2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2522710 14-Jul-2020 14:27

tdgeek:

mattwnz:

I think to is possibly due to what has happened in Oz with the virus apparently escaping from their isolation hotels being a major contributing factor in their outbreak. So IMO we do pose a risk to the CI at the moment, until we can be assured there are no further leaks in our watertight borders, and no local cases have resulted. We also aren't doing enough local testing, and this was again highlighted by the Minister of Heath today. I am not sure why the number have not improved much. It is just false economy not to at least do random sampling in at least the higher risk areas including contacts of workers involved.

Ok, we can direct all travel bubble economic woes to you them! :-) It would also appear that an Australia bubble would be a huge amount of time away?

Do NZers want to be responsible for an outbreak in the Cook Islands, and repeat what happened in 1918 with Samoa? https://www.teaomaori.news/samoa-influenza-100-years-on#:~:text=The%20influenza%20epidemic%20killed%20over,been%20spoken%20about%20until%20today.&text=The%20disease%20killed%20over%208%2C000%20people%20at%20the%20time.

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#2522712 14-Jul-2020 14:30

Oblivian:

mattwnz:

I am not sure why the number have not improved much. It is just false economy not to at least do random sampling in at least the higher risk areas including contacts of workers involved.

Like they announced they've started to do yesterday...

https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/media-releases/no-new-cases-covid-19-33

That is still a week later than when the Minister complained about the problem, and if there is any undetected virus in the community that has got through a hole, it has given it another week headstart. Very slow moving, and the Minster specifically mentioned it today at his press conference, as he still was not happy about the numbers as of today.

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#2522715 14-Jul-2020 14:38

mattwnz:

Do NZers want to be responsible for an outbreak in the Cook Islands, and repeat what happened in 1918 with Samoa? https://www.teaomaori.news/samoa-influenza-100-years-on#:~:text=The%20influenza%20epidemic%20killed%20over,been%20spoken%20about%20until%20today.&text=The%20disease%20killed%20over%208%2C000%20people%20at%20the%20time.

Matt, Just remind me how many days we have been without a case inside our borders? With your stance we could never reopen the border with the Cooks as we will always have cases from people coming back to NZ from higher risk countries.

The Cooks want us back or their economy totally crashes in September.

tdgeek

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#2522780 14-Jul-2020 14:44

cshwone:

mattwnz:

Do NZers want to be responsible for an outbreak in the Cook Islands, and repeat what happened in 1918 with Samoa? https://www.teaomaori.news/samoa-influenza-100-years-on#:~:text=The%20influenza%20epidemic%20killed%20over,been%20spoken%20about%20until%20today.&text=The%20disease%20killed%20over%208%2C000%20people%20at%20the%20time.

Matt, Just remind me how many days we have been without a case inside our borders? With your stance we could never reopen the border with the Cooks as we will always have cases from people coming back to NZ from higher risk countries.

The Cooks want us back or their economy totally crashes in September.

I agree. I appreciate Matt's conservatism on this, we are where we are now due to taking a conservative stance. But yes, we are heading into months with no cases s living in the community, let alone CT. We can get too risk averse.

ezbee

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#2522786 14-Jul-2020 14:53

Pacific Island Bubble... I suppose the pain points could be:

1/ Seperation of Customs, Immigration, Biosecurity ( Biggie for our farming ), duplicate equipment , secure paths etc.
2/ Who pays for all these costs , airlines/passengers and airports will argue for a deal to favour them, so subsidised?
3/ Aircrew management, airlines won't like extra cost running duplicate seperate rosters ?
4/ How squeeky tight are pacific islands , private jets, private yachts and such, drugs are smuggled in and through some islands ?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/24/the-new-drug-highway-pacific-islands-at-centre-of-cocaine-trafficking-boom
5/ Staff may have been redeployed on managing the whole isolation hotel thing.

Could also be as simple as lets let one thing squeeky tight and shipshape before we do another.
Oh heck Hotel escapes, there is always a % chance given we now have people who will smash windows etc.
Oh heck Aussie have just sent us a planeload of 501s with more to follow, arrange more secure isolation, support services etc.

Anything that goes wrong in pacific due to our actions we will be responsible to fix.
It maybe easier to directly send aid money for the moment, rather than subsidize holidays and spending outside NZ.

Seems more a timing / resource issue than anything else.

Oblivian

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#2522791 14-Jul-2020 14:59

Mattwnz: That is still a week later than when the Minister complained about the problem, and if there is any undetected virus in the community that has got through a hole, it has given it another week headstart. Very slow moving, and the Minster specifically mentioned it today at his press conference, as he still was not happy about the numbers as of today.

During Q&A he also reaffirmed the likelyhood is low/none as sporadic symptomatic check would be as good as a blanket of negatives and that's OK. But be nice to check anyway. (he still can't have it both ways any more than when he said it last week/2 weeks ago)

We understand. You agree. Doesn't need repetition.

Like you have said, the virus doesn't understand time, or numbers/testing rates anyway.

But it doesn't detract from the fact even if it was the ONLY line of defense, there is still the secondary line that if you are symptomatic of anything. The current climate makes you a. stupid to not stay home b. Very quickly noticed by others and avoided if not shamed or told to go away.

And that's from someone with a good record and full compliment of sick leave for the past 18yrs stacked who's had 2 separate periods of off-work in the last 45 or so days alone for headcolds and been probed.

Sneezing in public is now up there with farting in an elevator

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#2522871 14-Jul-2020 17:08

An extremely long newspiece worth reading. This is a small excerpt.

Washington Post: Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic

Trump hasn’t consulted with the scientist since early June, telling Hannity ‘he’s ‘a nice man but he’s made a lot of mistakes.’

For months, Anthony S. Fauci has played a lead role in America’s coronavirus pandemic... who has assessed the risk and issued increasingly blunt warnings as the nation’s response has gone badly awry.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

In recent days, the 79-year-old scientist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has found himself directly in the president’s crosshairs. During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci’s assessment that the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly: “I disagree with him.”

Fauci no longer briefs Trump and is “never in the Oval [Office] anymore,” said a senior administration official... Fauci last spoke to the president during the first week of June...

...But Trump cannot directly fire Fauci, a career civil servant with more than 50 years in government service who enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress.

As for Fauci himself, although he is frustrated by the turmoil and the state of the outbreak, friends say he has no plans to abandon his post, which includes a critical role in the development of a coronavirus vaccine and treatments.

Fauci has found other ways to get his message out, from online Facebook chats to podcasts and print media interviews. And in recent days, with coronavirus cases slamming hospitals in the South and West, he has been frankly critical of the U.S. response — and implicitly, of the president.

“As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not,” Fauci said in a podcast interview with FiveThirtyEight last week.

...A White House official released a statement saying that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things” and included a lengthy list of the scientist’s comments from early in the outbreak. Those included his early doubt that people with no symptoms could play a significant role in spreading the virus — a notion based on earlier outbreaks that the novel coronavirus would turn on its head. They also point to public reassurances Fauci made in late February, around the time of the first U.S. case of community transmission, that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”

Fauci’s supporters acknowledge those early mistakes, attributing them to the challenges posed by a new, largely unknown pathogen. They agree he downplayed the possibility of the virus spreading from person to person in January and early February even as it quietly seeded itself in communities on the East and West coasts. And, like several other public health officials, he initially said the public shouldn’t wear masks, but now strongly recommends it, especially when individuals can’t maintain distances of at least six feet from other people.

Fauci has said he was worried early in the outbreak about a shortage of masks and wanted to reserve them for health care workers. And he has said from the start that scientists’ knowledge of a brand new virus would evolve and recommendations could change based on new information.

...A senior administration official said they are not approving all of his requests.

“Our bigger issue with Fauci is stop critiquing the task force . . . and try to fix it,” the official said.

...Four months ahead of Election Day, Trump wants to “reopen and move on,” said another senior administration official...Those who disagree with that approach are out of favor, the official said.

Fauci has also expressed concern about the administration’s plan to reopen schools, but White House officials see keeping children home as having even more deleterious effects. Fauci has also called on state and local officials to mandate that people wear masks in public.

...Trump is also galled by Fauci’s approval ratings. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that 67 percent of voters trusted Fauci for information on the coronavirus, compared with 26 percent who trusted Trump.

...People who are close to Fauci say the public undermining of scientists and public health experts has frustrated and saddened him because it adds to the chaos the country is already experiencing from the pandemic.

Despite the repeated pushback from Trump and the White House, however, Fauci has told those close to him that has no plans to do anything differently.

...Several White House aides view Fauci’s interviews as unhelpful and say they’re frustrated he has expressed interest in appearing on programs such as MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” which are hostile to the administration. That one was rejected.

“The speculation game doesn’t serve the public in any particular way,” the same official said. “When it gets to handicapping and what’s going to happen next, get a cable news gig. We’ve conveyed that down to all the doctors.”

White House officials ...are working with Jared Kushner ... Trump’s son-in-law, to ensure better communication, the official said.

...Among those crusading against Fauci internally is Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, who has clashed with Fauci over his opposition to adopting the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, to treat covid-19 before its effectiveness had been proved.

When Trump and Navarro repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus, Fauci pushed back both internally and at task force briefings, arguing there was only anecdotal evidence about the drug’s efficacy. The Food and Drug Administration eventually revoked its temporary authorization after evidence showed it was not effective against covid-19 and could be dangerous for some patients.

“Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on,” Navarro said. “Now Fauci is saying that a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. So when you ask me if I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is only with caution.”
...

Dingbatt

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#2522879 14-Jul-2020 17:43

All I had to do was read the Washington Post byline to know it was an anti-Trump political piece masquerading as COVID news.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

tdgeek

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#2522883 14-Jul-2020 18:04

Oblivian:

Sneezing in public is now up there with farting in an elevator

My first supermarket day in lockdown I had a dry cough. I felt SO exposed

Handle9

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#2522885 14-Jul-2020 18:06

tdgeek:

Oblivian:

Sneezing in public is now up there with farting in an elevator

My first supermarket day in lockdown I had a dry cough. I felt SO exposed

It used to be that you coughed to cover up a fart, now you fart to cover up a cough.

tdgeek

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#2522902 14-Jul-2020 18:21

Handle9:

It used to be that you coughed to cover up a fart, now you fart to cover up a cough.

My bad, lack of baked beans... :-)

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ezbee

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#2522910 14-Jul-2020 18:33

Is Australia for turning ?

Experts call for Australia to replace coronavirus suppression strategy with elimination plan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-14/calls-for-coronavirus-elimination-strategy-replace-suppression/12452660

I thought elimination of COVID-19 was not possible in Australia - now I've changed my mind
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-thought-elimination-of-covid-19-was-not-possible-in-australia-now-i-ve-changed-my-mind-20200713-p55bgd.html

Join NZ , Taiwan ,
Seems Singapore is pouring a lot of effort into this as well , not just suppression ?
Got things down to a few hundred but a ways to go.

tdgeek

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#2522913 14-Jul-2020 18:38

ezbee:

Is Australia for turning ?

Experts call for Australia to replace coronavirus suppression strategy with elimination plan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-14/calls-for-coronavirus-elimination-strategy-replace-suppression/12452660

I thought elimination of COVID-19 was not possible in Australia - now I've changed my mind
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-thought-elimination-of-covid-19-was-not-possible-in-australia-now-i-ve-changed-my-mind-20200713-p55bgd.html

Join NZ , Taiwan ,
Seems Singapore is pouring a lot of effort into this as well , not just suppression ?
Got things down to a few hundred but a ways to go.

Its possible anywhere. Level 4 for 4 to 5 weeks, plus the other stuff. If you remove hosts, you remove infection. Basic math. The leftovers you can hoover up. Easy to say for a 5 million population, but if its 300M as per the US, same applies. The ability to promote and get the masses on board is another issue.

The smaller nations can do this. Often its more dense, but if the respective Govt can provide a will to the people, a few weeks sucking it up will give a HUGE benefit

Batman

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#2523078 14-Jul-2020 19:27

Dingbatt:

All I had to do was read the Washington Post byline to know it was an anti-Trump political piece masquerading as COVID news.

yeah it's not fair, daily dose of political pieces masquerading as COVID news to counter constant White House Trump re-election propaganda slander masquerading as truth from what I can see.

America, the land where nothing escapes politicization, even religion and virus is politicized.

Handle9

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#2523084 14-Jul-2020 19:36

Batman:

Dingbatt:

All I had to do was read the Washington Post byline to know it was an anti-Trump political piece masquerading as COVID news.

yeah it's not fair, occasional political pieces masquerading as COVID news to counter constant White House Trump re-election propaganda slander masquerading as truth from what I can see.

America, the land where nothing escapes politicization, even religion and virus is politicized.

COVID is heavily politicised in NZ as well. The level of lunacy on both sides is somewhat different.

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