Covid19 - no need to panic - still

[Kinnock]

11 hours ago, simple1 said:

Accordingly from your research what is the projected number of deaths p.a. w/w from Covid without mitigation strategies?

 

To answer one of your questions, my doctor advised me that flu has an annual death w/w toll of around 500k, without vaccines would be in the millions

Nonsense.  I think you need to find a real doctor.  What % of the global population has the flu vaccine - which is only 50% effective in a good year, and totally ineffective if they don't predict the right strains.

 

Vaccination for flu is a first world strategy, and most people do not live in the more 'developed' countries.

 

Flu and COVID-19 are both unrestrained by vaccination.  And look at TB - an effective vaccine since 1921, and yet 1.3 million people died of TB last year.

 

And yet the human population keeps growing.  And in Thailand it's now growing faster than before COVID due to the big reduction in the usual 65 road deaths per day due to the curfew and travel restrictions.

 

[Credo]

Many of the measures being taken are to 'flatten the curve', the curve has more to do with trying to keep the health care system functioning.   If it has to treat 10,000 people it can do it if they are spread out over a reasonable time frame.   They can't if it's 10,000 all at once.   

There is no cure, there is no effective treatment, so all that can be done is to slow the spread, get a handle on it and bide our time until we have a vaccine and/or reasonably effective treatments.   

 

There is a lot about this virus we don't know.   

 

[chessman]

If anybody wants a really interesting discussion about the statistics of Covid 19 I would recommend the Talking Politics podcast. In the latest episode they interview 538's Nate Silver. He's a stats guru and makes some interesting points about what we can tell and what we can't tell from the numbers. It's always a refreshingly non-partisan podcast and this was a really interesting episode.

[Kinnock]

Is anyone else feeling secretly disappointed that COVID-19 is not as serious as the fear-mongers predicted?  

 

I was hoping for a virus that significantly reduced the over-population pressures on the planet, but somehow spares all my family and friends ..... and that Attenborough chap .... oh and Eva Mendes too.

[yuyiinthesky]

Kudos to the OP, AussieBob18, this was the best summary about the current Covid 19 / lockdown nightmare I have read here on TVF! Thanks!

[simple1]

11 hours ago, AussieBob18 said:

You obviously didnt read all of the OP - like many other lefties didnt I ams sure judging by their ignore rubbish

To quote from my own OP

"Lets start to gradually and sensibly open up the world again – the number of deaths will clearly not be as high as they said initially.
Lets protect those over 65/70 and keep them socially isolated as much as possible – keep the grandkids away.
Lets get back to work and look after the economic garden before we end up with something far worse than a few million deaths.
Let the people decide what precautions they should take going forward with regards to social distancing."

 

Please refrain from deliberate trolling and cutting and pasting a section of my post out of context.

I disagree with the thrust of your OP in that Oz Federal government had already stated it will commence relaxation of Covid mitigation as Covid infection spread slows down so do not comprehend why all the noise. State government may or may not have a different timetable, but they would come under a lot of pressure if they were off message by a significant degree. Government will have to keep some form of mitigation practices in place until a vaccine is generally available to minimise flare ups, not as you commented Covid-19 will hopefully 'burn out'. 

 

I am not a 'lefty'. last election I voted Liberal, but I did not vote for Howard last time he was up for election as I considered he was attacking the rights of the lower paid. I do not put members on ignore. Trolling? No, I asked for clarification of your comments.

Edited April 20, 2020 by simple1

[Monomial]

9 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Is anyone else feeling secretly disappointed that COVID-19 is not as serious as the fear-mongers predicted?  

 

I was hoping for a virus that significantly reduced the over-population pressures on the planet, but somehow spares all my family and friends ..... and that Attenborough chap .... oh and Eva Mendes too.

 

I think at this point a lot of politicians are panicking. They can see the writing on the wall. They know these lockdowns are completely unsustainable, and that they have killed their economies for a questionable reason at best. They now need to undo what they have done, while figuring out how to make it look like it was absolutely necessary. Some people are predictably doubling down on the doom and gloom, hoping the statistics will eventually tilt in their favor, but more and more people are demanding accountability and a lifting of the foolishness.

 

It is going to be a difficult time these next 12 months. Don't worry. There will be a lot of ugliness and gore for you to feast upon. Maybe even some totally unsuspected geopolitical redefinitions and civil wars. Lots of good plot lines coming in season 2 of the world's worst reality show.

[WalkingOrders]

If we all Stop watching TV we'll all be alright.

Edited April 20, 2020 by WalkingOrders
Clarity

[simple1]

9 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Nonsense.  I think you need to find a real doctor.  What % of the global population has the flu vaccine - which is only 50% effective in a good year, and totally ineffective if they don't predict the right strains.

 

Vaccination for flu is a first world strategy, and most people do not live in the more 'developed' countries.

 

Flu and COVID-19 are both unrestrained by vaccination.  And look at TB - an effective vaccine since 1921, and yet 1.3 million people died of TB last year.

 

And yet the human population keeps growing.  And in Thailand it's now growing faster than before COVID due to the big reduction in the usual 65 road deaths per day due to the curfew and travel restrictions.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but my GP recommendations have saved my life and she is fully qualified.

 

I am cognisant of the qualifiers you refer, Are you better informed than the WHO specialists on regards the flu? please don't respond with conspiracy stuff.

 

https://www.who.int/influenza/Global_Influenza_Strategy_2019_2030_Summary_English.pdf?ua=1

 

have you read the expose of the trump admin denials of when they knew of Covid 19? be interesting to watch how trump and his supporters respond...

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/04/19/report-americans-at-world-health-organization-told-trump-administration-about-coronavirus-late-last-year/#65722fa1a548

 

 

[cmarshall]

TL;DR

But the OP doesn't understand interest rates.  The US Treasury 30-year bonds have a yield of 1.27% while AU Treasury 30-years are at about 1.69%.  Borrowing remains extraordinarily cheap, because the global economy has been awash in cash for years now and because in the current severe economic contraction borrowing by govts, corporations, and households is down also.  So, govt borrowing is not going to be a problem and interest rates are not suddenly going to spike up.  

[mauGR1]

54 minutes ago, Monomial said:

 

I think at this point a lot of politicians are panicking. They can see the writing on the wall. They know these lockdowns are completely unsustainable, and that they have killed their economies for a questionable reason at best. They now need to undo what they have done, while figuring out how to make it look like it was absolutely necessary. Some people are predictably doubling down on the doom and gloom, hoping the statistics will eventually tilt in their favor, but more and more people are demanding accountability and a lifting of the foolishness.

 

It is going to be a difficult time these next 12 months. Don't worry. There will be a lot of ugliness and gore for you to feast upon. Maybe even some totally unsuspected geopolitical redefinitions and civil wars. Lots of good plot lines coming in season 2 of the world's worst reality show.

I am afraid that you nailed it.

Although we can hope and pray for people helping each other to a certain extent, we can expect riots, and heavy hand response from authorities, and.. Better stop here for the moment.

[Logosone]

11 hours ago, johnnybangkok said:

Helsinki has a population of 600,000, London has a population of 8.9 million, nearly as much as the whole of Sweden (10 million). Currently 30% of the whole of the UK's Covid dead are in London a total of 3,825. 

It's a big number but do you want to try and tell me that self-isolation hasn't kept that number lower than it would have been if everyone was allowed to wander around and mingle like before? 

The fact that Sweden chose it's path is in no way an indication of whether it would work for everyone else, especially when talking about highly populated areas like London. IF successful (and the panels still out on that one) then all that will be proven is their method worked for Sweden (they are still doing other things though that make absolute sense and pointed out by other posters i.e. quarantining the most at risk).  

The better anology would be Seol as with a population of nearly 10 million it closely resembles London. Through extensive testing, tracking and isolating they have managed to keep infection numbers impressively low and deaths even lower (in the hundereds rather than thousands). But (and it's a big but) they had already been geared up for this through preperations from SARS, h1N1, Swine Flu etc. Their disease control authorities are very well funded and sprang into action with mass testing on an unprecidented scale. They caught it early, did all the right things and are a model to emulate.

The UK (and many other countries) on the other hand weren't well-funded, reacted awfully (to herd immunity or not to herd ummunity) and don't have the testing capabilities to even start down this route.

So we know what works for sure but where we differ in opinion is what to do when that option isn't available to you. My point is that self-isolation is a better option whilst waiting for the tried and trusted method to be available (all you hear from the UK government is this magic 100,000 tests a day goal they are trying desperately to achieve) than letting everyone just get on with it which we absolutely know will spread the virus. If you type 'covid stats for london' you will see a nice graph and a current plateu and the predictions are this will remain and cases start dropping in the next few weeks. This will hopefully give the incompetant British government the time they so desperately need to get the large scale testing (that they know will work) up and running.  

They are buying time but it is time being given to them through self-isolation.

 

(And yes this is the politicians fault and no it doesn't mean that capitalism is the fault and isolationism is the answer (as many other posters would love to see). Questions need to be asked  and people need to be held responsible but lets get things under control first).    

 

Very interesting and well thought out post.

 

On the point of self isolation, this is a social distancing measure. Some serious academic studies from China have shown that social distancing measures like travel restrictions have delayed the spread of the virus by 3, others say by 4 days. It is possible therfore that self isolation slows transmission of the virus. Whether it did so by days or weeks or months in the UK we do not really know for sure, as no serious studies have been done to examine this.

 

Looking at the extremely poor performance of the UK when compared to other countries it would certainly indicate that self-isolation is not as effective as testing and isolating. It certainly will not end the pandemic. Whether it had as dramatic an impact as some believe, studies would have to be done to determine. It may well be that, like in China it only delayed the spread by a few days. Whether that is worth the economic consequences is the question I would put to you.

 

I don't think the notion that Sweden and the UK can't be compared is persuasive, we can see if we look at the people per km squared that the population density of Stockholm is not worlds apart from London's, as London is sprawled over a larger geographic area. Nor do we know if population plays as large a role as some believe, since many of the worst affected areas were not the most densely populated areas, but rather villages in Lombardy, in Catalonia. If I look at Germany, it is not exclusively the most densely or highly populated cities that are most affected.

 

For instance the relatively population poor area of Heinsberg, with a low population density, was in fourth place behind Berlin, Hamburg and Munich but ahead of much more densely populated high population cities like Frankfurt, Cologne or Stuttgart.

 

This does not support the idea that population density is a key factor.

 

In terms of Seoul, they were not prepared through SARS. Like Germany their private biotech companies reacted immediateley when the genome was published and worked hard to produce a large number of tests. Something the UK could have done but failed to do. The South Koreans did test a lot, and their response has been interesting. However, whether the figures they provide, a country known for endemic corruption and mismanagement, are accurate is another question. I have some doubts about the figures provided by China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and co.

 

Testing would have been available to the UK, if they had done what Germany and South Korea did, and let private companies produce the test kits needed. The UK could have done so but failed to do it.

 

It only took very few weeks to produce test kits in countries that did so, a small single German company produced 1.4 million test kits in four weeks. So the UK did not have to focus on social distancing for as long as they did.

 

They have now focused on testing, and lo and behold, as soon as testing and isolating the infected is ramped up we see new cases tapering off. Again, testing, once implemented shows it is the way to beat the virus, as Mike Ryan of the WHO said for weeks.

 

If we find that Sweden, who has done very minimal social distancing, ramps up testing and similarly gets new cases to taper off (remember UK and Sweden were both at 10% mortality yesterday)  that would support the case for testing and isolating the infected alone and would indicate that social isolation of the extreme kind as done in the UK is not necessary.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Logosone

[WalkingOrders]

26 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

I am afraid that you nailed it.

Although we can hope and pray for people helping each other to a certain extent, we can expect riots, and heavy hand response from authorities, and.. Better stop here for the moment.

Riots?!! Where?????

[Logosone]

1 hour ago, cmarshall said:

TL;DR

But the OP doesn't understand interest rates.  The US Treasury 30-year bonds have a yield of 1.27% while AU Treasury 30-years are at about 1.69%.  Borrowing remains extraordinarily cheap, because the global economy has been awash in cash for years now and because in the current severe economic contraction borrowing by govts, corporations, and households is down also.  So, govt borrowing is not going to be a problem and interest rates are not suddenly going to spike up.  

Borrowing is not cheap. Even with low interest rates. The UK is paying 48 billion Pounds each year just in interest to service its government debt. That is 48 billion pounds the UK can not use for schools, hospitals or education. Government borrowing is a problem, now with governments coronavirus responses debt will become more of a problem. If your children and their children have to repay debt your government made today I'd say debt is a major problem.

 

If you think about the entire pension systems around the world are built on debt. A generational contract debt, those old today are financed by the working population, whose children then pay for the that working population. But what happens when the generation that preceded you, your parent's generation, has confined itself not just to the pensions debt but has in addition saddled the future generations with debt that dealt with other problems? It will be a major problem for the generations to come, as they unfairly have to pay off the money we spent today to pay for the mistakes our politicians made today.

 

And government debt is becoming more expensive to service btw, look at the UK which is continously downgraded by Moodys and paying more and more each year to service its debt.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Logosone

[mauGR1]

10 minutes ago, WalkingOrders said:

Riots?!! Where?????

My post is very general, but reading comments on social media, as much as you can despise them, can give one the impression that many people are already fuming, for lack of freedom, money and in poorer countries even food.

No riots yet, as far as i know, i hope i'm just being overtly pessimistic.

[WalkingOrders]

18 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

My post is very general, but reading comments on social media, as much as you can despise them, can give one the impression that many people are already fuming, for lack of freedom, money and in poorer countries even food.

No riots yet, as far as i know, i hope i'm just being overtly pessimistic.

Riots where? X2 Your prediction not mine. You are using the word RIOT. As if... YOU anticipate riots. So do you? Or are you simply fanning an idea that violence is coming? So where should I expect this violence?

 

Look out your window. Is it calm and peaceful ? Or is the tension overwhelming, the smell of blood in the air?

 

It's calm and peaceful here. And yes, people are all ready for the lockdowns to end, and for a return to normalcy. But not sensing any underlying current of violence ready to burst forth.

 

So why are you seeing things different? It is you using the language that says violence is ready to spring forth. So once more where?

[mauGR1]

Just now, WalkingOrders said:

Riots where? X2 Your prediction not mine. You are using the word RIOT. As if... YOU anticipate riots. So do you? Or are you simply fanning an idea that violence is coming? So where should I expect this violence?

 

Look out your window. Is it calm and peaceful ? Or is the tension overwhelming, the smell of blood in the air?

 

It's calm and peaceful here. And yes, people are all ready for the lockdowns to end, and for a return to normalcy. But not sensing any underlying current of violence ready to burst forth.

 

So why are you seeing things different? It is you using the language that says violence is ready to spring forth. So once more where?

I am glad to know that everything is fine for you.

Perhaps you have to concede that there are billions on this planet who are poorer than you.

I am not predicting anything, i am just expecting troubles to happen, perhaps in one month or one week, who knows.

Relax and enjoy, if you think that everything will be fine, good for you, i hope you are right ????

[WalkingOrders]

11 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

I am glad to know that everything is fine for you.

Perhaps you have to concede that there are billions on this planet who are poorer than you.

I am not predicting anything, i am just expecting troubles to happen, perhaps in one month or one week, who knows.

Relax and enjoy, if you think that everything will be fine, good for you, i hope you are right ????

Yeah well if you are not predicting anything....then perhaps you should not predict riots.

 

And enough with the implying that to not predict riots means I am not cognizant that there are poor in this world. A cheap trick. And a dirty one.

Edited April 20, 2020 by WalkingOrders
Clarity

[Aussieroaming]

On 4/19/2020 at 8:38 AM, cornishcarlos said:

 

You got it...

 

I'm stuck in Singapore, been here since end of January... 

Apparently I'm not allowed go home to be with my wife, because 11 people have died here this year and 47 in Thailand too !!

 

I'm stuck and locked down in a country I was working in, same thing. Wife went back BKK for a 4 week holiday in Jan and I haven't seen her since due to lock downs and travel restrictions. At the rate this is panning out, it might be months before we see each other again. I know of people of other people is the same situation and there must be thousands and thousands world wide. 

 

Having said that, I absolutely salute the healthcare workers that have been doing it tough and putting their life on the line for others.

[Skallywag]

13 hours ago, johnnybangkok said:

Glas it's all working out for you. 

Perhaps ask the ill, the unemployed, the hungry, the soon to be destitute and the dead what 'positives' they are seeing.

True-that.  I grew up in a different time.  You saved enough for three months of being out of work, your rent/mortgage was never more than 30% of your income, you didnt buy things on credit, especially automobiles. Yes you had a mortgage, but as pointed out, you saved enough money to pay that if out of work.  No expensive phones, phone plans, no A/C (we used evaporative coolers in AZ) so many differences  

Yes, the hungry need food, the unemployed need work, and the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions will die.

Was only reporting on my perspective as a retiree, did not mean to minimize the global economic and viral disaster many are having to live through.  In reality, global poverty and deaths related to it has been very high for many years, before we had this pandemic.

"More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty."   

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty

Edited April 20, 2020 by Skallywag

[patsfangr]

On 4/19/2020 at 9:50 AM, rumak said:

Probably?   Do most people buy Colgate toothpaste because it is "probably" better than

other brands ?     

Or is it possible that they are just mindless followers of the advertising?   ( they do have

"dentists"  dressed in white gowns telling you how effective it is  )

"Colgate can be an effective decay preventive dentifrice when used in a conscientiously applied program of dental hygiene and regular professional care." How's that for imprinted advertising?! I was addicted to TV early in my life, and Colgate seemed to sponsor at least some of nearly every kid's show broadcast. I'll be there are millions of American adults who can also recite that ad from memory. ???? It's sad that they seem to hold a near monopoly on American branded toothpaste in Thailand. 

 

[johnnybangkok]

3 hours ago, Logosone said:

Very interesting and well thought out post.

 

On the point of self isolation, this is a social distancing measure. Some serious academic studies from China have shown that social distancing measures like travel restrictions have delayed the spread of the virus by 3, others say by 4 days. It is possible therfore that self isolation slows transmission of the virus. Whether it did so by days or weeks or months in the UK we do not really know for sure, as no serious studies have been done to examine this.

 

Looking at the extremely poor performance of the UK when compared to other countries it would certainly indicate that self-isolation is not as effective as testing and isolating. It certainly will not end the pandemic. Whether it had as dramatic an impact as some believe, studies would have to be done to determine. It may well be that, like in China it only delayed the spread by a few days. Whether that is worth the economic consequences is the question I would put to you.

 

I don't think the notion that Sweden and the UK can't be compared is persuasive, we can see if we look at the people per km squared that the population density of Stockholm is not worlds apart from London's, as London is sprawled over a larger geographic area. Nor do we know if population plays as large a role as some believe, since many of the worst affected areas were not the most densely populated areas, but rather villages in Lombardy, in Catalonia. If I look at Germany, it is not exclusively the most densely or highly populated cities that are most affected.

 

For instance the relatively population poor area of Heinsberg, with a low population density, was in fourth place behind Berlin, Hamburg and Munich but ahead of much more densely populated high population cities like Frankfurt, Cologne or Stuttgart.

 

This does not support the idea that population density is a key factor.

 

In terms of Seoul, they were not prepared through SARS. Like Germany their private biotech companies reacted immediateley when the genome was published and worked hard to produce a large number of tests. Something the UK could have done but failed to do. The South Koreans did test a lot, and their response has been interesting. However, whether the figures they provide, a country known for endemic corruption and mismanagement, are accurate is another question. I have some doubts about the figures provided by China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and co.

 

Testing would have been available to the UK, if they had done what Germany and South Korea did, and let private companies produce the test kits needed. The UK could have done so but failed to do it.

 

It only took very few weeks to produce test kits in countries that did so, a small single German company produced 1.4 million test kits in four weeks. So the UK did not have to focus on social distancing for as long as they did.

 

They have now focused on testing, and lo and behold, as soon as testing and isolating the infected is ramped up we see new cases tapering off. Again, testing, once implemented shows it is the way to beat the virus, as Mike Ryan of the WHO said for weeks.

 

If we find that Sweden, who has done very minimal social distancing, ramps up testing and similarly gets new cases to taper off (remember UK and Sweden were both at 10% mortality yesterday)  that would support the case for testing and isolating the infected alone and would indicate that social isolation of the extreme kind as done in the UK is not necessary.

Firstly lets clear up the S. Korea point. I was slightly wrong with saying it was SARS, h1N1, Swine Flu etc when in fact it was MERS:- 

'In 2015, the country experienced a sudden and unexpected outbreak of MERS – Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which is also caused by a coronavirus. It was the largest MERS outbreak outside of the Middle East, and led to 185 confirmed cases in South Korea. It also led to a firm belief that testing should form a central part of any response to a viral epidemic.

So when COVID-19 hit South Korea, testing became the course of action that seems to have set the country apart from other nations.' https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/south-korea-covid-19-containment-testing/

 

Secondly you absolutely cannot say 'This does not support the idea that population density is a key factor.' When you look at all the major Covid hot spot areas that are atributing to large infections and covid deaths, they are almost exclusively cities. Here is the top 10 infected countries and their major cities: https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/covid-19-coronavirus-top-ten-most-affected-countries/

 

1. USA - New York has 9,000 deaths out of a national total of 40,000. This is 25%.

2. Italy - Most cases are in Lombardy where Milan dominates the area. 7,176 deaths out of a total of 16,000. That's 45%.

3. Spain - Out of 20,000 deaths, Madrid acoounts for 7,300 (37%)

4. Germany - Out of 4,600 deaths, Bayern acounts for 1,256 (27%)

5. China - Don't believe the figures so no point going there

6. France -LLe-de-France (which includes Paris) 3,400 deaths out of 18,000 (20%) 

7. Iran - Official figures are suspect but they say 5,118 deaths of which 33% are in Tehran.

8. UK - as mentioned in an earlier post London accounts for 30% of UK covid deaths.

9. Switzerland - 1,400 deaths almost exclusively to Geneva, Zurich, Ticino and Boast

10. Turkey - 2,017 deaths of which Istanbul accounts for 60% of all known cases.

 

Even Ecuador's biggest city, Guayaquil, is one of the worst-hit places in Latin America and if we are to believe Thailand death total of 47, 30 of them are in Bangkok. You can cherry pick 'villages in Lombardy' and places like 'Heinsberg' but the overall WORLD stats tell a very different story.

 

But is it really that surprising to you that major population centres with a larger congregation of people are recording higher rates of Covid? The sheer nature of infection means that proximity plays an important role as it has done in every major pandemic in the past.

 

The figures I have posted (and you can verify with your own Google search) prove that population centres dominate Covid infections and deaths and although impossible just now to prove that self-isolation and social distancing are completely effective in halting the spread, it certainly adds credance to it being the case.     

 

And again, I'm not arguing the point that testing, identifying and isolating is the best way forward and that many countries governments have been left sorely lacking in the face of this pandemic but rather, I'm arguing that if testing to an effective level isn't available then self-isolation and social distancing are the only ammunation left in many countries armoury. And with infection rates plateuing and in many cases going down, it seems to be working.

Edited April 20, 2020 by johnnybangkok

[johnnybangkok]

1 hour ago, Skallywag said:

True-that.  I grew up in a different time.  You saved enough for three months of being out of work, your rent/mortgage was never more than 30% of your income, you didnt buy things on credit, especially automobiles. Yes you had a mortgage, but as pointed out, you saved enough money to pay that if out of work.  No expensive phones, phone plans, no A/C (we used evaporative coolers in AZ) so many differences  

Yes, the hungry need food, the unemployed need work, and the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions will die.

Was only reporting on my perspective as a retiree, did not many are having to live through.  In reality, global poverty and deaths related to it has been very high for many years, before we had this pandemic.

"More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty."   

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty

You are showing your privelage and lack of empathy there.

I would suggest that the worst affected with this pandemic will be living pay-check to pay-check, don't have cars as no one is going to give them any credit (never mind for something as big as a car) and they can only dream of having a mortgage.

It's an isue with the boomer generation that they always believe that poor people are somehow responsible for it themselves; that they are lazy and irresponsible and only have to 'pull themselves together' for it all to get much better when societal study after societal study proves this is simply not true. 

Have a read of this https://theconversation.com/why-poverty-is-not-a-personal-choice-but-a-reflection-of-society-79552. It's US centric but can easily be a blue-print for many countries in the world.   

You may not 'mean to minimize the global economic and viral disaster' but that's excatly what you are doing with your 'it wouldn't happen in my day' post.

[Mayhem11]

So put two and two together. If the situation in Oz is not about Covid19, what is it about?
 

There are six tactics used by authoritarians:spreading disinformation, quashing dissent, politicising independent institutions, amassing executive power, delegitimizing communities, and corrupting elections.

 

Spreading disinformation: face masks won’t mitigate against Covid19 infection

Quashing dissent: police fining/ arresting and jailing people for leaving their abodes, raiding journos 

 

Politicising independent institutions: stacking the High Court, the Fair Work Commission and the ABC

 

Amassing executive power: closing borders, interfering with civil liberties, union bashing, wanting to track your whereabouts 

 

Delegitimising communities: denying workers a real chance to vote on boss sponsored slashing of worker’s remuneration and emoluments, banning gatherings, surfing and BBQs

 

Corrupting elections: gerrymandering, the numerous sports rorts affairs

in my opinion, this is a right wing coup d’état.

[AussieBob18]

14 hours ago, moe666 said:

If we allow things to be normal say as in NY normal who will be able to take care of the sick and the very sick people that will over whelm the system. All that can be done at present is to slow this virus down until an affective vaccine is developed. I am in the kill zone but still have some living todo.

Sorry to say this, but there will not be a vaccine for a long time - if ever.  There has been two previous coronavirus that infected humans - SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012 - and they have been trying to develop a vaccine since 2003 but they have failed.  There was an attempt for SARS, but it was withdrawn as it made people very sick.

 

Easing the lockdown, but keeping things tight for the elderly, and those in the 'kill-zone' as you said, and maintaining travel bans should be maintained.  But the world's economies need to be restarted before they die.  Right now it will eventually come back to where it was - maybe 3-6 months - but too long and we will have a depression (worldwide) that will last for years.  Far worse and much more deaths will come from that occurring.

 

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/coronaviruses-therapeutics-vaccines

[Skallywag]

4 minutes ago, johnnybangkok said:

You are showing your privilege and lack of empathy there.......  

You may not 'mean to minimize the global economic and viral disaster' but that's exactly what you are doing with your 'it wouldn't happen in my day' post.

True, agreed.  I do not have much empathy for the "human condition" anymore.  I have been tipping more to the Thai people who I know and use their services is about all.  Have only been an expat here for 2 years, and did plan on volunteering and such, yet have not done that.  My finances are limited, so cannot be out there serving 150 - 600 free meals a day like the Nightwish group on Soi 6 and others around Pattaya.  I do post or show info on the free meal giveaways to friends and people I know locally, so they can partake of the charitable offerings if they want.  

 

No sure how one person's empathy can help the global economic impact, but am willing to listen if you have suggestions

[rumak]

1 hour ago, Skallywag said:

Was only reporting on my perspective as a retiree, did not mean to minimize the global economic and viral disaster many are having to live through.

Well,  very nice to see someone who can take another look at what they say or think at

a certain moment.   I took some offence at what I thought was your selfish outlook,  but c'mon,

everyone here no matter what they "stand for"  are 3 meals away (missing them) from becoming animals.

There are so many issues and opinions in this crazy world that one can easily lose the way.

Many end up on thaivisa    55555

keep up your spirits,  take care of yourself and loved ones.  Just from what you wrote in your last post I can see that you meant no disrespect,  and you have a very rare quality.  Being able to admit that maybe you did not think out exactly what you first said.    

Keep an open mind  ????          best, rumak

Edited April 20, 2020 by rumak

[AussieBob18]

5 hours ago, simple1 said:

I disagree with the thrust of your OP in that Oz Federal government had already stated it will commence relaxation of Covid mitigation as Covid infection spread slows down so do not comprehend why all the noise. State government may or may not have a different timetable, but they would come under a lot of pressure if they were off message by a significant degree. Government will have to keep some form of mitigation practices in place until a vaccine is generally available to minimise flare ups, not as you commented Covid-19 will hopefully 'burn out'. 

 

I am not a 'lefty'. last election I voted Liberal, but I did not vote for Howard last time he was up for election as I considered he was attacking the rights of the lower paid. I do not put members on ignore. Trolling? No, I asked for clarification of your comments.

Ok - thanks for clarifying your request - apologies for taking it out of context. Like you I vote for the better Party in terms of policies and history - not for the personality or gender of the Party leader.

 

I hope you are right, but I think that this will become a political 'hot potato'. Any Govt that opens up and infections/deaths go back up again, will be attacked by their opposition. And all the Labor States will try to use this to make the Lib/Nat Fed Govt look bad. And all the Lib States will be pushing to balme the Labor ones for not opening if the infections/deaths stay about the same (or even decrease).  The basthurdds will always play politics - including with people's lives - they are what they are.

 

Please see my earlier post re vaccines - there will not be one for a long time - if ever.  The time is now to make decisions as to which area/city/state to open back up and get back to work/business/living.

 

[AussieBob18]

10 minutes ago, Mayhem11 said:

So put two and two together. If the situation in Oz is not about Covid19, what is it about?
There are six tactics used by authoritarians:spreading disinformation, quashing dissent, politicising independent institutions, amassing executive power, delegitimizing communities, and corrupting elections.

Spreadingdisinformation: face masks won’t mitigate against Covid19 infection

Quashing dissent: police fining/ arresting and jailing people for leaving their abodes, raiding journos 

Politicising independent institutions: stacking the High Court, the Fair Work Commission and the ABC

Amassing executive power: closing borders, interfering with civil liberties, union bashing, wanting to track your whereabouts 

Delegitimising communities: denying workers a real chance to vote on boss sponsored slashing of worker’s remuneration and emoluments, banning gatherings, surfing and BBQs

Corrupting elections: gerrymandering, the numerous sports rorts affairs

in my opinion, this is a right wing coup d’état.

I was reading what you said and thought you would be going to say something anti-left wing ????

The harshest lockdown provisions in the USA are being done by the Dem States.

But back to Aus - the harshest provisions are being done In Vic - labor.

But here in Qld (also Labor) it is very easy going and not too harsh - outside of Brisbane.

Those in Govt are always to blame (according to opposition) and they never do anything right (according to opposition).

[Logosone]

58 minutes ago, johnnybangkok said:

Firstly lets clear up the S. Korea point. I was slightly wrong with saying it was SARS, h1N1, Swine Flu etc when in fact it was MERS:- 

'In 2015, the country experienced a sudden and unexpected outbreak of MERS – Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which is also caused by a coronavirus. It was the largest MERS outbreak outside of the Middle East, and led to 185 confirmed cases in South Korea. It also led to a firm belief that testing should form a central part of any response to a viral epidemic.

So when COVID-19 hit South Korea, testing became the course of action that seems to have set the country apart from other nations.' https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/south-korea-covid-19-containment-testing/

 

Secondly you absolutely cannot say 'This does not support the idea that population density is a key factor.' When you look at all the major Covid hot spot areas that are atributing to large infections and covid deaths, they are almost exclusively cities. Here is the top 10 infected countries and their major cities: https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/covid-19-coronavirus-top-ten-most-affected-countries/

 

1. USA - New York has 9,000 deaths out of a national total of 40,000. This is 25%.

2. Italy - Most cases are in Lombardy where Milan dominates the area. 7,176 deaths out of a total of 16,000. That's 45%.

3. Spain - Out of 20,000 deaths, Madrid acoounts for 7,300 (37%)

4. Germany - Out of 4,600 deaths, Bayern acounts for 1,256 (27%)

5. China - Don't believe the figures so no point going there

6. France -LLe-de-France (which includes Paris) 3,400 deaths out of 18,000 (20%) 

7. Iran - Official figures are suspect but they say 5,118 deaths of which 33% are in Tehran.

8. UK - as mentioned in an earlier post London accounts for 30% of UK covid deaths.

9. Switzerland - 1,400 deaths almost exclusively to Geneva, Zurich, Ticino and Boast

10. Turkey - 2,017 deaths of which Istanbul accounts for 60% of all known cases.

 

Even Ecuador's biggest city, Guayaquil, is one of the worst-hit places in Latin America and if we are to believe Thailand death total of 47, 30 of them are in Bangkok. You can cherry pick 'villages in Lombardy' and places like 'Heinsberg' but the overall WORLD stats tell a very different story.

 

But is it really that surprising to you that major population centres with a larger congregation of people are recording higher rates of Covid? The sheer nature of infection means that proximity plays an important role as it has done in every major pandemic in the past.

 

The figures I have posted (and you can verify with your own Google search) prove that population centres dominate Covid infections and deaths and although impossible just now to prove that self-isolation and social distancing are completely effective in halting the spread, it certainly adds credance to it being the case.     

 

And again, I'm not arguing the point that testing, identifying and isolating is the best way forward and that many countries governments have been left sorely lacking in the face of this pandemic but rather, I'm arguing that if testing to an effective level isn't available then self-isolation and social distancing are the only ammunation left in many countries armoury. And with infection rates plateuing and in many cases going down, it seems to be working.

Thanks for the correction. Even with MERS though South Korea was not prepared, they did not have test kits. It was only once the genome was published that South Korean private companies began producing test kits that enabled them to do testing in the way they did.

 

Again, like Germany, Britain could have equally produced test kits, like South Korea did. There was nothing compelling them to focus on social distancing. They had no hard evidence that this actually worked. They only looked at China, saw they used it and therefore assumed it has to work. 

 

I agree, if there is no possibility to do tests, clinical management, social distancing is all you have, but the effectiveness of it, we just don't know. If it delays transmission by 4 or 5 days, is it even worth the economic cost.

 

In terms of population density and its importance or otherwise, the point is that population density is not an automatic pointer to the virus necessarily spreading worse in those areas that have high population density. Yes, some places with high population density are heavily affected, like New York, London, Madrid, but some of the places that are worst affected are precisely not high density population areas, see Heinsberg that is the fourth most affected area in Germany, well ahead of densely populated cities like Frankfurt (THE travelling hub in Germany), Stuttgart or Cologne.

 

Equally in Italy, it was the villages in Lombardy that were worst affected. You will recall that patients zero in Italy were two Chinese tourists in Rome. Also one of Italy's travel hubs. Yet the densely populated urban metropolis of Rome had 4082 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, whereas Bergamo had more than double that figure, 10689 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, Brescia had 11,946 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

 

Take the area of Liguria, the entire area has a population density of 290/km2 but had 6528 cases per 100,000 souls, whereas Rome, with a population density of 2232/km2 only had 4082 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. It does not really follow that the higher the population density the worse the rate of infection. So a comparison with Sweden vs UK is perfectly possible.

 

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/italy/covid/

 

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Logosone