# So is the COVID-19 drama over, or will this go on for some time?



## matty77 (17 April 2020)

Seems to be countries are starting to get Covid19 under control, is this the start of the end for Covid19 or just the beginning?

Will we see economies start to come back to normal as quarantine is lifted or do people still think it will get worse?


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## Dona Ferentes (17 April 2020)

It will get different.


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## Bill M (17 April 2020)

I don't think we are anywhere near over yet and even if the lock downs were lifted the economy will take a long time to get back to normal.


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## IFocus (17 April 2020)

matty77 said:


> Seems to be countries are starting to get Covid19 under control, is this the start of the end for Covid19 or just the beginning?
> 
> Will we see economies start to come back to normal as quarantine is lifted or do people still think it will get worse?




Controlling the virus by locking down and reducing the numbers is the easy part, then what?

Release the controls and hope reinfection rates don't take off so far it looks like there is very little room to do so particularly in the winter months.

Even if you can open up a single country makes little difference when the rest of the world is still locked down.

Requires a game changer treatment of some sort IMHO.


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## Garpal Gumnut (17 April 2020)

One also never knows if there is another one around the corner.

gg


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## qldfrog (17 April 2020)

Does not need to be another one, sadly, when checked, the number of infected people even in hard hit countries,whete  just a few pc so many more can get infected, some very sick etc..as soon as we release the pressure will flare again imho.
As for the vaccine, just hope we can not get the illness more than once ,would be a great news.
There is this nice idea, we stop lock down, live restarts as we knew it, a few oldies in aged care die and this is over ..dream on.
I am afraid we will remember 2019 as the year we started living with covid-19, and collapsed life expectancy


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## basilio (17 April 2020)

I suggest this is a very hasty view.  We havn't even started to see what the virus will do in poorer countries. I wouldn't suggest the US is anywhere near in control.  Russia is on a very dangerous path The financial implications havn't even started.


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## Smurf1976 (17 April 2020)

In due course we will go to "normal" for sure but what is "normal" from 2020 onward won't be the same as it was previously.

In various ways society today still wears the scars of 11 September 2001, the 1973-74 Oil Embargo, World War 2 and the Great Depression. Plenty of things today, including most obviously the economic response to COVID-19, are still based on those events.

This one is too big to not be in that league. There will be some things which never go back to how they were, just as they didn't after those other events.

Identifying what the permanent changes will be is the challenge. My thoughts include greater self-reliance and a general rejection of the 1990's - 2010's economic paradigm and its reliance on "free" trade and in particular "just in time" inventory management. Those concepts will struggle going forward with the risks firmly in the minds of literally everyone.

Things like tourism, which was really only a boom industry over the past 25 or so years anyway, may well also diminish to some extent and be more like it was previously when it was just another thing that happened, people traveled but very few places actually relied on it economically. All of sudden cruise ships carry a risk that most hadn't previously thought of, air fares are likely to be more expensive and a large portion of consumers will have neither the time nor the money to be a tourist anyway.

No doubt many other changes too but it's the non-essential things which are really going to struggle. Consumers without jobs don't buy luxuries and even those with jobs don't buy them if they're focused on fixing their financial situation.


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## Smurf1976 (17 April 2020)

IFocus said:


> Controlling the virus by locking down and reducing the numbers is the easy part, then what?




I use the analogy of saying that at the moment just about everyone's focused on getting the car out of the ditch and back on the road.

That the car isn't driveable in its current condition has thus far escaped the attention of most. Stand well clear of the markets when the masses look under the car.....


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## SirRumpole (17 April 2020)

There will be less jobs no doubt, especially in the tourism industry, although with overseas travel pretty well canned perhaps the tourist industry can partially recover by Aussies seeing their own country instead of someone else's.

On the other hand, I doubt if we will be bringing in 160,000 new migrants every year for quite a while, so maybe our infrastructure can start to catch up with the people we do have and there will be less competition for jobs so maybe more jobs for locals, higher wages and therefore more consumer spending.

Cheaper homes for sure and lower rents, so just maybe there is a silver lining in some of this.


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## Value Collector (17 April 2020)

I was massively disappointed when I went to my local westfileds today, I ducked in to go to woolies, however the place was packed, coffee shop had massive line, and people standing around talking into peoples faces who clearly were not from their household.

The place was so quiet the last few weeks, but it seems people have suddenly lost their fear.

We better hope this virus has be well and truly contained, because if it is still lurking in the community and people are acting like this I think we will have a big resurgence.

I just don't get it, people are obsessed with finding loop holes to get around staying at home, By all means go to the shops, but get your stuff and get home, if you see a mate give them a wave and keep walking, tell them you will video call them later, don't stop and breathe in each others faces.

And don't use the 2 person exercise excuse to visit a different person every day for 4 hours. (literally have a person on my face book page posting an update each day about which of their mates they caught up with that day for "exercise", 7 days 7 different friends so far),


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## Smurf1976 (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I just don't get it, people are obsessed with finding loop holes to get around staying at home



Human psychology is always a factor. Much the same in how people invest, they don't tend to do the maths and think rationally and so on.

On the other hand though, well I think governments have played a role by making the rules so pedantic. Beauty salons are out, hairdressers are in. Restaurants are out but schools are OK. You'll be fined for learning to drive with one other person in the car but it's just fine to catch a train. Etc. Then throw in the threat of a huge fine and overall that approach has created a mentality akin to someone doing their Tax Return. An approach of dotting every I, crossing every T and following the rules to the letter with the underlying thought that you may well end up having to defend your actions with reference to the stated rules.


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Human psychology is always a factor. Much the same in how people invest, they don't tend to do the maths and think rationally and so on.
> 
> On the other hand though, well I think governments have played a role by making the rules so pedantic. Beauty salons are out, hairdressers are in. Restaurants are out but schools are OK. You'll be fined for learning to drive with one other person in the car but it's just fine to catch a train. Etc. Then throw in the threat of a huge fine and overall that approach has created a mentality akin to someone doing their Tax Return. An approach of dotting every I, crossing every T and following the rules to the letter with the underlying thought that you may well end up having to defend your actions with reference to the stated rules.




I just don't get why peoples common sense doesn't kick in, they seem to care more about following the letter of the rules and avoiding fines than following the spirit of the rules and avoiding the virus.

I can understand why they government has made the rules with a lot of leeway and given us a certain amount of freedom, its because they were expecting us to be smart about it.

Sure, JB HIFI is open but that doesn't mean you should be out shopping or browsing for the sake of it, it's open so if you TV breaks or you need something to help you stay at home you can run out and get it, and then get back home.

it's great we can exercise, but don't use it as a loop hole to socialise, common sense means avoid all contact where ever possible with people outside your household, if we don't this thing grows at exponential rates.


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## jbocker (18 April 2020)

matty77 said:


> Seems to be countries are starting to get Covid19 under control, is this the start of the end for Covid19 or just the beginning?
> 
> Will we see economies start to come back to normal as quarantine is lifted or do people still think it will get worse?



I don't think ANY country has this under control that is not without huge risk of an (initial or repeated) massive breakout. We are being warned of complacency and as I see it, complacency will be our greatest undoing. Australia has been lucky in that we have been diligent and used isolation and containment which has worked well (excepting some well known blunders). Tasmania has had a classic case of what can happen if groups choose to take the risk.
*We need a way out of this which is well managed and understood*. That will require a little more patience and probably observation of other countries best efforts (that we can trust). Frankly I not sure I can see any just yet.
We get one good chance at this and if we blow it I don't think asking the populace to re-lockdown will be so readily accepted and therefore have very much success. And what _would that _do to the economy.
*I would remind my friends to remain cautious.*
I look at the stats of the large population countries and they ring alarmingly of under reporting, for many understandable reasons. They have a VERY long way to go.


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## Smurf1976 (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I just don't get why peoples common sense doesn't kick in, they seem to care more about following the letter of the rules and avoiding fines than following the spirit of the rules and avoiding the virus.




Just a personal observation I've made, largely through work, is that it's a minority of people who can stay the course with anything difficult and which has no definite end point. That lack of a firm end point, a specific time, really gets to them. 

Psychologically this is much the same really. Not much fun, no definite end point and all a bit miserable really. Some will cope just fine but many won't. 

Just an observation which I think applies to many things since it comes down to human psychology.


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## jbocker (18 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> I look at the stats of the large population countries and they ring alarmingly of under reporting, for many understandable reasons. They have a VERY long way to go.



Here are the top 13 Populated Countries. and Australia with Caronavirus case statistics


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## SirRumpole (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I just don't get why peoples common sense doesn't kick in, they seem to care more about following the letter of the rules and avoiding fines than following the spirit of the rules and avoiding the virus.
> 
> I can understand why they government has made the rules with a lot of leeway and given us a certain amount of freedom, its because they were expecting us to be smart about it.
> 
> ...




It's just the fact that we live in a "free" society and we don't like being told how to live our live by bureaucracy. 

But I agree  that we should listen to the medical advice, if not to the politicians.

Staying away from the lines of transmission (other people) is the best  thing we can do to avoid the virus, and it is a matter of commonsense, but it seems that there is a lack of that in some people.


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## qldfrog (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I just don't get why peoples common sense doesn't kick in, they seem to care more about following the letter of the rules and avoiding fines than following the spirit of the rules and avoiding the virus.



Years of nanny state and overregulation
You install your pool fence, have it checked then do not check your kids.let's make the rules more stringent
I left the road and had an accident yet i was under the speed limit..
We need to lower it..
Well it was the first rain in 3 months....
Above real cases i witnessed
Etc
Common sense in Australia is punished.so people just try to swerve between the myriads of overruling and policing


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## Bill M (18 April 2020)

Here is the latest stats for Australia. If we are still getting 50 new cases a day during a lock down then what might happen if everything opened up? It could quite easily jump back to 300 to 400 cases a day and then explode from there. We are no where near over it.


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## matty77 (18 April 2020)

So NZ have gone a lot harder with lock down then Australia to try and get rid of the virus entirely, but I just am not sure if this is actually possible, and even if they did manage to get rid of it completely then how would they managed to stop someone coming into NZ who had it when so many people dont even show symptoms. 

Seems to me we are going to have rolling quarantine for a few months yet, at least until the end of the year, there might be an outbreak and then things get locked down once again. The reason I posted this topic was I have friends who are madly buying up shares at the moment calling the market cheap, saying the crisis is over and its time to get back into it. I share a slightly different and more pessimistic view where even if we get this under a certain amount of control the bad economic times have not hit us yet and may not for a few more months at least. 

@Smurf1976 you make some really great points about how things changed long term since 9/11, probably something that nowdays seems normal.... really good point and I guess the new "normal" is going to be even weirder going forward.


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Just a personal observation I've made, largely through work, is that it's a minority of people who can stay the course with anything difficult and which has no definite end point. That lack of a firm end point, a specific time, really gets to them.
> 
> Psychologically this is much the same really. Not much fun, no definite end point and all a bit miserable really. Some will cope just fine but many won't.
> 
> Just an observation which I think applies to many things since it comes down to human psychology.




I don’t know, maybe it’s my army background that has made me a bit more self disciplined, but I don’t find this self isolation thing that hard to follow.

sure it’s different than my life before, but I have just built a new routine and it’s easy.

my basic outline at the moment is each day I make sure I accomplish 3 things.

1. Work on something around the house that I have been avoiding or is routine maintaining, or to do with investments

2. do some self improvement, eg reading, study or some exercise.

3. Enjoy some time with my wife, watching a movie, playing a board game etc.

that stuffs can easily fill in a whole day, especially if you add in some other activities to your routine such a catching up with video calls etc to people out side your home etc.


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

Bill M said:


> Here is the latest stats for Australia. If we are still getting 50 new cases a day during a lock down then what might happen if everything opened up? It could quite easily jump back to 300 to 400 cases a day and then explode from there. We are no where near over it.
> View attachment 102408




some of those 50 cases are probably caused by people being idiots.

I don’t see us getting to zero cases a day unless people take this thing more seriously.


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## jbocker (18 April 2020)

I have put in the statistics for Sweden and Australia. Both have the same principals with combatting Covid-19, Sweden have trusted their people to abide by it, Australia have enforced it.  I use Sweden as it has some isolation wrt to borders albeit nowhere near what our isolation is. People willing to utilize their free lifestyles, similar but I suggest Swedish would be more liberal.


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## Dona Ferentes (18 April 2020)

> The reason I posted this topic was I have friends who are madly buying up shares at the moment calling the market cheap



.  As long as they're not using *debt;* clearly things are "cheaper" but isn't the value about the same?

I tend to take the view that "_Every long-term security is nothing more than a claim on some expected future stream of cash that will be delivered into the hands of investors over time_" (Dr John Hussman) and I'd think its likely the future stream of cash could be diminished somewhat. There's all these new factors at play, not the least the expanding balance sheets of Central Banks, and then sluggish economies, soaring job losses and a real pivot on what's needed and useful going forward.

One of the best aspects of the current situation is that there could well be an accelerated reset, with structural reform and emerging technologies pushing forward in a timeline of months or 1-2 years that would otherwise take a decade. I'm taking the opportunity to buy some of the 'new industries' that have an environmental benefit. Because if there's one takeout of shutting down for a few months , it's that we can't go back. So let's go forward.


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## Bill M (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> but I don’t find this self isolation thing that hard to follow.



I don't find it that hard either. The big bonus was when they said you can exercise. I walk 7 to 8 KMS a day so for me that did not change. I've been clipped back on Supermarket visits to only when essential so that is not so bothersome either.

But I do a lot of O/S holidays and cruises, that has changed and it is disappointing but I conditioned myself that this year is wiped out for that anyway so I don't worry that much about that either.

Personally I think the Governments of AUS are doing the right thing. I would hate to see the daily death rates in Sydney like we are seeing in New York, 700 + people or so.
---
The city’s coronavirus death toll continued climbing to alarming heights with 722 new COVID-19 fatalities over 24 hours, bringing the grim total to 12,199 by Friday afternoon.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/17/nyc-coronavirus-deaths-hit-12199-as-confirmed-cases-climb/
---


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## Smurf1976 (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I don’t know, maybe it’s my army background that has made me a bit more self disciplined, but I don’t find this self isolation thing that hard to follow.



Never been in the Army but likewise I don't find it difficult.

Elaborating on my previous comment though, I've done plenty of work where there are no set hours but the job must be finished because it'll make the news, the actual mainstream news, if it isn't. That's the reality essential services.

Some people cope with that just fine, they see the whole picture that some days are easy, a few turn out truly miserable, and overall it was pretty reasonable. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose but overall not bad.

Many really couldn't cope with that though. They just couldn't look at the overall picture, see that it was actually a pretty good deal, but instead focused on the negatives even though they weren't that frequent. No amount of rational logic would get them to see it differently.

I suspect this lockdown situation is somewhat similar psychologically in that it is indeed open ended, there's no set finish date, and it's for the good of the community rather than an individual personally. Some will see the overall context but others will focus only on the negatives.


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

Bill M said:


> I don't find it that hard either. The big bonus was when they said you can exercise. I walk 7 to 8 KMS a day so for me that did not change. I've been clipped back on Supermarket visits to only when essential so that is not so bothersome either.
> 
> But I do a lot of O/S holidays and cruises, that has changed and it is disappointing but I conditioned myself that this year is wiped out for that anyway so I don't worry that much about that either.
> 
> ...




Yeah, the O/S travel is a bummer, I was meant to be in New Zealand right now, and in November I have a UK trip booked which probably will end up being canned.

But as far as sacrifices to fight the virus go, staying at home is a pretty easy war to fight.

Ask any young guy if they would go to war to defend Australia against an invader and they puff their chest and say they would die for Australia, They kinda show their true colours though when it turns out they can't even stay at home and watch TV to defend the Nation.


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## basilio (18 April 2020)

We may feel that Australia is getting on top of the Covid virus. All well and good.

But if you check out the John Hopkins website the graphs showing the rate of new infections (reported !) for many countries is not good at all..

India is accelerating as is Russia, Turkey,  Brazil, Canada, US, Peru, Sweden, Japan, Chile, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Serbia, Belarus and so on..
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6


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## InsvestoBoy (18 April 2020)

Reality checks:

There has never been a coronavirus vaccine successfully developed before: https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616?section=health


> For those pinning their hopes on a COVID-19 vaccine to return life to normal, an Australian expert in vaccine development has a reality check — it probably won't happen soon.




Doesn't look like herd immunity is on the way to save us either: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...na-transparency-uk-vaccine-taskforce/12160440


> Dr Ryan also said that even if antibodies were effective there was little sign that large numbers of people had developed them and were beginning to offer so-called "herd immunity" to the broader population.
> 
> "A lot of preliminary information coming to us right now would suggest quite a *low percentage of population have seroconverted (to produce antibodies)*," he said.
> 
> *"The expectation that … the majority in society may have developed antibodies, the general evidence is pointing against that, so it may not solve the problem of governments.*"


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## Joe90 (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> peoples common sense



 = sheeple fvckwittery. I've seen three cases of it in three short outings this week. Collected takeaway pizza for dinner, three strangers leaning on the counter jawing, had to ask them to move away so I could collect my order. Local computer shop, needed a new headset for work from home, no controls on the allowed number of customers in a small shop, two clusters of people in the shop gas bagging, no distancing. Didn't enter, waited for them to leave, entered and another group started invading my space at the counter so I left. Local bike shop today to get some bits to setup a bike on my rolling road for the missus; there were over 20 people in there jilling about in clusters, no obvious distancing. Sign on the door "maximum 35 customers" WTF??? Business is booming as no one wants to use public transport at the mo, come in come in,we want your $$$, what virus? I didn't enter and came back just before closing when no one was there. Went to another adjacent outlet to collect the last bit, no customers but seven sales stooges all lined up behind the counter rubbing shoulders I kid you not. I inquired if they all happened to share the same home i.e. a family unit? Received a vacant stare for my trouble.

I get the feeling Australia may have dodged a bullet so far with this pandemic, but its not referred to as "the lucky country" for nothing. There's plenty of complacency and stupidity evident everywhere in public places. I liken  this very dangerous virus to a lottery where the tickets are freely available (if you don't manage the exposure risk) and you can't refuse the prize if/when (surprise) you win.


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## IFocus (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I don’t know, maybe it’s my army background that has made me a bit more self disciplined, but I don’t find this self isolation thing that hard to follow.




I think that's personality VC seen plenty of ex military guys break the rules


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## qldfrog (18 April 2020)

InsvestoBoy said:


> Reality checks:
> 
> There has never been a coronavirus vaccine successfully developed before: https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616?section=health
> 
> ...



Like it, i have been repeating this again and again for now more than a month.good to see these few truth become more mainstream and acknowledged.
I know it is not good news.
The other point is that, even if you are treated and recover, by the time you leave the hospital, you are a wreck, can hardly breath, need physio for weeks just to walk and breath, your thinking is affected it is a slow recovery at best


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## Sdajii (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> I don’t know, maybe it’s my army background that has made me a bit more self disciplined, but I don’t find this self isolation thing that hard to follow.
> 
> sure it’s different than my life before, but I have just built a new routine and it’s easy.
> 
> ...




It's easy for you, and in your circumstances it would be easy for me too. At the other end of the extreme you have someone in my situation. I lost my business, it happened at a really bad time, I have been financially wiped out completely. I was getting set up overseas where my stuff (which I've lost, I arrived in Australia with nothing but hand baggage, didn't even bring my laptop because I was only planning a brief trip), so I've been separated from my stuff (everything from cookware to clothes to books to... everything other than my toothbrush, one book and a few changes of casual summer clothes), my friends, familiar places, my whole way of life, where I live. You have a nice wife to live with, I have just gone from having plenty of girls interested in me and no shortage of dating opportunities to being unable to socialise in a place where I have no intention of staying. I don't own any board games etc. I don't own a bed, I don't have the option of properly storing food in a freezer, etc. I'm experiencing the coldest weather I've been in for quite a few years, and am stuck living with an extremely toxic person, with no option of just going out to get some space. Yes, I can go out for a walk to exercise, I can shop for food with what little money I have, and often spend many hours doing such things, but I literally can't even legally sit down in a park. I never imagined I'd have to consider going on the dole, but I was forced to apply a few weeks ago. They somehow knew that until a few years ago I had a lot of money and a healthy stock portfolio so they rejected my claim. I explained I had spent a few years setting up a business in Asia, and had everything invested in that and because of the situation had lost everything, and they're reviewing it. No one will give me a job, even stocking shelves for minimum wage because they see someone with university qualifications and business history and they (very correctly) figure if they give me a job I'll be off doing something else as soon as I can. People who used to depend on me are doing it super tough and are scared, unable to comprehend that I'm not able to come back. My pets died horrible deaths because I was unable to organise care for them (believe me, I did everything I possibly could, I had someone doing their best to care for them and they had to watch them die and give me updates, it was horrible for everyone involved). I'm lonely in the extreme. My life is a living nightmare.

It's really lovely to know that people like you are in a position to get through this comfortably. I'm honestly very happy for you, but many people are not in a position to cope so well. My life has gone from absolutely wonderful to a complete and utter nightmare no good person should have to endure. My situation is definitely a lot worse than average, but plenty of people are doing it very tough, some worse than me, and plenty of people through no fault of their own are having a terrible time. Just because you are in a position to cope easily (in your shoes I'd be completely comfortable too) doesn't mean you can realistically expect everyone to. I bet I am coping with my situation better than you would.


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## sptrawler (18 April 2020)

Joe90 said:


> = sheeple fvckwittery. I've seen three cases of it in three short outings this week. Collected takeaway pizza for dinner, three strangers leaning on the counter jawing, had to ask them to move away so I could collect my order. Local computer shop, needed a new headset for work from home, no controls on the allowed number of customers in a smalnl shop, two clusters of people in the shop gas bagging, no distancing. Didn't enter, waited for them to leave, entered and another group started invading my space at the counter so I left. Local bike shop today to get some bits to setup a bike on my rolling road for the missus; there were over 20 people in there jilling about in clusters, no obvious distancing. Sign on the door "maximum 35 customers" WTF??? Business is booming as no one wants to use public transport at the mo, come in come in,we want your $$$, what virus? I didn't enter and came back just before closing when no one was there. Went to another adjacent outlet to collect the last bit, no customers but seven sales stooges all lined up behind the counter rubbing shoulders I kid you not. I inquired if they all happened to share the same home i.e. a family unit? Received a vacant stare for my trouble.
> 
> I get the feeling Australia may have dodged a bullet so far with this pandemic, but its not referred to as "the lucky country" for nothing. There's plenty of complacency and stupidity evident everywhere in public places. I liken  this very dangerous virus to a lottery where the tickets are freely available (if you don't manage the exposure risk) and you can't refuse the prize if/when (surprise) you win.



Well Joe I dont know where you are, but Fri morning I went for a walk on the Mandurah (WA) foreshore and stopped to chat with a group of about 6 oldies.
Huge spacing about 2 metres between each, well within 5 minutes a Ranger comes up and tells everyone to move on, that was at 6.30 in the morning, no wonder we are reducing the infection rate.


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

IFocus said:


> I think that's personality VC seen plenty of ex military guys break the rules



Me too now that I think about it


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## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

Sdajii said:


> It's easy for you, and in your circumstances it would be easy for me too. At the other end of the extreme you have someone in my situation. I lost my business, it happened at a really bad time, I have been financially wiped out completely. I was getting set up overseas where my stuff (which I've lost, I arrived in Australia with nothing but hand baggage, didn't even bring my laptop because I was only planning a brief trip), so I've been separated from my stuff (everything from cookware to clothes to books to... everything other than my toothbrush, one book and a few changes of casual summer clothes), my friends, familiar places, my whole way of life, where I live. You have a nice wife to live with, I have just gone from having plenty of girls interested in me and no shortage of dating opportunities to being unable to socialise in a place where I have no intention of staying. I don't own any board games etc. I don't own a bed, I don't have the option of properly storing food in a freezer, etc. I'm experiencing the coldest weather I've been in for quite a few years, and am stuck living with an extremely toxic person, with no option of just going out to get some space. Yes, I can go out for a walk to exercise, I can shop for food with what little money I have, and often spend many hours doing such things, but I literally can't even legally sit down in a park. I never imagined I'd have to consider going on the dole, but I was forced to apply a few weeks ago. They somehow knew that until a few years ago I had a lot of money and a healthy stock portfolio so they rejected my claim. I explained I had spent a few years setting up a business in Asia, and had everything invested in that and because of the situation had lost everything, and they're reviewing it. No one will give me a job, even stocking shelves for minimum wage because they see someone with university qualifications and business history and they (very correctly) figure if they give me a job I'll be off doing something else as soon as I can. People who used to depend on me are doing it super tough and are scared, unable to comprehend that I'm not able to come back. My pets died horrible deaths because I was unable to organise care for them (believe me, I did everything I possibly could, I had someone doing their best to care for them and they had to watch them die and give me updates, it was horrible for everyone involved). I'm lonely in the extreme. My life is a living nightmare.
> 
> It's really lovely to know that people like you are in a position to get through this comfortably. I'm honestly very happy for you, but many people are not in a position to cope so well. My life has gone from absolutely wonderful to a complete and utter nightmare no good person should have to endure. My situation is definitely a lot worse than average, but plenty of people are doing it very tough, some worse than me, and plenty of people through no fault of their own are having a terrible time. Just because you are in a position to cope easily (in your shoes I'd be completely comfortable too) doesn't mean you can realistically expect everyone to. I bet I am coping with my situation better than you would.




Sorry to hear of your struggles, hopefully you will pull through.

I have no issues with anyone that needs to go out going out to get stuff (even board games) or looking for work etc.

what I am talking about is people blatantly exploiting loop holes for their own entertainment, the person I was talking about I know well and speak to at least 3 or 4 times a week, no money issues etc they just are bored and want to go out and socialize.

by the way, their “exercise” today meant they were out for over 5 hours, visited two different peoples houses, and went to the shops just for coffee with a third person.

They just can’t help themselves for some reason, they don’t seem to be able to deal with spending anytime at home, I said “dude read a book” and the response was “yeah, I have some books to read, but I am saving them for winter” , I couldn’t help but laugh.


----------



## qldfrog (18 April 2020)

Sdajii said:


> It's easy for you, and in your circumstances it would be easy for me too. At the other end of the extreme you have someone in my situation. I lost my business, it happened at a really bad time, I have been financially wiped out completely. I was getting set up overseas where my stuff (which I've lost, I arrived in Australia with nothing but hand baggage, didn't even bring my laptop because I was only planning a brief trip), so I've been separated from my stuff (everything from cookware to clothes to books to... everything other than my toothbrush, one book and a few changes of casual summer clothes), my friends, familiar places, my whole way of life, where I live. You have a nice wife to live with, I have just gone from having plenty of girls interested in me and no shortage of dating opportunities to being unable to socialise in a place where I have no intention of staying. I don't own any board games etc. I don't own a bed, I don't have the option of properly storing food in a freezer, etc. I'm experiencing the coldest weather I've been in for quite a few years, and am stuck living with an extremely toxic person, with no option of just going out to get some space. Yes, I can go out for a walk to exercise, I can shop for food with what little money I have, and often spend many hours doing such things, but I literally can't even legally sit down in a park. I never imagined I'd have to consider going on the dole, but I was forced to apply a few weeks ago. They somehow knew that until a few years ago I had a lot of money and a healthy stock portfolio so they rejected my claim. I explained I had spent a few years setting up a business in Asia, and had everything invested in that and because of the situation had lost everything, and they're reviewing it. No one will give me a job, even stocking shelves for minimum wage because they see someone with university qualifications and business history and they (very correctly) figure if they give me a job I'll be off doing something else as soon as I can. People who used to depend on me are doing it super tough and are scared, unable to comprehend that I'm not able to come back. My pets died horrible deaths because I was unable to organise care for them (believe me, I did everything I possibly could, I had someone doing their best to care for them and they had to watch them die and give me updates, it was horrible for everyone involved). I'm lonely in the extreme. My life is a living nightmare.
> 
> It's really lovely to know that people like you are in a position to get through this comfortably. I'm honestly very happy for you, but many people are not in a position to cope so well. My life has gone from absolutely wonderful to a complete and utter nightmare no good person should have to endure. My situation is definitely a lot worse than average, but plenty of people are doing it very tough, some worse than me, and plenty of people through no fault of their own are having a terrible time. Just because you are in a position to cope easily (in your shoes I'd be completely comfortable too) doesn't mean you can realistically expect everyone to. I bet I am coping with my situation better than you would.



Which country where you in, and what are you doing in Australia? Do you have family here?
Imho, now is the time to go back with family if this is an option


----------



## Value Collector (18 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> Well Joe I dont know where you are, but Fri morning I went for a walk on the Mandurah (WA) foreshore and stopped to chat with a group of about 6 oldies.
> Huge spacing about 2 metres between each, well within 5 minutes a Ranger comes up and tells everyone to move on, that was at 6.30 in the morning, no wonder we are reducing the infection rate.




The virus can travel 8 meters, so if you stand there long enough 2 meters might not be enough, especially if you are a funny bunch making each other laugh towards each other, apparently laugh and singing can be nearly as bad as coughing.


----------



## Sdajii (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> Sorry to hear of your struggles, hopefully you will pull through.
> 
> I have no issues with anyone that needs to go out going out to get stuff (even board games) or looking for work etc.
> 
> ...




Yes, people like that are certainly exploiting the rules. I don't agree with the rules, but even in such a bad personal situation I'm following them. I can understand why many people are struggling in various ways though. Solitary isolation is one of the worst forms of human torture, and with many people in extremely bad situations, it's not surprising that some of them won't be following the rules. But yes, some people don't have an excuse and are being irresponsible, I agree.


----------



## Smurf1976 (18 April 2020)

basilio said:


> But if you check out the John Hopkins website the graphs showing the rate of new infections (reported !) for many countries is not good at all..



With reference to this site: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I note that for closed cases the US has a recovery rate of 63% versus Australia's at 98.4%

That's a massive difference and the idea that contracting COVID-19 in the US gives you a 37% chance of death is concerning to say the least.

If that rate continues and the virus continues to spread then the US is heading toward an outright catastrophe it would seem. Even if the death rate halved they'd still be in deep trouble.

Meanwhile the S&P500 is at the same level it was at in August 2019. Whether you consider that to be reasonably valued at the time or not, it seems more reasonable then than it does right now.


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## sptrawler (18 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> The virus can travel 8 meters, so if you stand there long enough 2 meters might not be enough, especially if you are a funny bunch making each other laugh towards each other, apparently laugh and singing can be nearly as bad as coughing.



So why in the shops do they have x marks the spot every 1.5mtrs? Then a big queue and that is in a confined space, as opposed to outdoors.
A degree of common sense has to prevail.
If anyone was coughing, laughing or being in anyway stupid one would walk off.


----------



## Sdajii (18 April 2020)

qldfrog said:


> Which country where you in, and what are you doing in Australia? Do you have family here?
> Imho, now is the time to go back with family if this is an option




I'm a multigeneration white Australian citizen, although I do have a couple of foreign friends stuck in Australia without work visas doing it pretty tough. I was in Asia (long story which I won't get into here) for about 6 years, making a quick visit to my hometown of Melbourne for about 2 weeks each summer for the last 2 or 3 years (I arrived in February, expecting to be back in Asia in early to mid March). My father abandoned me when I was 4 years old and my mother is a toxic person worse than my father who would not be out of character if she literally watched me die rather than allowing herself to be inconvenienced significantly. Unfortunately I'm not blessed with a supportive family. Usually I would have plenty of friends in Australia I could stay with, particularly in NSW and QLD, but sleeping on a friend's couch isn't legal now, and I can't drive across state borders anyway. Just before the lockdown when I was unable to leave the country but still able to travel within it I had generous offers from friends to have me sleep on their couch/spare room, but with very bad work prospects at the moment I couldn't see a clear exit strategy and didn't want to become a long term couch parasite they couldn't get rid of.  I'm confident that I'll somehow claw my way back up, it's not the first time I've been completely down and out. It's probably the most challenging situation to get myself out of that I've ever faced, but I'll get there.


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## Value Collector (19 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> So why in the shops do they have x marks the spot every 1.5mtrs? Then a big queue and that is in a confined space, as opposed to outdoors.
> A degree of common sense has to prevail.
> If anyone was coughing, laughing or being in anyway stupid one would walk off.




Being 1.5 meters away is much safer than being shoulder to shoulder, being 8 meters away in impractical, the 1.5 meter rule is a trade off between risk and practicality.

If you stand 1.5 meters from somebody with the virus for 2 minutes its low risk because the chances that enough virus cells to infect you will drift over to you in that short time is low.

But, if you stand 1.5 meters from them for an hour, it is higher risk because you have exposed your self to the situation for much longer and the chance that enough virus cells to infect you will drift over to you is higher.

There are three main factors at play which are Time, Distance and Shielding.

eg, If you can't increase you Distance from the source, then you should reduce the time of exposure, if you can't reduce the distance or time then you should have shielding (Mask).


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## sptrawler (19 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> Being 1.5 meters away is much safer than being shoulder to shoulder, being 8 meters away in impractical, the 1.5 meter rule is a trade off between risk and practicality.
> 
> If you stand 1.5 meters from somebody with the virus for 2 minutes its low risk because the chances that enough virus cells to infect you will drift over to you in that short time is low.
> 
> ...



You are very much like my wife, everything has a place, everything lines up, the corners need to be sharp.
Your wife must be easy going, like me.


----------



## Value Collector (19 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> You are very much like my wife, everything has a place, everything lines up, the corners need to be sharp.
> Your wife must be easy going, like me.



Hahaha, I am not really a pedantic person, my first posting when I joined the Army was into the CBRR Squadron (Chemical, Biological and Radiological Response Squadron), So I have had a lot of time spent thinking about various things in the past, and had many conversation with the civil scientists that supported us (I have curious mind).


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## sptrawler (19 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> Hahaha, I am not really a pedantic person, my first posting when I joined the Army was into the CBRR Squadron (Chemical, Biological and Radiological Response Squadron), So I have had a lot of time spent thinking about various things in the past, and had many conversation with the civil scientists that supported us (I have curious mind).



Yes my wife won a Commonwealth scholarship for 4th and 5th year, accepted to Monash, from Perth.
Now wont watch any news or current affairs, soduko nut, cross words, 20 books a week, computer jigsaws.
Absolutely normal.


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## tech/a (19 April 2020)

I've been watching lots of discussion since this began.

*This is my opinion.
*
Things are very orderly.
We have had 2 *OUTLIERS *
(1) Covid 19 pandemic while most got hit me included there was time to get out well before the bottom Failure to recognize an outlier is costly
(2) Trillions of Dollars were and are being placed back into world economies so we see a V type recovery ---not a bounce.

The *FUTURE *---- Will be different.
Look for up coming outliers---like 
(1) A treatment
(2) A Vaccine.
(3) Persistently high continuing death tolls---this will have an eroding effect particularly before (1) or (2).

China will see negative growth as the world pulls away from the Chinese dominance in free trade.
This will certainly affect us. Particularly mining.
I see a very long period of slow negative markets to flat markets at the very best.
I think that Stock and commodities on a whole will become boring and very difficult to trade long term as any form of volatility
virtually disappears. (After a treatment or Vaccine) and people ---some--back to the NEW normal---which will be for most existence. 

The effects on the world will continue for a very long time. 
International Travel will be Crucified and will not recover to 2019 type prosperity.
So its becoming clear ---to me --- that innovation will be what Im looking for for investment
I will be looking for short term and long term companies or commodities that will have something that
the world wants.

My thoughts are to watch for *OUTLIERS* and take advantage of them as soon as you recognize them.
They move world markets hard and Fast.

Again Im being brief for clarity.
Much is written---much I discard.
*Outliers* can be seen the rest is *noise.*


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## Tumbarumba (20 April 2020)

I doubt this is anywhere near over inAustralia.
Our normal flu season has yet to hit, ( June to September is normal).
Even before Covid19 there were over 1,100 flu deaths in 2017 and over 900 last year.
People lack sense and are becoming complacent; plus the economic pressure to ease lockdown restrictions will become overriding.
Inadequate protection of our health/care workers will lead to many choosing to put family first.
A vaccine for Corona strains ( Asian flu, bird flu, SARS, Spanish flu etc.) has never been achieved.
I doubt society or financial markets will breakdown, main effect will be deaths in the elderly and immuno compromised and an increase in poverty.
All IMO.


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## PZ99 (20 April 2020)

matty77 said:


> Seems to be countries are starting to get Covid19 under control, is this the start of the end for Covid19 or just the beginning?



Just the beginning. This will drag on for so long that something else will happen in the meantime and we won't know if the "end" had ever happened.



matty77 said:


> Will we see economies start to come back to normal as quarantine is lifted or do people still think it will get worse?



"Normal" will mean something else. For economies - especially ours - to get back to Jan 2020 will take so long that sadly, many of us including me won't be around to see it.


----------



## wayneL (20 April 2020)

tech/a said:


> I've been watching lots of discussion since this began.
> 
> *This is my opinion.
> *
> ...



Exactly.

The stock market, well, large caps anyway, are no longer a true price discovery mechanism. Central Banks are effectively nationalising large companies, rather than letting the market decide their actual current value.

That is the new reality. That in itself is/was an outlier and there were/are opportunities there.

Also I suspect precious metals are also being manipulated.

So outliers to me means looking for opportunities as to what central banks are up to, and others outside that reality. 

The hard part is staying on top of the *real* information flow and disregarding vested interests, propaganda and economic bias.


----------



## jbocker (23 April 2020)

tech/a said:


> China will see negative growth as the world pulls away from the Chinese dominance in free trade.
> This will certainly affect us. Particularly mining.



Agree there will be a move away from China. Maybe our mining will be taken up but many smaller economies as they try to re-establish their own industries to become more self sufficient or initiate manufacturing and infrastructure to become an alternative to China. Australia might take on the challenge and go some way to use our own abundance of raw resources to produce higher valued materials.


----------



## tech/a (23 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> Agree there will be a move away from China. Maybe our mining will be taken up but many smaller economies as they try to re-establish their own industries to become more self sufficient or initiate manufacturing and infrastructure to become an alternative to China. Australia might take on the challenge and go some way to use our own abundance of raw resources to produce higher valued materials.




I think demand will remain

How it’s filled will alter
This will take many years to filter to a new normality

Emerging economies like India Africa well also be affected.

lots of variants


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## Dona Ferentes (23 April 2020)

tech/a said:


> The *FUTURE *---- Will be different.
> Look for up coming outliers---like
> (1) A treatment
> (2) A Vaccine.
> (3) Persistently high continuing death tolls---



& perhaps a *fourth*; mutating virus.

(Spanish flu had three goes; most deaths from the second wave)


----------



## sptrawler (23 April 2020)

Dona Ferentes said:


> & perhaps a *fourth*; mutating virus.
> 
> (Spanish flu had three goes; most deaths from the second wave)



I tend to agree with you Donna, as was said earlier the virus has yet to run its course in Africa yet, I wont breath easy untill it is eradicated there. There are some horrible things it could mutate with there, hopefully a vaccine is found, before a mutation occurs.


----------



## jbocker (23 April 2020)

OK I got no idea here, but if we sell a Australian natural resource in Australia to another Australian company to produce something, Is a royalty still paid to the govt?
If it were why would we do that, couldn't we get rid of that tax (and while we are at it a few others) to help rebuild some manufacturing like some steel production?
We can get the tax back selling exports and some from wages. A working person pays a wage tax and not take a support benefit. A double wammy.


----------



## qldfrog (23 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> OK I got no idea here, but if we sell a Australian natural resource in Australia to another Australian company to produce something, Is a royalty still paid to the govt?
> If it were why would we do that, couldn't we get rid of that tax (and while we are at it a few others) to help rebuild some manufacturing like some steel production?
> We can get the tax back selling exports and some from wages. A working person pays a wage tax and not take a support benefit. A double wammy.



You understand this is actually the opposite of the wishes of roughly 45 to 50% of the population .
Less tax, and so less benefits, more work and less dependencies on redistribution, more rich and successful people here. Current labour platform is decimated
But fully supporting the idea for the sake of our children


----------



## Dona Ferentes (23 April 2020)

Results just released regarding the incidence of corona virus amongst the c


sptrawler said:


> I tend to agree with you Donna, as was said earlier the virus has yet to run its course in Africa yet, I wont breath easy untill it is eradicated there. There are some horrible things it could mutate with there, hopefully a vaccine is found, before a mutation occurs.



what gets me is there are now UN calls to "help Africa". The kleptocrats will have a field day


> Many Nigerians gloat that Covid-19 is mainly targeting the country's elite, particularly politicians, despite warnings that the life-threatening respiratory illness could hit the poor as well. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has recorded more than 600 cases since the end of February - *most of them people who had been abroad*, and those they had interacted with after their return to Africa's most-populous state, which has a population of about 200 million.





> So far, Nigeria's list of people who got or have died from Covid-19 includes President Muhammadu Buhari's chief of staff, politicians, heads of government agencies, former ambassadors and their aides or relatives. These are the kind of people who normally jet off to the UK, Germany, or the US at the slightest headache because Nigeria's state hospitals are poorly funded, run-down, and lack adequate equipment.


----------



## jbocker (23 April 2020)

qldfrog said:


> You understand this is actually the opposite of the wishes of roughly 45 to 50% of the population .
> Less tax, and so less benefits, more work and less dependencies on redistribution, more rich and successful people here. Current labour platform is decimated
> But fully supporting the idea for the sake of our children



Times are changing, I think and hope we might want to start rebuilding a labour base. A technologically skilled labour base moving on from the hammer and sledge that we left many years ago. The issue may be that we actually get through the virus without as much pain that will drive that change. Or we choose do something different, eg invest in tourism building towns and resorts, we hopefully be seen as a safe country to holiday in.
We cannot stay the same because the rest of the world wont.


----------



## qldfrog (23 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> We cannot stay the same because the rest of the world wont.


----------



## Dona Ferentes (24 April 2020)

Financial Times and other media reported that remdesivir, a Gilead Sciences drug, “flopped” in its first randomized, clinical trial. Gilead shares dropped 4.3 per cent and were briefly halted for volatility.


----------



## Smurf1976 (24 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> OK I got no idea here, but if we sell a Australian natural resource in Australia to another Australian company to produce something, Is a royalty still paid to the govt?
> If it were why would we do that, couldn't we get rid of that tax (and while we are at it a few others) to help rebuild some manufacturing like some steel production?
> We can get the tax back selling exports and some from wages. A working person pays a wage tax and not take a support benefit. A double wammy.




As a broad concept it's not hugely far removed from the idea of government supplying utilities at cost, no profit, and seeing the benefit as developing business and putting people into work rather than gaining any direct profit from the power / water / gas / railways / roads etc as such.

That model is the one which was key to establishing large scale manufacturing in Australia in the first place and its abandonment has played at least some role in the decline.


----------



## InsvestoBoy (24 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> As a broad concept it's not hugely far removed from the idea of government supplying utilities at cost, no profit, and seeing the benefit as developing business and putting people into work rather than gaining any direct profit from the power / water / gas / railways / roads etc as such.
> 
> That model is the one which was key to establishing large scale manufacturing in Australia in the first place and its abandonment has played at least some role in the decline.




To my personal view, the abandonment of such strategy was essentially a massive stripmining style crime perpetuated by Government and various oligopolists.

I'd say we should bring it back, but on this forum that is as good as claiming yourself a member of the Stalin Appreciation Club.


----------



## matty77 (24 April 2020)

I have no issue if the Government runs necessary infrastructure and services, as long as they are investing to keep it modern and world competitive, don't burn or waste money or rip off its customers and run it at zero profit. But alas we know no government could do this..


----------



## qldfrog (24 April 2020)

US study confirms moisture and temperature kills the virus:
The warmer and more humid it is, the lower the transmission
Which is NOT good news for Australia in the coming months..and may derail many plans.


----------



## Dona Ferentes (24 April 2020)

qldfrog said:


> US study confirms moisture and temperature kills the virus:
> The warmer and more humid it is, the lower the transmission
> Which is NOT good news for Australia in the coming months...



I don't like this.
....and may cause many resets. (To an uncomprehending  population)


----------



## Smurf1976 (24 April 2020)

matty77 said:


> I have no issue if the Government runs necessary infrastructure and services, as long as they are investing to keep it modern and world competitive, don't burn or waste money or rip off its customers and run it at zero profit.



It's off the subject of this thread but I'll simply say that it's the structure of such things which is crucial far more than who the actual owners are.

Scale is the key, lose that and you're stuffed.


----------



## sptrawler (24 April 2020)

InsvestoBoy said:


> To my personal view, the abandonment of such strategy was essentially a massive stripmining style crime perpetuated by Government and various oligopolists.
> 
> I'd say we should bring it back, but on this forum that is as good as claiming yourself a member of the Stalin Appreciation Club.



Several of us over the years on the forum, have derided the signing of the Lima agreement in the 1970's and bemoan the fact that governments abandoned the belief they were there as a training ground for our youth.
It was a conscious decision by Government, to stop using their facilities i.e power stations, water authorities, railway departments, to train apprentices, cadet draftsmen, engineers etc.
The Government deemed it wasn't the taxpayers responsibility, to pay for all the training and then the private sector to poach them when they were through training.
Well that has to go down as another monumental F%$k up, the problem is as with the education system, no one wants to admit that it needs to go back.
The wheel was round when we started, now it is a weird shape, but come hell or high water they don't want to go back to round.
Weird world.


----------



## Value Collector (24 April 2020)

jbocker said:


> OK I got no idea here, but if we sell a Australian natural resource in Australia to another Australian company to produce something, Is a royalty still paid to the govt?
> If it were why would we do that, couldn't we get rid of that tax (and while we are at it a few others) to help rebuild some manufacturing like some steel production?
> We can get the tax back selling exports and some from wages. A working person pays a wage tax and not take a support benefit. A double wammy.




The royalty is a pretty small part of the cost of the product, it’s like 6% and it’s fair way of compensating the Australian people across the board for their natural resources being consumed.

Sure if you live in a town that where a steel mill got built, you might benefit from the government giving away Australia’s resources for free, but the benefits would drop dramatically as you moved away from that steel mill.

There is also the problem that Australia has a limited supply of investment capital and Labour available, artificially diverting this Labour and capital into industries that require ongoing subsidy to survive is taking that Labour and capital away from other industries where it may be better employed.


----------



## Value Collector (24 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> It's off the subject of this thread but I'll simply say that it's the structure of such things which is crucial far more than who the actual owners are.
> 
> Scale is the key, lose that and you're stuffed.




yep, look at Berkshire Hathaway energy, privately owned for profit and in many locations hasn’t risen rates for 10+ years, and supplies cheaper electricity and gas than the state owned businesses just across the river.


----------



## Smurf1976 (24 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> Sure if you live in a town that where a steel mill got built, you might benefit from the government giving away Australia’s resources for free, but the benefits would drop dramatically as you moved away from that steel mill.



However limited the benefits of the mill are, they're an order of magnitude greater than the benefits of the mine.

It varies between minerals but take $5 - $20 worth of ore and turn it into $100 worth of metal is the basic concept.

To the extent there's no benefit in doing so, there's even less benefit in mining it in the first place since that depletes the resource for a very low gain. At least the mill employs and brings in $$$ export revenue far more than a mine does.


----------



## sptrawler (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> .
> 
> There is also the problem that Australia has a limited supply of investment capital and Labour available, artificially diverting this Labour and capital into industries that require ongoing subsidy to survive is taking that Labour and capital away from other industries where it may be better employed.



We also can only support a limited amount of baristas and uber drivers.
When Australian mines were first exploited in a major way in the 1960's, a condition for the pricing of their royalties was the establishment of towns and value added industries, this has been eroded away and everyone is sleepwalking into the third world IMO
For example from my memory, BHP were given concessions on iron ore royalties in W.A, on the understanding they would build a blast furnace and steel rolling mill at Kwinana, also a steel furnace was to be built by about 1980.
Well from memory the steel furnace requirement was waived and within a year the furnace and 1500 jobs were gone.
Now we are raping the NW of W.A and the Eastern States are riding the wave, it will be a sad day when the wave crashes IMO.


----------



## Smurf1976 (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> yep, look at Berkshire Hathaway energy, privately owned for profit and in many locations hasn’t risen rates for 10+ years, and supplies cheaper electricity and gas than the state owned businesses just across the river.




Competition does drive efficiency, no question there, but so does scale. 

It's a concept that tends to be poorly understood by both sides of the debate. Those with an economics background invariably gravitate toward the "competitive tension" argument and those with an engineering or other technical background generally go straight to the "scale of economy" argument.

Both are correct as such but in any given situation one will be more significant than the other. Rationally it makes sense to pick which is best for any given industry but in Australia we do have a cultural thing which is reluctant to ever embrace the monopoly concept even where it makes sense.

A proper review of all that sort of thing would resolve the long outstanding concerns and improve Australia's competitiveness as part of the way forward post Covid-19. Given the circumstances, I don't think we can afford to ignore any opportunities at all really.


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## sptrawler (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> yep, look at Berkshire Hathaway energy, privately owned for profit and in many locations hasn’t risen rates for 10+ years, and supplies cheaper electricity and gas than the state owned businesses just across the river.



Yes and we very nearly bought into a renewable energy project at huge cost, that Berkshire Hathaway were burnt badly on, so just name dropping isn't in itself a recipe for success.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...plant-was-obsolete-before-it-ever-went-online
The S.A government was sold on this technology and a thesis on how Australia could be fully renewable by 2020, was built on this technology and held up to ridicule mainstream power generation.
I'm not saying the process doesn't have merit, but to base the major part of your argument on its ability to replace fossil fuel, is somewhat presumptuous.
Also to compare the U.S to Australia with regard power generation is comparing apples with oranges, the U.S is a big Country with a huge differences to Australia.
Actually IMO many of Australia's problems have arisen from management buying off the shelf U.S products, to justify their own KPI pay rises, when in actual fact it has resulted in a worse outcome for the business and in some case Australia in general.
Competency standards is an example IMO.


----------



## Smurf1976 (25 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> Yes and we very nearly bought into a renewable energy project at huge cost, that Berkshire Hathaway were burnt badly on, so just name dropping isn't in itself a recipe for success.




Agreed although the context of my comment is far broader than power or indeed any one industry.

I'm seeing that the recent Australian economic model of immigration, tourism, bulk minerals and education exports really does seem to be coming into serious question now, even the current government is making utterances to that effect, so the question is where do we go next?

If we're going to do any sort of large scale manufacturing, either old tech (eg steel) or high tech, then it's a given that we're going to need efficient and cost competitive transport, energy, water, communications etc and a the ability to appropriately skill the workforce. 

So I'm really thinking two steps ahead here. Not just "what do we do next?" but "what needs to happen to enable that?".


----------



## sptrawler (25 April 2020)

It really is a back to the future IMO.
We had everything in place, it was dismantled, it needs to be rebuilt and Im not just talking about physical infrastructure.
It is about rebuilding quality education rather than quantity, it is about demanding mining companies put skin in the game, rather than just talking employment while at the same time trying to minimise employment and maximise material extraction at minimal cost.
Anyway hopefully people wake up.


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## Value Collector (25 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> However limited the benefits of the mill are, they're an order of magnitude greater than the benefits of the mine.
> 
> It varies between minerals but take $5 - $20 worth of ore and turn it into $100 worth of metal is the basic concept.
> 
> To the extent there's no benefit in doing so, there's even less benefit in mining it in the first place since that depletes the resource for a very low gain. At least the mill employs and brings in $$$ export revenue far more than a mine does.




I think your math is a bit off there, you are confusing a few things.

Iron Ore can be mined for $20 and sold for $80+ that is a fairly healthy profit margin (larger than any steel mill) from this the Australian government gets -

6% of the $80+ Revenue as royalty.
30% of the mining company’s profits
Tax on the workers share of the $20 cost.

The steel mills profit margin is much smaller it pays $80+ for the ore, plus Coal + Dolomite + other stuff and sells the final steel product for a small mark up, or sometimes a loss.

Now, the suggestion was maybe if the government gave up their 6% royalty, the local steel Mill would gain a cost advantage and the industry would thrive, that maybe true or it may not be true, but would the 6% loss of revenue be offset by extra income generated by the steel mill?

I don’t think it would, the effects would be marginal at best, and you would be taking capital and Labour away from industries that perhaps have much larger profit margins, or provide even more jobs and value added products.


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## Value Collector (25 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> Yes and we very nearly bought into a renewable energy project at huge cost, that Berkshire Hathaway were burnt badly on, so just name dropping isn't in itself a recipe for success.
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...plant-was-obsolete-before-it-ever-went-online
> The S.A government was sold on this technology and a thesis on how Australia could be fully renewable by 2020, was built on this technology and held up to ridicule mainstream power generation.
> I'm not saying the process doesn't have merit, but to base the major part of your argument on its ability to replace fossil fuel, is somewhat presumptuous.
> ...




Berkshire Hathaway bought Nevada energy after that solar plant was built.

But if you want to see a well run energy business, do some reading on Berkshire Hathaway energy, and listen to some interviews with its CEO Greg Able.


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## Value Collector (25 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> We also can only support a limited amount of baristas and uber drivers.
> When Australian mines were first exploited in a major way in the 1960's, a condition for the pricing of their royalties was the establishment of towns and value added industries, this has been eroded away and everyone is sleepwalking into the third world IMO
> For example from my memory, BHP were given concessions on iron ore royalties in W.A, on the understanding they would build a blast furnace and steel rolling mill at Kwinana, also a steel furnace was to be built by about 1980.
> Well from memory the steel furnace requirement was waived and within a year the furnace and 1500 jobs were gone.
> Now we are raping the NW of W.A and the Eastern States are riding the wave, it will be a sad day when the wave crashes IMO.




We produce a lot of value added products China wants, Just look at your FB feed and you will see a million people screaming bloody murder at the site of Chinese buyers stripping the shelves of baby formula, vitamins, and other stuff.

Beyond resources (which produce billions in wages, royalties, Dividends and taxes), we have heaps of opportunities for expanding exports of high margin value added products. 

As I said though these industries all consume Capital and Labour, which are both in short supply in Australia.

And a loud bunch of Australians seem to Hate the Idea of 

1, Selling products to China because “They are buying all our stuff the bastards”

2, foreign investment to expand Australian production because “that means they will take all our profits”

3, investing their own money “investing in businesses is risky”


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## Smurf1976 (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> The steel mills profit margin is much smaller it pays $80+ for the ore, plus Coal + Dolomite + other stuff and sells the final steel product for a small mark up, or sometimes a loss.




Ultimately if you're selling a $200 product versus an equal volume of a $10 product, and it's about that ratio for some metals such as aluminium (varies a bit with prices obviously), then that money is coming into the country from overseas. Whether it's going to workers, contractors, suppliers, shareholders, government (taxes) or whoever, ultimately it's bringing far more wealth into the community. _Someone_ is benefiting.

The way I'm looking at it in the context of the thread is that the "business as usual" economic model has run aground and it's going to really struggle going forward. Tourism, education, iron ore, coal - none of those are really likely to go to new highs anytime soon.

So the next plan is ???

I'm not saying it has to be making steel or anything else specific but as a concept we're going to have to change that seems virtually certain. So my thinking is where does the future lie? And how do we invest in it both at an individual level and as a society?

Even though I have knowledge relating to such things, I don't have any particular agenda that the way forward needs to involve electric arc furnaces, potlines and transmission lines everywhere. I mean that might be part of it, or it might not, but I do think the future is going to be different to the recent past which has basically been little more than an extension of the 1980's until very recently. The COVID-19 crisis has shown the vulnerabilities of that approach pretty clearly and other issues such as climate change also threaten it so change seems inevitable.


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## qldfrog (25 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Agreed although the context of my comment is far broader than power or indeed any one industry.
> 
> I'm seeing that the recent Australian economic model of immigration, tourism, bulk minerals and education exports really does seem to be coming into serious question now, even the current government is making utterances to that effect, so the question is where do we go next?
> 
> ...



And do not forget an efficient taxation and regulatory system
While gov can do big items you mention, only small companies can be nimble enough to act fast and leverage these into niches of excellence.but that last part can only happen in a freer tax/regulation model
Most if not all IT government projects are abject failure for a reason: bid winners are regulation expert, not domain ones.
It is all good to spray money around.. and my company will benefit, but it means the payback.taxes will disproportionately hit the successful at the restart.
What is the future of a farm where you cull your best breeders?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...KEAQ&usg=AOvVaw1dn7TNLvXw0Kr6N48iDLhJ&ampcf=1


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## InsvestoBoy (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> 30% of the mining company’s profits




ha ha, good joke.


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## jbocker (25 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> 1, Selling products to China because “They are buying all our stuff the bastards”



I think the 'bastards' are the ones stripping the shelves meant for the local supply. I think the VAST majority don't have an issue with selling to China.


Value Collector said:


> 2, foreign investment to expand Australian production because “that means they will take all our profits”



Good points on our shortages and we do need their money I understand foreign investment is needed but we have to take care at the level of ownership, where we no longer own the companies we develop. Then of course they will take all our profits and fill the boards and jobs too. We also need to be aware that we have let foreign companies in because we need them (sometimes). I think of Virgin how Aussie was that ever (I don't know I am hoping I picked a relevant example). Why Virgin and not QANTAS expansion which has to be a minimum 51% Aussie owned.


Value Collector said:


> 3, investing their own money “investing in businesses is risky”



 I have had a crack at a lot of these and done _some _dough, but I feel happy to have had a crack, I am still hopeful that one will repay my overall investment. We just have to keep having a go and back ourselves.
There is some merit in what the loud are saying, its always been about finding middle ground, and to be honest I think we have punched above our weight from both sides to get there. It is no wonder We have such a great place to live, albeit we need to work hard and keep this The Lucky country


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## IFocus (25 April 2020)

In regards to the mill discussion remember that the skills / technology required for running that business are much higher than for mining, this adds value for other bushiness requiring those skills as people move around.

When the motor industry closed that was the end of 40,000 plus skilled workers that bled into the wider economy plus training paths for our young no longer available 

The answer was to run 457 visas and condemn our youth to making coffees.


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## Smurf1976 (25 April 2020)

IFocus said:


> In regards to the mill discussion remember that the skills / technology required for running that business are much higher than for mining, this adds value for other bushiness requiring those skills as people move around.



Yep.

Go to any such town or city and it's always the same story. Go to just about any other workplace and yep, they know full well that by whatever means they're making money from the mill. They sell them something or they're a contractor or their main customers are the mill employees or whatever. Even though their business is vastly different, ultimately their money's largely coming from the mill as is everyone else's.


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## Value Collector (26 April 2020)

InsvestoBoy said:


> ha ha, good joke.




What do you mean, are you saying mining companies don't pay company Tax?

BHP and RIO have been in the Top 10 company tax payers in Australia pretty consistently for years with only a few down years, and FMG is not far behind them, and the top 40 list has many other mining companies on there also.

FMG for example last year paid almost 3 times the amount in company tax than it did in royalties on the Iron ore it mined.


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## InsvestoBoy (26 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> What do you mean, are you saying mining companies don't pay company Tax?




Some pay more, some pay less, some pay none.

I don't believe, given tax avoidance strategies employed, Government subsidy to reduce taxable income, etc that the effective rate for mining companies as an aggregate sector is 30%. The Australia Institute estimates 14%.

Michael West is one of AUs few remaining independent journalists and every year for the last five years he digs into the tax transparency data released by the ATO, mining companies are at the top of the list.



> BHP and RIO have been in the Top 10 company tax payers in Australia pretty consistently for years with only a few down years, and FMG is not far behind them, and the top 40 list has many other mining companies on there also.




Is this the same BHP that lost in court case to the ATO over (oh, I'm sorry, settled without admitting fault) over a decade of tax avoidance schemes using their Singapore marketing hub?

Or Rio that got hit with the same thing?

Not to mention the multinationals, especially Exxon and Chevron, who have not paid a dime in tax in five years and the ATO has won cases against to claw back tax from avoidance schemes, Shell who the ATO is still chasing for $750m and Glencore that the High Court crushed their attempt to hide all their tax avoidance using offshore law firms in the Panama Papers?



> FMG for example last year paid almost 3 times the amount in company tax than it did in royalties on the Iron ore it mined.




FMG is a company founded in 2003 that in 2011 told the Senate that they had *never *paid corporate tax. Sure glad they are finally paying something now.

Don't even get me started on royalties. I think the approach our country has taken is a joke compared to Norway who has a $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund and *78% tax rate* on oil companies.


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## qldfrog (26 April 2020)

A common trick by mining company is to include royalties among the taxes paid in their PR;
Same as a restaurant pretending that all the produce, meat, food they use was taxes.
Royalties as they are are a true robbery of Australians by miners.
Mostly wasted, lost forever and destroyed resources for a quick buck; recovery is never the KPI, profit is and usually with a very short vision.


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## Value Collector (26 April 2020)

InsvestoBoy said:


> Some pay more, some pay less, some pay none.
> 
> I don't believe, given tax avoidance strategies employed, Government subsidy to reduce taxable income, etc that the effective rate for mining companies as an aggregate sector is 30%. The Australia Institute estimates 14%.
> 
> ...




In regards to Fmg, ofcourse they aren’t going to pay tax during the construction and expansion phase of building their assets, expenditure is guaranteed To mean there is no Profits for a long while.

In regards to tax avoidance, well BHP and RIO are still the some of the largest payers of company tax, but ofcourse there will be squabbles around the edges.

If any company is found to be purposefully avoiding tax, I would have no issue with revoking mining leases, a company avoiding tax isn’t an argument against the system, it’s an arguement for better enforcement of the law.


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## InsvestoBoy (26 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> In regards to Fmg, ofcourse they aren’t going to pay tax during the construction and expansion phase of building their assets, expenditure is guaranteed To mean there is no Profits for a long while.




Very nice for FMG to be able to carry forward losses indefinitely while they ship the ore to China where there is a hard 5 year limit on carrying forward losses.



> If any company is found to be purposefully avoiding tax, I would have no issue with revoking mining leases, a company avoiding tax isn’t an argument against the system, it’s an arguement for better enforcement of the law.




Who's arguing against the system? I was laughing when you said miners pay 30% and you took that as me saying they pay no tax?


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## Value Collector (26 April 2020)

InsvestoBoy said:


> Very nice for FMG to be able to carry forward losses indefinitely while they ship the ore to China where there is a hard 5 year limit on carrying forward losses.




I take it you haven't followed FMG closely over the years, you do understand that they were constructing huge amounts of infrastructure that involved 4 large mines, a massive rail network, port and all the associated infrastructure, and their early production was very high cost.

How can you expect them to be generating enough profit to pay tax from the trickle of Iron that only ramped up towards the very end of you stated time frame, when they are spending huge amounts in expansion efforts that offset all the profits, They were taking on more debt every year over that period



> Who's arguing against the system? I was laughing when you said miners pay 30% and you took that as me saying they pay no tax?




Ok, you must have missed the original intent of my comment.

I wasn't making a factual statement that all mining companies pay 30% of their profits in tax.

I was describing the basic outline of how the system model should work, and the potential revenues made in mining vs operating steel mills.

If you want to enter the conversation half way through and try to distract from my original point by suggesting that currently some miners might get away with paying less than 30% tax, That isn't an argument against the point I was making, and of course the steel mills I was comparing the mining model to would be just as capable of tax avoidance.

My basic premise was that currently Iron ore mining is capable of generating significantly more revenues than operating steel mills.


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## Smurf1976 (26 April 2020)

Value Collector said:


> My basic premise was that currently Iron ore mining is capable of generating significantly more revenues than operating steel mills.



It may generate more tax revenue to government under current policy arrangements but assuming an equal volume of ore in either case, there's no way that processing it on shore in Australia can result in less revenue to the community as a whole if the plant is located anywhere in Australia and employs Australians and so on.

Taking ore mined in the NT and Queensland and shipping it to Tasmania for processing, as presently occurs on a significant scale, in no way reduces the value of the ore but the processing is pumping rather a lot of money through the Tasmanian economy in addition to that which arises to the NT and Qld from the mining. 

Likewise Singapore importing crude oil and exporting refined products isn't losing from the deal that's for sure. 

Whether or not it generates tax revenue to government, turning $10 into $100 certainly adds revenue to the community overall. Every worker, contractor, supplier etc involved is getting a portion of that added value.


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## sptrawler (26 April 2020)

From memory Royalties on iron ore is still 25cents per ton, as it was in the 1960s, Brendon Grylls an ex mp from WA was trying to get it raised to $5 per ton in 2017, but the mining lobby spent a couple of million on advertising.
He lost his seat.
Priceless.
So VC $20/ton, sell for $80/ ton, minus royalties 25cents and whatever tax we can get them to pay.lol
Great gig if you can get it.
Building a better Australia?


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## sptrawler (27 April 2020)

Hopefully the royalties will be investigated in Morrison's clean slate review, because in reality the only thing of value we are selling is resources, so that is what is paying for our lifestyle.
Unless we get fair return for it, we can't build a sustainable economy, we are just kicking the can down the road untill the resources run out.
Our advantage is we have the cheapest recovery rates in the world for resources, if we don't tax that advantage and use the money to invest in value adding, we do become a third world nation, not a matter of if but when.
Simple really, sooner or later the low cost resources are gone, then we become a high cost recovery resource.
Don't forget China has iron ore, the only problem is it is 1km underground, eventually ours will be then they wont be mining ours.


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## sptrawler (27 April 2020)

Just in case someone wants to poo pah what I've said, found a link, here you go.
https://www.watoday.com.au/national...hting-brendon-grylls-tax-20170208-gu8iz7.html

Clever Australia, I think not, the political parties thrash around in the $hit pit trying to find another pleb to suck money out of.
The problem is eventually they run out of pleb donors, Brendon Grylls was on the money.


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## Value Collector (27 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> It may generate more tax revenue to government under current policy arrangements but assuming an equal volume of ore in either case, there's no way that processing it on shore in Australia can result in less revenue to the community as a whole if the plant is located anywhere in Australia and employs Australians and so on.
> 
> Taking ore mined in the NT and Queensland and shipping it to Tasmania for processing, as presently occurs on a significant scale, in no way reduces the value of the ore but the processing is pumping rather a lot of money through the Tasmanian economy in addition to that which arises to the NT and Qld from the mining.
> 
> ...




Yes, of course producing steel here or any other processing would generate more revenue, but that is not the point.

The point is given the amount of capital we would need to invest to increase steel or other output, would the extra revenue they produce justify the capital outlay, or would that capital be better used in other ways, because capital is not unlimited.

At the moment shareholders capital deployed in mining can pretty easily produce 15%+ returns, while also producing significant Tax revenues for the government.

I don't think even the best most efficient steel mills in china beat a 15% return.

Alternative uses for or limited capital are likely to have all the benefits of steel mill and oil processing, but can deliver higher returns, if these other industries did offer decent returns the market would naturally push capital in that direction.


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## Value Collector (27 April 2020)

sptrawler said:


> From memory Royalties on iron ore is still 25cents per ton, as it was in the 1960s, Brendon Grylls an ex mp from WA was trying to get it raised to $5 per ton in 2017, but the mining lobby spent a couple of million on advertising.
> He lost his seat.
> Priceless.
> So VC $20/ton, sell for $80/ ton, minus royalties 25cents and whatever tax we can get them to pay.lol
> ...




You have been mislead by poor journalism.

Iron ore royalty is 7.5% in WA + the $0.25 rent so on $80 it would be $6.25 not $0.25.

Think about it, why else would the WA government be concerned about the Iron price dropping if the royalty was fixed, the only reason so mollies wanted to raise  the rent was because the Iron ore price had dropped, and so their revenue had dropped, I would be in favour of increasing the fixed portion as long as they reduced the % component too.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10...ed-why-are-rio-tinto-and-bhp-targeted/7908544

Over $5 Billion in Iron ore royalties were paid last year, if they were only paying 25 cents a tonne that would be 20 Billion Tonnes, which is more ore than has been mined in the last 30 Years.


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## Junior (27 April 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> It may generate more tax revenue to government under current policy arrangements but assuming an equal volume of ore in either case, there's no way that processing it on shore in Australia can result in less revenue to the community as a whole if the plant is located anywhere in Australia and employs Australians and so on.
> 
> Taking ore mined in the NT and Queensland and shipping it to Tasmania for processing, as presently occurs on a significant scale, in no way reduces the value of the ore but the processing is pumping rather a lot of money through the Tasmanian economy in addition to that which arises to the NT and Qld from the mining.
> 
> ...




...and every worker pays income tax, contractors pay company tax, GST etc. etc.  that revenue circulates here rather than giving away a big chunk of it offshore.


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## Value Collector (27 April 2020)

Junior said:


> ...and every worker pays income tax, contractors pay company tax, GST etc. etc.  that revenue circulates here rather than giving away a big chunk of it offshore.




Just as it would in any other industry that capital could flow to, rather than being tied up in one that produced little return on capital.

Once again my argument is not that we would increase national income (from all the sources mentioned) if we made huge capital investments in steel mills or oil refineries, my argument is that the huge amounts of capital are better used else where in other parts of the economic web of industry.

but hey, no one is stopping anyone rounding up investors and building these types of projects.


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## qldfrog (1 May 2020)

Week after week we are told about nearly there cure or vaccine
Yesterday, Gilead drug was in the new
I copied an extract of their trial result analysis
*A separate trial looked at the length of treatment*
In the study, most patients who received the five-day regimen were considered "improved" after 10 days. Those who received a 10-day course of therapy showed improvement after 11 days.

After two weeks, more than half the patients in both groups had been discharged from the hospital, and 64.5 per cent in the five-day treatment group and 53.8 per cent in the 10-day treatment group had recovered.
++++++++
Yes the earlier you stop the treatment, the better the patients...
Which improves at best 30pc of treatment
I think the only real result we have is that patients are not killed by the drugs....as long as they do not use it  for too long
That drug is what the US is banking on to sort the problem...well maybe that thread is a bit too early still.
We might stay stranded on our island a bit longer than many plan.

And before getting a red rob arguing at length my conclusions, what the trial shows is ..not much and statistically inconclusive.
The chinese initial trials did not find any advantage either, but the manufacturer is obviously not going to stop there.


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## Knobby22 (1 May 2020)

It doesn't work. It was known it didn't work a month ago. Big Pharma can make  lot of money if it can get approval. It annoys me resources are being spent on this when there are other more promising alternatives.


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## qldfrog (1 May 2020)

Knobby22 said:


> It doesn't work. It was known it didn't work a month ago. Big Pharma can make  lot of money if it can get approval. It annoys me resources are being spent on this when there are other more promising alternatives.



I agree and just want ASF people who read promising headlines realise the vacuum these great news are based on.


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## Dona Ferentes (8 May 2020)

Now we're entering a three stage pathway out of lockdown, there's a good interview with Peter Doherty in the AFR
https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury...el-prize-and-i-don-t-give-a-s-20200506-p54qhb
_Despite the sense from Doherty that we have dodged a massive bullet, he refuses to confirm we have passed the worst._


> "Once we start lifting these restrictions we will see," he says. "We will see if it's just at a level where we see spot fires and we'll be able to quench them. On the other hand, it could flare because it is so infectious.





> "The meat works and the construction industry have been out there as an experiment because we never closed them down."





> "That's the sort of thing where if we see a flare-up and contain it we are in good shape. On the other hand, if we get multiple flare-ups and get more widespread cases in the community, the worst case is you would have to shut down again, which would be disastrous".


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## Smurf1976 (10 May 2020)

Value Collector said:


> Once again my argument is not that we would increase national income (from all the sources mentioned) if we made huge capital investments in steel mills or oil refineries, my argument is that the huge amounts of capital are better used else where in other parts of the economic web of industry.



If we actually did invest in something else then I agree with you.

If it's a steelworks versus blowing another housing bubble though well then the steelworks at least brings in some real wealth.


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## Smurf1976 (10 May 2020)

Dona Ferentes said:


> Despite the sense from Doherty that we have dodged a massive bullet, he refuses to confirm we have passed the worst.



I claim no expertise on viruses but it seems logical that having extensive lockdowns during autumn is a somewhat more favourable situation than lesser lockdowns during winter so I think the uncertainty does seem warranted. 

It would be premature for anyone to be thinking this is all over in my view. All you can really say with certainty is that if you need to get out and about and get things done, whatever, well then doing so right now is probably wise. The old "make hay while the sun shines" line of thought - further improvement will be slow but there's some chance we see things go backwards.


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## Value Collector (10 May 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> If we actually did invest in something else then I agree with you.
> 
> If it's a steelworks versus blowing another housing bubble though well then the steelworks at least brings in some real wealth.




We are investing in other things large and small, right across the economy.


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## Smurf1976 (10 May 2020)

Value Collector said:


> We are investing in other things large and small, right across the economy.



I don't disagree but I also don't see why both can't be done.

It's not as though capital is scarce. It's so abundant that the problem has been finding somewhere to put it all hence the "everything bubble". It's like air or sunlight, there's so much of it that there's no need to ration it out.


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## Garpal Gumnut (10 May 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> I claim no expertise on viruses but it seems logical that having extensive lockdowns during autumn is a somewhat more favourable situation than lesser lockdowns during winter so I think the uncertainty does seem warranted.
> 
> It would be premature for anyone to be thinking this is all over in my view. All you can really say with certainty is that if you need to get out and about and get things done, whatever, well then doing so right now is probably wise. The old "make hay while the sun shines" line of thought - further improvement will be slow but there's some chance we see things go backwards.





Smurf1976 said:


> I claim no expertise on viruses but it seems logical that having extensive lockdowns during autumn is a somewhat more favourable situation than lesser lockdowns during winter so I think the uncertainty does seem warranted.
> 
> It would be premature for anyone to be thinking this is all over in my view. All you can really say with certainty is that if you need to get out and about and get things done, whatever, well then doing so right now is probably wise. The old "make hay while the sun shines" line of thought - further improvement will be slow but there's some chance we see things go backwards.




I'd be getting on with it. A contact in S.Korea tells me they have had over 30 cases in the last 24 hours after nearly 2 weeks with none. This was due in the main to lifting restrictions. 


Build a bridge
Cheat on your missus
Erect an edifice
Before it is too late.

gg


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## qldfrog (10 May 2020)

Garpal Gumnut said:


> I'd be getting on with it. A contact in S.Korea tells me they have had over 30 cases in the last 24 hours after nearly 2 weeks with none. This was due in the main to lifting restrictions.
> 
> 
> Build a bridge
> ...



I like your bucket list GG


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## Value Collector (10 May 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> I don't disagree but I also don't see why both can't be done.
> 
> It's not as though capital is scarce. It's so abundant that the problem has been finding somewhere to put it all hence the "everything bubble". It's like air or sunlight, there's so much of it that there's no need to ration it out.




there is definitely limits to Australian capital.


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## Smurf1976 (11 May 2020)

Value Collector said:


> there is definitely limits to Australian capital.




There may well be but looking at the amount shoved into inflating the price of the same houses we already had, all we'd need to have done would be to take a few % of that to fund just about anything else we could possibly need.

I've nothing against business making a profit and so on, but I'd much rather see a diverse and reasonably higher value economy than one which relies on resource extraction and low value services. There's a role for that, but of itself it's not enough. Those sorts of things always involve competing against the Third World countries, as evidenced by the suggestion that China could buy from elsewhere, and exist at the mercy of the buyers. 

It's much the same as someone with nothing to offer other than manual labour is almost always in a weak negotiating position with an employer. In contrast, the further someone goes down the intellectual and value added track, the stronger their bargaining position tends to become.


----------



## sptrawler (11 May 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> It's much the same as someone with nothing to offer other than manual labour is almost always in a weak negotiating position with an employer.



Until he can no longer do the manual labour, then he is thrown on the trash heap with all the others who no longer have anything to offer.
As will happen to Australia on the current trajectory, which isn't a problem for the current generation, but is a huge worry for future generations and Australia as a whole.


----------



## sptrawler (11 May 2020)

Value Collector said:


> there is definitely limits to Australian capital.



There is a limits to our capital and that limit will fall as our currency falls, unless we start and develop a first World economy.


----------



## Dona Ferentes (11 May 2020)

The 'spurts are lining up with 'best in show' predictions

*Key points:*

Deloitte Access Economics forecasts unemployment will not get back to 5 per cent until late 2024 and the budget will remain in deficit until then
Most experts agree economic recovery will have to involve tax reform, which could include abolishing state stamp duties and raising the GST
Some experts want to see the Federal Government bring forward its tax cuts, while others argue cuts for high-income earners should be dumped
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-11/economic-cure-post-coronavirus-is-tax-reform/12227760

"Public enemy number one is not the budget deficit — it's unemployment." - Dr Chris Richardson

Gert people back to work (in a way that doesn't endanger us with more virus spread). I will only take seriously anything that comes from those that have either lost a job or seen a marked reduction in income. It would be hard to find a prognosticator, bureaucrat or politician for that matter that is out of pocket.


----------



## Value Collector (11 May 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> There may well be but looking at the amount shoved into inflating the price of the same houses we already had, all we'd need to have done would be to take a few % of that to fund just about anything else we could possibly need.
> 
> I've nothing against business making a profit and so on, but I'd much rather see a diverse and reasonably higher value economy than one which relies on resource extraction and low value services. There's a role for that, but of itself it's not enough. Those sorts of things always involve competing against the Third World countries, as evidenced by the suggestion that China could buy from elsewhere, and exist at the mercy of the buyers.
> 
> It's much the same as someone with nothing to offer other than manual labour is almost always in a weak negotiating position with an employer. In contrast, the further someone goes down the intellectual and value added track, the stronger their bargaining position tends to become.




I am all for moving away from property focused investment and into other industries, there are plenty of other industries to soak up capital before we start building steel mills.

but.

a lot of The house price increase in capital cities has been structural.

1, Australia’s population has grown at one of the fastest rates for a developed nation, and that growth has been contained within the capitals.

2, the trend for the last 50 years is that outback towns are dying and shrinking, and having land prices collapse in relative terms, and the migration to the city has added pressure to land prices, so one offsets the other to an extent.

3, Australian Labour and interest rates are expensive in comparison to other countries, this means the cost of adding new housing stock is more expensive than other nations.


----------



## Banksy (11 May 2020)

being that the Reserve bank is now scraping the bottom of the barrel.. We're on our own moving forwards..   Basically we're about to feel the ramifications start to kick in.    Hold on as things are about to drop out BIG TIME


----------



## wayneL (11 May 2020)

Dona Ferentes said:


> The 'spurts are lining up with 'best in show' predictions
> 
> *Key points:*
> 
> ...



I reckon a big GST hit is London to a brick and Mombasa to a melon, along with measures to introduce a cashless economy.

Both will be a drag on recovery and future prosperity.

The lucky country is history


----------



## sptrawler (11 May 2020)

wayneL said:


> I reckon a big GST hit is London to a brick and Mombasa to a melon, along with measures to introduce a cashless economy.



Those two will be at the top of the to do list IMO.


----------



## evangeline19 (20 May 2020)

It's not easy for COVID-19 to be "over" due to the nature of the virus. People without symptoms (asymptomatic) but are infected will go around their business - going to work, shopping at the mall, meeting family and friends without knowing they are infecting others. That's why it is hard to weed out the virus. As a country, the best that can be done is to clamp down on clusters when they emerge. Quarantines are a good method but it doesn't totally kill the virus as the virus is known to be able to linger on in people beyond 14 days. You can google this up. I've read on long-term patients in Wuhan who don't recover but are continually testing positive for the virus. Of course, whether they are infectious or not is another question. If countries are affluent enough, the best course of action would be to test everyone at once. They will detect everyone who have the virus minus false negatives. However, I have not seem this being done in any country yet so far. Thus, all in all, COVID-19 won't be "over" until there is a cure for it.


----------



## tech/a (21 May 2020)

The number we need to keep an eye on
Even so read the whole article it is dependant on 
New case rates 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...ustralia-growth-factor-covid-19/12132478?nw=0


----------



## $20shoes (21 May 2020)

Taken from the latest MIT newsletter

Why are some people with covid-19 are “superspreaders,” while others aren’t infectious at all.

The scale on which covid-19 patients have an ability to spread the disease is about as wide as it gets. Some single individuals who are infected seem to have a superhuman ability to spread the disease, and are responsible alone for big outbreaks in some communities. Others, meanwhile, barely present as infectious. Here’s what we know so far about why some people are more infectious than others. 


*What is a superspreading event:* There are only loose definitions for what qualifies as a superspreading event, but one paper from 2005 basically says a superspreading event is essentially a 1 in 100 sort of event—more infections result from this event than in 99% of all other situations that result in the spread of the virus.
*How are superspreading events caused:* A myriad of factors can exacerbate transmission, including the lack of ventilation and people in close proximity. But one of the biggest factors has to do with the infected individuals themselves, and how much of the virus they are shedding, which can vary wildly even in the presence or absence of symptoms. Shedding is the release of newly replicated virus particles from the body, which for covid-19 is usually through coughing and sneezing. 
*Can we find pinpoint who sheds the virus worse than others:* Unfortunately no, we currently cannot anticipate who might be a superspreader and who won’t be. Pathogen scientist Jamie Lloyd-Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles tells Science that from what we’ve learned about covid-19 so far, “most people do not transmit [the virus].” A preprint study suggests that about 10% of infections are the cause for 80% of new cases. And while we’ve identified the superspreading individuals at the root of some outbreaks (such as a choir practice in Washington State that led to 53 infections), most transmissions don’t have a clear origin.


----------



## qldfrog (21 May 2020)

$20shoes said:


> Taken from the latest MIT newsletter
> 
> Why are some people with covid-19 are “superspreaders,” while others aren’t infectious at all.
> 
> ...



Loud speaking, singing and shouting are also by nature spreading causes..no surprise by the spread in America .Very interesting articles on choir spreading based on voice type etc as linked by $20shoes


----------



## Dona Ferentes (29 May 2020)

Are we anticipating the next wave?

Can we prepare for it?

.


----------



## qldfrog (29 May 2020)

Dona Ferentes said:


> Are we anticipating the next wave?
> 
> Can we prepare for it?
> 
> ...



Easy travel north..ohh sorry our premier premier does not want you....:-(


----------



## Dona Ferentes (23 July 2020)

> _“I think when people tell the public that there's going to be a vaccine by the end of 2020, they do a grave disservice to the public ... Let me just give you one data point. In the last quarter century, there have only been seven, truly new vaccines introduced globally at the clinical practice. Merck has four, the rest of the world has three.”_
> 
> _- Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck _



Ken Frazier, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, was interviewed recently by Professor Tsedal Neeley from Harvard Business School. 

Here is a summary of his interview with the following bullet points.


Developing a vaccine takes time, a lot of time. The fastest vaccine ever brought to market was for the epidemic parotitis (‘mumps’). It took Merck four years to produce this vaccine.
The most recent vaccine created for a large viral outbreak was for the Ebola virus, which took 5.5 years.
In the past 25 years there have been only seven truly new vaccines introduced globally. By new, that means that they were effective against a pathogen for which there had previously been no vaccine. Merck has developed four of those seven and the rest of the world three. There has been an enormous amount of work done in the field of prevention. Despite all this work, the world has been trying to develop a vaccine for AIDS since the early 1980s, and so far, without success.
Developing a vaccine requires vigorous scientific assessment. Vaccines must be safe, effective, and durable. No one knows if any of the 160 programmes will produce a vaccine that is effective. This vaccine must work on billions of people.
Lots of vaccines in the past have stimulated the immune system (just like the Moderna trial vaccine) but ultimately did not confer protection.
When politicians suggest there will be a vaccine available by the end of 2020, they are doing the public a “grave disservice”.
We do not want to rush the vaccine before rigorous science is done. We do not have a good history of introducing a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic. The swine flu vaccine did more harm than good.
While we are working hard on a vaccine, the best preventative measures to limit the spread and infection of COVID-19 are good hygiene, wearing a mask and social distancing.
The bigger challenge to developing a vaccine is distributing it to where it is needed most. In a time of ultra-nationalism, countries want to take whatever is available and use it in their own population first rather than offering it to populations globally at greatest risk.
Developing a vaccine for 7 billion people has never been done before. Delivering it to 7 billion people is an enormous logistical challenge, especially to those communities who cannot afford it.
This is a global pandemic. Unless all of us are safe then none of us is safe.
The mobility of the world’s society poses a real problem. The EU has barred Americans travelling to Europe for a reason. Americans are not doing the things required to suppress the epidemic. Americans value liberty. It has been a strong theme through US politics for 200 years, largely because the US has two big oceans protecting it. This virus does not care about liberties. If people exercise liberty at the personal expense of others, then we cannot control this pandemic.
America is 4% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s infections. That’s scary.
We need politicians with enough integrity to tell the truth. This time next year we will still be experiencing what we are experiencing now. Be prepared for that.
https://www.firstlinks.com.au/hard-dose-reality-check-vaccines


----------



## basilio (23 July 2020)

Dona Ferentes said:


> Ken Frazier, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, was interviewed recently by Professor Tsedal Neeley from Harvard Business School.
> 
> Here is a summary of his interview with the following bullet points.
> 
> ...



Great report and summary.
Also seems to be realistic in a way that many people won't/don't want  to accept.
Well worth posting the  summary IMV


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

Great post @Dona Ferentes  and again as we have said, some of the points support the opinion we have of don't get it.
To state EVERYONE will need to be vaccinated, tells us that this is a lot more serious, than is being let on IMO.

Everything that he stated is spot on, as you would expect from someone with his knowledge, why isn't he given airplay rather than the muppets we have to listen to on the google box.


----------



## Knobby22 (23 July 2020)

More bad news unfortunately.

From the University of NSW Kirby Institute Study findings:

on average catching Covid 19 will wipe 15 years off your life.
20% of sample (many in their 20s, 30s and 40s) who had not been hospitalised and cleared of the virus still suffer symptoms which include  poor breathing and a fog in their brain.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/...symptoms-linger-in-young-20200721-p55dz7.html


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Knobby22 said:


> More bad news unfortunately.
> 
> From the University of NSW Kirby Institute Study findings:
> 
> on average catching Covid 19 will wipe 15 years off your life.





What a load of crap. Even the people who actually die have an average age of barely below the average life expectancy.

The vast majority of people who get it experience zero to mild symptoms and won't have more than a negligible reduction in life expectancy (very much comparable to catching a cold or flu). Very few people are experiencing noteworthy permanent damage, and even if they all dropped dead immediately it wouldn't be quick enough to give an average 15 year reduction across the board.

That figure is absurd scaremongering. Yet another blatant example that politics is guiding the science instead of science guiding anything.


----------



## Knobby22 (23 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> What a load of crap. Even the people who actually die have an average age of barely below the average life expectancy.
> 
> The vast majority of people who get it experience zero to mild symptoms and won't have more than a negligible reduction in life expectancy (very much comparable to catching a cold or flu). Very few people are experiencing noteworthy permanent damage, and even if they all dropped dead immediately it wouldn't be quick enough to give an average 15 year reduction across the board.
> 
> That figure is absurd scaremongering. Yet another blatant example that politics is guiding the science instead of science guiding anything.




I didn't summarise it properly. On average, *of those who die*, will shorten their life expectancy by 15 years.
I do think the sample is a bit small. Hopefully not as bad as that.

That bit that worries me even more is that 20%  experience long term effects. 20%!


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Knobby22 said:


> I didn't summarise it properly. On average, *of those who die*, will shorten their life expectancy by 15 years.
> I do think the sample is a bit small. Hopefully not as bad as that.




Okay, now you're literally one about a thousandth as wrong, but still very wrong.

As I said, the average age of deaths is barely below the average life expectancies of the countries they occur in (both in the early 80s for Australia for example). It might be a couple of years, but it's not 15. And yeah, there's a very big difference between what's experienced *by the people who die* and *all people infected, the vast majority of whom recover*.



> That bit that worries me even more is that 20%  experience long term effects. 20%!




If you don't quantify this, it is meaningless. Exactly what qualifies as a 'long term effect'? An unqualified value is only used when someone is being lazy, doesn't know what they're doing, or is trying to misrepresent the picture.


----------



## Knobby22 (23 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Okay, now you're literally one about a thousandth as wrong, but still very wrong.
> 
> As I said, the average age of deaths is barely below the average life expectancies of the countries they occur in (both in the early 80s for Australia for example). It might be a couple of years, but it's not 15. And yeah, there's a very big difference between what's experienced *by the people who die* and *all people infected, the vast majority of whom recover*.
> 
> ...




We have had one die in their 50s today.

Probably worth a read of the article and what the University of NSW has said. Reading a reporters version misses a lot of detail.


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Knobby22 said:


> We have had one die in their 50s today.
> 
> Probably worth a read of the article and what the University of NSW has said. Reading a reporters version misses a lot of detail.




That's only one person!!!

That's like saying that since a 5 year old died of a vaccine somewhere in the world, vaccines remove 75 years of life.


----------



## macca (23 July 2020)

All these Covid threads are just fragmenting the discussion IMO

There are good comments in all the threads that deserve to be read but as this thread title mentions the economy I will post here.

Front page news $850 Billion, just how long can this go on for ?

Asian countries have never shut down, we are already $850B in the red with NO end in sight and we are no further advanced with Covid 19 than they are.

Obviously, we all hope that it goes away, obviously no one wants to die from this or anything else, obviously we have to pay all this back, the end is Nigh and it is very simple............

Mask up and go back to work and bear the consequences, we have no other option


----------



## Smurf1976 (23 July 2020)

sptrawler said:


> To state EVERYONE will need to be vaccinated, tells us that this is a lot more serious, than is being let on IMO.




As a general rule I'm not even slightly into conspiracy theories.

In this case however, the notion that the public are not being told the full story about the virus seems very plausible when considering the response and that it's widespread among otherwise very different nations.


----------



## Smurf1976 (23 July 2020)

macca said:


> Mask up and go back to work and bear the consequences, we have no other option




The other option would be simply blocking all movement, no exceptions, in and out of the two big cities until things are sorted there.

The other 60% of the Australian population can then resume life as normal and after a few months those in the closed off area will be fed up with it to the point they'll do whatever it takes to bring it to an end. That's when we do a proper lockdown in Sydney and Melbourne and eradicate it

That doesn't sort out the international situation but it sorts out the domestic one if it could be done.


----------



## basilio (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> As a general rule I'm not even slightly into conspiracy theories.
> 
> In this case however, *the notion that the public are not being told the full story about the virus seems very plausible* when considering the response and that it's widespread among otherwise very different nations.




That takes some picking apart Smurf.

So firstly this COVID is just 6 months old.  There is *no way*  anyone has an understanding of the full range of its possible effects. Clearly the various medical authorities are gathering more and more information across millions of affected people and attempting to identify  the range of severities, short term effects. longer term effects, effects on people with other illnesses, and so forth.
*
I have no problem with scientists saying they are still learning*. I'm concerned with research that is showing up longer term lingering effects as well as impacts on children.

As far as deliberately keeping people in the dark?  It's hard enough for medical people to get a handle on what is happening. I wouldn't expect there to be unanimous agreement given different experiences, different testing , lots of egos and political expectations on top of everything.

And then we have the  keyboard experts who make supremely confidently assertions. Nah.


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> The other option would be simply blocking all movement, no exceptions, in and out of the two big cities until things are sorted there.
> 
> The other 60% of the Australian population can then resume life as normal and after a few months those in the closed off area will be fed up with it to the point they'll do whatever it takes to bring it to an end. That's when we do a proper lockdown in Sydney and Melbourne and eradicate it
> 
> That doesn't sort out the international situation but it sorts out the domestic one if it could be done.




This is an exercise in futility.


----------



## Knobby22 (23 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> That's only one person!!!
> 
> That's like saying that since a 5 year old died of a vaccine somewhere in the world, vaccines remove 75 years of life.




Yea, but you've seen the stats. Saying everyone is very old that dies is not true.

From Worldometer:  *So far there has been 1 death every 1,166 people under 65 years old* (compared to 1 death every 358 people in the general population)*. And 89% of the times, the person who died had one or more underlying medical conditions.*


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

basilio said:


> That takes some picking apart Smurf.
> 
> So firstly this COVID is just 6 months old.  There is *no way*  anyone has an understanding of the full range of its possible effects. Clearly the various medical authorities are gathering more and more information across millions of affected people and attempting to identify  the range of severities, short term effects. longer term effects, effects on people with other illnesses, and so forth.
> *
> ...



Yes Bas, there is a lot for them to work out with the virus, I guess eventually it will be sorted.


----------



## Smurf1976 (23 July 2020)

basilio said:


> That takes some picking apart Smurf.
> 
> So firstly this COVID is just 6 months old. There is *no way* anyone has an understanding of the full range of its possible effects.




Agreed but my thinking is summed up by a question: What is so different about this virus which has prompted the response it has received?

It's not the first virus to emerge in the past few years so what has prompted such a massive response to this one?

The only answer I can come up with is that someone, that is government, either knows something or at least thinks they know something which warrants the response received. Something to the effect that it doesn't simply kill a few people who were at the end of their lives anyway and which warrants spending $ trillions to avoid.

Why no such response with SARS, MERS, bird flu, swine flu and so on? 

What prompted an immediate all out response to this versus basically no response to any other virus? 

I won't claim to know the answer but I can only assume someone does and that's the reason.


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Agreed but my thinking is summed up by a question: What is so different about this virus which has prompted the response it has received?
> 
> It's not the first virus to emerge in the past few years so what has prompted such a massive response to this one?
> 
> ...



Don't start talking logics and common sense smurf, that went out the window 20 years ago, these days you get a medal for not having any.


----------



## macca (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> The other option would be simply blocking all movement, no exceptions, in and out of the two big cities until things are sorted there.
> 
> The other 60% of the Australian population can then resume life as normal and after a few months those in the closed off area will be fed up with it to the point they'll do whatever it takes to bring it to an end. That's when we do a proper lockdown in Sydney and Melbourne and eradicate it
> 
> That doesn't sort out the international situation but it sorts out the domestic one if it could be done.




I agree but we are still facing the fact that when the international borders reopen it will start all over again.

Do we then close Oz down for another 6 months, incur another load of debt that the future generations have to suffer to repay.

There is no easy answer, there is not even an obvious answer but the truth is that we cannot afford to stay in lock down.

I do believe the younger generation look at the ages of the deceased and feel that it won't affect them so keep on ignoring it.

Maybe if a few of them get it and are sick it might sink in that we all need to mask up, respect social distancing and avoid crowds as much as possible.

Take Vitamin D or get some sunshine and exercise, if we can give people some way of easing the symptoms I do believe they will embrace that as a positive move.

Oz medical are dragging the chain as usual, common knowledge OS, not a squeak here


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

macca said:


> I agree but we are still facing the fact that when the international borders reopen it will start all over again.
> 
> Do we then close Oz down for another 6 months, incur another load of debt that the future generations have to suffer to repay.
> 
> There is no easy answer, there is not even an obvious answer but the truth is that we cannot afford to stay in lock down.




IMO there is every possibility that the International borders wont open for a long time, quarantine will be option for travellers that is if we can keep a lid on it here, if not well it wont matter anyway.
Just my thoughts.


----------



## tech/a (23 July 2020)

If community transmission is let loose which I think has happened in Vic 
There will be no stopping it in my opinion.
So in the not too distant future Victorian’s like it or not will just have to live with it in their own microcosm.

if other states aren’t diligent they will go the same way.

until a cure and or vaccine.
Bleak for many


----------



## IFocus (23 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> What a load of crap. Even the people who actually die have an average age of barely below the average life expectancy.




Actually not true for the thousands of medical staff that died world wide!


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Knobby22 said:


> Yea, but you've seen the stats. Saying everyone is very old that dies is not true.




I literally never said or implied that.



> From Worldometer:  *So far there has been 1 death every 1,166 people under 65 years old* (compared to 1 death every 358 people in the general population)*. And 89% of the times, the person who died had one or more underlying medical conditions.*




Right... this backs up what I'm saying... what point are you trying to make?


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Agreed but my thinking is summed up by a question: What is so different about this virus which has prompted the response it has received?
> 
> It's not the first virus to emerge in the past few years so what has prompted such a massive response to this one?
> 
> ...




In this case, China has firm control over the WHO (they installed a puppet to be the head of it, who doesn't even have medical qualifications. I'm literally more qualified for the position than he is, but unlike him I'm not a communist who can be bribed). China put out a massive scare propaganda campaign with the assistance of the influence they've been gaining over the last decade or so and had the WHO push this agenda. Governments are run by politicians, not scientists, so they readily followed the advice given to them, and the population by and large wanted it thanks to the media influence.


----------



## Sdajii (23 July 2020)

IFocus said:


> Actually not true for the thousands of medical staff that died world wide!




If you understand the difference between average (mean) and individual cases, please apply this knowledge to answer this post for yourself. If not, request the necessary education and I'll explain the difference to you.

It certainly is very peculiar, some may use other adjectives, that in the early stages of the pandemic, medical staff had a tremendously higher risk of fatality from the virus than the general population of the same age ever has (comparing per capita infections, and please don't respond until you understand 'per capita' and apply it appropriately - if you don't understand this mathematical term I can explain it too).


----------



## qldfrog (23 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Agreed but my thinking is summed up by a question: What is so different about this virus which has prompted the response it has received?
> 
> It's not the first virus to emerge in the past few years so what has prompted such a massive response to this one?
> 
> ...



Very very true, if you remember, I was in the alarmist camp initially as i witnessed first hand the Chinese reaction and was buying my masks in january.
While nasty, I do not deny this, I also saw the actual effect in Europe, a real first wave and decimated dying yards..aged care or end of life establishments.
But then it became ore and more obvious it is used as a pretext:
right now, all of France is in holiday, very few restrictions to be honest there yet 1000's of known clusters, a dozen of deaths a day


as many infections as you want to find/test
I know this is summer and blind Freddy can see the actual correlation (which some still deny..duhhh)  but it is not that bad or is it?
the ones who "had to die" did and it would not surprise me if the mortality in the next 2 years or so actually decrease overall .you will always find exceptions, young dead..who might have a stroke anyway otherwise, who knows.. but enormous majority old/very old people
I read above:
_*"So far there has been 1 death every 1,166 people under 65 years old* (compared to 1 death every 358 people in the general population)"_
pure BS->maybe these figures are valid for people who are tested and sick; plenty of studies showing more than 75% of people affected do NOT EVEN have fever..so the use of thermal camera..let me laugh
So at worst the above figures are for the 25% who are actually sick from the virus
And most are already sick and weak..
Anyway, this aggravated view and overreaction  is a scam and for a purpose in my opinion.
can we blame it on Trump?
_
_

I am now convinced this is used as a pretext.
What for?
Well look at the current state of libertes, laws, freedom restriction, mass propaganda;
A convenient way to stop kicking the GFC can and start new experimentation: universal income: aka jobKeeper/jobSeeker, hot cold war with china, you name it
This is the great reset with the frightened sheeple walking in cadence all over the world


----------



## Smurf1976 (23 July 2020)

macca said:


> I agree but we are still facing the fact that when the international borders reopen it will start all over again.




Agreed but I'd think that a fully functioning and "safe" domestic economy would be a huge improvement over what we've got now at least.


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

Well frog, it is either one or the other, thats for sure.


----------



## qldfrog (23 July 2020)

sptrawler said:


> Well frog, it is either one or the other, thats for sure.



And my opinion has changed from serious human threat to a pretext scam based on facts and a love of figures vs brainwashing.
I am contrarian by nature
Similar to the my researches on CO2 GW but here we have clear figures of total deaths


----------



## sptrawler (23 July 2020)

qldfrog said:


> And my opinion has changed from serious human threat to a pretext scam based on facts and a love of figures vs brainwashing.
> I am contrarian by nature
> Similar to the my researches on CO2 GW but here we have clear figures of total deaths



How it all plays ouf is out of our control, we have to work with what we have and try to make some money and enjoy what freedoms we have, untill this period blows over.


----------



## qldfrog (23 July 2020)

sptrawler said:


> and enjoy what freedoms we have



 have left
I have always been a traveller and people may find it hard to believe but i really feel trapped and prisoner of my own country.
Can not even realistically leave Qld.
I went FNQ after lockdown, West in March and obviously around SEQ but really due for a change of country.this will really change my perspective on where to live and the relative importance of home/ real estate.


----------



## Chronos-Plutus (24 July 2020)

qldfrog said:


> have left
> I have always been a traveller and people may find it hard to believe but i really feel trapped and prisoner of my own country.
> Can not even realistically leave Qld.
> I went FNQ after lockdown, West in March and obviously around SEQ but really due for a change of country.this will really change my perspective on where to live and the relative importance of home/ real estate.




Why don't you go for a holiday up to Port Douglas? See the Daintree and reef: or Airlie Beach/Whitsundays.


----------



## Garpal Gumnut (24 July 2020)

Chronos-Plutus said:


> Why don't you go for a holiday up to Port Douglas? See the Daintree and reef: or Airlie Beach/Whitsundays.



Those of us in NQ would prefer if Southerners stayed at home in Southeast Queensland. 

It's getting more than serious. 

Economics have been trumped by safety and the containment of the Coronavirus. 

If people from SEQ want a a water or tropical experience I suggest they put on the kettle, have a cup of tea and google "North Queensland Travel Experiences" and tap on the video drop down.

gg


----------



## qldfrog (24 July 2020)

Chronos-Plutus said:


> Why don't you go for a holiday up to Port Douglas? See the Daintree and reef: or Airlie Beach/Whitsundays.



Was in magnetic island Townsville Whitsundays mackay etc last month..
So i do as much as possible but still 
Found a latin cafe nearby..helps a bit but hard to shake the idea of being trapped.


----------



## Chronos-Plutus (24 July 2020)

Garpal Gumnut said:


> Those of us in NQ would prefer if Southerners stayed at home in Southeast Queensland.
> 
> It's getting more than serious.
> 
> ...




The old maverick Katter will sort out Annastacia.


----------



## Chronos-Plutus (24 July 2020)

qldfrog said:


> Was in magnetic island Townsville Whitsundays mackay etc last month..
> So i do as much as possible but still
> Found a latin cafe nearby..helps a bit but hard to shake the idea of being trapped.



I have been to Magnetic Island, very friendly folks there.


----------



## Garpal Gumnut (24 July 2020)

qldfrog said:


> Was in magnetic island Townsville Whitsundays mackay etc last month..
> So i do as much as possible but still
> Found a latin cafe nearby..helps a bit but hard to shake the idea of being trapped.



Well, don't come. 

gg


----------



## basilio (24 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Agreed but my thinking is summed up by a question: What is so different about this virus which has prompted the response it has received?
> 
> It's not the first virus to emerge in the past few years so what has prompted such a massive response to this one?
> 
> ...




That is sobering.
I suggest the reason for recognising COVID 19 as as an *extremely* dangerous new virus vs the previous ones  would come from the Chinese experience through January/Febuary as they experienced the spread of the virus , the effects on  people and the struggle to control it.

As far as we know there were sporadic infections around December 2019.  People coming in sick and developing   pneumonia that was untreatable with current  drugs. I believe one Chinese doctor recognised the significance of this new disease and  tried to alert the authorities.

This was effectively suppressed because, I suppose, it was seen as alarmist.  Within a couple of weeks in early January hundreds/thousands more people became infected. Hospitals started to fill. It became impossible to deny the obvious.

At this stage the story/understanding was that it spread through contact with some infected animal products allegedly the wet Wuhan markets.

Then it started to become clear that there was people to people infections... Totally new ball game now. The doctors realised that the disease could spread through asymptomatic carriers. You didn't have to look or be sick to pass this on.  Xhite .  This is now really serious.

Meanwhile thousands of people are dying in hospital. It is spreading across China and has already been spread across the world through international travel in January possibly earlier. But that is for later.

As the Chinese watch the unfolding disaster across the country they take extreme isolation and control measures. (Back here we all watched and silently or openly wondered how they could be *so* incompetent and then  so authoritarianly brutal..)

Back in the Western world there were at least two views.  The doctors  and epidemiologists realised this was the type of outbreak they had feared, warned about and prepared for for years. A new disease, easily transmitted human to human, untreatable, no vaccines, serious mortality. The sinister twist was the discovery that people could be infectious and asymptomatic. * How the hell do you identify and isolate people who show no symptoms 
*
On the political front no one wanted to take this problem seriously. The thought of closing downing whole regions  to stop this virus was economic anathema. Italy went to the dogs. The UK didn't take it seriously. Trump just denied it was a problem. Frankly it took a long time for the reality of what was happening *and which was predicted by the doctors *to strike home  And so it unfolded into the disaster we now see.  And we still don't know what the longer term effects will be.


----------



## Sdajii (24 July 2020)

basilio said:


> That is sobering.
> I suggest the reason for recognising COVID 19 as as an *extremely* dangerous new virus vs the previous ones  would come from the Chinese experience through January/Febuary as they experienced the spread of the virus , the effects on  people and the struggle to control it.
> 
> As far as we know there were sporadic infections around December 2019.  People coming in sick and developing   pneumonia that was untreatable with current  drugs. I believe one Chinese doctor recognised the significance of this new disease and  tried to alert the authorities.
> ...




It's amazing how much people believe the Chinese, despite them being blatant liars.

Sweden has been just about the only country doing what I suggested all along would be best. They now have a negligible number of deaths.

Trump didn't deny it was a problem, he was literally taking action to mitigate it very early on when the rest of the world accused him of freaking out and being silly. They said it was racist to call the disease a big problem, just an excuse to say China had done something wrong. He shut down international borders while the WHO told him it was unnecessary, etc.

Most people have such short memories and just believe the narratives they're lead to believe.


----------



## basilio (24 July 2020)

Back in the  evidence based real world the threat to younger people of the COVID 19 virus is becoming clear.
*Intensive care nurse's blunt warning over coronavirus risk to younger adults*

A senior Melbourne intensive care nurse says hospitals are preparing for the prospect of deaths among younger Victorians as authorities battle to rein in the state's coronavirus cases.
*Key points:*

From the start of July, a quarter of COVID-19 infections have been in Victorians aged in their 20s
Four children are in hospital and 20 per cent of the state's coronavirus patients are under the age of 50
A senior ICU nurse manager says there is "no doubt" younger adults with coronavirus will die
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07...re-nurse-warns-young-people-will-die/12486738


----------



## basilio (24 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> It's amazing how much people believe the Chinese, despite them being blatant liars.




And Donald Trump is the honest, intelligent stable genius who has led the US fight against this no problem flu virus to the point that only 140,000 people have died and the US  is  triumphantly marching, marching, marching to a Great New Destiny.


----------



## Sdajii (24 July 2020)

basilio said:


> Back in the  evidence based real world the threat to younger people of the COVID 19 virus is becoming clear.
> *Intensive care nurse's blunt warning over coronavirus risk to younger adults*
> 
> A senior Melbourne intensive care nurse says hospitals are preparing for the prospect of deaths among younger Victorians as authorities battle to rein in the state's coronavirus cases.
> ...




Silly scaremongering.

No statistically relevant numbers are given! Young people die of the common cold too. No, I'm not saying this is as mild as the common cold, but there is no attempt here to put anything into perspective (because doing so shows that it's not something worth fearing).

People in their 20s are being infected, sure, they can get infected, but proportionately, incredibly few have serious issues with it. Most literally don't even get symptoms.

Sure, at some stage a young person will die of it. We literally have hundreds of people die in Australia every day from all manner of causes. That's not reason to freak out about every single one of them!


----------



## Sdajii (24 July 2020)

basilio said:


> And Donald Trump is the honest, intelligent stable genius who has led the US fight against this no problem flu virus to the point that only 140,000 people have died and the US  is  triumphantly marching, marching, marching to a Great New Destiny.




No, he is not, I didn't say he was. I said China is blatantly dishonest so we shouldn't take them at their word.

If you can understand that Donald Trump should not be taken as an oracle of truth, then you should be capable of fathoming that China sure as heck shouldn't be!


----------



## basilio (24 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Trump didn't deny it was a problem, he was literally taking action to mitigate it very early on when the rest of the world accused him of freaking out and being silly. They said it was racist to call the disease a big problem, just an excuse to say China had done something wrong. He shut down international borders while the WHO told him it was unnecessary, etc.




The New World Reality according to Sdajii.


----------



## Sdajii (24 July 2020)

basilio said:


> The New World Reality according to Sdajii.




Why do you say this? He literally shut down the borders because of the virus, knowing it would harm the economy, which is his #1 priority, he did this because of the virus, and when he did it the WHO said it was unnecessary. This is all fact. It literally only happened a few months ago. Yet you facetiously imply that I am making this up and am misrepresenting reality, while you believe this actual reality never existed! Despite Trump literally going so far that the WHO said he was going overboard and China said he was being crazy for taking such extreme measures, you believe he denied it was a problem?

You have no business accusing anyone else of forming a 'new world reality'.


----------



## Junior (24 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Silly scaremongering.
> 
> No statistically relevant numbers are given! Young people die of the common cold too. No, I'm not saying this is as mild as the common cold, but there is no attempt here to put anything into perspective (because doing so shows that it's not something worth fearing).
> 
> People in their 20s are being infected, sure, they can get infected, but proportionately, incredibly few have serious issues with it. Most literally don't even get symptoms.




I would say these are specific and highly relevant numbers.  Around 5-10% of people testing positive with COVID in Victoria right now, end up in hospital because their symptoms are so severe.  A significant percentage of those end up in ICU.  

Your reference to Sweden is odd....they have had one of the highest fatality rates of anywhere on the planet, AND their economy has suffered, AND they have been shut out of neighbouring countries.  Hardly a situation to aspire to.

Congratulating Trump on his 'response' is simply absurd at this point.  His own supporters are leaving him in droves right now.


----------



## satanoperca (24 July 2020)

Everyone still arguing about what is right and wrong.

I find it difficult to gauge the validity of some of the posts as I do not have enough information about the poster and they're biased to the situation?

I feel some posters on here give a biased view of this virus due to 3 reasons :
1. They have never faced death. Well, few have under the age of 50.
2. Those over 50+ are having to accept death is part of life and wish to live forever, this virus challenges that. 
3. They live in a bubble, believing everything should be fair in life and humans can solve every issue natures throws at us (really humans are just the bacteria of the earth, consuming everything until there is nothing left)

But overall my point one is the one I feel strongest about, mainly for my on personal situation being under the age of 50 and having been told 4 times (from different conditions and diseases) over the period of my life, I would die - so I have had to accept death.

This might sound depressing, but rather it has given me a positive outlook on life, that few can achieve.


----------



## Junior (24 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Why do you say this? He literally shut down the borders because of the virus, knowing it would harm the economy, which is his #1 priority, he did this because of the virus, and when he did it the WHO said it was unnecessary. This is all fact. It literally only happened a few months ago. Yet you facetiously imply that I am making this up and am misrepresenting reality, while you believe this actual reality never existed! Despite Trump literally going so far that the WHO said he was going overboard and China said he was being crazy for taking such extreme measures, you believe he denied it was a problem?
> 
> You have no business accusing anyone else of forming a 'new world reality'.




He shut down Chinese people flying in from China.  He didn't shut out Americans flying in from China (with the virus) or anyone from anywhere else.  That's all he did.  And it failed spectacularly.


----------



## satanoperca (24 July 2020)

Junior said:


> He shut down Chinese people flying in from China.  He didn't shut out Americans flying in from China (with the virus) or anyone from anywhere else.  That's all he did.  And it failed spectacularly.




Did you read what you wrote?
1. Correct, he stopped Chinese nationals from flying into the USA, good move, if you ask me
2. What the f--k was he meant to do with USA Citizens wanting to return home? Sorry, you cannot come back to your home?

It is these types of stupid statements that make it clearer to me, we are f---kd.


----------



## SirRumpole (24 July 2020)

satanoperca said:


> 2. What the f--k was he meant to do with USA Citizens wanting to return home? Sorry, you cannot come back to your home?




Did he put them in quarantine ?


----------



## IFocus (24 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> Did he put them in quarantine ?




Crickets............


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

Junior said:


> I would say these are specific and highly relevant numbers.  Around 5-10% of people testing positive with COVID in Victoria right now, end up in hospital because their symptoms are so severe.  A significant percentage of those end up in ICU.
> 
> Your reference to Sweden is odd....they have had one of the highest fatality rates of anywhere on the planet, AND their economy has suffered, AND they have been shut out of neighbouring countries.  Hardly a situation to aspire to.




The people who died were close to death anyway. Their rate of death is tiny now. It's a brilliant case study of 'if you let it run its course you stop having to worry about it'.

Shut out of other countries? I mean, yeah, that's an argument which makes a lot of sense for an Australian...

The thing is, they've already reached their end game phase. Australia hasn't even started the journey.



> Congratulating Trump on his 'response' is simply absurd at this point.  His own supporters are leaving him in droves right now.




I didn't congratulate Trump. I pointed out the error in the accusations against him. You can't blame Trump for being slow to respond or for being in denial when he was declaring an emergency at the stage where the majority of the rest of the world was saying he was being alarmist. The democrats were literally mocking him and having publicity campaigns advising people to go out and interact with the people in highest risk categories to support them financially and emotionally. Trump was advocating social distance, the opposition was mocking him. This was only quite recently, all over CNN and friends. Trump isn't perfect, there's stuff you can legitimately criticise him for, but your criticism here makes no sense.

Heh, supporters leaving him in droves. I suppose if you can believe those stories even after the global media told us that there was no chance of Trump winning four years ago and Trump didn't take the virus seriously and denied it was there despite him moving so early that he was condemned by the Democrats, the left as a whole, most of mainstream media (condemning him for taking the virus too seriously), then hey, I'm sure you'll believe stories about his supporters leaving him in droves, and you'll believe the next few months of nonsense stories right up until he wins the next election.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

Junior said:


> He shut down Chinese people flying in from China.  He didn't shut out Americans flying in from China (with the virus) or anyone from anywhere else.  That's all he did.  And it failed spectacularly.




What do you expect? You probably think New Zealand is the pinnacle of dealing with this well, right? New Zealanders have always been able to fly to New Zealand. Infected Kiwis recently returned to NZ (this month), broke out of quarantine and went to buy booze.

NZ was always going to have an easy time, the USA was always going to have an impossible task, regardless of who was PM or President. The double standards are crazy.


----------



## Smurf1976 (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Sweden has been just about the only country doing what I suggested all along would be best. They now have a negligible number of deaths.




That depends on whether or not you consider 5700 in a country with a population less than half of Australia's as being "negligible" or not?


----------



## Smurf1976 (25 July 2020)

satanoperca said:


> I feel some posters on here give a biased view of this virus due to 3 reasons :
> 1. They have never faced death. Well, few have under the age of 50.
> 2. Those over 50+ are having to accept death is part of life and wish to live forever, this virus challenges that.
> 3. They live in a bubble, believing everything should be fair in life and humans can solve every issue natures throws at us (really humans are just the bacteria of the earth, consuming everything until there is nothing left)




4. They accept death due to natural causes as inevitable but do not wish to die in order to cover up someone else's failure.

I know a few who I'd confidently put in that category. Death as such they accept but they're not even slightly keen on ending up dead due to something that they see ought to be preventable.

Main issues they seem to have are concerns about the origins and whether it could have been avoided or not plus a concern that the "let it rip" approach is seeking to hide what I'll term structural deficiencies in the design of the economic system. 

Prove beyond all doubt that those aren't the case and I think there'll be a greater willingness to have a serious conversation by many (referring to the overall community there not specifically ASF).


----------



## Junior (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> What do you expect? You probably think New Zealand is the pinnacle of dealing with this well, right? New Zealanders have always been able to fly to New Zealand. Infected Kiwis recently returned to NZ (this month), broke out of quarantine and went to buy booze.
> 
> NZ was always going to have an easy time, the USA was always going to have an impossible task, regardless of who was PM or President. The double standards are crazy.




No, I don’t think NZ are the pinnacle. They have a small population on an island, and evidently people who comply with government orders. 

I just think it’s farcical patting Trump on the back for his covid response. It’s been a total sh1tshow from day 1, and he will lose the election partly because of that. It’s not 2016, and most Americans are tired of the Trump Circus, having now lived it for 4 years.


----------



## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Junior said:


> No, I don’t think NZ are the pinnacle. They have a small population on an island, and evidently people who comply with government orders.
> 
> I just think it’s farcical patting Trump on the back for his covid response. It’s been a total sh1tshow from day 1, and he will lose the election partly because of that. It’s not 2016, and most Americans are tired of the Trump Circus, having now lived it for 4 years.




If Trump claims he has "total power" , then that equates to "total responsibility" for covid. 

He's running out of people to blame and I think the voters realise that he's stuffed up.


----------



## qldfrog (25 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> That depends on whether or not you consider 5700 in a country with a population less than half of Australia's as being "negligible" or not?



France has roughly twice the size of Australia 60m and got 30 000 deaths so far
Do you mean that Sweden with 10 millions did as well as  France with a lockdown pretty severe by any standard?
So shutdown and 30k deads for 60 millions matching the  Swedish experience with school open all along and no lockdown except aged care
How do you reconcile this with your belief.it is a belief.@Smurf1976  with all the respect i have for you.

French lockdown was not severe enough?
Anyone contesting the above figure?
Sheer simple numbers with 2 different fighting experiences...
One traumatic, the other far less so.i know what i choose.
And Sweden had pretty cold weather


----------



## basilio (25 July 2020)

The spread of COVID 19 throughout aged care centres is no accident. It was always on the cards  and predicted as a critical issue in any response to an infectious pandemic.

This won't be a good time for the  for profit aged care industry operators.

* Victoria's Covid-19 aged care disaster: 'this virus is like a fire out of control' *
The Melbourne outbreak is ‘terrifying’ for families, but experts say it was predictable and systemic problems in the sector were well known before the pandemic

The disaster unfolding in Victoria’s aged care homes was “absolutely foreseeable”, one of the country’s foremost experts in aged care says.

Authorities knew some facilities had poorly trained workers and underpaid part-time or casual staff who had to move between homes to make a living. There’d been overwhelming evidence about the vulnerability of aged care residents internationally. In Sydney, there was the outbreak of Covid-19 at Newmarch House. It was all documented.

“We got this wrong from the very start,” says Prof Joseph Ibrahim, the head of the health law and ageing research unit at Monash University. The result, he and other experts say, is what is unfolding in Victoria.
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ster-this-virus-is-like-a-fire-out-of-control

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-of-collapse-amid-covid-19-surge-doctors-warn


----------



## satanoperca (25 July 2020)

https://www.news.com.au/world/coron...s/news-story/3fba6921cefdddf118469bfb13c7669d

Worth the read, if correct, then we cannot eliminate this virus, will be hard enough to control it, it is here to stay.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

Junior said:


> No, I don’t think NZ are the pinnacle. They have a small population on an island, and evidently people who comply with government orders.




It was just a week or two ago that a New Zealander infected with the virus broke out of quarantine and went shopping!



> I just think it’s farcical patting Trump on the back for his covid response.




I didn't do that! I pointed out that the criticism made no sense. That's not the same as patting someone on the back.

Let me explain the concept by way of example: If someone falsely accuses you of murder and I say you didn't kill anyone, I'm not patting you on the back, I'm not saying you're a good or bad person, I'm merely saying that the accusation was incorrect and anything based on that accusation is invalid.



> It’s been a total sh1tshow from day 1, and he will lose the election partly because of that. It’s not 2016, and most Americans are tired of the Trump Circus, having now lived it for 4 years.




You think he will lost the election before he mismanaged it from day one. How short your memory is. You think the Democrats will beat him because from day one he didn't take the virus seriously. In the early stages (not just day one) Trump was telling people to be careful and Democrats were telling people Trump was paranoid and they should go out into the community with no fear! The left is pushing massive riots! Trump doesn't want that!

How short your memory is, you are displaying the same mentality people had four years ago and Trump will win for the same reason. 2016: No one takes Trump seriously, he can't win. 2020: Everyone is sick of Trump, he can't win. You're suffering from echo chamber syndrome. Most people don't like riots and looting, most people don't like domestic terrorism. Most people don't like the insanity being pushed by the left. The left controls so much of the media, etc, and makes anyone who disagrees too scared to speak, so they will again remain quiet for fear of literally losing their job, being bashed, being 'cancelled', etc, and they will speak with their vote.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> That depends on whether or not you consider 5700 in a country with a population less than half of Australia's as being "negligible" or not?




Of course it is! Have you no sense of proportion or perspective?

On a normal day, hundreds of people in Sweden die. Not from the virus, just any day (6, 12, 24 months ago, etc, it hasn't changed). The vast majority of those 5,700 were already close to death, and thus, would have died anyway before long, thus, the total number of deaths in Sweden won't change. This wasn't 5,700 people cut down in their prime, this was mostly people in nursing homes etc.

You speak as though people are otherwise immortal and death is a rare thing, or like these were all high school students or something.

Also, don't forget, that Sweden simply had the event slightly earlier than everyone else will. Australia is still having deaths anyway. Yesterday was our 'deadliest' day from the virus so far. The spread is inevitable, we're just destroying decades of our future for the sake of slightly delaying the inevitable.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

satanoperca said:


> https://www.news.com.au/world/coron...s/news-story/3fba6921cefdddf118469bfb13c7669d
> 
> Worth the read, if correct, then we cannot eliminate this virus, will be hard enough to control it, it is here to stay.




This was almost certain in February and a forgone conclusion in March!


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> If Trump claims he has "total power" , then that equates to "total responsibility" for covid.




Trump has never even hinted at anything like that! What planet do you live on? 



> He's running out of people to blame and I think the voters realise that he's stuffed up.




It's amazing how contained within an echo chamber people can get. People aren't as stupid as you think. A lot of people do realise that the left promoting massive riots/protests is not Trump's doing, it's not something he wanted. Mass gatherings, literal terrorism, calls to disband police, etc etc etc, these are the things of the left/Democrats. These things are happening because a lot of the power is in the hands of people wanting them to happen. As you rightly point out, Trump doesn't have total power (neither has he ever claimed to), and most people don't want to hand more power to the people causing the chaos!


----------



## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Trump has never even hinted at anything like that! What planet do you live on?




Well, I don't live under a rock.


----------



## IFocus (25 July 2020)

Nice to see the conservatives on this site promoting left wing Sweden as a outstanding model 

I think we all should follow Sweden's example and get with the program...........


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> Well, I don't live under a rock.





Ah, no, not under a rock, you live on planet CNN! Haha!

If you're able to believe that nonsense, no wonder you're so deluded. That 9 minute video has a few seconds of Trump being taken out of context (he even points out "on this issue", which is to say that he is making it clear that he doesn't have absolute control over everything, and we're not even given enough context to show what that issue being discussed was!), then a few seconds of something irrelevant, then the same out of context clip is repeated in the middle of the video. The other 8 minutes or so is insane drivel by proven liars who make Trump look like an actual oracle of truth.

No wonder you are able to believe all the nonsense you spout!


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

IFocus said:


> Nice to see the conservatives on this site promoting left wing Sweden as a outstanding model
> 
> I think we all should follow Sweden's example and get with the program...........




On this specific issue, the management of the virus, yes. The country is clearly suffering in other ways, but if you want to agree that just on the specific issue of the virus they're doing things well, at least we have that common ground.


----------



## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> Ah, no, not under a rock, you live on planet CNN! Haha!
> 
> If you're able to believe that nonsense, no wonder you're so deluded. That 9 minute video has a few seconds of Trump being taken out of context (he even points out "on this issue", which is to say that he is making it clear that he doesn't have absolute control over everything, and we're not even given enough context to show what that issue being discussed was!), then a few seconds of something irrelevant, then the same out of context clip is repeated in the middle of the video. The other 8 minutes or so is insane drivel by proven liars who make Trump look like an actual oracle of truth.
> 
> No wonder you are able to believe all the nonsense you spout!




You have a delusion of Trumpian proportions. I suppose you think the video is faked.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> You have a delusion of Trumpian proportions. I suppose you think the video is faked.




What's the delusion?

You're literally the one who, based on a blatantly out of context few seconds of video, clings to the obviously ridiculous and false assertion that Trump believes he has absolute power, despite the obvious reality which clearly indicates otherwise.

You literally choose a few seconds of out of context over the clear, obvious reality.

You then accuse someone else, who points this out, of being delusional.

This explains so much.


----------



## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> What's the delusion?
> 
> You're literally the one who, based on a blatantly out of context few seconds of video, clings to the obviously ridiculous and false assertion that Trump believes he has absolute power, despite the obvious reality which clearly indicates otherwise.
> 
> ...




He said it with his own lips , "absolute authority",  what about that don't you understand ?

You said he never even hinted it, well he did a lot more than hint.


----------



## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> He said it with his own lips , "absolute authority",  what about that don't you understand ?




We didn't even see the start of the clip to get the context (not that it's even needed since it completely contradicts literally thousands of other clips) but he literally says "on this issue".

It's like if I'm saying I want cheesecake for dinner and someone says that's crazy and stupid and I say "Well, I have absolute authority on this issue"

I don't mean I am absolute dictator of the universe, it just means I can choose whatever I want *in relation to that specific issue*

Is this concept honestly beyond your comprehension? Is your TDS really so extreme that you can't fathom this most simple task of logic?

Trump has never, ever, claimed to have absolute authority over every aspect of the USA and he even points that out in your own blatantly biased, out of context, ridiculous CNN garbage which you try to use in an utterly absurd attempt to 'prove' the insane.


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## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> We didn't even see the start of the clip to get the context (not that it's even needed since it completely contradicts literally thousands of other clips) but he literally says "on this issue".
> 
> It's like if I'm saying I want cheesecake for dinner and someone says that's crazy and stupid and I say "Well, I have absolute authority on this issue"
> 
> ...




The issue was covid which is what this thread is about. There is your context.


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## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> The issue was covid which is what this thread is about. There is your context.




I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe you don't actually think he means that he has absolute power and authority to dictate what every human in the country does. Maybe you don't think he has the ability to force everyone not to commit acts of looting, rioting. Maybe you don't think he has direct command of every police officer. Maybe you don't think he actually has absolute control of every person's choice over whether or not to wear a mask, socialise, etc?

So, what exactly do you think he meant?

Obviously he meant something more specific than absolutely positively everything which has any relation to the virus, because no person who has any reason to set food out of a mental asylum thinks that, so perhaps you'd like to say what you actually thought?


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## SirRumpole (25 July 2020)

Sdajii said:


> I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe you don't actually think he means that he has absolute power and authority to dictate what every human in the country does. Maybe you don't think he has the ability to force everyone not to commit acts of looting, rioting. Maybe you don't think he has direct command of every police officer. Maybe you don't think he actually has absolute control of every person's choice over whether or not to wear a mask, socialise, etc?
> 
> So, what exactly do you think he meant?
> 
> Obviously he meant something more specific than absolutely positively everything which has any relation to the virus, because no person who has any reason to set food out of a mental asylum thinks that, so perhaps you'd like to say what you actually thought?




Just watch the video. On the issue of covid he said he had the authority to override State governers and tell them to drop their restrictions. He was wrong. It shows an inflated ego and an ignorance of US law.


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## Sdajii (25 July 2020)

SirRumpole said:


> Just watch the video. On the issue of vivid he said he had the authority to override State governers and tell them to drop their restrictions. He was wrong. It shows an inflated ego and an ignorance if US law.




Yeah, vivid if US law.

I think we all know Trump has a huge ego, and I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to overstep his authority and they played hardball and stopped him on this occasion. By your own thinking that just shows he doesn't have complete authority and thus isn't fully responsible.

But he never said he had absolute authority over everything to do with the virus.


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## Smurf1976 (25 July 2020)

qldfrog said:


> France has roughly twice the size of Australia 60m and got 30 000 deaths so far
> Do you mean that Sweden with 10 millions did as well as France with a lockdown pretty severe by any standard?
> So shutdown and 30k deads for 60 millions matching the Swedish experience with school open all along and no lockdown except aged care
> How do you reconcile this with your belief.it is a belief.@Smurf1976 with all the respect i have for you.




I'm saying that 30K deaths in France or circa 150K deaths in the USA, or comparable results anywhere else, is not a good outcome period. How it was achieved or that it could have been worse does not change that - it's a bad outcome as such.

If that number of people were killed due to any sort of industrial accident, natural disaster, plane crashes, terrorism etc then neither the political Right nor the Left would stand for it. Everyone from Donald Trump to the Greens would be demanding action.

I won't claim to know all the facts on this, that finding unbiased information is so difficult is my largest concern in fact, but I'm yet to see a convincing explanation as to what prevents the USA situation, a disaster by any measure, occurring elsewhere other than the actions being taken with lockdowns and so on?

If Australia adopted the "let it rip" approach, then what ensures we don't end up with statistics comparable to the situation in the US?

My other concern is a strong suspicion that the loudest screams are coming from those who, to borrow from one of Warren Buffet's well known quotes, have been caught swimming naked. There probably are businesses who took risks which were always in the "gambling" category and who've now come unstuck. So be it - capitalism has a solution for that.

If I were confident that the medical facts were being correctly communicated, in full, to the public and I were confident that poor business management wouldn't be covered up at the expense of human lives then I may well have a different view of it all.

I certainly don't claim to know the truth but what I do know is that the USA situation, as per their own official statistics, is not something Australia should contemplate following and likewise any other country with similar results. So back to the point - apart from lockdowns, what's stopping the US scenario unfolding in Australia?

There's also the question of how many end up with brain damage, lung damage or whatever? What are the odds? Without even being able to put a reasonable estimate on it, it would be pure madness to subject the majority of the population to an unquantified hazard. That's gambling.

Now if someone can put some proper figures on it which show what the outcomes would actually be and that we won't see a US-style failure, we won't see "brain fog" or whatever actually happening, then it becomes possible to make informed decisions based on accurate figures.

If new data emerges which shows it can be done then my mind is certainly open. It's not a fixed position, just a cautious one given what's going on overseas. Conducting an experiment on the entire population with unknown consequences and no known means of reversal is not at all smart.

There's also a point that it isn't all bad. Prior to COVID-19 there were plenty of people commenting about "kicking the can" economically and pointing to the problems of over-reliance on China, service industries and so on. If this pandemic forces a resurgence of local manufacturing then that's a good thing not a bad thing for the future. It's not as though certain other countries are likely to stop cheating on wages after all, so we're never going to have that mythical "level playing field" on which to compete so no point pretending otherwise.

It's a very brutal way of doing it but we've now got a recession and the economic system does need one of those periodically to flush out the dud ideas and to refocus the mind of governments and business leaders who otherwise tend to become rather lazy and unfocused.


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## Smurf1976 (26 July 2020)

I could sum up my thoughts as:

1. The whole thing's a damn nuisance, no doubt about that.

2. I'm in a low risk category so far as I can determine so self-interest says let's get things back to normal.

3. Morally however, well I'm not willing to sacrifice human life if it's being done unnecessarily. Propping up poor business or government economic decisions are not even slightly close to being an adequate justification. An actual justification would be the lack of a medically viable alternative or firm evidence that the death toll will in fact be minimal due to mitigations which will actually be implemented.

4. There are some good outcomes amidst the chaos and it's important that those aren't lost in a return to normal. Excessive trade to the point of undermining living standards and the environment, flying people huge distances so they can pick fruit, hot desking, having office workers all present in a physical office building 9 to 5 five days a week and not holding stock of critical products are examples of ideas that are either well past their use-by date or were never much good in the first place. There's an upside to the pandemic with it having brought some of that madness to an abrupt halt - now let's make sure it doesn't return.

5. If the facts change then my opinion will change. If someone can demonstrate a path that works then by all means let's adopt it. It's possible that some countries might be in the process of that but it needs time to be proven - a change of seasons and verification as to what, if any, ongoing health impacts have occurred.

I'm using the basic logic that conducting an irreversible experiment on anything real is always extremely high risk and something that is done only when there really is no choice. That applies whether we're talking about the entire population or something like a real skyscraper or the real power grid. You don't implement changes based on unproven theories in a real building full of people or the real national grid and it's not wise to do them to the entire population either. Rather, you do the calculations and work it out then you try it somewhere where failure won't matter too much - an empty building that's going to be demolished soon anyway, a small town's power supply, etc. If that all works, then you start scaling it up. If it doesn't work and something bad happens, well you don't want to find that out by ending up with a 100 storey building full of people coming down and ending up as a pile of rubble, the entire country blacked out or finding out that you just wiped 20 years of everyone's lifespan. Etc.

One thing that hopefully will come from this is a better understanding of risk. All of a sudden there should be a much better understanding that those very unlikely but extremely high impact things actually are worth being concerned about. A 1% chance that business as usual is wrecked, the situation we've got with the pandemic basically, actually is a lot more important than the 50% chance of a minor blip which sees a small decline or whatever. That point is commonly missed in discussion about catastrophic risk with the low probability used as an argument to dismiss the concern. In truth, well an unexploded bomb is far more concerning than a dripping tap no matter how unlikely that bomb is to go off. 

All that said, well I do acknowledge that my comments are based on incomplete information and there's the problem. So are everyone else's unless there's an actual expert on the virus here with first hand knowledge. For the rest of us relying on what we're being told, well the problem is knowing what might be missing from that story either good or bad.


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## SirRumpole (26 July 2020)

It will be interesting to see if governments from now on still keep thinking that immigration and free trade are the only ways to stimulate economic growth, or encompass bold new policies like a sovereign wealth fund funded by resources and investment in technically advanced industries that provide employment for our university graduates instead of requiring them to go overseas to get a job.

There is no sign of that sort of thinking yet, just more of the same old stuff and slogans like "grow the economy" without any plans for doing that apart from cutting as much expenditure as possible to pay off the debt.


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## Smurf1976 (26 July 2020)

Some random people.

These are completely made up and not based on any actual person I know but suppose that we have 1000 of each of the following, and that all are infected with COVID-19 in a "let it rip" strategy.

20 years old, male, average fitness for age. Drinks frequently, never smoked, plays indoor cricket.

30 years old, female, slim build, average fitness. Occasionally drinks wine, is a smoker, does yoga.

40 years old, female, slightly overweight but walks for an hour each day so isn't too unfit. Occasionally drinks, used to smoke but gave up 7 years ago.

50 years old, male, slightly underweight, sedentary occupation and does very little exercise. Doesn't drink, has never smoked.

60 years old, female, overweight, retired, occasional drinker, has never smoked, no regular exercise.

70 years old, male, very much fitter than average due to daily running, occasional drinker, smoked in the past but gave up in 1980 and hasn't touched them since.

Now can someone tell me, based on factual data, what the risks are if these people all get the virus?

What's the actual chance of death?

What's the actual chance of ongoing health impacts other than death and what are those impacts?

Only when that can be answered in a factual manner can informed decisions be made.


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## Sdajii (26 July 2020)

Smurf1976 said:


> Some random people.
> 
> These are completely made up and not based on any actual person I know but suppose that we have 1000 of each of the following, and that all are infected with COVID-19 in a "let it rip" strategy.
> 
> ...




I think the most relevant thing is that until very recently the global assumption was that the virus was going to go through and get everyone, and our goal was to flatten the curve so that we didn't all get it at once and overwhelm to healthcare system. As it turns out, the ICU beds are sitting largely empty, we have plenty of spare capacity. The assumption was that they would constantly be overwhelmed.

Everyone seems to have a very short memory.

The virus turned out to be far less severe than all the models assumed. The curve is never going to play out. The planned endgame will never come. The curve is more flat than makes any sense to flatten further, and it's extremely expensive and destructive to flatten it.

Since the healthcare system is not overwhelmed, we are not changing the risk to any of the people above, we are simply destroying ourselves to kick the can down the road and let them get it later.

Once you realise that flatten the curve no longer makes sense, you realise they haven't replaced it with anything, and we're stuck in 'remain paranoid forever with nothing to end the situation'.

Obviously there is some risk to everyone, whether it's a 95 year old man with a 25% chance of death from the virus if he doesn't die from something else first, or a 12 year old kid with a one in a squillion chance of death. What no one seems to care about is the damage, suffering and death we are causing.


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## tinhat (26 July 2020)

So many words for death now. dead planet. not good. dead times. nice genes. is it wrong to wish ill towards others? But I'm making the goofd fdoowwaaa on thre stockjmarket so I don't care about other people its like we area lll post war trippy children now, no moral responsibility for others how gREAT  thou art. 

There will be a militia in Australia and then smelly bottom hairdo.


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## noirua (3 July 2021)

Russia's COVID-19 daily death toll climbs to new pandemic high
					

Russia registered a record number of daily COVID-19-related deaths on Friday amid a surge in cases across the world's largest country that the authorities blame on the infectious Delta variant.




					www.reuters.com
				



The government's coronavirus taskforce said 679 people had died in the last 24 hours, the highest figure confirmed in a single day since the pandemic began.


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## noirua (3 July 2021)

United States and territories: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


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## SirRumpole (4 July 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> Some random people.
> 
> These are completely made up and not based on any actual person I know but suppose that we have 1000 of each of the following, and that all are infected with COVID-19 in a "let it rip" strategy.
> 
> ...




Then of course we have to throw in the small but potentially devastating chance of dying of blood clots when vaccinated , and here seems to be no risk factors from that apart from relative youth.

So we have potentially lots of people under 30 scared to get vaccinated but wandering around in the community potentially spreading the disease.

And do vaccines have potentially long term effects that we don't know about yet ?

Its a tough situation for doctors and pollies too.


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## Value Collector (4 July 2021)

SirRumpole said:


> Then of course we have to throw in the small but potentially devastating chance of dying of blood clots when vaccinated , and here seems to be no risk factors from that apart from relative youth.
> 
> So we have potentially lots of people under 30 scared to get vaccinated but wandering around in the community potentially spreading the disease.
> 
> ...



I am under 40, but decided to take the AstraZeneca vaccine anyway.

I decided the ultimate benefits to myself, my family, and community out weigh the tiny chance of complications.

But I did the math, and the rate of blood clotting issues, was lower than the rate of parachute failures based on the stats when I used to jump out of planes in the army, and I was never concerned about stepping out the door of the plane, so why worry about the vax.

So I took the Astra to free up a Pfizer for some nervous nelly out there that is to worried to take the Astra, I am sick of lock downs, and I want the borders open, I am sick of this virus.


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## Value Collector (4 July 2021)

I believe that we should roll out all the Astra Zeneca we can produce to anyone that wants to take it, import as much of the other stuff as we can to.

And then draw a line in the sand and say that from 1st of January 2022, the borders open again with no more lock downs and no quarantine, and we just deal with the consequences if you haven’t been vaccinated.

I think then we will see a lot more people getting vaccinated, because at the moment a lot of people are avoiding the vax because they feel safe.


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## qldfrog (4 July 2021)

SirRumpole said:


> Then of course we have to throw in the small but potentially devastating chance of dying of blood clots when vaccinated , and here seems to be no risk factors from that apart from relative youth.
> 
> So we have potentially lots of people under 30 scared to get vaccinated but wandering around in the community potentially spreading the disease.
> 
> ...



Anyone with just half a brain would look at figures availables in countries where covid has already spread
Below 50 and without serious preexisting illness.aka not under cancer treatment,etc..do not get vaccinated pure stats: risk reward
Above 70, probably worth giving  vaccine a go statistically and definitively if above 80
In between..hard to say, especially with mRNA which has some scary possible consequences as raised by scientists much more aware than me, and no, that does not mean conspiracy.look at the dengue fever first mRNA experience results...proudly french made. :-(
At 54 and relatively healthy,it is a hard call, especially as vaccines will be mandatory and AZ with the least long term unknown effect risk will disappear/not offered,so  ready to take a short term risk now. AZ clots vs more serious long term issues with mRNA is my personal view.
Some non mRNA vaccines will be available but not sure here.
As per thread name, this is not over..from virus or "vaccines" consequences
Please also note that by preventing the spread like wild fire, lockdowns and low natural spread/immunity, the world is destroying the natural cycle of viruses: becoming more infectious/more benign, and creating more mutations opportunities (variants) which could really lead to a very dangerous one. As is, it remains benign in term of mortality..raw mathematics.. obviously,you do not want to be in the 0.1%
But imagine if you had a 20 or 30% mortality rate regardless of age.
What a **** up is my summary..we send probes on Mars, yet no one able to use what i would call scientific common sense in our leaders.
Nope, story is not over


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## Garpal Gumnut (4 July 2021)

Is Covid or its effects over? It all comes down to a choice between Jesus or Xi Peng. 

Pray, as we are advised by our PM here, or have an authoritarian leader who vaccinates, as in China. 

Oh, and nobody has asked the virus. 

gg


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## basilio (4 July 2021)

We all "want" to believe COVID is  "almost" over.  

I think  the reality of the current  international spread of Delta Covid  shows we are kidding ourselves. In Australia the fact that we don't have an honest to god crash vaccination program including AstraZeneca (spot on  analysis VC) is so poor it's heart breaking.

I mean this time last year we were all struggling with a new dangerous virus that we had no answer for.  Our responses were only isolation and treatment. A year later we have the tools to very largely protect the whole community.  And we are xucking it up.  


_I decided the ultimate benefits to myself, my family, and community out weigh the tiny chance of complications.  VC_


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## SirRumpole (4 July 2021)

I'm over 60 and I'm booked in for my first AZ jab in 2 weeks.

My main problem with AZ is not clotting but the fact that one has to wait 3 months to be fully covered, whereas with Pfizer its all over in 3 weeks.

But as I have no choice AZ it is for me.


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## qldfrog (4 July 2021)

SirRumpole said:


> I'm over 60 and I'm booked in for my first AZ jab in 2 weeks.
> 
> My main problem with AZ is not clotting but the fact that one has to wait 3 months to be fully covered, whereas with Pfizer its all over in 3 weeks.
> 
> But as I have no choice AZ it is for me.



You will not be "fully covered" with either, and i believe you will be ok with AZ, risk benefit balance is good and far less risk of crap hitting you in a couple of years as a result of  mRNA"vaccine".
It is a blessing .be positive SirRumpole 👍


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## Smurf1976 (4 July 2021)

Quite some years ago I was trained in how to communicate correctly in an emergency situation. 

Suffice to say, pretty much everything I see going on around me with COVID and vaccination fails miserably from that perspective. 

The basic concepts are:

*Use simple language. Avoid technical terms or any word not in widespread mainstream usage.

*Include correct (official) names plus all known informal or other names of places.

*Persons in authority should always be referred to by official title.

*Assume zero prior knowledge of the situation unless it is extremely well known (eg the existence of COVID is well enough known to be assumed knowledge).

*Exclude all information not relevant. 

*Be specific not generic. 

The underlying reasoning is really quite straightforward. In an emergency situation you need to communicate in a manner that cannot be misinterpreted and which can be understood by everyone regardless of their education or knowledge.

Communication around COVID vaccination is failing miserably in that regard, to the point that it has likely deterred some who'd otherwise have been vaccinated.


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## qldfrog (4 July 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> Quite some years ago I was trained in how to communicate correctly in an emergency situation.
> 
> Suffice to say, pretty much everything I see going on around me with COVID and vaccination fails miserably from that perspective.
> 
> ...



maybe it is not such an emergency but more ego boasting and power pull by various heads (of states mostly);
I have the feeling (or hope?) that should this illness be ebola, it would not be acted in the same way:
we lock down but reopen for NRL match or AFL competition, while postponing new cases detected to the following day (as I speak,today, in qld) to be able to change narrative after the Broncos match is over..how can we trust anyone?


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## over9k (6 July 2021)

It's almost as if the people in charge haven't been put in charge based on their competence. 


I mean, that would never happen, would it?


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