Comments by "annoyed aussie" (@annoyedaussie3942) on "Dr. John Campbell" channel.

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  123.  @lisag1153  Population density with 0 restrictions means nothing, Mississippi is one of the least densely populated states in the US as in urbanisation rate and the worst death toll per capita from covid 19 of any wealthy jurisdiction on the planet. If Florida was a country and you ignore other US states it would be the worst wealthy country on the planet. As you would be aware Florida is subtropical which has its advantage of not having major spikes in transmission and you would also be aware by the statistics or from DeSantis himself that cases actually have a small spike in summer, come summer Florida will likely overtake New York in deaths per Capita and it's way ahead of Texas and California already. As far as Floridian being a bit older than average, so what , deaths per million in Japan, South Korea and Singapore with as old or older populations are at about 200 per million compared to 3,300 per million for Florida. If that's not failure I don't know what is. Wealthy retirees which bring the age up in Florida are very highly vaccinated also , educated rich people get vaccinated that's just how it is. It's how well a jurisdiction gets the vaccine hesitant vaccinated that counts and DeSantis and his hand picked propaganda agent for Surgeon General have actually done nothing to encourage and to some extent discourage such people to get vaccinated. Anyway I guess you can cling to well at least Mississippi and a few other mostly Republican states will always look worse when compared to Florida.
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  134.  @michaelowens7792  With regard to the US vaccine scheme it is good. A vaccine company directly especially in the context of US liability laws which are probably the most generous on the planet a company will just fight forever. It is known that even the best vaccine on the planet might kill for arguments sake 1 in 1,000,000 people. So a vaccine that could save for arguments sake 10,000 lives and one person dies is good to use and as the scheme itself says was set up so people using a vaccine know they have an easier recourse than taking on a multinational corporation directly yourself at your cost. As the scheme states if you disagree with the compensation you don't fight the government you take on the company direct, but you must go through the scheme process first. So you lose nothing it doesn't remove any rights you have. As far as are any compensation payouts appropriate or not it would seem they are because otherwise I would expect to see news to the contrary if it wasn't the case. The scheme also helps people in other countries because it would set precedence. Unless people are complaining of the 75c price tag I can't see what the issue could be. If a company acted negligently or forged trial results for arguments sake they are still liable, this is for the rare cases of serious adverse reactions including death which are unavoidable. Most of what I stated is on their website. The rumour as stated by the original commenter that it's impossible for a company to be held directly liable is incorrect.
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  164. Without complimentary efforts closing the borders would have achieved nothing. The virus was already in all major countries on the planet at the time of the Wuhan lockdown. The countries who succeeded all had detected more cases than USA on February 20, that's the approximate crossover date when the US started to overtake other countries case numbers. Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Thailand officially had the largest case loads with 15 or more cases and the US only 15 cases. There is a direct correlation with a small number of countries carrying out all required measures and other countries carrying out one measure partially, eg UK and US still haven't had a lock down by successful country standards to this day with borders still open and no supervised quarantine. It only takes one case, about 15,000 cases in Australia came from a single quarantine breach in Victoria and they know this from dna testing the strain. The main failure was not the quarantine breach because it's happened in Queensland , New South Wales and New Zealand also, the failure was to detect the breach contact tracing and acting very quickly. So quarantine at the border would be useless without proper lockdowns and internal travel restrictions with a massive contact tracing and testing effort by the end of February. Some countries were not particularly aggressive with all these measures officially but if you look at compliance levels of voluntary measures you will find they are much higher in some non Western countries so not as much enforcement required.
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  276.  @CarolReidCA  Part of your comment is correct but most of it isn't. If China had known earlier they would have locked down Wuhan earlier so clearly they didn't know until January 22 when over the next day they did a complete lockdown including all flights to anywhere which remained in place until April 14 . The flights coming out of Wuhan were evacuation flights requested by other governments which for obvious reasons couldn't be denied. It's not either possible or the responsibility of China to do anything with those people once they are in another country. All the evidence I have seen indicates less than 1,000 cases ever got out of China prior to January 23 and more likely around 100. I have not heard of a single confirmed case going from any other Chinese city to outside China so even if it did occur the number would be minnescule. But the number is completely irrelevant if countries chose to do nothing other than watch the spread , like the US did and no enforced quarantine to this day. Biden talks about doing it but I don't think it has been done yet and if it's not in a hotel it can't work anyway, even with hotels breaches will occur occasionally. Partial lockdown as practiced by every US state is largely pointless because as you pointed out no travel restrictions. I take it one step further the US actually has a spreading mechanism built into policy because if you lock down one state or county with high infections people just go to the place with low infections that are not locked down. Australian hotel quarantine is almost exclusively for returning citizens so can't avoid that one.
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  315. Looking from Australia, Canada has proven proof of concept however never takes that last step to elimination. In other words you have the technical capability but seems not the will. I was extremely impressed when Canada went from about 5,000 cases a day to around 400 cases a day around 6 months ago when Melbourne Victoria Australia had 500 cases per day. I thought Canada had done it they are going to eliminate it and Victoria was stuffed . The problem is Canada wants to fly close to the sun and wonders why it keeps getting burnt. The quarantine measures are relaxed or using the true definition which is " prevent "or "stop" diseases or pests from getting into an area , Canada isn't doing this so national border measures are actually slow the spread mitigation measures. Quarantine in the same house as your family is living isn't quarantine and isn't in any way enforceable, I can't imagine in the majority of cases a husband or wife returning after 3 months apart and they never touch or great each other closely , of course they will and likely they will end up in the same bed. The 3 days at a hotel is really just getting one negative test, according to governments in Australia it can take up to about 5 days after infection for a pcr test to be able to detect the infection, so incubation period sort of. The highest risk of catching it is actually the trip the airports and plane and any other stops on the trip, so that test on day one it appears will miss all the most likely cases. Of course I wish your country well but am sceptical because as stated measures are in most cases only 90% when you need 100% to stop new variants entering for example. Borders both national and provincial are the most important thing. Half of all breeches in quarantine in Australia have been the UK variant, whatever province that is in travel should be stopped to other provinces without proper hotel quarantine because it's virtually impossible to stop it's spread. Best of luck and take care personally.
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  466.  @jharris1397  Thanks for quarantine versus isolation terminology that is being used in your country. The example I gave of a person travelling to England from the US is the actual policy, but interchange Paris France with New York is probably a better example because it's only a drive away. The UK and US have what can be considered weak voluntary guidelines, because a £1,000 penalty even if you break the extremely relaxed procedures is nothing really. How many people are being fined anyway? I can tell you from Australian experience about 20% will break the rules until enforcement happens unless people in the UK are far more compliant. Between 8 June and 27 July just 10 fines issued, I found an article. I will give an example in my state a person threw a party breaking the rules at the time in April, they were issued with a $1,400 AUD fine. They thought they were smart so they did it again the next night. Police issued the with a summons to appear before court for a more serious penalty. They got 2 months gaol. The UK as US have no real intention of stopping the spread. If you are going to only do mitigation as in try to stop hospitals overflowing probably the continuous lockdown lite restrictions of Sweden is better and seems a bit more honest with the population. The restrictions in all states of Australia except Victoria are the same or less than Sweden's restrictions currently excluding travel restrictions. On Sweden the per capita death rate is just about to be overtaken by the US because Sweden seems to be having only about a death a day at the moment. The US population is a lot fatter though with an apparent adult obesity rate of 36% versus Sweden 20% so more deaths can be expected.
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  472.  @mildredobrien517  The why can be many reasons, I know I don't want to wear a mask or cloth mask but I will if the government requires it. I am in Queensland Australia and we have had a total of 225 cases of close contact or community transmission officially in a population of about 5 million. I live in a small apartment and did get very crook in March I think and some backpackers from Europe were about 6 metres away on the balcony while I was on mine, I think I did get the virus but could have been another virus no certain way to know but only tested when it was open to anyone who wants a test and all symptoms gone by then and was negative. I did wear a mask when shopping when I was sick and never touched a product unless I am going to buy it because I knew I was sick with something. One aspect based on many comments I see is that people who haven't seen it personally seem to believe it won't affect them, especially people from the US and of course the president probably contributed to this. Also if you are in a rural area it can seem like it's somewhere else, however it can spread through a small town no problems but it will be slower. People who get it but not bad symptoms also might never tell anyone because they feel stupid for not listening. In Australia the people that have taken it the most seriously are remote indigenous communities so they wanted to be cut off from all but essential government workers from the outside and have been. Their fear is reasonable they might be 500 km from the nearest hospital and if things got out of control generally they would be extremely vulnerable. Of course they aren't wearing masks but about how seriously people take it. I live in the city I am 10 minutes drive to 3 different major public hospitals, if I was 500 km away I know for a heart attack or something probably I am a gonner because even the flying doctor will be an hour or so minimum if an airstrip is close. So people's perception of their own vulnerability would play a big part in behaviour I think.
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  503.  @Unitedflyier  Australia has 3 advantages and being an island isn't one of them, as far as people in my region being more compliant , other than Japan and China it's not really the case. Japan recently resorted to enforcement in the end rather than just require people to do things and if they don't up to them, so even Japan realised enforcement is required. The 3 real advantages are being somewhat ready, we found more cases in the first month as in towards the end of February than any European country, Italy was totally asleep only found a case on February 21, secondly regional culture regarding quarantine in general, we normally have the highest quarantine standards in the world especially Australia, New Zealand and Japan with South Korea and China not far behind I think, this also most likely translated to the entire West Pacific WHO region countries adopting 14 days enforced quarantine, the other advantage is our own internal political leadership. I saw how some Eastern European countries actually compared to us then they opened the borders and thousands dead, if I was one of those nations I would at least threaten to leave the EU because they pressured countries successfully to open borders and kill their own citizens, no different to Donald Trump. If you followed what happened in Victoria then you would know luck doesn't play much of a part, the hardest lockdown outside of China other than maybe Italy in the beginning, however Italy just reopened and decided not to finish the job, Victoria decided to finish the job , the only place to do so at the time with cases reaching about 500 per day, outside of Wuhan. Victoria had more cases than Canada at the time and Canada has the exact same advantages as Australia, they shut the US border so what's their excuse. The only genuine excuse is my government failed to act effectively for any rich country. If EU is a country because it acts like one then that government. If you want to include WHO well your regional office is run by countries in your region. PAHO ( Pan American Health Organization) and European region WHO countries have almost universally performed bad and followed the open borders, 10 days voluntary quarantine protecols or done nothing.
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  552.  @imathumb  The sad thing is when cases were about 500 per day in Victoria, I was thinking they might be doomed, I don't know if you followed things much but slow action and contact tracing was the reason not the headline reason of a single quarantine breach which has occured in other states and New Zealand without it getting out of control, but Victoria came back better than any other jurisdiction outside of mainland China after reaching such case numbers and getting them to 0 . Canada at the same time was below 400 cases a day I think, I was impressed with Canada and thought they had done it but seems they relaxed. I think it's extreme to constantly put entire populations into lockdown lite indefinitely and the number of deaths people in Europe and North America accept is terrible. Of course Canada is far better than the big neighbour but that's basically comparing arguably the worst practice in the world for a high income country. What is most harmful to mental health is uncertainty in my opinion, if people know the outcome they will do there best, of course Victorians at the time would have felt terrible because every other state open with very limited restrictions and everything open and they are in hard lockdown, but conversely they can see an end and what the end of the process looks like. I am of course talking of the majority because some will always disagree but if you were to ask those same people now other than the conspiracy theorists I thing they would acknowledge having everything open including the state borders was worth it and deaths were not as bad as they would otherwise be. Best of luck and take care, at least vaccines are on there way but a few months before any real effects I think.
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  558.  @CharlesvanDijk-ir6bl  Interesting, in Queensland it's 1.5m rule which I thought was standard throughout Australia but apparently not. With the legality of border restrictions/quarantine measures there is no argument actually about the interpretation of the constitution which actually has quarantine as one of the issues and Australia already has 20 quarantine zones give or take if you actually looked at every single agricultural quarantine area for every single plant and or fungus. In general it isn't enforced with personal use such as someone hopping on a plane and flying elsewhere in the country with a piece of fruit or a mushroom, it is however enforced very strongly on farmers etc. and they will know the rules in their industry. Quarantine zones of course can pop up in days of any outbreak with say anthrax for example an entire district will be immediately quarantined and all animals tested and destroyed if they have the bacteria. The question therefore is, is the quarantine measure reasonable and if they tried a blanket challenge against WA again I think they will lose , however if the challenge was I as a person in South East Queensland with no cases for sometime would be a high enough risk to refuse entry if I was willing to do 2 weeks quarantine because I want a holiday in Western Australia. WA can argue even with quarantine breaches have occured in VIC, NSW, QLD and WA itself and to produce perfect quarantine is a technical impossibility and any breach could lead to 100's of deaths like Victoria, the counter argument is the probability is so low and WA is being completely unreasonable, then up to the judges to decide if that's reasonable. So I think WA probably is a bit unreasonable but overall not and really who would want to be the judges that helped cause 100 deaths, they would have to be pretty much dead certain this can't occur to rule against WA. So the process will favour the state imposing the quarantine/restrictions.
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  574.  @melmorrison1400  No I just look at places with comparable demographics to Australia and preferably comparable weather which actually doesn't seem to play a major part. Take Florida it would be somewhat comparable to my state Queensland, warm weather and not highly variable (almost everyone live near the coast). They have deaths per million approaching 2,000 and they have rolled out vaccines far quicker than us , so no reason we couldn't have had a similar or a higher death rate, we aren't genetically superior or something. I look on worldometer which seems pretty reliable and the open border countries with minimal restrictions in PAHO Pan-American Health Organization and European WHO regions mostly have deaths between about 1,500 per million and 2,500 per million. If you look at Western Pacific WHO region the deaths are less than 10% per Capita compared to those other regions, actions make a difference and at the regional WHO offices policies seem to be highly consistent between member countries especially border quarantine or no quarantine. The Delta variant every country now struggling, China, Vietnam, Australia but never struggled before. China has a reasonable vaccination rate but given the size of the population things can go very bad very quickly, the policy of testing entire city populations can't really be done anymore because have 30 cities or so with outbreaks. The good thing though is populations at least partly vaccinated except for Vietnam with a very low vaccination rate.
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  616. The talk about sugar in this thread I disagree with. The problem with concentrated high levels of sugar is highly available to the body so converted almost entirely to usable energy unlike more complex carbohydrates that are contained in a vegetable where the body must first break through the protein protecting the inner cell in the case if it's uncooked and then break that carbohydrate down to sugar. But the biggest issue is the desirability an 11 ounce or 330 ml can of cola is equal to about 450 gm or a pound of cabbage. I can tell you eating 450 gm of cabbage is a bit more effort than drinking that can of soft drink but approximately same energy content but my body will take hours most likely digesting that cabbage even though half the energy is sugar just the same as the sugar in the soft drink. My body will expend a certain amount of energy digesting the cabbage so the net energy will be lower but the soft drink sugar goes into my blood at a rapid rate within minutes of me drinking it. If one truly wants low sugar you shouldn't cook food because that creates sugars, cooked cabbage would have a higher percentage of sugars. The desirability of cola as my example is the problem along with how easy it is to consume or in other words too easy to have too much but inherently the sugar is the same as that in a fruit or vegetable. Fruit juices with 10% sugar like apple are pretty much as bad as soft drink, same high energy and just as easy to consume which people don't realise because we or at least me thought it was healthy from years of subtle brainwashing.
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  653.  @jonaseggen2230  I have observed during this global event a lot of people don't understand that they lack empathy and want a one size fits all simple one action solution. I am Australian and have noticed some Australian people saying the most bizarre things. They think that you can just put another countries policy here because in their mind they have done better. Even you point out hang on a minute I don't want Sweden's policy because it will mean more restrictions in my state than currently exist , border restrictions are tough but necessary. Then they say it's all about mask wearing and there should be no other restrictions and nothing else needs to be done open up your border to every state and just forget about it. Queensland is my state of 5,000,000 people and have had 254 known cases of transmission inside our border. Some people consider this a failure and Sweden has done better. A sense of denial I suppose. Anyway a bit off track there , the vast majority of Queenslanders are happy with our governments job and there is a snowballs chance in hell that we will open our border to a state with an outbreak without the current mandatory 14 days government supervised quarantine. I have a suspicion though those people are from the 2 states who haven't done so well even when they say they aren't. We were a relatively hard lockdown state who wanted to open up slowly, the current problem state wasn't like that and always wanted an open border. Reminds me of the US states, put your state in lockdown then those who can or live close to a border just cross the border spreading around possibly more quickly than just doing nothing.
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  662.  @just_chris1630  My biggest observation is so many places don't finish the job and leave one particular big hole which is border quarantine being done on an honour basis. The UK now seems like they might start enforcing it and have filled in a ridiculous hole that existed in the previous regime which was you could enter England and go straight into a household and other members of the household could continue going about their daily business. Ireland now has very similar rules to Melbourne before but keeping schools open and the entry quarantine is super relaxed and appears to be entirely voluntary referring to it as guidelines we request people follow. So they have shut down all but essential businesses but allow infected people to continue to enter, total madness not to do the job properly. For countries 5,000,000 or more Australia and New Zealand are now the leaders with China , Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand. South Korea isn't looking too bad but Japan with about 2,000 cases a day isn't so good, it's not large compared to their population but getting compliance in any population will reduce over time I suspect making things harder and harder. There are some African countries and other countries spotted around the world doing well too but I am not following every country. Canada 2 or 3 months ago had less cases than Melbourne and I was thinking at the time Canada is going to succeed and Victoria might be doomed, very happy my concerns with Victoria turned out to be unfounded but sad to see Canada is now about 5,000 cases per day.
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  684. Well sometimes John is wrong or wrong emphasis when relating possible reasons for various countries success or failure and not holistic enough. He is trying to understand too much too quickly and of course can't read every comment because too many. As one example. The discussion over masks should compare Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, not UK. I am not saying masks don't help in the case of an out of control outbreak, they do. Taiwan never got to that stage, and nor has all states in Australia plus New Zealand, other than Victoria . So there is no concrete evidence that masks do anything other than slow the spread and possibly cause a low dose or alternatively different initial infection point which maybe reduces the chances of major illness or death. Those countries that contained the virus, even if at a latter date had problems all successful at initial detection of the virus, contact tracing, effective public messaging and draconian enforcement of measures if the population required that. In Australia it was certainly required, Victoria took a little different approach and didn't want to fine anyone and keep stuff open including borders. It's not entirely a coincidence Victoria is having problems in my opinion. So masks are really the last line of defence after all else has failed in my opinion, they can't stop an outbreak. Correlation is not causation, other measures created the success , not masks. If masks were 100% effective healthcare workers would never get infected and they are trained to use proper N95 or P2 masks and still get infected even if at lower rates than the general public.
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  703.  @martincahill5622  Your comment is spot on, truth is the messaging by numerous governments where the policy is to only slow the spread is completely misleading. The classic one is changing the definition of quarantine to mean reduce spread of contagious pathogens while countries like Australia, Taiwan, China etc. it still retains it's original meaning of to stop or prevent spread of contagious pathogens. This has had the effect that people even professional have wondered why certain countries at least before the Delta variant could contain the virus and keep going to covid zero when without looking at details everyone doing the same thing except they weren't because definitions were changed. In Australia now we having discussions about opening up and we have the inverse message being widely spread , learning to live with the virus is the message but the underlying policy is still covid 0 but with a lower emphasis on containment as in lockdowns less likely and enforced home quarantine as opposed to hotel quarantine and still continue with contact tracing and quarantine of the infected. The infected states as I call them are largely in lockdown and complaining about my state at the same time because we don't give assurance of fully opening border when 80% of eligible people vaccinated, quite premature and for the domestic state audience because if your state has the virus rampant you have nothing to lose by opening the border to a virus free state , your population gets more freedom possibly at the expense of another states existing freedoms.
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  710.  @ArialAElise  ok I misunderstood you. I know other than at the beginning and when Victoria Australia had serious problems all cases are genomic tested, but no idea how long that takes. About overall effectiveness of contact tracing , it will be very low where cases are high. I know in the case of Victoria when they got to about 500 cases per day it couldn't work at all in a state population of 6,500,000 and about 2,000 contact tracers. It was stated when Victoria basically developed a lockdown plan to get to very few cases that they were only confident that they could effectively contact trace 50 daily cases and anything higher the risk of having another major outbreak was too high, 90% confidence was given at the 50 cases per day that contact tracing would succeed. Contact tracing in Australia is track down everyone who was for example in a supermarket between certain times and encourage them to be tested etc. and then contact their close contacts for testing. My impression is contact tracing where the virus is rampant is just people that are close contacts as in household and work without bothering about looking for others and forget about secondary contacts without another known positive test result. Because of our fear in Brisbane of the UK strain the people at supermarkets where an infected person visited were declared close contacts and must get tested and isolate. So all supermarket staff working at that time would be going through self isolation and all the other customers they could find that were in store at the same time. These would normally be considered potential contacts not close contacts and maybe that with the 3 days lockdown is a bit over the top but better to do more and didn't have to than not do enough.
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  713.  @williamhornabrook8081  the AZ vaccine is made all over the world, UK, Belgium, India, Thailand, Australia, China, USA, South Korea and others I believe, if France has the capability which I believe it has the government had to step in and provide funding to a local firm to start making it , also of course the local firm would need to agree to the "at cost " terms etc. from Astrazeneca and Astrazeneca gets nothing until pandemic I guess declared over by WHO to be over. In Australia for example the government paid for expansion of vaccine production capacity by CSL our local company. To me the EU can't decide if it's a country or group of trading/security partners, so in a way I don't think France is totally to blame as an individual country, but collectively the EU seems to be a country, taking away the rights of it's membership. The open borders policy in the EU seems slightly tougher than what individual Australian states in Australia can and have done to protect themselves. I saw some EU person naming countries that have shut their borders to whatever extent the EU deemed wrong. To travel interstate in Australia if a state has a lot of cases need a pass and an approved reason to travel and if not an emergency like urgent medical care which is generally exempt 2 weeks hotel quarantine for about $2,800 . So the EU and US (including no enforceable interstate restrictions) open border policies have of course ended in the same results. UK and Canada same too but at least finally put in some fairly relaxed measures. Certainly have sympathy to you as an individual but totally disagree with the choices made on your behalf.
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  777.  @krollpeter  Other than Taiwan and Vietnam the rest of us "Asian" countries including Australia and New Zealand have a very different view on matters and understand the term quarantine. You can look at it country by country and you will discover that quarantine is taken very seriously in our part of the world. In Australia now there are effectively 7 major quarantine zones for covi sars2, each health jurisdiction basically which is a state or territory. There are more travel restrictions inside Australia than there are in Western Europe where to give the UK example the door has always been open with quarantine actually meaning an extremely relaxed voluntary scheme where you can infect others even if you follow the rules. We naturally have about 5 major different quarantine zones with agriculture during normal times. To give an example in my particular part of the world, dirt can't be taken outside of an approximately 100 km diameter circle without a permit which will probably never be issued at this point in time due to a fire ant problem in which we appear to have eliminated them in the end with the use of sniffer dogs. It is illegal to grow cavendish bananas in a non commercial manner because that is the main commercial variety and private plantings might cause risk to the industry. If you look at beef it has happened on a few occasions that American beef gets banned in South Korea and Japan because of agricultural outbreaks which the US is slow to contain but New Zealand and Australian beef have never been banned to my knowledge. SARS 1 affected the regions tourism very badly and since then the region has put systems in place and I know in Australia when you enter since then it is emphasized that if you get sick within 2 weeks tell the doctor where you have travelled from and not entirely sure but I think it's standard practice for doctors to ask anyway. All successful countries either have tough quarantine measures for imported food and or are major exporters of agricultural products where fairly major industries are threatened by any outbreaks. So I guess I am saying a culture has developed in this region. I do wonder after this is all finished will Western Europe and the US change or not. I don't think East Asian region will be changing. With Thailand accepting inbound tourists soon I expect quarantine will fail because the quarantine measures appear fairly relaxed by Australian standards. The locked in your room part of quarantine in Thailand is only 7 days and your room gets cleaned every 2 days according to the hotels offering the service which no matter how much care is taken produces higher risk and then after 7 days you can mingle with other guests for the next week , not 14 days you are locked in your room and no one's going to clean it as is standard practice throughout Australia I believe.
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  936. The humidity correlation if it even exists is only a correlation. The confinement of people indoors without good ventilation is the issue. The remark about Thailand should apply to Singapore a constantly humid environment , note the infections in Singapore are mostly migrant workers in boarding houses. Thai people are scared of tap water, these are people that take infection risk to a ridiculous degree. When I am in Thailand obviously not in the last 6 months I drink the tap water in Bangkok and surrounding cities and half the year because the mineral content varies it tastes better than Brisbane Australia water. Many Thai people wear face coverings particularly the poorer people working in agriculture or selling items in Street side carts in Bangkok. A story my Thai girl friend told me earlier on is an infected person went back to her village which infected her parents causing their deaths. This person wasn't very popular to say the least , after that the village market areas required face masks. In Bangkok maybe 5,000,000 residencies plus almost all retail outlets have airconditioning running constantly when occupied. Thailand was the first country to find a case outside of China. Initial response and competency of the response is the key , humidity doesn't decide if your government is competent or not. Any modern city has buildings with heating and cooling so essentially the same condition exists everywhere on the planet with apartment blocks and inner city homes, other than slums or rural areas. It's quite possible that many African countries have the same culture regarding protecting themselves from disease as the Thai's do. That culture also slows the initial spread because social distancing between class groups is much greater in low to middle income countries. The rich get the disease first of course due to air travel etc. Hope you don't mind my dissenting opinion on the main point.
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  1036.  @Mis-AdventureCH  Your last answer explains a lot regarding your previous comments. Australia isn't in lockdown and in Australia the states run their own shows with federal guidance and complete communication between States and the federal government, a bit easier because only 7 versus 50 for the US. Greater Sydney which is in lockdown is about 25% of the national population and they are, New South Wales is fairly slow to lockdown compared to my state Queensland which takes a more cautious approach, very similar to Western Australia and New Zealand. Our states will restrict travel from any hotspot which is anywhere that has any cases at all basically. So if in New South Wales it gets out of control they won't be able to travel to any other state for some time. New Zealand in effect is like another state so far as travel goes and under normal circumstances a completely open border for citizens born in either country. My state Queensland with a population of 5 million only 7 deaths, vast majority of people are happy with this and are ok with the travel restrictions as required. We have had few lockdowns actually because we always act quickly. Best of luck to you and hope your country's problems reduce. I understand your health system isn't that functional and working in it could be rather frustrating. The US spends more on publically funded healthcare as a proportion of GDP than Australia but life expectancy 5 years lower and doesn't seem to be universal coverage. No idea how it can be fixed but just the numbers indicates disfunction and most likely some of what you are talking about. Take care.
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  1181.  @benwilson6145  Well point by point, Trump claims he is a Christian and isn't, Morrison is a Christian, so what I am an atheist and couldn't care less. I guess next point relates to the cruise ship well it happened so what? What matters is it was corrected. If he said Rupert Murdoch is his friend again so what, Rupert Murdoch has supported both sides of politics over the years and although he does or used to at least choose people to run his media interests he generally have them free reign and believes the media should represent both sides, if you look at the various Murdoch press in Australia it depends on the publication, the Australian for example although I haven't read it for a while was very balanced actually. Sky News Australia is comparable to Fox News , sometimes not sure which is worse. Qanon thing don't know about that or why he would say that Qanon hates all Australian politicians of both parties and thinks Trump is a world saviour. This would be completely contradictory to Morrison's UN speech where he mentions misinformation being spread about covid 19 , an indirect rebuff to Donald Trump the biggest spreader of misinformation. As far as outbreaks inside of a state it is the State governments fault because they are required to run the response, in the end Australia has succeeded and the Federal government is a major part of that success along with all state leaders, regardless of political party. In the beginning Dan Andrews and Morrison were actually the closest together on the response actually with open borders policy etc. Thank goodness other states ignored those 2 along with NSW because otherwise we would likely look like other countries. Again it's not by political affiliation the federal government is bleeding cash big time so of course wants borders open because that will help, all states except NSW and NT backed down it would seem on the definition of hotspot, now real position seems to be 14 days no cases of community transmission or your state will have travel restrictions except hardline WA won't budge at all yet. The states are scared of ever getting into the Victorian situation so remain cautious and Dan Andrews according to opening plan is now a hardline state having dropped the open border policy. In the end the federal government did assist states even when disagree on policy and of course provided major assistance to Victoria when needed, Trump I hate to say didn't seem to care one bit unless it's a "red state". So Australian leaders are nothing like Trump, Trump is literally like Pauline Hanson , who is good for our democracy because all voices should be heard but should never be and can never be Prime Minister. Australia has offered a far more consistent stimulus and truth is it was too generous and needs to be wound back. The US doesn't have that funds are cut at the moment because Trump wants a $100,000,000 not specified for exact spending and Democrats don't want him having $100 Billion not assigned properly because Trump using executive power can just spend it however he wants with very wide parameters. This is nothing like the Australian situation.
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  1237. @counselthyself I am not particularly arguing whether it will or won't be endemic, just that it's a political issue, Western Pacific WHO countries all have 14 days mandatory enforced quarantine, so yes politically on this issue China, Japan , Australia and Papua New Guinea are closely aligned , ignore other geopolitical issues. The US or PAHO Pan-American Health Organization area and European WHO region are closely aligned, So, Brazil, US , France and Mexico are all closely aligned on this issue , no closed borders just 10 days voluntary quarantine will do, internally France is now as strict as even Melbourne was during their crisis or similar at least but I would bet you the airport is still open and voluntary 10 days quarantine is still in place and anyone with money can just go elsewhere in Europe with no lockdown. So I think can go either way , the other WHO health regions are somewhere between the above mentioned regions, politically in the end will China and Australia for example say we must accept the Euro and Pan American disease which is what it now is or will it go the other way and they finally they decide better to not keep the disease. Of course I am Australian I want your regions to tow the line and not accept another new virus becomes equivalent of the flu but probably worse because like you say the mutations that might be far worse than currently, the UK strain isn't the original virus, far more infectious, about half of all quarantine breaches in Australia were this strain despite it not being around for long and it seems a little more deadly especially for younger people, however the good news is the vaccines are still highly effective against it , but a little less so than the original strain.
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  1327.  @SGI999  You claim to be a constitutional lawyer and know that all vaccine mandates go against the constitution, well it could come down to one's job type and whether or not it's reasonable. My feeling is health workers have 0 chance of winning their case however others might have a chance in some circumstances as in it's not reasonable. If people are employed by the government then my guess they don't have a good chance. You're complaining about New South Wales government from what I understand and about historical things a few months ago. You also complaining about inflation, housing is the biggest cost in Sydney if you live there, move if you don't like it. There's plenty of food on shelves so you must be well off and complaining about not getting your favourite cut of meat or that if you like beef that's gone up a bit which is great , that means Australia is exporting more at a higher price, unless you want communism or to stop farmers selling to the highest bidder that's how it is for an international commodity. So I don't understand your concerns at all, only that you're scared of taking a vaccine. Omicron is the best thing that could ever happen, it gets things over with quickly and the Chief Health Officer in Queensland said in the most recent press conference that things are looking good and the cases are a massive undercount. He said they were cautious in saying anything up to now because QLD had 0 cases of natural infection so couldn't compare to other jurisdictions, however it's turning out ok, the vaccines are doing their job. NSW has peaked and QLD as a whole is about 2 weeks behind is the estimate. Cases are going down in your state cheer up a bit, doesn't mean it's over but it's probably on the way to being over, schools might be an issue we have to wait and see if the unions want to shut them when there's outbreaks or alternatively teachers required to stay home and quarantine when infected. My feeling is Australia as a whole will have less problems keeping schools open than say a country like the US. Australia having less than 10% of the deaths of European countries and the US is a good thing isn't it and you say vaccines might not be working but clearly they are in stopping severe illness and death. I understand your feelings towards your state government but NSW isn't Australia despite how our PM talks sometimes.
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  1331.  @tuck295q  you don't understand , look at the US if you want to see the difference. Why is the US public service so useless? Could it be because of the leadership. Currently Thailand is potentially on a knife edge if covid 19 breaks out in protests because would they stop protesting if required. People often don't appreciate what they have because it's not perfect or until it's gone. All government leaders said or did things that look stupid in retrospect regarding covid 19 with the possible exceptions of Taiwan and Vietnam. The government is in power and could have behaved like most European governments and US government did. I do understand the issues in Thailand regarding at what stage your democracy is at. Having things change slowly I would suggest is not a bad thing. Although there is certainly issues your current king doesn't really want to be involved with politics which is good but the change might be rocky. If what is happening now , happened 30 years ago in Thailand as you know bullets would already be flying. I hope this doesn't happen but it's not impossible. Transitioning from the previous kings idea to the likely path of the current king is uncomfortable for some. I know the biggest issues for many Thai is the current kings behaviour is not "king like" however in the scheme of things this isn't a big problem. I think in 10 or 20 years Thailand will have a constitutional democracy more similar to a country like England where the monarch and privy council are pretty much symbolic from.my understanding.
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  1332.  @tuck295q  I actually looked up USAID and what you are referring to was $4.2 million USD only, so a drop in the ocean, total aid was at $78 million of this the 2 main programs at about $10,000,000 each was for Burmese or Myanmar refugees and some military thing. I am not arguing Thailand is perfect or anything but just be a little more patient and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Of course I hope things resolve peacefully and the constitution doesn't have the upper house controlled by the military anymore. As far as the institution of the palace , that's a hard one because while I might think it should be less involved do Thai people overall want that? Also what is your opinion on the Royal Projects which is funded by government but run independently of government. I did find out about probably the most contentious issue and that's the king having direct control over property such as palaces and in theory that he could actually sell them off or leave them to whoever he wanted to in his will. The amount the government is giving the monarchy does seem excessive but might not be and it lacks any transparency what it is for. As far as assets that could be considered private property it's sort of a mess and having finance ministers previously manage them is no different to now because either way conflicts of interest can be argued. However the tax now paid by the king on investments would be significant which is a plus I guess. Whether or not it's a good idea for the king to declare publically that income or not , I don't know and it has never been declared before under any king. Anyway best of luck and hope all goes well. I do have some money in the Thai stock market but haven't followed it for ages and my gf actually is in the military and fairly high rank , involved in the medical field. That's how I know some things. The difference between US and Thai government system is one is a Federation and one a central government, the overarching system in the US and Australia is the same, state governments deal with health and therefore the operational part of dealing with covid 19. Enjoy the end of your weekend. I hope both our countries stay covid 19 free.
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  1340.  Blue Butterfly  you are just wrong about a few things, quarantine zones even for humans have been found to be constitutional by the high court challenge Clive Palmer versus the state of Western Australia. The only real challenge was the action reasonable under such circumstances. Victoria and New South Wales had an open border policy so a different approach in the beginning. Victoria also had extremely small fines by national standards until lockdown mark II. Victoria opened up a little more quickly than QLD which moved mainly because NSW did. The quarantine breach was not the primary cause of things getting out of control in Victoria, in fact the worst quarantine failure was in NSW with the cruise ship. Victoria's main failure was to contain the outbreak. Queensland had and equally bad quarantine failure to VIC with those girls that decided to go to VIC then sneak back in via NSW by lying about where they had been( court case slated for Monday 28 Sep with a maximum penalty of 5 years if found guilty). That quarantine breach only spread to 50 people or so. The single quarantine breach in Victoria caused 95% of the cases for the " second wave" and they know . If you are Victorian hang in there and do the right thing, a so far worst case scenario would be continous lockdown measures much worse than any state in Australia other than travel restrictions and 10,000 dead Victorians. This is approximately the New York situation adjusting for population of Victoria. The inconveniences which I acknowledge are major in Victoria is better than continuous lockdown lite and 1,000s of dead people in my opinion.
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  1363.  @klonowskierklartrohrleitun4241  I agree with your last point that most European countries including UK seem hellbent on proving how free they are with freedom of movement, overcompensating I think for what they know should be done. The UK has however recently moved towards the Australian way but it's possibly counterproductive, giving people 2 weeks warning that a new restriction is going to be imposed means there is probably a rush back to the UK from countries like South Africa, no direct flights but that's meaningless, yesterday I checked where South Africa international flights go and one was Doha and plenty of flights from Doha to London. I just hope these vaccines work because it's actually the only real plan for many countries. On vaccine rollout I think the UK has the best strategy and that's one thing they do seem to have got right, in the US in many states it's a dog eat dog situation to get a vaccine, calling hours and days on end to get an appointment or with other states join a queue for 5 hours and hope the vaccines don't run out before reaching the front, the most vulnerable can't get the vaccine in the second case unless they are in a nursing home because queuing up like that would be too much. The best way to have a compliant population is to show success, if the government keeps failing people reduce their compliance and start protesting including in Melbourne but they did manage to deal with them and actually even they protested mostly they wore masks and socially distanced because they didn't want fines.
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  1373.  Hillary  What are you talking about, everyone new the virus was outside China in multiple countries on January 21 so they can't hide that. Most rich countries carried out evacuation flights towards the end of January and in February , are you seriously suggesting China should have detained US , UK and Australian citizens which would have made no difference at all because it was already out. If you are from the US you should hang your head in shame because you were not willing as a country to do anything other than watch it spread to every state and territory to the point of killing rural populations like in South Dakota. Wake up to yourself, your country failed. I am Australian and it's unfortunate China is behaving like Trump on trade issues. In part it is probably to do with what you say however the US set the standard and on barley when China imposed ridiculous tariffs the US promptly made a deal with China to be the preferred supplier as stated on a US gov website. On trade the US under Trump is certainly not a friend of Australia. China did lock down all provinces in March some time from memory to get rid of the virus which had spread throughout China meanwhile after a 2 week pretend lockdown in the US the president is saying Liberate ( has a connotation of armed conflict) pretty much every Democrat run state. The transparency from China is not ideal it's as bad as the US with Trump taped in early February by Bob Woodward knowing the threat yet he told the public the opposite and whoever else was involved didn't speak out also.
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  1397. @David WP Are those people dead? Then no because if they ended up in hospital in the trial they would have had 100 tests run on them and if they subsequently died their cause of death would be known with a high degree of certainty. It amazes me you seem to care more for the dead than the living. Now that testing is widely available and most covid 19 deaths have occured in the last 6 months the total death numbers will be reasonably accurate. An accuracy rate of plus or minus 20% would be fine , it would change no decisions. You can also compare data with accurate jurisdictions like Australia , Japan , South Korea etc. and see if anything stands out and probably suspected covid 19 deaths in New York and London early on would be over counted because of dealing with people already dead inside a residence or on the street. And so what if a few deaths are counted as suspected covid when it was diabetes or heart disease, the 2 lockdown killers in Australia responsible for about 1,000 excess deaths in a population of 25,000,000. So someone could probably do some adjustments and it will change nothing. I know that the lockdown was responsible for the excess deaths because ABS ( Australian Bureau of Statistics) had a graph for the first 6 months of last year and it clearly showed excess deaths in March/ April then reverting to below expected again. If the UK adjusted just using gross Australian data if the same spike is not apparent in the UK it can only bring the suspected deaths number down 3,000 which is very low and changes nothing, it would be nothing more than an academic exercise. As far as sky News Australia suggesting we should kill 30,000 people and be like Sweden which they often promoted previously , well although some supporters of that do exist it's not really a popular idea, we don't see people flowing out of Australia to go to partial lockdown countries with mostly freedom to travel, in fact we see those countries with high freedom of international travel reconsidering their position as the body count increases.
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  1401.  @hotbit7327  Then look at Victoria Australia, the lockdown was in winter and now just coming into Spring but the drops in cases occured at a consistent rate during the winter part of the lockdown. So that can't be down to summer weather, also other jurisdictions at around the same latitude no out of control outbreaks. Proper lockdown plus testing and tracing works it is undisputable. Every lockdown jurisdiction has far lower cases. You might incorrectly argue that how about Queensland Australia or New Zealand etc. which currently have overall much lower restrictions than Sweden, travel being the exception, well if the virus is contained then restrictions don't have to be harsh other than travel restrictions to reduce the chance of the virus entering and getting out of control. Soft lockdowns only reduce the rate of the spread, the UK has only ever had a soft lockdown with voluntary travel restrictions to this day. The UK has not considered containment to this day so to say containment can't work if it was never attempted and a soft lockdown which allows the virus to spread is I guess a self fulfilling prophecy. You can say 'til the cows come home look these UK measures haven't worked and you are correct but you are not because working means only slowing the rate of spread not attempting to contain and stop spread. I do sort of agree a soft lockdown achieves very little so maybe if you go down that path might as well make it super soft and tell the public directly we are going to allow a certain number of deaths because they can be sacrificed for the good of the collective society.
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  1416.  @cinderelladevil1687  If you mean May 2021 I understand but if you mean May 2020 then why did your economy plummet by 11% in 2020 and a government deficit of about 11%. I realise it's not fair to compare Australia to Spain in some respects however the Australian economy dropped only 1.1% in 2020 and a government deficit of about 7.5%. Australia will be slower to open up and our economic growth , lack there of will be greater than Spain this year I expect but nothing we can do about it , our vaccination rate won't equal yours until the end of the year or maybe early next year. Queensland can't open it's border to infected people it would be a disaster and we are all open now anyway except for travel and yes effects inbound tourism and this is where Australia differs a lot we are an importer of tourism as in Australian spend more overseas normally than our inbound tourists so the closed border at the country level at least assisted in increasing our trade surplus. Obviously we are opposite season so things even in the states that have covid 19 in them should continue to improve as vaccinations go up and the weather keeps getting warmer. We are yet to see what happens this winter in Europe and Spain should be ok actually because not a very cold place and high vaccination rates. The US isn't looking great though because they are slow to get vaccination rates up. You're convinced Spain did a great job and Sweden even better, I don't agree, better than the US certainly but still not great. In Australia's case I think most states have done an excellent job with a couple that have done an ok job but still kept loss of life low. Your point that Spain has an older population is neither here nor there, deaths per million from covid 19 in Australia is 41 and Spain 1800 , clearly these numbers can't be accounted for by the older population. In the end if you are happy with your government then great but allow others to also be happy with there's without disregarding that person just because you don't agree. My government hasn't lied to me , the deaths show this and other effects are no greater than in lockdown lite countries and economic impact on average has been less in countries that have lockdowns including border quarantine versus lockdown lite. As far as the current situation yes Spain seems ok but not every country can be in that position and culturally as you can see with the US vaccine hesitancy they will continue to have significant problems. Anyway wish you the best.
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  1443.  @chg1264  In the middle of February Tedros said the time for containment is now. Can't get much stronger than that and broadly speaking Europe and the Americas did nothing for an entire year and a half, just waited for the quick fix of vaccines. Nowhere had compulsory quarantine just voluntary schemes, don't blame the failures in policy of the various WHO regions on the WHO, as a person in the Western Pacific WHO region where the hardest line was taken and everyone in the region all 27 countries had border quarantine usually hotel and enforced. The Americas and Europe never went beyond voluntary compliance which completely failed. Africa and South East Asian region (South Asia plus half of South East Asia approximately) weren't as tough as Western Pacific region but still got comparatively good results compared to do nothing. The Eastern Mediterranean region which is basically the middle east I am uncertain of and haven't looked into it. Italy had a chance of elimination but never did it. With Delta the game has changed however and for some countries that were perfectly capable of containment with previous variants under the existing policies failed including 2 states in my country Australia and countries like Vietnam and New Zealand which previously had a very good record. I hope there is discussion about what was the best regional policy and I think it's my region and the open borders no quarantine regions should reconsider what they do next time but they were more concerned about freedom to travel and no lockdowns until hospitals overwhelmed than anything else. Is it possible that those 2 regions will ever admit they got it wrong, my cynical opinion says no they won't and geopolitically the Western Pacific region is far from a united grouping, Australia has been declared the enemy by China so even though essentially we took the same approach on the matter we don't want to give each other credit at the political level, behind the scenes though I think there's a very high level of cooperation throughout the region, contact tracing is truly international here although that will probably fade away slowly as countries "live with the virus".
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  1508.  @breakthroughchiropracticcl3526  Well the most compelling evidence is the consistency of approach by WHO region and consistency of outcome up until the last few months with the new more contagious variants. The entire Western Pacific WHO region has mandatory enforced usually hotel quarantine for all international arrivals and as pointed out in another comment SARS affected our region significantly at the time with tourism so some preparedness because of that. 3 of the toughest quarantine countries in the world are in our region , Japan, Australia and New Zealand so we take quarantine very seriously and have systems in place. The most compelling despite all that I just said is actually the fact that countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam that were doing as well as others in our general region (Thailand and Malaysia are in South East Asia WHO region which tended to have shorter mandatory quarantine) have completely failed. Sydney is now experiencing great difficulties due to the Delta variant with about 100 cases a day and they have the hardest lockdown in that state excluding the initial lockdown from over a year ago. The other aspect look at the diversity in our WHO region , China, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia , New Zealand, The Philippines and Papua New Guinea along with a lot of small Pacific nations. Collectively we have nothing in common except our overall response particularly with borders. I have raved on for a bit , up to you to consider what I have said.
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  1565. Same with Australia but a significantly different result, not saying there isn't a problem but it's not what you identified. The UK it's divided into 4 jurisdictions, one for each country within the Kingdom. Within about 2 weeks of it getting serious in Australia last March sometime if my memory is correct , 5 out of 8 states and territories shut their borders with stricter controls in place than ever happened in Europe for goods movement, every company needed to come up with a covid safe plan and have it approved for each state they travel to and from if one of the closed border states as an example. Otherwise only essential travel unless exemption like urgent medical care or special border zone travel permits with certain states. If for essential travel 14 days mandatory enforced hotel quarantine at $2,800 for a single, extra 10 days if refused to get tested at extra cost ( Queenslands rules), the cost could be exempted on compassionate grounds, probably not the extra 10 days if anyone was stupid enough not to be tested. The actions taken by Australian states could have been done by all countries mentioned, but exactly 0 states/provinces/countries (in the case of UK) took these actions, seems your provincial governments are cowardly. It could be due to listening to PAHO your regional office of WHO, all countries in the Western Pacific region of WHO did the same as Australia around the same time, top 40 countries last time I looked were in the countries covered by PAHO and European region of WHO. Maybe it's total coincidence but I think not, your offices of WHO might be to blame but only people from your region running them, WHO as a whole shouldn't be blamed and I would suggest the Western Pacific WHO office has done a good job, behind the scenes outside of politics our diverse group of countries are probably cooperating quite well, China is in that WHO grouping.
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  1585.  @zeroneutral  in answer to your queries and assertions, the death numbers will be highly accurate in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan , Thailand, Australia and New Zealand because very low cases means other than at the beginning all suspicious deaths people will be tested and even the strain of the virus will be tested because unless it is through known contact they want to check it's not a new outbreak. The high case rate countries will be less accurate but I would suggest if they are a high income country then at least 95% plus accurate versus the low case countries being 99% on average more accurate, ( a case could always be missed and if deaths are really low percentage terms it could actually be less accurate). The hard lockdown as you put it in Australia is different state by state. Every state has some border restrictions and all but one state Victoria have very relaxed internal restrictions by world standards. I will give the travel restrictions of Queenslanders and it might amaze you. There is a border zone where residents of New South Wales and Queensland can cross the border after going through a Queensland checkpoint but must stay within the zone specified. If someone comes from New South Wales or Victoria and are not exempted like trucks for example or the border zone exemption. To travel into Queensland a Border pass (sort of like a visa) is required and you must declare where you have been for the previous 14 days and if you lie could be 6 months imprisonment. If you have been in Victoria or New South Wales in the last 14 days you need to be quarantined in a government supervised hotel at the cost of $2,800 AUD for a single, extra 10 days plus costs if you refuse to be tested. Other states people can enter without quarantine, however some states are a little tougher than Queensland. To give the most extreme example , to enter Western Australia basically you can't unless you are going there to live permanently or visit a very close relative or something. So sort of like a permanent resident visa I guess. Western Australia has virtually said to it's residents if you leave Western Australia and it isn't for essential travel you might not be permitted re entry. The example is they are being told they can't come to Queensland to see a football game because it's not essential. Western Australia of course has same quarantine procedure but not sure of cost. So travel restrictions in my opinion have gone a little crazy however I do agree with the rights of the states to do it. I think my state is about right with travel restrictions and sort middle of the road by Aussie standards at present.
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  1613.  Brit Mk 2  No, British people are just humans, if the government has a relaxed mitigation strategy why would the public take any notice. If they don't care ,why should I? To this day your government allows people to enter the country and go into what is effectively voluntary quarantine and if your quarantine site is in an English household the people you are potentially infecting are not required to quarantine. Look up your governments policy, it's a super relaxed approach of mitigation. It's much more difficult to cross state borders in Australia than it is national borders in Europe. Although unlikely a Victorian Australian can travel to England and undergo the quarantine procedures as I partially outlined by one example. If the Victorian was to travel to Queensland , 14 days mandatory government hotel quarantine with 2 tests to be done during your stay. You will be required to contribute costs for your stay which will be more expensive for one person $2,800 AUD than the £1,000 penalty if you get caught breaking the extremely relaxed quarantine procedures in England. If you refuse to be tested an extra 10 days in quarantine and I suspect more costly. Just a few days ago one person was sentenced to 2 months gaol because they broke the government orders in April on one day by throwing a party and got a $1,600 fine I think it was and then the next day did it again hence the prison sentence. The government is a function or representative of the people and visa versa. Going to school in Queensland hasn't been considered an issue recently, they will just shut an entire school down if it is found a person who tested positive has been there and everyone gets tested and reopen in once people have got the all clear, probably a week or 2 but I'm not sure. I wish you the best of luck and think you should just keep yourself family and friends as safe as you can, your government isn't going to protect you, they only care about hospitals overflowing in my opinion.
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  1616.  @sailaway8244  You have to realise that out of Australia and NZ there only 2 places with much tougher restrictions than the go to standard Sweden other than travel restrictions, that is Melbourne and Auckland, Aucklands current tougher measures will probably be down graded along with the rest of NZ in a week or 2. Melbourne has fairly tough restrictions at the moment and the rest of Victoria a little less, I think it could be another month or so for Victoria because many cases. It's only 1 jurisdiction but NZ has seen a small decrease in suicides, Australia it has apparently remained flat. If the great depression is anything to go by the by product of the economic downturn is likely to be increased life expectancy. I saw from a commenter but not official that hospitals in NZ are having less cases of food poisoning. In Australia the number of flu cases has dropped dramatically . You must factor in human behaviour which people are not doing and just applying a negative attitude to everything. Having parents stay home with kids has of course helped many families and brought them closer together and it has been said but only anecdotally that child abuse might have increased but actually no evidence at this point in time, only that it's a concern it might happen. So should that be looked into and monitored of course but don't jump the gun and just assume suicides and violence are going to increase. In uncertain times I would think people reduce risky behaviour but that's just my thought, all I have to go off is the years when the economy declined in the US during the great depression life expectancy rose. So I can't see why relatively short term economic decline in it of itself causes any long term harm overall. I don't think we are likely to agree, I think 10,000 dead Australians is a price too high and as far as ok protect them , nowhere other than Singapore has succeeded at this and pretty sure Australia and NZ we couldn't, our societies are not as compliant.
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  1661.  @buckcampbell4292  "the science" term is bandied about too much, most of the science is social science anyway. Fauci and Osterholm are both well intentioned but they disagree that's all. American scientists and doctors think the US has a mentally weak population that can't be restricted and or alternatively politicians will make things fail no matter what so best to offer advice based on this. Maybe offering advice based on the assumption of political disfunction inside the US was the right thing to do, can't really fix the inherent disfunction during a pandemic. Same applies to Europe especially the EU, maybe they all refused the idea of any significant border restrictions early on so scientist went with that, however my feeling is actually the scientists are a representation of there own population and believed what they were doing is best. If you look at the regional offices of the WHO the policies of countries very much line up with those regions. The Pan American Health Office looks after the Americas and almost all similar results and the European region split into 3 areas. The regional offices may have amplified general culture of the regions. The top 40 countries for deaths per million from covid 19 are in those two regions, South Africa is just outside the top 40. If you look at the world map color coded for this it's very obvious. The Western Pacific region, South East Asia region, Eastern Mediterranean region and African Region all much better. It might just be a correlation but I don't think so. I think the WHO region you are in almost determined your fate. All Western Pacific region countries have 14 days mandatory enforced quarantine usually by hotel. Not sure about South East Asian or Eastern Mediterranean or African regions but all of Europe region seems to have adopted 10 days self (voluntary) relaxed quarantine and same goes for the Pan American Health Organization area. If one is to be scientific, next time put the West Pacific WHO office in charge because we will do the job properly. The European and Pan American can just follow and do as they are told ,other areas can work with the West Pacific office. Not going to happen but the failures of the WHO seems to be mostly the regional offices and the countries representing those particular regional offices.
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