What's Up With Australia

I don't know exactly what every other nation did what, so I can't really compare that broadly.

What we did is what is happening now - people can leave home for work, essential shopping, exercise, medical care, to care for others or school if parents are working. We could also get haircuts; restaurants & cafes could could sell takeaway food on premise or via delivery; food stores remained open. There were some variations from state to state, so some places allowed outdoor activities such as golf & fishing. That was 'stage 3' lockdown. There were looser conditions prior to and after that point.

I can tell you that my life and the lives of a number of people I know didn't change that much. I went to work every day, went shopping once or twice a week and even went to my favourite restaurant, though only to buy takeaway rather than hang all night & listen to live music. I saw my family less than usual, but probably had more regular contact. I won't claim my experience was typical for everyone, but it wasn't wildly unusual.

My understanding is that we were more strict than some places & less strict than others. I seem to recall at least some US states that were more strict than what I've listed. New Zealand definitely was, as were parts of Europe (though not always entire nations).

As for closing our borders, that has not happened at any point. Australian citizens & residents have always been able to come and go. Others are not currently permitted entry. People returning to Australia are currently required to quarantine in specified hotels for 14 days. Generally they are confined to their rooms for that time.

 

Well that does not sound terribly different from here. Perhaps I simply picked up that opinion back around April-ish anecdotally from reading "We're doing it right and you aren't" a few here at the PF forums, which came across as rather smug.

On closing your borders, did this not happen a few days ago?




I'm also reading that Australia has placed caps on the number of Australian citizens who can go home, leaving your own citizens stranded and locked out of their own country.

 

I can't speak to that, but we have secured a much better result than the US. Whether that is due to the specifics of quarantine or other factors is not clear to me. We certainly had better leadership at the national level. Our PM has been consistent, measured, followed the medical advice, supportive of lockdowns & the states administering them, and has largely avoided playing politics. Even now, with a political opponent stumbling he has been remarkably restrained. I can't measure exactly how much difference that has made, but it has helped set the tone for the nation overall.

Your second point is correct, caps have just been placed as of yesterday following the mess in the Melbourne quarantine. Melbourne is not currently accepting any further travellers for the moment, which puts more pressure on other cities. That appears to be the issue. There is a fear that there might be a repeat of what happened in Melbourne, so caps seem reasonable for now. People have had plenty of time to come home, so I'm not that concerned.

However, a cap on arrivals is not a 'closed' border by definition - people are still coming in. Someting like 350,000+ citizens & residents have returned since mid-March, so the borders have not been closed. I'm not currently aware of any plans to change that.

 

The authoritarianism sounds exactly like China. I never realized until now how Australia was such an oppressive government and its citizens were such willing sheep.

 

Your results as far as the virus, for now, are better. It seems very temporary to me as I expect you will have the same spikes over and over. Plus, I worry greatly for your economy, but the "politics of the virus" seems to be between weighing which is more important between the slowing of the viral spread and quick devastation of economic conditions. Regardless which direction countries are going, the leaders are trying to maintain some sort of balance between the two.

 

"Normalizing populations"? Is that a euphemism for fiddling the statistics to get the politically-based result the pollitical Left wants and NEEDS? Asking for a friend.

 

Australia population: 25,000,000
deaths from COVID 106
US population: 330,000,000
deaths from COVID 135,000

 

If your momentary freedoms are more important to you than your grandmother's survival, then I guess you'd see it as a problem. There are many in those towers who are very pleased it was done.

I have no idea why you think it's 'frightening'. I'd be far more terrified of a govt which did nothing .. and just let the virus rip through that compromised population.

 

1) There is only one defence against this virus. It cannot be right in one place, but wrong in another. The virus doesn't tailor itself to the politics of the population.

2) Our borders have been closed all along.

 

I just don't think you're going to get out of a bad wave or several small waves where you have the same percent mortality at the end of the day. The more people are shut out of their jobs, the worse the economic pain. Only time will tell.

 

Yeah, I've been hearing a lot of 'for now' comments. Will we have spikes? sure. Are we going to go from 4 deaths per million to 400 or 600 or 800 any time soon (if ever)? No. Because we got the initial response right we now have capacity to deal with spikes and plans in place to do so. Buying time also means that we get the ability to see which treatments are more effective. There are some solid, permenant gains from dealing with this successfully.

As for our economy, we have major issues, but have done better than many. Everyone is taking a hit from this as international trade is getting messed about & economic activity worldwide has dipped. As a nation that relies primarily on exports this will inevitably hurt us no matter what we do here. Our tourism industry is also in big trouble, first from the bushfires, now from this. It won't return to normal for years. However, the sooner we get this under control the sooner we can open up and return to at least some economic normalcy. That is happening in some parts of Australia already.

 

You clearly know little about either China or Australia. I could try to explain, but we both know that would just be a waste of time. I'll leave you to your ideologically constructed bubble of ignorance.

 

I hope you are correct!

 

Yep, no trickery there, just a simple comparison of deaths to population. We currently have 4 deaths per million, America has 410. That means we would need something near 10,000 deaths to have a comparably large toll.

 

Me too. This is going to be very difficult for everyone.

 

He left out quite a few things. EG, you could not be outside the home with more than one other person unless the additional person/s were from your own household. Recreational activities other than walking/jogging/cycling (ie, purely for exercise) were banned. You could not sit down anywhere outside the home. You could not leave your own general area (people tried of course - some got away with it, many didn't and were turned back by police). You could not leave cities. You could not go camping, or to your holiday home. Etc etc etc.

Citizens still out of the country at this late stage, have no one to blame but themselves if they're left stranded. They've had five months to get back. And of course if they actually left the country during the pandemic, no one is likely to feel sorry for them. IMO, we should have stopped ALL egress into the country two months ago.

 

Is there any shut down that
has been loosened and
DIDN'T result in a new spike in cases?


Moi

 

The sooner the world stops relying on tourism the better.

It's an incredibly destructive industry, no matter how you look at it. It's responsible for this pandemic, for starters .. and it literally kills the planet.

 

288 new cases today from 37,000 tests done. Hard to know what to make of that. Obviously a bad figure, but given the scale of testing I suspect most are very mild to asymptomatic cases. It will be interesting to see what hospitalizations look like. In any case, those numbers are going the wrong way, so for now we just bunker down, socially distance & wait for things to improve.

 

It's a ****ing disaster. Victoria just stumbles from one mistake to another. Been doing it for decades now, starting with trigger happy cops late last century.

 

But here in QLD we currently have I think ONE case

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03...w-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704?nw=0

 

Make that around 1000

 

That is NOT a good thing when your numbers total are so high

watch the death rate soar unfortunately over the next couple of weeks

 

Now care to adjust for population and those xenophobic, closed borders?

 

No, we have about 13 times the population of Australia. So take the 106 Australian deaths and multiply by 13 which gives you 1378. The US is currently at 135,822 deaths. So that's slightly under 100 times as much as Australia (about 98+ times as much currently).

* Note that is adjusting for population.