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No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

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Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#11
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.

Don’t be such an wide-eyed optimist, the US election will lead to 3 months of strife in the best case scenario. Both sides expect the other will try to steal the election, so how is it going to relieve anything?

I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not. What part of my comment led you to label me a wide-eyed optimist?

By "hopefully provides a temporary relief", I was thinking on a longer scale as in maybe sometime next year and more along the lines of getting to come up for a breath when we've had a hand holding our heads below water for four years.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#12
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.

Don’t be such an wide-eyed optimist, the US election will lead to 3 months of strife in the best case scenario. Both sides expect the other will try to steal the election, so how is it going to relieve anything?

Something I read (could have been on HN) theorized the only outcome that doesn't lead to social unrest is a Biden landslide.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#13
Another thing that's helping Australia is that they're heading into summer.

Normalized by population the worst non-tiny (10M+) countries to be right now seem to be France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. And it'd be even worse in France, Italy and Poland in terms of new cases if they had the kind of testing throughput the US has been able to muster (1.24M tests a day). Belgium has comparable normalized test throughput. As far as cases, new cases = positivity * throughput. The higher the throughput, the more cases you are going to get.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#14
post #2

This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, very expertly, on the sheer number of large Halloween parties I was invited to tonight... and how people (aged 28-40) are still mocking those who won’t congregate with 50 randos in a house. It’s very perplexing. And on the ever-increasing infections and deaths. A…

> I do worry about the US though Europe isn't looking much different right now.

Why is Europe's status something to care about in the U.S.? China is basically operating on all cylinders right now. It's insane how people in the U.S. don't get the damage that's being done on literally all fronts right now.

The past year has had irreparable damage to the U.S. It's hard to know where to even start, from slow production due to job loss and just everything going slower, poor health due to active cases and the decades of health care reverberations done from permanent damage and repeat infections, poor education due to an already broken primary and secondary school system basically being put on pause for a year, etc. The U.S. is literally fighting whether to re-elect a person who likely has clinical personality disorders and is probably well below even average intelligence, at the very best.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#15
Melbourne resident here.

We're feeling pretty relieved to be getting these results and excited to be tentatively emerging from nearly four months of fairly strict lockdown.

Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread.

At the same time, there's much debate and political ruckus about the merits of the lockdown - i.e., the economic and human costs, vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious.

There's also the ongoing attack on our state government from political opponents and parts of the media, over the fact that the virus was suppressed here back in May, as it was in the rest of Australia, but then started spreading rapidly again in June, when poorly-trained security guards acquired the virus while working in quarantine hotels, then took it back to their families and communities, with the outbreak then tearing through aged care homes and leading to a total of 800+ fatalities.

What isn't being talked about here, but has been mentioned by another commenter in this thread, is weather. Melbourne is the only large/dense city in Australia that has quite cool winters, similar to the weather that prevailed in Northern Asia, Europe and the US in Feb-April, and that is returning to Western Europe now. As we now know, given the serious outbreaks that have happened in warmer regions, warm weather is not a strong enough factor to halt this virus altogether, but it does seem to have an influence, and it's striking to note the progression of this virus in Melbourne, relative to the weather.

AMA!

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#16
post #6

> 6 new cases today (+5)*, 9 yesterday (+5) Title doesn't seem to match data.

All new cases reported in Australia today (Sun Nov 1, from tests performed on Sat Oct 31st) were acquired overseas and are in hotel quarantine. Aside from them there were no new cases, even between close contacts (household etc). So, the title is true for locally acquired cases, which I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make. (Also there was only one locally acquired case the previous day, in the state…

> I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make

Yes. I went with the headline Australian newspapers are using, which in hindsight lacks sufficient context for HN.

What I find remarkable is how many things Australia stuffed up, but was able to recover from by brute force and social cohesion. Procrastinating over quarantine for international travellers, obsessing about ventilators while ignoring prevention, identifying that aged care was a massive vulnerability but doing nothing to mitigate it, gross recklessness in setting up hotel quarantine, failing to anticipate that although the virus went away it was bound to come back: it's a long list.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#17
post #13

Another thing that's helping Australia is that they're heading into summer. Normalized by population the worst non-tiny (10M+) countries to be right now seem to be France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. And it'd be even worse in France, Italy and Poland in terms of new cases if they had the kind of testing throughput the US has been able to muster (1.24M tests a day). Belgium has comparable normalized test throughput. As…

Only Belgium of those seems to rank worse than USA for cases/pop. Missing from your list seems to be Israel and Czech Republic (unless your limit for non-tiny country is 11 million).

But even below USA, before we get to France, Italy or Poland; Peru, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia ranks in before.

And most of these countries are testing at lower rates than France.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#18
post #17
post #13

Another thing that's helping Australia is that they're heading into summer. Normalized by population the worst non-tiny (10M+) countries to be right now seem to be France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. And it'd be even worse in France, Italy and Poland in terms of new cases if they had the kind of testing throughput the US has been able to muster (1.24M tests a day). Belgium has comparable normalized test throughput. As…

Only Belgium of those seems to rank worse than USA for cases/pop. Missing from your list seems to be Israel and Czech Republic (unless your limit for non-tiny country is 11 million). But even below USA, before we get to France, Italy or Poland; Peru, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia ranks in before. And most of these countries are testing at lower rates than France.

That's only if you fail at basic arithmetics. All of them are worse than the US. Scaled up to US population, France would have 190K new cases per day. Italy - 168K. Poland - 185K. And so on and so forth down the list.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#19
post #4
post #2

This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, very expertly, on the sheer number of large Halloween parties I was invited to tonight... and how people (aged 28-40) are still mocking those who won’t congregate with 50 randos in a house. It’s very perplexing. And on the ever-increasing infections and deaths. A…

The U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.

My impression is that both in the US and in most European countries, there is a dire need for new political parties to enter the mainstream.

I mean this election is basically a forced choice between two grandpas and both are representing values from before I was born.

Where's the political party that I would trust to do what will secure a good future for my kids, because they, too, have young kids?

Where's the political party where people roughly my age are calling the shots?

US, France, Germany, UK, ... All I see is conservative old people. Germany and France tried to establish new center parties, but in both cases the newcomers quickly got infiltrated by old politicians and drifted far right, meaning conservative again.

Re: No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

#20
post #18
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Belgium of those seems to rank worse than USA for cases/pop. Missing from your list seems to be Israel and Czech Republic (unless your limit for non-tiny country is 11 million). But even below USA, before we get to France, Italy or Poland; Peru, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia ranks in before. And most of these countries are testing at lower rates than France.

That's only if you fail at basic arithmetics. All of them are worse than the US. Scaled up to US population, France would have 190K new cases per day. Italy - 168K. Poland - 185K. And so on and so forth down the list.

That wasn't particularly clear from your 'worst non-tiny countries' (which out of context just sounds mean-spirited). So you meant in terms of new cases, not total cases?
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