Royalty and famous people with coronavirus.

[Trekkie]

@missy - yes I agree we have a smaller less densely populated population except for cities like Sydney and Melbourne.... but overall if you compare those statistics to one of your states that has around 6000 people infected the death rates are double to triple in those states compared to the death rates overall here.

I don't believe that it is simply a matter of high density = COVID disaster, because places like India, Singapore and others that imposed much tighter regulations that have much denser populations than the US are doing far far better.

I do agree you have boarders that are much more difficult to control. We are a large Island so from that POV it's easier to stop and restrict international travel. But I dispute that per % population there was any more or less people coming here from other places with the virus.

The difference is, we tracked and traced EVERY single case we could, there are task forces in every single state that still are doing that every single day. We monitor every new case and where they have been and who they have been in contact with.

Earlier detection = earlier treatment = better outcomes for those infected. Better tracking and tracing of what is geographically still a large country to manage = being able to isolate and quarantine as many people that are not only infected but could be potentially infected, which means limiting and slowing the spread of the virus as much as possible.

We are in front of the infection not behind the infection.

As soon as we worked out that cases were turning up here from Europe (we have a lot of European and UK backpackers for example that come here, Gary just posted on the other thread that % wise we have more than anywhere else in the world) we stopped allowing all of those flights into here as well.

We restricted anyone that was not an Australian citizen that wanted to come back home from entering the country, they had tough quarantine measures that at first were not followed ie people were not self isolating, we then used the police and military and hotels and various designated places to ensure strict quarantine was followed.

People in those hotels were complaining long and loud about human rights etc they were in the media via Skype and Internet interviews slamming the government at the time, but what it did was, it greatly prevented the spread of the disease.

If we compare the US to other places, not just Australia, but India and Singapore and so on, I believe the failure has FAR more to do with both Trumps administration and the way some of your States and cities, like New York acted, which was far too slowly. They dropped the ball, they didn't track and trace enough cases and did not take this virus seriously enough in the beginning to quarantine anyone who might enter from those places potentially with it.

And when a number of cases showed up, again your quarantines or lockdowns were too slowly implemented and were not strict enough. Americans like their rights as much if not more than Aussies do (more at a guess) they don't like being told to stay at home or what to do by the government. It wasn't until large numbers of people started dying that some citizens in your society started taking this whole thing seriously. Even now some of your states still seem to favour preserving their economies ie not implementing strict enough lockdown rules - favouring keeping as many people employed as possible, over tougher lockdown rules and their implementation.

Australia is the promised land

 

[arkieb1]

@Trekkie - probably not, like New Zealand, and various other countries, just one that has people in power than can read data and actually listen to experts.

Today the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Adern and her political staff all took a 20% pay cut to help pay for citizens that are doing in tough economically in New Zealand, did the Aussie politicians follow? Nope, they aren't going to give up their wages to help poorer people.

Imagine Trump and his team giving up 20% of their incomes to give back to the system to give to the poor and struggling. Even in a parallel universe I could never see that happening!!!

We should all aspire to be like New Zealand!!!

 

[Trekkie]

@Trekkie - probably not, like New Zealand, and various other countries, just one that has people in power than can read data and actually listen to experts.

Today the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Adern and her political staff all took a 20% pay cut to help pay for citizens that are doing in tough economically in New Zealand, did the Aussie politicians follow? Nope, they aren't going to give up their wages to help poorer people.

Imagine Trump and his team giving up 20% of their incomes to give back to the system to give to the poor and struggling. Even in a parallel universe I could never see that happening!!!

We should all aspire to be like New Zealand!!!

Australia is still doing much better than the US and most of Europe.

In South Africa our president, the deputy president and cabinet ministers all took a 30% pay cut. It was announced last week. Many business leaders have since followed suit.

South Africa is also doing very well - 2415 infections. I am half British, half South African. I carry both passports and if you’d told me a year ago there’d be a pandemic in 2020 and one of my countries would be doing better than the other, I would immediately have guessed UK - and been dead wrong!

But this is probably the wrong thread for that! Will comment in the other one