Thread: Corona Virus

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I think you misunderstood - she went to the wedding, but after seeing how they "socially distanced", the self isolated and did not visit my brother or anyone else!

No John, I fully understood.

Originally Posted by trout1105

It will take at least a couple of weeks to find out IF the Melbourne public are still taking social distancing seriously, Fingers crossed that they do otherwise it will be back into lockdown mode again.

Yeah ... nah.

In the last fortnight there were just 4 unknown source cases in Vic, and that's on the back of 15,000 - 25,000 tests daily, even now:

• The total number of cases from an unknown source in the last 14 days is four for metropolitan Melbourne and zero for regional Victoria. 4,277 cases may indicate community transmission (an increase of one since yesterday.)
• There are 76 cases currently active in Victoria. 19,382 people have recovered.
• Five people are in hospital. There are no cases in intensive care.
• A total of 3,130,788 test results have been received. This is an increase of 24,135 since yesterday.

Department of Health and Human Services Victoria | Coronavirus (COVID-19) daily update

So, the odds of there being a heap of unknown cases is pretty slim.

Also, Melbournians were the best at complying with the restrictions in Australia:


Coronavirus Victoria: Melbourne'''s best-in-nation social distancing crushed the virus

“Victorians are the most compliant with the rules, of anywhere in Australia. Our rules are the toughest and we’re the most compliant,” he said.

I wouldn't worry about us, I'd worry about what'll happen in WA (or NSW, or Qld, or SA ...) if it gets loose, because I don't see any social distancing going on at all. We've just had months of lockdown, the rest of the country appears to be going about as normal.

Over the last 7 months there's been this weird thing going on where what people outside Victoria think is happening here bears no relation to the what's actually happening. I've had colleagues drop absolute clangers on Zoom calls.

As examples:

• "Dictator Dan" - Daniel Andrews' approval ratings have been in the 60%s for most of the time, 52% at the moment at the end of a pretty severe lockdown and after a concentrated pile on by the Murdoch press, and the most senior members of the Federal Liberal party.

BTW, the Liberal party's leader in Victoria, Michael O'Brien, has an approval rating of 15%. Yes, 15%. The view appears to be that Dan may have stuffed some things up, but at least he was trying. The Libs have contributed nothing, at a State or Federal level. I have a funny feeling that the Libs are going to get slaughtered at the next Victorian election. At the last Federal election they came close to losing a number of blue ribbon seats in Melbourne.

• People not social distancing - patently false, Melburnians have been scrupulously compliant. The exceptions have been the usual suspects.

Coronavirus Victoria: Melbourne'''s best-in-nation social distancing crushed the virus

• Melburnians protesting - no, maybe a couple of hundred crackpots out of a population of 4.9m. See above re "usual suspects".

So why the odd view outside the State? Pretty simple - outside of Victoria the Murdoch press is pretty much dominant and that's the news people see. People like Tim Wilson have more of a profile outside of Victoria than they do in it, because he was doing the rounds of the shock jocks in Sydney.

Also, 6.5 million people doing the right thing simply isn't as newsworthy as 200 being idiots.

the rest of the country appears to be going about as normal.

That is a direct result of NOT making the same Monumental stuff ups in the hotel quarantine area that Melbourne had , Closed borders and Early compliance with social distancing and lockdowns

Originally Posted by trout1105

That is a direct result of NOT making the same Monumental stuff ups in the hotel quarantine area that Melbourne had , Closed borders and Early compliance with social distancing and lockdowns

The point is, it's not a normal time. The virus is out there, it's often asymptomatic and at a minimum people should be taking some steps to mitigate it. Carry on business as usual and the result will be a lockdown.

Originally Posted by Arapiles

The virus is out there, it's often asymptomatic and at a minimum people should be taking some steps to mitigate it. Carry on business as usual and the result will be a lockdown.

Or you can think like NSW and understand it is not actually stoppable at the moment so you put in place the best systems in the country to track outbreaks as they occur and quarantine - NSW is basically open, economy is going very well, one or two new cases per day - usually known and into quarantine. NSW is the only state to reach the happy medium of low cases and being open for business.

Oh saw an add on NSW TV - silly Queenslanders encouraging NSW people to go an have a holiday on the Gold Coast when, with the exception of the border bubble, Qld still closed to NSW.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Wine is a fruit juice.

- that's gone a bit rotten....

Originally Posted by Arapiles

The point is, it's not a normal time. The virus is out there, it's often asymptomatic and at a minimum people should be taking some steps to mitigate it. Carry on business as usual and the result will be a lockdown.

"it's often asymptomatic" is a bit simplistic. Perhaps more accurately, it can be asymptomatic or have symptoms so mild they are not noticed but still be infectious, and this is commonly the case in the one or two days just before symptoms appear. Combined with the simple fact that this virus has shown itself to be more infectious than virtually any other serious disease except measles, and an incubation period of up to two weeks, it can spread explosively without precautions. As was shown in Melbourne a few months ago and is happening in Europe today. The reason you need to maintain precautions and social distancing is not that there are a lot of asymptomatic cases about, but that may be one - and it only takes one. And one case can lead to major issues as we have seen in outbreaks both in NSW and Victoria.

There is not much evidence that there are large numbers of hidden asymptomatic cases anywhere. In fact, what evidence there is suggests that there are not large numbers - with it so infectious, even very small numbers of asymptomatic but infectious cases would rapidly show up as a high positive rate in tests. That this is not happening must mean there are very few - NSW for example is consistently getting positive test results in the range of 0.01%-0.1%. It is the same as on the road - similar rates are found for random breath tests, but this does not mean we can drop precautions against drink driving!

It seems very likely that studies reporting significant levels of hidden infection are relying on rapid tests or blood antibody tests that are known to be significantly less accurate than the PCR tests used in Australia. These tests are appropriate perhaps for screening where infection rates are fairly high, but using the data to extrapolate to the whole population they may be less suitable.