19 ms·

No new locally-acquired coronavirus cases in Australia yesterday

135 points by thisrod 6y ago

Fezzik 6y ago
This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, very expertly, on the sheer number of large Halloween parties I was invited to tonight... and how people (aged 28-40) are still mocking those who won’t congregate with 50 randos in a house. It’s very perplexing. And on the ever-increasing infections and deaths. Also, don’t forget to vote. Edit: spelling
- bmitc 6y ago
  The U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.
  - labster 6y ago
    Don’t be such an wide-eyed optimist, the US election will lead to 3 months of strife in the best case scenario. Both sides expect the other will try to steal the election, so how is it going to relieve anything?
    - bmitc 6y ago
      I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not. What part of my comment led you to label me a wide-eyed optimist? By "hopefully provides a temporary relief", I was thinking on a longer scale as in maybe sometime next year and more along the lines of getting to come up for a breath when we've had a hand holding our heads below water for four years.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      Something I read (could have been on HN) theorized the only outcome that doesn't lead to social unrest is a Biden landslide.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    My impression is that both in the US and in most European countries, there is a dire need for new political parties to enter the mainstream. I mean this election is basically a forced choice between two grandpas and both are representing values from before I was born. Where's the political party that I would trust to do what will secure a good future for my kids, because they, too, have young kids? Where's the political party where people roughly my age are calling the shots? US, France, Germany, UK, ... All I see is conservative old people. Germany and France tried to establish new center parties, but in both cases the newcomers quickly got infiltrated by old politicians and drifted far right, meaning conservative again.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      IMO this was the primary thing that got Trump elected in 2016: He was the outsider, a big "fuck you" to both major parties.
      - 1_player 6y ago
        And we've seen the result. If I've learned anything atop my 33 wise years old, is that any political candidate that looks like a clean break from the old guard, is exactly the same if not worse than its predecessors. And this is just my cynicism: the corollary is that any candidate, new or old, is a bad choice, except extremely rare exceptions.
    - iso947 6y ago
      UK is polarised by age - a minority of people under the age of 60 voted to leave te eu or voted Tory, yet we are leaving with a massive Tory majority. Labour’s last leader was magic grandpa boomer. The new one is slightly younger, come the next election he’ll only be in his early 60s. Lib Dems had a young leader who (aged 39) managed to convert from being second in the June elections (led by a 70+ year old) to losing her seat in December, with a 7 year old and a baby. There are relatively young leaders - Finland and New Zealand come to mind, but leaders tend to be reflections of the population. When the UK Labour Party was taken over by hundreds of thousands of young socialists via momentum in 2015, they didn’t chose the 45 year old (since christened king of he north), or the 46 year old with teenage kids, or even the 44 year old with no experience. They chose the OAP career politician.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > I do worry about the US though Europe isn't looking much different right now.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    Why is Europe's status something to care about in the U.S.? China is basically operating on all cylinders right now. It's insane how people in the U.S. don't get the damage that's being done on literally all fronts right now. The past year has had irreparable damage to the U.S. It's hard to know where to even start, from slow production due to job loss and just everything going slower, poor health due to active cases and the decades of health care reverberations done from permanent damage and repeat infections, poor education due to an already broken primary and secondary school system basically being put on pause for a year, etc. The U.S. is literally fighting whether to re-elect a person who likely has clinical personality disorders and is probably well below even average intelligence, at the very best.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      Not long ago, it was popular to criticize the US's handling of the pandemic as a failure. Seeing the surge of cases in Europe makes what the US is going through look less exceptional and more expected. There's also no reason to think the level of containment China achieved is politically attainable in the west. Realizing it's "only" 180 cases, yes, China is firing on all cylinders: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-outbreak-in-china-linked-to-xinjiang-forced-labour https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-ou...
      - alisonatwork 6y ago
        Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Canada has done a relatively poor job by international standards, but still much better than the US and the UK, who have both been roundly criticized in the Anglosphere. Although parts of continental Europe are struggling, there are others that have done okay - Norway and Finland, for example. Outside of "the west", democratic countries in East Asia like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have done alright too. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have their political issues, but they're less authoritarian than Vietnam and China - the whole lot of them are doing well. Most of Africa is too. South America, not so much. So, it's not just about politics, and it's not just about geographic location, and it's not just about climate. It will be interesting to see the analysis after all this is over. There must be something we can learn from why it was that certain countries failed at managing this virus while others succeeded.
- dpc_pw 6y ago
  Are you worried about Sweden too? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM Deaths flat in case you were wondering: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coronavirus https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coro...
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Deaths do lag new cases, but something big Sweden has going for it is that a lot of Swedes live alone.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Deaths in Sweden have flatlined since the end of July. The lag is not nearly that big.
      - dehrmann 6y ago
        But new cases are up 10x from six weeks ago, and being exponential, most of those have been in the past few weeks. Still better than a lot of Europe, though.
  - evgen 6y ago
    And still sucking hind tit compared to Norway, Finland, and Denmark. But let's not let simple facts and data get in the way of your anti-lockdown fairy tale...
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Saving 2-3 people a day objectively isn't worth any kind of lockdown.
      - evgen 6y ago
        Unless you happen to be one of those 2-3 people. Just let us know when you are ready to be sacrificed for the sake of the market, happy to oblige.
boxed 6y ago
I went to the linked page. It doesn't have zero cases. Maybe it's just the classic case of reading the data before the data is in?
- davidbanham 6y ago
  When we say 0 cases we usually mean 0 locally acquired cases. We’re worried about community transmission rather than international travellers. If someone enters the country they’re quarantined in a hotel room for 14 days. If someone tests positive during that quarantine period we report it, but count it separately.
- _AzMoo 6y ago
  The title should be "no new locally-acquired cases", but there was actually one that came in after the cut-off time so it will be counted in tomorrow's numbers.
- Fomite 6y ago
  Locally acquired cases - indicates successful cessation of community transmission, which means you're back to the easier task of trying to detect and contain importation.
docdeek 6y ago
> 6 new cases today (+5)*, 9 yesterday (+5) Title doesn't seem to match data.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  All new cases reported in Australia today (Sun Nov 1, from tests performed on Sat Oct 31st) were acquired overseas and are in hotel quarantine. Aside from them there were no new cases, even between close contacts (household etc). So, the title is true for locally acquired cases, which I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make. (Also there was only one locally acquired case the previous day, in the state of South Australia, which has barely had an outbreak at all, thanks to having a sparse population and relatively little international air traffic). There were over 76000 test results processed to achieve that result, and there is a strong message through the community to get tested with even the mildest/vaguest of symptoms. Testing is free and stations are located to be easily accessible to most of the population, particularly in Victoria, which had a serious outbreak from June to September.
  - thisrod 6y ago
    > I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make Yes. I went with the headline Australian newspapers are using, which in hindsight lacks sufficient context for HN. What I find remarkable is how many things Australia stuffed up, but was able to recover from by brute force and social cohesion. Procrastinating over quarantine for international travellers, obsessing about ventilators while ignoring prevention, identifying that aged care was a massive vulnerability but doing nothing to mitigate it, gross recklessness in setting up hotel quarantine, failing to anticipate that although the virus went away it was bound to come back: it's a long list.
m0zg 6y ago
Another thing that's helping Australia is that they're heading into summer. Normalized by population the worst non-tiny (10M+) countries to be right now seem to be France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. And it'd be even worse in France, Italy and Poland in terms of new cases if they had the kind of testing throughput the US has been able to muster (1.24M tests a day). Belgium has comparable normalized test throughput. As far as cases, new cases = positivity * throughput. The higher the throughput, the more cases you are going to get.
- Svip 6y ago
  Only Belgium of those seems to rank worse than USA for cases/pop. Missing from your list seems to be Israel and Czech Republic (unless your limit for non-tiny country is 11 million). But even below USA, before we get to France, Italy or Poland; Peru, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia ranks in before. And most of these countries are testing at lower rates than France.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    That's only if you fail at basic arithmetics. All of them are worse than the US. Scaled up to US population, France would have 190K new cases per day. Italy - 168K. Poland - 185K. And so on and so forth down the list.
    - Svip 6y ago
      That wasn't particularly clear from your 'worst non-tiny countries' (which out of context just sounds mean-spirited). So you meant in terms of new cases, not total cases?
      - m0zg 6y ago
        Yes, since the original article is about new cases, not totals per se. Normalized totals will be the same everywhere - everyone will get it eventually.
        6y ago
tomhoward 6y ago
Melbourne resident here. We're feeling pretty relieved to be getting these results and excited to be tentatively emerging from nearly four months of fairly strict lockdown. Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. At the same time, there's much debate and political ruckus about the merits of the lockdown - i.e., the economic and human costs, vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. There's also the ongoing attack on our state government from political opponents and parts of the media, over the fact that the virus was suppressed here back in May, as it was in the rest of Australia, but then started spreading rapidly again in June, when poorly-trained security guards acquired the virus while working in quarantine hotels, then took it back to their families and communities, with the outbreak then tearing through aged care homes and leading to a total of 800+ fatalities. What isn't being talked about here, but has been mentioned by another commenter in this thread, is weather. Melbourne is the only large/dense city in Australia that has quite cool winters, similar to the weather that prevailed in Northern Asia, Europe and the US in Feb-April, and that is returning to Western Europe now. As we now know, given the serious outbreaks that have happened in warmer regions, warm weather is not a strong enough factor to halt this virus altogether, but it does seem to have an influence, and it's striking to note the progression of this virus in Melbourne, relative to the weather. AMA!
- Jedd 6y ago
  > ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in that category, but what we continue to find out about the way this disease can affect otherwise fit & healthy people, and with the unfortunate benefit of seeing what is happening in countries that aren't as committed to controlling this, indicates we've probably made the right decisions here.
  - 6y ago
peteretep 6y ago
Good luck y’all! Life in Thailand has been pretty awesome (if you don’t rely on tourist dollars) since we hit this point some months back. At this point when the occasional bizarre local case does show up (and one or two have here) the government can go nuts on contact tracing and make sure it stays under control.
- thisrod 6y ago
  Ha ha! That's what my friends in KL and Penang were telling me in August. Just wait until the king comes home from France, and insists that his 100 or so favorite hookers skip quarantine :-( Seriously, I think that we'll have to live with one Southeast Asian country (including Australia) having an outbreak at any given time.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say with the last sentence there. For one, the outbreaks in Indonesia and the Philippines show no sign of abating.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Thailand never had a bad outbreak to begin with and no one knows why. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-thailand-photos.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-th... Also, isn't Thailand a dictatorship where if you insult the royal family verbally you can be beheaded?
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    Just put in prison. With the new King there is a lot to be critical of, but for whatever reason he has held back on imprisoning people. The junta has nevertheless been quite harsh on critics of the regime.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Oh that's right 3 to 15 years of prison for criticizing the royal family....that's as fascist as it gets. Not a great model for any country to aspire to. How do we know Thailand isn't just executing anyone testing positive for Coronavirus? Would anyone report it if true with free speech laws like that? Pandemic Problem solved! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9_in_Th...
dustinmoris 6y ago
It is important to point out that Coronavirus emerged when the Northern hemisphere was still in Winter and early spring, a time where viruses can extremely thrive and now the Northern hemisphere is seeing a second wave because we still don’t have a vaccine and are entering a full new winter with COVID. The southern hemisphere had only to battle COVID for a single Winter, and that delayed too, having had already the advantage of all the lessons learned in Europe. It’s very likely that their second Winter will already see a vaccine so by pure chance when the virus emerged countries in the Southern hemisphere have had a much better situation and therefore should expect better outcomes.
- m_mueller 6y ago
  We Europeans sure learned our lesson in spring...ohwait
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    You are still disadvantaged against nature. We know that being more outdoors and having your windows more open is helping to reduce infections, but when you are entering Winter then a lot of the knowledge we have won’t stop the fact that infections will still rise due to the change in our behaviour in cold weather. It’s just a fact of life, the entire world sees infection spikes of other viruses (flu and so on) in Winters and therefore it’s not helpful to make sarcastic finger pointing comments when we all have accepted this as a fact of life and know this is just how it is.
- alisonatwork 6y ago
  It makes sense that winter makes things worse, but if weather were the only factor, why is South America seeing far more cases than Australia?
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    Because Australia suppressed the virus as much as they could with a very long lockdown. South America didn't, so they started with complete different baselines into their summers.
bobnamob 6y ago
To those citing weather as a likely influence, I'm not sure I agree. Given the graph provided by the linked site, it looks like cases started really dipping in late August. August and September are still bloody cold in Melbourne, where most of the cases have been recorded. Additionally, Australia is heading into a La Nina summer, generally characterised by a slower onset of warmer weather and greater average rainfall. Edit: Anecdotally, Adelaide weather for the last few months has barely registered as spring. Melbourne is typically a few °C cooler than Adelaide.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  Yes, it was Winter and they were in a four month lockdown. Let me repeat, a FOUR MONTH lockdown. That is a bloody long time so anything but a huge dip during a four month lockdown would just be bizarre. Now they have summer, cases a low after a lockdown and due to the weather cases will remain low like we've seen in Summer across all of Europe, regardless what measures countries have taken. If Europe was to spend 4 months out of their Winter in lockdown, then cases will drop there too.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    > Now they have summer, cases a low after a lockdown and due to the weather cases will remain low like we've seen in Summer across all of Europe, ... Summer starts here in Australia in a month from now. (We'll then be contending with the return of bushfires.) I think it's disservice to assert the weather is what will keep our case count low -- when a lot of people have gone through a whole lot of shit (and still are) to achieve & maintain the situation we now have. I think there's sufficient contra-examples in both hemispheres to suggest that the weather is not a major factor -- though it is politically expedient & convenient to point at the weather to distract from mismanagement.
    - dustinmoris 6y ago
      > I think there's sufficient contra-examples in both hemispheres to suggest that the weather is not a major factor -- though it is politically expedient & convenient to point at the weather to distract from mismanagement. I'm not a politician, I'm not a nationalist, my birthplace is not the culture which I've been raised under, where my parents come from I've never lived and where I live now I have no ties whatsoever, so simply I don't care about country politics and trying to suggest anything different is the real disservice. It's a fact that warm weather plays a huge role. In Europe we have seen a first relief during Spring and all countries have seen a huge dip in cases during their warmest summer months, completely irrespective of the countries individual measures. That's just a hard fact that you can't argue away in good conscience. Furthermore, irrespective of how well countries have done, how many sacrifices people have done and what measures countries have taken (e.g. Germany vs. Sweden vs. UK vs. Czechia, etc.) all European countries see the same acceleration of cases. The only difference is the baseline where the spike starts, but the curve upwards is literally identical, so it further underlines that the weather has a bigger influence than any other measure except a full lockdown on the infection rate of coronavirus.
lkrubner 6y ago
Apparently it is relatively easy to control this virus during the summer, and almost impossible during the winter. Australia's summer seems to be helping it a good deal, even as winter in the northern hemisphere is making things much worse.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  I'll check back here in 12 months when Americas cases never stop rising
- NathanWilliams 6y ago
  Checking in from Sydney here, summer is still a month away, my family is snuggled on the lounge under blankets right now. The result comes down to a competent government response to a public health crisis. Not the weather.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Here in New Zealand the virus was eradicated in the winter, then again in the late winter/spring. Did the US and UK control it in their summers?
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    NZ completely closed the borders. That's a huge factor.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Returning residents bring in covid - they have been allowed back at all stages. Some days there is none, but on most days several cases come into the country. Essential workers are also allowed in, although this has become a political football. For example, a equestrian race track builder was allowed in.
- anotherevan 6y ago
  We are not in summer yet (i.e., I do not see any bushfires outside my window) but the weather is starting to warm up a bit (many low to mid-20C days) here in Melbourne. I'm not convinced weather is the only factor.
drcross 6y ago
If you told six month ago me that we'd be treating people who are high risk of this disease the same as people with low risk I would have been in complete disbelief.
- rscho 6y ago
  What's unbelievable is that we started this pandemic by treating people as if we knew nothing not only about this virus, but also by throwing all ARDS experience to the trash. I will remember our experts telling us to intubate early and withhold steroids for a very long time. We killed a lot of people because a minority wanted to show off. This is depressing.
  - Lewton 6y ago
    Experts didn't suggest withholding steroids just because they wanted to show off. Doctors in the field withheld steroids because the steroids they were giving patients with covid-19 was actively killing them. It took a long time to find out what steroids could safely be used for treatment
    - rscho 6y ago
      When I say 'we killed', it's myself included in a very personal way. I am an ICU doctor working on the frontline at one of the largest european university hospitals. And I am not a resident anymore. Yes, they were show-offs and they still are. There is no justification for throwing away years of clinical experience with ARDS based on the personal opinions of a few who want to steal the spotlight by relying on novelty. They deserve to be despised, and I can say that with full confidence because I know a few of them personally.
      - Lewton 6y ago
        Is what I wrote wrong? Is it not true that in the beginning they saw an increase in fatalities when treating with certain kinds of steroids?
yen223 6y ago
Sydneysider here. Sydney hasn't seen anything remotely resembling an outbreak yet (not as bad as Melbourne's), but people are still wearing masks on trains, we are still getting tested (for free!), and businesses generally appear to be complying with covid restrictions. Life here has been relatively normal so far. I recognize that Sydney might still be due for an outbreak, but I have more faith that the chances of that happening is low. I am incredibly thankful to be living in a country whose people and its government seem to be doing the right thing when it comes to this pandemic.
- Jedd 6y ago
  Fellow Sydney resident. My other half is a high school teacher - she's had I think 4 cases of cough / sniffles that have required a test, with the process being free (as you say), convenient (walking distance - there are many places that offer the swab test), and fast (results back within 48 hours, usually faster, via SMS & email). I've caught a train into the office 3 times since March - public transport utilisation is wonderfully low (though I'm avoiding peak times), and most people seem to be good about wearing a mask. I've eaten out a half dozen times only, in that time, and again people seem to be behaving and handling things admirably. Looking around at the rest of the world, it's equal parts encouraging & astonishing just how well we're doing compared to, well, not just the obvious examples, but almost everywhere else.
  - LeCow 6y ago
    The mistake is to think it's never going to happen. It will get you eventually, could be 5 years, 10 years...but it will come.
    - jonsno56 6y ago
      It’ll get YoU in particular in 10 years cause you won’t get vaccinated
      - LeCow 6y ago
        ...okay I'm not sure why this needs explaining still. But this virus, like all viruses will evolve and change over time. The vaccine today won't be effective in a couple of years. I have no idea what that has to do with anything.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Melbournian here. It's now time to Get On The Beers. Edit: Donuts.
- yen223 6y ago
  Something from higher up the shelf maybe
- rswail 6y ago
  I had jam donuts, which don't have a hole, but, there's no donut rules! For those who don't know, when we went into lockdown, our Premier said "This is no time to gather with mates at home and get on the beers". He had a daily press conference every day, 111 days straight. He announced the current situation, what was being done, what was changing, and then stood and took questions from reporters until they ran out of things to ask. When we recently started to relax the lockdown, he was asked whether it was time to "get on the beers" and he said "I don't know that I'll be drinking a beer tonight. I might go a little higher up the shelf."
question000 6y ago
Seeing all these knee jerk anti-lockdown, anti-government, anti-rules, posts claiming beyond all reason that Australia just magically has no cases because of some statistical quirk or something really shows how many people will just never accept any kind of government intervention was beneficial even when blatantly obvious.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Your comment doesn't really add much value to the discussion, but seeing as you are a new account, I would suggest lurking a bit more.
  - question000 6y ago
    Comments claiming the lockdown did nothing add something to the discussion? How could any rational human being really think this? They just blindly hate the government and some people here really don't understand that this worked, not because they debated about it but because they just did the obvious thing and organized a response and executed it. Edit: and also instead of making personal attacks please address the substance of what I'm saying I've been on HN but just created an account to respond to the new wave of germ theory denialism I see on this site.
questionsta 6y ago
Genuine question from a fellow software engineer (throwaway because COVID is such a wedge issue. And for the record I'm currently in Australia and spent the early part of COVID pandemic in the US so have familiarity with both sides of the equation): Does anyone have a plan to get the world out of COVID? Previous pandemics such as SARS/MERS were contained but had no vaccine, Spanish Flu wasn't contained but there were lasting antibodies (up to 90 years![0]). For COVID all we've been doing is "hoping for a vaccine" which by all accounts[1] will only be 70% effective and will likely require boosters. The world is on a roller coaster of going into and out of lockdown (see Europe this week instituting stay at home orders again) and all the while _there is no plan_ for the world to get past this. So I ask again, does anyone have any kind of plan to get the world back to normal? In Melbourne, Australia, people are wearing masks and "buying time for a vaccine" but when it comes it won't help the at-risk portions of the population. In the US there seems to be no plan at all. Nowhere in the world has anyone come up with a pathway forward to return the human race to a way of life similar to where we were at in 2019. So, given there are so many people in here skilled at decomposing problems and articulating effective solutions, and given there most likely won't be a >70% effective vaccine in the next 2-3 years, what is the way forward for the world? Or are we to be mired in an endless cycle of lockdown/open/lockdown for as far as the eye can see. [0]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080817223642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080817223642.h... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/health/covid-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/health/covid-vaccines.htm...
- azakai 6y ago
  Even with a vaccine, I'd expect the world to be different than a year ago. There will be long-term changes. Much of Asia went through such changes after SARS, so the world has experience with this. But we can get to something very close to normal, with differences from before. More mask-wearing, more government powers to do contact tracing, more health checks on borders and other travel limitations, more remote work, etc. So it might not be the same "normal" as before, and some of those things will be unpleasant, but we can live with them (and some will have other benefits, like remote work and a decrease in flights will help against climate change). And specifically I think you're downplaying a vaccine. Even a 70% effective one would make a huge difference in how the virus spreads, potentially decreasing R below 1 even in Europe and the US and other hard-hit areas.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
So they achieved 0 infections without herd immunity via natural means or a vaccine? Isn't that a temporary win? Once a person enters the country with the virus its back on. Are we pattong our selves on the back too soon for these kinds of wins? The modern news cycle is so short sighted that the media makes money off this kind of thing without reporting the full picture.
- questionsta 6y ago
  It doesn't really seem like it provides any long term benefits, as you point out.
- jberryman 6y ago
  I think the idea is to suppress numbers via lockdown to the point where contact tracing, along with ubiquitous testing, can detect and squash any local outbreaks before they spread widely, and people can live somewhat normally. Afaict that has been the plan all along in the US as well (in terms of what scientists and infectious disease experts were saying), but most states and the administration gave up on that months ago, e.g. the national "testing czar" declaring the required testing capacity impossible.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    How is that possible given that the virus spreads so rapidly, asymptomatic people can spread the virus, and the tests aren't 100% accurate and population size is large? By the time an out break is identified hundreds or thousands of people have possibly been infected.
    - doubleunplussed 6y ago
      It's not asymptomatic enough, not infectious enough, for that to be impossible. Multiple Australian states have demonstrated this, as have China, New Zealand, Taiwan and a few others. If every time you get a symptomatic case that tests positive, you isolate contacts and secondary contacts, you will have isolated enough of the asymptomatic cases and false negative tests to get R < 1 and halt the spread of the virus.
variable11 6y ago
But they still send SWAT teams to beat houseiwves, what progress.
variable11 6y ago
Yet you still send your super cops out to beat up pregnant women,, fuck you.
Yuioup 6y ago
... until the next time they let Britons in.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Anyone knows if Australia is going to accept "tourists" anytime soon? I would love to spend a few weeks there and get away from the chaos. (and of course I would get tested before going, etc)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  No time soon, if they're smart. They shouldn't be eradicating coronavirus then inviting people in to reinfect them. That would be poor judgment.
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    Unless you accept people that have been tested, in which case you are not reintroducing anything. You can also enforce a 10-12 days quarantine to make sure.
    - jackvalentine 6y ago
      We are currently struggling with enough quarantine capacity to let Australian citizens back in the country, let alone tourists. I would expect that if your country hasn't gotten covid-19 under control you won't be allowed to travel here in the next two years.
- nstj 6y ago
  Australia has recently introduced a “travel bubble” which allows residents of New Zealand to visit without quarantine (albeit with a couple of edge cases). Interestingly, residents of Australia aren’t permitted to travel in the other direction yet.
- doubleunplussed 6y ago
  I'm sure they would, but they don't currently have the quarantine capacity to accept all of their own citizens that want to return, so there would be public outrage if the capacity were used for tourists, no matter how profitable. Many Australians (including loved ones of mine) are currently stuck overseas with flights repeatedly being cancelled. It's really shameful the country isn't doing more for its own citizens.
dpeterson 6y ago
Done with hacker news. You are clamoring for lockdowns and slavery. This is not my community.

135 points by thisrod 6y ago

This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, very expertly, on the sheer number of large Halloween parties I was invited to tonight... and how people (aged 28-40) are still mocking those who won’t congregate with 50 randos in a house. It’s very perplexing. And on the ever-increasing infections and deaths. Also, don’t forget to vote. Edit: spelling

bmitc 6y ago
The U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.
- labster 6y ago
  Don’t be such an wide-eyed optimist, the US election will lead to 3 months of strife in the best case scenario. Both sides expect the other will try to steal the election, so how is it going to relieve anything?
  - bmitc 6y ago
    I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not. What part of my comment led you to label me a wide-eyed optimist? By "hopefully provides a temporary relief", I was thinking on a longer scale as in maybe sometime next year and more along the lines of getting to come up for a breath when we've had a hand holding our heads below water for four years.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Something I read (could have been on HN) theorized the only outcome that doesn't lead to social unrest is a Biden landslide.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  My impression is that both in the US and in most European countries, there is a dire need for new political parties to enter the mainstream. I mean this election is basically a forced choice between two grandpas and both are representing values from before I was born. Where's the political party that I would trust to do what will secure a good future for my kids, because they, too, have young kids? Where's the political party where people roughly my age are calling the shots? US, France, Germany, UK, ... All I see is conservative old people. Germany and France tried to establish new center parties, but in both cases the newcomers quickly got infiltrated by old politicians and drifted far right, meaning conservative again.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    IMO this was the primary thing that got Trump elected in 2016: He was the outsider, a big "fuck you" to both major parties.
    - 1_player 6y ago
      And we've seen the result. If I've learned anything atop my 33 wise years old, is that any political candidate that looks like a clean break from the old guard, is exactly the same if not worse than its predecessors. And this is just my cynicism: the corollary is that any candidate, new or old, is a bad choice, except extremely rare exceptions.
  - iso947 6y ago
    UK is polarised by age - a minority of people under the age of 60 voted to leave te eu or voted Tory, yet we are leaving with a massive Tory majority. Labour’s last leader was magic grandpa boomer. The new one is slightly younger, come the next election he’ll only be in his early 60s. Lib Dems had a young leader who (aged 39) managed to convert from being second in the June elections (led by a 70+ year old) to losing her seat in December, with a 7 year old and a baby. There are relatively young leaders - Finland and New Zealand come to mind, but leaders tend to be reflections of the population. When the UK Labour Party was taken over by hundreds of thousands of young socialists via momentum in 2015, they didn’t chose the 45 year old (since christened king of he north), or the 46 year old with teenage kids, or even the 44 year old with no experience. They chose the OAP career politician.
dehrmann 6y ago
> I do worry about the US though Europe isn't looking much different right now.
- bmitc 6y ago
  Why is Europe's status something to care about in the U.S.? China is basically operating on all cylinders right now. It's insane how people in the U.S. don't get the damage that's being done on literally all fronts right now. The past year has had irreparable damage to the U.S. It's hard to know where to even start, from slow production due to job loss and just everything going slower, poor health due to active cases and the decades of health care reverberations done from permanent damage and repeat infections, poor education due to an already broken primary and secondary school system basically being put on pause for a year, etc. The U.S. is literally fighting whether to re-elect a person who likely has clinical personality disorders and is probably well below even average intelligence, at the very best.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Not long ago, it was popular to criticize the US's handling of the pandemic as a failure. Seeing the surge of cases in Europe makes what the US is going through look less exceptional and more expected. There's also no reason to think the level of containment China achieved is politically attainable in the west. Realizing it's "only" 180 cases, yes, China is firing on all cylinders: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-outbreak-in-china-linked-to-xinjiang-forced-labour https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-ou...
    - alisonatwork 6y ago
      Doesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Canada has done a relatively poor job by international standards, but still much better than the US and the UK, who have both been roundly criticized in the Anglosphere. Although parts of continental Europe are struggling, there are others that have done okay - Norway and Finland, for example. Outside of "the west", democratic countries in East Asia like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have done alright too. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have their political issues, but they're less authoritarian than Vietnam and China - the whole lot of them are doing well. Most of Africa is too. South America, not so much. So, it's not just about politics, and it's not just about geographic location, and it's not just about climate. It will be interesting to see the analysis after all this is over. There must be something we can learn from why it was that certain countries failed at managing this virus while others succeeded.
dpc_pw 6y ago
Are you worried about Sweden too? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM Deaths flat in case you were wondering: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coronavirus https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coro...
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Deaths do lag new cases, but something big Sweden has going for it is that a lot of Swedes live alone.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    Deaths in Sweden have flatlined since the end of July. The lag is not nearly that big.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      But new cases are up 10x from six weeks ago, and being exponential, most of those have been in the past few weeks. Still better than a lot of Europe, though.
- evgen 6y ago
  And still sucking hind tit compared to Norway, Finland, and Denmark. But let's not let simple facts and data get in the way of your anti-lockdown fairy tale...
  - anoncake 6y ago
    Saving 2-3 people a day objectively isn't worth any kind of lockdown.
    - evgen 6y ago
      Unless you happen to be one of those 2-3 people. Just let us know when you are ready to be sacrificed for the sake of the market, happy to oblige.

boxed 6y ago

I went to the linked page. It doesn't have zero cases. Maybe it's just the classic case of reading the data before the data is in?

davidbanham 6y ago
When we say 0 cases we usually mean 0 locally acquired cases. We’re worried about community transmission rather than international travellers. If someone enters the country they’re quarantined in a hotel room for 14 days. If someone tests positive during that quarantine period we report it, but count it separately.
_AzMoo 6y ago
The title should be "no new locally-acquired cases", but there was actually one that came in after the cut-off time so it will be counted in tomorrow's numbers.
Fomite 6y ago
Locally acquired cases - indicates successful cessation of community transmission, which means you're back to the easier task of trying to detect and contain importation.

docdeek 6y ago

> 6 new cases today (+5)*, 9 yesterday (+5) Title doesn't seem to match data.

tomhoward 6y ago
All new cases reported in Australia today (Sun Nov 1, from tests performed on Sat Oct 31st) were acquired overseas and are in hotel quarantine. Aside from them there were no new cases, even between close contacts (household etc). So, the title is true for locally acquired cases, which I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make. (Also there was only one locally acquired case the previous day, in the state of South Australia, which has barely had an outbreak at all, thanks to having a sparse population and relatively little international air traffic). There were over 76000 test results processed to achieve that result, and there is a strong message through the community to get tested with even the mildest/vaguest of symptoms. Testing is free and stations are located to be easily accessible to most of the population, particularly in Victoria, which had a serious outbreak from June to September.
- thisrod 6y ago
  > I believe is the point the submitter is trying to make Yes. I went with the headline Australian newspapers are using, which in hindsight lacks sufficient context for HN. What I find remarkable is how many things Australia stuffed up, but was able to recover from by brute force and social cohesion. Procrastinating over quarantine for international travellers, obsessing about ventilators while ignoring prevention, identifying that aged care was a massive vulnerability but doing nothing to mitigate it, gross recklessness in setting up hotel quarantine, failing to anticipate that although the virus went away it was bound to come back: it's a long list.

m0zg 6y ago

Another thing that's helping Australia is that they're heading into summer. Normalized by population the worst non-tiny (10M+) countries to be right now seem to be France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. And it'd be even worse in France, Italy and Poland in terms of new cases if they had the kind of testing throughput the US has been able to muster (1.24M tests a day). Belgium has comparable normalized test throughput. As far as cases, new cases = positivity * throughput. The higher the throughput, the more cases you are going to get.

Svip 6y ago
Only Belgium of those seems to rank worse than USA for cases/pop. Missing from your list seems to be Israel and Czech Republic (unless your limit for non-tiny country is 11 million). But even below USA, before we get to France, Italy or Poland; Peru, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia ranks in before. And most of these countries are testing at lower rates than France.
- m0zg 6y ago
  That's only if you fail at basic arithmetics. All of them are worse than the US. Scaled up to US population, France would have 190K new cases per day. Italy - 168K. Poland - 185K. And so on and so forth down the list.
  - Svip 6y ago
    That wasn't particularly clear from your 'worst non-tiny countries' (which out of context just sounds mean-spirited). So you meant in terms of new cases, not total cases?
    - m0zg 6y ago
      Yes, since the original article is about new cases, not totals per se. Normalized totals will be the same everywhere - everyone will get it eventually.
      - 6y ago

tomhoward 6y ago

Melbourne resident here. We're feeling pretty relieved to be getting these results and excited to be tentatively emerging from nearly four months of fairly strict lockdown. Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. At the same time, there's much debate and political ruckus about the merits of the lockdown - i.e., the economic and human costs, vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. There's also the ongoing attack on our state government from political opponents and parts of the media, over the fact that the virus was suppressed here back in May, as it was in the rest of Australia, but then started spreading rapidly again in June, when poorly-trained security guards acquired the virus while working in quarantine hotels, then took it back to their families and communities, with the outbreak then tearing through aged care homes and leading to a total of 800+ fatalities. What isn't being talked about here, but has been mentioned by another commenter in this thread, is weather. Melbourne is the only large/dense city in Australia that has quite cool winters, similar to the weather that prevailed in Northern Asia, Europe and the US in Feb-April, and that is returning to Western Europe now. As we now know, given the serious outbreaks that have happened in warmer regions, warm weather is not a strong enough factor to halt this virus altogether, but it does seem to have an influence, and it's striking to note the progression of this virus in Melbourne, relative to the weather. AMA!

Jedd 6y ago
> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in that category, but what we continue to find out about the way this disease can affect otherwise fit & healthy people, and with the unfortunate benefit of seeing what is happening in countries that aren't as committed to controlling this, indicates we've probably made the right decisions here.
- 6y ago

peteretep 6y ago

Good luck y’all! Life in Thailand has been pretty awesome (if you don’t rely on tourist dollars) since we hit this point some months back. At this point when the occasional bizarre local case does show up (and one or two have here) the government can go nuts on contact tracing and make sure it stays under control.

thisrod 6y ago
Ha ha! That's what my friends in KL and Penang were telling me in August. Just wait until the king comes home from France, and insists that his 100 or so favorite hookers skip quarantine :-( Seriously, I think that we'll have to live with one Southeast Asian country (including Australia) having an outbreak at any given time.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say with the last sentence there. For one, the outbreaks in Indonesia and the Philippines show no sign of abating.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
Thailand never had a bad outbreak to begin with and no one knows why. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-thailand-photos.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/world/asia/coronavirus-th... Also, isn't Thailand a dictatorship where if you insult the royal family verbally you can be beheaded?
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Just put in prison. With the new King there is a lot to be critical of, but for whatever reason he has held back on imprisoning people. The junta has nevertheless been quite harsh on critics of the regime.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Oh that's right 3 to 15 years of prison for criticizing the royal family....that's as fascist as it gets. Not a great model for any country to aspire to. How do we know Thailand isn't just executing anyone testing positive for Coronavirus? Would anyone report it if true with free speech laws like that? Pandemic Problem solved! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9_in_Th...

dustinmoris 6y ago

It is important to point out that Coronavirus emerged when the Northern hemisphere was still in Winter and early spring, a time where viruses can extremely thrive and now the Northern hemisphere is seeing a second wave because we still don’t have a vaccine and are entering a full new winter with COVID. The southern hemisphere had only to battle COVID for a single Winter, and that delayed too, having had already the advantage of all the lessons learned in Europe. It’s very likely that their second Winter will already see a vaccine so by pure chance when the virus emerged countries in the Southern hemisphere have had a much better situation and therefore should expect better outcomes.

m_mueller 6y ago
We Europeans sure learned our lesson in spring...ohwait
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  You are still disadvantaged against nature. We know that being more outdoors and having your windows more open is helping to reduce infections, but when you are entering Winter then a lot of the knowledge we have won’t stop the fact that infections will still rise due to the change in our behaviour in cold weather. It’s just a fact of life, the entire world sees infection spikes of other viruses (flu and so on) in Winters and therefore it’s not helpful to make sarcastic finger pointing comments when we all have accepted this as a fact of life and know this is just how it is.
alisonatwork 6y ago
It makes sense that winter makes things worse, but if weather were the only factor, why is South America seeing far more cases than Australia?
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  Because Australia suppressed the virus as much as they could with a very long lockdown. South America didn't, so they started with complete different baselines into their summers.

bobnamob 6y ago

To those citing weather as a likely influence, I'm not sure I agree. Given the graph provided by the linked site, it looks like cases started really dipping in late August. August and September are still bloody cold in Melbourne, where most of the cases have been recorded. Additionally, Australia is heading into a La Nina summer, generally characterised by a slower onset of warmer weather and greater average rainfall. Edit: Anecdotally, Adelaide weather for the last few months has barely registered as spring. Melbourne is typically a few °C cooler than Adelaide.

dustinmoris 6y ago
Yes, it was Winter and they were in a four month lockdown. Let me repeat, a FOUR MONTH lockdown. That is a bloody long time so anything but a huge dip during a four month lockdown would just be bizarre. Now they have summer, cases a low after a lockdown and due to the weather cases will remain low like we've seen in Summer across all of Europe, regardless what measures countries have taken. If Europe was to spend 4 months out of their Winter in lockdown, then cases will drop there too.
- Jedd 6y ago
  > Now they have summer, cases a low after a lockdown and due to the weather cases will remain low like we've seen in Summer across all of Europe, ... Summer starts here in Australia in a month from now. (We'll then be contending with the return of bushfires.) I think it's disservice to assert the weather is what will keep our case count low -- when a lot of people have gone through a whole lot of shit (and still are) to achieve & maintain the situation we now have. I think there's sufficient contra-examples in both hemispheres to suggest that the weather is not a major factor -- though it is politically expedient & convenient to point at the weather to distract from mismanagement.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    > I think there's sufficient contra-examples in both hemispheres to suggest that the weather is not a major factor -- though it is politically expedient & convenient to point at the weather to distract from mismanagement. I'm not a politician, I'm not a nationalist, my birthplace is not the culture which I've been raised under, where my parents come from I've never lived and where I live now I have no ties whatsoever, so simply I don't care about country politics and trying to suggest anything different is the real disservice. It's a fact that warm weather plays a huge role. In Europe we have seen a first relief during Spring and all countries have seen a huge dip in cases during their warmest summer months, completely irrespective of the countries individual measures. That's just a hard fact that you can't argue away in good conscience. Furthermore, irrespective of how well countries have done, how many sacrifices people have done and what measures countries have taken (e.g. Germany vs. Sweden vs. UK vs. Czechia, etc.) all European countries see the same acceleration of cases. The only difference is the baseline where the spike starts, but the curve upwards is literally identical, so it further underlines that the weather has a bigger influence than any other measure except a full lockdown on the infection rate of coronavirus.

lkrubner 6y ago

Apparently it is relatively easy to control this virus during the summer, and almost impossible during the winter. Australia's summer seems to be helping it a good deal, even as winter in the northern hemisphere is making things much worse.

catmanjan 6y ago
I'll check back here in 12 months when Americas cases never stop rising
NathanWilliams 6y ago
Checking in from Sydney here, summer is still a month away, my family is snuggled on the lounge under blankets right now. The result comes down to a competent government response to a public health crisis. Not the weather.
lostlogin 6y ago
Here in New Zealand the virus was eradicated in the winter, then again in the late winter/spring. Did the US and UK control it in their summers?
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  NZ completely closed the borders. That's a huge factor.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Returning residents bring in covid - they have been allowed back at all stages. Some days there is none, but on most days several cases come into the country. Essential workers are also allowed in, although this has become a political football. For example, a equestrian race track builder was allowed in.
anotherevan 6y ago
We are not in summer yet (i.e., I do not see any bushfires outside my window) but the weather is starting to warm up a bit (many low to mid-20C days) here in Melbourne. I'm not convinced weather is the only factor.

drcross 6y ago

If you told six month ago me that we'd be treating people who are high risk of this disease the same as people with low risk I would have been in complete disbelief.

rscho 6y ago
What's unbelievable is that we started this pandemic by treating people as if we knew nothing not only about this virus, but also by throwing all ARDS experience to the trash. I will remember our experts telling us to intubate early and withhold steroids for a very long time. We killed a lot of people because a minority wanted to show off. This is depressing.
- Lewton 6y ago
  Experts didn't suggest withholding steroids just because they wanted to show off. Doctors in the field withheld steroids because the steroids they were giving patients with covid-19 was actively killing them. It took a long time to find out what steroids could safely be used for treatment
  - rscho 6y ago
    When I say 'we killed', it's myself included in a very personal way. I am an ICU doctor working on the frontline at one of the largest european university hospitals. And I am not a resident anymore. Yes, they were show-offs and they still are. There is no justification for throwing away years of clinical experience with ARDS based on the personal opinions of a few who want to steal the spotlight by relying on novelty. They deserve to be despised, and I can say that with full confidence because I know a few of them personally.
    - Lewton 6y ago
      Is what I wrote wrong? Is it not true that in the beginning they saw an increase in fatalities when treating with certain kinds of steroids?

yen223 6y ago

Sydneysider here. Sydney hasn't seen anything remotely resembling an outbreak yet (not as bad as Melbourne's), but people are still wearing masks on trains, we are still getting tested (for free!), and businesses generally appear to be complying with covid restrictions. Life here has been relatively normal so far. I recognize that Sydney might still be due for an outbreak, but I have more faith that the chances of that happening is low. I am incredibly thankful to be living in a country whose people and its government seem to be doing the right thing when it comes to this pandemic.

Jedd 6y ago
Fellow Sydney resident. My other half is a high school teacher - she's had I think 4 cases of cough / sniffles that have required a test, with the process being free (as you say), convenient (walking distance - there are many places that offer the swab test), and fast (results back within 48 hours, usually faster, via SMS & email). I've caught a train into the office 3 times since March - public transport utilisation is wonderfully low (though I'm avoiding peak times), and most people seem to be good about wearing a mask. I've eaten out a half dozen times only, in that time, and again people seem to be behaving and handling things admirably. Looking around at the rest of the world, it's equal parts encouraging & astonishing just how well we're doing compared to, well, not just the obvious examples, but almost everywhere else.
- LeCow 6y ago
  The mistake is to think it's never going to happen. It will get you eventually, could be 5 years, 10 years...but it will come.
  - jonsno56 6y ago
    It’ll get YoU in particular in 10 years cause you won’t get vaccinated
    - LeCow 6y ago
      ...okay I'm not sure why this needs explaining still. But this virus, like all viruses will evolve and change over time. The vaccine today won't be effective in a couple of years. I have no idea what that has to do with anything.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Melbournian here. It's now time to Get On The Beers. Edit: Donuts.

yen223 6y ago
Something from higher up the shelf maybe
rswail 6y ago
I had jam donuts, which don't have a hole, but, there's no donut rules! For those who don't know, when we went into lockdown, our Premier said "This is no time to gather with mates at home and get on the beers". He had a daily press conference every day, 111 days straight. He announced the current situation, what was being done, what was changing, and then stood and took questions from reporters until they ran out of things to ask. When we recently started to relax the lockdown, he was asked whether it was time to "get on the beers" and he said "I don't know that I'll be drinking a beer tonight. I might go a little higher up the shelf."

question000 6y ago

Seeing all these knee jerk anti-lockdown, anti-government, anti-rules, posts claiming beyond all reason that Australia just magically has no cases because of some statistical quirk or something really shows how many people will just never accept any kind of government intervention was beneficial even when blatantly obvious.

thinkingemote 6y ago
Your comment doesn't really add much value to the discussion, but seeing as you are a new account, I would suggest lurking a bit more.
- question000 6y ago
  Comments claiming the lockdown did nothing add something to the discussion? How could any rational human being really think this? They just blindly hate the government and some people here really don't understand that this worked, not because they debated about it but because they just did the obvious thing and organized a response and executed it. Edit: and also instead of making personal attacks please address the substance of what I'm saying I've been on HN but just created an account to respond to the new wave of germ theory denialism I see on this site.

questionsta 6y ago

Genuine question from a fellow software engineer (throwaway because COVID is such a wedge issue. And for the record I'm currently in Australia and spent the early part of COVID pandemic in the US so have familiarity with both sides of the equation): Does anyone have a plan to get the world out of COVID? Previous pandemics such as SARS/MERS were contained but had no vaccine, Spanish Flu wasn't contained but there were lasting antibodies (up to 90 years![0]). For COVID all we've been doing is "hoping for a vaccine" which by all accounts[1] will only be 70% effective and will likely require boosters. The world is on a roller coaster of going into and out of lockdown (see Europe this week instituting stay at home orders again) and all the while _there is no plan_ for the world to get past this. So I ask again, does anyone have any kind of plan to get the world back to normal? In Melbourne, Australia, people are wearing masks and "buying time for a vaccine" but when it comes it won't help the at-risk portions of the population. In the US there seems to be no plan at all. Nowhere in the world has anyone come up with a pathway forward to return the human race to a way of life similar to where we were at in 2019. So, given there are so many people in here skilled at decomposing problems and articulating effective solutions, and given there most likely won't be a >70% effective vaccine in the next 2-3 years, what is the way forward for the world? Or are we to be mired in an endless cycle of lockdown/open/lockdown for as far as the eye can see. [0]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080817223642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080817223642.h... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/health/covid-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/health/covid-vaccines.htm...

azakai 6y ago
Even with a vaccine, I'd expect the world to be different than a year ago. There will be long-term changes. Much of Asia went through such changes after SARS, so the world has experience with this. But we can get to something very close to normal, with differences from before. More mask-wearing, more government powers to do contact tracing, more health checks on borders and other travel limitations, more remote work, etc. So it might not be the same "normal" as before, and some of those things will be unpleasant, but we can live with them (and some will have other benefits, like remote work and a decrease in flights will help against climate change). And specifically I think you're downplaying a vaccine. Even a 70% effective one would make a huge difference in how the virus spreads, potentially decreasing R below 1 even in Europe and the US and other hard-hit areas.

nickthemagicman 6y ago

So they achieved 0 infections without herd immunity via natural means or a vaccine? Isn't that a temporary win? Once a person enters the country with the virus its back on. Are we pattong our selves on the back too soon for these kinds of wins? The modern news cycle is so short sighted that the media makes money off this kind of thing without reporting the full picture.

questionsta 6y ago
It doesn't really seem like it provides any long term benefits, as you point out.
jberryman 6y ago
I think the idea is to suppress numbers via lockdown to the point where contact tracing, along with ubiquitous testing, can detect and squash any local outbreaks before they spread widely, and people can live somewhat normally. Afaict that has been the plan all along in the US as well (in terms of what scientists and infectious disease experts were saying), but most states and the administration gave up on that months ago, e.g. the national "testing czar" declaring the required testing capacity impossible.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  How is that possible given that the virus spreads so rapidly, asymptomatic people can spread the virus, and the tests aren't 100% accurate and population size is large? By the time an out break is identified hundreds or thousands of people have possibly been infected.
  - doubleunplussed 6y ago
    It's not asymptomatic enough, not infectious enough, for that to be impossible. Multiple Australian states have demonstrated this, as have China, New Zealand, Taiwan and a few others. If every time you get a symptomatic case that tests positive, you isolate contacts and secondary contacts, you will have isolated enough of the asymptomatic cases and false negative tests to get R < 1 and halt the spread of the virus.

variable11 6y ago

But they still send SWAT teams to beat houseiwves, what progress.

variable11 6y ago

Yet you still send your super cops out to beat up pregnant women,, fuck you.

Yuioup 6y ago

... until the next time they let Britons in.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Anyone knows if Australia is going to accept "tourists" anytime soon? I would love to spend a few weeks there and get away from the chaos. (and of course I would get tested before going, etc)

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
No time soon, if they're smart. They shouldn't be eradicating coronavirus then inviting people in to reinfect them. That would be poor judgment.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Unless you accept people that have been tested, in which case you are not reintroducing anything. You can also enforce a 10-12 days quarantine to make sure.
  - jackvalentine 6y ago
    We are currently struggling with enough quarantine capacity to let Australian citizens back in the country, let alone tourists. I would expect that if your country hasn't gotten covid-19 under control you won't be allowed to travel here in the next two years.
nstj 6y ago
Australia has recently introduced a “travel bubble” which allows residents of New Zealand to visit without quarantine (albeit with a couple of edge cases). Interestingly, residents of Australia aren’t permitted to travel in the other direction yet.
doubleunplussed 6y ago
I'm sure they would, but they don't currently have the quarantine capacity to accept all of their own citizens that want to return, so there would be public outrage if the capacity were used for tourists, no matter how profitable. Many Australians (including loved ones of mine) are currently stuck overseas with flights repeatedly being cancelled. It's really shameful the country isn't doing more for its own citizens.

dpeterson 6y ago

Done with hacker news. You are clamoring for lockdowns and slavery. This is not my community.