My main concern through this thing is that lunatics like our mate Lion are behind Ardern pulling her strings
No easy way to handle it, but I find it absolutely crazy that people can’t take their kids to stand out on a field with 20 other kids and play cricket on Saturday but it is perfectly fine to take them to a mall containing hundreds of people indoors, seems even more crazy as the indoor sports centres carry on playing as well. Not saying I want malls and the like shut down, just pointing out the craziness of the situation
I honestly hold the viewpoint, which can probably never be proven either way, that some of the measures being taken now and that will come in the upcoming weeks will claim more lives through mental health issues and businesses collapse and families fall apart, than the virus will claim
Well, some of it can probably be measured, after the fact.
I agree not much is being said about the psychological impact at the moment of all of this, though it will no doubt be huge.
One of the arguments against stricter suppression measures being made by the advisors to the UK government is that people are not psychologically prepared to do strict isolating for 3, 4, 5 months or longer.
The economic costs will of course be large, and lives lost due to failing economies can (and will, eventually) be counted.
It is a tough balancing act.
But it is almost certainly the virus itself that will cost the most lives, I would think (also counting lives lost to other conditions that can't get treated due to stretched hospital reserves). As a "bad case scenario" the government is saying the virus could kill 150 000, which sounds like a pretty horrifically high number to me.
I'm not hearing a good enough explanation of this either. I completely agree.
If I was to hazard an educated guess, it would be that kids cricket is seen as inconsequential. Things like the Maadi Cup rowing etc are seen as inconsequential. There's no real scientific reason for them to be cancelled, but the fallout - both economically and morally - is small. Shopping malls, professional sport like the NRL/AFL, even indoor sports centres, schools are seen as either economically harder to shut down, or create a much bigger push back from the public (unless we are given a clear red alert, super pandemic sort of message).
To be honest I'm a bit demoralised by this all and the range of conflicting information I'm getting. I'm a school teacher, who doesn't know what to believe. On one hand I hear the PM and Education Minister tell me schools are safe and no scientific reason to shut them. Yet they tell me groups of 500+ is a bad idea, and that students should be 1.5m apart (there's zero chance of that in schools). Then I read today from one expert who says schools should be shut down in the interim and that social distancing is the best idea in the short term...and on the same website an opinion from another expert who says shutting schools would be a bad idea because it could create burdens and issues in other areas.
A lot of the conflicting information is because we aren't really getting official information of models or how government is making decisions. The school issue is complex, and I think I can glean the argument trying to be made for keeping them open (not counting the argument for health care workers having to look after their school aged kids, which can be addressed by still allowing them to come to school). The paper that the UK seems to be using to judge school closures suggests closing them and opening them again in repeated cycles is an important way of keeping infections manageable in the short and long term, but the timing of when to do this is tricky (and a bit experimental).
The news article talks generally about the paper, which can be found easily online:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...-us-and-uk-coronavirus-strategies/ar-BB11jVNP
But the information we get about schools is that they can implement 1.5 m social distancing and hygiene measures (which in a lot of cases they can't), and that closing them will increase infections (which it won't. It may increase intrahousehold infections but won't increase total numbers). As the strategy is complex, I guess this is the best attempt the PM and state Premiers have made of explaining a strategy they probably don't fully understand, but it means they are giving us strange information that contradicts with strategies from around the world, and lacks internal consistency without the full plan explained.
the problem is everything is a balance between risk and cost (both monetary and social). Now if everyone could go into complete lockdown for a month we’d no doubt get control of things really quick. But obviously that’s just not practical, business need to stay afloat, rent and mortgages need to be paid, people need to buy food. So they target the obvious things that are discretionary and high risk first (big sports crowds, concerts etc), then progressively those things that can be shit down without huge cost and disruption (kids sports, smaller gatherings). Schools, public transport and workplaces are riskier than they’ll happily admit but the consequence of shutting them down is huge, so authorities have to strike a delicate balance.
I agree that the nuanced closing down seems more practical, though will result in larger numbers of deaths early on. But that does explain shutting down "easy targets" like amateur sport, first. The issue though is not really practicality in terms of economic cost, as a complete shut down of most services probably doesn't need to be as long as a gradual one, and may actually cost less.
The real issue I think, that no one knows precisely how to resolve, is how to end partial or complete shut downs of non essentials, without having herd immunity.
The PM and governments are preparing us for this by talking about 6 months of disruptions (despite me being called a panic merchant for suggesting a few months of disruptions just a few days ago). But no one really knows. That same cyclic strategy for the UK government suggests nearly 2 years on periodic interruptions to economic and social activities (and people called me the hand wringer!). Hopefully we would be well on top of treatment and vaccines long before then.
