Coronavirus 4 - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[stui magpie]

Clearly the health advice has changed, Regional and Rural Vic gets a bone with reduced restrictions from midnight while Greater Melbourne case numbers going badly.

https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/coronavi ... victoria-0

NSW is allowing areas of Rural NSW more freedom, but only targeted areas.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/l ... gional-nsw
Also using the 4sqm rule for hospitality where Vic is blanket max 10 inside and 20 outside

NSW has also published their roadmap for lifting restrictions for the fully vaccinated once they hit 70% of eligible people being fully vaxxed. Andrews already being asked where his is.

The next few months promise to be divisive. Personally I'm all for easing restrictions for the fully vaxxed and it is already having an incentive effect, but there will be a number who won't like it at all.

[What'sinaname]

Listening to the three stooges, between them, it's become more apparent that they can only deal with a zero strategy. With part of the State with zero, they wont be able to ease restrictions in metro. They'll not want anyone to go to rural Vic. We'll see a lot of rural businesses die with no metro tourists this summer.

[Pies4shaw]

Now 1300 cases ahead of NSW at the same stage of their outbreak.

Took NSW 51 days to get over 300 cases in 1 day, Day 36 for Victoria

The present Victorian outbreak commenced no later than 12 July. Today is day 59.

[eddiesmith]

Now 1300 cases ahead of NSW at the same stage of their outbreak.

Took NSW 51 days to get over 300 cases in 1 day, Day 36 for Victoria

The present Victorian outbreak commenced no later than 12 July. Today is day 59.

The Victorian government clearly disagrees with you there.

Of course they have refused to upload any information on Nextstrain so they are clearly hiding something...

[Jezza]

The Victorian government clearly disagrees with you there.

Of course they have refused to upload any information on Nextstrain so they are clearly hiding something...

Exactly. Andrews was celebrating "donut day" on August 4.

Meanwhile, the CHO said last year on August 23 we wouldn't see 300+ cases in Victoria "under his watch", until that streak ended today.

“We’re not going to see, you know, 300s and 400s again in Victoria, not under my watch at least,” Brett Sutton told reporters on August 23.

[think positive]

That was before delta

[What'sinaname]

How can this be justified?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... zjQaYNPmUE

[Pies4shaw]

^ Yes, of course. I think if we wanted to waste our time going back over the NSW "hubris files" we'd find a whole lot about "gold standards" and a fair bit of gloating about what was happening in Victoria.

Exactly. Andrews was celebrating "donut day" on August 4.

"Exactly" nothing. Him thinking, on the day, that Victoria had stopped the outbreak and finding out a few hours later that it had actually seeded into a large school setting didn't suddenly mean that what happened in the afternoon of 4 August was a spontaneous new outbreak. It isn't possible to have an intelligent conversation about any of this if people just want to score political points. The evidence is plainly that the outbreak started on 12 July - there happened to be a day early on where they thought they'd stopped it. They were wrong. Today is day 60.

[What'sinaname]

The Victorian government clearly disagrees with you there.

Of course they have refused to upload any information on Nextstrain so they are clearly hiding something...

Exactly. Andrews was celebrating "donut day" on August 4.

Meanwhile, the CHO said last year on August 23 we wouldn't see 300+ cases in Victoria "under his watch", until that streak ended today.

“We’re not going to see, you know, 300s and 400s again in Victoria, not under my watch at least,” Brett Sutton told reporters on August 23.

Not to mention the CHO's tweet about zero cases using the image of Titmus' coach.

That aged well.

[Pies4shaw]

The 7-day moving average of new cases in the UK has reached 38,500 a day. Now that we can look back on the data trend, it's plain enough that (as it seemed at the time) it has been a continuous straight line increase, with an additional short-term peak along the way fuelled by the various Euro 2020 super-spreader events.

The 7-day moving average of new deaths is now up to 134 per day. That's 27 times the daily death rate on 22 May. It stands to reason that it's got to start dropping sometime - but there is no indication at all that the UK has this under control. There are certainly fewer deaths than there were at the winter peak - but the 134 average of daily new deaths is to be reasonably compared with the average of 8 reported on the same day in 2020. Also, the UK authorities are now reporting that more than 8,000 are presently hospitalised with COVID.

That, of course, is with over 80% of their entire population aged 16 and up fully vaccinated. That experience makes me extraordinarily sceptical of the assumptions made in the NSW modelling. Why are our much lower vaccination rates (and lower rates of natural immunity - given that the UK data for a number of months has been to the effect that over 90% of the population has either been fully vaccinated or had the disease) going to lead to dramatically better outcomes? I just don't see it.

Is there a basis in all of this for our public health authorities to make vaccination mandatory, at least above a certain age? I don't really think the "my choice" garbage sits too comfortably with the massive public health expenditure that is being - and will increasingly be - occasioned by people being unvaccinated. It all seems quite neat to say "It's going to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated". That's sort of true - but when our double-vaccinated family members can't get the critical care they need for other conditions because the hospitals are packed with unvaccinated COVID patients, will it still be a "private" choice not to be vaccinated (the usual special circumstances aside)?

[eddiesmith]

^ Yes, of course. I think if we wanted to waste our time going back over the NSW "hubris files" we'd find a whole lot about "gold standards" and a fair bit of gloating about what was happening in Victoria.

Exactly. Andrews was celebrating "donut day" on August 4.

"Exactly" nothing. Him thinking, on the day, that Victoria had stopped the outbreak and finding out a few hours later that it had actually seeded into a large school setting didn't suddenly mean that what happened in the afternoon of 4 August was a spontaneous new outbreak. It isn't possible to have an intelligent conversation about any of this if people just want to score political points. The evidence is plainly that the outbreak started on 12 July - there happened to be a day early on where they thought they'd stopped it. They were wrong. Today is day 60.

Yet the official word from the government is that none of the original cases from the 5th August were linked to any of the previous outbreak and they’ve counted all cases since then as seperate to the July outbreak.

If you know differently…

[stui magpie]

^^

@P4S, a key difference that I see between the UK and what is proposed here is that the UK, just threw the doors open and do WTF you want, no restrictions.

The roadmap proposed by NSW at this stage allows for easing of restrictions, not carte blanche go for it, and only to the fully vaccinated.

Victoria will come up with something similar although more conservative

[stui magpie]

334 new cases and 1 death in Victoria.

[Pies4shaw]

From NSW Health twitter:

NSW recorded 1,542 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.

The total number of cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic is 40,427.

Sadly, NSW Health has been notified of the deaths of nine people who had COVID-19.

There have been 34,804 locally acquired cases reported since 16 June 2021, when the first case in this outbreak was reported.

There are currently 1,156 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital, with 207 people in intensive care, 89 of whom require ventilation.

The positive test rate was 1.16% - so the new number of cases is from a much lower number of test results than yesterday's number.

[stui magpie]

^

At what point do you just stop testing? When does case number become a statistical irrelevance?

Clearly not yet here in Australia, but for what purpose is the UK still conducting bulk testing? Surely that's money and resources that could be redeployed and you only test people who present as unwell and do it for treatment purposes?