No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

> Sounds like you’ve gone to the argument of “this can affect fit and healthy people in other ways that we may not even know.”

Not so much an argument of, than an observation regarding, the unpredictable mid to long term impacts of this infection in the demographic that includes most of the 'it's harmless' crowd. Ie, the 20-40yo, relatively healthy individuals.

Most of whom, I hasten to add, are cautious rather than cavalier -- but within which group there are sufficient case studies of severe debilitation lasting very many months, and occasional signs of much longer term damage.

Basically my position is 'we don't know' with a consequence of 'let's assume it's worse than we hope'.

> It is clear that the death toll is overwhelmingly skewed toward the elderly.

Almost definitely. And if you're not in the 'elderly' demographic, or care about people who are, this is probably less worrying for you.

> ... similar levels to spring 2020.

Spring 2020 started two months ago.

I mean, TFA is about Coronavirus in Australia, and Australia is where I am right now, and Spring is what's happening here now.

> I don’t think you can deny this, so pro-lockdown people are now mainly using this “it can affect young people” argument to avoid cognitive dissonance - I have yet to see proof.

Apologies -- but I do not understand the point you are trying to make here.

> I only have seen an article that says there is lung damage after infection which diminishes over the course of weeks. This is what you would expect with any kind of damage but the article had a ridiculous title like “coronavirus may lead to long lasting damage.” Lastly, I see a lot of ambulances these days - it serves as a reminder to check myself. But we’re all probably pretty analytical here and you can’t justify a strict lockdown from a utilitarian standpoint.

You mention 'here' without describing where that actually is. And you mention an article that said something you didn't like, but don't provide a reference to that article. Apparently there are ambulances near you. You then conclude that a lockdown is not justifiable, despite TFA being about how lockdowns have effectively halted the spread of SARS-CoV2 within Australia.

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%

... until the next time they let Britons in.

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 sufficient to seed the outbreak, whether or not there was any intimate contact. But then it was also poor contact tracing/outbreak management and aged care management that exacerbated things after that. So these things are always multi-faceted.

I've been paying close attention to the weather factor since the epidemic spread beyond China in Feb/March. It was notable that the places that had the biggest outbreaks then (Milan, Qom, NYC, London, Madrid, as well as Wuhan itself) had similar weather in those months to what Melbourne has in winter - cool but not freezing, and not too rainy or humid. When I saw that, I immediately felt Melbourne could be more at risk of a serious outbreak than other Australian cities - all of which have either warmer winters and/or lower population density (EDIT: and also more sunlight in some cases, influencing Vitamin D). Of course, if quarantine was better managed it could have been prevented. But I also find it hard to believe that there was not a single serious lapse in any of the hotels in any of the other cities that were running quarantine.

When weather is raised, people are quick to point out the warmer regions that have had major outbreaks, like India and Brazil. What these places also have his highly dense populations with many people living/working in close quarters, which obviously also facilitates spread. Nutrition/health may also be a major contributor.

As another commenter has pointed out, research has found Victorians to have higher rates of Vitamin D deficiency in winter compared to other states, so weather can play a role in different ways.

Clearly this is a highly complex illness with multiple factors that combine in different ways to influence the outcome.

Plenty of countries have maintained local transmission at zero or near zero thanks to travel restrictions: taiwan, vietnam, new zealand, the Atlantic region of Canada, Thailand

The virus isn’t magic. If you have a testing and tracing system in place and act quickly with temporary restrictions you can squash any outbreaks that do make it through.

And meanwhile life in those areas is basically normal. I’m in one now. Functionally we’re much more free than people in places with heavy lockdowns and fear.