Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

covid19data.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 284 posts

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

#111

Post by rswail »

m0zg wrote: post #70
JimTheMan wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have substantially improved and increased both testing and tracing and isolation/quarantine.

We have testing in industrial environments that are known to be dangerous (eg abbatoirs, health care).

We have tracing that in the last week caught a single case in a school that ended up with over 800 people in isolation while being tested. Our tracing is not only close contacts, but the close contacts of contacts.

This test/trace infrastructure is being replicated across the country and by next winter, we should have standardized processes.

Work is ongoing in areas like health and aged care, and we are planning for how to bring international students (an important part of our economy) back for the start of the university year in March.

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

#112

Post by rswail »

olalonde wrote: post #84
tomhoward wrote: post #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. A…

How strict was the lockdown in practice? What were the rules?

The initial rules when we went into "Stage 4" lockdown were:

* Essential industries (food, health care, logistics) were working, some, like abbatoirs, with reduced capacity

* Retail food sales (supermarkets/butchers/bakers etc) open. Cafes/restaurants for take-out or delivery only.

* Other retail closed except for online or click&collect contact free.

* Night curfew 8pm - 5am, relaxed later to 9pm.

* Maximum 5km radius from home unless for work/medical care.

* Only 4 reasons to leave home: essential work, medical care, one person shopping once/day, one hour of exercise.

* Masks whenever in public (not just inside).

Over time, some things got slowly relaxed. The curfew was changed when we got to the start of daylight savings. The radius was relaxed from 5km to 25km. A "singles" or "intimate partner" bubble was established, that allowed people to have one other person outside their household. Then two households were allowed to meet outside the home, but still masked.

At the same time, the government support included $150 if you were being tested and had to quarantine until the results (usually 24h). Then if you were positive or were a close contact and had no sick leave, then there were payments of $1500 for the 14 day isolation/quarantine period.

The Federal government introduced Jobkeeper, which was a subsidy of $1500/fortnight for businesses to maintain employment, and Jobseeker was an extended unemployment payment.

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

#113

Post by Lewton »

rscho wrote: post #104
Lewton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is what I wrote wrong? Is it not true that in the beginning they saw an increase in fatalities when treating with certain kinds of steroids?

I never downvote, so not me. BTW yes, they said that. And now we see that using them and trying to keep people breathing by themselves, we do much better (big surprise). I do a lot of medical research and I am fully confident in saying that to decide to go against the grain based on preliminary data is irresponsible in medicine. As a personal note, the attitude of medical researchers and the loosening of ethical and…

> I never downvote, so not me

Appreciate it (and your reply!)

I think the issue was that most of the decisions made, over-reliance on intubation, withholding steroids, etc where made in the beginning, in places were the hospitals were overloaded and there was this sense of urgency and panic. Then some random study is showing a 18% fatality rate in severe cases with steroids Vs 14% without, giving the impression that this virus works like no other

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

#114

Post by rswail »

flamble wrote: post #67
0xy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, there were deaths as a result of the lockdown. There was definitely increases in mental health problems and associated effects like domestic violence and addictive behaviors. There are scars that will take time to heal. There are likely to be ongoing effects that will need to be addressed.

However, the effect of these needs to be balanced against the effect of not controlling the spread of COVID. There were also other benefits, for example, much lower influenza and other winter diseases due to lack of contact and masks and social distancing.

By controlling and reducing the number of cases, we had lower rates and now almost eliminated hospitalizations. There were interruptions in "elective" surgeries, but required surgery and hospitalization for other disease suffered much less than it could have.

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

#115

Post by rswail »

0xy wrote: post #110
howlgarnish wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what mechanism does a lockdown ending in 2020 cause 30% spike in suicides in 2024?

Assuming this is a genuine question, thousands of businesses and lives have been irreparably destroyed. Suicide can take years to manifest after trauma. It's also worth noting that a lot of people have been temporarily propped up by government social programs, which will presumably end at some point. Once they do end, the destruction is no longer hideable and the people who have been made destitute by government mand…

There was more than "token" support for small businesses. There was Federal government support for maintaining employment and there were bank and commercial lease supports. In addition, the state government provided loans and direct funding to various industries.

Remember that Australia has not had a financial recession for 25+ years. Recession for any reason causes bankruptcies which leads to those personal impacts.

But the lockdown has meant that our economy will be closer back to "normal" earlier than it would have been. Our primary markets in Asia (in particular China) are all recovering rapidly.

So not sure what your argument is here. Yes, all of the effects you state are correct. However, what was the alternative?

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

#116

Post by luckylion »

Aachen wrote: post #87
drcross wrote: post #36

If you told six month ago me that we'd be treating people who are high risk of this disease the same as people with low risk I would have been in complete disbelief.

Yeah let's get all the young people infected, having one percent of that population die is fine right? Next, they'll surely never talk to the people at risk. Their grandparents can sit at home and be more bored to death and lonely than they usually already are and have young people, which are allowed out, to bring them food. Couldn't possibly go wrong. How do you picture different kinds of measures per risk group goi…

> You can find a new job next year and live on government benefits in the meantime

The problem with that kind of thinking is it doesn't account for how the government gets money, which generally taxes on stuff being produced. If you don't produce stuff, you cannot redistribute it. There's no magic "the government takes care of it, we can all stay home forever" concept.

Increased government spending now means increased taxes tomorrow, that ought to be obvious.

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

#117

Post by rswail »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #107
alisonatwork wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 superficia…

Knocked on the head...for now. All it takes is for one person to start the virus up again and the entire country has to go back into lock down. They're playing a permanant game of country wide lockdown whack a mole with the virus. No one can ever get comfortable again until herd immunity is reached which lockdowns delay.

We all know that we are in "COVID normal" not "normal" until there is a widely delivered effective vaccine.

However, it's much easier to test, trace and isolate small outbreaks ("whack a mole") than if its widely spread and uncontrolled.

Recently we had a single case of a school child that went back to school before they should have. Two days after he tested positive, the following happened:

* The school was closed and deep cleaned

* Close contacts and close contacts of those contacts went into quarantine. This ended up being approximately 800 people.

* All of them were tested within 48 hours and even further contacts (not "close") were also tested to the point that approximately 5000 tests were done and no additional cases were found.

You can't do that tracing and isolation if there is wide community transmission.

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

#118

Post by rscho »

Lewton wrote: post #113
rscho wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never downvote, so not me. BTW yes, they said that. And now we see that using them and trying to keep people breathing by themselves, we do much better (big surprise). I do a lot of medical research and I am fully confident in saying that to decide to go against the grain based on preliminary data is irresponsible in medicine. As a personal note, the attitude of medical researchers and the loosening of ethical and…

> I never downvote, so not me Appreciate it (and your reply!) I think the issue was that most of the decisions made, over-reliance on intubation, withholding steroids, etc where made in the beginning, in places were the hospitals were overloaded and there was this sense of urgency and panic. Then some random study is showing a 18% fatality rate in severe cases with steroids Vs 14% without, giving the impression that…

In my opinion, reverting to more usual intubation practices is really a major improvement. For some reason, people tend to forget that mechanical ventilation is not a treatment but merely a supportive measure.

> some random study is showing a 18% fatality rate in severe cases with steroids Vs 14% without, giving the impression that this virus works like no other

Exactly. And I think that this goes to show that the current dynamics of medical research are highly toxic. The synergy between the 'publish or perish' motto and the myriad of Excel spreadsheet warriors who go on to become influential professors kills a lot of people.

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

#119

Post by rswail »

luckylion wrote: post #116
Aachen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah let's get all the young people infected, having one percent of that population die is fine right? Next, they'll surely never talk to the people at risk. Their grandparents can sit at home and be more bored to death and lonely than they usually already are and have young people, which are allowed out, to bring them food. Couldn't possibly go wrong. How do you picture different kinds of measures per risk group goi…

> You can find a new job next year and live on government benefits in the meantime The problem with that kind of thinking is it doesn't account for how the government gets money, which generally taxes on stuff being produced. If you don't produce stuff, you cannot redistribute it. There's no magic "the government takes care of it, we can all stay home forever" concept. Increased government spending now means increase…

Increased government spending now means greater national debt. Governments get money by printing it. They get revenue by taxation. They can borrow by issuing debt instruments.

A recovering economy and greater economic activity leads to greater tax revenue without necessarily increasing taxation rates.

This is a natural "budget stabilizer" effect that happens during recessions and expansions.

Debt funding is currently at historically low, almost zero/negative rates. Australia's debt-to-GDP is relatively low (42% prior to the current recession), our debt ratings are AAA.

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

#120

Post by rswail »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #83

Melbournian here. It's now time to Get On The Beers. Edit: Donuts.

I had jam donuts, which don't have a hole, but, there's no donut rules!

For those who don't know, when we went into lockdown, our Premier said "This is no time to gather with mates at home and get on the beers".

He had a daily press conference every day, 111 days straight. He announced the current situation, what was being done, what was changing, and then stood and took questions from reporters until they ran out of things to ask.

When we recently started to relax the lockdown, he was asked whether it was time to "get on the beers" and he said "I don't know that I'll be drinking a beer tonight. I might go a little higher up the shelf."

Post reply on HN