If solar power and batteries were a winner anywhere, we’d hope it would be in remote Australian communities. But a cyclone clouded over Central-Australia for a few days and the batteries ran out. People had no money, no phone and no landline either. To boot, the rain flooded the roads, so people were cut off in every sense.
Welcome to Renewable World:
Telstra says the stations that provide landline and mobile phone coverage to some remote communities in Central Australia are not robust enough to withstand several days of cloud cover.
The communities of Santa Teresa and Titjikala, south-east of Alice Springs, were without mobile and landline coverage for over thirty hours in a recent outage.
In the most recent outage, Santa Teresa was also cut off by road because of flooding.
Santa Teresa parish assistant Sister Liz Wiemers said being that isolated was alarming.
“We couldn’t use ATMs, couldn’t buy fuel, community members couldn’t buy power cards,” Sister Wiemers said, referring to the pre-paid electricity system used in remote communities.
Obviously they need diesel-gens as a back up. But because the roads were blocked Telstra couldn’t send any technicians out with one. They said they need to replace those batteries, but may not be able to for a while (busy repairing things in the fire-zones presumably).
This is what 100% renewable looks like. Hope no one needs a doctor.
[BBC] Travellers from countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks who arrive in some parts of China will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine, state media say.
Travellers from the virus hotspots of South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy arriving in the capital will have to be isolated, a Beijing official has said.
Shanghai and Guangdong announced similar restrictions earlier.
Authorities are worried the virus might be imported back into the country.
Although most virus deaths have been in China, Monday saw nine times more new infections outside China than in.
Shanghai said it would require new arrivals from countries with “relatively serious virus conditions” to be isolated, without naming the countries.
Chinese official statistics suggest they are getting the outbreak under control, which is hard to believe, but they are acting like they do. If most of their population is still at risk of further outbreaks, then they would care about risky incoming flights.
Meanwhile our health ministers tell us it’s too late to stop the planes.
Cost of importing viruses *might* be more than cost of closing borders x 1000
Has the Prime Minister done the right cost-benefit calculations?
Forget the tens of thousands of deaths, pretend those lives are worthless, and add up the cost of shutting down schools, factories, public transport, sports events, conferences, concerts and everything else, because that’s not the cost of closing flights, its the cost of keeping them open. Factor in $5,000 a day for intensive care beds, plus workers staying home to look after kids, plus job losses. Include the costs of putting off most elective surgery for six months. Don’t forget people who will get sick of something else this year but will have to wait longer for help, so add some cancer patient deaths to the tally.
Ponder how much cheaper it is to live in a country free of this scourge? If Australian domestic tourists knew travel in NSW was safe, and if people in Sydney weren’t afraid to eat at Chinese restaurants, then Australian citizens could enjoy those holidays and dinners and thousands of tourist-related businesses might not go bust. If we let in risky flights then we earn two more weeks of tourism cash but maybe wipe out the small mum and dad businesses who can’t survive the cash crunch.
The Tasmanian Government has just announced they will be “200% renewable” by 2040 — a feat only possible because they have an umbilical cord to hostages in the mainland who have to pay for irrelevant surges in electricity that arrive when they don’t need it. The same hostages will send back fossil powered electricity every week to keep Tasmania running when the wind and sun stop and the water is worth more in the dam than out of it. Not to mention container-ships of GST cash to support the state with the second highest unemployment in the nation.
This is the same state that went 100% renewable for three months in 2015 and launched itself into an electricity crisis. They decommissioned the last fossil fuel power station, just in time to get islanded by a break in their umbilical cable and thence had to order flying squads of diesel generators to keep the lights on at a cost of at least $140m. They also had to restart the same plant they just closed. The state lost half a billion dollars in the crisis — nearly twice the cost of the newish gas plant which had only built in 2009.
All these quarters in the red below are ones where Tasmania needed to import up to 30 percent of its own electricity from the mainland. Not visible here are all the days during the blue “export” quarters where generators in Victoria kept the lights on in Hobart.
All the high export “blue” quarters in 2013 -2015 were during the carbon tax era. Tasmanian Hydro was running the dams down in El Nino conditions through carbon tax funded greed. The state got so desperately short of water in 2016 the intellectual giants in charge of Tas Hydro paid to do cloud seeding to fill the dams. Which would have been fine if they weren’t trying to do it in the face of a monster storm front that created flash flooding.
Too bad the Sun shines and the wind blows at the same time in Tasmania as it does in Victoria
Wind farms in both states are highly correlated so the extra energy will be pushed onto Victoria when it doesn’t need it. More unreliable power dumped on the National Grid just means that last reliable generators run less efficiently and have to raise their prices or go broke.
Droughts in both states are also “correlated”. The government hopes Tasmania will be the battery of the nation, but short of moving the island to Peru, when there’s a drought in Australia, the battery might be flat.
Money from the mothership is probably also coming for the Hydrogen Projects the state is planning, and possibly (who knows) to fund the unneeded second undersea interconnector which will benefit foreign companies like UPC Renewables who want to build the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a project so unpopular even the Greens in Tasmania don’t want it.
Interconnectors are always sold as “opening up potential” but they are hugely expensive, the potential they open isn’t economic in its own right, and the billion-dollar cables wouldn’t be needed if states were self-sufficient with baseload stable power like they all used to be, and could be again.
Preliminary findings from that study indicate that the benefits of a second interconnector could outweigh the costs by $500 million.
[ABC News] The Federal Government has expanded its coronavirus travel ban to include South Korea, and added additional precautions for travellers from Italy, amid fears about the spread of the disease.
The revised bans will be in place until Saturday, March 14 but the Government will review the situation within a week to determine if the travel restrictions need to be extended further.
Since the government was at least one week too late with the Iranian block, how will the medical experts stay ahead of the curve on other countries with no testing? Eg Indonesia? Or in this case, Europe and Dubai?
The woman in her 30s from Perth’s southern suburbs returned a positive result after holidaying in Iceland and the UK, and returning to WA via Dubai on Monday.
The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated.
Don’t look now: Big Numbers Coming. Assuming 60% of people catch it before some treatment appears, a death rate of 0.7% – 4% means bad news for some furry number from 100,000 to 600,000 Australians. Double that for the UK. And 1.4m – 8m in the United States. There is a wide range of mortality rates, which may reflect that there are two kinds of mortality rates here — one where people get great ICU care, and one where hospitals are overrun and they don’t. We’ll probably pin that to the low end if we keep cases limited, we eat well, don’t smoke, don’t have wild pollution, and hopefully we’ll get better and better at treating it. But even the low end numbers here are Not Nice. What this means is mass disruption to keep those numbers down — schools closing, factories stopping, no parties, delay the Olympics, etc etc.
The long lag is a bomb. It can be five weeks from infection to death and bureaucrats are weeks behind the virus.
Train meets hospitals
Let’s look at the Worldometer daily numbers, to get an idea of how many cases from 2 weeks ago have died, and how many cases from 8 days ago have got into breathing difficulty rates as “severe”. The data is starting to accumulate (unfortunately).
Hunting for good news, on the Diamond Princess, numbers are not so awful: based on 691 cases eight days ago, five percent are now classed as severe and the mortality rate of 454 patients two weeks later is only 1% (assuming all the deaths are correctly recorded there by Worldometer, and the severe cases stay on the “severe” list if they get well, which they might not). The Diamond Princess would be an older demographic too — so these numbers suggest that mortality is at the lower end of the WHO range. Maybe even “only 0.5%”. Clutch at good straws and hold on to that thought.
Looking across lots of countries (but not China, Korea, Italy or Iran) and based on 867 cases that were known just over two weeks ago, the mortality rate is a daunting 3.7%, and based on 1334 cases eight days ago, the rate of progression of all known cases to severe is 7%. If correct (and they may not be) these are the kind of numbers that would freak a hospital manager out. These don’t come from China, South Korea, Iran and Italy — all of which clearly have a lot more cases that they didn’t know about two weeks ago. So, see the table below, this is data from nations like Japan, USA, Hong Kong, Germany, France and the UK. They’re rough, not always taken at the same time of day, they may double-count Diamond Princess deaths (in national tally’s and boat tallies — any one know?) Feel free to point out mistakes.
These numbers are a train wreck for hospitals, even at the lower end. State Ministers in Australia got briefed recently and appear to understand that now as they they tend to be using the phrase “we may not have the resources”. Translated, that’s the code for “not enough hospital beds”. They’ve already warned people with symptoms to stay home. How fast we shift from chartered rescue flights and individual attention to “just call us, and stay in bed”. A few weeks is a long time in an unfolding pandemic.
Governments have been consistently two weeks behind this virus.
Everything they’ve done would have been so much more effective if they did it two weeks before they did. Now is the time to leap up and get ahead. Look at where South Korea and Italy are now, and just do it. We’re going to have to do it soon anyhow.
The curve we want to flatten. The Ro, Reproductive curves of infectious diseases. ResearchGate
It doesn’t have to be that way. No cases confirmed yet in WA (apart from the Diamond Princess cases). Thousands of deaths are coming, and don’t forget mass disruption to schools, uni, businesses, factories and elective surgery. All that in the offing and no one wants to cancel some holidays and flights to slow the train down? Are we so addicted to weekends in Bali and interstate footy trips that it’s unthinkable to just say “hang ten for a few weeks?”
WA’s chief medical officer Andrew Robertson said an outbreak in the state was now “probably inevitable”. “There are measures that could help delay it, certainly some of the border measures, [plus] self isolation and possibly quarantine if needed,” he said.
“And we will continue to try and contain this disease. But we accept that we have to prepare for the next stage and make sure that our systems are best prepared for the likely pandemic.” Many non-emergency elective surgeries are expected to be cancelled and doctors and nurses working desk jobs may be redeployed to treat patients on busy hospital wards. — ABC News
‘We may not have the resources’: Minister
If there are no nice wildcard surprises coming (new antiviral, lucky break, freak discovery) — the aim of the game is to flatten the curve, slow the exponential growth and keep as many people as possible uninfected and out of hospital. That means no more unnecessary flights, no mass events, close the schools, do church online, get people to work from home if they can and do mass hygiene lessons for our nations.
Everyone needs to know how to wash hands seriously well, and not touch the tap or the handle in a way that undoes the point of washing in the first place. Did you leave those germs on the doorknob on the way in, and collect them again on your way out?
The have-cake eat-cake experts. When will the media pin them down?
Meanwhile last night the experts were still saying there was no evidence of community transmission in Australia and simultaneously that there was no need to stop the flights to Italy or South Korea. Go figure. If there is no community transmission, it’s not too late to stop the flights. If there is community transmission– then stop telling people not to wear masks, keep shaking hands, going to parties and the football. It can’t be both ways.
When community transmission is obvious and undeniable they’ll say “we expected this”.
Don’t let them get away with their double-speak.
Scott Morrison is choosing to let the virus fly in, can someone tell him these are not the deaths we have to have?
Scott Morrison almost got a hard question on the ABC last night. But he weaseled out of it — just following the expert advice, he said. No, dear leader. Do your own research. Ask some different experts. Ask some different questions. People’s live depend on you. Please send him the message (and tell Boris, Jacinta, Justin, and DJT too).
Given the gravity, we should call a halt to all flights without a two week quarantine (not pretend quarantine loopholes through Dubai, Thailand and Bali). Do it just for a few weeks til we get more data. Winter is coming downunder. The best way to avoid this virus is to minimize trips, shopping and crowds. Start thinking about the long run.
Amazing: LA Times finds a WHO expert who makes sense:
Mike Ryan, who runs the agency’s [WHO] emergencies program, pushed back against officials who wanted to “wave the white flag” and surrender to the disease’s hold. China took drastic steps to fight the virus, he said, and case numbers are now on the decline there.
Countries such as China and South Korea “implemented very, very strong measures that have affected their own economies and their own societies,” Ryan said. “It’s really a duty of others to use the time that has been bought. “That is not a reverse you can achieve with influenza. If that is a failure, we’ll have slowed down the virus.”
There can be a big benefit in slowing the virus’ arrival in a country for a few months, Ryan said. Many countries, including the U.S, are in the middle of flu season, so large numbers of coronavirus cases would overwhelm the health system.
Too many in the deep state are waving the white flag.
A carrier’s 26% reduction across their entire operation in comparison to last year.
A hub carrier reporting bookings to Italy down 108% as bookings collapse to zero and refunds grow.
Many carriers reporting 50% no-shows across several markets.
Future bookings are softening and carriers are reacting with measures such as crew being given unpaid leave, freezing of pay increases, and plans for aircraft to be grounded.
It almost gives me hope that people are smart enough to outwit their governments and protect themselves despite the incompetence at the top. But it doesn’t get the governments off the hook — it just shows how easy it would have been to stop the flights. The problem is that while the people who are afraid of getting sick are staying home, the people who are surrounded by the sick would want to fly in if they could. Therefore countries that want to stop their hospitals being overrun still need to stop those flights.
With only two cases of Covid-19 here in Western Australia (both from the Diamond Princess) and no sign of community spread, the state government just declared that all international school camps are henceforth cancelled (including for private schools — see how “private” they really are?) So kids without the virus can’t fly out, but people with the virus are welcome to fly in.
Our chief medical officer says ” it was no longer possible to completely prevent people with the coronavirus from entering the country”. Ironically, because the sick people can come here, soon healthy ones won’t want too. Voluntarily, the people we do want as tourists will all stay home. The borders will semi-shut without government action anyway, but it’s the most useless kind of border control.
Let the pandemonium begin
Two weeks and two days ago South Korea had 30 cases. Now it has 5,186. Of those, twenty eight people have died, which sounds not-too-awful til you realize that it’s a two week lag to death (or even three), and 28 out of 30 is a 93% mortality rate. Except, of course, it isn’t. It means South Korea had far more cases two weeks ago than they realized. It’s the same for Italy and Iran. How many other places are about to leap forward…?
A Chinese man believed to have contracted the coronavirus during 14 days of supposed self-quarantine in Dubai has raised a red flag about the “back door” for fee-paying university students entering the country.
More than 11,000 Chinese university and high school students have used the third-country layover mechanism to sidestep the ban on Chinese nationals flying direct to Australia.
(CNN)Up to 1 million people could be tested for coronavirus by the end of week, the FDA said, as cases across the US rose to more than 100 and health officials warned the number will keep climbing.
People don’t believe the government when they say there’s no need to stock up on supplies either
It’s the first run on shop shelves I’ve ever seen.
For some reason Australians are buying lots of toilet paper and tissues, but leaving some tinned fish and soup in the stores. The Lucky Country is not well trained in the prepping culture. Anyone would think we ate toilet paper and tissues.
…
It’s too expensive to close borders, they say, but who can afford to import this virus?
Should we stop holidays and conferences, or most of the economy?
The monthly PMI figures show that in February about four fifths of China’s economy was shut down. Locking people in apartments and hospitals being not very productive. Strangely, all the economists watching the mainstream news and official Chinese figures did not expect this. They were shocked when the monthly PMI result was announced. The drop from 50 to 35 was more than twice as bad as the economists expected.
The market had expected a reading of around 46, according to a Reuters poll and this shocking data had analysts recalibrating their numbers.
The ANZ economists said this implied the utilization of only a fifth of the country’s full economic capacity, much lower than the high numbers claimed by authorities.
Satellites show nitrogen dioxide emission over China: NASA
Junk journalists copied junk news from China and they all fooled the economists
The February result came in far below the median forecast of 43 by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal.
Saturday’s results show a “relatively large impact” from the epidemic, Zhao Qinghe, an analyst with the statistics bureau, said in a statement accompanying the data release, according to the Wall Street Journal. March’s readings should improve because of authorities’ efforts to help companies, especially manufacturing firms, resume production, he said.
“The situation on the ground [in China] is materially worse than what has come out in the media,” Leland Miller, CEO of the China Beige Book, a research firm that collects Chinese company viewpoints, told MarketWatch in an interview.
Xi wants to be emperor of the whole world and can see a path to achieving that. But he has kicked a couple of own goals…
Xi’s first own goal was to suppress privately owned business activity in favor of state-owned companies. Workers in state-owned companies have about a third of the productivity of those in businesses run by their private owners….
His [President Xi’s] second own goal was to delay the news of the coronavirus until after the trade deal was signed with the United States. Xi did not want to show any sign of weakness while the deal was being negotiated. China’s relative position had been deteriorating since 2015, when its share of world exports peaked at about 15%. Trump wanted a trade deal because he would like China to remain stable through the election cycle. The language of the trade deal included a lot of “China shall,” indicating that China needed the deal more than Trump did. We infer that the anti-China efforts will be ramped up again after the election.
The first coronavirus case was reported on December 1, 2019, and the trade deal was signed on January 15, 2020. Wuhan was put under quarantine lockdown eight days later on January 23. In the meantime, some five million people left Wuhan, as estimated by Wuhan’s mayor, a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. So, as a result of waiting for the trade deal to be signed before acting, Xi changed a controllable outbreak into an out-of-control epidemic.
The Chicoms are pathological liars, as they regard anyone who is not in a more powerful position in the Chinese Communist Party with contempt, thus they reported daily deaths as a percentage of cases as 2.1%, 2.1%, 2.1% until they gave up lying about it. But the hit to China’s economy is real and huge. Coal consumption is half of what it should be at this point after the end of the lunar new year holidays. Air pollution, as measured by satellites, is down 20% to 50%.
China’s ability to threaten its neighbors will be much weakened as its government revenues crater. There is a good case for nominating the coronavirus for the Nobel Peace Prize. The humble virus has certainly done far more for world peace than Greta Thunberg, the current frontrunner.
The PLA can’t attack anyone until there is a vaccine for the coronavirus. It’s been reported that the PLA pulled out of Wuhan after 3,000 of its troops became sick. Collecting dead bodies is now on a bounty system, similar to how bodies were collected in Europe during the plague.
Another beautiful outcome from the coronavirus is that it should, in a rational world, eliminate China from the world’s supply chains. It might be good for a couple of million jobs in the United States alone.
Reuters, meanwhile, are reporting that things are picking up in China
Apparently Chinese official data shows there are more lights and more people driving around and we all know the Chinese government would never make that sort of thing up.
BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Nearly 300 million people have gone back to work in China since the Lunar New Year break as more companies restart business and coronavirus travel restrictions ease, although many small firms are still struggling to find enough workers to run plants.
Coal consumption is making a slight recovery.
Chinese coal consumption data
We hope things are improving for the people, if not for President Xi.
On the news tonight various officials told us that now “we can no longer stop the virus coming into the country”. It was some kind of self-soothing abject nonsense to calm themselves down. What they meant to say was that we can no longer stop the virus running amok inside our country (because we didn’t stop flights from Iran a week ago).
Obviously we could still block flights tomorrow and stop the virus coming in. And given that we may run out of hospital beds in weeks, it still seems sensible to stop potential virus-shedding people from romping through our cafes and shops. The main aim now, surely, is to delay the peak til after winter. Adding random virus generators doesn’t seem like a good way to reduce the use of ICU beds, even though there will come a point where there will be so much virus in Australia that bringing in a few more won’t matter. But when a single superspreading tourist can double the national toll, we’re not there yet.
Right now, there may be people who live in Indonesia, Africa, or anywhere, noticing that people are getting sick all around them. While the Australian government is waiting for the WHO to tell them what to do, these same potential carriers are thinking of boarding a plane to come to Australia. (Same for the US and UK, NZ and Canada obviously).
Preparing is quite good advice,
With lentils, beans, nuts and rice,
But if COVID should spread,
Best take to your bed,
And hope that your stocks will suffice.
No seriously, this is matter-of-fact, youtube-at-its-best, concise, cartoony, and smart.
Think of doctors as Body-Engineers. The problem to solve today Engineer-readers — is how to keep blood supply oxygenated when lungs are highly inflamed, filling with fluid, and the delicate thin membranes of lung tissue can’t cope with the sheer forces of rapid collapse and expansion. As well, if oxygen levels drop, even unconscious patients will breathe involuntarily — out of synch with artificial ventilation machines. The sensation of suffocation creates the urge to breath faster and harder.
.
The great news is ICU staff are getting much better at keeping people alive when they get ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which can happen with other diseases (like Influenza). Seems, the ICUs can keep 84% alive while they wait for the inflammation to subside and the damage to heal. Though the DIY version at home probably won’t be so effective.
Not enough beds
Obviously, this explains my obsessive interest in the percentage needing ICU care and also the Ro (rate of reproduction or spread). With a shortage of ICU beds, slowing the spread makes a life-and-death difference to state the bleeding obvious. To bore you again: in Australia we have about 1 ICU bed per 12000 people or 2,000 ICU beds nationally.
Check out the Ro epidemiology curve written here Jan 31st: Corona virus and those exponential curves. Note that current estimates of Ro are between 2 and 3, so higher than these (meaning the curve will hit harder, faster and peak higher unless we bring it down through draconian isolation measures). An Ro of 1.8 peaks in just 60 days. Sometime in the last few days a medico in Japan got this through to the guy in charge, which is why with only 200 patients he realized that closing schools was imperative across the whole country. The only way to reduce the R0 to zer0 is to “Stop The Flights”. The next best option (far distant second) are mass lockdowns, closure of factories, schools, offices, etc.
As a reader wrote to me yesterday: It’s not practical to close the borders. My reply: It’s not practical to kill 100,000 people either but one or the other may happen. Do the maths, WHO estimates 1% CFR (Case Fatality Rate. Let’s be optimistic, call it 0.5%. Deaths in the next six months: Australia, 125,000; Canada, 175,000; New Zealand, 25,000, USA, 1.6m; UK, 300,000. Geddit?
Ro, Reproductive curves of infectious diseases. ResearchGate
Next post: stock up at home. Panic buying is what happens when people wait for the government to tell them to prepare. Think of long lasting food that you will eat anyway, and don’t forget soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, disposable gloves, plastic bags, detergents, medicines (prescriptions). Mail order deliveries are a good option. The less physical shopping you need to do in the next few months, the better. Do it for your country. If you can stay out of the shops, and out of the hospital, that’s going to help the people who can’t.
Amazing. Sinbad reports on the situation in Iran. He is a commenter here who speaks the language. I can’t confirm this except to say that #Coronavirusupdates Iran looks like everything he is describing. Officially there are only 388 cases and 34 deaths. But on twitter, just like China, censorship and denial and so much more. Mass graves. Corrupt officials. Mass spraying of the streets. But if there is no attempt to stop it spreading (no lockdown like China has done) this will truly run wild. Those poor people. Germany closed flights in January, related to other problems in Iran. In the last week Iraq, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, UAE, Kuwait all closed borders with Iran. Australia, with lower medical standards imported a case from Iran today instead. – Jo
UPDATE: Finally, today the Australian government banned arrivals from Iran without a two week holiday stopover somewhere. That’s a lot better but should be mandatory proper quarantine. The government now has the arduous job of tracking the 40 people (or more) she may have infected and the people those victims may have infected (their families). Those 40+ people now have the stressful wait to find out if they got “lucky”. Hopefully they’ll all survive and the virus doesn’t spread wildly. Why did we take this risk?
“How to prevent and stop the spread is easy. But it will not be done.
The virus has no legs nor wings. It can not move from country to country on its own.
Stop international and inter regional travel for 40 days. During that time, test everyone from any region with disease. Those infected go off to disease camp and stay there until dead, or cured plus any relapse time possible. Workers in the camp have separate quarters area from the sick and do not return to the outside population until 40 days after the last case is discharged.
From Sinbad:
Hi all,
A bit of update on the Iranian front since my last post1- The regime has no plan to quarantine. Multiple officials including the ‘president’ have come out and refuted it as ‘unscientific’ and ‘backward’.2- The regime views everything from a security lens. Consequently, regime mouthpieces have already stated that the ‘enemy’ will seize upon any chance to bring the country to a standstill in turn leading to the toppling of a an extremely hated and weakened theocracy. The fascisti are extremely paranoid at this stage. This means that the mullahcracy is committed to the exact opposite of what the rest of the world is doing. As i stated in my original post, they have no intention of controlling it. As the architect in Matrix put it ‘there are levels of survival we are prepared to accept’. The population is expendable.3- An MP for the city of Rasht, capital of Gilan province along the Caspian sea, has described the situation as ‘horrific’, based upon burial numbers from the city’s main cemetery, claiming that the number of deaths are much higher. However, he does not dare to tell how many due to ramifications.
4- The above is mirrored in reports of 2000 freshly dug graves in the city of Qom over the last week or so. Chinese despots build hospitals in 7 days, the mullahs dig thousands of graves in one week. There are multiple reports, citizen journalism, of people of all ages and sexes dying quite quickly, 2-3 days, and being hurriedly buried covered in lye. Relatives either being told to keep their mouths shut or bought off with some small lump sum. This common practice by the regime.
5- Another council official from Tehran has made a claim of 15000 infected for the entire country. This was a few days ago.
6- The actual numbers? No one knows. The regime is not interested. They are not monitoring nor do they have any protocols in place. The numbers of available kits are minuscule.
7- However, arguably the number one authority on this thing Dr. Drosten at Charite, believes numbers of infected to be very high, at least between 5000-10000, and probably much higher. Of all the countries, he is most worried about Iran. This podcast is in German but i have read a Persian excerpt. It would be good if German speakers could translate the gist of this podcast. https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html
9- Most pharmacies in Iran have run out of masks, hand sanitiser and gloves. Some people have attempted 50 pharmacies in the capital in vain being forced to travel to the neighbouring provinces to secure some. There are reports on shortages of alcohol as well. Some medical staff have died already. Some in their 20′s.
10- There are recordings coming out with medical staff telling about the chaos at hospitals and lack of supplies, equipment, plan or proper protocol. Many hospitals have been turned completely into corona wards, turning away everyone else. There are reports of 20 people dying in one Tehran hospital in one shift alone. However these cannot be corroborated independently since the government has begun a vast censorship effort.
11- One thing is certain, the brave medical staff are doing their best to combat this thing on their own. Correction, Khamenovsky did release a clip form an undisclosed location praising their efforts. Staff have been told by senior doctors and specialists that the time to leave would be now since they may not be able to later on due to coming down or putting their families at risk. However, it should be too late for that already. As far as i am aware, staff have rejected these offers although many are really scared since they are pretty much operating in darkness. Some are reporting family breakdown and a sense of paranoia since support or accurate information from above is non existent.
12- The WHO should have taken over the Iranian situation last month but as always the UN is doing the usual vacillation routine. Rwanda anyone?
13- So is the mullahcracy doing anything? Absolutely. How about this; 3 year sentences and lashing have been introduced with 24 ‘rumour mongers’ arrested already. All ‘Israeli and CIA agents’ no doubt! Some have been cautioned and released. A team of the country’s top medical experts were told at a meeting with health ministry officials a few days ago that the minutes should be treated as top security material. They were later warned by IRGC to keep their mouths shut or else. A few have broken ranks and revealed what happened during the meeting. In short; all proposals by the experts, following international efforts and guidelines, were dismissed. In other words, there is no plan. ‘Things must flow as normal, disruption are foreign enemy efforts etc.’.
14- The German government has finally revoked the infamous Mahan Air’s, Corona Air or Terrorist Air, operating permits in Germany. Unfortunately, the damage is already done.
16- Here is for those who believe mullahs to be serious die hard fanatics with apocalyptic ambitions. Reports were made this week about 53 prominent mullahs from the epicentre, Qom, packing their families and relatives into a privately chartered passenger plane and flee to the port city of Mah-Shahr in the south. Apparently, they have been housed in a guarded area in the outskirts. Once locals found out, they rushed the local government building demanding an answer in regards to why such large number of people from this virus hotbed had been flown in. They received the usual answer; disappear or disappear.
17- The above is mirrored in other reports of some officials moving their families abroad or leaving Tehran and other major cities. Some regime henchmen have openly admitted that the country will be facing ‘very serious next 7-10′ days.
18- I would caution against believing these numerous reports of regime apparatchiki coming down with the virus. As Iranians say; once they’re dead, we’ll believe it. The regime exercises something called Taqiya or outright pretending/lying as a legitimate tenet of their creed. Projecting one’s own attributes to these criminals is a serious mistake. They have no morals or principles. Would they fake illness to pretend ‘we are all in the same boat’? Absolutely. The reality is that they are hunkering down in safety allowing the pandemic to burn itself out.
19- Remember our friend Harirchi the deputy health minister promising to resign if the numbers were even close to 25% of the stated 50 Qom casualties? The hospital official death toll of 210 as of Thursday evening has been released. The Qom MP Frahani who released the initial 50 number has maintained a daily death rate of 10 per day for the city but that was a few days ago.
20- Actual numbers? I am guessing since there is no way of knowing for sure. 100,000 – 200,000 infected and an actual death toll of 1000 already. As i mentioned in my original post, Iran will surpass China. Iran’s death toll cannot be compared to the rest of the world due to factors mentioned in earlier post i.e. systemic malnutrition and the government being the enemy of the people. North Korea, Yemen or Syria would be equivalents in regards to malnutrition and lack of infrastructure with only North Korea matching mullahcracy in its hatred of its own population.
21- How widespread is it? How about this; 7 Iranian passengers arriving at Kuwait this past week tested positive. All of them. What does that tell us?
22- 20 million Shia pilgrims visit Qom alone every year. Domestically and from Africa, India, the Gulf sheikdoms, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan etc. Major source of revenue, indoctrination, propaganda and recruitment. The show must go on at all costs.
23- This thing has not even taken off in the city Mash-had, the number one pilgrimage site. However, numbers of dead are starting to trickle through.
24- The pandemic is entrenched in Tehran now. It has started at the southern part of the city, traditional, more impoverished and more dense, and spread to the rest. As of Thursday evening, Tehran is reporting 100 dead followed by Qom at 80. In my view, the above numbers are worthless. The regime is already changing the designation to ‘respiratory related deaths’ in order to bring down the numbers.
25- Remember the sage words of the officials in regards to quarantines being ‘dated’ and ‘unscientific’? This is apparently scientific. Burning of Peganum Harmala seeds to ‘purify’ hospitals. This is an ancient folk remedy of the region lacking scientific evidence. Can you imagine? As a patient suffering from bone crunching pain, fever and reduced breathing ability being exposed to the thick pungent smoke? I can assure you, it is pretty strong. See, it’s all under control, the smoke will take care of it.
26- The virus has spread to prisons, already notoriously overpopulated and unsanitary, and some of the military bases all over the country. Suffice to say, none of these institutions have adequate measures to deal with the issues.
27- Business as usual. Visitors arriving at Qeshm island in the Persian Gulf. According to Rouhani the so called president; everything will go back to normal on Saturday! This should tell you why postmodernist/post structuralist left is so in love with religious fundamentalism. There is no objective reality, just project own radical subjective wishful thinking onto external universe.
28- Finally, as others have pointed out, Friday prayers have been cancelled, not just in the capital but in 23 cities. However, senior mullahs are raging already, demanding a return to normal claiming that; 1) having not been consulted, and 2) the virus being a product of ‘the world of infidels’ thus a potential attempt to disrupt the unity of Umma. Consequently, an urgent return to mass gatherings is needed.
I will post more in the coming days. Please ask any questions you may have and i will try to answer.
Overnight, people woke up to the real threat and markets crashed appropriately. Unless we take massive action immediately, the exponential curve is about to lift off. And if we don’t act now then massive action is coming anyway in a month, along with major disruption, pandemonium, and worse.
There are now 5,300 cases outside China. If it doubles every 5 days (as it just has) then 40 days from now 5 million people will be infected.
What does massive action look like? A bit like this:
In Japan some are in uproar — they’re the ones who don’t understand how 226 infections becomes a national hospital crisis in weeks. Japan (like most nations) is theoretically only 19 doublings away from 100% infected.
Lies are killing people in Wuhan. We don’t know the real situation, not even the situation of our own residential building. But we deserve the right to know everything, which can only help us to control the contagion. We were told that buildings with red tape indicate that no residents are infected by the virus, but the ones with white notices posted outside indicate infections. But our building has no such notices, and we have no way of knowing who’s infected.
On the lockdown:
The first problem, however, is that the rules for the isolation facilities have been loosely applied, which I can still observe today [Feb. 18] from my apartment, a high-level unit. The second problem is that security measures have turned out to be a mere formality. I saw with my own eyes that security guards were often absent from their posts. Many of them let people through…
WHO says 1% mortality rate in China
The high mortality rate is not the tip of the iceberg — it is the iceberg.
At the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed. But this week, a WHO expert suggested that this has not been the case with Covid-19. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and the country’s response, said the evidence did not suggest that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If borne out by further testing, this could mean that current estimates of a roughly 1% fatality rate are accurate. This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.
A virus with a 1% case fatality rate– that’s ten times worse than The Flu — could kill 70 million people.
The WHO is rarely worth quoting, (because of this kind of conflicts of interest) but they’ve been playing this disaster down. When the team run by an apologist for Xi says “1%” and it matches the shocking stories on #Covid2019, it’s time to pay attention.
As bad as it is, its a relief after weeks of watching this build while leaders were asleep the wheel. Finally, some action. If a few major economies launch into action — others will suddenly follow. Like fish flipping from “don’t want to look alarmist” to “don’t want to look inept”.
The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.
The zero carbon goal by 2050 was also a Grand Theater Promise. But here the two symbolic acts of nothingness met like anti-matter and threaten to blow up an economy.
Controversial plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport have been thrown into doubt after a court ruling.
The government’s decision to allow the expansion was unlawful because it did not take climate commitments into account, the Court of Appeal said. Heathrow said it would challenge the decision, but the government said it would not appeal.
The judges said that in future, a third runway could go ahead, as long as it fits with the UK’s climate policy.
Since when were Judges appointed to decide if an elected government stuck to its policies? Isn’t that what the voters are supposed to do?
British ambitions of becoming a global economic power after Brexit suffered a major blow yesterday after a court ruling suggested future airports, motorway and energy projects could all be blocked to prevent global warming.
Join these dots. Our universities took a huge bet on Chinese students that is falling apart. They’ve creamed the profits, but taken no insurance and stand to lose billions if they can’t get students to Australia — An extraordinary 65,000 of whom got caught in China by the quarantine. In China, travel agents are marketing 14 day holiday stopovers in Thailand to students, who are then flying on to Australia to get around the ban. But this is not quarantine. Thailand is open to China, and considered so risky that Israel has already banned flights from Thailand. What’s next? Australia imports the virus, tens of thousands may die, and all so the ivory tower smug academics can make their profits, while weak politicians sell out the nations citizens — especially the senior, longest serving ones?
How long before Israel bans Australian planes? We could be one the highest value clean nations in the world, waiting out our first winter of this pandemic until there is a treatment. We could be a place that wealthy tourists come to stay safe (after a two week real quarantine) and spend months of money. Perhaps we still can? Some students in Wuhan are offering to pay for a Charter Flight to Christmas Island if we’ll let them.
Martin North interviews Salvatore Babones and he is eloquently savage about the “mindbogglingly illogical” move of Australia to allow Chinese students to come in without proper quarantine. h.t David E.
Is Scott Morrison selling out the nations health for arrogant academic investors?
Read Australia’s gloriouspreparedness plan for Coronavirus it’s as Babones said — “56 pages of platitudes” — the plan Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt waved so passionately today is a recycled seasonal flu plan. It lacks almost all useful details barring advising people in Aged Care to get their Wills in order. (h.t Bill H)
Where are the Labor Party? Whining about sports allocations (minor junk pork barrelling). They could be scoring major points for senior citizens, the sick, the vulnerable. Or are they under the thrall of the Big-Government-loving universities even more than the Liberals are?
Salvatore Babones is an expert on the academic sector and points out how extreme the gamble has been by Australian universities. The most “Chinese” university in the US is Uni of Illinois, with 5,700 students. Uni of Sydney has four times as many students as this. The Uni of Illinois were so worried about that exposure they took out insurance with Lloyds of London against exactly this kind of event. He warned Uni of Sydney six months ago, but they didn’t buy the insurance. And there are many universities in Australia in a similar position. They took the taxpayer dollar, and took the profits but now that trouble has come, they want the government and the people to bail them out and foot the bill — with their health, even their lives.
The mineral sector is not putting public health at risk…
The Tourism sector was highly dependent on China, but no one is talking of rerouting tourists through secondary nations to keep that alive.
The people pushing hardest on the politicians to risk Australians health are the smug ivory tower academics who recklessly bet too much on this.
The two week unsupervised holiday in Thailand is not a quarantine. Thailand is not wealthy, but is one of the only countries still allowing Chinese flights. It’s only kept its border open because of pressure from China. Australian universities are exploiting that “loophole”.
Chinese travel agents are marketing bespoke “14-day, 13-night” packages to third-country transit destinations to help Chinese students enrolled at Australian universities get around the federal government’s coronavirus ban for as little as $2700 each.
Agents said the packages, which are being micro-targeted on Chinese social media, are selling well, as almost 65,000 Chinese students look for ways to get around the federal government’s travel ban on all non-Australian citizens and non-permanent residents coming from mainland China. “Thailand and Malaysia are the top two choices. Next is Cambodia,” said an education agent in Beijing.
Scott Morrison imposed the travel ban on February 1, when almost two-thirds of the 109,000 Chinese students enrolled in Australia were in China for the Lunar New Year break. Estimates suggest the ban could cost universities up to $2bn in deferred fees.
Stopping flights for a few more weeks — and from other locations too — will buy us time to find out more about this virus before we decide what to do for winter. Singapore and Hong Kong appear to be managing the virus, and we were containing it, perhaps with some help from summer — which ends today.
Do the maths
Look behind the marketing — for most people it’s like a cold. True – but for 5 – 10% it’s a hospital stay, and for 70 – 79 year old people in China it’s an 8% case fatality rate. In the 80 plus cohort 15% passed away. The death rate will be lower — the Chinese didn’t test the non serious cases who stayed home. The air is polluted in Wuhan and rates of smoking are high. But the rate of hospitalization for health workers was 15% too. Even a few young healthy nurses and doctors have died (which happens with the flu sometimes too). Does this virus leave lasting lung damage or scarring? We don’t know. Can people develop immunity to it? Another mystery. Is the Iranian version more deadly?
Flu kills 0.1% but we have antivirals, vaccines, and partial immunity thanks to other strains. This is not the flu.
So the virus is on its way. Even though Australia has no known community transmission we are choosing to slow down the spread by actively importing it even though we are surrounded by a moat, and are pretty much self-sustaining. We have thousands of high risk people and the disease that’s coming is largely unknown — today there are reports a Japanese case of a woman medical experts had thought had recovered who tests positive again. Is this a biphasic disease like anthrax? That’ll be fun.
Winter is twelve weeks away for Australians, and we know the coronavirus potentially threatens to overwhelm our medical systems and could be a GDP-type hit on national economies. It’s highly infectious, and between 5 – 17% of current cases outside China require hospitalization, and probably 1 -3% will need intensive care. Inviting the virus to start spreading now will mean it will peak during winter — the worst possible time in Australia.
Australia is one of the easiest countries to protect from this scourge, yet we are obediently following policies of northern hemisphere nations in a different situation. Hmm?
As I keep saying, it’s easier to import a deadly virus than to bring in cut flowers to Australia.
Most people won’t get very sick, but China is still reacting somewhat like the it has the Black Plague.
Scott Morrison says “the pandemic is upon us” but also says don’t cancel large public events, you can still go to the footy. How to reconcile the two; is it coming, or isn’t it?
Based on all these things, the only logical approach is to close the borders temporarily until we know more. The medical experts I’ve talked to privately agree. Thousands of Australians agree (see the last essential survey). Yet despite that, almost no medical official, commentator or expert even discusses that as an option. Are they all afraid of being called a scaremonger? Is namecalling worse than being the person who decided to let the virus run rife, or do they know something they are not telling us? Perhaps, behind the scenes, the experts know that too many cases are already circulating without diagnosis? Officials are acting as if that’s the case. Somehow we shifted from “low risk” to “100% chance sometime soon”. Germany has just announced six new cases and says “it’s facing an epidemic”. Trump has said “the risk is low” but warned schools need to be prepared to close. One US case with no known source has just been announced. Ominously, they acquired it before Feb 19th, but only just got tested. Evidently undiagnosed coronavirus was spreading a week and a half ago around Sacramento.
LATE NOTE: The US untraceable case suggests the virus has been circulating possibly since Feb 12th or so. Perhaps this isn’t as dire as it sounds. Whoever he caught it off may not have triggered a wave of deadly pnumonia instead perhaps just triggering colds and flus. That may mean the virus is already loose, and most infections are not severe. Then again, since no one is testing these kinds of cases, who knows? I hope someone is tracking pneumonia cases in Sacramento and starting to test them.
Latest claims are the Ro (rate of reproduction of the infection) was a 7.05 in the early days in China. The draconian quarantines have reduced this to to 3.2. (by Jan 23rd, so it’s even lower now, hopefully). We have to bring the Ro below 1 to stop this. Every person has to infect less than one other.
How many will need a hospital?
Based on Worldometer stats, and bearing in mind there is an eight day delay between detection and progression to “severe” — the latest stats from semi-reliable countries on Feb 19th, the rate of progression to hospitalization is: (severe cases/ total cases 8 days ago). Bear in mind that with the lack of current broad testing, these numbers may bear no resemblance to the actual number of cases.
Japan (13/76) 17%
Singapore (7/53) 13%
Germany (2/16) 13%
Hong Kong (6/62) 10%
Diamond Princess (36/542) 7%
Thailand (2/35) 6%
Taiwan (1/22) 5%
UAE (2/13) 25%
France (1/12) 8%
There are zero cases progressing to “serious critical” from Australia (15), USA (29), UK (9), Macao (10), Canada (8), Malaysia (22), Vietnam (16), India (5). That’s 114 cases with good outcomes. Many countries have had only one or two cases and complete recovery: Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Egypt, Belgium, Russia, Philippines. Things are moving too fast in South Korea, Iran and Italy to make their statistics meaningful. Obviously all three had far wider spread a week ago than they knew of.
Is there any data on how this affects different racial groups, or is that information being kept quiet because everyone is too afraid of offending an ethnic group?
Singapore and Hong Kong appear to be doing good jobs of controlling the spread. Iran is a basket case, so is Indonesia (with no reported cases, but little testing and their medical policy is “it’s in the hands of Allah”. )
While graphs show exponential growth outside China, it appears (probably falsely) localized to South Korea, Iran and Italy. Presumably coronavirus has been headed via 747 out of all three for at least a week, which may be why officials have given up. They know outbreaks will occur next week, they just don’t know where. What I can’t explain is why they won’t even try tracking and isolating these cases now and stopping further imports. The success of Singapore and Hong Kong suggests it might still be possible.
Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.
James Hamblin M.D., The Atlantic
The Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch is exacting in his diction, even for an epidemiologist. … it’s striking when one of the points he wanted to get exactly right was this: “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”
… even with the ideal containment, the virus’s spread may have been inevitable. Testing people who are already extremely sick is an imperfect strategy if people can spread the virus without even feeling bad enough to stay home from work. Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. But, he clarifies emphatically, this does not mean that all will have severe illnesses.
At this point, it is not even known how many people are infected. As of Sunday, there have been 35 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. But Lipsitch’s “very, very rough” estimate when we spoke a week ago (banking on “multiple assumptions piled on top of each other,” he said) was that 100 or 200 people in the U.S. were infected. That’s all it would take to seed the disease widely. The rate of spread would depend on how contagious the disease is in milder cases. On Friday, Chinese scientists reported in the medical journal JAMA an apparent case of asymptomatic spread of the virus, from a patient with a normal chest CT scan. The researchers concluded with stolid understatement that if this finding is not a bizarre abnormality, “the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging.”
Originally, doctors in the U.S. were advised not to test people unless they had been to China or had contact with someone who had been diagnosed with the disease. Within the past two weeks, the CDC said it would start screening people in five U.S. cities, in an effort to give some idea of how many cases are actually out there. But tests are still not widely available. As of Friday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories said that only California, Nebraska, and Illinois had the capacity to test people for the virus.
The Australian asks “should you travel” and says “Yes, No, Maybe”. Jo Nova says “Why risk it?” — who wants to chance catching it on a plane or overseas — even if you only get the common cold, you may end up facing quarantine for two weeks. Of course, if you are away from home, it might be time to get back.
This may all look so much better (or worse) in a few weeks. We just don’t have the numbers yet.
The Optimist says: Perhaps this is a bad flu season and as long as we can stop the cytokine cascade in the vulnerable, or get some anti-viral working, we may not be looking at large deaths or mass quarantines. The Pessimist says: do the math, stop the flights, and wait for the data.
UPDATE: The Hon. Craig Kelly MP was so appalled by this story he has taken this to the Australian Parliament already where The Labor Party was so afraid they interrupted his allocated 15 minute speech just to stop him finishing. They even called a formal Division which means the bell is rung and all the missing MPs have to return to the Chamber to vote. See that on Kelly’s Facebook page. Who cares about our climate and who covers up for incompetent bureaucrats?!
For generations it was a Guinness Book of Records type thing. Now it’s gone.
In 1924 Marble Bar set a world record of the most consecutive days of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or above, during an incredible period of 160 days starting in 1923. It was legend — but thanks to the genius homogenized adjustments, we now find out all along it was wrong. It’s another ACORN triumph, rewriting history, extinguishing the hot days of days long gone. The experts at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have reanalyzed the temperatures from 4000 km away and nine decades in the future and apparently it wasn’t that hot.
Chris Gillham wonders how the bureau figured out the Marble Bar max was one whole degree too warm on 18 Nov 1923, but it was 0.6°C too warm on 19 Nov 1923, 0.3°C too warm on 20 Nov 1923, 0.2°C too warm on 21 Nov 1923, and 0.8°C too warm on 22 Nov 1923? He points out the sky was totally clear every day, the screen didn’t get shuffled around every day, etc, so where’s the logic? The world record was extinguished because on 8 March 1924 the ACORN adjustments magically cooled the temperature from 38.2°C to 36.5°C. What caused the thermometer to be 1.7°C too warm on that particular day? That adjustment is twice the size of the entire century long trend. Check out those “daily changes” of raw versus “ACORN.”
Ponder the bad luck of scientists Saving-The-World who constantly have to battle against all the thermometers which cruelly and overestimated temperatures from Stevenson Screens in sites probably unaffected by concrete and bitumen so long ago. Those falsely high readings lulled the world into thinking that the world has always been hot and that CO2 was an irrelevant, minor and beneficial gas. What are the odds that so much equipment was non-randomly, dastardly conspiring to hide the True Catastrophic Effect of CO2!
But never fear, the brilliant minds of the BoM are correcting past mistakes with secret methods they cannot explain to mere mortals outside the sacred guild of weather druids. Luckily for us, the new super sensitive small box electronic gizmos that record one second spikes of warmth from passing trucks and radiated heat from tarmac and walls is The Truth Hallalujah Brother. In another ten years, the climate of Marble Bar circa 1924 will be so much cooler. I bet the dead will be delighted.
I can’t imagine why the BoM didn’t issue a press release to let the world know that Australia now doesn’t hold the longest hottest record which now goes to Death Valley.
Thanks to the volunteer number-crunching dedication of Chris Gillham for doing what the million-dollar-a-day BoM hasn’t found time to do — tell Australian we no longer have our long-standing heatwave world record at Marble Bar and that distinction now goes to America. Perhaps if we paid them less, they’d be more informative? — Jo
If the Bureau of Meteorology’s Australian Climate Observation Reference Network (ACORN) accurately corrects historic temperature observations, it means that Marble Bar in the north of WA can no longer boast it had a world record heatwave in 1923/24.
Marble Bar has been world famous for decades because of the 160 consecutive days in which it recorded maxima at or above 37.8C (100F or a “century” in the Fahrenheit days).
The Marble Bar thermometer in a Stevenson screen topped 100F every day from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, and nowhere else on earth is known to have recorded 160 century days in a row without a break.
Marble Bar is now a runner-up
The BoM website used to have a Climate Education page explaining Marble Bar’s heatwave record. The National Library of Australia considered it to be of national significance and has archived it for posterity.
In 2020, the BoM website still has a page that explains: Marble Bar, in the Pilbara, holds the Australian record for the longest sequence of days over the old century mark (100°F or 37.8°C). This occurred during the period from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924 when the maximum temperature equalled or exceeded 100°F for 160 days in a row.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics acknowledges the world record and Australians have heard about the Marble Bar heatwave record for many decades :
Temperature dataset downloads from the BoM website show that ACORN has cooled 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924 so much that the Pilbara town can no longer boast that it had a world record 160 consecutive days above 37.8C.
ACORN 2, which is described as a world-class homogenisation network, has reduced the 160 days to just 128 – from 1 November 1923 to 7 March 1924.
From 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, the dates during which the 160 days of 100 or more were recorded, there’s now 153 days at or above 100F.
And the winner is … America Wikipedia’s Death Valley page states that “The greatest number of consecutive days with a maximum temperature of 100 °F (38 °C) or above was 154 days in the summer of 2001.” This data is confirmed by the American Meteorological Society, which also references 134 consecutive days at Furnace Creek in Death Valley that were above above 37.8C during the summer of 1974.
154 days is less than 160 days but a lot more than 128 days, so it seems that America now holds the world record heatwave of consecutive 37.8C+ days at Death Valley – thanks to ACORN.
On its archived Climate Education page, the BoM states that “The highest temperature recorded during the record spell was 47.5°C on 18 January 1924.”
This is correct in the original RAW temperature dataset (see below), but ACORN 2 cools 18 January 1924 to 47.3C.
An Excel spreadsheet (499kb) with columns of daily maximum temperatures at Marble Bar from October 1923 to April 1924 in ACORN 1, ACORN 2 and RAW can be downloaded here.
Politicians and climate change skeptics are often scorned for suggesting that the BoM adjusts temperature data to fit a global warming agenda or to cool the past (e.g. Media Watch), and in late 2019 SBS News reported that the bureau denied it has rewritten Australia’s climate record.
The animation below uses the daily temperature datasets for RAW, ACORN 1 (introduced 2011/2012) and ACORN 2 (introduced quietly with no BoM announcement in early 2019) to compare the number of days each year from 1910 to 2019 that Marble Bar recorded a very hot day (defined by the bureau as at or above 40C) :
Marble Bar very hot day trends
This animation demonstrates that temperature data has been adjusted, with Marble Bar just one of many examples where Australia’s climate record has been rewritten to cool the past.
The slides show that very hot days were far more frequent according to the original RAW thermometer observations in the first half of the 1900s, but ACORN 1 cooled many of these and ACORN 2 has trimmed them even further to create an upward trend in the occurrence of 40C+ days at Marble Bar since 1910.
Rain = clouds = fewer very hot days
The bureau’s archived 2009 Climate Education page helps explain why Marble Bar had the world’s longest heatwave in 1923/24: “The town is far enough inland that, during the summer months, the only mechanisms likely to prevent the air from reaching such a temperature involve a southward excursion of humid air associated with the monsoon trough, or heavy cloud, and/or rain, in the immediate area.”
Marble Bar averaged just 9.9mm of rain per month from November 1923 to April 1924, compared to the 1910-1964 Nov-Apr average of 43.4mm per month. Just 71.1mm of rain fell in 1924, compared to an average 325mm in 1910-1964. The town had 132 very hot 40C+ days in 1924, compared to the 1910-1964 average of 112.3.
It’s no surprise that the frequency of rainfall strongly influences how hot it gets in Marble Bar and how often the town exceeds 40C. In the absence of cloud data, rainfall is a proxy for cloudy days that keep temperatures below 37.8C or 40C.
Confining the data to months when very hot days occur, the animation below shows the correlation between annual November to April rainfall at Marble Bar and the number of very hot days in the RAW, ACORN 1 and ACORN 2 daily temperature datasets :
RAW very hot day (40C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 112.3 1965-2019 98.7
ACORN 1 very hot day (40C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 93.2 1965-2019 94.5
ACORN 2 very hot day (40C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 90.7 1965-2019 95.1
Rainfall November to April monthly averages: 1910-1964 43.3mm 1965-2019 56.5mm
The animation demonstrates that the frequency of very hot days increased when rainfall and cloudy days were relatively sparse at Marble Bar in the early 1900s, and how very hot days decreased when rainfall and cloudy days increased from the 1970s.
However, the correlation between very hot days and rainy days is ignored by ACORN 1, and even more so by ACORN 2. For example, ACORN cools 8 March 1924 from 38.2C to to 36.5C at Marble Bar, ending the world record, but there was no rainfall on 8 March 1924 so what caused the thermometer to be 1.7C warmer than it really was on that particular day (according to ACORN)?
1,187 fewer very hot days
Marble Bar had 6,178 very hot days of 40C or more from 1910 to 1964 in the original RAW observations, and ACORN 2 cuts this to 4,991 – a 19.2% reduction.
If this homogenisation is an accurate adjustment, it must be assumed the BoM identified a significant recording error in the standardised equipment and/or Stevenson screen, or an influential site move, in the first half of Marble Bar’s temperature record – sufficient to diminish the ability of rain clouds and clear skies to keep the daily temperature below or above 40C.
Alternatively, the daily ACORN adjustments are due to area averaging based on daily temperatures at “neighbouring” weather stations. In 1923/24, the closest known weather stations with digitised daily temperatures were Port Hedland Post Office, a coastal site almost 140 kilometres away, and Broome Post Office about 440 kilometres to the north (long-term Nov-Apr average maxima : Port Hedland 34.6C; Broome 33.9C; Marble Bar 39.7C). Nullagine, about 120 kilometres south and without digitised daily temperatures, is an influential station (long-term Nov-Apr average maxima 37.6C).
Although ACORN 2 substantially reduces the frequency of very hot days in the early 1900s at Marble Bar, both RAW and adjusted ACORN 2 maxima show the average temperature of the very hot 40C+ days was 42.4C in 1910-1964 and 42.3C in 1965-2019.
As at most weather stations, Marble Bar’s temperature history has been influenced by shifting rainfall patterns rather than CO2.
ACORN homogenisation of Australia’s temperature history doesn’t alter readings at the rainfall gauges since 1910, and seemingly ignores the correlation between cloudy days and very high temperatures.
Averages
The cooling adjustment of Marble Bar’s early observations affects both the frequency of very hot days and the yearly average maxima. Below compares average annual maxima in the RAW, ACORN 1 and ACORN 2 datasets :
Average maxima 1910-1964 – ACORN 1 34.90C / ACORN 2 34.77C / RAW 35.45C 1965-2019 – ACORN 1 35.16C / ACORN 2 35.18C / RAW 35.25C
ACORN 1 warmed 0.26C / ACORN 2 warmed 0.41C / RAW cooled 0.20C Average change per decade : ACORN 1 0.10C / ACORN 2 0.12C / RAW 0.03C
The maximum averages show that ACORN’s reduction of very hot days in the history books is typical of broader adjustments to maximum temperatures on all days at Marble Bar before the 1970s.
Not just very hot days
ACORN adjustments to historic daily observations affect not only the frequency of very hot days (40C+) but also what the BoM defines as hot days (35C+).
Since 1910, Marble Bar has recorded daily maxima at or above 35C every month of the year. The animation below shows annual hot 35C+ days at Marble Bar in the RAW, ACORN 1 and ACORN 2 datasets from 1910 to 2019, as well as annual rainfall :
RAW hot day (35C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 206.5 1965-2019 196.7
9.8 fewer hot days per year in 1965-2019 than 1910-1964
ACORN 1 hot day (35C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 196.3 1965-2019 194.2
2.1 fewer hot days per year in 1965-2019 than 1910-1964
ACORN 2 hot day (35C+) annual averages: 1910-1964 191.2 1965-2019 194.8
3.6 more hot days per year in 1965-2019 than 1910-1964
RAW hot day (35C+) annual average temperature: 1910-1964 40.1 1965-2019 39.9
Average hot days temperature 0.2C cooler in 1965-2019 than 1910-1964
ACORN 1 hot day (35C+) annual average temperature: 1910-1964 39.9 1965-2019 39.9
Average hot days temperature the same in 1965-2019 as 1910-1964
ACORN 2 hot day (35C+) annual average temperature: 1910-1964 39.9 1965-2019 39.9
Average hot days temperature the same in 1965-2019 as 1910-1964
Because annual rainfall can include downpours concentrated over just a few days and there isn’t necessarily any rainfall on cloudy days, another way to identify the correlation between hot or very hot days and cloudy rainfall days is to compare the average number of actual rainfall days each year, rather than total annual rainfall, since 1910.
This clarifies the influence of downpours over a few days but can’t account for cloudy days without rainfall.
The table below shows the averaged number of 35C+ and 40C+ days at Marble Bar in years when 10 to 19 days, 20 to 29 days, 30 to 39 days … 60 to 69 days of rainfall were recorded from 1910 to 2019:
Marble Bar is also noteworthy for recording 200 consecutive days of 35C+ from 5 October 1923 to 21 April 1924, averaging 41.7C, which ACORN 2 has reduced to 179 days from 19 October 1923 to 14 April 1924, averaging 41.5C.
Which dataset do we believe?
Marble Bar, widely considered to be the hottest place in Australia, nowadays has cooler weather and its residents endure fewer scorching hot days than was the case a hundred years ago.
ACORN’s rewriting of Marble Bar’s climate history has warmed the town and encouraged the belief that CO2 is responsible for more hot and very hot days.
If the BoM still believes its 2009 Climate Education web page and argues that Marble Bar retains its heatwave world record because the original 160 consecutive days of 37.8C+ in 1923/24 were valid and accurate, the credibility of ACORN is destroyed as a homogenisation process that persistently cools historic temperature observations around Australia.
But If ACORN is touted as a world-class network that produces accurate historic temperatures, Marble Bar can no longer boast that it holds the heatwave world record.
Either the original observations were accurate or the ACORN cooling adjustments are accurate, and the bureau can’t claim it’s both.
• Further details here, a page with links to further analysis of hot and very hot day frequency in different Australian regions.
If official stats are correct the death rate is 20%. It almost certainly isn’t, but either this virus is deadlier than ever, or Iranian officials are hiding a broader spread. Either way, every nation with high risk people (say, people over 60 years old) might consider suspending the flights til we know more. We would all probably be dealing with what Iran is right now if we had not closed flights to China weeks ago.
The US CDC says it’s OK to fly to and from Iran, though older people should “consider” postponing their trip. Travellers should stay away from sick people and use hand sanitizer etc. That’s Alert Level 2. They have raised the alert to level 3 for travel to South Korea. “Avoid non-essential travel” — but hey, go if you really want to. There is seemingly no warning on CDC Travel Notices that people traveling to these countries risk getting caught inside them if flights are stopped or internal borders shut. Will we do rescue flights in plastic wrapped planes?
Australian authorities say“reconsider your need to travel”and sternly warn “If you travel to Iran despite our advice, you will be screened for coronavirus (COVID-19) at airports. ” Which means someone will check your temperature, but not whether you have taken a panadol 2 hours ago and not whether you are an asymptomatic carrier.
Apparently, Iranian health officials think quarantine is too old fashioned. For that reason alone we should stop all flights from Iran from entry.
Amirabadi-Farahani [Qom lawmaker, who spoke in Parliament] said Qom should be quarantined, while also suggesting that nurses and other health-care workers lacked the necessary protective gear to treat coronavirus patients.
[Deputy Health Minister Iraj] Harirchi told journalists that a quarantine in the holy city — where many senior ayatollahs and thousands of religious students are based — is unlikely to be efficient in controlling the spread of the disease that emerged in China in December.
“We do not agree with quarantining Qom; the practice of using a quarantine is pre-World War I for the plague and cholera and Chinese [officials] are also unhappy with the quarantines imposed [in their country],” Harirchi said.
The son of an 83-year-old woman who died in Qom over the weekend after being infected with the coronavirus told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that she died while in quarantine in a hospital.
He said doctors did not test him even though he had taken care of his mother before she was transferred to the hospital. “They asked me if I coughed and asked a few other questions,” the man, who identified himself as Reza, said. “Then they said, ‘You can go.'”
David D. Kirkpatrick, Farnaz Fasshiki and Mujib Mashal, NY Times
Experts worry that few Middle Eastern countries are ready to respond effectively to the threat posed by the virus.
“How ready are these countries?” asked Dr. Montaser Bilbisi, an American-trained infectious disease specialist practicing in Amman, Jordan. “In all honesty, I have not seen the level of readiness that I have seen in China or elsewhere, and even some of the personal protective equipment is lacking.”
In Jordan, for example, he said that he had not yet seen a fully protective hazardous materials suit. “So health care workers would be at very high risk for infection.”
In Afghanistan, officials said the first confirmed case of the virus was a 35-year-old man from the western province of Herat who had recently traveled to Qom. Health officials declared a state of emergency in Herat. The government on Sunday had already suspended all air and ground travel to and from Iran.
But the border is difficult to seal. Thousands cross every week for religious pilgrimages, trade, jobs and study — about 30,000 in January alone, the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental agency, reported.
“In the past two weeks, more than a 1,000 people have visited or traveled to Qom from Herat, which means they come into closer contact with the virus,” the Afghan heath minister, Ferozuddin Feroz, said on Monday at a news conference in Kabul.
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If solar power and batteries were a winner anywhere, we’d hope it would be in remote Australian communities. But a cyclone clouded over Central-Australia for a few days and the batteries ran out. People had no money, no phone and no landline either. To boot, the rain flooded the roads, so people were cut off in every sense.
The non-binding unenforceable Paris agreement was always a theatre show on the international stage, where most countries promise to do nothing, and the rest make promises they don’t keep. But it’s an excuse for the domestic Deep State to do whatever they want.
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