasing.
As far as WDGs go I have been operating part of my household electricity needs from solar and lithium batteries off grid for 8 years now and have a good grasp of real data based economics of such WGDs. I also have a 3kW grid connected system. I know that describing WDGs as ‘renewable’ is using language in a misleading manner but it does not prevent me from making money using the democratically mandated subsidies.
On the Covid19 front I forecast way back in January that Covid had potential for dire economic consequences based on the news coming out of China. I was relieved in May when it appeared that Victoria/Australia had dodged the worst of it. The relief was followed by concern as my middle son started to report the numbers rolling into his Covid ward at a large Melbourne hospital. That expanded to three wards and then he was transferred to work night shifts at a northern suburbs hospital that had lost control with staff numbers dwindling as they were told to isolate. At the peak of the second wave at that hospital he was signing off on an average of two deaths certificates each shift in his ward and there were two wards at that hospital. It went from nothing to overwhelmed in 3 weeks. Just like almost every other place that has let the genie out.
Sometimes my knowledge and views agrees with the majority; sometimes my knowledge and views stand alone. I am always willing to offer a view based on evidence and am willing to change my view if there is a compelling case in new evidence. The evidence on Covid19 is quite clear – the virus is easily transmitted, results in an extraordinarily high rate of hospitalisation and has a comparitevly high mortality rate. I know that from detail accounts from my own son who is a practicing physician in Covid wards in Melbourne.
I am way more pragmatic than dogmatic or idealistic. I am happy to make money out of my rooftop solar system if that is where the government incentives push me. Ultimately more rooftops has a negative impact on income of grid scale WDG investors. If you are promoting WDGs then do it in a way that benefits average households.
On the Covid front, pragmatism trumps dogmatism – I see Taiwan as providing the benchmark in pandemic response. If it was not for Dopi Dan Amnesia, Victoria would be in a much better place. Despite that, there has still been an AFL footy season with decent crowds; mostly in my home State. My three sons and partners have continued to work. The one having high exposure to Covid has avoided it, at least so for. The son in UK thinks he may have already had a mild dose but will not know until he has an antibody test.
Science encourages a pragmatic approach where data rules. Dogma is for believers of whatever they believe.
With respect to the JoNova blog, time is a factor in all these areas. I can guarantee the weather in any location will be colder at some time in the future than it is now. I am watching integration of WDG into the national grid with interest – it is presenting some interesting technical challenges. I am insulated from any price rises as I make money from selling electricity and could go off grid with a relatively small investment if the rules change. By this time next year the impact of CV19 will be clearer. Right now, the whole of Australia is in a good place; one of the best in the world. No thanks to Dan Amnesia.
14
Rick
Thanks for your interesting reply
As I suspect you realise I had my tongue slightly in my cheek but needed to make the point that democracy is not always the best judge of science or indeed any complex situation.
As a historical climatologist in the UK, living close to the excellent archives of the Met Office, I am fortunate in being able to collect climate records going back 2000 years with much evidence ‘on the ground’ from nearby Dartmoor going back 5000 years. So, like you, I certainly see nothing climatically to get excited about.
Interestingly I was having a debate about Taiwan on another blog. They didn’t actually lockdown to any great extent and masks were only compulsory on Public transport services.
Generally they are a fitter society (obesity being a big Covid killer as you know) and as they built from scratch when fleeing to the island, their hospital system and test and trace is very good, as is their rapid response..
Covid is dangerous to certain groups as shown in the extensive ONS figures I posted above. Some 90% plus of those that died here had often considerable health problems with the median age being 85 and were put into a situation in care homes where the virus spread rapidly.
Very few ‘healthy’ people died. As I also posted above there is now a realisation that being indoors is the worst place possible and being outdoors is the best, the opposite of what happened to us, compounded by a lack of Vitamin D after a long wet winter.
Just when the sun shone for weeks on end was just the time we were told we couldn’t go out to soak up the rays.
We have put our countries (the West generally) through a food mixer, mincing up everything from our economies to freedoms to society to education. Everything is dependent on covid which ultimately will be a minor cause of death compared to other human ailments.
I think the price we have been willing to pay is far too high, and when the near future comes round to demand payment, people will be aghast at the existential losses they will be faced with for something that, although serious, is not the bubonic plague, and should not have been allowed to have become the defining moment of all our lives and to our democratic society.
In short, we got into a hysterical panic when what was necessary was caution and concern and calm heads and a realisation that we hadn’t been visited by the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but merely a rather scrawny rider on a pretty small horse.
80
Very well said Tony.
KK
30
The fundamental error in “climate science” (which is entirely wrong, and wrong-headed) is believing that “the Sun warms the earth and the earth warms the atmosphere” or its corollary, “the atmosphere is transparent to incoming solar radiation”. That supposed physics is exactly, precisely backwards (actually reversing cause and effect, in claiming radiation determines temperature in the atmosphere, rather than the actual reverse, temperature determines the “measured” radiation) and upside-down (the atmospheric temperature, globally, is maintained by incident solar IR, thus from above not below, as the incompetent climate scientists believe unquestioningly). The very existence of the tropospheric temperature “lapse rate” structure, empirically determined and enshrined in the Standard Atmosphere model, confirms the hydrostatic conndition of the troposphere as the real governor of the (essentially unchanging) global mean surface temperature, and denies all of the “settled science” of the “greenhouse effect” in the real atmosphere.
And, by the way, the more Jo Nova writes about covid19, the more she is merely entrenching HER dogmatic ignorance of the truth about it. And that is par for the course, quite generally, in this time of ascendant false dogma over good honest reason, in the public discourse. She is — along with too much of the world — being hysterical, instead of truly informative. (Apparently, she thinks she is an expert on covid19, and a defender of the “settled science”. She has become one of “them”, in this.)
61
… and what, pray tell, are your qualifications and expertise in this arena?
Do tell …
01
Jo: 10%: The hospital burden is too much for any nation
Things that result in far greater than 10% admission to hospital:
* head injuries from sport, motor accidents
* snake bites
* bone fractures from sport, falling over, car accidents
* indicators of imminent miscarriage, cancer, heart attack or stroke
Sure, you can’t catch these things from someone else, but you also can’t develop immunity to them like you can with COVID-19, nor will 80% of sufferers of these things be asymptomatic.
I think the big error here is not seeing that over time the hospitalisation rate goes way way down. A quick glance at Sweden’s data proves this.
100
10% of the Australian population is 2,500,000 people. There are 62,000 public hospital beds in Australia. Just a tad short of 2,500,000!
Melbourne hospitals were overwhelmed with just 750 daily cases of Covid being detected. Hospitals in the city and north of the city went from nothing to unable to cope within three weeks. The government had no choice but to intercept that exponential trend.
15
RickWill: 10% of the Australian population is 2,500,000 people. There are 62,000 public hospital beds in Australia. Just a tad short of 2,500,000!
The article we are commenting on specifically says:
The state of Victoria:
Active Cases: 620
Hospital: 80
ICU: 8
I have no idea what you’re talking about 62,000 or 2.5M for, because those numbers have no relevance to anything on this page.
RickWill: Melbourne hospitals were overwhelmed with just 750 daily cases of Covid being detected.
According to this page: https://www.covid19data.com.au/states-and-territories – the highest daily new cases for Victoria was 725 / 723 and they were outliers, no doubt due to reporting delays. It would appear that Victoria, let alone Melbourne solely, did not record 750 new cases a day – ever.
Most bad days were around 400.
According to The Age, on July 27 not only were there 428 new cases of COVID-19 – around the typical bad day of the time, but
Now, I realise MSM can be dubious at times, but they are reporting analysis done by the Grattan Institute, who found:
Later on that page, Chair of epidemiology at Deakin University Professor Catherine Bennett suggested the Grattan Institute calculations may be a little conservative.
This makes your claim that “Melbourne hospitals were overwhelmed with just 750 daily cases of Covid being detected” seem fabricated at best.
I am disappointed that these sorts of comments are being posted when they are so easily debunked with a modicum of research.
50
Haven’t you read Jo’s posts on Vitamin D 3?
Her latest is Sept 12, 2020.
When did you have a calcifidiol test?
Do you know what your serum level is?
How do you know you aren’t Deficient? Or worse …
At appropriate levels, it protects and prevents imminent miscarriage, [some] cancers, heart attack or stroke when brought to about or above 120nM/L or c. 50ng/ml or higher. It also enables your immune system to remain free and uninfected by Covid. Otherwise, you’re in the queue.
You should check out https://vitamindwiki.com where you can find out just what vit d3 deficiency causes.
Have you read Jo’s post of Septermber 12, 2020?
In it she references a scientific paper from Cordoba University, Spain, which describes what is effectively a cure for Covid. I suppose you didn’t think to obtain a copy of that paper and read it, did you? I did … I strongly suggest you should.
41
Sophocles: Haven’t you read Jo’s posts on Vitamin D 3? When did you have a calcifidiol test? [etc]
Entirely irrelevant to the point. This is not about me – why you would make it so is puzzling.
In case there are others who also missed the point, it’s this: picking a number (10%) and saying “This is too much for any nation” – ignoring the reality that there are many, many other things that occur that have higher than 10% hospitalisation rates is naive at best. Why are those things – by implication – “just fine for any nation”? I thought every life mattered? And yes, you can catch COVID-19 from other (symptomatic only) people, but not miscarriages, etc. However you cannot develop immunity to head trauma in vehicle accidents either. 80% of people who get snake bites are not asymptomatic.
As for the study that is a “cure” for COVID-19 – HCQ etc, protocols have been discussed and their efficacy shown online for some months now. That is irrelevant in the case of Victoria and Australia where political will is against curing anybody.
If anything, it completely refutes the “10% is too much for any nation” that Jo has posted. If we were politically / medically amenable to learning from other nations and free to implement such protocols, it’s difficult to see how any % would be too much.
00
Re: miscarriages
I cannot vouch for the veracity of this site, however they found
Sharp jump in stillbirths during COVID lockdown
Telling me that taking more Vit D can reduce miscarriages is all well and good, but there’s a bunch of women that info is too late for.
00
The miscarriage story is something I read the day I made this 10% post.
It’s one of the the uncounted (by most) costs of the lock down being implemented because “every life matters!!” Even if you do not consider a fetus to be “alive”, the devastation affecting the families trying to have a child would also be increasing four-fold.
“Lockdowns work” has been the cry here and whilst at face value, it may appear that they do (ignoring Japan and Sweden), the effects are far more than what we can see on the surface via case numbers and yet more aged care facility deaths.
00
Viruses are like earthquakes, the first time it hits all the vulnerable buildings fall down when a second shake comes only a few buildings fall because the vulnerable ones are already gone. When a new virus appears most of the vulnerable fall in the first wave, in subsequent outbreaks the fatalities are much lower. Naturally every year people fall into the vulnerable category and are at risk. We saw this pattern with influenza, in the initial outbreak 50 million died but in subsequent flue seasons the casualties are around 400,000.
Modelling indicates that first wave global deaths from CV19 will be 1.5 to 3 million much less deadly than the flue and since about 100 million die every year from other causes not a very significant number. Covid viruses are common cold viruses so we can expect to see a similar seasonal outbreak pattern with global deaths in the 10’s of thousands each year.
Victorias lockdown is just delaying the inevitable, It’s time to move on and get back to our lives.
60
Neil, only a small part of the population has been exposed to the virus.
00
My point exactly, lockdown is just delaying the inevitable, we are still being dragged excruciatingly through a long drawn out first wave. As soon as we attempt to open up borders the first wave will resume until the 10’s of thousands of vulnerable Australians die. We can stop it, we need to accept it and move on.
10
The problem is that the death toll caused by the lockdowns will far exceed (by orders of magnitude) the lives saved from the lockdowns. Please show me any modelling that disproves this.
60
Less people have died in NSW compared to this time last year.
14
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/09/23/will-the-covid-19-response-be-more-deadly-than-the-virus-early-indications-say-yes-n958530
20
Two very good Inked articles. The first concerns a letter sent by medical experts and professors in the UK to boris Johnson pointing out that lockdown measures are not effective.
The second takes the UK office of national statistics report . All but 1500 of the 32000 or so people who died of the virus in UK hospitals had at least one underlying health problems. As the age increases so the number of co morbities increase. The median age of those dying is 85 who have on average 2.6 co morbidities
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8761609/Exasperated-professor-HUGH-PENNINGTON-signed-stinging-protest-letter-PM.html
We need to protect the vulnerable not lock down everyone and destroy society.
50
the best way to “protect the vulnerable” is to give them enough Vitamin D 3 every day so they become and stay invulnerable.
40
In a political context when the word ‘democratic’ is used it means not democratic.
If the word ‘science’ is used to ban fishing, golfing, boating, tennis, surfing and driving ranges, sitting on a bench in a public park, informing journalists that their name is on a list, and all that, then it is not science, it is tyranny.
31
Yes Victoria is a Marxist state. Nasty small-minded fascists using brutal enforcers to control every moment of people’s lives. Andrews is is typical of the moronic bullies foisted on us by the union lowlifes.
50
New Zealand identifies its first coronavirus case – seven months after infection.
‘The infection occurred in late February after exposure to a visitor from Italy but the family suffering symptoms was not tested at the time.
‘Epidemiologist said he had not heard of a case identified by testing so long after a person first fell ill.’ SCMP
13
”
Has Sweden really pulled it off?”
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/09/has-sweden-really-pulled-it-off/
Ain’t statistics wonderful?
50
So is the conclusion:
By all accounts Australia is in a good place compared with a few rare examples like Taiwan.
Lets see how Sweden fares when “crowds’, about 30% of capacity, are permitted at football matches from the 1st October. Mid November will be an interesting period for Sweden.
Australia has had football crowds at 30% capacity for months now.
05
Overseas conservative news services & commentaries sites picking up Malcolm Roberts climate letter….
https://newswithviews.com/australian-report-discloses-the-economic-destruction-of-the-global-warming-fraud/
“Australian Report Discloses the Economic Destruction of the Global Warming Fr*ud
“In recent years, like many countries, including the U.S., Australian politics of both main parties have been moving decidedly to the left. This, as in the U.S., is attributable to Agenda 21/2030. Also, like in the U.S. and the rest of the countries that signed on to Agenda 21, the chief tool is Global Warming. Last year, President Trump announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, which is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts, a major spokesman exposing the hoax of Global Warming ,notes that his nation is still part of the Agreement and, thus, has been “seduced into endorsing policies aiming at decarbonizing and consequently deindustrializing” their economy. Roberts avers that costly government policy has, knowingly, been based on “imprecise, weak, and unscientific” data. He is calling for a stop to “all climate policies” until the government provides scientific proof for the need for destruction of the economy.
50
https://judithcurry.com/2020/09/22/herd-immunity-to-covid-19-and-pre-existing-immune-responses/
This article, written by Nic Lewis, has more good news in it than a lot of stuff I have read lately. It would seem that if you have had a bad coronoavirus cold then you may be immune to SARS-CoV-2 and already a part of the race to herd immunity. But there is much more to it than that especially stuff about WHO scientists forgetting things they learned about immunity more than a decade ago … the plot thickens about why this virus ever got the status it has.
40
HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE
AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF
An Urgent Call to Depoliticize Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic
September 2020
The Economic Standard
The COVID-19 pandemic struck America nine months before a presidential election, turning basic medical activities like
testing and treatment into partisan battlegrounds. No subject has been more distorted than hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a
safe, versatile medicine that has treated hundreds of millions of people for numerous diseases for seven decades.
HCQ was adopted as a COVID-19 treatment in Asia in January 2020 without fanfare, based on lab tests with the
related coronavirus SARS-1. But when President Trump stated in March that the U.S. would also begin studying the
drug’s potential against the virus, political opponents defied longstanding scientific and medical consensus to portray
HCQ as harmful and Trump as a mortal danger to public health. Flawed and even falsified studies were published and
promoted by media outlets eager to discredit Trump, while positive studies were impugned or ignored.
This campaign persists even as evidence of HCQ’s benefit against COVID-19 grows – including scores of
observational controlled trials showing therapeutic effect when administered early in disease progression. Hundreds
of drugs have been approved for both indication-specific and general usage on the basis of similar observational
trials, especially when conducted in large numbers and subject to careful meta-analysis. As a matter of medical
practice and especially in a pandemic emergency, it is flatly not the case that only randomized controlled trials can
justify adopting a treatment, as HCQ detractors have insisted while publicizing randomized controlled trials results
that are themselves deeply flawed.
The U.S. is an international outlier on HCQ. Right now, doctors around the world are prescribing HCQ to treat
COVID-19 outside of hospitals, as well as prophylactically to prevent infection among healthcare workers and
vulnerable populations. This paper argues that HCQ has met the appropriate burden of proof and urges members of
the U.S. news media, public health community, and regulatory agencies to stop politicizing the use of this medicine.
Tens of thousands of lives still hang in the balance.
30
Very apt, thanks OldOzzie. The net ref. is:
https://theeconomicstandard.com/hcqwhitepaper/
On that page there is a separate link to download the paper.
30pp, 2.4Mb
00
Cases are trending down, Vic government to get more power.
Some news cuttings of possible relevance:
Victorians could be detained on broad and subjective grounds
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6193915710001
.. union has reportedly called for the dismissal of Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos
https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-health-workers-union-calls-for-the-dismissal-of-vic-health-minister_3512284.html
Two deaths, 12 new cases
https://www.theepochtimes.com/victoria-has-two-virus-deaths-12-new-cases_3512271.html
12 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths
https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-victoria-update-12-new-cases-covid19-2-deaths-latest-numbers-dhhs/af31f6eb-b519-4f42-9021-9560276ed163
Victoria has recorded 12 new virus cases, pointing to a possible easing of lockdown restrictions earlier than scheduled.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/victoria-records-12-new-coronavirus-cases-two-more-deaths/news-story/2161e335c68d0c216a9021c232a4b832
Victorian government will have to release key advice it received before imposing its curfew despite arguing the information was “privileged”.
Described as, “bizarre, capricious, and arbitrary”.
https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/courts-law/anticurfew-trial-curfew-legal-advice-must-be-released/news-story/f76f2866d4c6b55ba2df8db23f09b754
10