COVID-19 Stuff Here

[Braveheart81]

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.

It was an absolute disaster and most parents didn't really understand how it worked. I know I certainly didn't until I looked into it further. Most thought that free child care meant that the portion parents were previously paying was instead paid by the government however they basically just stopped charging the parents and didn't compensate the childcare providers.

Plenty of small centres weren't able to offer children all their previous days back when people started returning as they didn't have the budget to pay staff.

We stopped sending our daughter for a couple of months (but kept our place and kept paying until it was made free) but her room dropped down to about 2 kids on some days (from around 20). They are pretty much back to normal numbers now (my daughter has been back for 3 weeks now).

 

[Pfitzy]

I have less faith in Scomo than you.

Maybe because he's a fucking dimwit with just enough rat cunning to stumble into the PM's office.

Some of the fucking nonsense coming out from supposed "superior economic managers" today was absolute twaddle. Paterson and Wilson the worst of them.

The fact is our social network is an investment in the economy. Continuing to punish poor people is just going to keep us where we've been the last decade: slow decline while rent-seeking and lobby-driven agendas keep the political class cruising away from the rest.

This is not going away any time soon and smarter leadership with 2 grams of balls would start pulling bigger levers, starting with franking credits and fossil fuel subsidies.

 

[Up the Guts]

Hard to see franking credits ever being cut, the ASX’s returns are way too inflated by them.

 

[Teh Other Dave]

It's not so much the imputation credits (which were originally introduced to eliminate double taxation), as the refunding of the credits beyond the tax paid by the shareholder. It's the ultimate (upper) middle class welfare for retirees.

 

[Up the Guts]

^^^
Doesn’t change the implications for the ASX. Aus accumulation indices are higher than US counterparts thanks to credits, as a result some funds fall into the trap of being overweight Aus equities which further inflates the market. Policy makers face a theory of the second best type trap if they try to remove them. Hard to see any government changing dividend taxation in the current environment when so many self-funded retirees are already missing their usual dividend income and at risk of falling onto government support.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

What has any of this got to do with the thread?

 

[boyo]

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2..._term=2020-06-20&utm_content=cover_text_url_1

 

[fatprop]

Interesting analysis on this things seasonality and we can probably expect a nice spike

 

[Brumby Runner]

Interesting analysis on this things seasonality and we can probably expect a nice spike

Not sure what that shows FP. I would have thought that COVID-19 hasn't been around long enough to draw any conclusions about its seasonality. In any case, if there is a suggestion that the spread drops off in warmer weather and spikes in colder weather, how would that explain that USA, now in Summer, is currently experiencing their highest number of infections.

Or is there a point that I have missed?

 

[fatprop]

Not sure what that shows FP. I would have thought that COVID-19 hasn't been around long enough to draw any conclusions about its seasonality. In any case, if there is a suggestion that the spread drops off in warmer weather and spikes in colder weather, how would that explain that USA, now in Summer, is currently experiencing their highest number of infections.

Or is there a point that I have missed?

Because we don't know what the real infection rate is?

CDC: Coronavirus may have infected 10 times more Americans than known

Nearly 25 million Americans may have contracted the coronavirus, a figure 10 times higher than the number of confirmed cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday........................................

For every one confirmed case, Redfield said, the CDC estimates that 10 more people have been infected.

"This virus causes so much asymptomatic infection," Redfield said. "We probably recognized about 10 percent of the outbreak."

Almost 2.4 million Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. Redfield said the serological surveys of blood samples, collected both for coronavirus tests and for other reasons like blood donations or laboratory tests, showed that between 5 percent and 8 percent of Americans have contracted the virus.

Most people who contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus show few if any symptoms, and only a small percentage require hospitalization. But while the number of potentially infected people is multitudes higher than the number of confirmed cases, Redfield also said the relatively low percentage of Americans who have been infected means hundreds of millions more remain at risk.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...e-infected-10-times-more-americans-than-known

 

[Derpus]

Maybe because he's a fucking dimwit with just enough rat cunning to stumble into the PM's office.

Some of the fucking nonsense coming out from supposed "superior economic managers" today was absolute twaddle. Paterson and Wilson the worst of them.

The fact is our social network is an investment in the economy. Continuing to punish poor people is just going to keep us where we've been the last decade: slow decline while rent-seeking and lobby-driven agendas keep the political class cruising away from the rest.

This is not going away any time soon and smarter leadership with 2 grams of balls would start pulling bigger levers, starting with franking credits and fossil fuel subsidies.

Negative gearing plz, thanks.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

A good interview with John Ioannidis, a researcher from Stanford University, talking about the pandemic and the spread, impact and other topics.

https://www.thenationalherald.com/c..._natalia_linos_on_covid_19_inequality-398607/

It's from a week or so ago when the infection rate was trending downwards in the US (it's back up at the moment) but the fatality rate is slowly declining in the US and their deaths per day is also dropping. An interesting country to note is Chile. A very large number of cases per capita (but dropping), and a lower number of fatalities than other countries in the developed world.

 

[Brumby Runner]

Because we don't know what the real infection rate is?

No, but the number of hospitalisations is increasing especially in the southern and western States. If hidden infections (ie asymptomatic carriers) were always high, there wouldn't be the noticable increase in numbers of people getting sick. Like it or not, the infection rate in the US is increasing again, at a fairly rapid rate, and their reputable commentators/medicos working in the field are consistent in believing infections are increasing as communities open up their economies.

I am still at a loss to understand your earlier reference to seasonality.

 

[boyo]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-losing-trust-in-covid-19-strategy-poll-finds

 

[fatprop]

No, but the number of hospitalisations is increasing especially in the southern and western States. If hidden infections (ie asymptomatic carriers) were always high, there wouldn't be the noticable increase in numbers of people getting sick. Like it or not, the infection rate in the US is increasing again, at a fairly rapid rate, and their reputable commentators/medicos working in the field are consistent in believing infections are increasing as communities open up their economies.

I am still at a loss to understand your earlier reference to seasonality.

I always understood there was always going to be an increase in infections as restrictions were lifted

It was my understanding also that the restrictions could never get rid of this thing and it was about getting sufficient resources in place so if you needed an ICU bed, it was available

And I still think the idea of a respiratory virus having a seasonal factor makes sense, it is a cold/flu like thing, they are seasonal, during winter you get stuck in enclosed badly aired spaces much more often

We are coming into our flu season, I expect that to be a factor in the increases we will see

The other part of that graph that i thought is interesting was with all the hate for the right wing Brazil "literally killing people" by not locking down, their state closely matched Peru who went into full lock down

 

[Brumby Runner]

It is a matter of balance, isn't it. Houston, I think, had one ICU bed available apparently a couple of days ago. Think some of the more liberal States (read conservative) may have gone too early and too fast with opening up.

 

[fatprop]

It is a matter of balance, isn't it. Houston, I think, had one ICU bed available apparently a couple of days ago. Think some of the more liberal States (read conservative) may have gone too early and too fast with opening up.

"The units set up specifically for COVID-19 wereabout full. The hospitals themselves are at about 50% capacity, with plenty of bed space to carve out more whenever it's needed. "

 

[Dctarget]

40 new cases in Vic. 2,000 deaths in the USA and 40,000 new cases, not good...

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

It's funny how our perception changes with new cases. In March or April, we would have been cheering 40 cases per day in Vic, now we're concerned about it. I know it could be reflective of an explosion, but I'm moderately confident that it can be contained to a large degree. Here in WA we've basically had the shackles taken off now. There will be 30,000+ at the footy in a couple of weeks and a full house at Optus Stadium the week after in all likelihood.

 

[boyo]

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/217504962602970/