Aussies: Football, Meat Pies, and Rampant SARS

[karaddin]

On 12/1/2020 at 4:10 PM, Paxter said:

Totally agree. At the moment they are caught in no-mans land. But I honestly don't know what they can do...if they run progressive they are never going to win those marginals in QLD. If they run too central than they might not have any product differentiation to the Liberals, as well as risk losing seats to the Greens. 

Meanwhile the Coalition is considerably less toxic without Turnbull/Abbott/Joyce.

 

8 hours ago, Jeor said:

Labor is caught in that major problem that they ran with a lot of policies last election and still lost, because ScoMo was a much better campaigner and people bought what he was selling (which, to be fair, wasn't a lot - mostly spin). So it's a natural reaction from Labor to shy away from the policy route but that does mean it's a no-man's land as @Paxter says - can't run with progressive policies, but if they tack too much to the centre or just go with style over substance that's already ground that the Coalition has taken.

I think the narrow path for Labor is to go with the policy route again (though perhaps a little more tempered), combined with more effective attacks on ScoMo. There are a few avenues for this - I wouldn't advise going after him on COVID-19, but some of the pro-business things (e.g. repeal of bank responsible lending laws) and so forth.

I think the problem was their attempt at policies last election was a half measure. It might not have been obvious prior to the start of the campaign, but by the day of the election they had two paths to victory - winning seats in Qld which required supporting Adani, or winning seats in Vic which required outright opposing Adani. Instead they went with medium support for Adani which wasn't enough to defuse the issue as an attack in Queensland, but also completely turned off Victorian voters who were in play for the right message.

The half measure issue is also precisely the thing that saps the Labor campaign of the impression of sincerity. If the public perception is that every issue is being run through a focus group and that perception is supported by the highest profile issues then its hard to sell anyone on the message that you truly stand for something. And if my sympathies are 45% Coalition/55% what Labor claim to support, but I don't believe Labor and the Coalition are going to result in a better selfish outcome - why wouldn't I go ahead and vote for the Coalition? Its not like Labor are going to feed my principles, so I might as well feed myself.

Labor need to stake out some issues that they actually stand for, and refuse to bend on those even when they aren't popular or they'll never convince anyone they stand for something. And they're worse at bribing the electorate.

[Paxter]

One small COVID event in Sydney and the hares are running back in Perth. How long is this charade going to last? At least as long as a vaccine is available and probably longer.

[Horza]

Hey all, I'm up in Sydney from December 18, lets hang out!

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, Horza said:

Hey all, I'm up in Sydney from December 18, lets hang out!

I’m sure Nil will round up the troops...have a drink for me!

[karaddin]

8 hours ago, Paxter said:

I’m sure Nil will round up the troops...have a drink for me!

You could just invent a teleporter and join us. I'll ping Nil if he hasn't seen this or on FB yet.

 

[Jeor]

Not totally unexpected, but another outbreak has begun in NSW. With Christmas coming up in a week's time Gladys will have a very difficult decision on her hands. The number of infections (28 in the past 2 days) suggests that it has been circulating a fair bit and will be more difficult to contain than the single figures we had for months. 

The Northern Beaches is a fairly insular area (residents rarely travel very far - why would you when you're in a very nice part of Sydney) so there's still some hope it might yet be contained, but I think lots of Christmas plans are going to be on hold...

[Impmk2]

SA got on top of a cluster in a couple stressful weeks, so if it doesn't get too much larger it should be containable, but that was without Christmas getting in the way. I really feel for all effected at this time of year. A short lockdown to let the contact tracing get caught up would be ideal. 

The lack of obvious source is really concerning.

[Jeor]

NSW is in a particularly tough position because we have "lived" with a small number of daily cases for a long time. For months it seemed we had cases in the single figures - rarely zero, but mostly under control. So I understand why Gladys hasn't put us into a short, sharp lockdown, but the proximity to Christmas is really worrying and must be presenting a real headache to decision-makers.

If you try to save Christmas by not having a lockdown at all, the outbreak in the New Year will be much, much worse. But if you impose restrictions before Christmas and ruin everyone's plans, it still might be all for nothing as I bet there will be lots of non-compliance.

[karaddin]

I think her hand is going to get forced, if there is already as much spread as I fear. My Dad was apparently at Kirribilli Club in the same hours the infected musician was there so has been instructed to quarantine until midnight on the 28th. He's still waiting for his test results now and has to get tested again in a week. Either way he's out for Christmas.

I've been feeling sick on and off for the last couple of weeks but thought it was withdrawal from codeine (which is fantastic - after daily headaches for pretty much 5 years I've gone 2 weeks without one), but knowing there has been spread I'm thinking I should go get tested if any of the particularly covidy symptoms resurface. 

[Jeor]

5 hours ago, karaddin said:

I think her hand is going to get forced, if there is already as much spread as I fear. My Dad was apparently at Kirribilli Club in the same hours the infected musician was there so has been instructed to quarantine until midnight on the 28th. He's still waiting for his test results now and has to get tested again in a week. Either way he's out for Christmas.

I've been feeling sick on and off for the last couple of weeks but thought it was withdrawal from codeine (which is fantastic - after daily headaches for pretty much 5 years I've gone 2 weeks without one), but knowing there has been spread I'm thinking I should go get tested if any of the particularly covidy symptoms resurface. 

Hope you and your Dad are okay!

As to the broader state picture...there is probably a fair bit of spread but while the 28 figure is scary, if you spread the numbers out by days it was 1, 17 and 10. While it's likely the numbers over the next few days might be more, it's not a given...we hovered in the teens per day for quite a while and there's still a small chance that will continue over the next week. But once we hit Christmas all bets are off.

[karaddin]

It's just really terrible timing, too close to Christmas to have an accurate picture of spread before the day and too close to be on the down curve after measures turn out to be effective. And I am still hopeful we'll get it back down, it's just going to take a couple of weeks to a month because that's the time scale this virus works on.

[Jeor]

Things still more or less contained within the Northern Beaches area, so I think today's health update is actually quite a good one. If it had spread further, hopefully that would have been picked up by now and people should now be staying home. Still not sure there will be any prospect of Christmas with people mingling, but that's not really as important as the bigger overall picture.

[ants]

The cases seems to be growing fast. Hopefully that’s just due to widespread testing. 

[Jeor]

Only 15 cases today, all linked to the Northern Beaches cluster, which is good news. The venues are spreading outside of the Northern Beaches but there's still hope this could be contained yet before it blows out to something much bigger.

It's really tricky, though. A few good days like this could encourage the government to make the short-term decision to allow Christmas gatherings, which would potentially make things a lot worse long-term.

 

[Skyrazer]

Was planning to drive from Melbourne to Canberra on Wednesday for Xmas, but am having second thoughts. No I won't be going anywhere near Sydney, but if it gets out of Sydney and goes regional, they might lock down the NSW/VIC border completely and I'm fucked.

Couldn't have been timed any worse. Really don't know if I want to take the risk.

[Jeor]

Yeah, the timing around Christmas is a killer. I have a feeling the numbers over the next couple of days are going to be worse.

I'm self-isolating at the moment, having taken a COVID test on Sunday morning (runny nose, sore throat, but nothing major - altogether feeling fine). I live a couple of suburbs over from the Northern Beaches area though, so it could have easily made its way around my immediate community. Very long lines of testing - took me 2.5 hours to get tested, and I haven't got mine back yet.

So I have a sneaking suspicion that the real cases haven't really made it into the news yet. If people are like me and their results from the weekend still aren't showing up (and the weekend was when people really decided to go out and get tested since the news first broke on a Friday), when they do come to light I have a feeling the next couple of days' numbers will be worse.

[Paxter]

I'm in the camp of being optimistic that these latest cases will be contained to the Beaches. It's definitely a "good" place for a COVID cluster, versus say a domestic airport or a hub like the CBD or Parra.

It is interesting that Gladys' approach is so different from the other states. You don't need to have much imagination to know what McGowan or Marshall would have done in this same situation. Personally, I really like her approach and think it's more balanced and data-driven. 

[Jeor]

A couple of hours until the numbers are announced but the Health Minister Brad Hazzard has said in a radio interview that he is "fairly happy", which seems to indicate that the numbers won't be as big as I thought. The Insular Peninsular may well be our saving grace here.

[karaddin]

The Dan Andrews stans and "waterdrop twitter" are so fucking obnoxious and eager for things to get worse in NSW just so they can score political points. Its giving me a crash course in the sort of behaviour my more conservative leaning family members fixate on and while I'm never going to budge ideologically speaking I can see where the irritation comes from. Jeor and I may be well apart on policy but I'd like to think we can both agree state governments that are doing their best to protect their citizens should be judged on their success at that goal, not on stupid tribalism grounds.

[Paxter]

10 hours ago, karaddin said:

The Dan Andrews stans and "waterdrop twitter" are so fucking obnoxious and eager for things to get worse in NSW just so they can score political points. Its giving me a crash course in the sort of behaviour my more conservative leaning family members fixate on and while I'm never going to budge ideologically speaking I can see where the irritation comes from. Jeor and I may be well apart on policy but I'd like to think we can both agree state governments that are doing their best to protect their citizens should be judged on their success at that goal, not on stupid tribalism grounds.

I think the electorate agrees with you. Palaszczuk increased her majority by four seats despite already being in power for six years. McGowan will follow suit in March. Citizens are seeing the good faith efforts of state governments and rewarding them for it.