Comments by "annoyed aussie" (@annoyedaussie3942) on "NBC News" channel.

  1. I think the risk is low enough for children however schools probably shouldn't be opened because of the risks of children spreading it. Data doesn't really exist on this because everywhere else doesn't take the risk. The US can provide data for the rest of the world if some states go ahead with the live experiment in a highly infected area.
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  2. Did you listen to the commentary? Texas is fighting a local government to keep everything open and sees it more like a logistical challenge having people caring for the dying and sending medical staff. That state might as well be run by Trump.
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  3.  @Cosmo__Kramer  You pose an interesting question, is it better to have a high cost government funded non universal healthcare system or a highly functional lower cost universal healthcare system where tax payers pay less? The US is the former.
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  4.  @Cosmo__Kramer  The healthcare market can't really be open to competition for certain drugs still on patent and emergency care and also unfortunately in your country doctors can get kickbacks for selling drugs. For non urgent matters as in elective surgery competition can help. I am in Australia and our healthcare is of a high standard but like everywhere you need to wait for elective surgery unless you pay for it or have insurance pay for it. Also you need to consider public health like the response to covid 19, in which case the US completely failed. If Biden gets to offer the public option this should help if they call the shots on how much they pay for services, insurance companies don't care how much hospitals charge and just price policies accordingly. I think the concept of " private healthcare" is too ingrained in your country to move more than baby steps even though you actually pay higher tax for it than other well run universal healthcare systems.
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  5. Florida seems to have an excellent hospital system for it's population, those case numbers being hospitalized would collapse the Australian healthcare system and our population 25 million versus 20 million for Florida. I am thinking it's so good in Florida to cater for all those wealthy retirees that live there. It seems as long as hospitals don't overflow DeSantis supporters don't see the problem.
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  6. My guess they wait until the impeachment is over because to start the process now would be pointless and the judge would agree to a delay anyway.
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  7.  @IMGreg..  I am not so sure your last paragraph is correct, the previous Japanese PM resigned unexpectedly for health reasons and in my country Australia with 1 fifty-eth of the per Capita death toll the current government has actually polled lower on a 2 party preferred basis recently (the 2 party preferred is to do with our different election system where preferences are considered) However the PMs personal rating is far higher than the opposition leader so the polls not consistent. The Western Pacific WHO region might as well be another planet compared to the PAHO Pan-American Health Organization region.
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  8. It seems we now have a new "Dear Leader " of a country.
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  9. In Australia we have a system where until a graduate earns over a certain amount they don't have to pay any money towards the student loan scheme run by the government which is set at a low interest rate. I think our system works quite well however it's not fair that if that person after obtaining government funded education goes overseas and stays there never paying a cent, maybe it's not common so not cost a lot but morally wrong.
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  10. I am from Australia and always wonder a bit why in geopolitical terms Australia is closer to the US than Canada, I think it's because they are too close to you, that Pacific Ocean and a different hemisphere distance away provides a bit of a buffer. For my region I am happy Biden is in because although Trump didn't do any harm he was unpredictable and not consultative at all , I don't think Trump ever considered the opinions of other countries but Biden will at least listen and a more dependable ally. Domestically though he has an uphill battle with vaccines and the messaging isn't the best, should be telling everyone the vaccines don't stop spread at all , only slow it down and dramatically reduced chance of hospitalization or death, it's not 0 as many commentators keep saying which only increases distrust.
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  11. The solution was get vaccinations over 90% at least. No it's triage, leave people in corridors to definitely die or have a nurse/doctor treat them who might give them a virus and they die, chance of life whether people like it or not is better with the second choice. But people shouldn't go to hospital unless really need to, don't go in for minor issues that can wait or elective surgery.
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  12. The WHO is run by European and US people mostly. It's entirely consistent with the country responses. So WHO is the US standard I would suggest.
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  13. Using blood plasma can only be done small scale and it's expensive. If you can afford it then great but it's not for the masses.
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  14.  Tony Hovgaard  I am Australian so it's a hypothetical question and I can't say how I would feel if my country failed to contain it. I do wish your country the best of luck.
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  15.  Tony Hovgaard  my state is fine but one state Victoria which has about 7,000,000 people so a midsized US state equivalent had 288 cases in last 24 hours. It's possible they might lose control. If you come from that state to my state Queensland you will be put in government supervised hotel quarantine at your cost for 14 days. If you lie about not being in that state in the last 14 days you can get a $4,000 AUD fine. It's true things can go from looking ok to not ok very quickly.
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  16.  @wvmike7008  In Australia nobody cares about that small minority of antivaxxers. No politician of note supports them.
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  17. But the sheep in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia ( except 1 council area) and New Zealand can roam freely inside our pens or countries if you would prefer. Only just recently the UK stopped people roaming internationally. American can still travel freely if anyone wants them.
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  18. Leah , read through the comments in this thread it answers your question indirectly, both sides are more interested in blaming each other. Mostly the problem in the US is disfunction that produces inferior results.
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  19. Not entirely true, it reduces risk of death by about 90% , so an 85 year old who's vaccinated and has a breakthrough case will still have about a 1% chance of dying instead of 10%.
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  20.  @mohameddiakite4953  Depends on your age and just using age the number I gave was roughly right , if you are over 90 it drops down to about 80% survival rate unvaccinated meaning a vaccinated person at that age still only 98% survival. Below 50 especially if not overweight the survival rate even without a vaccine is very high to start with.
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  21. Well you have to consider that it's only 1% of the population, however it's going to become impossible to keep doing this, Omicron is not like other variants. Only China has the ability to stop the spread and I would suggest not forever. They are delaying the inevitable.
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  22. The US treats guns like covid 19, somehow an 80% success rate will work. Some things need to be 99% to have any real effect, any person who is unstable who just watched this show has been advised how to get a gun without any checks and legally. An unstable person doesn't mean incapable of carrying out simple tasks, opening a bank account is more difficult than buying a gun in the US, most people are capable of opening a bank account.
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  23. So no conspiracy if the report is correct just blatant incompetence, much like the early handling of covid 19 in January and February only testing 500 people compared to my country Australia with one 15th of the population with 10,000 tests. The reason I mentioned that time period of the response is because that's before Trump made it worse and he wasn't really to blame for the complete incompetence of the US CDC and his lead guy Fauci didn't have a clue that anything was wrong and should have.
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  24. Obama was a good diplomat, this might sound unbelievable but he had a higher favourability rating in Australia than US when he left office. So internally I don't know but the world liked him.
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  25. It's quite depressing actually, California seems on the right track but they are not. No compulsory quarantine of people entering the state or an outright closed border that I am aware of. If my knowledge is correct then ok only another 1000 per day or whatever the real number may be of new imported cases to continue the spread. You can't half stop it and expect major positive outcomes.
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  26. He can't answer simple questions because the Republican Party doesn't seem to have any policies, so his answer is that they need to make some with new ideas at an unknown future point.
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  27. It's a probability calculation, it's not to stop it from ever spreading but that it will spread slowly and if a school hopefully not infect too many before it's realised.
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  28. You have already given a good suggestion for a maths lesson involving working with volumes.
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  29. It's true even an imperfect plan but a full plan people will be ok with that.
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  30. As a troll congratulations on your comment being put last.
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  31.  @dontsubscribe6229  The original commenter was just being silly.
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  32. When are you guys going to open to Australian travel. Queensland my state has the best rules, NZ should follow us. Even WA ( Australia's hardest line state) opened the border to Queenslanders and any other states without community transmission for 28 days.
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  33. 160 potential pardons, Trump better get busy drafting the pardons especially if they have to be done individually.
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  34. Hello. What's that supposed to mean.
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  35. Lots of crybaby MAGA in the comments afraid if a journalist asks their Orange Messiah questions that aren't Dorothy Dixers.
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  36. Not most, some.
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  37. That's the UQ one and a bit sad about that being a Queenslander. A couple of points we are manufacturing the Oxford Astrazeneca one already and none of these vaccines so far have proven to last long term because not enough time. We have 0 community transmission so no rush and it's only expected that vaccines start being distributed around March. So basically no worries for now.
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  38. Are you kidding, if I was American and in a state where benefit cut off I am moving, probably I don't own a home so guess what I get in a car and travel a few hundred miles to a "benefit state" , also helps local business in my new state as I am an extra consumer. States cutting off free money are insane. By the way I think the benefits are excessive, Australia all enhanced benefits have been cut for a while now I believe.
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  39. One thing that wasn't considered about social media is the level of access provided to the very poor that in the beginning was texting created a way to find jobs and know what is going on elsewhere inside the country so you can be treated fairly. Think how useful this is in a country where $5 per day is a normal wage and you can find a $6 a day job. It's quite impressive the Gates Foundation is like a large country in it's efforts for global health and probably more efficient.
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  40. Sorry folks you are going downhill, the entitled culture of the US has never been seen before in the world but here it is. Whatever happened to the idea of a liberal democracy with limited socialism. Trumpers , BLM/Antifa and now school kids all calling for handouts yet not actually calling for a stop to corporate welfare , yep socialism for the rich or particular party demographics, farmers or inner city businesses or whatever, seems you have more in common with each other than whatever your warped view of the rest of the world is.
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  41. You make me laugh, and having already watched the inauguration it gave me one memory at the time, especially his motorcade coming in. This looks like North Korea , can only see military and the leaders vehicles.
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  42. Yep same for Australia, but less than 10% of the deaths on a per capita basis than the US and the gap is actually widening Australia maybe 15 deaths a day and US thirteen times the population 1,500 deaths a day. Maybe Americans should get vaccinated. Singapore and South Korea have very similar rates on a per capita basis of deaths to Australia.
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  43.  @nyla2408  The original statement is correct, opening up as in no more Covid 0 or no choice with Omicron means lots more infections. See my comment above.
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  44. There were plenty of missile launches under Obama and Trump, so are you suggesting all US presidents are a joke?
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  45. Student debt forgiveness is far lefty craziness. It should also be noted that higher educated people on average earn more. In the Australian system you only need to pay when your income reaches a certain level and it's subsidized as in the charge for the study is below real costs and the interest rate isn't a real market rate. Maybe the US should look abroad for what is the best system going forward and I would suggest the Aussie system is superior but maybe somewhere is better than us.
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  46. Without state border restrictions it'll just keep on going. Look at Australian states a similar federal system regarding this issue and now every state has border restrictions. Look at Alaska and Hawaii, their geographic isolation has helped a lot it would seem. It is a bipartisan policy in the US to not have any serious border restrictions. So until it infects everyone or a vaccine comes or border restrictions are put in place (extremely unlikely) things will continue along pretty much as they are. The good thing is treatment seems to be much better than in the beginning.
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  47. I thought they were waiting for the microchips in the vaccine and everyone turns into cyborgs that can be controlled if they refuse to obey. Maybe you know more informed people than me. China has it's version, why do you think the military gets the vaccine first.
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  48. There's idiots in every race , ethnicity and country. It's only a problem if there are too many of them.
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  49. It's better if you didn't, maybe when Trump is gone you can be friends again.
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  50. To use an effective bioweapon you need to vaccinate 100% of your own population. Not exactly the best thing for Ukraine to attempt because they can't even get 50% of their own population to take the covid 19 vaccination. In other words it's impossible that they would even consider such a move.
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