Corona virus and other pestilences. Poxes ‘n stuff. Part 6.

[RussellEbertHandball]

The academics will now talk in retrospect but Australia, like the rest of the world, was facing a crisis. In the early stages no one knew exactly what they were dealing with so our pollies erred on the side of safety. We will never truly know how effective closing borders and lockdowns was because we do not know what the death toll would have been if we had followed the Trump lead US example and kept our international and State borders open.

Using Sweden as an example is ridiculous as Sweden followed a 'herd immunity' strategy which did not work. The Swedes did not lock down and their pro rata Covid death rate was much higher than that of Australia. I suspect that some selective data is being used to support an academic case. The term, 'projection based on previous years' is academic speak for an educated guess.

You need a base line, so you take the average deaths in each nation over the last 4 years before Covid hit. That's what the ABS do, that's what the OECD did, that's what the Financial Times data guy did, who was the most comprehensive reporting in the media I saw did for excess deaths, and that's what other credible agencies have done.

Why all of a sudden would there be an increase in deaths if there was no pandemic? nothing academic at all about it.

Trump like Morrison could only shut down his international borders. Both counties constitution give the power to the states to manage their borders. People just don't seem to understand how federations work.

From my perspective Australia got it right and if we are faced with a pandemic in future, which there is every chance we will be, I would hope that a similar isolationist policy would prevail. Of course it would help if the United Nations showed some initiative and issued realistic assessments of the danger. When Covid struck it took the UN several weeks to declare a pandemic and the meantime countries like the UK, Spain and Italy left their borders open and the infection took hold.

One of the things that most of us identified during the pandemic was the lack of isolation facilities similar to Howard Springs in the NT. Every State should have one or more of these as they could be used for backpacker or foreign student accommodation in non pandemic times. This would save us having to use hotels in population centres as isolation areas.

No nation did a perfect job. No nation could have done a perfect job.

As the above quoted government report stated - the next time this happens, if people who have lived thru this one - Aussies wont accept the severe lockdowns like they did this time because there were so many mixed messages, and incorrect ones. If you are scared of a pandemic - stay home, but don't restrict or stop people's reasonable movements.

If the next one happens in a 100+ years time who knows how accepting the nation will be. I don't care i will be dead.

 

[backtozero]

The transmission messaging was around mask wearing and good hygiene practice.

You can find countless examples of those in positions of power telling the public that they wouldn't contract the virus and wouldn't transmit it if they got vaccinated.
The reported efficacy of the thing continued to drop over time too.

 

[Duckimus Prime]

Yes, they absolutely were.

They only moved the goal posts once they realised that vaccinated people were being infected and reinfected and the messaging had to change.

You mean vaccines struggled with a continually mutating virus? Shock horror.

But yeah, lets listen to the Professor of Oncology on how we should combat the spread of highly infectious diseases.
Because Cancer is something that is known to easily spread between patients.

 

[backtozero]

You mean vaccines struggled with a continually mutating virus? Shock horror.

But yeah, lets listen to the Professor of Oncology on how we should combat the spread of highly infectious diseases.
Because Cancer is something that is known to easily spread between patients.

Infection, transmission and reinfection from the same strain.

 

[Duckimus Prime]

Infection, transmission and reinfection from the same strain.

A strain that mutated post vaccine development...

When viruses mutate, vaccines need to be modified to take into account the changes. Its why we need to keep getting flu shots each year.

 

[edgie]

I remember messaging in the beginning that vaccines would be effective for all variants

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[raptalia]

As of April 13 2024 the death rate from Covid19 in Australia was 937 per million of population. In Sweden the death rate from Covid19 was 2,682 per million of population. So how did Sweden handle the pandemic better than Australia?

I am not sure why you need a 'base line' and I do not understand why natural death rates come into it. The world knows we had a pandemic without an academic like Angus Dalgleish trying to prove it. I spent a good part of my life in lecture theatres listening to academics trying to justify their existence. They spend hours in a cloistered environment then produce papers which they publish and that gives them and the University status. One stat that was pretty accurate in developed nations during the pandemic was the Covid death rate. The death rate from Covid is the only stat that I see as relevant and Australia came out pretty well compared to Trump's America where the death rate was 3,642 per million almost four times the death rate in Australia. As for not understanding a Federal system of Government, Morrison, to his credit, had regular National Cabinet meetings involving all the Sate Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers. While the Premiers did their own thing re border closures there was also a degree of co operation on issues such as repatriation of Australian citizens, quarantine protocols and vaccination rollouts. Morrison also listened to the State and Federal health officials whereas in the US Trump was at war with Anthony Fauci. At one stage Trump was asking at a National Press Conference why people could not be injected with detergent? The man had no idea of the seriousness of the situation. In the US Trump failed to get the States together and there was no coordinated national policy on quarantine, international travellers etc.

I had no problems with lockdowns but I was not working, if I had been working for a living I might have had a different perspective. My problem was with people who wanted to carry on life as normal with a pandemic raging. These people put not only themselves at risk but placed greater strain on a health system that was already under immense pressure.

I am happy that Australia did not take the Anders Tegnell herd immunity approach that was used in Sweden and advocated by Tony Blakely in Australia and Sir Patrick Vallance in the UK. Morrison had his faults and the response was not perfect but I would much rather Australia's 'overreaction' than an inflated death rate.

Some basic maths tells us that if the Swedish Covid death rate is applied to the population of Australia 69,732 people would have died as opposed to the 24,414 who died from the virus up to April 2024. Getting things right long term is irrelevant, what was critical was saving lives during the pandemic and comparing Australia with Sweden shows that the Australian strategy achieved that.

 

[Festerz]

You can find countless examples of those in positions of power telling the public that they wouldn't contract the virus and wouldn't transmit it if they got vaccinated.

Would love to see who those people in a position of power in the Australian health system who were pedalling this nonsense.

Name and shame.

 

[TazD]

To hell with human lives my super was at stake!

 

[edgie]

To hell with human lives my super was at stake!

Pfft the wealthy made out like bandits and continue to, covid was the best thing to happen for the upper classes.



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[OneGreatClub]

 

[rumoursofwinter]

In Melbourne, the wearing of masks has been banned at protests.

 

[OneGreatClub]

 

[EskimoPAFC]

In Melbourne, the wearing of masks has been banned at protests.

What if a group of people want to protest this decision?

 

[OneGreatClub]

Yup

 

[OneGreatClub]

Quelle surprise

 

[OneGreatClub]

'My only hope to have a child is spontaneous recovery from long COVID'

Long COVID is snuffing out some patients' dreams of having children, and complicating pregnancy and parenthood for those who choose to conceive despite their symptoms and doubts about when or if they will recover.

www.abc.net.au

 

[raptalia]

Quelle surprise

Does that data mean that Covid was a conspiracy by the millennials to kill off the older generations ?

 

[OneGreatClub]

 

[OneGreatClub]

I see the antivaxxers are taking Ozempic quite happily

 

[JimmyBC]

How is this thread still even going?

 

[TazD]

How is this thread still even going?

By engaging with it.

 

[edgie]

This thread has outlasted covid

 

[Puddy]

This thread has outlasted covid

Still waiting for the oldies to actually pass away

 

[OneGreatClub]

The New Rasputins

Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe.

www.theatlantic.com

“When I first wrote about the need for new political terminology, in 2017, I struggled to come up with better terms. But now the outlines of a popular political movement are becoming clearer, and this movement has no relation at all to the right or the left as we know them. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, whose belief in the possibility of law-based democratic states gave us both the American and French Revolutions, railed against what they called obscurantism: darkness, obfuscation, irrationality. But the prophets of what we might now call the New Obscurantism offer exactly those things: magical solutions, an aura of spirituality, superstition, and the cultivation of fear. Among their number are health quacks and influencers who have developed political ambitions; fans of the quasi-religious QAnon movement and its Pizzagate-esque spin-offs; and members of various political parties, all over Europe, that are pro-Russia and anti-vaccine and, in some cases, promoters of mystical nationalism as well.”