Oops. Forgot Tuesday. Sorry.
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Australia has only one mask factory, and the Army was only sent in yesterday to start helping to ramp up production? Six weeks after this disaster was obvious to bloggers-watching-twitter-feeds, the entirely predictable shortage of masks is only just starting to be addressed? Why weren’t they doing this a month ago? Australian Defence Force soldiers have been deployed to help Australia’s only mask manufacturer, Med-Con, near Shepparton. The Federal Government confirmed on Tuesday about a dozen ADF personnel would be called out under the Defence Assistance to the Civil Community rules to help Med-Con ramp up production of personal protective equipment. Three army trucks were seen heading north on Old Dookie Rd about 7.20 am Wednesday morning. Australians are panic buying because the sheer incompetence of our medical advice and management is obvious to everyone. It didn’t occur to me to suggest the government get local mask production running because any sensible ten year old would have seen that coming. The Greg Hunt mantra on Jan 31: WHO declares emergency. “We are prepared.” March 5th: Dental practices face closure because of shortage of surgical masks. March 18th: doctors are warning a promised influx of almost 100,000 COVID-19 test kits in the coming week, won’t be enough.
Incompetence.
Dithering politicians push the fatality from 0.5% toward 5%A gritty analysis by Tomas Pueyo shows how leaders inertia is killing people every day. Some of the victims of tomorrows Virus Get-Togethers won’t die for a few weeks, but the next batch starts tomorrow (and every day until the nation self-isolates, stops the pox-parties, the cough-shopping, and pneumonia-planes. ). And each day there are more than the day before. Sounds macabre, but at this point in an exponential epidemic, it’s just how it is. Since we didn’t stop the Airbussed virus, we’re going to have to shut everything down anyhow, the later we do it, the larger the cost, and the longer it takes. We have to get ahead of this virus. Meanwhile in Australia, the average punter seems to realize this and the mood is hitting feverish notes with tramplings in supermarkets — The government is calling for calm, but doctors are calling for borders to close, and schools to go online, they’re standing outside schools with signs telling parents not to send their children to school. Doctors are warning that we are the next “Italy” if we don’t get our act together. But the government says it’s too early to close schools (apparently we have to kill some more people first). The keep-schools-open excuses are bizarre: parents are being told to send kids to school so that kids don’t stay home and infect grandparents — which implies that they will infect parents and somehow that is OK. Ministers doesn’t seem to realize that if kids stay home with grandparents early, and we stop this spreading, no one gets sick in the first place. The other excuse to keep the schools open is that healthcare workers need the childcare which South Korea solved by holding small “emergency” classes of under ten students. Better for healthworkers kids and the teachers. In some schools in NSW and Victoria a quarter to a half of all students are already absent as parents keep them home. The Catholic School system (which huge here) is calling for stoppages. Teachers, not surprisingly are not too happy about being sacrificial child minders. They don’t understand why a crowd of 500 is not OK, but a school of 1000 is. And finally some cancer patients, disabled folk and longer lived humans are identifying as the 1-4% who “Are expected to die” and they don’t like being referred to as a casual-nevermind-addendum. When’s the best time to stop an epidemic? Before it becomes one. Pueyo calculates the likely final death rates in different areas by converging two different ways to estimate it. Far in the future some countries are headed for a 0.5% while others are aiming for 4% — it depends on the day they start. How many people will start down a path to dying tomorrow… Peuyo has a handy method to guesstimate the “percentage of infected employees” or odds of getting infected in your own state — he’s trying to help people answer the question “when should you lock down”. Read it all. h/t to Orson Olsen for the excellent tip. Coronavirus: Why You Must Act NowThis is what you can conclude:
Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten. And that’s just counting the fatality rate. Acting fast also drastically reduces the cases, making this even more of a no-brainer.
 Some countries have kept the exponential curve at bay…
Notice the main rise and fall plays out over four weeks of lockdowns. And also that it takes 12 days from major action to slow the ship and start to see a difference.  … He estimates that the true rate of infections (grey lines) rises much faster than the recognised cases. The two estimates of death rates converge on under 1% or close to 4%. The difference comes down to the day the leader gets their act together. No country on Earth has enough ICU beds for this virus. The later they stop the spread the sooner the hospital wards overflow. The death rate in central China will end up around 5%. The rate in the rest of China is more like 1%.  … The rate in South Korea is tending towards 0.5%. (Though it is a pretty “out there” graph — South Korea is one of a kind.) In Italy the curves are headed towards 4%. The hospitals are totally overrun. Here’s hoping they can bring that back fast. But suddenly it’s clear why the semi lock down one day became a nation lockdown the next. I heard tonight that Italy has more hospital beds per capita than the US does.  … Wow. What China did. The lengths at which it went to contain the virus are mind-boggling. For example, they had up to 1,800 teams of 5 people each tracking every infected person, everybody they got interacted with, then everybody those people interacted with, and isolating the bunch. That’s how they were able to contain the virus across a billion-people country. This is not what Western countries have done. And now it’s too late. I do have a reservation with the Pueyo analysis — he doesn’t seem to realize the Chinese stats are computer modeled CCP estimates of something probably ten fold higher. But the rates in China match elsewhere — they might have been using the real ratios, even they faked the numbers to hide the scale. There are only a couple of sentences that hinge on the actuals – -I don’t think Wuhan was really locked down when infections were . Otherwise, the trend is King, unfortunately.
______________________________________________ Coronavirus Background: ☀ The Demographics: the young are spared, but the severity increases with age, and slightly more for men than women. ☀ The Ro is 2 – 3 and exponential curves are steep. How Coronavirus kills: why the number of ICU units matters so much. ☀ Illness progression: Dry coughs and Fevers, Aches. In 15% of people, by day 5 breathing trouble starts. In 3% (?) by day 8 they may need an ICU (intensive care unit). ☀ The good case of Singapore but the ominous calculations of how fast the ICU beds may run out. ☀ Proof that viruses don’t have wings and we should have stopped all flights so much earlier. ☀ The story of how American Samoa avoided Flu Deaths with quarantine in 1918. ☀ The story of Vo, the Italian town that stopped the virus. ☀ Delay = Death, statistics show mortality rates rise tenfold if hospitals are overwhelmed. ☀ Economics: ☀ The huge impact on the Chinese economy, the awful case of Iran.☀ Beware UN advice: ☀ Ethiopian WHO chief was part of China’s debt trap diplomacy ☀ Stats and Data: ☀ John Hopkins Live Map ☀ Worldometer ☀ Coronavirus data in Australia ☀
WA hospitals call for state border closures to deal with coronavirus fears (COVID-19)Top doctors across WA’s biggest hospitals are sensationally calling for the state to effectively close its borders to protect West Australians from the coronavirus pandemic. In a remarkable letter obtained by The West Live to be discussed exclusively on this morning’s show, it can be revealed the Combined Medical Leads Advisory Group has raised concerns about the “extremely limited” availability of testing infrastructure and supplies in WA. The group, which includes senior medicos from FSH, RPH and SCGH, also warns there is “limited evidence of effective anti-viral treatment”, “no effective vaccine” and that rationing is already in place at hospitals. It recommends that to “flatten the curve” that attention should be paid to “extending isolation restrictions to all personal interstate travel”. Just to spell this out, all states without community transmission have the chance to quickly put this virus back in the box. The first thing they need to stop is stop flying in the virus. Then they track and isolate all current cases, and if appropriate, tell people to stay home, call off all movement in the state and suspend everything bar essential services. Then within three to four weeks said state will be in blissful nirvana where all citizens can fly inside the state, take holidays, resume their normal jobs, send their kids to normal schools, and get elective surgery, medical care and all the normal things we hope for. After this point border quarantine must be maintained. The state must be vigilant for any outbreak. When outbreaks occur, we track and trace. As I said two days ago, trucks and trade still cross the border even during the lockdown but the drivers (fresh virus fuel) are either swapped at the border or kept only in special sealed hotels before they return. So if you want to save the local economy, thousands of lives and our very way of life — Close the Borders Now. I remain baffled as to why so many people think we have to let this virus run wild, and why the cost of domestic door to door lock down is not seen as hideously expensive and therefore state border closures are a bargain compared to the inevitable pain and suffering coming. In the UK and US, Canada there will still be regions where there is no community spread yet. These can be saved, and then as more clean regions are achieved more flights and movement between these safe regions will rescue airlines, tourism agents, etc etc. The world will soon be divided into the countries or states which have beaten this virus and those which haven’t. The Clean World = Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore. Imagine your home state there and start working on that future. Note from blogger: For fed up readers — yes, I get it. Normal transmission will resume soon. In comments, I’ve explained that the area of science I was always most passionate about was virology, disease, and genes (my majors and research)*. I would never have guessed in a billion years that I would end up writing a blog on climate science. And just as I feel in the climate debate that I can help the hands-on experts explain their case with renewable energy and meteorology, in this medical debate there are thousands of doctors and medical researcher nerds who are political and media naffs that seem to need some help. *Also prevention of such, which means nutrition etc — don’t get me started, take your D, Zn, and Se. :- )
March 17th, 2020 | Tags: Coronavirus, Virus | Category: Global Warming, Medicine |  Print This Post | | Scuttlebutt that crossed my desk today says “”US to have nationwide quarantine for 14 days'”. h/t Scott.I hope this is correct. My reply:”Brilliant”. Finally, a hint of an attitude determined to beat this. It’s so refreshing after all the defeatist fatalism telling us this is a disease we have to have. I predict if the US does this, other countries will follow. This is the fastest way to get borders open, and people back to work, and reduce the death toll. Flights will be able to reopen among countries that have done this and done this well. UPDATE: Officially denied already? The Whitehouse has been forced to deny national shutdown rumours.(A search for “Rumor US two week lockdown” turns up almost no news items?) Don’t believe anything til it is officially denied… but don’t believe the rumours. The fact is there are no facts. Forgive me if I repeat: A virus is just an inanimate chemical code. It can’t reproduce and it can’t repair itself. To beat it, all we have to do is out-wait it. Without machinery to copy the code it will degrade into foodsafe ingredients. Air, oxygen, time and light will crack the code. The longer we feed it, the stronger it gets. A perfect quarantine needs two weeks. An imperfect one will need longer. But giving up social contact, income, parties and holidays isn’t the end of the world. Obviously, some people will bear a larger cost than others. (Hope temporary measures can look out for them). But everyone will bear a smaller cost in the long run if we go hard, go early and get serious. No more feeding it free bodies. Except apparently in the UK, where that is actual policy…. ? Seriously?
UK recycles old measles/flu policy to come up with Very Stupid (Sounding) PlanUPDATED: UK Local, Stephen Wilde warns it was a bit more complicated and Hanage at The Guardian spun a side comment for political effect. But the stories about the Herd Immunity Plan went right across the Atlantic and popped up downunder too and given what Sir Patrick Vallance said, seem to fit. The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ DebacleEd young The Atlantic: The country is not aiming for 60 percent of the populace to get COVID-19, but you’d be forgiven for thinking so based on how badly the actual plan has been explained. This sstill sounds like the influenza “we have to have” plan. Not the deadly virus plan: With the peak of the pandemic still weeks away, the time hadn’t come yet for stricter measures, Johnson and his advisers said. They worried about “behavioral fatigue”—if restrictions come into force too early, people could become increasingly uncooperative and less vigilant, just as the outbreak swings into high gear. (As of yesterday, the U.K. has identified 1,391 cases, although thousands more are likely undetected.) And while suppressing the virus through draconian measures might be successful for months, when they lift, the virus will return, said Sir Patrick Vallance, the U.K.’s chief scientific adviser. To avoid a second peak in the winter, Vallance said the U.K. would suppress the virus “but not get rid of it completely,” while focusing on protecting vulnerable groups, such as the elderly. In the meantime, other people would get sick. But since the virus causes milder illness in younger age groups, most would recover and subsequently be immune to the virus. This “herd immunity” would reduce transmission in the event of a winter resurgence. On Sky News, Vallance said that “probably about 60 percent” of people would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity. Half-baked quarantines don’t work very well. But a serious quarantine can save thousands of lives. Why not aim high? Keep reading → BREAKING NEWS: Since writing this Scott Morrison has finally moved to quarantine all arrivals including planes and ships. He’s still two weeks behind the virus, and playing catch up with Jacinda Ardern, the real leader. But finally the bleeding obvious has dawned. He won’t close schools, and perhaps, suddenly that will now be a viable option, though Sydney still needs short sharp major action to save lives. Could they bear doing no sport or social events for two weeks? The big risk to most states are now flights from Sydney. Will NSW aim for the “slow bleed” eking out infections over months, hoping none accidentally go wild, or will it aim to wipe this out in three weeks so life gets back to normal, and Australia can play sport again against New Zealand, asap? With this news, just in the nick of time, the future is now looking better. My prediction: Watch as leaders all round the world pick this up. This is a good boost for nation states and sovereign borders. All eyes are on the EU now where the open border policy has been disastrous — Spain (6,300), Germany (4500) and France (4,500) are where Italy was on 7th March, just over one week ago. Even if they lock-down seriously now their hospitals are set to reach breaking point. Tell me again how flight bans and quarantines don’t help. When there is an epidemic coming, flat lines are our Christmas-glitter-favourite trend. This graph from Coronavirus data in Australia shows infections arriving here followed by mysterious long flat lines. The dates are unreadable but we all know what happened and when. h/t Travis and Chris D How many thousands of Australians were saved by that one call to stop flights from China? Italy had the same number of cases as Australia does now (250) on the 24th of February. Now 1,500 Italians are dead and 20,000 are infected. That’s three weeks “progress”. UPDATE: Will NSW follow Italy? On Feb 23rd Italy had 134 cases and 2 deaths. By 7 days later, the tally was 1,700 and 34 deaths. Sun, warmth and a lower population density mean it will be lower in Australia. Obviously flights from the USA and Italy should have been quarantined a week ago. For all these discovered infections there only needed to be a few that went unnoticed and seeded the community spread we are now seeing in NSW. The only planes we want right now come from Russia, Israel, Taiwan and New Zealand. Across the Tasman, just like that yesterday — all flight arrivals to New Zealand were quarantined. Voila. New Zealand may end up being the best place on Earth to be in the next month. After this is over, a few leaders will be seen to have saved tens of thousands of lives. Jacinda Ardern will look like a hero. SlowMo will look like a Slow Mo. NZ could’ve allowed flights from Australia but we’re too high risk. Slow leaders are choosing to kill people and the economyTo protect people in the rest of Australia, interstate travel could be quarantined. [UPDATE: Maybe this is not necessary now. But the nation would beat this faster if we did]. People could return to their home state with a two-week isolation. If borders were closed now WA, SA, Tas, NT would quickly get a tiny epidemic back under control with contact tracing. Then they could send spare masks and doctors and ventilators to NSW to save lives. Trucks could unload trailers and containers at border stops to be picked up by local drivers in local semi cabs. Or they could be allowed to drive right through but stay in designated secure hotels before returning home. We could build holiday homes instead of hospitals. Some genius economist needs to explain how the economy benefits from allowing a mass outbreak-that-we-don’t-have-to-have. Interstate travel, restaurants, schools, businesses in the smaller states could reopen for business with domestic sales and travel in perhaps four weeks time saving thousands of businesses from going under. High risk vulnerable Australians could take a one month holiday in a safe state to wait out any mess in NSW etc. All this is achievable, but which state leader has the balls to stand against the Open Border Bullies and deadly fatalistic medicos like Brendan-we-have-to-die-Murphy? NEWS Sunday morning in Australia:
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Tomas Pueyo
| (1795 onwards?)* | .. | Droughts and fires |
| 1788 | Drought in Sydney | |
| 1797 | Drought near “Melbourne” | |
| 1799-1806 | Nearly every year “high flood” in NSW the Hawkesbury river rose 101ft | |
| 1810 | Excessive rain ruled til 1810 then ended | |
| 1811-1826 | More floods than droughts | |
| 1826-1829 | Longest continuous recorded drought in Australia | |
| 1830 | Great Flood. Windsor on the Hawkesbury became an island. | |
| 1831 – 1836 | Moderately dry | |
| 1837 – 1839 | A three year drought which almost exterminated the sheep and cattle of Australia, a dried up that great “father of waters” the big Murrumbidgee River itself, leaving the very fish to putrefy in the dry bed thereof… | |
| 1840-1841 | More floods. In 1841 was the highest known flood in this part of the world. The Brisbane and Bremer rivers were both in flood at once, and the water rose 70ft at Ipswich. | |
| 1841-1849 | “there was rather more rain than was wanted” | |
| 1849-1851 | Severe drought and on Black Thursday, terrible fires: “boxed the scattered bushfires of of the colony of Victoria into one vast wild blaze, before a northerly hurricane, which blew coaches and men-of-wars rowing boats over like hats. Farms buildings fences, crops, and lives were lost” | |
| 1852 | A flood so bad it swept away the town of Gundagai and drowned more than a score or two…. | |
| 1857, 1863, 1864, 1870, 1873, 1875, 1879 | Floods of the Brisbane River with “boats rowing in Mary-Street and Stanley-Street” | |
| 1869, 1877 | Dry years | |
| 1882, 1883 | Wet years, and the eruption of Krakatoa brought “the constant glow and iron drought that has scarcely been broken since”. “Since then cholera and floods in the Northern Hemisphere, droughts and disease in this hemisphere, have been rife.” | |
| … | … |
………………….
The Queenslander, Sat 19 Sep 1885
Droughts and Floods.
THE following letter by Mr. N. Bartley
appeared in Monday’s Courier:—
The present severe drought serves to remind
me of a paper which I read 5th
January, 1864, before the Queensland Philoso-
phical Society on ” Meteorology,” and which
led to the establishment in this colony of ob-
serving stations, till then unknown here ; and
as this paper, amongst other matter, contained
a list of droughts and floods in south-east
Australia since the year 1782, it may be of
some interest to repeat that part of it now.
From 1782 to 1792, Captain Flinders landed at
intervals in various places on the south and
east coasts of our continent, and he found
traces of drought and bush fires invariably.
Keep reading →
March 11th, 2020 | Tags: Australian rainfall, Drought, Evidence, Fires, Floods | Category: Fire, Global Warming, Meteorology | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | ..
And so it begins.
Suddenly there are no more weddings for a quarter of all of Italy. No more movies, pubs, dance halls or trains to some parts of the country either. Italy is about to overtake South Korea for the number two spot on the list no country wants to lead, unless Iran beats Italy to it (which it almost certainly has already). Today 16 million Italians are not free to go about their business, or go to school.
On Feb 21st, Italy had three cases, now 366 people are dead, and 7353 are infected (at least). How life has changed in two weeks and three days. Suddenly France and Germany are about to reach the 1,000 mark. This is what exponential curves feel like.
“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in announcing the government decree in a news conference after 2 a.m. — NY Times
The Frankfurt and London exchanges dropped by 8 percent in early Monday trading, while in Paris stocks were trading 4 percent lower. An index of Europe’s 50 biggest companies was down nearly 6 percent.
Oil prices lost nearly a quarter of their value in futures markets, as two major producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia, set off a price war while the world’s thirst for crude is already ebbing. While low oil prices can give consumers a boost, they can also disrupt countries that depend heavily on petroleum dollars to keep their economies running.
Stanford Uni and University of Washington have cancelled all classes and gone online. The first of many. One student started a petition and got 3700 signatures. Maybe that did it, or maybe the rulers there are smart and worried about catching it themselves.
This is all so predictable.
But we don’t have to sit back and wait for leaders to figure out the obvious. Send those messages. Start those petitions. Write to the editors. On the curve, every day matters. We know what we should do. We just need to get serious. Stop the flights, stop the crowds, stay home and get deliveries. Close the schools. Do it well fast and hard and then it’s over. Then open flights up to all the countries that did it properly too. Its not the end of the world. Then we can help others.
The good news: South Korea continues to get fewer new infections (only 272, down from 800 at the peak). Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan appear to be in control. There is a future where the West awakes, stops doing everything two weeks too late, playing catch up with a virus, and pretty soon we can flatten that curve.
The video’s pretty full on, but history books will be written about this week. Tucker Carlson’s not boring and there’s plenty to debate, like how fast can we start mass production of antibiotics. (UPDATE: Antibiotics won’t beat a virus, but we sure need them).
Does Greg Hunt have a plan, or is he hoping the US does and we can piggy back? Or thinking India will have medicine to spare? They banned pharmaceutical exports four days ago.
If Australians are a bit skittish it’s because Greg Hunt has said we’re “prepared” 400 different ways with an old influenza plan and no other details.
This is what’s coming (something like Italy), plus deaths. Or we can do it now and skip most of the deaths bit:
Northern Italy under lockdown
– Lombardy region (entire region, all provinces)
– Piedmont (provinces of Alessandria, Asti, Novara, Verbano Cusio Ossola, and Vercelli)
– Veneto(provinces of Padua, Treviso, and Venice)
– Emilia Romagna (provinces of Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia, and Rimini)
– Marche (province of Pesaro Urbino)
In the above areas:
- Travel in and out of the area, as well as within the area, will only be possible in response to “duly verified professional requirements, emergency situations, or for health reasons”
- People with symptoms of respiratory disease and fever of 37.5 Celsius or above are strongly encouraged to stay at home and limit social contact as much as possible, and contact their doctor
- Avoid gathering
- All schools and universities must be closed
- All museums and places of culture will be closed
- All cultural, religious or festive events are suspended
- Cinemas, pubs, theaters, dance schools, game rooms, casinos, nightclubs and other similar places shall remain closed
- All sporting events and competitions are suspended
- Ski resorts are closed until further notice
- Swimming pools, sports halls, thermal baths, cultural centers and wellness centers must suspend their activities
- Bars and restaurants can remain open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. provided they respect the safety distance of at least 1 meter between customers – this provision also concerns other commercial activities
- Shopping centers and department stores must remain closed on public holidays and the days preceding them
- Places of worship remain open, provided that the safety distance of at least 1 meter is respected, but religious ceremonies (marriage, baptism) are prohibited until further notice
National restrictions
- As in the north of the country, cinemas, theaters, museums, pubs, game rooms, dance schools, discos and other similar places will be closed
- Sports competitions are suspended with some exceptions
______________________________________________
Coronavirus Background: ☀ The Demographics: the young are spared, but the severity increases with age, and slightly more for men than women. ☀ The Ro is 2 – 3 and exponential curves are steep. How Coronavirus kills: why the number of ICU units matters so much. ☀ Illness progression: Dry coughs and Fevers, Aches. In 15% of people, by day 5 breathing trouble starts. In 3% (?) by day 8 they may need an ICU (intensive care unit). ☀ The good case of Singapore but the ominous calculations of how fast the ICU beds may run out. ☀ The story of how American Samoa avoided Flu Deaths with quarantine in 1918. ☀
Economics: ☀ The huge impact on the Chinese economy, the awful case of Iran.☀
Beware UN advice: ☀ Ethiopian WHO chief was part of China’s debt trap diplomacy ☀
Stats and Data: ☀ John Hopkins Live Map ☀ Worldometer ☀
Watching South Korea — it appears to have stopped the exponential spread of Coronavirus
Heartening. At its peaks last Saturday and Tuesday, South Korea acquired 800 new infections per day. Since then, whatever it is doing, South Korea has managed to keep the new daily cases between 300-800. That may not sound like much, but in exponential terms it could have been a lot worse. Is this the future for us in the West? Perhaps with aggressive action, and local or statewide lockdowns, wealthy western nations may get outbreaks under control. Will we spend the next year with periodic major lockdowns as outbreaks occur, but manage to keep the virus from en masse spread without hospitals being overwhelmed? But can poor countries achieve this? If not, we will have to close flights to stop repeated debilitating and deadly outbreaks, while doing our best to help them. The world will become divided into nations which have this controlled, and those who don’t. This is still the pandemonium I’ve been talking about for six weeks; we could have avoided it, but it’s better than other scenarios. It’s a middle-run scenario.
We are fortunate that this is not as airborne and infectious as measles, which might have made even this impossible. (Note that Coronaviurs is perhaps 500 or more times more deadly than measles, whose fatality rate is 1 per 100,000. Note the mass panic those outbreaks cause.) Keep the pantry stocked. Reduce your risk. Travel less. Avoid crowds. Wash hands. etc.
The death toll so far in South Korea is 48. Theoretically, even if they have passed the peak of new cases, the death toll will still double in coming weeks. In this one outbreak, 100 people may die, 10,000 plus people will have suffered a potentially debilitating disease, and tens of thousands will have been inconvenienced by quarantine and travel bans. There is also the financial cost of closing workplaces. Note also that there are major privacy issues with the South Korean approach to mapping and tracking victims and their movements by their phones.
When will the Australian Government stop telling people to keep going about their business as if nothing is happening? Presumably when there is an outbreak and it’s two weeks too late?
South Korea, new cases Coronavirus
South Korean cases of Coronavirus.
Extrapolating further than I should, if this is the peak and the decline starts soon and there are no new outbreaks, then in a month or so it may be safe to open flights again to South Korea. (Though if our outbreaks are not controlled, they won’t want our planes.)
The daily growth rate is shrinking — yesterday increasing by 7%. This is ideally a bell curve type rise and fall, and the huge spike on the 20th Feb is probably the discovery of all the cases that existed but weren’t detected in the days before. Is that what we are about to see in the US, which hasn’t been doing nearly enough testing?
Growth in Coronavirus cases in South Korea
Two weeks ago South Korea had only 200 cases, now it has 7,000. So the death toll of 48 (with a two week lag) is not a number we want to calculate, because it’s surely a wild overestimate. South Korea had more undetected cases then. Guess. Guess. Guess. O for data.
Deaths still rising following that “new cases” curve with a two (or three week) delay.
It will be at least another week before it levels off.
….
The first few cases in South Korea were very early (11 cases on Jan 31). It was doing well, but lost control.
Taiwan is worth watching:
How Taiwan managed to avoid a coronavirus outbreak
Taiwan is 81 miles off Mainland China. It is a highly urbanized state of 24 million people with an extremely high population density. It is also one of the first places where the new coronavirus epidemic manifested itself. All things considered, Taiwan was expected to have the highest number of cases outside China. Yet Taiwan successfully managed to avoid an uncontrolled outbreak and only has 44 confirmed cases.
Less than one year after the SARS outbreak, a National Health Command Center (NHCC) was established. The NHCC is meant to serve as a disaster management center command point…
Technology is a key ally when you’re fighting an outbreak, Taiwan realized. So they leveraged the national health insurance database to create a smart system to warn citizens and keep an eye on the situation.
The database was integrated with the customs information to generate a pool of big data. This data generated real-time alerts based on people’s travel patterns. It used QR code scanning and online reporting of travel history and documented health symptoms to classify passengers’ infectious risks. Then, Taiwanese authorities acted based on what the data suggested — and took some pretty draconic precaution measures.
People with the lowest risk were issued fast travel clearance, but people with higher risk were likely to be quarantined at home, whether they liked it or not.
Obviously, there is a lot of big government involvement. Again, we see hi tech tracking. Is that necessary? How much freedom will we have to trade in order to reduce the toll and curb the rising fear? Can we control this just with old fashioned quarantines and public information updates?
______________________________________________
Coronavirus Background: ☀ The Demographics: the young are spared, but the severity increases with age, and slightly more for men than women. ☀ The Ro is 2 – 3 and exponential curves are steep. See the importance of an ICU unit in treating ARDS (the severe respiratory disorder). ☀ Illness progression: Dry coughs and Fevers, Aches. In 15% of people, by day 5 breathing trouble starts. In 3% (?) by day 8 they may need an ICU (intensive care unit). ☀ The good case of Singapore but the ominous calculations of how fast the ICU beds may run out. ☀ The story of how American Samoa avoided Flu Deaths with quarantine in 1918. ☀
Economics: ☀ The huge impact on the Chinese economy, the awful case of Iran.☀
Beware UN advice: ☀ Ethiopian WHO chief was part of China’s debt trap diplomacy ☀
Stats and Data: ☀ John Hopkins Live Map ☀ Worldometer ☀
Who needs studies? CSIRO doesn’t need any evidence to tell Australians how things work
Senator Matt Canavan asks Dr Peter Mayfield of CSIRO why an explainer document they put out about the bushfires didn’t include a sentence he found in another CSIRO study.
“No studies explicitly attributing the Australian increase in fire weather to climate change have been performed at this time.”
A record breaking ten long seconds of silence in Senate estimates this week.
The CSIRO only needed to say There are no studies showing man-made climate change has increased either droughts or bush fires. (References at the link).
Matt Canavan has recently given up his role as a Cabinet Minister to support a leadership challenge by Barnaby Joyce in the Nationals party. Unleashed!
Amazing what people can achieve from the back bench. Make this man PM!
March 8th, 2020 | Tags: CSIRO, Fires | Category: Global Warming, Junk Science, Lies-by-Omission | Print This Post | |
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With a big hello and best wishes to long time commenter Roy Hogue who’s in hospital and we hope is improving fast.
We miss you Roy.
(Not CoronaVirus)
The evidence is overwhelming but the names of 85 unconvinced experts threatens the Earth. Shield your eyes, sinner, lest ye faith be tested!
…
The Religion of Carbonoid-Weather-Control is so fragile, and Wikipedia so captured by philosophical fruit flies, that 35 editors voted down 19 other editors and now The List does not exist. Thus do 35 editors keep safe the minds of Wikipedia babes who might get confused when they see Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencers names and mistake them for actual climate scientists… oh.
Thanks to Dr Roger Higgs:
Electroverse: Wikipedia deletes scientists who disagree…
Here’s the reasoning for the censorship given by one of the Wiki editors:
“The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.”
Wikipedia
I’d like to thank those 35 Wiki editors for telling the world how weak the consensus is and giving skeptics another excuse to highlight this dangerous list. Go Streisand Effect.
Cap Allon at Electroverse captured the Wikipedia list. So have Fandom. KEEP!KEEP!KEEP! Those listed are not noteworthy? “Any utility it ever had is long past?” It’s a list of cranks? Absolute rubbish. There are 4 explicit criteria for inclusion. 1) the individual must have published at least one peer-reviewed research article in the broad field of natural sciences; 2) he or she must have made a clear statement disagreeing with one or more of the IPCC Third Report’s three main conclusions, and 3) the scientists has to have been described in reliable sources as a climate skeptic, denier, or in disagreement with any of the three main conclusions. Additionally, to ensure notability, only individuals with a wikipedia article can be included. Someone advocating for deletion, if the article is a mishmash of miscreants . . . I DARE YOU TO STOP BEING INTELLECTUALLY LAZY!
Dr Roger Higgs notes:
By the way, note three BBC-style disingenuous omissions in the title alone: “List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming”:
(1) these are not just any scientists, but well-known and, in many cases, distinguished scientists (Happer, Soon, Lindzen, etc, etc; see below), in diverse fields of science;
(2) they disagree with the consensus on man-made global warming (no educated person denies global warming; Earth has always alternately warmed and cooled);
(3) the consensus is only among climate scientists (whose salaries, research grants, and reputations depend on public belief in man-made warming).
Time to share far and wide. If Wikipedia is serious they have to kick out the editors with political or religious bias.
Dr Roger Higgs, by the way has published: 29 bullet points prove global warming by the sun, not CO2: by a GEOLOGIST for a change
h/t Viv Forbes CarbonSense, Bill and George
SCIENTISTS ARGUING THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS PRIMARILY CAUSED BY NATURAL PROCESSES
— scientists that have called the observed warming attributable to natural causes, i.e. the high solar activity witnessed over the last few decades.
- Khabibullo Abdusamatov, astrophysicist at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[81][82]
- Sallie Baliunas, retired astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.[83][84][85]
- Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg.[86][87][88]
- Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.[89][90]
- Vincent Courtillot, geophysicist, member of the French Academy of Sciences.[91]
- Doug Edmeades, PhD., soil scientist, officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.[92]
Keep reading →
March 8th, 2020 | Tags: Bullying, Consensus, Free Speech | Category: Free Speech, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Sobering
This 25 year old British man caught the virus in Wuhan on November 25. He must have been one of the earliest cases, and it was only recognised belatedly that he had Coronavirus. Twice, he thought he was well, only to relapse. But he does recover. I suspect this is the rarer “severe” type case in an otherwise healthy young man. Theoretically 80% of people get the easier five day version and recover. Notably, for him it’s 24 days before he feels well properly. Can this disease affect pets, which is very ususual? If so, can it affect other mammals, like livestock?
What it’s REALLY like to catch coronavirus: First British victim, 25, describes how ‘worst disease he ever had’ left him sweating, shivering, and struggling to breathe as his eyes burned and bones ached
Day 5: I’m over my cold. It really wasn’t anything.
Day 7: I spoke too soon. I feel dreadful. This is no longer just a cold. I ache all over, my head is thumping, my eyes are burning, my throat is constricted. The cold has travelled down to my chest and I have a hacking cough.
Keep reading →
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