CV and mad panic behaviour

[northernblue]

Dunno, what price do you put on 820 Australians no longer with us?

Do I get to select the 820 ? ?

Sadly they are departed and we can’t help them.

Again I ask you insurance… how much are you prepared to pay in premiums ?
More than you earn in income ? Half ? 5% ?

I understand what you’re saying and don’t disagree, I’m just pointing out that if these centers are to be properly built and fit for purpose AND ready to go then the bastards (politicians) won’t be trimming their salaries to make the budget work.

I think if we want a pandemic facility the NT one has provided the blueprint, but I’m not sure that one (or more) in each state is financially workable. Maybe one other, both federally funded and everyone (foreign arrivals at least) funnels through them probably doesn’t work for local cases though.

[Thryleon]

Do I get to select the 820 ? ?

Sadly they are departed and we can’t help them.

Again I ask you insurance… how much are you prepared to pay in premiums ?
More than you earn in income ? Half ? 5% ?

I understand what you’re saying and don’t disagree, I’m just pointing out that if these centers are to be properly built and fit for purpose AND ready to go then the bastards (politicians) won’t be trimming their salaries to make the budget work.

I think if we want a pandemic facility the NT one has provided the blueprint, but I’m not sure that one (or more) in each state is financially workable. Maybe one other, both federally funded and everyone (foreign arrivals at least) funnels through them probably doesn’t work for local cases though.

Then you also have to consider how well equipped are our health services to deal with a pandemic if it hit in earnest and inundated them.

A lot of the older hospitals around are extremely under equipped and service a large catchment.

Prevention is better than cure I agree, but this is to a degree a zero sum game.  The money used in quarantine could go a long way to service the community in a variety of ways and the shortfalls are enormous.

I understand what you're saying.  A quarantine facility purpose built is a luxury.  Thing is people need to understand that the risks of escape done dissappear because there is a facility.  They just decrease.

The few leaks we hear about are very incidental and coincidental. 

[Gointocarlton]

Do I get to select the 820 ? ?

Sadly they are departed and we can’t help them.

Again I ask you insurance… how much are you prepared to pay in premiums ?
More than you earn in income ? Half ? 5% ?

I understand what you’re saying and don’t disagree, I’m just pointing out that if these centers are to be properly built and fit for purpose AND ready to go then the bastards (politicians) won’t be trimming their salaries to make the budget work.

I think if we want a pandemic facility the NT one has provided the blueprint, but I’m not sure that one (or more) in each state is financially workable. Maybe one other, both federally funded and everyone (foreign arrivals at least) funnels through them probably doesn’t work for local cases though.

The 820 might have been preventable though, if this thing has taught us anything, its that we need to be better prepared.
Deaths aside, from a financial point of view, the Mrs and I have worked hard over the years and have saved a penny or 10. She can work from home as she's a teacher, so can I if I have to so no problems there. Unfortunately, far too many people are are not as lucky as me and they are the people I literally lose sleep over. Mortgages, school fees, bills, food on the table with no money coming in, it makes me sick to the core just thinking about it. As nation, we need to be much better prepared for the next "Scotsman" (no offence to the Scottish, its a reference to the crazy Scott who came out of the bushes from nowhere during an Olympic Marathon and took out the leader). We have to have learnt a lesson surely.

[northernblue]

You both make great points [member=105]Thryleon[/member] & [member=160]Gointocarlton[/member].
Ideally we could trust people to go home and stay home… ?

I’m going through my first lockdown, we were locked down last year, but I and every other tradie was flat out quoting work for a gov stimulus package ?
On Sunday arvo darwin was put into lockdown, then on Monday arvo they listed “casual contact” sites, one of which was Darwin Bunnings on Saturday morning, guess where I was on Saturday morning…?
Their exposure timeframe drifted over the course of Monday and night, initially 10-10:15 Saturday, my receipt was date stamped 10:09 ??
I rang the Covid hotline and finally got a call back at 9pm Monday night, only to be put on hold again… got a call this morning confirming that the exposure time was 10:30-10:40 Saturday, so I’m in the clear.
But it gets you thinking about you exposure… my customer and her partner, her daughter, my wife, the houses that my wife cleaned on Sunday morning, her cleaning boss, the lady we dropped some produce off to, the woolies that I went to for my usual weekly shop on Sunday lunch (when everyone in darwin turned up to panic buy, most without masks) then on Monday me and my wife’s return to woolies, and bottle shop prior to hearing about my possible Bunnings exposure… geez !!
The numbers are breathtaking !

[DJC]

You both make great points [member=105]Thryleon[/member] & [member=160]Gointocarlton[/member].
Ideally we could trust people to go home and stay home… ?

I’m going through my first lockdown, we were locked down last year, but I and every other tradie was flat out quoting work for a gov stimulus package ?
On Sunday arvo darwin was put into lockdown, then on Monday arvo they listed “casual contact” sites, one of which was Darwin Bunnings on Saturday morning, guess where I was on Saturday morning…?
Their exposure timeframe drifted over the course of Monday and night, initially 10-10:15 Saturday, my receipt was date stamped 10:09 ??
I rang the Covid hotline and finally got a call back at 9pm Monday night, only to be put on hold again… got a call this morning confirming that the exposure time was 10:30-10:40 Saturday, so I’m in the clear.
But it gets you thinking about you exposure… my customer and her partner, her daughter, my wife, the houses that my wife cleaned on Sunday morning, her cleaning boss, the lady we dropped some produce off to, the woolies that I went to for my usual weekly shop on Sunday lunch (when everyone in darwin turned up to panic buy, most without masks) then on Monday me and my wife’s return to woolies, and bottle shop prior to hearing about my possible Bunnings exposure… geez !!
The numbers are breathtaking !

They sure are!

Apparently the contact tracers here in Victoria can spend four hours or more on the phone to one contact before they're satisfied that they know all of their exposure sites and contacts.  It's a huge task and good luck to them.

And, speaking of luck, it's bad luck that the COVID-Safe app was a dud.  It could have saved a lot of work and perhaps even some lives if it had been able to do what it was claimed  :

Good to hear that you're in the clear and I hope it stays that way.

[Mav]

Interesting article in the SMH: The truth about what vaccines are achieving, from a country getting it right
The opening 2 paragraphs and the last paragraph are:

By now you’ve probably heard Scott Morrison’s argument, which goes something like this: Australia can’t yet talk about a post-pandemic future because we still don’t know whether vaccines guarantee a return to normality.

To illustrate the point, the Prime Minister regularly notes COVID-19 cases are climbing in Britain even though 85 per cent of all adults have been given one dose of a vaccine and 62 per cent the full two.

...

The Prime Minister is entitled to defend his strategy. But he also has an obligation to not cherry pick the facts about a vaccination program far more successful than his own.

It makes these points:

• Infections were always going to increase as the UK came out of lockdown.
  
• While infections are up, deaths are much lower than previously for comparable cases.
  
• Of the 92,000 people infected with the Delta variant since Feb, only 7.8% involve those who were double vaccinated.
  
• Nobody in England aged under 50 and double jabbed has died from the Delta variant this year.
  
• It’s believed the vaccines have prevented about 7 million from being infected.
  

The fact that the double vaccinated are still being infected and some are dying is due to the vulnerability of older people:

David Spiegelhalter, the chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge, and Anthony Masters, a statistical ambassador for the Royal Statistical Society, have a simple explanation for why so many fully vaccinated people died: the vaccines are not perfect and older people will always be at most risk.

“The risk of dying from COVID-19 is extraordinarily dependent on age: it halves for each six to seven year age gap,” they wrote in The Guardian. “This means that someone aged 80 who is fully vaccinated essentially takes on the risk of an unvaccinated person of around 50 – much lower, but still [it’s] not nothing, and so we can expect some deaths.”

This highlights the need to vaccinate the workers at aged care centres as well as the residents.

[LP]

Given the rising numbers interstate, and the number of people returning to Vic from red zones, it's very hard to see us avoiding another lockdown, but fingers crossed they will all do the right thing and quarantine.

But I fear some of those returning were actually lockdown escapees who went interstate for the very reason of avoiding a lockdown, and now they are returning for much the same reason, so I think they are highly unlikely to quarantine.

[Thryleon]

I think we need to get our testing requirements sorted before we worry too much about the rest.

Identifying a threat is probably a bit more important than mitigating against it.

i.e.  I just spoke to one of the stores men at our health service and he advised me he has had one covid test the whole way through.

This in itself isnt a massive issue, but when you consider he stocks the shelves in ICU, Theatres, and all manner of other locations, I think it would be reasonable enough to see all staff that work onsite in high risk locations tested once a fortnight.

I myself as an IT support worker have only been tested reactively (symptoms) like him, and that means that we have multiple workers who only get tested once symptomatic.

Is that a much bigger risk profile than anything else?  Id say so.  Sure we all wear masks and stuff, but we are more likely to super spread in an environment where things are dire than anyone else, and there is literally no requirement to test unless symptomatic or exposed.  Thats a bit silly.  We villify the people fleeing lockdowns, but lets face it, when you declare a lockdown starting from X tomorrow, then that in itself leaves too much scope for people to simply leave.

[capcom]

People simply "escape" to avoid the ensuing 14 day isolations.  The states act with unchallenged impunity and then blame the Feds.  Chaos and dirt cheap politics follow.

[Mav]

People escape because they’re selfish. If they’re infected, they can obtain treatment at their new location and they can wander around to their heart’s content until they need to be treated. That they might infect others is not their problem. They don’t care. That’s pretty apparent from the extent many have gone to in order to avoid quarantine.

People who aren’t selfish when they leave an area with a Covid outbreak would ensure they’re tested to ensure they aren’t infectious and isolate until they’re cleared. They’re not the ones we worry about. It’s the selfish ones who couldn’t give a *#$@ we worry about.