COVID-19 Stuff Here

[Braveheart81]

The trouble isn't just the ability of the hospital system to accommodate COVID- and non-COVID patients, it's that there will be plenty who die despite the efforts to keep them alive. Then there's the issue of the subsequent waves each time restrictions are eased then re-imposed. Sadly it sounds like it's going to be a long haul.

This is a response to the suggestion that we need to accept those deaths as inevitable.

An interesting question would be how much money could have been saved if the initial response had been much stronger. Close borders early, strongly advise Australians to return home otherwise they might not be able to re-enter the country and strong screening and quarantining of every arrival into Australia.

Of course it would be incredibly difficult politically to take that action before the number of local cases were rising rapidly but the number of affected industries and people to provide stimulus to would have been much less.

 

[Teh Other Dave]

@BH81 Not sure that you mean that I was suggesting that we accept these deaths at all, but just to be clear I most certainly was not. More that a proportion of those infected will die despite heroic efforts to keep them alive. My point was that we can't just leave it to our hospitals, we'll be in various degrees of isolation for some time, which also has a profound detriment.

I agree that acting decisively sooner might have saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and a lot of heartache, but who knows? Pretty much as you pointed out, it's a politically difficult decision. Not only would Morrison and company have been surrounded by world-class experts, he also has the Craig Kellys of the world.

Let's be honest, there's a great deal of convenient denial in politics at the moment, and this seems to be largely a product of our elected leaders appealing to our selfish side.

 

[Up the Guts]

This is a response to the suggestion that we need to accept those deaths as inevitable.

An interesting question would be how much money could have been saved if the initial response had been much stronger. Close borders early, strongly advise Australians to return home otherwise they might not be able to re-enter the country and strong screening and quarantining of every arrival into Australia.

Of course it would be incredibly difficult politically to take that action before the number of local cases were rising rapidly but the number of affected industries and people to provide stimulus to would have been much less.

What sort of dates should the initial response have come at to be strong enough to avoid shutdowns?

 

[Braveheart81]

@BH81 Not sure that you mean that I was suggesting that we accept these deaths at all, but just to be clear I most certainly was not. More that a proportion of those infected will die despite heroic efforts to keep them alive. My point was that we can't just leave it to our hospitals, we'll be in various degrees of isolation for some time, which also has a profound detriment.

I agree that acting decisively sooner might have saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and a lot of heartache, but who knows? Pretty much as you pointed out, it's a politically difficult decision. Not only would Morrison and company have been surrounded by world-class experts, he also has the Craig Kellys of the world.

Let's be honest, there's a great deal of convenient denial in politics at the moment, and this seems to be largely a product of our elected leaders appealing to our selfish side.

I wasn't suggesting that you were saying that we should accept x number of deaths. I was saying that it has become a common refrain from those seeking to decrease restrictions and business closures and re-open the economy.

My point is that no one has managed to articulate how exactly an economy can function properly when the pandemic is out of control. Likewise there is no certainty that an area where the pandemic has got out of control can return to normal in a significantly faster timeframe than one that has mitigated the number of cases strongly.

What sort of dates should the initial response have come at to be strong enough to avoid shutdowns?

Early February when we evacuated Australians from Wuhan to Christmas Island.

It would have been an incredibly bold plan but it would have likely cost far less money. Like $100B or so.

 

[fatprop]

This is a response to the suggestion that we need to accept those deaths as inevitable.

An interesting question would be how much money could have been saved if the initial response had been much stronger. Close borders early, strongly advise Australians to return home otherwise they might not be able to re-enter the country and strong screening and quarantining of every arrival into Australia.

Of course it would be incredibly difficult politically to take that action before the number of local cases were rising rapidly but the number of affected industries and people to provide stimulus to would have been much less.

At the moment we are just managing resources/increasing resources to limit deaths from overwhelmed services (NSW expects to have tripled ICU beds in the next few weeks)

But we need to accept some deaths as inevitable, as we do with car deaths without wanting to ban driving.

At some stage we will have to start leaving our home.

Half our challenge is the amount of humans with multiple problems we keep alive for years (my dad died old, obese, with T2D, liver disease and coronary heart disease) until something like this happens and ........................

 

[Pfitzy]

Based on the anecdotes I'm seeing on SM, the holidaymakers aren't all paying attention to this.

Will be interesting if there is a case spike in a week or two. For now: < 2% case increase last 2 days

 

[Up the Guts]

Early February when we evacuated Australians from Wuhan to Christmas Island.

It would have been an incredibly bold plan but it would have likely cost far less money. Like $100B or so.

The WHO only established on 22 January that person to person transmission was possible. Even then, they said it was only possible between close contacts (families or in health-care settings) and that wider transmission, such as 3rd, 4th generation transmission, was evidenceless.

It's all well and good to retrospectively say "we should have done this" but the information that was being received at the time didn't indicate transmission rates of the kind we've experienced.

 

[Braveheart81]

At the moment we are just managing resources/increasing resources to limit deaths from overwhelmed services (NSW expects to have tripled ICU beds in the next few weeks)

But we need to accept some deaths as inevitable, as we do with car deaths without wanting to ban driving.

At some stage we will have to start leaving our home.

Half our challenge is the amount of humans with multiple problems we keep alive for years (my dad died old, obese, with T2D, liver disease and coronary heart disease) until something like this happens and ........

Sure, but that completely ignores the exponential growth of the virus. I can't really find an example of a country that is keeping the number of new cases and deaths at somewhat sustainable levels without significant social isolation measures.

The countries that haven't adopted those measures seem to get to a level of outbreak where they decide things are dire enough that they have no choice but to implement lockdowns.

 

[Braveheart81]

The WHO only established on 22 January that person to person transmission was possible. Even then, they said it was only possible between close contacts (families or in health-care settings) and that wider transmission, such as 3rd, 4th generation transmission, was evidenceless.

It's all well and good to retrospectively say "we should have done this" but the information that was being received at the time didn't indicate transmission rates of the kind we've experienced.

It was a hypothetical question only. That's why I framed it as wondering how different the results would be if those sort of measures had been taken rather than suggesting they should have been taken.

Clearly the countries who took the most decisive action early were those who had experienced significant problems with SARS. They learnt from that experience and used it to frame their response to this pandemic.

You would think that if another pandemic happened in 2 or 3 years' time that the response from most countries would be much stronger, much earlier.

 

[Up the Guts]

It was a hypothetical question only. That's why I framed it as wondering how different the results would be if those sort of measures had been taken rather than suggesting they should have been taken.

Clearly the countries who took the most decisive action early were those who had experienced significant problems with SARS. They learnt from that experience and used it to frame their response to this pandemic.

You would think that if another pandemic happened in 2 or 3 years' time that the response from most countries would be much stronger, much earlier.

How do you take action early against a pandemic if you don't know it is a pandemic?

 

[tragic]

Every medical professional I know was calling bullshit on that. (Uncertain community transmission) Every other coronavirus is transmissible person to person. This one was always going to be no different.
I personally think the government has done a good job since they got serious but was a little slow off the mark.
Border closures, cruise ship quarantines and incoming flight quarantines earlier in the piece may have averted the need for the aggressive small business closures we’ve seen recently.
The fact that people were still allowed to board cruise ships and depart in March beggars belief.
And this is not hindsight - we were all saying it at the time. I stopped my parents going on a cruise in Feb.
We have the advantage of being a geographically isolated island but didn’t really make the most of that.

 

[Braveheart81]

How do you take action early against a pandemic if you don't know it is a pandemic?

We evacuated Australians from Wuhan to Christmas Island at the start of February. We implemented travel bans on multiple countries well before the WHO declared a pandemic.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing at this point. Do you really think if the world was presented with what looked like a similar situation in a few years time (so in very recent memory) that the action taken by many countries wouldn't be significantly different to what has been done this time around.

As mentioned in my last post, the countries that were significantly affected by SARS did take much stronger action well before knowing they were dealing with a pandemic.

 

[cyclopath]

Every medical professional I know was calling bullshit on that. (Uncertain community transmission) Every other coronavirus is transmissible person to person. This one was always going to be no different.
I personally think the government has done a good job since they got serious but was a little slow off the mark.
Border closures, cruise ship quarantines and incoming flight quarantines earlier in the piece may have averted the need for the aggressive small business closures we’ve seen recently.
The fact that people were still allowed to board cruise ships and depart in March beggars belief.
And this is not hindsight - we were all saying it at the time. I stopped my parents going on a cruise in Feb.
We have the advantage of being a geographically isolated island but didn’t really make the most of that.

Spot on. Much of the "uncertainty" earlier about transmission was being propagated by mainstream media, and a few dullards in the political ranks (worried about their lobby groups, I mean constituents). I agree the government has really turned it around well in recent weeks. I understand the obvious financial pressures with regards to relaxing measures, but it is absolutely a call they cannot afford to get wrong by going early.

 

[Up the Guts]

Spot on. Much of the "uncertainty" earlier about transmission was being propagated by mainstream media, and a few dullards in the political ranks (worried about their lobby groups, I mean constituents). I agree the government has really turned it around well in recent weeks. I understand the obvious financial pressures with regards to relaxing measures, but it is absolutely a call they cannot afford to get wrong by going early.

The WHO said on the 14th of January that there was no evidence of person to person transmission. Genome tracing in Italy has established that the virus had reached their shores by then. Too late to lock down the borders.

 

[Up the Guts]

Every medical professional I know was calling bullshit on that. (Uncertain community transmission) Every other coronavirus is transmissible person to person. This one was always going to be no different.
I personally think the government has done a good job since they got serious but was a little slow off the mark.
Border closures, cruise ship quarantines and incoming flight quarantines earlier in the piece may have averted the need for the aggressive small business closures we’ve seen recently.
The fact that people were still allowed to board cruise ships and depart in March beggars belief.
And this is not hindsight - we were all saying it at the time. I stopped my parents going on a cruise in Feb.
We have the advantage of being a geographically isolated island but didn’t really make the most of that.

If the medical professional was so unanimous that was the case then why did we have a systematic worldwide failure to act early enough?

 

[Up the Guts]

Now we have Stanford hypothesising that the virus may have been present in California since December and the population has developed some sort of herd immunity and that explains why the death/hospitalisation rates have been much lower than the rest of the country despite scant differences in lockdown policies.

https://abc7news.com/health/were-ca...QsHDZDwvb6jKbnttneFYBpxa8sE7GuEW0JZK5c5g7XZQ4

 

[tragic]

If the medical professional was so unanimous that was the case then why did we have a systematic worldwide failure to act early enough?

Because it was like nothing else we’ve seen in a generation.
Calling for early action and putting it in place are two different things. Governments are paralysed by process, and have other competing considerations (economic) Plus there’s indecision in not wanting to be seen to overact and lose votes/power if it turns out to be less ominous than predicted
Very easy for me to quarantine my parents and cancel their cruise - all I’m worried about is their personal health. Much harder for the government to do it at a national level.
The countries that had seen SARS and MERS did act earlier and had slower growth with less restrictions.
We will probably have a pandemic plan for next time which will address some of our earlier errors with protocol driven actions.

 

[cyclopath]

The WHO said on the 14th of January that there was no evidence of person to person transmission. Genome tracing in Italy has established that the virus had reached their shores by then. Too late to lock down the borders.

But at that stage they were working mainly on Chinese data, which has proved to be inconsistent or indeed, bullshit. It was illogical to assume this novel coronavirus would not transmit from person to person, given the experience with other coronaviruses.
And the critical time to act has been different in different countries. Obviously Northern Italy had early transmission, likely from all the textile workers from Wuhan and thereabouts and were blind-sided. Countries like us and NZ had somewhat unique opportunities given out geography to limit it better and earlier, but we're talking a few weeks at most. I don't think they've done too badly, the obvious clusterfucks aside. Certainly in my circles, most medical people were bemused by the laissez-faire attitude by many in the media and politics 6-8 weeks ago, however.

If the medical professional was so unanimous that was the case then why did we have a systematic worldwide failure to act early enough?

At WHO and national levels, it is more political than medical. And to answer more fully, look at what political leaders in the USA and UK have done, with questionable results.

 

[Up the Guts]

Because it was like nothing else we’ve seen in a generation.
Calling for early action and putting it in place are two different things. Governments are paralysed by process, and have other competing considerations (economic)
Very easy for me to quarantine my parents and cancel their cruise - all I’m worried about is their personal health. Much harder for the government to do it at a national level.
The countries that had seen SARS and MERS did act earlier and had slower growth with less restrictions.
We will probably have a pandemic plan for next time which will address some of our earlier errors with protocol driven actions.

Yes, that's the point. It was like nothing we've seen in a generation and the information we had about it was very poor. It's a pretty simple question, if governments had information at the time saying that it is likely that what has ended up transpiring would occuring would they ignore that to focus on competing considerations? No, the benefits of focusing on the competing considerations are far outweighed by the economic costs of the ensuing disaster. We know it is the case that governments were getting bad information. Infections had already spread overseas when the organisation, supposed to be the foremost authority on pandemics, declared that there was no evidence of person to person transmissions.

The countries that had seen SARs are also all the countries that are the closest to China, they acted most quickly primarily because they were in the most danger not because of their previous experience. There is no way Taiwan is the first mover to implement restrictions if the pandemic breaks out in Peru.

 

[tragic]

I wouldn’t bet on that.
It’s like the tsunami analogy.
Communities that has seen one before legged It to higher ground when the tide went out.
Communities that hadn’t watched bewildered until they got smashed.