Bloop, you are welcome to leave anytime and go to a less restrictive country that is not suffering from the the effects of virus.
Oh wait.
Yes, wait."There is a ban on all overseas travel, with few exceptions." Everyday I lookup the list of countries with COVID infections and everyday Australia falls down the list because what we are doing is working. It's harsh, but it is working.
And I've been wearing a tinfoil hat the whole time, and I'm not infected. I'd better keep wearing it!
If you put in measures X, Y and Z all at once, and something changes, you don't know whether it was X, Y or Z. If you put them in one by one with a gap in between and something changes, then you know. If you remove them one by one with a gap in between and something changes, then you know.
What Bloop and I are suggesting - and we disagree on almost everything else, so this is remarkable - is that we look at the facts. We are not suggesting, "open everything up NOW." We are not American, so we do not rush to absurd extremes. We're looking at the facts. Here are the facts:
1. the measures we take, though saving lives from the virus, have a nonzero cost in other lives, for example a rise in unemployment leads to a rise in suicides, keeping people away from hospitals means a rise in cancer and cardiac deaths, etc
2. therefore, we want the
minimum possible restrictions to give the effect of reducing virus cases3. whatever measures you take will take about 14 days to have an effect on new daily cases (because it's 3-11 days from infection to symptoms, and 1-3 days to get tested and results back). So if we put in or remove measure X on the 5th, we'll see a change if any by the 19th.
4. From the health department's own study
here (on page 3), we can see that stage 1 restrictions caused a decline in cases, and stage 2 cemented that decline. Stage 3 was declared
after the number of new cases was already in solid decline. 5. Now, what are our aims?
Minimum: at least, keep the number of cases to a level the healthcare system can handle without compromising anyone else's care. If you have 100 ICU beds, for example, and all 100 are occupied by covid-19 patients, then people with cancer and cardiac conditions and in car accidents are going to die. But if say 10 are occupied by covid-19 patients, the rest should be alright. New cases always happen, but it's a slow simmer, nothing boils over.
Maximum: eliminate the virus entirely. Freeze it!
So, did any of these stages achieve this? Yes.
6. Stage 1 - Closing the borders, quarantining new arrivals, and shutting down large sporting, religious etc events, this achieved the Minimum scenario. Just in case we missed any recent arrivals or people they'd sneezed on, the ban on large gatherings made sure they'd only infect 1-2 people instead of 100-200 like in the superspreader events such as the Italian guy who got infected in the north, went home to the south and died - and hundreds of people went to his funeral, and his covid test results didn't get to his family until after his funeral, whoops. Anyway,
Stage 1 is sufficient for the Minimum scenario. 7. Stage 2 - closing restaurants, pubs, cinemas, gyms, etc have achieved the Maximum scenario. Bans on large gatherings stop people infecting 100 others, and bans on medium gatherings stop them infecting 2-3 others. And we see this in the numbers both in Victoria and elsewhere, that stage 2 if done early on really puts the hammer on infections and drives them down. Thus,
Stage 2 is sufficient for the Maximum scenario. 8. Stages 3 - closing other workplaces, playgrounds, stopping gatherings of 2 or more, etc - in all cases this was either not introduced at all (Sweden, etc) or was introduced just 1-2 days after stage 2 (Victoria, etc). But from the charts - again, the charts given us by our own health departments - we can see that stages 1 & 2 caused a decline, and a solid decline. There's no evidence stage 3 made any difference.
9. Stage 4. Australia went to stage 3, and NZ to 4. They couldn't even go get a takeaway curry. Infection rates and deaths were no different, in fact NZ had slightly higher proportionally - but I don't believe it's statistically significant because we're talking about small numbers. In both cases most of the new infections are either recent overseas arrivals (who are all in quarantine and thus can't pass anything on), or an unlucky cluster at an aged care home or hospital. When we're talking under 10 new cases each day, the numbers will be all over the place.
Your mental health will be fine.
Mine will be. I've already given examples of those for whom it won't be. We're already seeing a spike in the number of suicides and overdoses. We're already seeing a 25-30% decline in referrals to cancer centres, and there'll be a similar decline in cardiac referrals. People are dying because of these measures. It doesn't really help us to avoid X deaths from the virus but have X+1 deaths from other stuff instead. That's why I said: the minimum measures required. Minimum.
I for one am incredibly happy we are not seeing the body bags piling up in the street like they are in New York.
Me too. But this is a fact that too many Australians struggle with: we are not American. For which I thank God daily. America is a clusterfuck, it's been a clusterfuck for a long time, and nobody outside America is surprised that they are a clusterfuck with this virus, too. America. LOL.
But we're not America. We got onto things early. If a woman finds a small lump on her breast, ignores it and lets it become multiple large lumps, then she will need a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. But if she goes and gets it dealt with when it's a small lump, then a small removal will do the job. You, along with our state Premier, are asserting that the small lump needs a double mastectomy and chemotherapy, and are pointing to the woman in the next bed who has stage IV terminal cancer as evidence.
It's a different situation. We brought in measures early, and so our measures don't have to be as harsh.
Of course, this doesn't even address things like suspending parliament and arrogating to themselves dictatorial powers until October, or setting neighbour against neighbour by encouraging people to dob each-other in (ACT has now achieved zero active cases with... zero fines, hmmm). We don't reduce infection risk by destroying democracy and rule of law, but people have simply accepted this. Australians have an authoritarian streak - that's why they keep saying they have an independent and larrikin streak. If it were true they wouldn't have to say it so loudly.