Aussies: NSW Politicians, keeping ICAC in business

[Impmk2]

So we're opening for practical classes next week. We're down to less than 100 active cases state wide (SA), but we were all still taken by surprise. The tech / teaching staff are scrambling to get everything up and running inside the 2 work day notice.

[ithanos]

In the cold light of day, when all facts are laid bare, one might react with a modicum of restraint. But if any of the allegations made against the driver of the Porsche involved in the Melbourne freeway tragedy hold true, then this sub-human is scum of the earth.   

[Jeor]

23 hours ago, ithanos said:

In the cold light of day, when all facts are laid bare, one might react with a modicum of restraint. But if any of the allegations made against the driver of the Porsche involved in the Melbourne freeway tragedy hold true, then this sub-human is scum of the earth.   

He's reportedly got mental health issues, but even if that's true (and not a courtcase ploy) he should still be punished.

And if it's not, then he should be heavily punished and be removed from society, because he's an ongoing danger to others with a sociopathic level of zero remorse.

[Paxter]

So...who's downloaded the app?

I'm guessing that your average ASOIAF-forum aussie is going to be a non-downloader.

[Fragile Bird]

Just popping in to mention how amazingly well Australia has handled the virus. At one point Canada and Australia were at the same level. Hard to imagine now that Canada has 47,000 cases and 2600 deaths.

What does surprise me, though, is how low the Australian death total is, extremely low for the number of cases. Are Australians all skinny? Is the population of POC very low? Did the virus never get into nursing homes?

Also, do you know how many people returned from overseas? I think where Canada and Australia diverged was in returns from overseas. More than a million people came home, a third from the US, a third from Europe, and we all know now what cesspools of virus both areas were. I remember running into a couple in the park walking their dog (we were 10 feet apart) and they said on their return from the US nobody told them to quarantine but they were social distancing. The quarantine rule had come down a few days before and I guess they just decided that didn’t need to. After all, hey, they had no symptoms!

My guess is that being winter in the northern hemisphere not as many people were overseas on vacation from Australia.

In any event, keep up the good work!

[Paxter]

36 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Just popping in to mention how amazingly well Australia has handled the virus. At one point Canada and Australia were at the same level. Hard to imagine now that Canada has 47,000 cases and 2600 deaths.

What does surprise me, though, is how low the Australian death total is, extremely low for the number of cases. Are Australians all skinny? Is the population of POC very low? Did the virus never get into nursing homes?

Also, do you know how many people returned from overseas? I think where Canada and Australia diverged was in returns from overseas. More than a million people came home, a third from the US, a third from Europe, and we all know now what cesspools of virus both areas were. I remember running into a couple in the park walking their dog (we were 10 feet apart) and they said on their return from the US nobody told them to quarantine but they were social distancing. The quarantine rule had come down a few days before and I guess they just decided that didn’t need to. After all, hey, they had no symptoms!

My guess is that being winter in the northern hemisphere not as many people were overseas on vacation from Australia.

In any event, keep up the good work!

I don't think nearly as many Australians leave the country period, but especially in the summer. Many of my family members go years without leaving Perth (which is further from Canberra or Sydney than London is from Moscow or Ankara). Canada is so close to the US and Europe compared to Australia that it's not really a fair comparison. 

There's also the possibility that Canada imported the (potentially more malign) European strain of the virus, while Australia had the milder, original strain. 

Overall, I would probably credit natural advantages as the main explainer of difference (e.g. isolation/low density living/southern hemisphere seasons), rather than any particular policy, cultural or behavioural attributes. 

On the flip side, I give Australia, ScoMo and the individual States a lot of credit for not stuffing it up (which they kind of did for the bushfires) and for a bold economic response. 

ETA: The virus did get in to some nursing homes (particularly in and around Sydney), but not on the same scale as Ontario or Quebec. And Australia is most definitely not skinny - around 2/3 of Australian adults are classified overweight or obese.

[brook]

A third of NSW deaths have come from two nursing homes but they are the only cases of it getting into aged care that I am aware of so far.

I think Australia was just lucky enough to have never seen much community transmission in the first place. A large proportion of the initial spike in cases which caused people to take it seriously came from a handful of cruise ships which (despite a massive screw up involving one) were a lot easier to trace and manage.

[Impmk2]

I think we did pretty well in Australia by locking down to international travel and tourism early (the governments xenophobic tendencies came in handy for once), and in recognizing that the virus can be minimally symptomatic / asymptomatic relatively early and so enforcing isolation and quarantine on returned travelers. Then going extremely hard on testing, track and trace. Helped of course by a very low density population by world standards.

Other thing which I think really helped was the lock down on interstate travel, effectively cutting the country into 8 more easily managed states / territories.

Here in SA we're approaching a week of 0 new cases, so we're on the verge of eliminating the virus which is great news.

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, Impmk2 said:

I think we did pretty well in Australia by locking down to international travel and tourism early (the governments xenophobic tendencies came in handy for once)

Canada closed its borders (even its extremely well-travelled US land border) in the same week as Australia. I'm not going to give ScoMo credit for simply doing what every other developed country was doing!

Again, I'd say that geography > policy. 

Agree on the state borders though - I think that may have helped the less-populous states. Onya SA.

[Impmk2]

39 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Canada closed its borders (even its extremely well-travelled US land border) in the same week as Australia. I'm not going to give ScoMo credit for simply doing what every other developed country was doing!

Again, I'd say that geography > policy. 

That is true. Though the bans from China, Italy, Iran and other hot spots were weeks earlier. Not sure what the international response was there? I know the US had banned travel from China and then Europe, but not sure on the timing and who else followed suit. But yes being a remote island does have it's advantages!

[ithanos]

9 hours ago, Paxter said:

So...who's downloaded the app?

I'm guessing that your average ASOIAF-forum aussie is going to be a non-downloader.

I haven't yet, and am not convinced enough to at this stage.

I've found this to be a good review of the pros & cons of the Govt app.  

tl:dr, I would wait until the source code has been made available for robust analysis before making a decision to participate.

In the meantime I've been running a bioTrackingApp for a few decades. It's free. It can run in the background continuously. Unfortunatley it doesn't work when I'm asleep. When I'm out and about it can store contact information. The strength of the contact information is strongest if it is initiated by handshaking and reinforced by bioCamera input. There may also be some bioMic and bioSpeaker exchange. For accuracy and privacy, these are both regulated internally. I'd like to think I can divulge to health authorities the past 21 days of contacts for their tracking, but as the years have gone by I've found the period and strength of recall starting to wane.   

 

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Also, do you know how many people returned from overseas?

As of yesterday, 63.8% of Australia's all confirmed cases were acquired overseas.

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_23.pdf

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, ithanos said:

As of yesterday, 63.8% of Australia's all confirmed cases were acquired overseas.

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_23.pdf

The last time I looked the origin of Canadian cases had dropped all the way down to 17% for travelers.

What I meant was, once the Australian government announced a travel ban, how many Australians returned home? As I said, a million Canadians have returned, from around the world. I think the government is still working on getting people home from India. 
About 400 people returning from the States to Ontario tested positive, and I worked out that that group alone could have created our 14,800 cases all by themselves.

I heard on the radio that a million Australians have already downloaded the app.

[Jeor]

45 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I heard on the radio that a million Australians have already downloaded the app.

I haven't downloaded the app yet, although it's mainly out of procrastination and laziness than any actual anti-government belief. Plus, I'm not really leaving the house anyway so there's not much for it to track. Apart from 3-4 trips to the local supermarket I haven't gone out in about three weeks.

I think one of the differences between Canada and the US has been that very long land border. I don't know how many people regulate commute to and fro or work on one side and live in another, but I suspect Canada has a lot more border crossings in general (and hence a lot more "international" citizens).

Apart from the typical "Aussie backpacker", I get the feeling that Australians generally don't travel overseas as much, and if they do, it's usually closer to home - Bali, New Zealand, Fiji, other places in Southeast Asia. Going to the USA or Europe is such a big commitment (flying-wise and cost-wise) that it's not really worth it if you're only staying a week, so people tend to only have those sorts of big holidays (2-3 weeks) once every few years. And it's been the Aussie summer - so usually those big American or European holidays happen in July.

[brook]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

The last time I looked the origin of Canadian cases had dropped all the way down to 17% for travelers.

What I meant was, once the Australian government announced a travel ban, how many Australians returned home? As I said, a million Canadians have returned, from around the world. I think the government is still working on getting people home from India. 
About 400 people returning from the States to Ontario tested positive, and I worked out that that group alone could have created our 14,800 cases all by themselves.

I heard on the radio that a million Australians have already downloaded the app.

The best figure I could find with a quick google was approximately 200k Australians returning home since mid-march.

Anyone returning from overseas since the travel bans have been held in isolation (mostly in hotels) and so haven’t been a major source of community spread. Before that people were asked to do home isolation and there were reports of cases linked to people breaking that but I have no idea how significant that would be.

I did see that over 10% of Australia’s known cases have been linked to the Ruby Princess so I guess our national obsession with blaming everything on boats finally has some kind of justification.

[Stubby]

About 4 million have now downloaded the app.  But I was reading this morning that it doesn't work properly yet.  Can't find the link now, though.

 

[Jeor]

I've taken the plunge and downloaded the app - partly out of curiosity.

From the app intro, it seems it works on Bluetooth to detect other app users that you come into contact with, and this data is supposedly encrypted and stored only on your phone and the people you run into. If you then test positive, it asks for your consent to upload your information to some server and they can then contact all the people you've been in touch with.

I haven't put my tinfoil hat away, though, so if men in black suits show up to my apartment I'll be ready for them!

[Paxter]

Personally I would have downloaded the app, but I certainly understand the reticence of many.

As a public servant I'm biased towards thinking of government as a force for good!

[karaddin]

I usually feel the same, but this government has demonstrated itself not to be trustworthy when it comes to matters of information security. Even if I trust them not to misuse the data, which thanks to Dutton I do not, I have zero confidence in them a) Securing the data on their servers such that it's kept confidential, or b.) Coding the app in a way that it doesn't introduce a security vulnerability to my phone or introduce a dramatic performance hit to my phone.

I'm barely leaving the house anyway and the only people I'll be spending >15 mins around are doctors and related staff that would easily be identified by a tracing conversation, so there's not much potential gain from it anyway.

[Paxter]

Just saw the Dean Laidley story. FFS Vic Police.

[The Winged Shadow]

I am super lazy and the fact that I have to do something means I won't be getting the app

I figure they know where you are based on your phone anyway which is why they probably didn't make it mandatory