It’s no surprise that faith in our politicians and institutions remains low given the contradictory and misleading comments so regularly espoused.
Two days ago it was widely reported that Dr Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, had said Victoria’s intensive care capacity was at 82% and COVID-19 cases accounted for one in 10 intensive care patients.
This was despite 31 people currently being in intensive care in Victoria due to COVID-19. Based on this ominous warning, Victoria would have only 400 intensive care beds in total.
However, a few days earlier modelling performed by the Grattan Institute provided to Nine said: “Victoria would need to record between 960 and 1885 new infections daily for 10 days to fill the state’s existing intensive care beds.” And: “The state has 695 intensive care beds and the capacity to rapidly expand that number if cases surge, according to state Health Minister Jenny Mikakos.”
According to the Grattan Institute: “From where we are now, and the lockdown steps taken, things would have to go seriously wrong for ICU capacity to be an issue in Victoria.”
While Coatsworth wasn’t technically lying, he doesn’t appear to have been upfront that Victoria has plenty of surge capacity.
Then there’s Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, whose early popularity has faded as the state’s infections have soared and a stage three lockdown is maintained.
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On Sunday he tried to justify the rationale for Victoria’s face mask law: “80% of all new cases since mid-May in Victoria could be attributed to transmission in the workplace, including in the aged care sector.”
This comment appears to part misleading, part ironic.
Yesterday Tony Neal, counsel assisting the judicial commission into the hotel quarantine disaster, told the commission: “Comments made by the chief health officer … have suggested that it may even be that every case of COVID‑19 in Victoria in recent weeks could be sourced to the hotel quarantine program.”
If most, if not all, of Victoria’s recent outbreak was caused by returning travellers who in turn infected security guards who went on to infect their families, it would appear difficult to claim that all infections occurred at workplaces, as Andrews suggested.
(Ironically, the workplaces most at risk are hotels used for quarantine and guarded by incompetent private security workers, and meat plants, which Andrews has steadfastly refused to include in lockdown restrictions despite their massive risks.)
The biggest concern for Victorians though — other than their disappearing civil liberties — is the outbreaks in aged care facilities. New York and Sweden showed what happens when the aged aren’t properly protected.
Until recently it has been reported that employees in aged facilities were not required to wear masks and staff were regularly transferred between centres, greatly increasing the risk of cross-infection. Infected patients were not being transferred to hospital, instead being forced to remain in their facilities.
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This article is a disgrace. Apart from the use of pure speculation to “prove” his point, who on earth At Crikey thought it was a good idea to post an article that only serves to undermine the authority of those In charge during a pandemic.
BTW Andrews never suggested that “all infections occurred at workplaces” as Adam Schwab claims. He described at length how people had not been self-isolating both when waiting for results and even after having tested positive.
Crikey used to be better than this.
Spot on Jeremy.
Adam Schwab is probably better off sticking to the things he really understands.
(Like the sacred importance of TV ratings.)
And as for the “no worries, we have plenty of ICU surge capacity” sentiment, I can tell you, as a critical care specialist, you really, really don’t want to be in a situation where you have to use that.
Agreed GoofyDog!
The major problem that I have with the coverage of this latest surge in numbers and the ancillary announcements is that we still do not have anyone addressing the cheap and nasty decisions taken by the Federal Government that have led to people either not being tested or not isolating after a test.
The treasurer earnestly and apparently sincerely explaining that the working underclass in Australia who are not citizens, are also not entitled to the assistance offered to citizens even though they pay taxes.
Then as we look at the conditions surrounding Job Keeper and Seeker we find that those conditions are also mean and tricky and so, not all citizens qualify either.
The economic imperatives of food on the table and a roof over your head tend to cause people to “soldier on” and the government offers $1500 as a single payment to stay home if you are sick. As if that will keep a family for a couple of weeks lockdown.
No one seems to be talking about the long term damage of getting SARSCoV2 if the person is in the 25 to 40 age group and I think it is so negligent.
This is stealing about 15 years from them and setting us up for a huge number of people on disability pensions.
Well done scottie from marketing, Smoko and all your variations the underclass will be the Achilles heel of this grand Ponzi scheme.
Adam, Adam, Adam. Are you not watching? Or understanding basic epidemiology? 5 or 6 security guards get it at work from travellers in quarantine. WIth an R0 of 3 they’ve then given it to 18 other people, probably mostly at home. Who go to work. And give it to 58 people there. Who take it home who give it to 174 people. Who go to work and give it to 500+ people. Which is how we get to over 1,000 new active cases. So once it gets into the community then work places are the most likely sources of spread, because that’s where we encounter the most people.
Adam, you may have done better to provide a case study of two where there clear contradictory statements as to the public health implications of the virus exist. You might have begin with an examination of the assertion by Andrews regarding transmission in the workplace. With a high Ro (closer to 2.5 or 2.6 Jackson [but 3 as an integer]) the transmission is going to be high.
Also a distinction needs to be made between the use of doubtful information and the game of ‘playing politics’ as hospital administrators are apt to do.
You might have mentioned the capacity that exists in the PRC to build a illness-specific hospital in a week or so. Ditto for overpasses for that matter. A week earlier, from my apartment in Hangzhou, crossing the road [a black and acquired art in Asia anywhere] was comparatively easier.
It is logically quite possible that while Victoria’s current cases could be traced back to hotel quarantine, the main source of transmission NOW is, as the Premier said, from the workplace.
I think Schwabb should immigrate to the US and live in New York. He would fit in well with Trumpian magical thinking and total disregard for actual data. He might even look at renting an apartment in Trump Tower so he could be right in the thick of it.
In fact lock-downs are all that will work at the moment. Testing isn’t frequent enough, fast enough, sufficiently ubiquitous, or cheap enough to pick up asymptomatic infections before they have a chance to spread. As soon as the restrictions are lifted off it goes again. There is no vaccine and it will be six to twelve months if that’s up and running. If they work.
The governments are doing their best with the blunt instruments at their disposal. Although the Federal Government’s covid-19 economic policies are inadequate, poorly implemented and targeted at their rich mates, not the people who really need it. Even Boris of the UK had a better policy than Morrison’s and he’s quite a bit to the right of Ayn Rand and Genghis Khan.
Not one dollar of direct assistance has been given to ordinary people outside of the corrupt and dysfunctional Centerlink, it’s all being funneled through their business mates who will siphon off a good part of it to maintain their profits and life styles.
Well said, Robert…especially the last paragraph!
It has always been a mystery to me why the Jobkeeper payment (in particular) has not been paid directly to the ‘worker’ concerned. As you say, leaves the system wide open to rorting by employers, and I bet there is more than a smidgen of that going on!
But then…this poor excuse for a government couldn’t run a chook raffle, let alone a national wage supplement program!!
With all due respect, Robert, the ad-hockery across the States in the USA is not a good example. One might compare it to Brazil as an item of humour. What is working in Asia (generally) is rapid identification and VERY rapid tracing along with weekly questionnaires organised at the workplace.
In the case of Australia, one only has to read the media statements from the Premiers to see that the policy is “from the hip” in every case. There is nothing as to a rigid policy and a set of contingencies but only blithe statements to appease the electorate.