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Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) outbreak discussion

Will the "Corona Virus" turn into a worldwide epidemic or fizzle out?

  • Yes

    Votes: 37 49.3%
  • No

    Votes: 9 12.0%
  • Bigger than SARS, but not worldwide epidemic (Black Death/bubonic plague)

    Votes: 25 33.3%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 4 5.3%

  • Total voters
    75
This is just Middlesbrough a large town in the county of Yorkshire in England. It shows how the Delta variant can lead to an explosion in the number of cases despite the UK having the worlds second best vaccination record :
 
I usually am on the same page as yourself, however now it sounds as though the media is saying just get the AZ if it's available, yet when Morrison said that several weeks ago he was lambasted, as usual.
The problem is, everyone has been trying to wedge Morrison, when really they should have been just looking out for Australia's best interest.
just my opinion.
 
So amazingly sad, I wonder if he was vaccinated, or had an underlying health condition, or just decided enough is enough.
Don't think in this case being vaccinated would have made any difference to the poor bugger.
Suicide always lacks logic and reasoning.
Mick
 
Don't think in this case being vaccinated would have made any difference to the poor bugger.
Suicide always lacks logic and reasoning.
Mick
Absolutely and it is everyone's right to chose, sometimes the reason to keep going, is outweighed by effort required to keep going.
Many of us, have had to weigh up that decision, at some time in our lives.
I am noticing a much higher media coverage of full lockdowns and there repercussions, now that NSW is starting to have them, is that because full lockdowns are bad, or because of the media's Sydney centric obsession?
 
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As someone from Regional NSW said to me some time ago, NSW stands for Newcastle, Sydney and Woolongong. Nothing else exists.
Mick
 
As someone from Regional NSW said to me some time ago, NSW stands for Newcastle, Sydney and Woolongong. Nothing else exists.
Mick
I tend to think that is how the rest of Australia see it, it seems that people in the Sydney area, see the rest of Australia as a life support system for them.
All policies have to be Sydney/ Melbourne centric, the rest of Australia can get stuffed, that's why I started the thread "should we sell W.A to China" a long time ago.
No one gives a $hit about W.A no one wants to live here, the media moved all its coverage over east, the political parties don't give a ratz ar$e about it, other than the mining income.
Now when Sydney starts to feel some actual personal financial pain, it is a national crisis, why? because they have a protected life selling into and buying into the ponzi scheme.
Well the virus ain't buying.
Another way of looking at it is, the Sydney/Melbourne people live with a 50% higher financial stress level than most of the rest of Australia and most of the media presenters live in Sydney/ Melbourne.
Maybe that is why they are so focused on Sydney/ Melbourne outcomes?
 
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Some may remember back in early 2020 that one of the experts, Neil Ferguson from the Imperial College in London, had used modelling to predict huge numbers of deaths from the coronavirus in the US and UK,
A bit of examination of his models by American Institue for Economic Research has shown just how far out he was in his predictions.

Ferguson and the Imperial college had form on this.
In a stats persons view
From Statistical Modelling
So now it seems that the recent falls in cases in the UK seem to be a bit of a dissapointment to the expert epidemioligists.
from
it just shows that scientists, experts, genii etc do not always get it right.
The problem lies in when to believe them, and when to look a little sceptically at what they have to offer.
The one thing you can be sure of, they are not universally correct.
Sometimes not even the consensus is correct.
Mick
 
I was on the same page here. So was Bas from memory. AZ was completely political and now the same twitter idiots have swung back and said to get it. Meh, nothing wrong with disagreements.

My thoughts: stopping people working while simultaneously altering stimulus. At a time when rents are $500+ and 2 bags of groceries will set you bag $100. For my way of thinking is setting up a hard landing.

Then thinking people are not going to protest as they go broke.
Bjiggles should have fought harder to ensure what she put in place was going to offset the damage. Locking down the Lebanese community was never going to go well. Then for some reason a lot of my Muslim friends are aggressively antivax.

Zero cases seems like a stupid strategy. But a few here were saying the obvious months ago. Get vaccinated for the inevitable shtstorm
 

Of course, but they were predictions based on the best information available at the time. One must view them cogniscent of the fact that being predictions, many things could go wrong or new factors could come into play. It was also a brand new virus and they had little knowledge of it and how it could mutate. They estimated over a million deaths in the US with lockdowns in place and it came in about half that. But what were the predictions of those who ignored science completely, people you seem to have some affinity with.

It's just a Democratic hoax.
It will go away in a few days.
Once the election is over, you will hear nothing more about it.

I would much prefer a government to be overcautious on a new virus that could have proven more lethal and killed in the millions or spawned a mutation that was not controllable through vaccines or other means, than a government that stuck its head in the sand and pretended nothing was going on.
 

Thanks for that Redrob. I have read a number of articles from the AIER website and frankly their methodology is pretty shonky.
 
But what were the predictions of those who ignored science completely, people you seem to have some affinity with.
The UK based its first responses to Covid based on the modelling that Ferguson provided.
I am merely pointing out that was miles out.
That does not mean I have an affinity to those who ignored science.
Its an inference that you have made.
I am a sceptical, cynical bugger who likes to see both sides of every argument.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a few folks on here who will only accept reviews, articles, models data analysis etc that suit there own particular bias.
Mick
 
From my own experience, two of my four kids were badly affected by the Victorian lockdowns, the other two were able to keep working.
Oner of the two who were affected lost his job, indeed the entire business is he started with a mate is gone, I am in a position to help him start agin if he thinks its worth it. At the moment he has no intention of going through it again.
Other son works in hospitality , so his job has been on and off again for 18 months.
I find it instructive that the people most vociferous in business, the media, the government, the public service etc rarely lost any money, much less their jobs. The well paid invariably were able to work from home as if nothing happened, with their biggest concern being what meals could be delivered to their "work from home".
The people most exposed to the virus were those whose jobs could not be done from home, and almost invariably were the lower paid jobs.
The army of delivery drivers dropping all the amazon purchases to the those working from home, the food delivery folks, the guys who manned the service stations, the mechanics, the furniture removers shifting the well to do from their city premises to their country/coastal/mountain retreat. These are the groups who suffered the most.
Then the elites wonder why they revolt.
Mick
 
Did his post get deleted?
Yes.
Here's the Table that simplified Imperial College's calculation on deaths:

Table 4. Suppression strategies for GB. Impact of three different policy option (case isolation + home quarantine + social distancing, school/university closure + case isolation + social distancing, and all four interventions) on the total number of deaths seen in a 2-year period (left panel) and peak demand for ICU beds (centre panel). Social distancing and school/university closure are triggered at a national level when weekly numbers of new COVID-19 cases diagnosed in ICUs exceed the thresholds listed under “On trigger” and are suspended when weekly ICU cases drop to 25% of that trigger value. Other policies are assumed to start in late March and remain in place.

There are too many variables to make definitive statements about what worked best, especially as masks were never in the initial mix.
Some people want to use the extremely high "Do nothing" figures as a basis for claims, rather than look at what was forecast against various mitigation strategies. That's not sound in that every nation has done something, not always soon enough, and not always enough!

(for those who don't read the linked paper, "on trigger" simply means how quickly mitigation strategies were "triggered" - based on people in ICU due to covid)
 
Unfortunately, there seems to be a few folks on here who will only accept reviews, articles, models data analysis etc that suit there own particular bias.
Are you able to confirm that you understand the data you quote?
For example in your post the calculation for US "overestimated" (by Imperial College) is 536000 deaths, but on a worst case scenario Imperial College forecast that lockdowns reduce deaths by about one fifth of the "Do nothing" scenario, so their lockdown estimate is 2200000 x 0.2 = 440000 (compared to 1100000 in your post).
I clarified the meaning of the data in a table you presented regarding vaccinations in Israel, as you requested, and got no reply.
 
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It would not matter if I quoted God, you would dispute it.
Thats your perogative, but there are occasions when I just don't respond to trolls.
Mick
 
And to back that up comes the news that private pathology groups in OZ are vehemently opposed to anything except PCR tests here in OZ.
From Todays Australian

One of the issues with PCR tests is the number of cycles of the PCR test that are required to get a result. According to a paper from National Library of medicine, running more than 24 cycles is prone to produce errors.
Never let science, public health or ethics get between a large listed co and a buck.
mick
 
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