scrubbedexpat098

This is our point entirely, we have a room for each person on camp. Ideal for the separation they want us to achieve, if we go to Perth for a week we're putting ourselves and Perth residents at risk, and I don't get it. As I say I think there'll be an about turn within the next few days, some people have even said if you're flying me to Perth, fly me all the way home.

moneypenny20

Hardly unstuck but interesting nonetheless.

Beoz

There are lots of well qualified voices emerging questioning government decisions. A bit like what's happening in the UK and the US.

I guess we are lucky in Australia. So far (things can change) all the decision makers have been largely united in their response.

carcajou

Western Australia has recorded just one local case of COVID-19 for the fourth consecutive day. There were four cases total; three were from the cruise ship Artania.

Health Minister Roger Cook says attendance at COVID clinics was low over the holiday weekend and he is expecting increased demand this week.

Luthien

From Angus: Here are today's figures and also the second graph is the 'curve' for 4 of the Anglophone countries from March 20. Sorry NZ, didn't have the stats going back far enough.

Please skip these stats if not interested. We've been self-isolating for quite a while now -It’s my daily dose of sanity in an insane world at the moment and strengthens my resolve to keep myself isolated. It’s not just for my benefit, but for all our benefits and this shows what we’re doing is clearly and demonstrably working.

Beoz

These are great.

Interestingly Canada and Australia were tracking similar through to the end of March then Canada just took off.

Also I read that they think Spain might be heading toward herd immunity by default.

carcajou

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cov...ents-1.5528726

Link from the CBC about Canada's slow response.

Basically it seems the Canadian Government and public service just went into denial about how bad it had the capacity to be, did not have any sense of urgency, lacked resolve to take extraordinary measures and there was some tsk-tsking among Trudeau's bureaucrats when Trump banned travelers who had been to China. At one point according to the CBC, the Canadian Government was disputing reports from China that the virus could be transmitted from person-to-person.

In contrast to the US response, which started strong but then got bogged down in bureaucratic in-fighting, poor leadership at multiple levels, and an unwillingness to replicate successful past models of pandemic suppression such as Obama's response to Ebola.

Canada also has a big land border with the US and I would bet infected Americans spread it there too, and Canadians coming to the US brought it back.

I think the Australian Government was just as slow off the blocks as everyone else, and it had the potential to run riot here - but we were bailed out by our geography, and our leaders did eventually "get it" before it got too late (albeit if just barely) and committed to getting on top of things.

Dmorgan07

Please do not think that I was including you in my rant about the quality of the forum. Your daily charts are indeed informative and I understand how they are helpful to everyone. What I was really referring to were the few people getting bogged down by throwing figures and stats at each other for political arguments sake. It was starting to get me down a bit. I appreciate the time and effort you are putting in to creating these charts for everyone.

Beoz

Just ignore the bits you don't want to read. I do.

Beoz

Is the US / Canada border closed?

I find it hard to believe the UK didn't close Its borders to everything bit freight.

Luthien

Oh I understand - thanks . It's great to see any signs of a bipartisan approach to tackling the pandemic. The whole thing does get me down a bit too. I can;t take credit for the charts though - a friend of a friend puts them together everyday and I simply copy and paste. They cut through all the noise for me - especially the testing rates.

carcajou

Yes, now; but it's a heavily trafficked border across almost its entire length, and a lot of damage was done before the closure.

Luthien

I must admit I was very aware of the virus in December and January but lulled myself into a false sense of security that It would be contained within Asia .
My personal wake up call came when the Imperial College London released their advice to govt - I suspect it changed the UK's reliance on herd immunity and reading it was very alarming.
Also I was following the Facebook public profile of an epidemiologist called Dan Suan. His posts (look them up if you are interested, they are still public I think) really convinced me to take this seriously very early on, and begin self isolation.

abner

What the hell just happened to Singapore?

After a relatively good run, the % increase in cases just went through the roof, at least on the figures shown above. I don't know any details of their lockdown protocols per se, but had been under the impression that they had had a fairly successful response, to date...?

abner

Not really. Roughly 10% of the crossing points account for 90% of the traffic (though that varies a bit on whether one measures the passage of freight vs people, and discounts air traffic altogether).

It's not so long ago (though definitely pre-9/11) that one could cross on a rural road from Quebec to Vermont, and encounter a polite sign mounted on a traffic cone, at the American border, indicating that the border guard was currently off-duty, and asking that any customs declarations be called in to the phone number on the sign.