Corona Virus: How has the Aus Government handled it

arent you sick of all the talk/threads about Corona Virus???

well here is a another one!!

It seems everyone is whinging about how tough the new restrictions are and how badly its going to effect their "important" lives, but I think the government has done a great job so far, they havent over reacted, they havent under reacted, so far, as of today, our death toll is low, our number of cases is moderate in the grand scheme of things

yes, now I have to consider wiping my backside less, and wait until the hoarders get tired of hoarding toilet paper, pasta and panadol, but if thats the cost of keeping the death toll minimum and not falling into a depression, its a small price to pay

Discuss

 

It’s too premature to be making calls on how any government has handled it. I’d be inclined to wait till the dust settles and the data has been extrapolated and actions objectively assessed.

 

They closed a couple of doors very quickly , but then left others wide open.
South Korea and Italy appeared around the same time and just after Iran.
Yet the Italian door was left wide open.
Many of the infections here have come from the U.S undiagnosed, so it was spreading around there and they were completely unaware.
Many U.S citizens come from Italian heritage, so its also a top destination for U.S citizens heading back to the "old country".

 

Italy went to total lockdown on March 9 (12 days ago). According to Prof. Raina MacIntyre we are 20 days behind Italy considering our rate of infection is (roughly) doubling twice per week and the rate is growing exponentially. Consider the scale of the ignorant masses who are going about things as if it is business as usual. I'm not confident that we'll see a total lock down anytime soon considering Scomo was planning to join a crowd of 21,000 at an NRL match 7 days ago. Hopefully the curve can flatten but it appears we are doing everything in our power to avoid that. It all makes Scomo and Brendan Murphy's comments about herd immunity interesting.

 

Need a few options in between the three listed. I’m not going to say they have done a terrible job but they definitely could be doing a better job. To many mixed messages and silly protocols.
Keep 1.5m apart. Keep 4sqm clear space around you. 100 people is a closed space. 500 people in open space.
Who do they think is managing all these silly rules?
Are you walking around with a measuring tape making sure you have your 4 sqm?
Is there someone at the door if every enclosed venue to make sure there’s no more than 100 people?

let’s be honest there are so many people out there not even making an effort to comply with any of these protocols. Then they allow a ship to dock in Sydney with positive cases on board allowing everyone to get off and mix in the community.

They have lost control of the situation and everything they do from here is just for show and hope that this thing doesn’t grow rapidly. But based on the current rate of growth I would say they and we as a nation are failing.

 

I personally think their timing of various restrictions, has been adequate, i mean, had we virtually gone into lockdown 2 weeks ago would have been better, however as much as i hate politicians, there will always be someone complaining regardless of what they do

well, I deliberately chose the extremes of Yes, No, Neutral as it will give a good indication of what people on here,
because I didnt want to get into specifics

 

No one I know is complaining that the restrictions are too tough.

 

We are very lucky Australia is separated by ocean from every other country.

 

I have questions around our pandemic preparedness in general. Front Line workers are running short of critical equipment.

 

Abysmal. We are following the Italian model. We are treating a health issue as an economic issue, and badly. Cases are now going exponential, and there is no clear messaging and insufficient testing. South Korea was doing up to 20,000 tests a day. We have done about 81,000 total.

This is the biggest crisis Australia has faced since WWII. Where is the leadership and communication?

Also, apparently four cruise ships full of people were let go in Sydney with active coronavirus cases. That's around 10,000 people potentially exposed (I wouldn't normally reference twitter, but it's from the news editor of the Sydney Morning Herald):

Twitter

We should be in lockdown now. The longer we wait, the worse the health and economic consequences will be.

 

Agreed with this. Absolutely woeful so far. Half the population goes about doing whatever they want and not taking things seriously because the government hasn't.

 

I'm flabbergasted by the innumeracy in broader society as well as with the lack of understanding of how exponential and compound growth work.

For anyone who thinks that this will blow over and our responses are 'proportionate' please consider the following:

7 days ago we had 198 cases. At the start of today we had 1,070 cases which was an increase of 540% over the course of the past week. If this continues and our infection rate continues to double every 3.5 days (which is overly conservative based on how we are tracking this week) the following scenario will occur:

This morning's opening - 1070 cases

1 week - 4,280 cases
2 weeks - 17,120 cases
3 weeks - 68,480 cases
4 weeks - 273,920 cases
5 weeks - 1,095,680 cases
6 weeks - 4,382,720 cases

And I could go but hopefully you get the picture. This thing is not going to be stopped with token changes.

This does not factor in any continuation of the exponential growth in the incidence of cases and is based on the unlikely assumption that the rate will not continue to skyrocket.

The 'Red Zones' of Lombardy and Veneto went in to lock down on Feb 22 when Italy only had 79 cases and 2 deaths. The rest of Italy went into lock down on March 9.

Not going into lockdown now is madness and we are kidding ourselves if we think we have been more proactive than others.

 

It is interesting to see countries now “throwing everything including the kitchen sink” at this.

It will also be interesting to see how much debt they rack up on the national credit card and how long they take to pay it off.

From memory, Britain took 55+ years to pay off their WW2 debt.

If the same sort of thing happens this time (who knows), someone aged 20 today (say a Uni student) will be 75 when it is paid off. That is, they help carry the debt all of their working life and the first 10 years of retirement.

Someone might need to mention this to all those people breaching those simple heath practices we have asked over and over again to implement.

Le’s hope that all governments get on top of this soon.

 

Afters todays closure of Bondi and other beaches, how is weekday rush hour transport into and out of the capital cities going to work.
Most businesses will just have to close up , only one person in an elevator at one time? ?. Will transport personal maitain only limited numbers into stations, platforms and trains.

 

I know how exponentials work
I've been reading up on this virus and its definitely airborne, some sites are saying the virus has a up to 15 hr half life on metal or plastic
Current mortality rate is 0.7%
Which means according to the above death toll would be 30,000, which makes me **** bricks
Some experts are saying the virus is constantly changing,

Based on the poll here we should be in lock down

It seems most cases seem to be overseas acquired,

However, I'm usually Mr cynical but im genuinely starting to crap myself and thinking of not going out to public except for shopping , and wiping every surface I touch with sanitiser multiple times per day

Maybr im over reacting

 

You´re not. When it goes exponential things go pear shaped very fast. We had an extra 3803 cases and 285 deaths here today, by 5pm. It´s been doubling about every 3 days, 25400 cases now, many hospitals hitting their limit.

Being an Island not a huge advantage, easy to close land borders as Spain has done. Faroe Islands and Iceland (Islands) are the 2nd and 3rd hardest hit countries per capita.

The main advantage Australia has at the moment is the weather - it´s warm. Have a look at countries/regions with warm climates.. all pretty low infection rates. Also the low density living helps.

 

We put ourselves into home lockdown two weeks ago, not to protect the public from us BUT to protect us from the public. We didn’t trust the Australian public to do the right thing. Unfortunately, so far, it looks like we might be right.

We are retired, on the wrong side of 60 and my wife’s immune system has been compromised (she had breast cancer). We weren’t waiting for the Government to tell us what to do. We did it as we believe it could be life-and-death for us.

For some people, this will be a heath crisis (eg older people); for some, it will be a financial crisis (eg young people) and, for the remainder, it will be a heath crisis AND a financial crisis. We see ourselves in the first category and we will continue doing what we have been doing. It ain’t that hard, we keep focussing on the end game (i.e. being here when this is all over).

We look forward to the day when ALL Australians are on board, we see the numbers dropping and we can see the light at the end of this tunnel.

 

Worldwide we just went from 200k to 300k in 3 days.

The Australian government is following the approach and hence the country is following the trajectory of most other Western countries as seen in the graphs below. Unlike the Asian countries that have managed to flatten the curve. Singapore and Hong Kong didn’t even have a surge up.

The charts below which are updated as of yesterday tells the story.

 

The government already had its measures that it will implement. They are horrible and draconian bssut it's probably what needs to be done.

They're implementing them day by day as a strategy.

If you drop them all at once people will either miss the memo or rebell. Drip feed them, day by day over a week and the uptake will be higher.

Drip feeding also allows people and organisations to get the idea and get their preparations in order. For a lot of people working/living full time from home isn't just a matter of taking a laptop home and away you go. A lot of work needs to be done beforehand.

I strongly suspect that Morrison will enact a full lockdown this week.

 

The US Curve is the worst right now