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.
Spare a thought for those (mostly Filipino) crew floating about on the cruise ships off the coast. Their very meagre wages are normally heavily supplemented by tips from the passengers, but without any passengers there’s no tips either.
Player One:
Great (link?), but as has been pointed out repeatedly (in response to my questions), NIV (non-invasive ventilators) needs:
a – something to address the aerosol risk (aerosol jet from break in seal of mask)
b – negative pressure rooms
c – medical staff trained in much wider use of NIV than has been typical in Australia? Apparently high degree of expertise is critical (i.e. not just machines ); for example in relation to when to use NIV versus intubating immediately…
d – no doubt other things
So it might be:
a – Can ResMed (or whoever) make helmet/hood interfaces for the NIV machines?
b – Itza noted that negative pressure rooms might be scarce. Royal Adelaide (being new) has at least some, but are these enough (cf. European hospitals). Also, are they big enough to accommodate large numbers of “cohorted” patients? (does this make sense? it seems to be what’s happening in Europe)
c – Lots of Aus doctors and nurses have worked in UK and Ireland (and vice versa), but perhaps Ireland+UK is more like Aus than like continental Europe? Quite a few Dutch doctors seem to do fellowships in Aus, presumably Italians too given the migration links? Do Aus doctors/nurses commonly work abroad in continental Europe?
poroti @ #299 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:57 pm
True 🙁
Kronomex @ #295 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:54 pm
I’ll check it out, thanks. Though I do have personal experience, as you can tell. 🙂
Private hospitals will be integrated with the public health system under a deal struck between the sector and the federal government on Tuesday, adding 34,000 beds.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the partnership between private hospitals, state or territory and federal governments would guarantee the viability of the private sector throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today is about giving [health workers] support, security and integrating two national systems – our public and private hospital systems in a once-in-a-century redesign of our hospital services.”
The deal ensures that private hospitals’ intensive care units – which make up a third of Australia’s ICU capacity – will be available for use in the pandemic.
poroti @ #293 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 1:53 pm
I’m sure the government has effectively rented the beds, and I bet at a premium rent rather than the low value which the beds have when they can’t be used for elective surgery.
laughtong:
You can search for vessels on that site as well, it shows the Queen Elizabeth is currently off the Queensland coast, north-east of Bundaberg and tracking north-west.
E. G. Theodore @ #301 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:58 pm
Can’t link directly, but see the post at 13:20 …
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/31/coronavirus-australia-update-live-nsw-queensland-victoria-subsidise-wages-jobkeeper-scott-morrison-covid19-fines-latest-news
Not much detail, I’m afraid. As to your other questions, I don’t know. However, Resmed has been making ventilators and other respiratory devices for quite a while. So these would not be new devices, and they would probably be familiar to most hospitals.
So far Scrott has said nyet to releasing the modelling done re the virus. NZ has released theirs and with the Australian input involved might just tell us the sort of stuff Scrott was told. Must be some scary numbers as Ardern went flat out from level 1->4 after seeing it. Might be why, despite Scrott’s moans they were moving to fast, acted so quickly.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nz-s-coronavirus-modelling-offers-clues-to-australia-s-confidential-plans-20200331-p54fmv.html
Well, at least those on mechanical ventilation won’t get a bacterial pneumonia on top of their viral pneumonia:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/926484
Fit out all grounded passenger plains for freight. Is in high demand.
GoldenSmaug says:
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 2:54 pm
As far as I’m concerned the government should only provide cash assistance to any companies that are deemed critical to Australia and it should be done only by buying shares in said companies on behalf of the Australian people at a discounted rate i.e. the company should offer an exclusive share float to the people of Australia at a 20% discount to current traded price and cease trading until the float is finalised. That way we, the people of Australia, can get our money back or otherwise get value from the companies.
This is just insane.
Take, for example, my neighbours at work. They operate a small welding business, providing fabrication, installation, construction and maintenance services and products. They have been in business for decades. They’re basically welding subbies with a workshop. Lately they have had 4 workers. Last week their one remaining good client cancelled the next 6 months of maintenance work, so now they have just a few hours work per week available. They will qualify for Jobkeeper support and maybe some other direct assistance. This will keep the business going and provide income support to the employees.
Why would the Commonwealth want to acquire such a business? What would the assets be? Some welding equipment, some oxy sets, a gantry crane and a forklift….and some scrap steel. The liabilities would be a rental agreement and maybe a few supplier accounts. How could it be on-sold at a later date?
It looks like the government, and Australia more generally, is incrementally introducing stronger measures without waiting (the two weeks or so) to see where the curve ends up, thankfully.
Here (relevant t0 NIV):
– https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-oxygen-equipment-meant-for-ireland-held-back-by-italy-1.4214229
Hood = helmet
DisplayName
Yes indeed – and that is encouraging
As long as there is a decline in the rise in new cases then we can maintain current rules on social distancing.
If they rise again we tighten the screws like NZ to slow the increase.
Thousands of medical students are set to bolster Victoria’s health system and join the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic, with some starting in hospitals as early as this week.
The Victorian government has asked the state’s medical schools – which teach about 4000 doctors-in-training – to provide numbers on how many students are willing to join a surge health force, as Australia moves towards hitting a peak in coronavirus infections in May or June.
All of them volunteered.
RI @ #311 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:12 pm
What works for publicly traded companies may not work for small businesses.
Don’t mind the “cheap shares” idea for the big players.
For the smaller ones, freeze their rent/interest expenses, require them to keep anyone they had on their books as of March 1 employed (stood down on unpaid leave if there’s nothing for them to do), and have the government
payissue wages directly to each employee.I currently have package doing the corana virus world tour. Started out on spring break in Florida, went to Ohio, then South Korea, now is sitting in Singapore and has been for days. Are carriers like DHL overloaded or are there much fewer flights they can put a couple of bags of deliveries on, and they are aggregating until they can fill a load in their own plane / charter?
I would have thought you’d have a Singapore – Perth load most days, but perhaps the volume of cargo is less than I thought. Just speculating that they do have (or had previously you know when planes were flying with passengers) a ‘throw that on a commercial passenger flight’ options built into their movement chain.
Why would the Commonwealth want to take hospitals into public ownership? For a start, there is no easy way to determine their value…their price. But that aside, the Commonwealth does not know how to run hospitals. Why would anyone not in the hospital-running-trade buy them when they can be hired for the duration to serve a specific public health purpose?
In any case, there is an element of compulsion involved in the health sector already. Health workers and physical assets have been assigned to covid19 duty in the public interest. They have been conscripted. This is not in the interests of those who have been conscripted. In what possible way does it make sense to add confiscation to conscription?
Interesting: Just got a text message from our private health insurance (CUA Health) saying the premium increase scheduled for tomorrow has now been put off till 1 October. Probably prompted by expected lower payouts due to a lot of elective procedures cancelled and activity in the private hospitals being largely taken over by the government.
Do I hear the death rattle of private health insurance in Australia?
RI,
I was talking about the likes of Qantas and Virgin and other large corporates demanding bailouts. I don’t think we should just give them money, particularly when they’ve spent decades dodging taxes and offshoring work to save money.
If they are too big to fail then on that basis we don’t “give” them anything, we buy them to whatever degree is required to stop them failing and make bloody sure that there is nothing that is “too big to fail” that isn’t owned to some degree by the people of Australia so we can ensure the National Interest comes first.
caf @ #224 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 1:45 pm
Casuals are casuals. They have no contract. They are summoned to work when needed. They cannot be terminated, because they have never been taken on. The employer can simply tell them that they are not needed today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
This particular employer is reported as taking into account the fact that the lady in question has a compromised immune system, and may well die if she should catch the virus while working in a position that entails contact with multiple people. A reasonable enough thought, perhaps. If she were a hairdresser or teacher, then that would be ok, of course.
a r says:
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 3:22 pm
RI @ #311 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:12 pm
Why would the Commonwealth want to acquire such a business? What would the assets be? Some welding equipment, some oxy sets, a gantry crane and a forklift….and some scrap steel. The liabilities would be a rental agreement and maybe a few supplier accounts. How could it be on-sold at a later date?
What works for publicly traded companies may not work for small businesses.
Don’t mind the “cheap shares” idea for the big players.
For the smaller ones, freeze their rent/interest expenses, require them to keep anyone they had on their books as of March 1 employed (stood down on unpaid leave if there’s nothing for them to do), and have the government pay issue wages directly to each employee.
There is no instrument or agency available to carry out what amounts to placing hundreds of thousands of small businesses into administration. This is simply impractical…and it’s unnecessary…and it serves no public purpose at all.
As for seizing the assets of publicly owned companies….. If the choice for a company were whether to accept public support and have its assets confiscated or to refuse support and repel confiscation, then nearly every company other the insolvent will choose to refuse support. This would defeat the whole purpose of offering support…which is to try to hold the economy together during a crisis.
There need to be checks. There need to be systems for rationing support. But it makes no sense to offer support on terms that would mean it could never be accepted. That would be self-defeating.
There have been just nine new cases of coronavirus recorded in Western Australia over the past 24 hours.
The new cases bring the state’s total to 364.
The state’s death toll remains at two.
WA Health Minister Roger Cook labelled the new numbers “incredibly encouraging”, but cautioned the state was still “sailing into this storm, not out of it.
Our numbers were similar to Canada for a while but they have now skipped well ahead
Yabba:
Sure, but as I understand it, while simply giving no shifts with no explanation is fine, giving no shifts “because you’re pregnant” for example would not be fine.
They have a contract, just a really, really shitty one.
I don’t know how best to structure it, but if we are going to build a better world, the rules around employment of a casual nature has to be hit hard. Perhaps a massive payroll tax spike (that is reduced by making them permanent part time), perhaps introducing a new rate of GST, say 15% that the employer must self-assess and that doesn’t come with an input tax credit.
Perhaps all contracts of service should have a 15% GST and no input tax credits on them. If you run a business and want human inputs, then you should pay for them.
GoldenSmaug says:
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 3:28 pm
…..we can ensure the National Interest comes first.
Exactly what do you mean by the National Interest?
For most of us, at the moment, this means two things – arresting the pandemic and saving jobs. All kinds of measures are being invoked to those ends.
SA not enforcing Morrisons 2 person rule. Sticking to the 10 person rule ‘for now’.
The thing about India is we may never know what actually happened. They don’t have the accounting capability
There are also going to be a lot of people in India who die of secondary consequences, like starvation.
Latest edict from the SA government.
http://www.police.sa.gov.au/sa-police-news-assets/front-page-news/limitations-to-surgical-treatment-across-the-state-new-covid-19-direction
RI @ #319 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 3:23 pm
Well, I guess it depends on whether your criteria for assessing ‘how to run hospitals’ is whether they save more lives or make more money. Public hospitals are better at one, private hospitals are better at the other.
What happens in South Australia if there is a run of very small increases for several days?
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
Can you just STFU with the ‘Let’s get BB’ campaign? Not for BB’s sake, he is old enough and crotchety enough to look after himself.
But for pity’s sake, you are boring the rest of us to drink!
Go get a room.
It is not the case that casual employees are ‘not engaged’ or are in some way engaged without a contract. This is a non sequitur. They are called casuals to distinguish them from permanent employees with respect to their terms of employment and the conditions attaching to remuneration, leave and security of service.
Casual employees are entitled to fewer benefits than other employees, but they still employees. They have to be insured. They still have entitlements to super. Their employment has to be registered with the ATO. They are employees like any other wrt OHS provisions. The fact that they are by definition only marginally-attached workers is not usually something the workers would choose. It is almost always something that is imposed upon them, usually to their considerable detriment.
The Commonwealth’s discrimination against casual employees is idiotic. The reason wages are being supported by the Commonwealth is to support particular household incomes and demand because this will help keep total employment and production intact through the crisis. Depriving some workers/households of this support on arbitrary grounds is just self-defeating. It undermines the effect of the support provided to everyone else. Hopefully this discrimination will be removed.
RI @ #319 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 2:23 pm
Some things are natural monopolies (power, water, roads, etc.) or best operated for reasons other than “it makes profit” (healthcare)?
Simon Katich
The National Cabinet remaining united in their desire to not act united. 🙂
PuffyTMD @ #335 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 3:44 pm
The issue would be over if some people didn’t insist on re-raising it every day.
Player One says:
Tuesday, March 31, 2020 at 3:41 pm
RI @ #319 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 3:23 pm
Why would the Commonwealth want to take hospitals into public ownership? For a start, there is no easy way to determine their value…their price. But that aside, the Commonwealth does not know how to run hospitals …
Well, I guess it depends on whether your criteria for assessing ‘how to run hospitals’ is whether they save more lives or make more money. Public hospitals are better at one, private hospitals are better at the other.
Right now, in the immediate context, the issue is providing care to covid19 patients. The reason for this is ameliorate a public health emergency and an economic cataclysm. Other considerations are quite secondary. Beyond that, no one has yet advanced a satisfactory argument that would justify adding confiscation to conscription.
Maybe in the tourism sector the Commonwealth could appropriate rural properties as an alternative to providing financial support during a crisis.
Shit, I wish they’d do that for me.
ar….there is a public health system. It’s owned by the States. It’s financed jointly by the States and the Commonwealth. Private assets have been conscripted by the States. Why would the Commonwealth want to acquire them? What possible public purpose would be served?
Coronavirus turbo charges disruption
Analysis
Decades of old analogue ways and rules are being swept aside as the coronavirus emergency turbo charges the digital economy in a matter of weeks.
Sunday’s national rollout of universal telehealth is a truly generational change that will revolutionise general practice delivery in this country.
The national cabinet meeting by teleconference.
The rapid shift of primary healthcare to tele-delivery came after another traditionally conservative sector, the courts, also went virtual.
In less than one week, an insistence on face-to-face hearings has been sent to the judicial dustbin, as court systems across the country switched to the web.
Judges who had found all sorts of reasons not to accept video hearings, suddenly let evidence rules go and turned on the cameras for hearings. A small start to finally unwinding the hideously bureaucratic judiciary system.
Doctors and the judiciary had both been slow walking into the internet world. But in just one month, decades of old practice has been swept away, as the need to isolate from COVID-19 pushes even the most techno-phobic industries, institutions and work practices into the digital era.
As the economy is paused for the virus, digital is being fired up as the platform of choice for a whole suite of new services and practices needed to keep society running through the winter.
Full article –
https://www.afr.com/technology/is-this-the-end-of-analogue-20200327-p54eo9
Holden
That might be OK if one could reliably separate the (incomplete) signal(s) from the noise.
For example, there is currently s risk that as the noise from Cruise Ships etc dissipates (causing the aggregate to fall) it hides a rise in underlying growth.
Note that whilst this particular case can perhaps be accounted for and thus removed from the aggregate, there may be other cases where this cannot be done
RI @ #340 Tuesday, March 31st, 2020 – 3:53 pm
This seems a good enough argument to me …
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/private-hospitals-warn-they-will-be-forced-to-close-nurses-stood-down-20200328-p54etz.html
Why should private hospitals be treated differently to airlines?
Nationalize them both.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/when-did-new-york-city-shut-down
P1
If you jumped on every ripple in the bush, you would be one short-lived grasshopper.
Marshall will hold them in line with his strong will and steely glare.
BB
You ain’t helping.
Most peeps understand there could be a short hiatus between the washout of OS cases and pickup of community transmission.