Jaws_au
3114
Our (Australian) Home Affairs Minister was found positive for COVID-19 today - six days ago he was standing beside Ivanka Trump and William Barr…
Peter Dutton was standing next to Ivanka Trump six days ago. He’s just tested positive for Covid19. https://t.co/X0hK83OJJ2
— Henry Belot (@Henry_Belot) March 13, 2020
rei
3115
We need for the whole klan to die off.
Jaws_au
3116
Given how few non-travel related cases we have here - I’d bet money he (Dutton) caught it while in the US. Maybe the whole WH has it…
So would any course of action. It’s not like shutting down swathes of the economy is consequence free, and you compute those consequences with… models.
I’m not saying they’re right, but the advice is coming from experts. That the government is listening to the wrong experts is possible, but it’s hard to know (or presumably they wouldn’t be listening).
ShivaX
3118
Or, or the CDC wont test dead people so that “less people died”.
“Who knows how they died? No one knows. Probably flu. Maybe overdoses. Maybe a couple were corona. No way to know. But we’ve kept the death toll really low. Lower than anywhere else. They said it wasn’t possible. Perfect call is what they called it. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘sir, you saved more Americans in the last 2 months than any American ever.’ Is that true? I don’t know, but that’s what they tell me. Probably true.”
The question for me is why are 99/100 groups of national advisory boards are recommending one thing, and we’re following the advice of 1/100
ShivaX
3120
It worked in the US for Climate Change.
Because people have forgotten what death up close looks like.
Death of people, death of animals etc, all conveniently several layers away.
Yeah when some people start panicking, the correct response sadly is to respond to the panickers.
Some supermarkets yesterday had empty shelves…
All this doom and gloom. I hate to be that guy but ask yourself, so what if x million die? Hardly a dent in the global population and it’ll rebound soon enough.
I only wish this level of panic and energy were directed towards creating a sustainable economy (instead of our debt House of cards) and fixing climate change and ensuring a healthy diet (instead of pushing the low fat, sugar riddled shit that has fucked us up and will continue to do so) instead of worrying so much over a virus.
I think like Iran, our governments are going to have high rates of infections. Lots of ministers meeting confirmed cases.
https://www.ft.com/content/9a9e9e60-64b3-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68
Did you listen to Today (BBC Radio 4) this morning? The Chief Scientific Advisor did a good job of explaining the advice and why certain measures are appropriate right now, at this stage, but they are ready to pivot when needed.
He also made the point that trying to suppress the virus too strongly immediately could lead to it coming back much more strongly, say next autumn, where the more measured response can lead to more herd immunity and a lower, more controlled peak.
I’m not doing the explanation justice. But questioned about publishing the models and linking the research they were basing their decisions on, he said it’s something he really wanted to do.
He did stress that they were not of a fixed mindset and were ready to adapt. But he had answers as to why, in this context, they didn’t think the stronger courses of scrounge we’re the best just yet.
Yeah, that’s my big question. Johnson claims it’s because other countries are acting without evidence because of the pressure, but maybe our experts are just wrong.
I have faith in our experts, but the way we approach problems at an executive level is to present a number of data/fact driven options to the decision makers and they chose what they want. We will then justify and support that decision if it is questioned by presenting the same evidence we did with the other options.
I still suspect the Tories chose the option that was based around mitigating economic cost over human cost, and the 99/100 other governments favoured a route with minimal human cost.
There is some notable criticism of our plan, Jeremy Hunt is all over the news at the moment asking sensible questions like “why aren’t we asking care homes to isolate”
Johnson claims
We’ve also had a few decades of Johnson claims that turned out to be lies. That’s the problem with notorious liars. They lie.
Reemul
3126
You must be really worried, you don’t believe anything anyone else is posting, their information is not valid and does nothing to put you at ease.
You must be stressed, worried, not coping and all these things are not going to change the UK’s strategy, I do feel really sorry for you as it seems all your worries are coming home to roost and nothing anyone is saying can help you deal with them.
You really need to take a step back and take some time away, what will happen will happen and one way or another time passes and we will know if any choices were the correct ones but you need to be living your life without all this stress.
I do have some understanding of how you are feeling as my wife is paranoid at the moment and shit scared she may die when she gets it, reassuring her is very difficult at the moment.
Yes, I wouldn’t have put much trust in anything he said. He was wise to let his scientific advice do the talking.
In the good news department South Korea seems to be containing.
Only 110 cases in the last 24h
Im asking the same questions everyone on the news is right now. Criticism of the UKs plan is growing by the hour.
Aceris
3130
Yeah strict containment clearly works. My question is, what happens next?
Regarding the UK policy debate, I can see the rationale, especially if the true current UK infection level is actually even lower in comparison to the EU countries than the comparative positive test numbers indicate. But given they are freeing up testing capacity by saying “If you have symptoms self-isolate” and not bothering to test people, what they should be doing is testing randomly sampled people to get a more accurate picture and verify their model against reality.
In stage one they needed that testing capacity to enable contact tracking and targetted isolation to be effective (and if you look at the trajectiry of the disease in the UK to the rest of the EU, assuming roughly equivalent testing regimes, that was a success). They now need to move that testing capacity to making sure they have the best information possible.
Kill the bearded ones!? I see your game.
ZeTh1
3132
South Korea has no not implemented strict containment measures as far as I know. Certainly nothing like Italy did (borders closed, shops closed etc.). They issued clear messages on what each citizen should do, they do lots of testing, and essentially asked everyone to cut contact with other people to the minimum.
Aceris
3133
I thought it was south korea that was tracking infected people by mobile phones and imposing targetting lockdown in infection areas? At least one of the measures they used would be unconstitutional in Germany, for example.
They’ve definately done a great job with testing.
