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COVID-19 Stuff Here

cyclopath

George Smith (75)
Staff member
Sure, but those groups also have the lowest mortality rate. Wouldn't letting this group 'safely' build up an immunity to it in the long run have a positive impact on those most vulnerable?

No. That's not how it works. Having a broader base of infection just increases the likelihood that vulnerable people will be exposed.
Herd immunity works with widespread vaccination. Widespread exposure to a new virus, where nobody knows the timing and penetrance of developing immunity, is just not that.
 

Aurelius

Ted Thorn (20)
How so? Legitimate question. COVID-19 doesn't live on surfaces indefinitely. So the only way it could occur would be person to person at a point in that period. And the idea behind an extended lockdown would be having it long enough so that all of the current and future cases within that time frame would have their chance to run their course.

People are at home. They get sick. Call authorities and they could come to the houses to test. If by week 6 most people who do emerge as contracting the virus have tested negative then it's dropped for everyone if not those still positive maintain it for another fortnight. In theory this would reduce the numbers of infected. If those with the infection run their course and a free of it and during that period the live virus that was on surfaces is long dead then where will it resurface? International travel. Well, the maintain the border controls until the end of the year.

I seriously would like your thoughts on the above. Just some data to mill over. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshua...oronavirus-in-a-matter-of-weeks/#2d5170b612e1


First of all, thanks for posting that article. It made for interesting reading.

Personally, I just don't think imposing a national lockdown for so long is a practical proposition. Will people wear it if they haven't tested positive, no one they know has tested positive and they're not in the high-risk category? What if they need a plumber? An exterminator? An electrician? What happens when they start running low on food, especially fresh food? Six weeks on canned goods (if you can store that much) with no exercise and little sunlight could lead to a whole new health crisis. Can people living in flats hold out that long? Even prisoners in solitary confinement get an hour in the exercise yard every day.

I would also add that I just don't trust any figures coming out of China, and I just can't believe that businesses around the world could be so gullible as to accept that it's going to be business as usual already.

I note the South Korean approach here which instead of locking down everyone, just locks down and tracks people who have already tested positive or been in contact with people who have. It seems that the approach they're taking there is basically the approach we're taking here, only they're doing it much better. I think the gathering limits, closing the borders etc that we've put in place all make sense but it's a bit of a worry that we apparently don't have the resources to ensure that people who've been ordered to self-isolate are actually doing it.

Now that's all been said, I'm not an epidemiologist (either a real one or the other kind) and this is probably a good a time as any to post this:

https://medium.com/@noahhaber/flatten-the-curve-of-armchair-epidemiology-9aa8cf92d652
 

Up the Guts

Steve Williams (59)
Now that's all been said, I'm not an epidemiologist (either a real one or the other kind) and this is probably a good a time as any to post this:

https://medium.com/@noahhaber/flatten-the-curve-of-armchair-epidemiology-9aa8cf92d652

I do like that article, everyone has become an expert overnight.

For those of us in the world of finance/business (and aren't really at risk) it's easy to downplay the health ramifications of the virus and favour trying to go about business as usual. Those whose livelihoods aren't as tied to the health of the economy can be equally dismissive of legitimate concerns about the economic consequences of the virus. Part of the problem is that there is no easy solution--more people will die from the virus if we don't take precautions but widespread lockdowns would push people into poverty which we know also leads to greater mortality rates.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, probably why I'm not running the show.
 

WorkingClassRugger

David Codey (61)
First of all, thanks for posting that article. It made for interesting reading.

Personally, I just don't think imposing a national lockdown for so long is a practical proposition. Will people wear it if they haven't tested positive, no one they know has tested positive and they're not in the high-risk category? What if they need a plumber? An exterminator? An electrician? What happens when they start running low on food, especially fresh food? Six weeks on canned goods (if you can store that much) with no exercise and little sunlight could lead to a whole new health crisis. Can people living in flats hold out that long? Even prisoners in solitary confinement get an hour in the exercise yard every day.

I would also add that I just don't trust any figures coming out of China, and I just can't believe that businesses around the world could be so gullible as to accept that it's going to be business as usual already.

I note the South Korean approach here which instead of locking down everyone, just locks down and tracks people who have already tested positive or been in contact with people who have. It seems that the approach they're taking there is basically the approach we're taking here, only they're doing it much better. I think the gathering limits, closing the borders etc that we've put in place all make sense but it's a bit of a worry that we apparently don't have the resources to ensure that people who've been ordered to self-isolate are actually doing it.

Now that's all been said, I'm not an epidemiologist (either a real one or the other kind) and this is probably a good a time as any to post this:

https://medium.com/@noahhaber/flatten-the-curve-of-armchair-epidemiology-9aa8cf92d652


I'm more expresssing my opinion on the subject as well. Certainly I don't think I'm an expert on the matter. But what I do take into consideration is the contributions from the actual doctor on the board. And he certainly doesn't seem sold on the current strategy.
 

waiopehu oldboy

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Wifey's an online shopper for Woolworths' NZ operation. Just when you'd be encouraging people to shop online they've had to shut it down until Tuesday as the panic-buyers have stripped the shelves to the point they can't fill orders.

Most supermarkets are opening later & closing early to give them more time to get what stock they can on the shelves & are imposing limits on pretty much everything but produce.

Freight companies are flat out getting stuff from warehouse to supermarket which has consequences for the supply chain as a whole: I'm in the building supplies industry & we're having to tell people that it could take 3-5 working days to get e.g. their truckload of plasterboard from South Auckland where it's made to their site no more than two hours drive down SH1. If this goes on much longer the whole mult-billion-dollar industry will grind to a halt.
 

Brumby Runner

David Wilson (68)
Makes you wonder why we don't lock up the inverse, ie the currently sick and 65+ year olds! Smaller subset and more easily identifiable!

Here's an idea. With all the empty football stadiums around the country. ample facilities to lock away those infected with the virus or old age. Believe it has been done in some countries usually run by military juntas in the past.:(
 

Brumby Runner

David Wilson (68)
UK Govt has announced overnight they will top up the salaries of all workers kept on the payroll who would otherwise be put off due to downturn in business, at 80% of their salary/pay level. Maximum of $5000 per month. That's likely to be a huge impost on their budget and public finances. Payments to be made through the employer, not directly to employees.

No doubt will work with majority of employers, but I anticipate there will be many 'ghosts' suddenly appearing on payrolls across the country, or under-payments to employees happening in ever increasing numbers. Remember how some in the building industry took advantage of the pink batts program to put untrained workers into dangerous positions, all the time having the press etc put the blame on the Govt? Remember the under-payments to Seven 11 workers? Remember the greed of the Banks over the past many years in their dealings with powerless or dead customers?

There is plenty of evidence in this country of the type of unconscionable behaviour of some employers to believe there will be (maybe widespread) gouging of any such program put in place.
 

Aurelius

Ted Thorn (20)
So, I've been following the news pretty closely recently and a bit curious to know how Frydenberg's stimulus will have overarching benefits. My fears are pretty succinctly laid out in this article. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/bank...ge-trickle-beyond-the-banks-and-big-business/

It's really not my area of expertise but it seems to make sense, could someone point out where Michael West went wrong?


Well, I can't say he's wrong on the theory but in practice, and to be fair to the banks, they do seem to have stepped up for their small business customers. I think all of the big four have announced that they'll offer loan holidays for the next six months for their small business customers and Anna Bligh (the banking association CEO) has been quoted as saying that any small business that needs help will get it. We'll see.

As to the rest of the stimulus measures on offer, who knows how much it will cushion the blow? Even the government's pushing its budget back to October so it's pointless trying to predict what will happen.

As for the RBA's constant cutting of interest rates, though ...

There's a scene in the Michael Douglas movie Traffic, in which Douglas' character, the federal drug czar, visits the Mexican border along with a phalanx of advisers and is confronted with the enormity of the challenge of trying to stop the flow of drugs on the ground. As he's flying back on his government jet, he encourages his advisers to come up with any new idea to address the problem. Everything's on the table, he says. Nothing that you suggest on this flight will be considered too out-of-the-box. There's silence for a few seconds until one of his advisers tentatively suggests, "More funding?"

That's what I think of whenever the RBA (or central banks around the world, in fairness) cut rates as a so-called stimulus measure. It's the only idea they have for any scenario. Fall in business confidence? Cut rates. Problems in Chinese-American trade? Cut rates. Make first contact with a hostile alien race? Cut rates. And it doesn't work, and it'll never work because there's too much debt in the economy already, and households and businesses aren't interested in taking on more. All it does do is drive up the prices of other non-cash assets such as shares, gold and crypto-currency, which is why those asset classes have been posting giant gains for years.

In other words, cutting rates is an act of wealth redistribution which reduces the income for depositors (in the form of interest) and gives it to share-market speculators in the form of higher capital returns, which suits governments just fine because they can tax those gains and use the surge on the share market to claim that the economy is stronger than it actually is. Which is what's been going on right around the world, as far as I can tell, just about since the GFC.
 

Aurelius

Ted Thorn (20)
It's been reported in the West this morning that secret trials of HIV and malaria drugs have cured a handful of COVID-19 patients, that the drug trial will be rolled out to 50 hospitals around the country, and it could be widely available by May. Let's hope.
 

Ignoto

John Thornett (49)
Here's an idea. With all the empty football stadiums around the country. ample facilities to lock away those infected with the virus or old age. Believe it has been done in some countries usually run by military juntas in the past.:(

There's already discussions that the public hospitals are going to push all surgery to the private hospitals where the public hospitals will take all COVID cases. That should help out with the immediate influx and I guess they could switch to stadiums as a last resort.

It's been reported in the West this morning that secret trials of HIV and malaria drugs have cured a handful of COVID-19 patients, that the drug trial will be rolled out to 50 hospitals around the country, and it could be widely available by May. Let's hope.

The trial I've seen from the French show that combination of Plaquenil (the anti-malaria drug) combined with a anti-biotic based drug halve the recovery period. Taking it from 7 - 8 days to 3 - 4. Promising signs as these anti-malaria based drugs are normally used in a wide range of treatments. Unfortunately, my wife depends on it for an arthritis treatment and all pharmacies have gone out of stock already.
 

Froggy

John Solomon (38)
Was reading about a possible treatment using Chloroquine and Azithromycin. Have you heard anything about that Cyclopath?
 

WorkingClassRugger

David Codey (61)
But aren't hydroxychloroquine & chloroquine the silver bullets? Must be 'cos Donny T thinks so:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-chloroquine-trump.html


Early trials are suggesting the are helping halve the life cycle of the infection from 7-8 days to 3-4. The next question will be whether iot can prevent people who otherwise would require hospitalisation from ,well, having to be hospitalised. If so, then that could be a fairly significant development in easing the burden on the health system.
 

cyclopath

George Smith (75)
Staff member
Early trials are suggesting the are helping halve the life cycle of the infection from 7-8 days to 3-4. The next question will be whether iot can prevent people who otherwise would require hospitalisation from ,well, having to be hospitalised. If so, then that could be a fairly significant development in easing the burden on the health system.

Depends whether it halves the actual infectious period, or just the symptomatic period for that patient. The former would be a huge benefit, the latter only a benefit if the shorter period correlates with a lower chance of needing high-level acute care. Agree, if this combo has demonstrable benefit, it could be good as we know these drugs already, and they should be relatively easy to ramp up in supply. Wait and see.
 
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