COVID-19: Australia vs the rest of the world

Maybe they just have fewer recalcitrants....

The Y-man

From abc.net.au:
Parklands Christian College, south of Brisbane, has been closed after a female employee and her travel companion both tested positive after returning from interstate on July 21.

Ms Palaszczuk said there would be a "thorough police investigation" into how the two 19-year-old women returned to Queensland after visiting hotspots.

"I'm absolutely furious that this has happened. That these two people have gone to Victoria, have come back and have given misleading information to authorities," she said.

 

I have people in Taiwan.

They hard closed borders very early on - pretty much as soon as Wuhan hit the news, they were shutting down borders - including preventing their own people returning from the mainland.

Pretty much everyone wore masks and maintained social distancing - I certainly don't recall any news about anti-maskers.

The Y-man

 

Actually what made the news was someone getting fined for "coming out of self isolation" to answer the door when the police knocked

In Taiwan, you have to self-isolate in a declared area away form family etc. The guy declare he was isolating upstairs (with his own bathroom etc) and the rest of the family was downstairs.

When the police knocked, he came downstairs to answer the door.... fail....!!

People there thought it was fair enough - but here I think you would have had some people claim human right violations or something and go nuts.

The humans we allegedly trafficked over (according to @TMNT ) found during the 14 day self-isolation, they had police calling up several times a day to "find out how you were feeling" (and probably doing a geo-location check where you were answering the call) and would do unannounced visits. If you fail to answer your phone consistently, you'll be fined.

You had to put your rubbish in secure garbage bags, separate form the rest of the household
The city council sent special rubbish collectors in full hazmat suits who spray your garbage bag and then take it away to be high-temp incinerated (they sent us photos - was quite funny seeing these 2 fully hazmat suited people taking this tiny little rubbish bag away (food wrappers, tissues etc) - but that is how seriously they take it over there - and maybe it tells us something.

The Y-man

 

... with a gun?

The Y-man

 

Got an issue in Danang at the moment - city is in lock down.
Again, from what I have seen on my several visits to VN, they are a pretty compliant bunch there (we often forget there is an authoritarian gov there), and everyone wears a mask anyway in the cities in normal times.

The Y-man

Abc.net.au
Vietnam locks down Da Nang as virus cases grow
Vietnam has locked down its third-largest city, Da Nang, for two weeks after at least 15 cases of COVID-19 were found in a hospital.

The country is back on high alert after authorities confirmed the first community infections since April in and around Da Nang.

A further 11 cases linked to a Da Nang hospital were reported late on Monday local time.

Two of the Da Nang cases were in critical condition, Vietnam's health ministry said.

Public transport into and out of the central city were cancelled and all flights to and from were suspended for 15 days.

Authorities estimated several thousand people would be stranded by the transportation shutdown and asked hotels to shelter them.

Vietnam is still closed to foreign tourism, but there had been a surge in domestic travellers looking to take advantage of discounted flights and holiday packages to local resorts.

With the new infections, Vietnam has reported 431 cases of COVID-19 without a death.

 

This is something that I believe most western countries have had huge difficulty with - keeping the virus out of aged care facilities.

Now that I think about it - I've wondered why some countries (Qatar / Bahrain / Oman / Singapore) have such low death rates even in the face of very high infection rates.

I think part of it might be the demographics of the country - I know that the bulk of the infections in Singapore are from foreign workers living in dormitory style housing, but these people will be generally younger and thus less susceptible to dying from the virus.

... I just looked it up:

Qatar has only 1% of the population over the age of 65, and only 4.4% over the age of 55 - so that would explain the low number of deaths there.

Bahrain has 2.5% of the population over the age of 65, and Oman only 1.5%.

This is compared to Australia with 16.4% of the population over the age of 65!

So the very young population will go a long way towards explaining the very low death rates in those countries.

But I also wonder whether there is a fundamental difference in how they manage their aged compared to European based cultures like ours and other similar countries?

 

Many countries have large extended families. Older people tend to live with their extended families - living in a facility is much rarer.