Agnostic.com
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The ABC's take on what we have learnt since coronavirus hit.
[abc.net.au]

I would say Australia has learnt this;

  1. Our Federation is a joke when states can discount other Australian states and citizens access. We are still colonial states.
  2. Our pandemic response legislation needs to be modified, taking dictatorial power away from "medical experts". Society's "health" is far more than one area and a more balanced approach is needed. No need to discount common sense. The most vulnerable were not protected.
  3. Aged care staff are underpaid and badly managed. Working at multiple facilities during a pandemic is madness.
  4. Pandemic was redefined by the WHO during the 2000's. Used to be above 5% fatality. Now it's "worldwide spread". The WHO declaring a Pandemic triggers emergency legislation. We need to look at this.

Any other issues that need to be looked at?

powder 8 Oct 3
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5

I think it is a good thing that states/Territories can make their own rules up listening to their own medical experts as each has different factors to contend with. I think that as people are the carriers and spreaders of the disease that stopping people from moving around is the best way to slow down the spread. That was determined early on. Since people can not be trusted to do this themselves because a large proportion only care about themselves and think they have the right to do what they want regardless then it needs to be mandated and forced if needed. Each state/territory had to do what was best for itself. If they had not then we would be looking at the same situation as America is facing. And a much higher death rate.

Sorry but when there is wide spread of a highly contagious and damaging disease (many of the people who have "recovered" are still suffering from damage caused by the virus and new conditions are occurring ie strokes, heart attacks etc) then it is the medical experts that need to be listened to. Had borders been closed earlier and quarantining been enforced correctly Australia may well be in the same position as New Zealand. Here in the NT we are pretty much back to normal. There is still the social distancing rules in businesses but as we had no community spread (despite people who lied and tried to evade quarantining) we did not have the major shut down seen in other states. We have been able to open up our borders and some people are allowed to come in. All of the NT cases came from people in quarantine one from someone at their home quarantine giving it to the people in the home and then we insisted on hotel quarantine and no spread. (mind you our security guards were not sleeping with the people in quarantine) In the NT the most at risk were protected as the remote communities were shut very quickly. Had aged care been taken as seriously then they would also have been protected. But as your next point shows they were not.

Aged care staff have always been underpaid and working at multiple facilities is madness at any time. You could have someone who has been working for 16 hours straight assuming they go from one facility to another doing one shift after another. Many of them also work at hospitals as well as Aged care homes. Some of them are also doing study as they are training to be nurses. This is crazy and increases the risk of a wide variety of conditions not least skin diseases ie scabies. Our Aged care homes here still had the same restrictions as those down south. My aunt in one in Victoria spent many days in her room, her facility was thankfully spared, if her sons could have cared for her at home they would have done so (she is paralyzed down one side after a stroke).

I am quite happy for the definition to be worldwide spread.

I know that you disliked the restrictions put on you,

  • having to have a flu vaccination to visit your father in his Aged care home
  • not being allowed to travel to Tasmania to inspect a house you had purchased or finding the process difficult/impossible to navigate
    but you have also argued against the pedo priest being allowed to travel which contradicts your request that you be allowed to travel.

You have not suggested one thing that could have been done differently just they they should not have done what they did. If you have a better scientifically backed response then put it on the table but to say you do not like what they did (it inconvenienced you) and something better should have been done is just not good enough.

Budgie Level 8 Oct 3, 2020

I was interested to read that 24 Philippine ship crew have been taken ashore in WA. Considering that it is reported that they have been in quarantine the last six months sailing between Australia & China, how did they get infected? Seagulls?
The low rate of infection in the NT may be due to the natural aversion to getting down wind of a Teritorian & the high rate of alcohol consumption - your bodies are naturally noxious to the virus perhaps?
Stay safe. 👋😁😉

@powder Then my one merely suggest that, IF you think/believe you can do better then feel most free to do so and prove it to all.

@FrayedBear There are cases of people testing positive then negative then positive. Over months. It is possible that the tests are returning false positives (most tests are set to return false positives rather than false negatives) There are also cases of someone who has "recovered" falling ill again. They are still learning what this disease tracks like so it is possible that a crew member was positive. The Territory did not have a low rate of infection we had NO infection. All of our numbers were people returning and they tested positive while in quarantine.

@Budgie By your argument the cruisers could have gone on board infected - testing of the asymptomatic still does not occur.
The virus seems to be mutating and so you have to wonder how can any vaccine give people immunity?

You are still world wide at greater risk of being killed in a motor accident.

@FrayedBear I will give you that on the car accident but I can choose when and which roads to drive on I can alter my behaviour to do my best to avoid an accident. I have just spent over 6 hours on the road, I chose the speed to go at and when to overtake any vehicle going slower than me. I also chose when to take a break to refresh my brain. I spent 7 hours on Monday in rain driving again I made choices to keep myself as safe as possible. If I was driving in peak hour traffic in Sydney compared to outback roads in the NT I would have less choices and more risk factors. So looking at the virus we know some of the risk factors and can make some choices to limit our risk. But it varies depending on where you are and what your risk factors are.

As to the mutating this has always been a concern and the more people who contract the disease the more chance it has of mutating. We need good quality data to be able to make decisions and to see what is going to be the way to go. The vaccine would be targeting the most common points in all of the different mutations to kick start your immune system to attack those points I would imagine. However we have not been able to make a vaccine for HIV either so it may not be possible.

I believe Iceland tested a large percentage of its population,
[nordiclifescience.org]
[iflscience.com]

How many Australian's do you think would voluntarily go for testing or would they have to be ordered to and then how many would complain that they were ordered to and take it to the courts to refuse to be tested?

@Budgie "How many Australian's do you think would voluntarily go for testing or would they have to be ordered to and then how many would complain that they were ordered to and take it to the courts to refuse to be tested?" - just ask "how many morons are there living in Australia". Most would not piss on their neighbour if s/he was on fire on the sidewalk or sitting next to them in church. .

2

In response and my opinion, I'd say this,

  1. The States were 100% correct in closing their borders to try to prevent what could have been even greater Infection and Death Tolls amongst their populace, as we have sadly witnessed with Victoria,
  2. Our National response, given the Covid virus was entirely new on the scene, was better than expected as compare with the U.S, and other countries,
  3. Aged Care has ALWAYS been a bone of contention, imo, whether it be during normal times or this Pandemic and imo, there seems to be some who take up employment in Aged Care not out of a sense as in what we who were once in the Nursing sector called a sense of actual caring for the patient/s, but only for the wages/salary, This MUST be addressed and resolved permanently,
  4. The W.H.O., imo, was correct in declaring a Pandemic since Covid was as near as damned to 'out of control' from the get go, the world wide Death Toll is way beyond what could be classed as 'reasonable' under ANY circumstances imo, BUT the W.H.O. is NOT the be all - end all governing body that some seem to think it is, it IS an Advisory Body at the very least and something akin to the U.S.C.D.C. etc.
    Whining like spoiled children over such trivial things as limitations to so-called 'personal liberties' etc, is, imo, utter selfishness in the face of such a horrific event as this, how would you, the whiner, react IF Covid infected and killed those closest to you BECAUSE someone or other merely decided to ignore and disobey these limitations thus directly infecting those whom were closest to you?
    Would YOU not be enraged, I know I would considering that such an event was at least 90% preventable by merely temporarily relinquishing a few 'freedoms' that you often take for granted as being YOUR sole RIGHT/S ?
Triphid Level 9 Oct 3, 2020
1

Your 1. Federation or the Commonwealth Act I understod amongst many things to supposedly allow free movement of goods & people between states and to create one body speaking for the whole continent. In practice we can see that it didn't & in fact I have roven that even if Australia signs international treaties its federal courts refuse to recognise them if they have not been formally codified into Australian legislation - the numerous treaties on Human Rigts - Australia & its states are the only place on earth that do not afford its citizens the rights stipulated in the treaties.

  1. Medical experts - they should be outed as incompetent, shamed & then struck off.
    They still haven't got it right -
    Testing of the asymptomatic infected is the only way to properly determine infection rates. But what do you expect from legslators who measure unemploymentas being all people who have less than one hour's paid employment per week. The easure should be whether the amount received allows the person to maintain life in the economic neighbourhod where they live.
  1. See my response to 2.
    Also note that both Labour & NLP governments at both Federal & State level have been perpetrating senicide against the elderly for many years - compare the pension paid to the minimum amount determined to be needed for life in this country.
  1. The prevalence of many other diseases worldwide has not resulted in pandemic alerts so why now? And yes death rates are nowhere near 5% - the Australian death rate is something in the order of 0.003% and America's 200,000 about 0. 057%!

I liken the pandemonium to the old response of employer barons to lack of work orders - create a strike and let it go on until new work orders are received - that way workers don't have to be paid.

@FrayedBear Maybe, imo, @FrayedBear may like to climb down from his 'personal' cross once in while and give some other poor and unfortunate person/s a chance to rest up for a spell.

@FrayedBear You seem to be confusing what the medical experts are saying with politicians who want to have their figures look good. The unemployment rate has nothing to do with this and medical experts do not comment on them.

@Budgie I'm pointing out that it matters little who prepares what figures if the basis of calculation is meaningless.

@Budgie medical experts are being used as the reason for creating unemployment.

0

Australia's reaction was hysteric.
The closing borders was absurd.
Stripping people en mass of their basic rights is criminal.

There is also one more important point to be made when is comes to "old people's homes": these places are just the antechamber before the final disposal of the mortal coils.
Western "civilisations" have largely abandoned their old people. The CoVid tragedy is just a reminder that these places are inadequate for old people. There is ample evidence of ill-treatment of inmates in the detention centres for the elderly.

Given the somewhat very low Covid Death Toll here in Australia, discounting the needless numbers that Victoria copped from its 'second wave' that were, imo, truly preventable, when compared to the rest of the world, I'd say that thus far we have handled quite well.
Except of course for, imo, those rank, selfish idiots who seemingly are thinking ONLY of themselves and their so-called 'personal needs and desires, thus putting the health and lives of others at risk, etc, etc.
S.O.P. in Medicine and Hospitals is, when ANY highly infectious out-break occurs is to immediately isolate the patient from the rest of the hospital and initiate aseptic and sterile protocols such as limiting the number of Staff attending to patient zero to limit the spread BUT not to any extent that treatment and care to patient zero, or others who may also have been compromised, etc.
As yourself this question, Would you prefer that any person who MAY be carrying Covid be simply allowed to walk the streets where you live freely and unrestricted?
IF it were such a thing as Ebola, Typhus, Cholera, Bubonic Plague, etc, etc, would YOU still be screaming and whining about having your 'personal liberties' restricted then?
As a nurse I was called upon numerous to times to do my duties and 'special nurse' patients with HIGLY infectious diseases, even once a patient with Stage 3 Syphilis, a VERY HIGHLY infectious disease even these days that CAN, in Stages 2 and 3, be passed on by simple contact skin to skin or body fluid to bare skin, Isolation Protocols worked then and NO-ONE screamed about having their 'liberties' restricted, so WHY are you and others doing so now?

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