COVID-19: who’s going full doomsday prep on this?

Jpez

Down on the left!
That gummint "by staying home you're saving lives" cliche is absolute fucking hyperbolic bullshit. This country's population is already by and ....er.... large overweight and under-exercised, and burdening the health care system as a result. By further discouraging healthy activity, they're basically guaranteeing an increased burden on the physical and mental health system, and will be completely blindsided by it. Pretty much every outdoor activity they're banning is safer and healthier than the dunny roll battles in any local stupormarkets.
So you’re with Daniel hale on this?
You also think this is all just an over reaction and completely unnecessary?
Am I reading your post correctly?
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Allowing yes, the conditions are not exactly doing much to encourage exercise; the overbearing tone is definitely discouraging.
It seems to have spurred on a significant growth in people getting out for a walk, run, or ride around here. Keeping 1.5m from some of the larger specimens is difficult on a shared path.




What is with all the childcare funding? Shouldn't people be encouraged not to send their kids to day care? Much like all the other saying at home action...so unclear.
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Schools are shut and a lot of health care workers have kids.
I realise that, and it makes sense in such a situation. Certainly better than shuffling them between grandparents and neighbours. The info I'd seen seemed to say it was a free for all, which is what I found confusing as a message.
 

nathanm

Eats Squid
Not just healthcare, but yes, plenty working in essential services that can’t leave kids at home.
We're absolutely still expected to where I work, my daughters 11 and that's apparently deemed by call centre management to be old enough for her to stay home alone all day. I like how they apparently have the authority to make these decisions about our childrens welfare.

I asked for leave, got told I was essential. I have one of the least essential jobs in my organisation but its still a blanket rule. So when I was sick this week, I was not missed in the least despite my "label".

But they still come to me and ask me to work overtime, but only if I have the pre=requisite skills, which I don't and they wont train me and i wouldn't give them 1 minute extra of my time regardless.

Government work really does your head in most of the time. If we were a retail company, we wouldn't last a week. Our customers come absolutely last, only slightly below our employee's.
 

The Duckmeister

Has a juicy midrange
So you’re with Daniel hale on this?
You also think this is all just an over reaction and completely unnecessary?
Am I reading your post correctly?
I'm saying that our society is already burdened with a raft of other health problems that haven't miraculously disappeared just because this new kid has arrived on the scene, and curtailing safe activities that combat these issues will cause greater problems than the one they're seeking to fix.
 

johnny

I'll tells ya!
Staff member
That article was written by a fucking lawyer... So you take legal advice from a surgeon?

How the fuck does this putrid rag get away with this shit, isn’t there a law against such outrageous misinformation about a public health issue?!

edit - look at the author... the sort of contrary Pell supporting “acedemic” those idiots at the Oz love. Pathetic.
Who was the author?

Are you able to copy/paste the article?
 

Flow-Rider

Burner
Govt site has said they've come across a new strain here, no info whether it's mutated or it's another strain that's already around.

Not much transmission is occurring in Australia, most of the new cases are mainly from overseas Aussies returning, some experts are claiming the 1.5m rule is BS because when you cough germs can reach 8m, a number cruncher worked out that if everyone wore a mask it will reduce transmission by 80% only problem will be that it will put health care workers at risk with a mask shortage
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Who was the author?

Are you able to copy/paste the article?
We are in the midst of the strangest event of our lives. Societies have shut down. Families and whole nations face financial ruin. Walking the streets is now a crime from Paris to Sydney to Mumbai. And all of this has occurred not despite the will of the people but because of it.
The reasons are well known. There is a virus on the loose. It is transmitted by humans and is killing tens of thousands. It is an existential threat at which all resources must be thrown and all energy expended.

This is the popular mantra. And if true it would justify the incredible events we are witnessing. The problem is that it appears not to be true, a fact few are willing to entertain amid the hysteria that prevails. Yet its falsity is indicated on a cursory review of the best available data.

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That data is provided by Italy, an early epicentre of the virus with many deaths recorded.

On March 26, the country’s peak health organisation — the National Institute of Health — published a report with details of the 6801 deaths the country had recorded to that point. This is a considerable sample size, and the figures are revealing.

The first statistics of note are those about the average age of casualties, which is 78. The median is 79. A little more than 95 per cent of victims were over 60, and zero deaths were recorded for people under the age of 30.

Then there is the method of designating the virus as the cause of death, which includes anyone who had tested positive for it before dying. In other words, many were said to have died from the virus when in truth they merely died with it.

Third, 98 per cent of casualties of a random sample of patients had a pre-existing chronic illness, or comorbidity, at their time of death. About 21 per cent suffered from a single comorbidity, 26 per cent from two, 51 per cent from three and just 2 per cent with none.

Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s Health Minister, recently reported: “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus.”

The overwhelming majority of Italy’s deaths involved chronically ill and elderly patients.

This is not to diminish these tragedies. But the questions arise: why are we surrendering our hard-won civil liberties and committing economic suicide when this virus poses a danger to only a small portion of our society? Why do we not pour all of our resources into protecting the vulnerable?

The answer is that a 24-hour news cycle, with its morbid tallying of deaths, images of corpses and sensationalist reporting of outlier cases has whipped the public into a frenzy that politicians have had to take extreme measures to appease.

And anyone who questions the collective unreason is denounced on social media as a bloodthirsty mercenary who favours the economy over human life.

History shows time and again the reaction to a perceived crisis becomes the true catastrophe. Like the execution of witches until the mid-18th century or the scapegoating of Jews for poisoning wells during the Black Plague, evidence and logic are of no use to us now. There is an existential threat, and anyone who denies it is not just a denier but the cause.

None of this is to say this virus is not dangerous. It is. But the level of threat it poses is being exaggerated, and the response to it exaggerated as a result.

This is especially true in Australia, where infection rates appear to be relatively low and the government containment methods are among the most draconian worldwide.

If the government has compelling data to support this strategy, it should release it. But there seems to be no correlation between the scale of the threat and the economic and social damage we will suffer responding to it.

There is a disaster afoot. But it is not the COVID-19 virus. It is the putative remedy, a fact we will not appreciate until it’s too late.

RJ Smith teaches law at Paris universities I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) and X (Nanterre).
 
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Jpez

Down on the left!
I'm saying that our society is already burdened with a raft of other health problems that haven't miraculously disappeared just because this new kid has arrived on the scene, and curtailing safe activities that combat these issues will cause greater problems than the one they're seeking to fix.
Who says these activities are safe? RJ SMITH?
People adjust. Always have always will. and it’s only short term.
Leaving gyms and sporting clubs open is just leaving a door open for this new kid as you say.

This “hyperbolic bullshit” as you say is what is helping keep the local transmissions low. The USA didn’t proscribe to this supposed over the top measures and look where they are.
 
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