6 ms·

Would 50000 more deaths made it look better? Australia's handling of the crisis has been stellar compared to most other countries.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
This is a loaded question. In slovenia, more people have died from smoking related illnesses than covid (even in the last two years), but somehow "corona lives matter", peoples personal choices to go out, get ill, and risk the 0.5% chance of death don't matter, governments take more and more power, because "every life matters", but on the other hand, you can still buy cigarettes everywhere. If every life matters, then ban cigarettes, tax the shit out of sugary sodas and junk food, if you're willing to sacrifice basic human rights, also force people to exercise, and more lives will be saved than from corona. If all those lives don't matter, but corona lives do, someone is doing something very very wrong.
- tigershark 5y ago
  It’s not true. In all the world covid caused way more deaths than smoke related diseases. If in Slovenia it’s not the case then they are massively undercounting covid deaths. And the covid mortality is 1%, not 0.5%. Stop spreading dangerous misinformation.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    I have to disagree https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco > Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio. edit: even obesity, 2.8mio per year, 5.6mio in two years - https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-facts-on-obesity https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-fac...
    - tigershark 5y ago
      Only in India the excess deaths were 4.5M in one year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57888460 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57888460 The total death count for covid will be known only in the next years and it’s for sure many multiple of the current official numbers.
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        So, which country data do you want to use? Usa, 480k smoking deaths yearly - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast... , still more than covid deaths there. And not to mention counting the iffy counting of covid deaths (any death, even suicide within 28 days is a covid death) and covid hospitalizations ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-covid-hospitalisations-tested-positive-admission/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-c... ). Let's be honest here... covid is really bad for old and already ill people. For young and currently healthy, the impacts of lockdowns will be worse than covid, especially for younger children (imagine just going to first grade, unable to rad and write yet, and you're put infront of a laptop with Zoom running, no real-life contact with friends, parents having to quit their jobs to take care of you, and all that to "save grandma", even with vaccines already available).
        tigershark 5y ago
        USA excess deaths are over 1M so it’s still greater than smoke deaths. 646k is for the first year: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29503 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29503 646k > 480k if I’m not mistaken.
        ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        So, every excess deaths is a covid death now? 20k of those, are just extra overdoses (100k total). - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/20211117.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
- stef25 5y ago
  So we should only pay attention to whatever illness causes the most deaths and ignore the rest? You're free to get ill if you choose (from smoking, covid, whatever) but it's really hard to believe people don't understand you don't have the right to endanger others, be it with tobacco smoke or covid. That's also why we have speed limits. If you want to endanger yourself driving 250Km/h that's fine. But you can't, because you'd endanger others. TL;DR: your freedom ends where mine begins.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that. And yes, we basically do the calculation (deaths vs convenience) all the time.. look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits.. a few deaths is ok, because everyone can get to work faster, but a lot of deaths is not ok. Especially now, with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering (except others, who also chose not to vaccinate)? Thinking the vaccinated won't get in contact with omicron from other vaccinated people who got infected is stupid, but we still don't let unvaccinated people go to the bar, while I can go there, even infected (and with omicron, i could be infected right now, but noone tests us, the vaccinated ones).
    - stef25 5y ago
      > I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that Smoking isn't ignored ... I don't think any illness is ignored in favor of any others. Doctors have been insisting people do not postpone medical procedures and checkups because they're worried about covid in hospitals (which has been happening, and causing more deaths). One of the main reasons to get vaccinated against covid is specifically so hospitals don't get overwhelmed to the point where patients have to turned away, regardless of what they're suffering from. > look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :) Faster driving doesn't cause more accidents, but it does cause greater injury (complicated subject with lots of research, no time to dig all this up). > with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible). And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars). And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong. It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
- kleiba 5y ago
  Unhealthy diets affect only the people who follow them, not their peers. Smoking is different because passive smoking does affect others - that's why there have been government interventions (higher taxation, public campaigns) to reduce smoking in many countries in the last decades. Your argument is besides the point anyway: just because there are other factors in life that can make you sick, that does not mean that we should not fight COVID.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care. Considering we have vaccines available for some time now, and considering we've dealth with contageus diseases before covid, getting unvaccinated is basically a lifestyle choice, and non-believers can still stay at home and not do the stuff we've been restricting to people who actually want to do that.
    - HeyZuess 5y ago
      > But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care. I don't know if you can compare smoking to covid, smoking related diseases take years and more likely decades to be deadly. But in saying that, one way to look at this is via economics. When you are born, you have a potential life expectancy and a potential to earn society money (taxes). Smokers quite often die younger overall and not reaching their value to society, however this is general with many other diseases. Obviously reducing preventable forms of deaths such as those from smoking are to the benefit of society. Whenever you hear that smoking costs the "country" $X billions a year, that is not only the direct costs but also the indirect costs. I believe in Australia the direct healthcare costs of treating smoking related illness was pegged at some number around 110 million a year, which is substantially different to the promoted cost of billions. The difference with Covid is that it is an anomaly, perfectly healthy individuals have an increase chance of dying, as well as those who do have other health factors. This number maybe small but it has a large impact on the economy on society in general. Not only is a persons economic value reduced by the direct costs to society are increased. An example of this, might be, you build a hospital knowing that X amount of smokers will die a year as well as other illnesses. You can calculate this, and work out what type of hospital you need to build. But what you cannot do very easily is calculate an additional 5 million people a year dying over an immediate time. It also takes considerable time to build hospitals, and years to train doctors, as such it is difficult to ramp up quickly to deal with anomalies. Then you must also consider the amount of productivity which is lost when a person is sick, this is also a factor which is calculated in regards to society, and then the publics spending, fear etc. You can also look at the cost increases in the supply chain, which will affect the economy for years to come. Smokers for example are unlikely to influence the price of wood, but covid has. So while we should take a pro-active stance against smoking (and when I was smoking I used to say the same), the pandemic is a real-time disaster which cannot be dealt with over 20 years like smoking. People will continue to die from smoking for decades even if you banned it today, but people will die today and potentially from related issues for decades from covid. The effects of covid are immediate, substantial and impactful to society not only right now but likely for some time.
- ljm 5y ago
  Given the multiple 'X lives matter' references I think this response is probably more loaded than the question could ever have been. The thing with COVID is that it's a contagious and deadly disease. The thing with smoking, fizzy drinks and junk food is that they're not contagious and deadly diseases, they're lifestyle choices. You can't compare them like-for-like.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    I'm not an american, and I don't really care about your internal issues. Our phrase is "vsako zivljenje steje", which is literally translated to "every life counts", but "matters" makes more sense in this context.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
switch007 5y ago
Stellar, perhaps, if deaths is your only metric. I don’t consider leaving 10,000s of your own citizens stranded abroad for up to 18 months a good metric by any means. That’s suspending citizenship, and will have done irreparable damage to rights. They of course also prevented people from leaving This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210406-stranded-abroad-australians-lodge-un-petition-against-govt-for-right-to-return-home https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210406-stranded-a...
- hilbert42 5y ago
  "This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there" The truly disgraceful aspect of all this is that Australia had a proper quarantine system in place and it abandoned it. When I was a kid, everyone knew of Australia's quarantine system and its past history as it was so public. Anyone who'd traveled on Sydney Harbour back then would have seen Sydney's quarantine station (I used to pass it every time I went to the beach): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station The fact is Australia was unprepared for COVID because of government funding cutbacks and other political BS. The country has no one else to blame except itself. BTW, this was the ideal site of a quarantine station, it was easily accessible (near all incoming shipping, etc.) and yet it was properly isolated geographically from the rest of Sydney (see aerial photo in wiki link), thus people who were quarantined there would not have been able to infect others as they have done in the idiotic 'hotel system' that now exists.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

This is a loaded question. In slovenia, more people have died from smoking related illnesses than covid (even in the last two years), but somehow "corona lives matter", peoples personal choices to go out, get ill, and risk the 0.5% chance of death don't matter, governments take more and more power, because "every life matters", but on the other hand, you can still buy cigarettes everywhere. If every life matters, then ban cigarettes, tax the shit out of sugary sodas and junk food, if you're willing to sacrifice basic human rights, also force people to exercise, and more lives will be saved than from corona. If all those lives don't matter, but corona lives do, someone is doing something very very wrong.

tigershark 5y ago
It’s not true. In all the world covid caused way more deaths than smoke related diseases. If in Slovenia it’s not the case then they are massively undercounting covid deaths. And the covid mortality is 1%, not 0.5%. Stop spreading dangerous misinformation.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I have to disagree https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco > Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Two years, 16+mio deaths. Total covid deaths, a bit over 5 mio. edit: even obesity, 2.8mio per year, 5.6mio in two years - https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-facts-on-obesity https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-fac...
  - tigershark 5y ago
    Only in India the excess deaths were 4.5M in one year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57888460 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57888460 The total death count for covid will be known only in the next years and it’s for sure many multiple of the current official numbers.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      So, which country data do you want to use? Usa, 480k smoking deaths yearly - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast... , still more than covid deaths there. And not to mention counting the iffy counting of covid deaths (any death, even suicide within 28 days is a covid death) and covid hospitalizations ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-covid-hospitalisations-tested-positive-admission/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-c... ). Let's be honest here... covid is really bad for old and already ill people. For young and currently healthy, the impacts of lockdowns will be worse than covid, especially for younger children (imagine just going to first grade, unable to rad and write yet, and you're put infront of a laptop with Zoom running, no real-life contact with friends, parents having to quit their jobs to take care of you, and all that to "save grandma", even with vaccines already available).
      - tigershark 5y ago
        USA excess deaths are over 1M so it’s still greater than smoke deaths. 646k is for the first year: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29503 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29503 646k > 480k if I’m not mistaken.
        ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        So, every excess deaths is a covid death now? 20k of those, are just extra overdoses (100k total). - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/20211117.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
stef25 5y ago
So we should only pay attention to whatever illness causes the most deaths and ignore the rest? You're free to get ill if you choose (from smoking, covid, whatever) but it's really hard to believe people don't understand you don't have the right to endanger others, be it with tobacco smoke or covid. That's also why we have speed limits. If you want to endanger yourself driving 250Km/h that's fine. But you can't, because you'd endanger others. TL;DR: your freedom ends where mine begins.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that. And yes, we basically do the calculation (deaths vs convenience) all the time.. look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits.. a few deaths is ok, because everyone can get to work faster, but a lot of deaths is not ok. Especially now, with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering (except others, who also chose not to vaccinate)? Thinking the vaccinated won't get in contact with omicron from other vaccinated people who got infected is stupid, but we still don't let unvaccinated people go to the bar, while I can go there, even infected (and with omicron, i could be infected right now, but noone tests us, the vaccinated ones).
  - stef25 5y ago
    > I mean... you probably shouldn't ignore the thing that kills the most people, to deal with something that kills less people than that Smoking isn't ignored ... I don't think any illness is ignored in favor of any others. Doctors have been insisting people do not postpone medical procedures and checkups because they're worried about covid in hospitals (which has been happening, and causing more deaths). One of the main reasons to get vaccinated against covid is specifically so hospitals don't get overwhelmed to the point where patients have to turned away, regardless of what they're suffering from. > look at speed limits for cars, they're just a calculation of traffic deaths per year vs time losses due to lower speed limits I doubt that speed limits have anything to do with "time lost". The difference in covering 30Km at 150Km/h vs 120Km/h is 3 min, negligible. Wake up earlier :) Faster driving doesn't cause more accidents, but it does cause greater injury (complicated subject with lots of research, no time to dig all this up). > with vaccines... if someone doesn't want to vaccinate, who exactly are they endangering You're also endangering vaccinated people. The risk of serious illness is greatly reduced but you're not guaranteed not to die. A vaccine is like a seat belt (works super well but doesn't make you invincible). And it's not just 1 or 0. People die from covid and survivors can have long lasting afflictions from it. I think the statistic is for every person that dies, there's 5 that will be "marked" for life by covid. Not "long covid" or whatever, but life long problems with reduced lung capacity, problems with kidneys, heart etc - things they will suffer from in varying degrees for years to come, burdening the healthcare and social welfare system and the economy in general (global cost is already in the trillions of dollars). And it's still not ok to endanger those who aren't vaccinated because they can still end up in hospital, using up valuable resources. So if you want to have your covid parties that's fine if you sign a contract saying you'll receive no medical help whatsoever should you get infected. Anything else is morally wrong. It's extremely tiring having to explain all this basic, obvious stuff to people. I'm sure if you thought it through you could figure it out for yourself.
kleiba 5y ago
Unhealthy diets affect only the people who follow them, not their peers. Smoking is different because passive smoking does affect others - that's why there have been government interventions (higher taxation, public campaigns) to reduce smoking in many countries in the last decades. Your argument is besides the point anyway: just because there are other factors in life that can make you sick, that does not mean that we should not fight COVID.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care. Considering we have vaccines available for some time now, and considering we've dealth with contageus diseases before covid, getting unvaccinated is basically a lifestyle choice, and non-believers can still stay at home and not do the stuff we've been restricting to people who actually want to do that.
  - HeyZuess 5y ago
    > But if lives (number of lives) matter, and we're unwilling to ban the sale of cigarettes to save lives (which is, lets be honest, not a very impactful thing on normal life of normal people, especially if you do it the new zeland way, by a cutoff year), we basically let all those people die, and we don't care. I don't know if you can compare smoking to covid, smoking related diseases take years and more likely decades to be deadly. But in saying that, one way to look at this is via economics. When you are born, you have a potential life expectancy and a potential to earn society money (taxes). Smokers quite often die younger overall and not reaching their value to society, however this is general with many other diseases. Obviously reducing preventable forms of deaths such as those from smoking are to the benefit of society. Whenever you hear that smoking costs the "country" $X billions a year, that is not only the direct costs but also the indirect costs. I believe in Australia the direct healthcare costs of treating smoking related illness was pegged at some number around 110 million a year, which is substantially different to the promoted cost of billions. The difference with Covid is that it is an anomaly, perfectly healthy individuals have an increase chance of dying, as well as those who do have other health factors. This number maybe small but it has a large impact on the economy on society in general. Not only is a persons economic value reduced by the direct costs to society are increased. An example of this, might be, you build a hospital knowing that X amount of smokers will die a year as well as other illnesses. You can calculate this, and work out what type of hospital you need to build. But what you cannot do very easily is calculate an additional 5 million people a year dying over an immediate time. It also takes considerable time to build hospitals, and years to train doctors, as such it is difficult to ramp up quickly to deal with anomalies. Then you must also consider the amount of productivity which is lost when a person is sick, this is also a factor which is calculated in regards to society, and then the publics spending, fear etc. You can also look at the cost increases in the supply chain, which will affect the economy for years to come. Smokers for example are unlikely to influence the price of wood, but covid has. So while we should take a pro-active stance against smoking (and when I was smoking I used to say the same), the pandemic is a real-time disaster which cannot be dealt with over 20 years like smoking. People will continue to die from smoking for decades even if you banned it today, but people will die today and potentially from related issues for decades from covid. The effects of covid are immediate, substantial and impactful to society not only right now but likely for some time.
ljm 5y ago
Given the multiple 'X lives matter' references I think this response is probably more loaded than the question could ever have been. The thing with COVID is that it's a contagious and deadly disease. The thing with smoking, fizzy drinks and junk food is that they're not contagious and deadly diseases, they're lifestyle choices. You can't compare them like-for-like.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I'm not an american, and I don't really care about your internal issues. Our phrase is "vsako zivljenje steje", which is literally translated to "every life counts", but "matters" makes more sense in this context.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

switch007 5y ago

Stellar, perhaps, if deaths is your only metric. I don’t consider leaving 10,000s of your own citizens stranded abroad for up to 18 months a good metric by any means. That’s suspending citizenship, and will have done irreparable damage to rights. They of course also prevented people from leaving This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210406-stranded-abroad-australians-lodge-un-petition-against-govt-for-right-to-return-home https://amp.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210406-stranded-a...

hilbert42 5y ago
"This is before we get in to the whole topic of quarantine “hotels” and the force with which people were escorted to them and the conditions there" The truly disgraceful aspect of all this is that Australia had a proper quarantine system in place and it abandoned it. When I was a kid, everyone knew of Australia's quarantine system and its past history as it was so public. Anyone who'd traveled on Sydney Harbour back then would have seen Sydney's quarantine station (I used to pass it every time I went to the beach): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Quarantine_Station The fact is Australia was unprepared for COVID because of government funding cutbacks and other political BS. The country has no one else to blame except itself. BTW, this was the ideal site of a quarantine station, it was easily accessible (near all incoming shipping, etc.) and yet it was properly isolated geographically from the rest of Sydney (see aerial photo in wiki link), thus people who were quarantined there would not have been able to infect others as they have done in the idiotic 'hotel system' that now exists.