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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

#61

Post by thisrod »

peteretep wrote: post #23

Good luck y’all! Life in Thailand has been pretty awesome (if you don’t rely on tourist dollars) since we hit this point some months back. At this point when the occasional bizarre local case does show up (and one or two have here) the government can go nuts on contact tracing and make sure it stays under control.

Ha ha! That's what my friends in KL and Penang were telling me in August. Just wait until the king comes home from France, and insists that his 100 or so favorite hookers skip quarantine :-(

Seriously, I think that we'll have to live with one Southeast Asian country (including Australia) having an outbreak at any given time.

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

#62

Post by luckylion »

Jedd wrote: post #56
dustinmoris wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there's sufficient contra-examples in both hemispheres to suggest that the weather is not a major factor -- though it is politically expedient & convenient to point at the weather to distract from mismanagement. I'm not a politician, I'm not a nationalist, my birthplace is not the culture which I've been raised under, where my parents come from I've never lived and where I live now I have no ties whatsoever…

My point was that politicians that are incapable of managing this disease within their own borders would be happy to point to weather, as a way of abrogating responsibility. This claim is typically made without citation. If people that repeat this claim, asserting it as fact, don't have citations -- then that's a different but related problem. In Australia we got this under control through winter. Several states (Sou…

A point for Germany: the current outbreak is much stronger than the one in March, even though we didn't have obligatory masks in March (they've been in effect since April; few people had them before they became obligatory). We had very few cases during the (pretty warm) summer (in the county I currently live in, there were zero cases in June). March peaked at around 5.5k on a single day, October peaked at ~13k with most days >5.5k.

Given that we have a lot more measures in place now (masks, distancing etc), something else has to play a role. February and March were unusually warm and sunny. I don't know whether that's relevant, but it seems unlikely that the counter-measures predict the peak - they are much stricter now than they were at the beginning of the year.

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

#63

Post by sjy »

luckylion wrote: post #43
alisonatwork wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Canada has done a relatively poor job by international standards, but still much better than the US and the UK, who have both been roundly criticized in the Anglosphere. Although parts of continental Europe are struggling, there are others that have done okay - Norway and Finland, for example. Outs…

> Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Politically, yes, but being islands with a significant distance to other countries does make them very different. It's somewhat easy to restrict travel to NZ or AU, but it's much harder in Europe. Geographic location seems to play a role. Japan and Taiwan are islands, for all intents and purposes…

> Restricting movement in Europe between countries is more comparable to restricting movement within a country.

Which is another significant policy that was implemented in Australia, both this year and during the Spanish flu pandemic. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-24/coronavirus-border-cl...

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

#64

Post by thedays »

dustinmoris wrote: post #39
alisonatwork wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense that winter makes things worse, but if weather were the only factor, why is South America seeing far more cases than Australia?

Because Australia suppressed the virus as much as they could with a very long lockdown. South America didn't, so they started with complete different baselines into their summers.

Only one state in Australia - Victoria - had a long lockdown. People in most other states have been living a fairly normal life for months.

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

#65

Post by disdain_stain »

0xy wrote: post #59
Jedd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in…

Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young peopl…

where did you get the 4,000-7,000 figure? There were 3,048 suicides in Australia in 2018[1]. Data from the Victorian coroner shows that there's been roughly the same number of suicides in the state this year up to August 27 as last year(466 this year vs. 468 last year)[2].

[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...

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

#66

Post by berdario »

0xy wrote: post #59
Jedd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in…

Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young peopl…

The pandemic has a death toll.

A lot of these things would've happened even without a lockdown, since if the pandemic goes badly enough, huge swaths of the population would've shut themselves at home to avoid risk of contagion.

Also, the virus is clearly more dangerous than the lockdown: you have seen what happens when the lockdown is applied to the whole population, but you haven't yet seen what happens when the virus has spread to 50%+ of the population (and it's especially ugly if it'd happen all in a short amount of time).

It's sad to know about additional suicides, though the reports I've seen say that there hasn't been any increase in suicides during the lockdowns (but again: it might've been specific to the situation in Europe)

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

#67

Post by flamble »

0xy wrote: post #59
Jedd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in…

Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young peopl…

> Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact.

I steeled myself to read this post in the most charitable possible light. Yes, lockdown most likely has some death toll. But the specific points you're making are very dubious and also very recognisable as the effect of consuming specific kinds of media.

Firstly, the point about "not getting as much exercise" is frustrating. Back when we didn't have data on this, it was annoying to me to hear people's absolute conviction that (a) people would exercise less and (b) the effect would be so large that it would lead to a decrease in obesity significant enough to offset the number of life-years lost to COVID, especially since the lockdown personally prompted me to start exercising MORE due to my new surplus of idle time. We now have some suggestion that for previously sedentary people, it led to more exercise (my experience) and for previously active people, it led to a decrease. I'd love to see any suggestion that the net effect of this was so colossal as to produce the adverse health outcomes of whose existence you seem so confident. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512/

> In Australia, an additional 4000-7000 suicides were projected

At least in Victoria, it seems like these predictions were unfounded. Of course, that is not going to stop people from repeating this talking point. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...

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

#68

Post by alisonatwork »

0xy wrote: post #59
Jedd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in…

Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young peopl…

I agree with the spirit of your comment, but I would also like to see some hard (not projected) numbers to take it beyond speculation.

Where I currently live in BC (Canada), there have been more overdose deaths than coronavirus deaths in 2020[0]. It might be the case that the overdoses have increased precisely because of lockdown. It might also not be the case. That remains to be investigated.

I think it's superficially easy to blame suicide, overdose, domestic violence etc on the lockdown, but that's hard to prove, because who's to say it's not a reaction to the overall situation of people dying of a brand new disease?

Personally, I really resent lockdown/movement restrictions and I think it's a garbage policy, right back from when I lived in China during the initial outbreak. However, I also have to admit that the countries that locked down seem to have successfully knocked this virus on the head, whereas those that didn't are still suffering the effects. Perhaps a lengthier lockdown pain at the beginning is better than this drawn-out shitshow of half-assed measures that other countries are going through? I dunno.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-dea...

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

#69

Post by iso947 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #19
bmitc wrote: 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.

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 politi…

UK is polarised by age - a minority of people under the age of 60 voted to leave te eu or voted Tory, yet we are leaving with a massive Tory majority.

Labour’s last leader was magic grandpa boomer. The new one is slightly younger, come the next election he’ll only be in his early 60s.

Lib Dems had a young leader who (aged 39) managed to convert from being second in the June elections (led by a 70+ year old) to losing her seat in December, with a 7 year old and a baby.

There are relatively young leaders - Finland and New Zealand come to mind, but leaders tend to be reflections of the population. When the UK Labour Party was taken over by hundreds of thousands of young socialists via momentum in 2015, they didn’t chose the 45 year old (since christened king of he north), or the 46 year old with teenage kids, or even the 44 year old with no experience.

They chose the OAP career politician.

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

#70

Post by m0zg »

JimTheMan wrote: post #57
m0zg wrote: 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…

I just came out of months of hard lockdown in Melbourne. Everyone wants to downplay our results. But we went hard and obeyed the rules. I really do think we acted exceptionally as the public. I see what other places with outbreaks are doing, and it seems very lax.

You've only postponed the inevitable though. Virus is gonna virus - it's not going anywhere, ever. I'm not downplaying. I really hope you've used this time to prepare and didn't just sit on your behind hoping it'd go away.
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