The West Australian had a Painted Dog Research poll of 500 respondents on attitudes to the coronavirus, with field work dates undisclosed – or at least its website did, as I can’t see any mention of it in the hard copy. What the online report ($) tells us is that 71% believed the federal government should “enforce a full lockdown”; that 25% expected three months of social distancing, and 23% six months; that 18% were extremely worried about losing their job by September, with another 42% slightly worried; and that 68% were most concerned about the health impact, compared with 28% for the economic impact.
Other than that, I have the following to relate about Queensland’s elections on the weekend, which I’ll put here as the dedicated post on the subject doesn’t seem to be doing much business:
• As the dust settles on the troubled counting process, it’s clear the Liberal National Party has enjoyed something of a triumph in the election for Brisbane City Council, extending their 16-year grip on the lord mayoralty and quite probably repeating their feat from 2016 of winning 19 out 26 wards on the council. Incumbent Adrian Schrinner leads Labor’s Pat Condren in the lord mayoral race by a margin of 5.5%, although the latter gained a 4.0% swing off Graham Quirk’s landslide win in 2016. The ABC projection is awarding 17 ward seats to the LNP, to which they look very likely to add Enoggera, while maintaining a slender lead over the Greens in Paddington. The Greens’ combined council ward vote is up 3.4% on 2016 to 17.9%, and they retained their sole existing seat of The Gabba with swings of 12.2% on the primary vote and 8.5% on two-party preferred.
• However, it was a less good performance by the LNP in the two state by-elections, where all the detail is laid out at my results pages for Bundamba and Currumbin. The party finished a distant third behind One Nation in Bundamba, which remains a safe seat for Labor, and have only narrowly held on in Currumbin, where Labor has achieved a rare feat for a governing party in picking up a swing of nearly 2% at a by-election. Party leader Deb Frecklington would nonetheless be relieved by the result, since a defeat in Currumbin, which a pre-election poll suggested was in prospect, would surely have imperilled her leadership, despite her being able to point to the highly unusual circumstances in which the election was held.
• Speaking of which, I offer the following numbers on the ways the enrolled voters of Bundamba and Currumbin did and didn’t vote, with the qualification that there is an indeterminate number of postals still to be counted — perhaps rather a few of them, given I understood that there had been a surge in applications (although it seems a number of applicants never received their ballots).
Finally, a few thoughts on the situation in the United States, elaborating on a subject covered in yesterday’s post here by Adrian Beaumont – you are encouraged to comment on that thread if you have something specific to offer on matters American, and in particular on Donald Trump’s confounding opinion poll bounce over the past few weeks. I sought to put the latter event in context in a paywalled Crikey article on Monday, the key feature of which is the following comparison of his approval rating trend, as measured by FiveThirtyEight, with comparable trend measures of my own for Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Scott Morrison.
The upshot is that leaders the world over are enjoying a “rally around the flag” approval bounce, and that Donald Trump’s looks meagre indeed compared with his colleagues across the Atlantic. I feel pretty sure that the lack of a clear bounce for Scott Morrison is down to the fact that there have been no new numbers since Essential Research’s poll of over a fortnight ago, with the surges for Merkel, Johnson and Macron being concentrated since that time.
It’s also interesting to observe that Trump’s improvement has not been consistently observed. The chart below records his trends so far from this year from the five most prolific pollsters. For some reason, Rasmussen, the pollster that is usually most favourable to him — and which is accordingly the most frequent subject of his vainglorious tweets on the odd occasion when it reaches 50% — has in fact found his approval rating going in the direction he deserves. There is also no sign of change from the Ipsos series. However, the improving trend from the other three is more in line with the many other pollsters included in the FiveThirtyEight series, hence its overall picture of his best ratings since his post-election honeymoon.
Rumour has it this blokes in-laws were on the Ruby Princes and perhaps a favour was called in. Like I say it’s a rumour but he has form.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/liberal-politician-accuses-first-female-muslim-mp-of-thinking-her-diversity-is-better-than-others
meher baba @ #146 Friday, April 3rd, 2020 – 10:06 am
Whatever. You don’t appear to be in a field of expertise then.
The High Court had to evaluate the evidence of four epidemiologists, Professor Musk, Professor de Klerk, Dr Leigh and Professor Berry, on the question any causal link between asbestos exposure and the contraction of lung cancer in Amaca v Cotton.
It probably helped that the then Chief Justice, Justice French, had a maths degree.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/2010/5.html
Lizzie
If that is true then he has to resign because that is unacceptable.
The exponent is always “time”.
Be careful dealing in absolutes, P1!
Forgot the punch line.
That case was about risk ratios
Mexicanbeemer
I hestitated to post it because it may not be true, but when the gov MPs are so secretive, rumours will run riot.
lizzie
So a few rumours around? Might explain Dutton’s absence. Apparently there’s a Hill Song connection as well.
Good.
And the (ahem) money quote:
From The Grauniad live blog.
Dandy Murray @ #156 Friday, April 3rd, 2020 – 11:17 am
Yes, I know I’m overly simplifying. But you have to start somewhere 🙁
There now appears to be an undeniable lessening of new infections rate in NSW.
Today, the increase of 91 on a base of 2,298 represents a 3.9% increase, or a doubling ever 18 days.
That’s a pretty impressive performance from NSW.
My own rough rule of thumb is to look for a 3.4% increase per day as the “magic number” (“Everyone else can have one, why can’t I?” he whines), which would give a doubling in 21 days. This would balance a recovery time of 21 days resulting in no increase over time. Less than 3.4% and we might start to see a tapering off in total numbers.
Given that we still have a few days for the full effect of last weekend’s strict social distancing rules to kick in, I have increasing confidence that this figure of 3.4% or less is possible, given no exacerbating factors or surprises.
As I’ve ventured before, there are so many possible variables in any realistic model that it may be closer to a chaotic system than a deterministic one. In which case where we’re headed is anybody’s guess, and we may never figure out why we dodged the bullet (IF we do!).
We are closing down imported cases, but the local transmission numbers haven’t fallen so much. There’s also the Human Factor: if people relax too soon it’ll all start up again (maybe a better name is The Kangaroo Factor?). And there are still those “Under Investigations” and “Unknown Origins”. Was there a Hillsong Event? Then there’s the quality of our Health system… what’s the exponent for that if it gets a real stress test? And density of population is another consideration. Plus many more “fudge” factors, some changing slowly, some quickly, some unknown.
We do have some fairly reliable baseline numbers: total deaths and hospitalizations being principle among them. On their face, they do not indicate a huge resevoir of undetected cases (although some are certain to exist, and also to either be tracked down or peter out as symptomless carriers recover).
Our testing rates are high by world standards, and will probably go higher, with faster results.
Last night the boffin – if I’ve ever seen one, this guy was it – on The Drum, the person charged with the really hardcore calculations on the virus by the National Cabinet (with a team of 20 mathematicians, modelers and actuaries at his disposal) was upbeat. He didn’t guess, opinionate or gild any lilies. He stuck to his knitting and talked straight: we are not out of the woods, but are definitely walking in the right direction.
He gave me quite a lot of optimism.
PO: “If you see graphs that make the resulting growth look linear – which is often done for the purposes of comparison – it is probably because the graph is using a logarithmic scale.”
Couldn’t it also look linear simply because the rate of growth (either in arithmetical terms or as a percentage rate, depending on how you draw your graph) is remaining approximately the same over a period of time?
mexican and mikeh
I’d say we’ll never know the truth, then.
“Last night the boffin – if I’ve ever seen one, this guy was it – on The Drum, the person charged with the really hardcore calculations on the virus by the National Cabinet (with a team of 20 mathematicians, modelers and actuaries at his disposal) was upbeat. He didn’t guess, opinionate or gild any lilies. He stuck to his knitting and talked straight: we are not out of the woods, but are definitely walking in the right direction. He gave me quite a lot of optimism.”
Sorry, but you shouldn’t listen to him: I’m sure he’s a mere amateur compared to some of the geniuses who post on this blog. He probably thinks a growth rate of 1.0 is equivalent to zero growth. What a moron.
OK, I’ve vented enough: I think I was entitled to do so.
Can we all try to be a bit more civil to each other on the statistical stuff going forward?
The linear line will usually be upward or downward sloping with numbers rarely aligning but often drawn towards it.
“ I’d say we’ll never know the truth, then.
Sky News Australia
@SkyNewsAust
· 35m
The handling of the Ruby Princess cruise ship fiasco is now under police investigation, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has confirmed.”
Now, now Lizzie. Generalissimo Mick already has the cuffs out to nab Gladys and Spud. Honest.
Meher Baba
“As I’ve posted often enough before, I think the gradual move towards home isolation that was implemented nationally was done at the right pace.”
Then as far as I can tell, your argument has changed a bit. It wasn’t just “let’s do this incrementally”, it had a strong component of “wait and see”, where new measures were only implemented as observations that we were on a worse trajectory came in.
The virus has a one to two week incubation period, so that would mean waiting one to two weeks between the introduction of new measures, which is not what the government has been doing. Each week has seen a string of announcements. Sometimes the rules even changed from one day to the next. While the government hasn’t gone for the most severe measures, they’ve not been waiting either.
I assume that the reason they’ve not been waiting is because they know how the virus behaves if left unchecked, and how observations of its spread only come after a one to two week delay. Waiting would be a disaster. We need to act ahead of where we’re projected to be. Proactive, not reactive.
That accelerating growth you keep pooh-poohing is uncontroversial. It’s from published modelling of the spread of the virus, not the fevered imaginations of PB maths enthusiasts. The main caveat is the “left unchecked” bit. In other words, if we’re changing our behaviour then those models don’t directly apply, instead you need a model that also takes into account society’s changing behaviour. Furthermore, a more sophisticated model (taking into account our changing behaviours) will still take into account the potential for accelerated spread of the virus. It *has* to. Such models may not predict accelerated spread, but they will account for the potential.
The problem for the LNP.
They can’t blame NSW. It’s too well documented how Ruby Princess passengers spread the virus in other states.
It’s crystal clear to everyone.
The LNP lost control of the borders.
meher baba @ #163 Friday, April 3rd, 2020 – 11:24 am
Not really. Linear growth is an unnatural (and, in the long term, unstable) scenario for viral growth. The natural underlying growth for viruses is always exponential. At least in the initial stages, when it is uncontrolled and unconstrained (and also until it starts killing its hosts!).
Paradoxically, if it looks linear for an extended period of time, that probably means things in the environment are continually changing, not that the situation is stable.
Display Name: “Then as far as I can tell, your argument has changed a bit. It wasn’t just “let’s do this incrementally”, it had a strong component of “wait and see”, where new measures were only implemented as observations that we were on a worse trajectory came in.”
Not really. I should have elaborated further in my post, but I thought it was long enough as it was. I still would have preferred a bit more wait and see, but it was clear that the states – especially Victoria – were hot to trot with a lock down. The different views were mediated at National Cabinet and the outcome was a lock down more quickly than I (and I suspect both ScoMo and Murphy) would have liked, but also one that involved all the states and territories going more or less in the same direction at the same speed. And none of them going as far as NZ went.
In a Federal system, I would call that a pretty good outcome.
And, BTW, I appreciate the very civil tone of your post.
Andrew_Earlwood
😆
Yep. Not a fan of Keane, but he’s on the button here.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/04/02/home-affairs-coronavirus-accountability/
PlayerOne: “Paradoxically, if it looks linear for an extended period of time, that probably means things in the environment are continually changing, not that the situation is stable.”
That actually makes sense to me, because things in the Australian environment seem to have been continually changing over the past week or so: eg, more people coming back from overseas each day, adjustments to the lock down arrangements each day, a gradual step up in testing, etc.
“ Andrew_Earlwood
”
But of course, Generalissimo Mick has to get through machine gunning several thousand refugees … I mean foreign crews … before get can get back around to Gladys and Spud.
I had to do worky-type stuff, so I missed the discussion on growth rates, so here I am to catch up.
Growth is linear if the rate of growth expressed as a derivative is constant. For example, if there are 300 new cases today, then 300 new cases tomorrow, then 300 the day after that, and so on, there is constant growth of 300 per day. That’s linear.
Growth is exponential if the rate of growth expressed as a fraction is constant. So if we grow by 5% today, then 5% tomorrow, 5% the day after that, and so on. The feature here is that the derivative – the total number of new cases per day – increases proportional to the number of total cases.
And to the person who pointed out that the total number of cases can’t decrease, yes I knew that. I was just illustrating what a growth rate less than 1 (expressed as a multiplier in this case) would mean.
guytaur: “They can’t blame NSW. It’s too well documented how Ruby Princess passengers spread the virus in other states.”
Possibly in terms of public perception. But I think NSW was actually responsible for determining what quarantine arrangements would apply to these people once they came off the ships. While quarantine rules around entry to the country are administered by Federal officials, I think you’ll find that the rules themselves are determined by State and Territory health departments.
Of course, you can argue that all the people could have been forced to remain on the ship, but I don’t think that was a humane option, given what we saw happen with the Diamond Princess.
Nobody is safe from Trump’s wrath.
Would be funny if he took his crew and mutinied. Think there’s a movie or series or something with basically that plot.
Five per cent growth means that whatever is growing is five percent bigger than it was, equivalently multiplied by 1.05. Different ways of saying the same thing. So if inflation in 5% per annum, prices are on average 1.05 times what they were a year ago.
Baba
Nope. Decades of the LNP running on Howard’s slogan.
“We decide the circumstances in which people come”.
I may not have the quote exact.
No amount of spin changes the irrevocable damage to the LNP on borders as a result of deciding to let the virus in.
The LNP has gone to extremes to tell us they control the borders. They own the failure.
meher baba
What an age we live in eh. Did you ever think you’d live to see pistols at dawn in the Bludger lounge over Epidemiological statistics 😀
The rate is fuzzed by the washing out of the overseas and cruise ship cases and the lag and lack of testing from community cases. Now that testing has increased and there has been enough time for people to start presenting symptoms, we should get a better handle on how effective the timing and extent of quarantining overseas visitors and social distance rules have been.
I also query seasonal influences. Have we been lucky in the virus arriving in early March? With winter coming, will second and third waves be a bigger problem for us in the southern hemisphere?
As for whether Morrision will come out of this looking good or not: I think Morrison has been behind the curve most of the way (except maybe early on when quarantining flights from China) but, relatively, has been ahead of the many people who weren’t taking it seriously. So on balance, from the point of view of many Australians, he will probably come out looking like he was on top of things :-P.
I hope the MJA invites proper critiquing of articles such as this:
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/public-health-health-systems-and-palliation-planning-covid-19-exponential-timeline
This is a not a work of pure scholarship but rather a step into advocacy which is borne out by the thinness of the references (look at footnote 1 re undetected infection rates – there must be more than one study), some self referencing (footnote 4), a thoroughly uncritical assessment of Chinese statistics and finally a call for a number of important initiatives but which have nothing to do with the expertise of the authors.
The new case numbers must be a confounder to where the authors’ perceptions lay a fortnight ago and they are pushed aside on the basis they are going to ramp up again in mid-April.
Will a topless Erika Eleniak jump out of a big birthday cake?
Interesting to see that Ovation Of The Seas (the boat docked at Circular Quay when I was in Sydney in late January) returned with 74 cases on March 18th. Don’t know whether this was after one or two cruises.
The 3 American couples I met on the Manly Ferry on the same day were going cruising on Ovation, and then (as one of them put it) attending a “convention” before returning to America.
martini henry
“Bucephalus, I will keep it simple for you a shell is a projectile, the casing is made of iron or steel and filled with explosive. When the shell explodes the casing breaks in to chunks large and small which fly in all directions to maximize the damage caused this is called shrapnel. The case you mentioned is brass and it holds the propellent and does not fly to the target but stays in the gun until it is ejected by the gun crew. This case serves two purposes one is to hold the gun powder and the second is to seal the breech on firing. A final fun fact not all artillery uses brass cases once the shell gets to big to handle the propellent charge is kept separate in bags and is loaded in to the gun after the shell. i.e large naval guns.”
The word SHELL was used in the original post to describe the BOMBS dropped on Darwin.
I have sitting next to my desk the SHELL of an L35A3 HESH-T 105MM Tank ROUND – the first Tank ROUND that I fired in my 13 year career in the Army – one of the many hundreds if not over a thousand I personally fired. And then there’s the many thousands of ROUNDS of 0.50 cal, 0.30 cal, 7.62 mm, 5.56mm and 9 mm that I fired that created spent CARTRIDGES, also called SHELLS. I’ve also called in Airstrikes, Artillery and Mortar Fire Missions. In a Fire Mission your request “Five ROUNDS – Fire For Effect”. I’ve even taken the excess BAGS off of Mortar ROUNDS and dropped a few mortar ROUNDS and I’ve helped ram BAGS of powder on an M198 155mm Artillery piece.
Aircraft BOMBS are not called SHELLS. They are BOMBS or these days MISSILES. When you are talking to the pilots or their liaison about the load out on fast air you never refer to SHELLS. The CASING of a BOMB is steel but the terminology used in the original post was SHELL – not CASING or BOMB.
Would you like a further technical discussion about ammunition? Because unless you are an Ammunition Technical Officer you are unlikely to know as much about ammunition as an Officer in the Royal Australian Armoured Corps who has passed Gunnery Wing training at the School of Armour.
I look forward to you telling Mr William Bowe that he doesn’t know shit about elections or polling – you utter cockwomble.
meher baba says:
Friday, April 3, 2020 at 10:40 am
Shellbell: “So if the cases were say 5,000 yesterday, what number of new cases would equate to growth of 1.0 today.”
In any sort of sane universe it would be zero. But, in the arcane world of PB, the magic “exponent” means that it’s pretty much what any poster wants it to be.
Perhaps if I put it this way. If the population of infected people is to remain constant then the newly infected has to match the retired cases ( either through death or get well).
truth is for leftie snowflakes. Police are not interested in such novelties.
Simon Katich @ #184 Friday, April 3rd, 2020 – 8:49 am
Yep,
Restrictions will be in place for quite a while, especially international travel.
Basically you’re pretty much stuck in the Country you’re presently in for the foreseeable future.
Re Display Name @11:50. So on balance, from the point of view of many Australians, he will probably come out looking like he was on top of things
I broadly agree. Of course that will depend very much on how things go in coming weeks and months.
My “magic number” for this is 3.4% new cases per day, or less, which is a doubling over a maximum of 21 days, balancing an admittedly guesstimated recovery rate of 21 days after diagnosis.
Barney in Tanjung Bunga
Covid Immunity Passports will be a comin’ . Had the disease ? Travel permitted.
I have just received a phone call from my son, during which he informed that his wife’s beloved aunt, 72, has died in hospital in England from COVID-19. She was in hospital for a hysterectomy, and acquired a ‘hospital’ strep infection, requiring an extended stay on intravenous antibiotics. She was probably infected with the virus in hospital, went downhill fast, and died 4 days after first symptoms. Not known, of course, who she caught it from, but she had not been allowed visitors for the past 2 weeks. It is possible, but unlikely, that she had it when she went to hospital.
This sad little story illustrates the some of the myriad unknowns and uncertainties that cloud this whole topic, in particular the potential role that health workers who lack adequate PPE can play in spreading infection both within and outside hospitals, and the obvious fact that hospitals can be a potent source of continuing infections in the absence of ‘perfect’ cross infection control. Health workers, like us all, have to shop. Coles, that I know of, are concentrating them at 7am to 8am on Tuesdays and Thursdays in special shopping hours, so that they have the opportunity of infecting each other while not wearing PPE. Is that better, or not, than them being spread more evenly amongst the rest of us? Hard question.
a rsays:
Friday, April 3, 2020 at 11:44 am
“Nobody is safe from Trump’s wrath.”
Nothing to do with Trump.
I have no idea what caused the Captain to have the brain snap that made him release the letter but this issue should have and is being managed through the Chain of Command.
I am not in the least surprised that he has been relieved of command. I’m surprised it took so long.
I have an indirect connection to the Acting Secretary of The Navy and I know he is a completely apolitical civil servant.
meher baba says:
..
I think you’ll find that the rules themselves are determined by State and Territory health departments.
..
Until a few days ago Australian boarder security was a federal responsibility. The Federal government has proved so incompetent the states have taken over, that is for sure.
poroti @ #194 Friday, April 3rd, 2020 – 10:56 am
Will you have to wait for enough pilots and flight crew to also have had the disease, or do you get to fly yourself if you’re one of the early ones with the passport?
This rumour re the Ruby Princess that posters are talking about. Is the main source Eddy Jokovich? I note that he had a tweet earlier today hinting at knowledge of all sorts of things about the decision to let people off the ship. But someone (either Twitter or EJ himself) seems to have taken that tweet down.
He’s a guy I tend to take about as seriously as the bloke who runs the Kangaroo Court of Australia site.