No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #109

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.

Thailand never had a bad outbreak to begin with and no one knows why. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-th... Also, isn't Thailand a dictatorship where if you insult the royal family verbally you can be beheaded?

Just put in prison. With the new King there is a lot to be critical of, but for whatever reason he has held back on imprisoning people. The junta has nevertheless been quite harsh on critics of the regime.

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

#182

Post by Devils-Avocado » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #42

Sydneysider here. Sydney hasn't seen anything remotely resembling an outbreak yet (not as bad as Melbourne's), but people are still wearing masks on trains, we are still getting tested (for free!), and businesses generally appear to be complying with covid restrictions. Life here has been relatively normal so far. I recognize that Sydney might still be due for an outbreak, but I have more faith that the chances of th…

The Federal Government forecasts debt will increase by $500billion due to the pandemic response.

If we take the deathtoll from Sweden (lower than the USA, Spain, Italy, Belgium), Australia could have expected 15,000 deaths, adjusted for population. Less if we consider only excess deaths.

This is $33 million per life saved, typically for a person in their 80s.

Is this a good use of funds?

If this money was devoted instead to tackling climate change or domestic air pollution (basically the same thing), how many lives would have been saved and improved instead?

Its likely that the country could have been completely decarbonised - all coal power plants shutdown, urban wood burning banned and new efficient gas heaters and insulation subsidised, and all new vehicle sales replaced with electrics.

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

#183

Post by grecy » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

apexalpha wrote: post #146

freddie_mercury wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Vietnam. It is neither a small island nor on a remote corner of the planet. We have a population of 95,000,000 people -- substantially more than any single country in Europe -- and share land borders China, Cambodia, and Laos as well as being within trivial sailing distance of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We have had 0 cases for over 2 months. You should stop with the "it i…

That's really great and you did far better than Europe, no doubt about it. But the borders vietnam shares with those countries are hard borders. You need a visa and pass a government controlled checkpoint when you enter. Europe (mainland) has no internal borders. There are no checkpoints, customs agents or chokepoints between countries. There's thousands of roads leading from every country into others. That, plus the…

And the US has hard borders with Canada and Mexico... both of which have been closed for 7 months now.

... but somehow cases are still not under control.

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

#184

Post by anoncake » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

azakai wrote: post #158

anoncake wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IFR of Covid is closer to 0.5% than to 1%. That is something we are perfectly used to: For example, Australia had a death rate of 0.63% in 2019.[1] Of course having anyone die isn't "fine". But the death of less than 1% of the population is something we can tolerate, not some kind of disaster of unprecedented magnitude worth a lockdown causing damage we can't even foresee yet. [1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistic…

That number looks accurate, but I'm not sure it's the only thing to look at. First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems. Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid can rise higher than…

> First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems.

...where long-term means a few months at most. People do recover, just uncomfortably slowly.

> Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid can rise higher than 0.5-1%.

I'm not so sure about that. These IFR estimates haven't changed much since spring, when half of those hospitalized died.[1,2,3] Our treatment methods have improved since then. If the estimates reflected the IFR with treatment, they would be lower today. So I think an IFR of 0.5-1% is actually the worst case.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any source explicitly comparing death rates with vs without treatment.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

[2] https://in.dental-tribune.com/news/new-estimate-by-the-cdc-b...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32234121/

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

#185

Post by DanBC » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #184

azakai wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number looks accurate, but I'm not sure it's the only thing to look at. First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems. Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid can rise higher than…

> First, deaths aren't the only measure. For every death there are many more people that just barely survive after a hospital stay, and data suggests a significant amount of those people will have long-term problems. ...where long-term means a few months at most. People do recover, just uncomfortably slowly. > Second, if the hospitals are overloaded by such people (even if most of them survive) then the IFR of Covid…

No, the current IFR of about 1% is the best case with current treatment options. It was much higher earlier on.

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

#186

Post by smaddox » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

TheBlight wrote: post #157

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…

I don't understand. Is the plan to keep covid out of the country forever? That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at this point. Will there be a lockdown every time there's new infections?

I don't understand this attitude. It's seems to essentially be "it requires thought, planning, and effort, and therefore is impossible."

Was this kind of mindset as common when the world irradicated Small Pox and Polio, as it is now?

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

#187

Post by anoncake » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

jonsno56 wrote: post #176

icpmacdo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDC's survival percentage based on the IFR per age group 0-19----99.997% 20-49---99.98% 50-69---99.5% 70+-----94.6%

I love how you can produce statistics about survival rate but not disability rate. Because surprise, you don’t have a clue

Exactly. There is no evidence that there is a significant disability rate, so no one can provide any.

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

#188

Post by grecy » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

Devils-Avocado wrote: post #182

yen223 wrote: post #42

Sydneysider here. Sydney hasn't seen anything remotely resembling an outbreak yet (not as bad as Melbourne's), but people are still wearing masks on trains, we are still getting tested (for free!), and businesses generally appear to be complying with covid restrictions. Life here has been relatively normal so far. I recognize that Sydney might still be due for an outbreak, but I have more faith that the chances of th…

The Federal Government forecasts debt will increase by $500billion due to the pandemic response. If we take the deathtoll from Sweden (lower than the USA, Spain, Italy, Belgium), Australia could have expected 15,000 deaths, adjusted for population. Less if we consider only excess deaths. This is $33 million per life saved, typically for a person in their 80s. Is this a good use of funds? If this money was devoted ins…

I also saw someone else say if we had done the Sweden approach and allowed those 15k deaths and saved all that money and ALSO made cigarettes illegal we would have saved many orders of magnitude more lives.

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

#189

Post by tomhoward » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #175

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…

If you emerge from lockdown, won't that result in increase of rate of cases?

The idea is that now the virus has been suppressed (they are doing sewage analysis to confirm whether the virus has gone away), they can control new cases with well-managed quarantine of returning travellers, and outbreak management. NZ and the rest of Australia has done this successfully since about May.

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

#190

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sun, Nov 01, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #155

rswail wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's just a path for hyper inflation when no increased production is included. Money is a placeholder for value. If you don't create value and print money, the money doesn't magically create the stuff that gives it value. It might not ruin…

I dunno. The US seems like a case study in this stuff. Large deficits every year, and even the more Conservative party is willing to pass a huge tax cut and nobody blinks an eye. The connection between income and spending appears to have been completely severed. And some people have been predicting hyperinflation for at least 40 years now.