I’m having difficulty in understanding social distancing rules? It seems ok to stand in a queue to vote but a funeral must be limited to 10 mourners. It seems ok for hairdressers to continue to work, but beaches must be closed because the bathers are getting too close?
Has this pandemic shown us how ineffective our political system is ? Or are we just lacking leadership? I can understand why we need to take advice from WHO , but we always seem to be behind the pace? Russia closed its borders, and started contact tracing, in January. I’m not suggesting Russia is a model to follow or a country I would like to live in , merely pointing to decisive leadership.
Not having a go at you, nor am I necessarily defending the Govt or leadership, but what exactly do you think they should do? Are you suggesting a full lockdown?
Seems that most people are screaming that the Govt "should do more!!!" but I think it seems to be a lot of people who would not vote Libs in any situation.
Personally, I dont want the Govt to do more, or do less. I want them to take the advice of ALL the experts available to them to chart a course that navigates the tricky path of minimising deaths, ensuring our health system is not overwhelmed yet maintaining the maximum economic heartbeat possible.
Of course the natural reaction is to think to stop everything, shut down everything in total lockdown, and it may come to that and be necessary if it looks like it will overwhelm the health system, and Id be all for it in those circumstances, but if it is possible to reduce the rate of spread to a point that the health system can cope, yet keep as much of the economy running, then for me that is the best path.
This may seem callous for want of a better word, but when this is over, we are going to need to climb out of it and the depth of the decline economically will have a massive impact on many peoples lives for years to come and it will be the lower socioeconomic levels hit hardest. Rich people with assets will make it through.
The natural reaction is always 1 death is too many, but we average 4500 deaths a year for influenza and we dont shut down the economy to save those deaths. I am NOT suggeting this is the same as the flu, its not and if we did nothing there would be more than 10 x that number dead, but there does need to be a balance between possibility of deaths and possibility of economic depression.
5150, I’m not having a go at you either and I’m not wanting to get into a any pee high club discussion.
Just pointing out my observation that we always appear to be a country which follows, rather than one which gets on the front foot instinctively and decisively does what’s best for Australia and it’s citizens. There was a time when citizenship meant something. Anyway, cheer on your club if you like, but it doesn’t explain the failings in our political system.
Here’s an example..
https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6698458/hairdressers-call-for-clear-messaging-directive-to-close-from-government/
Mate I dont necessarily disagree with you and I am **definitely** not wanting to get into a club discussion, in fact I dont actually feel like I have a club in this discussion, definitely not one Im cheering on.
Part of what prompted me to respond to your post was listening to discussions about what is going on in the UK. Their strategy is a bit different to what is going on in Italy & US and to a great extent appears to be a lot more successful. Their strategy is not based on auto lock down but involves lock down when required.
Im not sure what you are specifically referring to when you say the Govt which follows, particularly when we were the second country to shut borders to China, Iran & Italy. It is entirely possible that the strategy that the Aus Govt is following, on the advice of their experts, is entirely intentional and what is happening is EXACTLY what they are trying to do, but merely is different to the instinctive reaction of the general population, who aren't aware of the advice they are getting from the expertise.
Obviously not everyone is listening to the same experts.
I don’t have a problem with the governments staggered approach, although the downside is they need to wait 14 days to see what’s working. It was usually the approach I’ve taken, whether in business or with my health. If we follow the Shorten / Albo approach which is ‘throw the kitchen sink at it and hope for the best, then if it doesn’t work it’s harder to find out why. Or if it does work we can only speculate which remedy was more effective. I don’t know if the enormity of our problem is registering with some. I’ve heard from Doc the damage the virus causes to the lungs is irreparable.
It is hard to argue with the measures so far when the data is starting to turn for us, we know have to see if we need to make more restrictions to get it turn enough!
I was not going to post this for a few days to see how it panned out, but what you are saying correlates well with it. Four days ago the exponential rate of growth dropped markedly from a steady 1.23 - 1.25 down to 1.13. But since then it seems to have instantly found a new steady level with four days 1.13, 1.15, 1.13, 1.14. Hoping it drops again but if it stays there, more measures might be needed.
Well a couple of people wanted an update so here we are.....
Yesterday there was a significant dip in the exponential growth multiplier. It dipped down from a steady 1.3 for a few days, down below 1.1 to 1.09. This is pretty significant as it may be the second round of restrictions washing through. For those playing along at home, to be steady at 1.1 we need less that 4382 cases by the end of today.
This is obviously encouraging as slowing it down is obviously a good thing, but how does this end? At what point do we start thinking about re-opening the economy (Im not suggesting soon)?
I could imagine a scenario where parts of the local economy are reopened, but with disasters all over the world (US and parts of Europe), once its under control here I can see our borders closed for a LONG time.
Ok so something is definitely happening and so far it looks good. Another big dip yesterday in the exponential growth multiplier . It was steady at 1.23 for weeks, then spent four days at 1.13 and has spent the last two days going down. 1.09 Sunday and 1.06 yesterday.
Its very encouraging and shows that the restrictions and changes in behaviour are working. I have a couple of worries. People are behaving better, but not perfectly (we are Aussies) and I dont think we can get that multiplier down to 1 based on restrictions alone, so what does that mean? We get to a low multiplier (growth rate) and stay indoors?
I also worry that if we get teh growth rate low enough people will say "screw this" and go back to normal life and rates will bounce back up.
Anyway, so far so good. For those playing along, to keep it at 1.06 we need to keep the total to under 4523. At the time of posting (9:30) it was already 4364.
Another update. Yesterday stayed pretty steady with exponential multiplier of 1.06. I can see some merit in Mikes comment about reduced testing however. TO stay steady at 1.06 we need todays cases to stay below 4830. We are at 4711 already at 9am.
Todays update. Yesterday was steady, very steady unfortunately. After an encouraging dip in the exponential multiplier, we have now had three days steady at 1.06.
Hoping the stricter measures start to wash through and we are not stuck here.
Need to keep total cases under 5150 today.
Todays update.
A slight dip again yesterday. After three days at 1.06, the exponential multiplier dipped slightly to 1.05. Hopefully continues down but we might be getting to the point of diminishing returns. To maintain 1.05 growth or less, we need todays total to stay under 5400.
Had a thought this morning when considering someone else pointing out that new cases seem to be almost staying under 300 a day and this being a good thing. I agree that relative to what could be it is a reasonable result, but at current death rates, that would still 3-4 deaths a day (delayed by 20 days).
Update for Friday 03/04/20
Another encouraging dip in the exponential multiplier. Dropped down from 1.056 to 1.041. Very encouraging. To maintain 1.04 we need the total cases to remain under 5570 today. at 10am they are still at last nights total 5350.
Saturdays Update
Another encouraging dip. THe exponential multiplier dropped under 1.04 to 1.037. To keep it this low we need to stay under 5757 total cases today.
I'd like to briefly derail this NSW Health & Border Force discussion with some boring numbers.
The trajectory continued downwards yesterday. The exponential multiplier dipped lower than Saturdays 1.037 to 1.024 which is very encouraging. Only 137 new cases (still equals 1-2 deaths in 2 weeks) . Clearly the measures are working. Fingers crossed there is no reversal. I hope Aussies being Aussies we dont revert to close enough and start to get out and about for a while. To stay at this low point, we need the total cases to stay below 5827 today.
Personally I'd love to see the multiplier get to 1, stick at it for 3-4 weeks then open everything but the borders back up.
Todays update. This seems too good to be true. Yesterday the exponential multiplier dropped again under 1.02 to 1.018. To maintain this we need to stay under 5905 today.
Todays update, after yesterdays optimism, a bit of reality.
The exponential multiplier stayed steady at 1.019. Its not a bad result and its relatively low, but Im hopeful for the sake of opening things up again that we can get it way lower. I want the total cases number to stay under 6000 today.
Well it seems we have hit a plateau. After a few days with solid drops in the exponential multiplier, down to a reasonably low level, we have now had three days of very steady levels of 1.018, 1.019 and yesterday 1.017. When this started I said it was unnerving how predictable it was every day when it was around 1.23 and again now for three days Ive been able to predict within 10 the total cases at the end of the day. The rate is relatively low, but for any chance of an exit I think we need it to drop more, at least below 1.01.
To maintain yesterdays rate, we need the total to stay under 6119 today. Personally I'd love it to stay at least under 6112 because that would be the first day with under 100 new cases for a long time.
Again for comparison, if we didnt drop the rate from 1.23, we would have had 62413 cases yesterday.
Todays update. Remember I said it was getting predictable again, with expected number to be 6112 - 6119, it turned out to be 6104, so not bad. This equates to a slight drop again in the exponential multiplier down from 1.017 to 1.015, so pretty steady. First time under 100 new cases since 17 March
Expect it to be around 6195 today.
Yesterday was predictably predictable. Total cases reached 6292. I guess it could be seen as slow steady progress downward with the multiplier dropping slightly again from 1.016 to 1.014 but its very slow and very steady. Seems to me the law of diminishing returns has kicked in and its hard to get better than this.
Expect cases to get to 6380 today but it would be encouraging to see a more significant dip. Actually it will be interesting to see if say on Tues or Wed if we see a rise because of Easter.
Let me know if you are getting sick of these updates
Not sure of what to make of todays update. Yesterday there were only 21 new cases. This drops the exponential multiplier down from 1.014 to 1.003 which is effectively all over (remember 1.0 is no new cases and we are done). Now I am pretty sure that this is more a case of not a lot of testing on Easter Sunday rather than the end of the epidemic, so it will be interesting to see what happens this week.
My biggest concern is that the public sees these figures and just gets back to normal life but I hope they dont. They have to understand the time lag in infection, symptoms, infectious state. I would love to see these hard restrictions last 4 more weeks to eradicate it.
At the risk of provoking @Hangonaminute and the new world order, but for the sake of continuity, here is the update on the figures.
Not sure how much can be taken from these numbers (restraint Hangon)...but only 46 new cases reported yesterday. Again, most likely a hangover from Easter weekend and we will see over the next few days if its an ongoing trend. FWIW the exponential multiplier bumped up slightly from incredibly low 0.003 to an also low 0.007.
What I find interesting and encouraging is NSW Department of Health are opening up test centres now where you can get tested on demand, anyone can get tested. This may spike numbers up but the result will be more reliable data and hopefully the start of an exit strategy. If they open testing up to all comers and the data doesnt change much, then they will know that they are on the right track and a possible way out.
Because of lack of adequate testing, in many places only hospital patients are now counted as cases.
The people who do not feel seriously ill stay home, recover quietly, and are never counted.
This matters because they do not appear in any of the official statistics.
Your arrogance is contributing to your ignorance.
Literally....in the post that you responded to I said that in NSW they are now testing all comers and by doing so, hopefully we will get more reliable data and the amount that the data shifts will also tell a story.
You refer to "in other places" in response to my post and data & graphs. My data doesnt relate to "other places" it is specific to Australia and that is the only relevance.
Take for example an elderly New Yorker who is mildly sick. She calls her family doctor who makes a clinical diagnosis of suspected COVID-19 based on her symptoms, not a test. Because she is not very sick, she is advised to stay home. There is no mechanism for her doctor to report her diagnosis to the health authorities, so if she gets better, she is never counted. Only if she becomes ill enough to be admitted to the hospital, is she counted as a COVID-19 case. If she dies she will be counted as a COVID-19 death.
Sad story, completely irrelevant to my data and post that you responded to.
It seems a good time for a math refresher. Once the number of infections is determined, this becomes the denominator in our public health calculation. The number of deaths is our numerator.
Gee, thank you for the maths lesson, from memory we covered division early in the piece when I did Pure & Applied Maths at USyd.
In appreciation for the quick maths refresher, let me give you a quick comprehension lesson. In my posts previous, I made it CLEAR that the Case Mortality Rates are NOT total death rates for exactly the reasons you have repeated. Case mortality Rates are strictly deaths (numerator) / confirmed number of cases (denominator). This rate is useful for many reasons but are limited by its definition. One of the uses, which I clearly spelled out previously but you clearly havent comprehended. is that you can use the Case Mortality Rate can be used to identify cases, like the US (as I have already said clearly) where the denominator (confirmed cases) is obviously wrong and understated due to insufficient testing.
However, instead of counting us all in the denominator, in many countries including the US, only people sick enough to go to the hospital are counted. People sick enough to go to the hospital are more likely to need critical care, and patients in critical condition are more likely to die than patients with mild symptoms. This means the fatality rate looks higher than it really is.
Duh......like I already said but AGAIN, what the hell does that have to do with Australian figures that I have posted?
Further, even when we are testing, depending on the type of test used, we may only be counting people who are actively infected, not those who had it and are thus currently immune. This again will lead to an underestimate of the denominator.
What does it mean? It means that the denominator (number of infections) is smaller than it should be, so the numerator (number of deaths) has a lot of power. In this case, the result is that the death rate (numerator divided by denominator) reported is higher than it should be.
NOT IN CASE MORTALITY RATES!!!!!! Because they are what they are. READ IT. UNDERSTAND IT.
In other words, by not counting the people who don’t need hospital care, we are massively over projecting the percent of infected people who die of COVID-19. It’s a dangerous message that is causing fear all driven by a false denominator.
You are correct in that we do not actually know the total mortality of the virus, we only know the Case Mortality Rate, but.....It doesnt matter, unless your point is that this is not dangerous and that the isolation measures are not required. If that is your point you are wrong and that is proven by overrun ICU's in Wuhan, Italy, Iran, Spain & NY.
Im done in this "discussion" because you have your own fixed agenda and thoughts on this matter. That is fine and you are entitled to your opinion, but when I clearly address your points with facts and data and then you come back to me and patronizingly explain the exact same thing that I have previously said, it is clear you are not interested in a discussion, you just want to impose your opinion on me and others and wont even take the time to read others opinions.
Enjoy your day on the beach
Get back to your TV your Government and Health Minister have orders for you to follow, do as you're told and get back in your cage, you don't want to get a fine for not obeying orders do you?
