COVID-19 Stuff Here

[Braveheart81]

Hmm, seems on the day we have reports that Victoria are considering halting further restrictions easing after they discover further community transmission and that the job market is going to deteriorate further post Job Keeper ending that it might be a touch early to start reviewing optimal strategies.

I think JobKeeper and the raised JobSeeker will both need to be extended otherwise we're sending the economy off a cliff when they stop.

The point is though that there is absolutely no evidence that countries which had a larger disease outbreak are in any better shape economically than those that didn't.

 

[I like to watch]

I have less faith in Scomo than you.

Turning off child care assistance this early gives an indication that they are desperate to get back to the old status quo.

penny wise, pound foolish.

 

[Up the Guts]

I think JobKeeper and the raised JobSeeker will both need to be extended otherwise we're sending the economy off a cliff when they stop.

The point is though that there is absolutely no evidence that countries which had a larger disease outbreak are in any better shape economically than those that didn't.

There’s no evidence for anything, that’s the issue. We haven’t even worked out how to properly micro found the effects of lockdowns/excess mortality etc. in the theoretical models let alone have near enough complete datasets to run any sort of econometric analysis. This is a novel problem for macroeconomists working at the frontier and a lot of them are scratching their heads trying to embed new assumptions in the existing models.

 

[Braveheart81]

There’s no evidence for anything, that’s the issue.

There's plenty of evidence of what has happened so far and our learned history of how economies recover from recessions and high unemployment.

There are zero indicators to suggest that countries that have had a severe outbreak have avoided similar economic catastrophes as countries that avoided a severe outbreak.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

I think JobKeeper and the raised JobSeeker will both need to be extended otherwise we're sending the economy off a cliff when they stop.

The point is though that there is absolutely no evidence that countries which had a larger disease outbreak are in any better shape economically than those that didn't.

Yeah I reckon that the jobkeeper piece will get extended, depending on whether a couple of key areas of the economy (retail and hospitality) rebound.

 

[Up the Guts]

There's plenty of evidence of what has happened so far and our learned history of how economies recover from recessions and high unemployment.

As I said before, this is a novel problem in macroeconomics, they can’t just adapt the old models because there are unique capital stock problems that need to be modelled in for which there are no theoretical precedents.

 

[Teh Other Dave]

Sweden made mistakes in not putting sufficient protections in place for nursing homes and the aged (90% of the dead in Sweden were over 70) and not providing (or encouraging) their Somalis refugees to have enough vitamin D - they were overly represented in the other 10%

Both are furphys. 'Sufficiently' protecting nursing homes would be to lock carers in with the residents, away from their families. The whole point of everyone socially isolating in other parts of the world (including across the Øresund) was because there was no failsafe way to completely sequester residents from the outside world.

Somali refugees generally have a lot more going on than Vitamin D deficiency, including living in closer quarters, having jobs that can't be done in isolation, and having poorer access to healthcare. You can pretty much apply that to other disadvantaged minorities anywhere, including migrant workers in Singapore.

 

[Ignoto]

A vulnerability has been identified in the implementation of the Android version of Australia's COVIDSafe (v1.9.17 and earlier) contact tracing app that may affect several other contact tracing apps that share a similar architecture, such as Singapore's TraceTogether and Alberta's ABTraceTogether. This issue is being tracked using the CVE ID CVE-2020-12856. This vulnerability allows an attacker to bond silently with an Android phone running a vulnerable version of the app. The bonding process involves exchanges of permanent identifiers of the victim phone: the identity address of the bluetooth device in the phone and a cryptographic key called Identity Resolving Key (IRK). Either one of these identifiers can be used for long term tracking of the phone.
This vulnerability was reported to DTA (who is responsible for the COVIDSafe app) on May 5th, 2020, and it has been fixed in COVIDSafe (Android) v1.0.18.

https://github.com/alwentiu/COVIDSafe-CVE-2020-12856

For those of you who don't want to read through the research, the author has a series of tweets that explain it;

 

[waiopehu oldboy]

Two more cases today taking the Active total to five, all of them recent arrivals (no community transmission for nearly two months): two transited through Brisbane & another Doha & Melbourne so I hope your borders are tighter than ours ATM.

Calls are mounting for those who insist on flying here in the middle of a pandemic to pay for their isolation/ quarantine & it's hard to argue against that, it's nearly three months since the "come now or stay where you are" message was put out there.

EDIT: the flight that went through Melbourne originated in Pakistan, the one through Brisbane in UK & also went through Doha. UK, Pakistan & a Gulf state, those are three of the world's top-10 Covid hotspots right now.

 

[formerflanker]

Two more cases today taking the Active total to five, all of them recent arrivals (no community transmission for nearly two months): two transited through Brisbane & another Doha & Melbourne so I hope your borders are tighter than ours ATM.

Calls are mounting for those who insist on flying here in the middle of a pandemic to pay for their isolation/ quarantine & it's hard to argue against that, it's nearly three months since the "come now or stay where you are" message was put out there.

I've heard that DFAT is making it very hard for Australians to leave Oz. I don't get that.

 

[Sully]

Queensland going to start charging $200 a night for quarantine from July.

 

[waiopehu oldboy]

^ the average cost of a 14-day quarantine here is apparently $4K so $200 a night sounds fair.

 

[Dctarget]

Something I've been trying to work out for a while is places like NZ, WA, QLD etc have almost painted themselves into a corner with their impressive success containing/wiping out covid-19. What do they do now?

Italy got bent over the barrel by 'Rona but they've opened up, I've got mates from Dublin travelling in Italy now, going to clubs etc. They're still recording approximately 100 deaths a day but it's dropping. They don't care who comes or brings covid, is that not partially herd immunity? It seems like despite opening up it's not increasing.

Whereas NZ has to open up sometime and eventually there'll be community transmissions again. QLD are looking at opening up in a few weeks and it'll soon have community transmission too and then what? Do we go back into lock down or just aim for a situation like Italy where they've got outrageous numbers of dead but they've decided to cope with it?

Edit: Well, after the spate of recent cases Vic is now re-imposing tougher lockdowns. Which sucks, I have vested interests in all this, meant to be flying to Cairns to park my ass under a palm tree with a beer in hand at the end of July. Not looking promising.

 

[Up the Guts]

Something I've been trying to work out for a while is places like NZ, WA, QLD etc have almost painted themselves into a corner with their impressive success containing/wiping out covid-19. What do they do now?

Italy got bent over the barrel by 'Rona but they've opened up, I've got mates from Dublin travelling in Italy now, going to clubs etc. They're still recording approximately 100 deaths a day but it's dropping. They don't care who comes or brings covid, is that not partially herd immunity? It seems like despite opening up it's not increasing.

Whereas NZ has to open up sometime and eventually there'll be community transmissions again. QLD are looking at opening up in a few weeks and it'll soon have community transmission too and then what? Do we go back into lock down or just aim for a situation like Italy where they've got outrageous numbers of dead but they've decided to cope with it?

Edit: Well, after the spate of recent cases Vic is now re-imposing tougher lockdowns. Which sucks, I have vested interests in all this, meant to be flying to Cairns to park my ass under a palm tree with a beer in hand at the end of July. Not looking promising.

I’ve been saying something similar for a while. The success of NZ, QLD et al. are predicated on the timely emergence of an effective and accessible vaccine. We may yet get that but if we don’t it’s hard to see how local elimination will be feasible in the long run.

 

[formerflanker]

Edit: Well, after the spate of recent cases Vic is now re-imposing tougher lockdowns. Which sucks, I have vested interests in all this, meant to be flying to Cairns to park my ass under a palm tree with a beer in hand at the end of July. Not looking promising.

Imagine being a small business owner with no income since the lockdown started. You then spend money on re-opening only to have your business shut down again.
Who'd invest again?

 

[Dctarget]

I’ve been saying something similar for a while. The success of NZ, QLD et al. are predicated on the timely emergence of an effective and accessible vaccine. We may yet get that but if we don’t it’s hard to see how local elimination will be feasible in the long run.

I think Queensland at least has accepted they can't wipe it out. They're opening up in July and to save face Palaszczuk is saying they're only going to do it if other states have low levels. But with Vic's increase I'll be curious how she can twist it so Vic can still come.

 

[Slim 293]

In Victoria the amount of guests allowed in your home will be reduced to five...........

Increases from 20 to 50 customers in cafes and restaurants will be pushed back until next month...........

Other businesses such as gyms, cinemas etc will still be reopening on Monday.

 

[Froggy]

Re comments earlier on Jobkeeper etc.
Talk is (not confirmed) that Jobkeeper will be retained for some more vulnerable industries after September, and Jobseeker won't immediately halve, but there will be a phased reduction.
If that's the case, it shows good common sense.

 

[stoff]

I have less faith in Scomo than you.

Turning off child care assistance this early gives an indication that they are desperate to get back to the old status quo.

penny wise, pound foolish.

The move away from CCS to the temporary system was a killer for alot of centres. If you had poor occupancy coming in to the assistance calculation period and your numbers increased you could be down massively on revenue. The free childcare wasn't for parents, it was to keep centres viable whilst they worked out what was next. I know my kids centre is back at capacity now, and whilst revenue is stable, being forced to overpay people who were earning less than $1,500/fortnight was starting to hit the bottom-line (it's a co-op and I'm the treasurer). As a well run not for profit with good occupancy we are going to end up around $220k ahead of budgeted surplus solely on government grants. That against a budgeted turnover of $1.8m.

Parents can still access the Additional Child Care Subsidy for financial distress which means they are in the same position if they have lost work.or have reduced hours as they were, or at least should have expected to be, under free childcare. Returning to the old system now there has been time to get past the uncertainty of March makes sense as some centres were being strangled on income whilst others were making windfall gains.

 

[boyo]