As reported by The Guardian, Essential Research has unusually conducted a new poll just a week after the last. This effectively replicates last week’s suite of questions on coronavirus to tie in with an online forum later today involving The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy and Essential Research’s Peter Lewis.
The results show a sharp rise in concern since last week, with 53% now saying they are very concerned, after the three previous fortnightly polls had it progressing from 25% to 27% to 39%. Only 18% now say they consider there has been an overreaction to the thread, down from 33% last week, while 43% now think the threat has been underestimated, up from 28%. These results imply little change to last week’s finding that 39% thought the response about right, though we will presumably have to await publication of the full report later today for a complete set of numbers. The poll also finds overwhelming support for the restrictive measures that have been taken. The rise in concern appears to have been matched by a decline in skepticism about media reportage, which 42% now say they trust, up from 35% last week.
Also out today is a Roy Morgan SMS poll on coronavirus, showing 43% support for the view that the federal government is handling the crisis well with 49% disagreeing — a rather weak result by international standards (it is noted that a similar poll in the United Kingdom a bit under a fortnight ago had it at 49% and 37%). This poll finds an even higher pitch of public concern than Essential, in that only 15% believed the threat to be exaggerated, with fully 81% disagreeing. Relatedly, 80% said they were willing to sacrifice some of their “human rights” to help prevent the spread of the virus (evidently having a somewhat different conception of that term from my own), with only 14% disagreeing. The poll was conducted on Saturday and Sunday from a sample of 988.
UPDATE: Full report from Essential Research here. The recorded increase in concern about the virus is not matched by a change in perceptions of the government’s handling of it, which 45% rate as good, unchanged on last week, and 31% rate as poor, up two. There is also a question on concern about climate change, which refutes the hopes of some conservative commentators in suggesting it has not been affected by the coronavirus crisis: 31% say they are more concerned than they were a year ago, 53% no more or less so, and 16% less concerned. However, the number of respondents saying Australia is not doing enough to address climate change is down from 60% in November to 55%, with doing enough up one to 23% and doing too much up one to 9%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1086.
Blobbit:
See:
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKS1pahoPRU&feature=emb_logo
Starting at about 4 minutes 30 second in. Morning of 20 February it was business as usual; they got a COVID19 result back from an unusual ICU patient (young, no risk factors but in ICU) then by the end of 21 February they knew they had an uncontrolled secondary outbreak.
So they got at most 24 hours warning before the shit hit the fan completely…
Blobbit see my edit.
“Cud Chewersays:
Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 5:03 pm
Blobbit
https://healthywa.wa.gov.au/coronavirus
Skip to “Can I be tested””
I’m aware of that. The way you said “That’s what the official Health WA web site says.” seemed to suggest that you think that in the real world something else is happening.
Scout @ #1938 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 4:51 pm
I’m just jealous – 20 years ago is starting to look like a golden age!
P1 …….depends how you look at, things down here have been great for a long time.
Place of contrasts no doubt, Bob Brown / Eric Abetz for a start. Know which one id rather
“Cud Chewersays:
Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 5:08 pm
Blobbit see my edit.”
Apologies for multiple posts on the same topic – I think it disappeared.
Again, in theory I don’t disagree with mass testing. As I understand it there are still limits on what can be done practically at the moment.
I’m guessing that the government was expecting queues of people wanting to be tested today. They didn’t appear. If that continues for a few days, then I’d suggest that there might be scope to further relax the testing criteria.
billie @ #1947 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 5:02 pm
Yes, with Julia Gillard’s help they rose from the smoking ruin that was ABC Learning.
I have always wondered what happened to Eddy Groves?
Chewer:
Of course, predictions are (usually) made on the basis of the parameters, so good predictions require good parameters.
So we need feedback too.
And we need to find better parameters – maybe learn them, or learn the function?
Or?
EGT
About that video on the initial cases in Italy.
What really burns is that they too got caught with their pants down on testing guidelines.
They were only testing people coming from China and it only when they had that young patient and found a secondary cluster that they started testing in the community.
They should have been out in the community testing well before that.
We’re making the same mistakes here.
EGT
Here’s a better “controller”
Stomp on it, HARD. Figure out the parameters later.
Or as the Doom Slayer would say.. must kill all demons!
EGT,
I’d say the boffins in health have a model of the virus’ spread, and based on this they are implementing a form of model predictive control with, e.g. ICU bed constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_predictive_control
They are doing this under considerable uncertainty, but because they have a non-dissipative system driven by exponential growth (i.e. not BIBO), the costs of over-control are much less than the risks of under-control.
Which boils down to – go hard, go early.
NSW is reporting hospitalisation. today:
There are 231 COVID-19 cases being treated by NSW Health, including 43 cases in our Intensive Care Units and, of those, 20 require ventilators at this stage. More than 50 per cent of the remainder of cases being treated by NSW Health are through Hospital in the Home services.
Yesterday;
There are 218 COVID-19 cases being treated by NSW Health, including 42 cases in our Intensive Care Units and, of those, 22 require ventilators at this stage. More than 50 per cent of the remainder of cases being treated by NSW Health are through Hospital in the Home services
There were 9 on ventilator 1 week ago
Florida’s hurricane season starts in June. Imagine what mass evacuation would do to the spread of the virus.
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-records-highest-ever-peak-throughput-of-138tbps-545949
“NBN Co has revealed that data flowing through its access network peaked at 13.8Tbps during the four hours to midnight each day last week, about 25 percent above levels a month ago.
The company said it will now publish a weekly report as a way to publicly track demand for internet services over its network during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Thanks OC. These are much more reliable figures.
Let’s hope they remain relatively small.
Cud Chewer:
I feel the need to indulge in a spot of nitpicking, because this has been bugging me (from several sources!) for a few days now:
It’s not really ideal to talk about the exponent falling. The exponent is where the time variable goes, so the exponent itself is time varying. You can of course have a coefficient within the exponent, and that can change – but since any change in that coefficient is equivalent to a change in base, it makes most sense to leave the exponent at just t and talk of a reduction in the base of the exponential instead.
caf
Fair enough. I was trying not to get too technical.
Bloobit:
I was aware of high Sweden death rate but not looked at the detail. Sweden and Denmark have higher death than Norway (and Australia) but infections are remarkable similar. Finland is (perhaps significantly better than all four). I have not looked at detail but I suspect difference in age profile is responsible (most of the low death rate countries including Australia have favourable age profile)
DisplayName: “This from the same person who implied that the early spread of the virus was due to Labor and Greens voters who were ignoring the government’s advice because they didn’t like Scott Morrison.”
I think you must be confusing me with someone else. I certainly never made any such statement.
Blobbit @ #1937 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 3:50 pm
LOL amateurs compared to the Swiss.
Switzerland; 17,768 cases, 488 dead
Swiss pop. 8.6M
Swede pop. 10M
Norway pop. 5M
A very bad situation in Switzerland.
To those discussing death rates I might point out that the faster the rate of growth, the lower the ratio of reported deaths to reported cases, all else being equal.
CC
Which in turn is a function of the rate and target of testing.
Isn’t our rate of growth slowing, but the rate of deaths to reported cases increasing?
Meher Baba
If I mixed you up with someone else, I apologise.
EG Theodore: “What are “the signs you would expect to see if Australia was about to go down the path of Italy or the US”?”
Something like the OED’s understanding of the word “exponential”: that is, a rate of increase that is itself growing over time. If not a geometric rate of increase, then at least an increase in the arithmetic rate of growth. If you look at the stats, the average numerical rate of increase for the last 5 days (albeit with today’s WA figures yet to come) is significantly less than for the preceding 5 days: 297 per day compared to 392 per day.
Some officials could be in for a kicking after this is all over.
———————————-
Sweden defends its more relaxed coronavirus strategy
Unlike its immediate neighbors Denmark, Finland and Norway, Sweden has not closed its borders or its schools; neither has it closed non-essential businesses or banned gatherings of more than two people, like the U.K. and Germany.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/sweden-coronavirus-approach-is-very-different-from-the-rest-of-europe.html
Isn’t there a Maths pedants blog somewhere else on the internet!?!
“I have not looked at detail but I suspect difference in age profile is responsible”
No. Sweden has taken a very different approach to Norway. Norway has been in a pretty complete lockdown for a few weeks now. Sweden is very much going with a “business as usual” approach. Bars and the like are still open, last thing I read a couple of days ago.
C@t
This is the blog for pedants, maths or otherwise :-P.
Tweeps are reporting that Laming is giving the white power hand sign. I don’t think that the position of the fingers/thumb is a natural easy gesture, but maybe that’s because of my arthritis.
“C@tmommasays:
Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Isn’t there a Maths pedants blog somewhere else on the internet!?!”
Isn’t there a “how shit are the LNP” blog somewhere else on the internet!?!
My son is still in a lockdown nightmare in Perth. He has no idea when he can get back to work here in his remote community. Two weeks in Perth, two weeks in Broome, two weeks confined to home in community looks like it will be. He flew to Bali before the advice not to go, on annual leave, and i flew up here to look after his dogs.
Now, we are both stuck. If Morrison had been bloody decisive, and issued an order earlier, or shut the bloody borders, both of us would still be where we should be. We made decisions based on the information available, which was not much.
DisplayName @ #1981 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 5:36 pm
Can I quibble with that? 🙂
Blobbit @ #1983 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 5:37 pm
I’d imagine there are plenty. 😀
C@t
Yes of course, you’re welcome to ;-).
Blobbit
“Isn’t there a “how shit are the LNP” blog somewhere else on the internet!?!”
Let’s sue them for IP theft.
Guardian
[McGowan says that there will be exemptions in place.
“In effect, we will be turning Western Australia into an island within an island,” he says. “Our own country. These are drastic steps, but also sensible and workable.”]
This sounds like it protects the Australian cricket team from Mitch Marsh.
“Isn’t our rate of growth slowing, but the rate of deaths to reported cases increasing?”
Its a pipeline. The rate of deaths is proportional to the rate of new infections (as opposed to reported infections) some time beforehand.
Its a bit like when your shower is too hot, so you turn off the hot tap only to discover it keeps getting hotter because of what you did to the hot tap a few seconds earlier.
Jeebus Kerist in a freaking bottle! When are these Evangelical wingnuts going to get the message that their God is either crazy, a mean mofo, or just doesn’t exist!?!
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/megachurch-meeting-in-mulhouse-seeded-france-s-coronavirus-epidemic-20200402-p54gdq.html
lizzie says:
Thursday, April 2, 2020 at 5:37 pm
Tweeps are reporting that Laming is giving the white power hand sign. I don’t think that the position of the fingers/thumb is a natural easy gesture, but maybe that’s because of my arthritis.
_________________________
There are a lot of right wing people who have inadvertently placed their fingers in a white power signal. Who knows maybe they have been unfortunate accidents. We need a quantitative and qualitative analysis of this. How many left wing politicians have been similarly unlucky?
Plus, if we can find a photo of Karl Marx accidentally doing it then fair enough.
C@t based on behaviour alone, one can only surmise that God is a petulant teenager..
I hope the cricket tragics realise there’s more likely than not not going to be a cricket season this year.
Cud Chewer: “Worse, meher is one of these fools that comes here and says that there is no need to shut things down to the current level. He’s said this repeatedly. Without basis of evidence.”
I have never said that I didn’t want to see things shut down to the current level. What I didn’t want to see was what has been applied in NZ: no shops open other than supermarkets and pharmacies (eg, no hardware shops – except for tradies – no Big W or K Mart); no takeaway food; no social visits outside the household to family or friends, etc.
I think ScoMo and the states and territories have worked together very well, perhaps (according to rumours I’ve heard) with a bit of creative tension and robust debate along the way. The settings we have in place now are sustainable over a six month period or longer, extremely difficult though that will be. I can’t see NZ’s being sustainable over such a long period: their leaders made it pretty clear when they put them in place that they were meant to be a short, sharp shock followed by a return to normality. I’m not sure that this idea is looking so good at the moment.
It seems a 2500-strong megachurch meeting in Mulhouse seeded France’s coronavirus epidemic.
How many more of these moronic events are going to help the virus?
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/megachurch-meeting-in-mulhouse-seeded-france-s-coronavirus-epidemic-20200402-p54gdq.html
PTMD
As a small consolation it could have been even worse now that this is coming in.
——————————————
McGowan says there will be a “hard border” from Sunday night. His message to Western Australians is to “come home now”……………………to any West Australian who is thinking of coming back to WA, you need to come home to Western Australia and come home now.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/apr/02/coronavirus-update-live-news-australia-nsw-victoria-queensland-qld-tas-act-sa-wa-nt-covid19-latest-updates
nath
I look forward to your research on the matter. 😉
shellbell @ #1974 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 4:31 pm
That’s CC’s pipeline.
“I hope the cricket tragics realise there’s more likely than not not going to be a cricket season this year.”
Well, there’s some good in it after all..
Cud Chewer @ #1992 Thursday, April 2nd, 2020 – 5:42 pm
If so, he needs to be sent to his room to reflect on his behaviour!
Now from another angle Marx’s left hand just might be making the gesture.