COVID19 Tracking App - would you use one?

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Originally Posted by Feckit

That's an excellent expression, never heard it before, hope you don't mind me borrowing it.

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I made it up, but as with everything you make up, i doubt someone else hasn't made it up, too.

It's a description I came up with talking with an attorney colleague of mine (she's an attorney, i'm an actuary). She was frustrated with her husband (nuke-engineer) who she mentioned to me was inconsistent and she was always catching him making statements that conflicted with another statement that he'd made earlier. She and I are probably a big aspergergy (literal, well grab on to things like a bulldog and try to compare and solve -we've had that discussion also). I asked her what her husband's reaction was when she pointed out his inconsistency and said "I'll bet he looks less like he was caught and more like he's been inconvenienced".

??? was her response.

As someone who is probably "a bit aspergery" I notice patterns. I notice that otherwise competent people are either lazy or unintentionally (the latter) loose with their own explanations to lubricate themselves through a situation. Something comes up that may potentially cause a fight? The wagon wheels come to a halt. Lubricate the conversation with a little white lie and expect that either the person who you're talking to won't question it, or they will recognize that you're being misleading on purpose to lubricate the wheels and roll past the problem.

There's an implied request for courtesy in this case, too - I'm sure her husband was misdirecting or shifting the conversation around to let her know that he wasn't interested in arguing. She hadn't considered it because he's taking in some bad habits (think increasing alcohol consumption, increasing interest in partisan politics and creating simplistic arguments to explain away who is responsible for his issues), and said "huh........now I feel a little less good about humanity".

I suggested she watch her colleagues, who can otherwise write tight legal arguments, but at least some of them will pee her off by not being truthful. She thinks they're intermittently incompetent. Now she knows that they're selectively incompetent.

They have the oil can to lubricate the wheels when the conversation could come to a halt in a bad place.

More info than you probably wanted, but you can spread the use of my pet term :)

(governments do this all the time, of course. Provide simplified guidelines, partial explanations, etc, and so do opinion articles and media writers - it's just a lot easier than being as precise as you possibly can because that often doesn't help your case).

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Originally Posted by D.W.

well, the viral particles are. 07 to .09 micron in size. How big are the droplets? i don't know. If they're telling us at the time that it could be aerosolized and not just droplet transmissions, they're also advocating that we should essentially make a bucket out of 1" screen to hold sand.

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1) Unless working in an enclosed/unventilated space with heavily infected persons, lone viral particles are relatively rare and have a shorter lifetime in air than if they are in water droplet or aerosol. For someone over 90 with serious health complications a lone virus can possibly cause a problem. If you are 20 something with a robust immune system then you can probably tolerate exposure to a large viral load without any problems.

2) The smaller a particle is, the less likely it is to make contact with a respiratory tract surface on the way in and the more likely it is to be breathed out again.
On the way out, viruses are more likely to attach themselves to drops and aerosols. This means they slightly more likely to make contact with respiratory tract surfaces and more importantly be filtered so the virus sits on the inside of the mask. If the wearer is working in a high viral load area for some time, a significant viral load can then build up on the inside of the mask - this is another reason why they should not be used for too long.

3) The greatest viral loads will usually be on the largest droplets which will be mostly filtered out by even basic face coverings.

4) Viral loads on smaller (aerosols) particles will usually depends on aerosol size but most aerosols will easily filtered by P2/N95 masks.

5) P2 and N95 masks will filter considerable amounts of even <0.1 micron aerosols. They usually perform significant better than their minimum rating (95% at 0.3 microns) and the longer they are are worn, the more they clog up and the finer they filter. I have measured P2 filters with 99.8% filtration at 0.3 microns

6) P3 masks are rated for 99.97% at 0.3 micron - these also filter 99.97% at 0.2 microns and continue to perform very efficiently even at <0.1 microns.

7) The real effectiveness issue for masks is not the filter media efficiency but the reliability of the fit. This is why full face respirators are (or should be) used in COVID wards.

Some of my testing results are here
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f200/.../3#post2188384

I should be O K. Norton has just renewed my 360 anti-virus.
:wink:

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Originally Posted by A Duke

I should be O K. Norton has just renewed my 360 anti-virus.
:wink:

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friends don't let friends pay symantec for products they don't need. Defender will also protect you and is free.

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Originally Posted by poundy

friends don't let friends pay symantec for products they don't need. Defender will also protect you and is free.

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Hi,
I am still running Vista, not 10.
But thanks for your concern.
Regards

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Originally Posted by A Duke

Hi,
I am still running Vista, not 10.
But thanks for your concern.
Regards

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ok, that's actually a bigger issue that I'd pay attention to. There are no security updates at all for that platform, so you really are dodging the bad guys. One malware loaded ad on a website could jeopardise everything you do. If your hardware is capable and you need a hand with the upgrade, don't hesitate to ping me. I'm formerly a Microsoft employee but please don't hold that against me ;)

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Originally Posted by A Duke

Hi,
I am still running Vista, not 10.
But thanks for your concern.
Regards

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if you keep it long enough, it'll be too old for anyone to be interested in writing viruses for it. Then it'll really be ideal!

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Originally Posted by BobL

1) Unless working in an enclosed/unventilated space with heavily infected persons, lone viral particles are relatively rare and have a shorter lifetime in air than if they are in water droplet or aerosol. For someone over 90 with serious health complications a lone virus can possibly cause a problem. If you are 20 something with a robust immune system then you can probably tolerate exposure to a large viral load without any problems.

2) The smaller a particle is, the less likely it is to make contact with a respiratory tract surface on the way in and the more likely it is to be breathed out again.
On the way out, viruses are more likely to attach themselves to drops and aerosols. This means they slightly more likely to make contact with respiratory tract surfaces and more importantly be filtered so the virus sits on the inside of the mask. If the wearer is working in a high viral load area for some time, a significant viral load can then build up on the inside of the mask - this is another reason why they should not be used for too long.

3) The greatest viral loads will usually be on the largest droplets which will be mostly filtered out by even basic face coverings.

4) Viral loads on smaller (aerosols) particles will usually depends on aerosol size but most aerosols will easily filtered by P2/N95 masks.

5) P2 and N95 masks will filter considerable amounts of even <0.1 micron aerosols. They usually perform significant better than their minimum rating (95% at 0.3 microns) and the longer they are are worn, the more they clog up and the finer they filter. I have measured P2 filters with 99.8% filtration at 0.3 microns

6) P3 masks are rated for 99.97% at 0.3 micron - these also filter 99.97% at 0.2 microns and continue to perform very efficiently even at <0.1 microns.

7) The real effectiveness issue for masks is not the filter media efficiency but the reliability of the fit. This is why full face respirators are (or should be) used in COVID wards.

Some of my testing results are here
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f200/.../3#post2188384

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Somewhere around a month ago, there was a chart going around in the news (not sure who published it) that suggested that transmission chance with one person wearing a cloth mask (instead of none) was reduced by about 2/3rds. Both mask wearing and the chance of transmission would drop to 10% of no mask wearing.

That's OK (better than nothing), but it doesn't cut it for someone at risk.

There's the sieve issue, and the other issue of fitting. There's no real way to get most of the cloth masks to seal, so you're stuck guessing whether or not your particular mask is doing anything.

I do as they suggest and wear a cloth mask. I'd wear n95 masks if I could get them reasonable, but that's not the situation here. I'd be a bit less annoyed if the government had been honest from the outset -instead, you'd see people rolling around in wheelchairs with loose fitting cloth masks here. I'd forgo the n95 stuff entirely if there could be some system-wide honesty about getting the better masks on the high risk individuals - but instead we got a public message "anything for a a mask is fine" to eliminate bidding against the health system. and then the states and health systems started bidding against each other here.

My wife works in a wound care practice. They prioritized masks at first to the ER and ICU (of course, this is reasonable). Then, they banned practitioners in any other area in the hospital from wearing an n95 mask because it could confuse other practitioners (when this broke out, many of the nurses and therapists are married to tradesmen and hobbyists and headed to work with n95 masks. They were told to take them off, even if they were theirs, or face discipline or possible termination). That's part of being an employee - it's a stupid rule, but businesses often demand employees follow stupid rules, sometimes unsafe.

Now, the rule at work is that they must wear a mask, it can be anything, but the employee has to supply their own. The hospital will provide one paper mask per week to supplement, but the paper mask can only be worn for one day.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

Somewhere around a month ago, there was a chart going around in the news (not sure who published it) that suggested that transmission chance with one person wearing a cloth mask (instead of none) was reduced by about 2/3rds. Both mask wearing and the chance of transmission would drop to 10% of no mask wearing.

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That's based mainly on the efficiency on the average cloth mask media but there's a lot more to it that this,

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There's the sieve issue, and the other issue of fitting. There's no real way to get most of the cloth masks to seal, so you're stuck guessing whether or not your particular mask is doing anything.

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Fitting issues lead to masks having two efficiencies - one is efficiency with respect to inhaled air, which tends to push the mask onto the wearers face. The other is when exhaling which tends to push the mask away from the wearer. Hence the efficiency is usually better for inhaling than exhaling.

A related effect is the restrictiveness of media. The media used in cheaper masks and some cloth masks can be quite restrictive this results in more leaks (lower efficiency) especially on exhaling. Because of this some masks manufacturers fit masks with an exhaling valve - this is fine for woodworkers but not so good for COVID transmission.

As the average cloth mask is usually not that restrictive, fitting turns out to be less of an issue than for higher filtration efficiency masks that use restrictive media and are ill fitting to the user.

This is why in critical situations it is important to use masks that are made and tested to a known standard (for restrictiveness and efficiency)

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Now, the rule at work is that they must wear a mask, it can be anything, but the employee has to supply their own. The hospital will provide one paper mask per week to supplement, but the paper mask can only be worn for one day.

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Sadly this looks like third world stuff.

I visited my dentist recently and was pleased to see he and all his employees wearing high end surgical masks. He has increased the ventilation through his rooms and he used dedicated aerosol extractor while working on my teeth Aerosol Extractor

Pity the POLL is closed, as it would be interesting to assess the change in people’s opine the longer this thing drags on.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

My wife works in a wound care practice. They prioritized masks at first to the ER and ICU (of course, this is reasonable). Then, they banned practitioners in any other area in the hospital from wearing an n95 mask because it could confuse other practitioners (when this broke out, many of the nurses and therapists are married to tradesmen and hobbyists and headed to work with n95 masks. They were told to take them off, even if they were theirs, or face discipline or possible termination). That's part of being an employee - it's a stupid rule, but businesses often demand employees follow stupid rules, sometimes unsafe.

Now, the rule at work is that they must wear a mask, it can be anything, but the employee has to supply their own. The hospital will provide one paper mask per week to supplement, but the paper mask can only be worn for one day.

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In the capitalist societies we live in (even more so in the USA); unions have a poor reputation amongst people that would most benefit from being a member of one. The outcome of a successful campaign to demonise unions as fundamentally corrupt; by those in power that actually are corrupt and really don't have working people's interest at heart! This is an excellent example of why unions are important; and why the suppression of unions has -- and is -- a bad thing for working people.

Frankly, that is the sort of BS you would expect in a failed state.

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Originally Posted by markharrison

In the capitalist societies we live in (even more so in the USA); unions have a poor reputation amongst people that would most benefit from being a member of one. The outcome of a successful campaign to demonise unions as fundamentally corrupt; by those in power that actually are corrupt and really don't have working people's interest at heart! This is an excellent example of why unions are important; and why the suppression of unions has -- and is -- a bad thing for working people.

Frankly, that is the sort of BS you would expect in a failed state.

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I'm sure it's going on there, and you're not hearing about it. The issue is simple - when you divert masks toward the critical areas of hospitals, then the support staff doesn't get the same quality in masks. We mention it here in the US because we're not afraid of reality.

China may have the upper hand on something like this because they can manufacture the masks, but they also have the upper hand in that they can squash anyone who talks about it. We don't do that here.

The reality so far is that nobody in my wife's clinic has gotten covid and I didn't figure they would, either, it was just an illustration of human nature, not unions or capitalism.

The nurses in the clinic are union/collectively bargained. The union didn't have any issue with it, either.

What's interesting is that when this is brought up, because you guys don't seem to have an objective view of the news and there's a strong "we aussies are better and care more, thus we'll say that and ignore the real numbers", you perceive something different than reality. Part of that is the fault of the news.

The assumption that the case rate in the US is at 1% of the population is errant. The one reliable stat so far with covid is that in organized countries, the death rate is around .005% or a little bit lower. Health care here is far superior to there. You don't have to believe it, and the news may not say that, but the resources spent here and the potential for economic gain (and the competition) is why. We have stratified levels of coverage and access isn't universal, but seeking care here at the highest level results in more resources and treatment per patient than anywhere else in the world. Literally something like 18% of our GDP is spent on it and though we're something like a 20th of the world's population, i'd guess more than half of the advances in medicine come from ehre.

Saying that, with about 350 million people in the US, we have 137k deaths so far.

Australia's population is 25 million - you have about 10k deaths so far.

The likely total case rate and death rates in both countries are just about identical. Do the math.

The obnoxious thing here in the middle of this isn't too little regulation, it's too much. Our medical system has scads of potentially viable vaccines. I live 5 miles from the health system that developed the polio vaccine. They had a viable vaccine to try that creates covid antibodies in mice in about two weeks. Why? Because they have a gigantic vaccine practice and already had vaccine options for sars. Thus far, nobody has been able to try the vaccines because our government thinks that treating lots of people who didn't want covid is ethical, but allowing 25 volunteers to sign up to try a vaccine and create a fast path toward gathering data presents an ethical dilemma. Likely, zero of them would die. The potential payoff is saving hundreds of thousands around the world from death.

It's just plain goofy hearing about how well covid is controlled elsewhere, but not here, only to find out the overall death rate per capita is about the same or worse. Pure propaganda.

We can see real time data at health systems here. My wife's place of employment is a gigantic 600 bed hospital. In the middle of the first outbreak, the hospital notified staff twice for resource updates - each time, they had covid patients in the low teens, about half of those in the ICU on ventilators, and the other half just in the hospital. In some parts of houston and early on in new york, the health systems were at capacity. Each time they got close, we shut down.

The notion that we're going to have a vaccine that's viable and ahead of virus mutation is a nice academic ideal. It doesn't appear to match reality very well so far.

I do work for unions (benefits). I think on average, the union workers are better off than their non-union counterparts but the wage package here for most trades is around $60 an hour for unskilled labor and $70-$100 an hour for skilled labor. The reality is that not all projects can afford those labor rates. The cost of providing benefits and pensions to retirees are generally half of the wage package, perhaps slightly more on the low side (the laborers may have hourly wage rates around $25 US, which is about $35 there I would guess) and a big retiree population to care for. Retirees get a large percentage of their pre-retirement income as a pension income and generally get free or near free medical through age 65.

You cannot bid residential work at $80 an hour on average, people won't pay for it. You end up with a system that is a combination.

The unions are smart enough here to realize that if they make too many demands of the private systems, the number of employed men and women will go down and they won't be able to take care of their retired members. Reality isn't as simple as you think it is.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

Australia's population is 25 million - you have about 10k deaths so far.

The likely total case rate and death rates in both countries are just about identical. Do the math.

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Actually to date we in Australia have only had 108 deaths from COvid. We haven't even had 10k identified cases yet. Not sure where you get your information from but maybe you should redo YOUR math.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) current situation and case numbers | Australian Government Department of Health

Let's have a look at a society that lives mostly by it's production here (we don't have mineral or surplus energy resources that allow us to live in a false reality)

PPP GDP per capita in the US is nominally higher than australia. Once you normalize the GDP for purchasing power, it's much higher than australia (About 25% higher). PPP GDP checked for dispersion is probably the best measure of standard of living from one country to the next. You can assert life expectancy is, but that ignores individual choice by people.

Health care here is same day usually at your PCP's office for anything if you want it to be, and walk in options elsewhere (covered by insurance are practically unlimited - even in rural areas). Specialist access is pretty much immediate with waiting only for the most notable practitioners - e.g., if you are a baseball professional and you want T.J. surgery by the best surgeon, you may have to wait for him. IT's probably worth waiting. If you just want shoulder surgery as a layman from a highly rated surgeon, access is pretty much immediate.

If you are indigent, you get a monthly income, free health care, free food, and free or subsidized living accommodations, internet access, assistance with utility bills. We have a gigantic socialist safety net that people like to pretend is not there. There is one condition that you need to meet to get it - you have to spend down your own personal assets first before qualifying. you want the government to cover your expenses and keep your own money? Tough. These rules are often skirted by folks who qualify for disability and spend down their recorded assets, but then work under the table in the cash economy on the side here.

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separately, the median income in the US here per individual (not full time, but across all individuals) is $40100 as of last year. In aus, it's about $50k aud, but adjust that to currency, and that number is equivalent to $33k in USD. Adjust for purchasing parity (the strength of a purchasing dollar, as to what you can actually buy) and australia suffers about another 10%. So the median income is about 75% in actual standard of living there.

You can create situations where an american could get themselves in trouble with that, which is refusing to find a job with benefits and going uninsured. That's not necessary here, and is stupid, but the volunteers who do that are often self employed and they choose to forgo coverage. I think it's a bad decision, but it's your right here. coverage for a healthy individual age 40 is somewhere around $4k a year. There's an urge, especially for people starting businesses, to put their wellbeing aside. For younger individuals, it's magnified (and their cost of coverage is even lower, perhaps 5-7% of their total income). The tax system is hugely progressive, so even if those individuals pay social safety net taxes, they often pay nothing in federal income taxes (or get a credit in return for being below a certain wage level). Health care is subsidized further for people below poverty levels.

The picture painted around the world based on "pat ourselves on the back because we're not the US" is idealistic pandering.

It's popular here to talk about how great it is everywhere else because of the opposite factor - people love to believe they're driving a really tough road when they're not.

I've got an English friend who is an engineer - he's retired, grew up in England and couldn't get an engineering job as a child because his dad was a joiner. The class system there isn't as strong as it used to be, but it's meaningless here. You want to be a hematologist and your dad worked at mcdonalds? You don't have to hide it. You may find an employer who is clamoring to give you a shot because they'd just love to have you as a newsletter story.

This friend of mine just watched his father die in England in a nursing home over a period of about a year. He is fabulously liberal (hates trump, of course), but says to me all the time "you have no idea how lucky you are to have been born here. No idea. " Actually, he says it in an admonishing tone. I suppose he was used to teh customer service type setup here with end of life care and it's not as responsive, expensive or as clean in the UK and there are fewer options. He thought overall, the level of care there was unacceptable. I reminded him that it cost half as much and as a cheapskate, I'd choose the cheaper less responsive option if it was available. He wouldn't.

When our european guests (from denmark, london and scotland) come here, they first look for gunshots and four wheel drive trucks (due to the farcical shows marketed overseas), and then instantly want to go on a drinking and eating binge due to the taste and low cost of the food and services here relative to europe. They talk about the fat shaming shows in the UK, so we help them find the "biggies" when we're out walking around. That's what they're looking for, but they seem to want to come here often and don't think that it's fair that we don't have a mortgage.

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Originally Posted by doug3030

Actually to date we in Australia have only had 108 deaths from COvid. We haven't even had 10k identified cases yet. Not sure where you get your information from but maybe you should redo YOUR math.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) current situation and case numbers | Australian Government Department of Health

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my mistake, that's cases. You guys may be a special case in that you're not generally a tourist destination for western europeans or chinese tourists (which are how the virus was delivered here in huge numbers before it was detected).

The rest of my commentary above holds. In places where the system is like yours (western europe) and the virus was introduced in large numbers, the outcome has been similar. Except we really haven't seen an overwhelmed health care system other than in newspapers. We have seen ICU fully subscribed, but health care utilization here is down about 30% due to the drop off of elective an delayable items, so the health care system is on the other end - it's underutilized and hurting financially because of it, not experiencing a windfall due to a packed house.

You lost me at “living in a false reality “. I think you may have been digesting too much Donald Trump rhetoric.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

my mistake, that's cases. You guys may be a special case in that you're not generally a tourist destination for western europeans or chinese tourists.

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Yes we are.

The difference is that our leaders took it seriously and despite a few mistakes have put measures in place which have actually helped contain the situation, whereas your president is on record as saying that it will just go away by itself.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

my mistake, that's cases. You guys may be a special case in that you're not generally a tourist destination for western europeans or chinese tourists (which are how the virus was delivered here in huge numbers before it was detected).

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We get about 1.4 million Chinese visitors a year to Australia

Per 1000 inhabitants Australia gets 265 international tourists where as USA gets 191

The top countries represented are, from the top China, New Zealand, USA and UK, Japan, Singapore and India, Malaysia, HK and South Korea

The irony in this thread is palpable. Only 15% of respondents would download the COVID app without reservation. 33% said never, and another 32% would, but only if they were assured of its security, despite the government having provided those assurances with its introduction. Yes, we acted early and our feds coordinated a nation wide plan of management. The majority of our citizenry have cooperated well, but so have they in the U.S. because fear is a great motivator. We went early and hard and fortunately even our neo-cons decided to listen to the experts for once.

Putting sh*t on another person's country is way out of line IMO. D.W. is right saying that our information mostly comes from the press. That source is selective, commercially and politically motivated, and frequently inaccurate. And don't get me started about the internet.

I lived and worked in Manhattan for a number of years and was staggered when I heard friends' attitudes and opinions about what goes on in the States when we came home on leave. They were so wrong. I still subscribe to the NY Times, but that's only a small slice. You have to live there.

Australia was lucky to have a government intent on producing a balanced budget when the rest of the G20 were spending on infrastructure in these times of low interest rates. I said lucky, not necessarily sensible. Dumb luck. What the U.S. and others wouldn't welcome at present is another large addition to their deficit, hence the need to get back to work asap, tragically at a cost to human life.

I was interesting to learn that Huawei relies on U.S. semi-conductors for their 5G network. I believe Washington "snapped its fingers" and told their manufacturer in Taiwan to turn off the tap to China. I guess the poms will now have to look elsewhere. America leads the world in technology and daylight comes second.

There's lots of things I don't like about the U.S. system; same with Australia's. But let's not start patting ourselves on the back. Even our record period of growth was only due to migration. Take that out of the equation and GDP would have flatlined.

mick

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Originally Posted by Glider

Putting sh*t on another person's country is way out of line IMO. D.W. is right saying that our information mostly comes from the press. That source is selective, commercially and politically motivated, and frequently inaccurate. And don't get me started about the internet.

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Not what I did, but never mind. My commentary was on the way health care workers (and more generally, workers) in the USA have been let down by the way unions have been emasculated and this is the consequences of it. Hardly a controversial opinion when the people responsible for doing this openly brag about it. To give just one example, see the Koch brothers.

I work for a large Australian multi-national healthcare company. I am privy to information about testing rates here and abroad. I am not authorised to share this information.

On Friday, I became aware of the positive test rates for Austin, TX. I am very, Very, VERY, V E R Y, concerned about where those numbers are heading. The person that communicated that information is an officer of the company. The numbers are totally credible based on the source; to me.

I am not an epidemiologist; I'm not even a medical professional, of any kind. The people that run this company are though, and I do have education in higher mathematics. I understand these numbers.

But, to you and anyone else reading this, of course; I'm just some guy on the internet. Don't just accept what I, or anyone else, says without doing your own verification.

Search for positive test results; asymptomatic and symptomatic. Luckily, being numbers -- therefore kinda fact based -- they are not very likely to be featured on Brietbart, Fox, InfoWars and similar because it would kind of undercut their story...

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Originally Posted by Glider

I lived and worked in Manhattan for a number of years and was staggered when I heard friends' attitudes and opinions about what goes on in the States when we came home on leave. They were so wrong. I still subscribe to the NY Times, but that's only a small slice. You have to live there.

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Which, in my extensive experience with working in the USA, far exceeds the average USA citizen's knowledge of what happens outside of the 48 contiguous states. I have literally had the "Wow you speak great English" response. For real! Admittedly, that was NC, not NY. Even cab drivers in NY know where Australia is, but their knowledge of Australia was kinda limited to Steve Irwin and similar cultural stereotypes.

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Originally Posted by Glider

Australia was lucky to have a government intent on producing a balanced budget when the rest of the G20 were spending on infrastructure in these times of low interest rates. I said lucky, not necessarily sensible. Dumb luck. What the U.S. and others wouldn't welcome at present is another large addition to their deficit, hence the need to get back to work asap, tragically at a cost to human life.

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The perception of the "balanced budget" that our government was what they were trying to project anyway. The budget reality is quite different.

We are lucky though. Lucky the government didn't react with the ideological brickbat they used on the opposition when they were in government during the GFC. Lucky that our conservative government took broad advice and acted on it with rational responses. There are things that are not perfect and I would do differently but overall a solid B+, in my non-conservative opinion.

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Originally Posted by Glider

There's lots of things I don't like about the U.S. system; same with Australia's. But let's not start patting ourselves on the back. Even our record period of growth was only due to migration. Take that out of the equation and GDP would have flatlined.

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On this we agree. No system is perfect; nor will there ever be one. All democracies rely on all parties (in the more broad sense than political parties) acting in good faith. Unfortunately, there is a significant portion of conservatives in Australia that are looking to the USA for inspiration. I don't think that is ultimately useful for conservative politics because there are so many differences between the US political system and ours. I do not see politics as practiced in the contemporary USA as a great role model, on either side.

We are long long way away from being through this. This is not even the end of the first act of this tragic play.

Unfortunately the incompetence of the US federal response (and other similar minded jurisdictions like Brazil et cetera) have probably condemned humanity to live with COVID-19 and its successors forever. That said, there are so many countries where this was going to be the case anyway because they do not have the resources to deal with it; it was going to happen anyway. It's just worse than it could have been if the USA had competent leadership. Describing the USA leadership during this period as incompetent is the kindest possible spin that one could put on it and hardly controversial.

Here be the source if anyone is interested: COVIDSafe * GitHub

Not sure if its been mentioned in the thread previously.....

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

Here be the source if anyone is interested: COVIDSafe * GitHub

Not sure if its been mentioned in the thread previously.....

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Can't remember if I did mention it but it bears repeating.

Without tracing its operation in a debugger, I did review the source code. It seems to be doing what they said it would; and nothing more.

My only criticism is that it does not give the user any feedback. I reckon letting know just the numbers of connections on a weekly basis would be useful feedback and to keep people interested.

I thought that the 30 minute contact time on the app was a bit long given the highly infectious nature of this virus.

We happened to be having lunch in a restaurant in Bondi recently with a close mate sitting opposite with the sun at his back. For the first time ever, we noticed droplets emanating from his mouth in the normal course of conversation. not unlike the fibres seen in a ray of sunshine. No lisp or emphatic consonants, just normal speech.

A good lesson learned and at social distance.

mick :)

I heard on the TV news this evening that in Australia the covidsafe app is yet to provide a single close contact that has not been already derived without it. They called it the $2 million failure.

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Originally Posted by BobL

Sadly this looks like third world stuff.

I visited my dentist recently and was pleased to see he and all his employees wearing high end surgical masks. He has increased the ventilation through his rooms and he used dedicated aerosol extractor while working on my teeth Aerosol Extractor

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I think lack of supplies pretty much occurred everywhere that there was a quick ramp up in virus cases. Everything is very strict here, too - meaning if someone had expired N95 masks, they were unusable, but most sites here (like amazon) didn't allow sale of expired masks to anyone else because they had a policy that anything like n95/p100, etc, would go to docs only. Some of that stuff ended up on ebay (I ran out of nitrile gloves to apply shellac and settled on expired gloves at an inflated price - annoying, but not exactly critical).

I think also that the hospitals (absolutely everything is digitally linked here) can tell quickly where something becomes a problem, so they're hoarding supplies for their ERs and ICUs and they're not going to use those supplies. The simple issue in this region is there just hasn't been much in terms of workplace transmission and the case load (outside of bar patrons and folks traveling to do relief work elsewhere) is pretty low.

The issue is more communication - someone is making decisions, and so far though they seem rude to individuals (like my spouse), they are on target.

Our local schools are planning to open in September - I don't think this will happen, but they have to pretend that they're doing it now. we were talking to one of the staffers yesterday at a local park and they are working through the summer (office staff at school stays there year around). They work in an enclosed area where ventilation moves air, but there is no ability to open windows due to modern "green" design and probably security. The staffer told us that they are more than 6 feet apart inside, so they've decided they're no longer going to wear masks. Simplified rules may meet overall goals, but four folks working in a large office area with stale air isn't exactly ideal.

regional population here is about 1/10 of all of australia, and covid confirmed cases are about the same as the australian total. 10 times the cases sounds terrible, but compared to actual hot spots in the US (or especially spain, italy, england, etc who have much higher per capita death rates thus far), it's not that much. Enough to make sure that it doesn't get worse. When we shut down initially (all essential retail locations still open, which is a nice test - people don't seem to be transmitting it very quickly in gigantic retail buildings), the new cases came mostly from outside of the region. It's easily controllable, just not convenient.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

regional population here is about 1/10 of all of australia, and covid confirmed cases are about the same as the australian total.

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Not really a very good comparison.

Australia is most definitely not a regional country as we are more "urbanised" than nearly all other countries on earth with about 90% of Australians living in 0.22% of the land area. The majority of Australian 100 or so COVID19 deaths have occurred in Melbourne and Sydney, with cities of 5 million plus.

Australia with 25 million people has has fewer COVID19 deaths than about 40 of the 50 US states.
The 10 or so US states with similar or fewer numbers of COVOD19 deaths than all of Australia all have populations of about 1 million or less.
The total deaths for these 10 states so far is currently about 625 and they represent <10 million people.
Australia at about 25 million including 5 cities of more than a million people each has a total of about 100 deaths.

I'm not looking to make australia equivalent with any US state.

I'd imagine that your early exposure was far less than NYC's, which is where our outbreak started, along with NW areas like washington state. I don't know of those were introduced by european and chinese tourism like NYC and the eastern seaboard. You could see the spread quickly here in those areas and they fared the worst in the initial outbreak (NY, massachusetts, NJ, philadelphia).

Most of the urbanized areas that had much travel or tourism (the wealthy areas of italy, london, etc) fared very poorly early on. I'm not sure what tourism is like in most of australia, but I'd bet the total for the country is less than New York City is alone.

We referred to it as a virus of means here early on, because it generally affected areas (even here in pittsburgh) where the affluent folks live, those who can afford to travel a lot or have guests who travel a lot. It's gotten further than that, but the sentiment here is past the idea of universally controlling it. Nothing is universal, especially when politics are involved, but one would have to guess that if early data suggests antibodies may not last that long, the idea of creating a vaccine for the virus isn't looking that great.

In the second wave, places like NJ and Philadelphia were much slower to see numbers increase than we were here in western pa. Our numbers increased quickly, but the virus is here - despite the news, it's not really as if people just have no idea what's going on. I'm included in that group - I find my own comfortable level (Which involves not being in bars or enclosed spaces with dead air), but have zero interest in seeing everything shut down for a year or more. I think this virus is permanent and will be added to the flu virus types and rhinoviruses, etc.

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Originally Posted by D.W.

...the new cases came mostly from outside of the region. It's easily controllable, just not convenient.

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D.W. I've read your posts here with considerable interest. They show that the experience you have (and perception of it) doesn't match the breathless hysteria we see reported here... and that I see on Reddit by your countrymen (personal posts of personal experiences).

Its interesting. Many of the things I see and consider factual are rebuffed pretty strenuously and rather convincingly by your long and detailed posts.

They have made me think and re-evaluate what might be "True", but create a cognitive dissonance as they so directly contradict what others within the USA write.

Perhaps this is the nature of the USA! A constant near-chaos of options, opinions, contradictions, half-truths, misdirection, lies, spin, dogma, politics and doings, that eventually(?) settle into what may be a Truth... or truth?

Please do keep writing them.

These are the sources I use:

-- Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
-- COVID-19
-- Coronavirus Update (Live): 13,229,711 Cases and 574,981 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer
-- World News


Last night, at the dinner table, I ruminated upon the report that 1% of all USAnians now have COVID19. What IF that number becomes 5%.... 10%.... 25%.


Speculation 1 - What happens IF 10% of the country becomes incapacitated? 20%? Where do the resources come from to handle this? Nursing, health, recovery, beds, jobs, economic fallout? Pretty big picture stuff.

Speculation 2 - If a country were not to have the interests of the USA at heart, how might one use this? Attack? immobilisation? Revenge? Hostile takeover?

Speculation 3 - One simply DOESN'T recover from this thing like a cold, flu or random lurgie... it affects the lungs, kidneys, immune systems, brain, CNS.... there are months-long hangovers with listlessness, tiredness and an all-pervasive depression. There are some harrowing stories out there. Multiply this by (??) TWENTY MILLION......



I'm only saying all this as D.W. (and fellow citizens) has a view that is different to literally every other country on earth. Are there OTHER countries that aren't treating this like the emergency it is?



edit - a few links to make it interesting....

you are right, we like the salad bar of discussion rather than just "this" or "that". People here, aside from those who make memes of themselves, most of us are tolerant of idiots and the term here is "with freedom comes responsibility".

Memes are easy to make of a country as large as this one with as many different regions. The south is not remotely like the northeast, the eastern seaboard isn't remotely similar to the west, and the seattle and portland area isn't even similar to LA.

As far as cases go, I'm guessing based on what's been described in the news here - 10% so far. You are right, some folks will have permanent damage. And in greater numbers than would occur with the flu.

Our news likes to make things polarized (that's pro-wrestling psychology), but much of the country is somewhere in between. Academia tends to try to develop more consensus and then chide other people, but the average citizen here doesn't really like that.

This country is made much of people who fled from Britain and Germany due looking for freedom from the government and the notion of that is still relatively strong in many places. Underneath the surface and aside from having to listen to one idiot president after another (some more polished than others), the levers are pulled by federal, state and local agencies and things do actually work pretty well. What I see with the viruses is this - the bulk of society wants to be as open as possible. They don't want to see the elderly exposed, so care homes and such here are closed. When the second wave came here, everyone was pretty much on board - OK, opening bars and restaurants and events seems to have brought a second wave, shut it down again ,and we'll wait.

The acid test for most places is when the ICU beds are full, we shut down. It's not good enough for the news (e.g., houston, where some hospitals had full ICUs, but we don't see bodies in the streets - the news needs 'there will be bodies in the streets, we just know it!!').

The country becoming incapacitated more so than, let's say, Aus is shut down, just isn't going to happen. We have the resources to shut areas down when they get too hot. Regional culture makes determining what that point is a little different from place to place,but full ICUs seems to be the stopping point for all, and closing restaurants, bars and schools seems to be all that's needed to bring the spread to a halt.

We should all be thankful for that much.

Testing is available here, too - all over the place. If you want a funded (insured, covered) test, you have to have some reasonable exposure. Some folks are trying to fib their way into it just because they want to visit elderly representatives, but with as many cases as there are, the system sniffs them out. You can, of course, pay a few hundred bucks and get a private test performed (while we have a gigantic overpriced insured medical system here with seemingly a million payers, there still is even another layer - a fully private system of docs and labs). When someone says, sure, we'll test you "$700 for the test and results", most people boasting about getting tested hell or high water decide they'll just stay home. That stuff is for the wealthy, and if they have the means to get tested without draining the more public system, more power to them.

I'll tell you who this virus really sucks for, though - kids and other folks who have no idea that they've got an underlying illness (e.g., leukemia) and find out that they do by dying. That really sucks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by D.W.

I'm not looking to make australia equivalent with any US state.

I'd imagine that your early exposure was far less than NYC's, which is where our outbreak started, along with NW areas like washington state. I don't know of those were introduced by european and chinese tourism like NYC and the eastern seaboard. You could see the spread quickly here in those areas and they fared the worst in the initial outbreak (NY, massachusetts, NJ, philadelphia).

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Because of timing early exposures/case numbers were quite similar across many OECD countries.
Below shows the case numbers in early Feb just before both the US and AUS closed borders to China.


Attachment 477049

Around that time many Chinese college students were arriving back in Australia from Summer vacation to commence the new academic year in Feb. The number of Chinese college students that study in Australia is about 160,000, the number in New York is ~360,000 BUT most of those would have already been in NY.

What seems to have mattered was what was done after that.
Aust went thru a coordinated national lock down sequence unlike other countries with dithered and directed blame elsewhere.

Anyway all it takes are a few infected people and an over relaxed population and it can start over as the folks in Melbourne and many US states are finding out.

I guess i'm a little suspicious about early numbers (we didn't test much here, and even in a very liberal places - NY - the mayor was under pressure from the labor unions not to shut anything. That turned out to be a bad decision in my opinion, but we have a long way to go before we know how this thing ends).

I'd guess the people flow through New York and the proximity of everyone there makes them more susceptible to an explosion in numbers there, especially in the manhattan area (there is a lot of youth and a mindset that isn't safety first).

You're right about the spread - it's exponential. The lead time is weeks before 100 cases become 10,000.

Just guessing (and this isn't confrontational) on the mindset here, nobody will tolerate a long term lockdown except for a few (regardless of who is president), but I think most folks here are getting conditioned to the idea that a shutdown closes the valve for a while. But instead of saying "we need to stay like this for a while", we are using that turning of the valve to buy time for the next reopening.

Care homes took a huge hit initially because they implemented tough visitation rules, but predictably, they didn't do that much about the employees. Only one vector is needed, of course, and employees were that vector. In a care home here with 340 beds, 80 deaths occurred (it was one of the lower-tier homes and they just didn't think). The other homes acted appropriately and, for example, may have had 10 deaths for 500 residents when they had an outbreak.

Many of those in those care homes are WWII children, and we've introduced some to devices they'd have never used and their reaction is surprising "it's just the way it is, you can't let it bring you down".

As we've already discussed, my personal view is that I will make a reasonable effort to not be part of the problem. If older people are around, or people we don't know well in a very small group, we are outside, and even most of the folks we know well, we can congregate outside. It's summer. Let the virus blow away into the air.

I have asthma, so my wife hasn't allowed me to grocery shop, but I wouldn't feel that unsafe in a large building. The data on asthma (mine is relatively minor) isn't that clear, so I'm playing it safe. I do go to work from time to time, but there's almost nobody there.

It's interesting that as similar as many of us are (most of us originating from eastern europe and western europe), how we came to our destinations (many in the US fleeing for religious reasons - some of my ancestors were sent to an area in Germany to starve for not being Catholic - the palatinate. Others went to switzerland and were chased out from there for the same reason - they arrived here in the states in the mid 1700s. Some were amish (but not in quite some time), and all of those folks have some distrust of government and may of us don't like the idea of an unjust war (and the bar for just war is VERY high). The american revolution found some of my relatives facing a decision of hauling war bits or going to jail as they absolutely weren't going to fight on behalf of any government.

While I don't have such a disdain, cultural lines until ease of travel and the internet came along really has left a long mark. We are very loathe to tell someone what to do, and enjoy someone telling us what to do about as much - especially if our intentions are good.

There's an old dutchy (amish / pa dutch) saying around here, "it's OK if we disagree as long as we're friends in the end".

That means more or less I don't expect you to agree with me and don't want to tell you what to do, but we need to make sure we don't get carried away with any disagreement and think we should ever not be friends because of it.

Hard to explain.

Not sure if the word amish ever gets to TV in austrlia other than sensationalism, but pa dutch here refers to the amish and anabaptists, but also to protestants who are much the same (it's not uncommon to hear german at a protestant funeral in parts of pennsylvania - despite a settlement date of the communities being mid 1700s, sometimes earlier).

My ancestors before the american revolution got stuck riding a wagon to philadelphia (100 miles) to profess their loyalty to the king. Apparently, a german speaking area was perceived as a potential problem for separatism, but the King of England misjudged it - the region had no interest in conflict at all.

when it came to the revolution, I suppose my family became 1700s draft dodgers of sorts. We were agrarian types so later world wars spared most of us due to the necessity to keep farmers in the fields producing food. Some volunteered, anyway, but most had the very high bar in mind of not wanting to raise arms against someone else without being absolutely sure that what they were doing is right.

I've moved four hours away to Pittsburgh since childhood and there are germans here, but even those folks were entirely different (urban, mill labor, etc, far more social and less conservative with money and drinking).

Amish culture is well known here, I believe. Most would be able to give you the highlights and some detail - fine nuances, perhaps not. But that's not the point, it is known, say compared to that of Mozambique or the cultures of Estonia.....

DW, the insight you provide is important. I'm aware of a vast number of people in the USA being of German ancestry. The escape from Europe to avoid persecution and war isn't overly mentioned (I believe)... when you explain it, it certainly does give a good raison d'être behind the psyche of the USA.

On a slightly different matter, I think many here follow many of the same philosophies of your ancestors. The early lot were dragged here against their will (convicts!) and formed a new life in a harsh and unforgiving place, but modern immigrants come here for the same reasons as yours... freedom and peace.

I wouldn't mind returning to agrarianism, my father certainly pushes me a lot to "buy a farm"!!!! ..... it would give me a quiet and serene place to do my woodworking :) :)


On a note, BE SAFE everyone.... the plague looks to be getting out of hand again and people are being bloody stupid.