Democracy in the time of COVID-19

Queensland council elections and state by-elections to proceed in spite of everything; two polls on attitudes to coronavirus; and Josh Frydenberg off the Section 44 hook.

I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday considering the implications of coronavirus for the electoral process. For what it’s worth, the New York Times today reports that research finds no evidence that elections act as vectors for disease. Apropos next Saturday’s local government elections and state by-elections in Queensland, my article had this to say:

According to Graeme Orr, University of Queensland law professor and a noted authority on electoral law, it is still within the power of Local Government Minister Stirling Hinchliffe to postpone the council elections. The byelections for the state seats of Currumbin and Bundamba could also theoretically be called off if the speaker rescinded the writs. Since a state election will be held in October in any case, it might well be argued that filling the latter vacancies for a few months is not worth the bother. However, the official position is that neither pre-poll nor election day booths will experience activity amounting to a gathering of more than 500 people, as per the latest advice of the chief medical officer — advice that will surely be showing its age well before next Saturday.

In other by-election news, the Liberal National Party has put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards in Currumbin and Bundamba, and thus behind One Nation, a move that has evidently lost its taboo since the issue of One Nation preferences tore the state’s Coalition parties apart around the turn of the century. This could potentially be consequential in Bundamba, where it is conceivable that One Nation could outpoll the LNP and defeat Labor with their preferences.

Elsewhere:

• The Federal Court has dismissed a Section 44 challenge against Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in parliament on grounds of dual Hungarian citizenship, to which he was allegedly entitled via his Hungarian-born mother. The petitioner, Michael Staindl, initially pointed to Australian documentation suggesting her family arrived in Australia in 1950 with Hungarian passports, having fled the country the previous year as the post-war communist regime tightened its grip. However, it was established that this arose from loose definitions used at the time by the Australian authorities, and that what the family actually had was “a form of single use emigrant exit passport”. This led Staindl to twice reformulate his argument, eventually settling on the contention that Frydenberg’s mother was left with the “shell” of a citizenship that had been emptied only by the communist regime’s arbitrary and capricious “pseudo-law”, a factor that ceased to apply with its demise in 1989. This did not impress the court, which dismissed the petition and ordered Staindl to pay costs.

• The Age/Herald has polling results from Newgate Research on which aspects of coronavirus are of greatest public concern. The results are reasonably consistent across the board, but top of the list is “the overall economic impact”, with which 41% express themselves extremely concerned, 36% quite concerned, 19% slightly concerned and 4% not at all concerned. “Regular health services not being available” produces similar results of 35%, 32%, 25% and 8%. There are slightly more moderate results for other questions on health impacts and “shortages of food, toilet paper and other essentials”, although in all cases the combination for extremely concerned and quite concerned is well above 50%. The poll is an “online tracking study of more than 1000 Australians, taken between Wednesday and Saturday last week”.

• The West Australian ($) also has a WA-only coronavirus poll, which finds 66% supporting cancellation of large sporting events, 45% for night venues, 35% for cinemas and theatres, 34% for gyms and leisure centres, 29% for schools, 28% for universities, 22% for shopping centres and 16% apiece for restaurants and cafes and public transport. Fifty-one per cent of respondents agreed the government had been fully open and honest about the risks and implications of the virus, with 25% disagreeing. The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday by Painted Dog Research from a sample of 890.

• The count for the Northern Territory’s Johnston by-election was finalised on Friday, with Labor’s Joel Bowden winning at the final count over Steven Klose of the Territory Alliance by 1731 votes (52.6%) to (47.4%), in the absence of any surprises in the full preference count. With no candidate polling more than 29.9% on the primary vote, the latter was always an abstract possibility, but the result after the previous exclusion was not particularly close, with Bowden on 1275 (38.7%), Klose on 1110 (33.7%) and Greens candidate Aiya Goodrich Carttling on 907 (27.6%). It seems unlikely that preferences would have favoured the Greens even if it had been otherwise. My live results facility now records the final numbers – there will be more where this came from on this site with the Queensland elections on Saturday week, certainly with the state by-elections, and perhaps also for the Brisbane City Council elections, depending on how things go.

Note also two new posts below this one, one dealing with a new poll of state voting intention in Tasmania, the other being Adrian Beaumont’s latest contribution on the Democratic primaries in the United States.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

3,538 comments on “Democracy in the time of COVID-19”

Comments Page 57 of 71
1 … 56 57 58 … 71

  2. Well, if the 1000 cases is accurate, and we’re just waiting for the aggregators to catch up, then it unfortunately confirms that we are still accelerating just has hard as a week ago. (The acceleration rate had us reaching 1000 cases at approx 6:30 this morning, daylight saving time.)

  3. The Guardian – Daniel Andrews

    And finally, on school closures, the premier had this to say:

    It remains the advice of both the chief health officer and every other health officer across the country, and the chief medical officer Brendan Murphy, that schools should remain open. That is the health advice. Again, I am in no way criticising parents for being concerned. Being anxious, that is a perfectly natural thing. I again make the point, the consistent and unanimous advice of chief health officers, the experts, is that schools should remain open. We have a week to go until we get to school holidays. I want to take this opportunity to thank you, to thank both as the premier and on behalf of my family, every teacher, every worker in our schools, they are doing a fantastic job. My kids are at school, the chief health officer’s kids are at school, that is the medical advice, that is the advice of experts, that could change.

    If it does, you will be the first to know.

  4. My understanding is that there are two SARS-CoV2 strains, “L” and “S”.
    The newer and more aggressive L type strain accounted for about 70 per cent of the analysed cases in China, while the rest were linked to the older S type version.

    Do we have the analysis of the relative proportions of the strains in our cases here in Australia?
    A question for the “resident” PB medicos: if you contract the “S” strain and survive are you immune to the “L” strain and vice versa?
    I’ve read that during the Spanish Flu pandemic there was a second wave of infection which hit Australia particularly hard. Is a second wave due to the virus mutating or due to people who missed the first wave becoming complacent, less cautious and picking up any lingering background virus?
    I ask this question in the context is there a possibility of a second wave with Covid-19?
    Thank you in advance.

  6. There are now 90 confirmed cases in WA. From Tuesday, all category 3 elective surgeries will be cancelled. Category 3 surgery is considered non-urgent surgery for conditions causing pain, dysfunction or disability but that are unlikely to deteriorate quickly and do not have the potential to become an emergency.

  10. Australian cases surpass 1,000

    The latest case numbers announced from the states and territories throughout the day means 1,049 cases of Covid-19 have now been confirmed in Australia, including seven deaths.

  11. Local IGA this morning:
    No paper products
    No soaps
    No sanitizer
    No mince
    No eggs
    No pasta
    No rice
    No frozen veggies
    No live pangolines

  15. Diogenes:

    Excellent epidemiological article on COVID-19 and why we are being failed by our game government and CMO.
    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
    Instead of the hammer and the dance, have the soggy lettuce and the stumble.

    An excellent article (as others have noted).

    I wonder whether it’s possible not only to use a “data driven decision making table” such as the example in the article (NB: the example has placeholder data, not real data) but also to place it online and have it updated in real time as the evidence improves and circumstances change.

    This would communicate the “method in the madness” quite effectively to a reasonably wide audience and and does not seem to have much downside. In particular, it does not seem likely to create panic, and to the contrary may mitigate the obsession with schools closure (though anything close to the “implement / not implement” border and on the “not implement” side will likely become controversial)

    In Australia (for some reason) the main role of the Commonwealth appears to be communication / information, rather than implementation. Whilst they a belatedly getting the “tone” (or “narrative”) right, they seem to be hopeless at the detail of communication / information – for example why is there not a four hourly updated publication of the number of tests done (one answer is “lawyers and spin doctors”). Again, the War on Science in the Murdoch Nations is having adverse consequences and people will die before their time because of it. Likewise the viral proliferation of lawyers, merchant bankers and other innumerate people within those nations.

    The States have charge of implementation, and seem to be doing better than the Commonwealth (including both ALP and LP state governments). People are now listening mainly to the State Premiers, including those from States other than their own, rather than the Commonwealth, but this has the downside that the information is fragmented across the States. Two/four hourly aggregation of the States’ information sources would help – someone should be data warehousing, including manually to the extent necessary.

  16. I am now officially and old fart/codger/geezer and have submitted information to Woolworths to perhaps enable home delivery.

    Waiting now on Coles. I will not attempt to use both.

    Good afternoon all. 😎

  21. C@t And all I did was turn the computer off and on!

    That works for lots of problems with computers and other cantankerous devices. If it’s not working properly, first switch it off then back on again and the problem often goes away. It resets the device. I think that NASA calls this ”cycling the equipment”.

  22. Down at the beach today. Not crowded, lots a dogs having a ball in warm, windless weather. Did notice that people chatting were keeping their distance a bit. That said am in the fortunate situation of living in Freo so lots of nice beaches close by that only ever get crowded on really hot days.

    Lots of friends are taking the handwashing / distancing thing seriously.

  24. E. G. Theodore

    I wonder whether it’s possible not only to use a “data driven decision making table” such as the example in the article (NB: the example has placeholder data, not real data) but also to place it online and have it updated in real time as the evidence improves and circumstances change.

    This would communicate the “method in the madness” quite effectively to a reasonably wide audience and and does not seem to have much downside.

    100% agree.

  25. The latest case numbers announced from the states and territories throughout the day means 1,049 cases of Covid-19 have now been confirmed in Australia, including seven deaths.
    _____
    Tomorrow there will be 1290.
    And in another 11 days it will hit 10000.

  26. Pegasus:

    The Guardian – Daniel Andrews

    And finally, on school closures, the premier had this to say:

    It remains the advice of both the chief health officer and every other health officer across the country, and the chief medical officer Brendan Murphy, that schools should remain open. That is the health advice. Again, I am in no way criticising parents for being concerned. Being anxious, that is a perfectly natural thing. I again make the point, the consistent and unanimous advice of chief health officers, the experts, is that schools should remain open. We have a week to go until we get to school holidays. I want to take this opportunity to thank you, to thank both as the premier and on behalf of my family, every teacher, every worker in our schools, they are doing a fantastic job. My kids are at school, the chief health officer’s kids are at school, that is the medical advice, that is the advice of experts, that could change.

    If it does, you will be the first to know.

    If it is logical that schools remain open this coming week (which I can accept) then surely they should also be considering schools opening during the forthcoming holidays, since these holidays were scheduled without knowledge of the COVID19.

    Are they considering schools remaining open in the holidays? Particularly the first week?

  28. Late Riser @ #2800 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 2:14 pm

    Well, if the 1000 cases is accurate, and we’re just waiting for the aggregators to catch up, then it unfortunately confirms that we are still accelerating just has hard as a week ago. (The acceleration rate had us reaching 1000 cases at approx 6:30 this morning, daylight saving time.)

    The rapid increase in cases is likely due to more testing identifying more people with the virus.

  29. Greensborough Growler @ #2828 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 1:36 pm

    Late Riser @ #2800 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 2:14 pm

    Well, if the 1000 cases is accurate, and we’re just waiting for the aggregators to catch up, then it unfortunately confirms that we are still accelerating just has hard as a week ago. (The acceleration rate had us reaching 1000 cases at approx 6:30 this morning, daylight saving time.)

    The rapid increase in cases is likely due to more testing identifying more people with the virus.

    Are we increasing testing at an exponential rate?

  31. vote1julia

    There is a bit of academic fisticuffs as to whether the difference are enough to consider them two strains 🙂 From March 5th

    ———————————————-
    “I think it’s a fact that there are two strains,” says Erik Volz at Imperial College London. “It’s normal for viruses to undergo evolution when they are transmitted to a new host.”
    ———————————————-
    the differences between the two identified strains are tiny. In fact, they can’t really be considered to be separate “strains”, says Jones. And many of the genetic differences won’t affect the production of proteins, and so won’t change the way the virus works, or the symptoms it causes, he says. One is not more deadly than the other.

    “In all practical terms, the virus is as it was when it originally emerged,” says Jones.
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236544-coronavirus-are-there-two-strains-and-is-one-more-deadly/

  35. Late Riser @ #2827 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 2:38 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #2828 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 1:36 pm

    Late Riser @ #2800 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 2:14 pm

    Well, if the 1000 cases is accurate, and we’re just waiting for the aggregators to catch up, then it unfortunately confirms that we are still accelerating just has hard as a week ago. (The acceleration rate had us reaching 1000 cases at approx 6:30 this morning, daylight saving time.)

    The rapid increase in cases is likely due to more testing identifying more people with the virus.

    Are we increasing testing at an exponential rate?

    I read last week that the actual number of people with the virus is about a factor of 20 of the reported cases.


  36. BK says:
    ….
    Tomorrow there will be 1290.
    And in another 11 days it will hit 10000.

    And in 14 days- 20000. We have 2000 intensive care beds. 5% of case need intensive care. 5% if 20000 is 1000, half way there 3 more days and rationing starts.

  39. There are multiple worrying parallels between our response to the virus and our response to AGW:

    – A disregard for externalities. The costs of my actions are borne by someone else, so why should I care? Or sometimes rejection that externalities exist. You’re conspiring to steal my freedoms, or jealous of my success! Those people just need to work harder/smarter.

    – Even with people who accept (but do not necessarily fully comprehend) the science, a complacency in waiting for observed effects to react to, when pre-emptive action is required. The countries that handled the virus appropriately had experienced one before. No-one has experienced AGW before. Even though the majority of Australians apparently accept the science, we’ve voted in (three times) a goverment doing nothing.

    – The too-clever-by-half attempts to balance between economic and other concerns (health, environmental), assigning unjustified superiority to economic concerns, and a lack of recognition of the interconnectedness of these systems. When people are sick, the economy is sick. When the environment dies, so does the economy. They are not separate systems.

    – A disregard for social/political solutions in favour of either technological solutions (not yet existing, mind you, it’s assumed they will be developed) , or worse, a callous, darwinian approach (“adaptation”, “herd immunity”). Social/political solutions often benefit everyone (but belong to ideologies rejected by current systems). Technological solutions often only benefit those who can afford them (and are a great match for current, dominant ideologies). With AGW, many peoples contributing little to the problem do not have the resources to cope and will bear the brunt of its effects.

    The significant difference is of course the timescale. The situation with the virus is playing out over days, weeks and months, the situation with AGW over years, decades and centuries.

  40. I read last week that the actual number of people with the virus is about a factor of 20 of the reported cases.

    That is the worry.

  43. Yesterday’s explanation (for the observed increase) was affected people returning from overseas.
    Today’s explanation is we’re seeing more because we’re testing more.
    I’m excited for tomorrow’s explanation.

  44. NSW testing now at 46 K and positive tests increased to 1%. 6k tests in the last 2 days
    This remains among the strongest testing regimens in the world

  45. DisplayName @ #2843 Saturday, March 21st, 2020 – 1:52 pm

    Yesterday’s explanation (for the observed increase) was affected people returning from overseas.
    Today’s explanation is we’re seeing more because we’re testing more.
    I’m excited for tomorrow’s explanation.

    Whatever the underlying reasons, the statistical regressions of the number of reported cases are suspiciously good. (last night it was 0.9972)

  47. Remember

    If you are at home watching TV, exercising on your indoor bike or what ever activity it is you do at home. Even being the couch potato, you are saving lives.

  49. It’s been a good day for gardening but I was inside when OH had ABC24 on with David Elliott’s press conference about enforcing a 500 person limit on Bondi Beach. He had police standing behind him and sounded very confrontational during question time. I hope he hasn’t instructed police to strip search beachgoer no. 501.

  50. One area we may be doing well.

    If some cases are health professionals who have survived they are available for treating others. That’s an important statistic.

Comments Page 57 of 71
1 … 56 57 58 … 71

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *