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No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

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191–200 of 284 posts

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

#191
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US Canadian border is only closed for non essential services. There are thousands of people flying in and more driving commercial trucks

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

#192
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really have a dog in the fight, but it's uncontroversial that basic quarantine breaches were what seeded the the June-October outbreak in Melbourne. Stories of "security having relationships with those in quarantine" make for titillating clickbait articles, but so far little more than rumour has been reported. We'll see what the inquiry report says, but any poor practices in quarantine would have been suffici…

My personal theory is that weather is proximate. The spread is not about population density and social patterns. Take England. I’ve lived in London. There’s a large segment of British social life that revolves around going “down pub”. People will gather at pubs in confined spaces for long periods of time. Those seem like the perfect conditions for community spread. It comes as no surprise to me that England is in ano…

For what it's worth, pubs/bars/restaurants were already closed when Melbourne's major outbreak happened. The outbreak really took hold when households intermingled in May/June and spread it to each other, then when it got into aged care homes (with staff that worked across multiple facilities) it was all over.

I think you're being too specific, pinning it on pubs, etc. It just needs people intermingling in confined spaces of any kind; homes, apartment buildings, workplaces, hospitals/care homes, churches, schools, sporting events, public transportation, and sure pubs/bars too, but any/all of these are conducive to spread.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You: efficient market hypothesis

Also you: never invented anything

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should probably google myalgic encephalomyelitis and covid

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in New Zealand the virus was eradicated in the winter, then again in the late winter/spring. Did the US and UK control it in their summers?

NZ completely closed the borders. That's a huge factor.

Returning residents bring in covid - they have been allowed back at all stages. Some days there is none, but on most days several cases come into the country. Essential workers are also allowed in, although this has become a political football. For example, a equestrian race track builder was allowed in.

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

#197

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…

I'm an Australian living in Europe, it's painful to keep hearing people say "it will never work in Europe", when it's been shown to work elsewhere in countries small to large, with borders or without.

Borders can be shut, it was done earlier this year. Lockdowns can be enforced, it was done earlier this year. Governments can provide financial support, it's been happening all year.

All this could be over in 4-6 months, and were going into the miserable 4-6 months of the year anyway.

But somehow it's all too hard and the economic damage would be too severe.

What people won't put up with, and rightly so, is an incoherent strategy across Europe. Why make sacrifices if everyone is then encouraged to go on their summer holiday to save the economy and undo everything?

Its frankly disappointing.

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

#198
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a biased New Zealander - not only the above, but both New Zealand and Australia have controlled outbreaks twice. After round one there were breaches (presumably that is the cause in NZ, the origin has not been found) and then new lockdowns followed by control/eradication. Throwing up your hands and claiming it can’t be controlled in the west for some reason is a cop out and is also incorrect.

I think it's somewhat easier to accomplish that when both countries are islands and the majority of incoming traffic is by air.

It is. Plenty of other islands have done poorly though. Britain and Hawaii come to mind.

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

#199
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…

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 vir…

Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe.

Raw infection numbers are scary, but not very telling since testing is far from universal or error free.

Death stats aren't that reliable either. Covid seems to be deadly and a miracle cure at the same time - it's amazing how death rates for other maladies all seem to be dramatically down. I'm sure that is just coincidence.

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

#200
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…

That's 25 grand per person. If life goes back to normal for Australians for 1-2 years before everyone else, that's a bargain.

Considering that the Australian economy is based on digging and has an economic complexity just below Uganda[0], most of that damage was unavoidable anyway.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Complexity_Index

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