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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

#251

Anyone knows if Australia is going to accept "tourists" anytime soon? I would love to spend a few weeks there and get away from the chaos. (and of course I would get tested before going, etc)

I'm sure they would, but they don't currently have the quarantine capacity to accept all of their own citizens that want to return, so there would be public outrage if the capacity were used for tourists, no matter how profitable.

Many Australians (including loved ones of mine) are currently stuck overseas with flights repeatedly being cancelled. It's really shameful the country isn't doing more for its own citizens.

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

#252
post #206
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least in Victoria, it seems like these predictions were unfounded. I specifically said Australia, and your claim is incorrect according to the Australian Medical Association which forecasts 750-1,000 additional suicides for 5 years. [1] I can't find my original source for that figure but the AMA source still proves my point. > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512 Belgium did not have a Melbourne-t…

> Belgium did not have a Melbourne-tier lockdown at any stage. Why would it be comparable? What are you talking about? Yes we did. Curfew, essential services only, no non-essential travel, etc etc.

No you didn't. Belgium allows unrestricted domestic travel, Melbourne allowed 5km maximum. Additionally, Belgium allows funerals with up to 15 people which is still not the case in Melbourne. You even allow children's sporting events to continue, which was never the case in Melbourne. Further, your "close contact" rules are far more lenient than Melbourne's during peak Stage 4 lockdown.

Above all of that, Melbourne has had one of the longest lockdowns globally (surpassing Wuhan in length).

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

#253
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose that would work for island nations. Not sure how it would work if you can just drive over the border, as is the case with EU and USA

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to suppress numbers via lockdown to the point where contact tracing, along with ubiquitous testing, can detect and squash any local outbreaks before they spread widely, and people can live somewhat normally. Afaict that has been the plan all along in the US as well (in terms of what scientists and infectious disease experts were saying), but most states and the administration gave up on that month…

How is that possible given that the virus spreads so rapidly, asymptomatic people can spread the virus, and the tests aren't 100% accurate and population size is large? By the time an out break is identified hundreds or thousands of people have possibly been infected.

It's not asymptomatic enough, not infectious enough, for that to be impossible. Multiple Australian states have demonstrated this, as have China, New Zealand, Taiwan and a few others.

If every time you get a symptomatic case that tests positive, you isolate contacts and secondary contacts, you will have isolated enough of the asymptomatic cases and false negative tests to get R < 1 and halt the spread of the virus.

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

#255
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If that suicide prediction was made it must have been early on in the pandemic when no one really what was going to happen. If there was an increase of 4000-7000 that'd mean 2-3 times the ~3,000 suicides that occurred in Australia last year.

Stop repeating this false claim. I never said it'd increase in a single year (strawman).

The Australian Medical Association projects 750-1,000 additional suicides for 5 years. [1] That's an increase of 3,750 - 5,000 additional suicides.

Some have projected a 50% increased suicide rate, if that happened for 5 years it'd be 7,500 additional suicides.

[1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...

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

#256
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Spring 2020 started two months ago I think that the parent was referencing the improvements made in covid treatments over the past handful of months, which have been significant - not as many people in hospitals are dying >Apologies -- but I do not understand the point you are trying to make here. Young people, as a population, are not much impacted by this virus. As of Oct 10 there have been 5.3 deaths per 100,000…

Yup, I get that mortality rates are relatively low - but finding quantifiable QoL impact is extremely difficult, especially as these effects can last for months.

Reporting seems to focus exclusively on mortality, which I suspect leads to people feeling much more confident than if long term health impacts were more clearly reported.

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

#257
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Australia has an astoundingly low ECI. Is there any way this could be confounded? I know we're no USA in this respect, but it still comes as a surprise.

We mostly sell ore, meat, and grain. If I'm reading the ECI right this takes no particular skill and these are common products that many countries in the world can produce, explaining the low score. It's why we rank alongside so many African nations. It doesn't seem to take into account internal economies, but I don't know how we fare there.

I understand that, and if the ECI is normalised by total economic output, it would make sense for it to be low in Australia for that reason.

But if you subtracted these industries from Australia, I would expect there to be more knowledge and technology industry remaining than in some of the countries with a higher ECI. So if ECI is not normalised by total economic output, I would be surprised.

Normalising by economic output makes it a bit of a misleading metric. Australia could have world-class knowledge and tech sectors (they don't, but they could), and yet ECI would be low just because some low-complexity sector was booming.

Not normalising at all is pretty fraught too though. I guess it has the potential to mislead in both cases.

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

#258
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What isn't being talked about here ... is vitamin D, HNs favorite topic: > Rates of deficiency were shown to be lower in summer (14%) and higher in winter (36%). There was little variation between the states and territories in summer, when deficiency levels were low across the country; ranging from 6% in Queensland to 19% in New South Wales. A divide was apparent in winter, with rates of vitamin D deficiency partic…

As someone in Sydney I was wondering about that connection. Cases are subsiding as we come into Spring, in Sydney and Melbourne both.

I've spent a lot of time in Melbourne, and it's winters are characterised by almost constant heavy cloud cover. That mixed with greater latitude makes natural vitamin synthesis by UV a real problem. There is also a large hole in the ozone around the southern hemisphere, so maybe that allows a little more UV through on less cloudy days.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No time soon, if they're smart. They shouldn't be eradicating coronavirus then inviting people in to reinfect them. That would be poor judgment.

Unless you accept people that have been tested, in which case you are not reintroducing anything. You can also enforce a 10-12 days quarantine to make sure.

We are currently struggling with enough quarantine capacity to let Australian citizens back in the country, let alone tourists.

I would expect that if your country hasn't gotten covid-19 under control you won't be allowed to travel here in the next two years.

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

#260
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hawaii has actually done fairly well with only 155 deaths per 1M residents. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/hawaii/

That isn't all that good compared to AU and NZ. NZ = 5 per million and Au = 35 per million. NZ has a population of 5 million and AU is 25 Million. Hawaii is 1.4 million. Same source.
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