COVID-19 / Coronavirus

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Dixie Flatline said:
Despite the attempts by the Victorian Government to be completely transparent about the sources of the outbreak, to the extent known, the Liberal party has done a massive disservice in promoting the lie that the BLM protest is the source of the new outbreak in Victoria. Only three individuals out of tens of thousands who attended have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Of course there were other BLM protests in other States that drew as many, if not more, protesters as the protest in Melbourne. So far, there has been no increase in infections in those other States.
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Yeah, the current spread of completely false info is quite enlightening isn’t it.
 
tige19 said:
You know more about most things than I do, but I do understand what you’re saying. The evidence isn’t there in plain sight because if you or I get tested and it’s positive we just accept it as fact, but due to it being an AFL player there is a microscope under the test and due diligence is actually followed.
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Not exactly true. If you test positive they don’t clear you without multiple negative tests. My son tested positive to Antibiotic resistant strain of a bacterial infection shortly after he was born. It took many test across More than 12 months before he could be admitted to hospital without been put into quarantine (he was born premature and suffered a lot of croup attacks). He never had a single symptom. The focus on positive results is always greater than negative.
 

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tige19 said:
We are discussing the Victorian landscape, I am giving reasoning why the LNP would be outlining the BLM march, that is it in a nutshell. The ALP have shown their hand as a corrupt and derelict government, all the LNP is doing (finally I must say) is highlighting all their bullshit. Daniel Andrews has had it to easy for too long, at last the LNP have a guy to lead them who has an inch of ticker and some intelligence to point out and broadcast his lack of capability.
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Would love to know what is 'corrupt' and 'derelict' about the government. Andrews has what? A 75% approval rating? While barely anyone knows who the Opposition leader is.
 
tige19 said:
We are discussing the Victorian landscape, I am giving reasoning why the LNP would be outlining the BLM march, that is it in a nutshell. The ALP have shown their hand as a corrupt and derelict government, all the LNP is doing (finally I must say) is highlighting all their bullshit. Daniel Andrews has had it to easy for too long, at last the LNP have a guy to lead them who has an inch of ticker and some intelligence to point out and broadcast his lack of capability.
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And I am saying that the BLM march has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with corruption or dereliction of duty and the fact the LNP are framing it that way is purely wedge politics and damaging to the situation. Linking the protests to government corruption or incompetence is inaccurate but it does feed a certain part of the public and media.

They've got actual issues they could focus on if they want to point to corruption or dereliction in the Andrews Government.
 
Hesitate to wade in to this, but here goes.

It strikes me that there are four factors in Victoria that people believe are leading to growth in numbers (this is based on what I've heard; happy to accept there could be more):
  1. Large family gatherings
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels
  3. BLM rally
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public.
Examining each in turn:
  1. Large family gatherings. From what I have heard, these families have a large proporertion of people who do not speak or read English very well (or at all). The DHHS here in Vic has been translating the warning messages into other languages, but it ends up these translations were buried a 3-4 clicks into the DHHS website. My understanding is that this situation has now been rectified, with non-English translations more easily accessible.
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels. Anecdotal evidence suggests that staff are either inadequately trained or failing to follow the training provided. This seems to be an issue with execution rather than policy, as other states have quarantine hotels and are not having this same issue. Presumably the solution is to replace existing security staff with medical staff with better training / observance of training, but I don't have enough insight into the execution of this policy to make any more than this relatively uninformed observation.
  3. BLM rally. It's been over two weeks now, and no spike in cases attributed to people catching it at the rally. Last number I heard was that there were three people known to be at the rally with the virus (down from four), but timing and testing has confirmed that all three had it prior, and none of the many cases coming forward in the subsequent fortnight demonstrate that it was caught there. The guy behind the H&M Northland cluster was originally thought to have caught it at BLM, but they have now confirmed based on timing and viral load that he caught if a few days after the rally. In addition, we've got a really nice controlled experiment here: BLM rallies were held in several capital cities, and no other state is experiencing a rise in cases. Suggests that BLM rallies therefore are not a direct vector for transmissions. What message holding these rallies sends to people about controls is another matter, which leads us onto...
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public. I was at my local supermarket the other day, and loitered near the entrance (well away from other people). It has one of those hands-free sanitizing stations. I waited until 20 people had passed the entrance; only one bothered to use the sanitizing station. If this tiny little experiment is in any way indicative, then... and I posted my observations to social media. I don't think I've ever had a post which has gathered more comments. Pretty evenly split: 50% saying, yeah, pretty poor, 50% calling me judgemental or calling out reasons why people may not use sanitizer (ranging from completely reasonable (I have a skin condition and using high vol alcohol sanitizer causes medical issues) through to perhaps less so (I find some of them a bit slimy so don't use them)). I would have had a more peaceful life had I posted a poll: "Lindy Chamberlain: guilty or not?"
    There's also a bit of cargo cult mentality. Rode bikes into town to pick up some shoes for Mr 14 on the weekend. People ignoring the marks on the floor for queuing outside the shop, and the guy running the queue said, "We're only allowed 20 people in at one time". Yep, the shop looked about 80 sq m, that makes sense. Except all 20 people were squeezed into one corner where the seats were to try on shoes. Actually, the shop may be 80 sq m, but the usable area is closer to 20 sq m. Not the fault of the dude following instructions on the door, but a little more analysis would be helpful.
    Chatting with a colleague who lives and works in Sydney today, she reported basically the same behaviour there. "It's just like October last year, really". Again, if this behaviour is happening in Sydney and Melbourne, and only Melbourne is spiking, it does suggest the correlation is lower than other causes. Still skating on thin ice IMHO.
    Today's Coronoacast podcast cited some research showing in April (I think) 80% of people were complying with physical distancing measures. When the group running the survey ran it again last weekend, the number was 25%. I'm not sure if this was just Victoria, or measurements across the country.
Anyway, that's all a long-winded way of saying to my mind the evidence does not suggest BLM rallies as a direct link to spike in Vic, but may have sent poor signals to people re controls. I read somewhere yesterday (sorry, looked for the source but couldn't find it) over 80% of current active cases (for Tuesday) in Vic can be traced back to one of the family gatherings or the hotel quarantine; but I do worry that #4 may lead to more cases in future.

Edited to add: I'm not sure that the current use of hyperbolic language is helping any. City of Darebin is a "hotspot" apparently. Latest figures I can find is 4 infections out of a population of 160,000. That's 0.0025% and it qualifies as a "hotspot"? Nearly as bad as the cybersecurity guff spewing from the PM's mouth last Friday (I work in the industry, and no one outside the NSW gov who had a slight uptick in attacks has any idea what he was on about).

Sorry for the long post, but thought it may add to the discussion in a constructive way.

Cheers,
P
 
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phlogiston said:
Hesitate to wade in to this, but here goes.

It strikes me that there are four factors in Victoria that are leading to growth in numbers (this is based on what I've heard; happy to accept there could be more):
  1. Large family gatherings
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels
  3. BLM rally
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public.
Examining each in turn:
  1. Large family gatherings. From what I have heard, these families have a large proporertion of people who do not speak or read English very well (or at all). The DHHS here in Vic has been translating the warning messages into other languages, but it ends up these translations were buried a 3-4 clicks into the DHHS website. My understanding is that this situation has now been rectified, with non-English translations more easily accessible.
  2. Poor practices at quarantine hotels. Anecdotal evidence suggests that staff are either inadequately trained or failing to follow the training provided. This seems to be an issue with execution rather than policy, as other states have quarantine hotels and are not having this same issue. Presumably the solution is to replace existing security staff with medical staff with better training / observance of training, but I don't have enough insight into the execution of this policy to make any more than this relatively uninformed observation.
  3. BLM rally. It's been over two weeks now, and no spike in cases attributed to people catching it at the rally. Last number I heard was that there were three people known to be at the rally with the virus (down from four), but timing and testing has confirmed that all three had it prior, and none of the many cases coming forward in the subsequent fortnight demonstrate that it was caught there. The guy behind the H&M Northland cluster was originally thought to have caught it at BLM, but they have now confirmed based on timing and viral load that he caught if a few days after the rally. In addition, we've got a really nice controlled experiment here: BLM rallies were held in several capital cities, and no other state is experiencing a rise in cases. Suggests that BLM rallies therefore are not a direct vector for transmissions. What message holding these rallies sends to people about controls is another matter, which leads us onto...
  4. Poor preventative practices from a large proportion of the general public. I was at my local supermarket the other day, and loitered near the entrance (well away from other people). It has one of those hands-free sanitizing stations. I waited until 20 people had passed the entrance; only one bothered to use the sanitizing station. If this tiny little experiment is in any way indicative, then... and I posted my observations to social media. I don't think I've ever had a post which has gathered more comments. Pretty evenly split: 50% saying, yeah, pretty poor, 50% calling me judgemental or calling out reasons why people may not use sanitizer (ranging from completely reasonable (I have a skin condition and using high vol alcohol sanitizer causes medical issues) through to perhaps less so (I find some of them a bit slimy so don't use them)). I would have had a more peaceful life had I posted a poll: "Lindy Chamberlain: guilty or not?"
    There's also a bit of cargo cult mentality. Rode bikes into town to pick up some shoes for Mr 14 on the weekend. People ignoring the marks on the floor for queuing outside the shop, and the guy running the queue said, "We're only allowed 20 people in at one time". Yep, the shop looked about 80 sq m, that makes sense. Except all 20 people were squeezed into one corner where the seats were to try on shoes. Actually, the shop may be 80 sq m, but the usable area is closer to 20 sq m. Not the fault of the dude following instructions on the door, but a little more analysis would be helpful.
    Chatting with a colleague who lives and works in Sydney today, she reported basically the same behaviour there. "It's just like October last year, really". Again, if this behaviour is happening in Sydney and Melbourne, and only Melbourne is spiking, it does suggest the correlation is lower than other causes. Still skating on thin ice IMHO.
    Today's Coronoacast podcast cited some research showing in April (I think) 80% of people were complying with physical distancing measures. When the group running the survey ran it again last weekend, the number was 25%. I'm not sure if this was just Victoria, or measurements across the country.
Anyway, that's all a long-winded way of saying to my mind the evidence does not suggest BLM rallies as a direct link to spike in Vic, but may have sent poor signals to people re controls. I read somewhere yesterday (sorry, looked for the source but couldn't find it) over 80% of current active cases (for Tuesday) in Vic can be traced back to one of the family gatherings or the hotel quarantine; but I do worry that #4 may lead to more cases in future.

Edited to add: I'm not sure that the current use of hyperbolic language is helping any. City of Darebin is a "hotspot" apparently. Latest figures I can find is 4 infections out of a population of 160,000. That's 0.0025% and it qualifies as a "hotspot"? Nearly as bad as the cybersecurity guff spewing from the PM's mouth last Friday (I work in the industry, and no one outside the NSW gov who had a slight uptick in attacks has any idea what he was on about).

Sorry for the long post, but thought it may add to the discussion in a constructive way.

Cheers,
P
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Great post and absolutely spot on.

Make a good point that, under the circumstances, the BLM rally didn't send a great message but I don't see Premiers in other states that had larger rallies (Berejiklian and Palaszczuk) copping the heat like Andrews is.
 
Daniel Andrews has called in the ADF, has called in the SA health leaders and in doing so basically yelling out "Guys, I am **** on a bull useless, save me".
 
Gralin said:
And I am saying that the BLM march has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with corruption or dereliction of duty and the fact the LNP are framing it that way is purely wedge politics and damaging to the situation. Linking the protests to government corruption or incompetence is inaccurate but it does feed a certain part of the public and media.

They've got actual issues they could focus on if they want to point to corruption or dereliction in the Andrews Government.
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I agree with some of your points.
 
Guerrahappyteam said:
Would love to know what is 'corrupt' and 'derelict' about the government. Andrews has what? A 75% approval rating? While barely anyone knows who the Opposition leader is.
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Generally, in the face of state and commonwealth disasters the custodians of leaders from each political party tend to have booming popularity. I think Scomo is preferred PM by more than double than Albo, it's the nature of Australian politics.
 
tige19 said:
Daniel Andrews has called in the ADF, has called in the SA health leaders and in doing so basically yelling out "Guys, I am **** on a bull useless, save me".
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How much of a shrill ****ing dickhead do you want to be.......

Asking for help is not yelling I'm incompetent, it's asking for help. You know the smart thing to do when you need help and there are people that can help.

NSW is using the ADF already and has been for a while. Other states with zero active cases have resources available that could be used to help shut down the spread in Victoria more quickly.

Not asking for help would be the issue.

tige19 said:
I agree with some of your points.
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Good for you, which ones?
 
Gralin said:
How much of a shrill ******* dickhead do you want to be.......

Asking for help is not yelling I'm incompetent, it's asking for help. You know the smart thing to do when you need help and there are people that can help.

NSW is using the ADF already and has been for a while. Other states with zero active cases have resources available that could be used to help shut down the spread in Victoria more quickly.

Not asking for help would be the issue.


Good for you, which ones?
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The issue is this, Daniel Andrews should have taken more advice, more intel and more direction from the national cabinet and other states MUCH earlier on, instead, the guy went it alone, he and his mates know best right? Where was the community engagement with ethnic groups in multicultural suburbs? Who was leading that strategy within the health department? Noone.

He is now asking for help because his government has completely and categorically fluffed the whole thing.

ALP should have had the ADF manage the hotel quarantine from day one, why are they using idiotic security guards who completely ignored SD orders? Further to that, why on earth did they persist with this as dozens of cases started to emerge from these hotels?

Fancy setting up testing stations at shopping centres and not expect people to go shopping? Why aren't they doing the testing at the 100s of Suburban football grounds? Why not at the multiple racecourses around the city? He says we have the ability to test 20k a day, but the logistics of doing it just don't work, the traffic control conditions become hazardous at places where crowds will already flock to (isn't this logical?), was this not thought about? NSW have had no such issues, why?

Daniel Andrews has brought in the SA health officials to oversee and lead our contact tracers, why? Because we do not have people with the skill set required to lead the contact tracers, it's that simple. The Health Department has failed, if the evidence isn't already there when every other state and territory has eradicated it then I don't know on what planet you can deny that fact.

If you can sit here and say Mikakos and Sutton truly know what their doing and you have confidence in them then good on you, I sure as hell don't. I am looking forward to the day when we get told that Covid19 only exists 1ft off the ground, we will have all of you crawling on your knees to avoid it, why? Because Mikakos told you so.
 

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tige19 said:
The issue is this, Daniel Andrews should have taken more advice, more intel and more direction from the national cabinet and other states MUCH earlier on, instead, the guy went it alone, he and his mates know best right? Where was the community engagement with ethnic groups in multicultural suburbs? Who was leading that strategy within the health department? Noone.

He is now asking for help because his government has completely and categorically fluffed the whole thing.

ALP should have had the ADF manage the hotel quarantine from day one, why are they using idiotic security guards who completely ignored SD orders? Further to that, why on earth did they persist with this as dozens of cases started to emerge from these hotels?

Fancy setting up testing stations at shopping centres and not expect people to go shopping? Why aren't they doing the testing at the 100s of Suburban football grounds? Why not at the multiple racecourses around the city? He says we have the ability to test 20k a day, but the logistics of doing it just don't work, the traffic control conditions become hazardous at places where crowds will already flock to (isn't this logical?), was this not thought about? NSW have had no such issues, why?

Daniel Andrews has brought in the SA health officials to oversee and lead our contact tracers, why? Because we do not have people with the skill set required to lead the contact tracers, it's that simple. The Health Department has failed, if the evidence isn't already there when every other state and territory has eradicated it then I don't know on what planet you can deny that fact.

If you can sit here and say Mikakos and Sutton truly know what their doing and you have confidence in them then good on you, I sure as hell don't. I am looking forward to the day when we get told that Covid19 only exists 1ft off the ground, we will have all of you crawling on your knees to avoid it, why? Because Mikakos told you so.
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Come on tige, the entire planet was unprepared for this. There was no playbook or manual for dealing with a pandemic like this and the Australian outcome is close to the best on the entire planet. You are essentially criticising the absence of perfection when the outcomes have been spectacularly good compared with almost every other nation.
 
Brishawk said:
Come on tige, the entire planet was unprepared for this. There was no playbook or manual for dealing with a pandemic like this and the Australian outcome is close to the best on the entire planet. You are essentially criticising the absence of perfection when the outcomes have been spectacularly good compared with almost every other nation.
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Yeah, fair assessment Bris. I suppose how we measure the handling of the pandemic we first and foremost measure it against the KPI’s within our own country, and by doing that Victoria is a clear bottom of the barrel.

There’s no playbook that’s perfect for the pandemic, I get that, but wasn’t it also mooted very publicly that DA will clearly and directly only take real instruction from his health advisors? Mikakos lost me the day she publicly shamed the first doctor who un-knowingly passed it on to patients at his clinic in Brighton.

The “I know best” attitude of Andrews has been an unmitigated disaster and now we are all paying for it. It’s not all on DA, I get that but he is the leader of the state so it starts and ends with him.
 
tige19 said:
Yeah, fair assessment Bris. I suppose how we measure the handling of the pandemic we first and foremost measure it against the KPI’s within our own country, and by doing that Victoria is a clear bottom of the barrel.

There’s no playbook that’s perfect for the pandemic, I get that, but wasn’t it also mooted very publicly that DA will clearly and directly only take real instruction from his health advisors? Mikakos lost me the day she publicly shamed the first doctor who un-knowingly passed it on to patients at his clinic in Brighton.

The “I know best” attitude of Andrews has been an unmitigated disaster and now we are all paying for it. It’s not all on DA, I get that but he is the leader of the state so it starts and ends with him.
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Stop smoking the Murdoch pole - it is making you look even more of a clueless ****ing *******.
 
tige19 said:
Yeah, fair assessment Bris. I suppose how we measure the handling of the pandemic we first and foremost measure it against the KPI’s within our own country, and by doing that Victoria is a clear bottom of the barrel.

There’s no playbook that’s perfect for the pandemic, I get that, but wasn’t it also mooted very publicly that DA will clearly and directly only take real instruction from his health advisors? Mikakos lost me the day she publicly shamed the first doctor who un-knowingly passed it on to patients at his clinic in Brighton.

The “I know best” attitude of Andrews has been an unmitigated disaster and now we are all paying for it. It’s not all on DA, I get that but he is the leader of the state so it starts and ends with him.
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Mate it's not Mikakos giving the advice she's just the political spokesperson like Hunt is federally when they want a politician talking but not the PM or Premier
 
tige19 said:
Daniel Andrews has called in the ADF, has called in the SA health leaders and in doing so basically yelling out "Guys, I am **** on a bull useless, save me".
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Pay what essential work is he taking them away from?
you night as well say in the bushfires vic/nsw/qld say "were crap we need people form other states to show us"
 
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