The Guardian reports Essential Research’s latest weekly reading of concern about coronavirus finds satisfaction with the government’s handling of the crisis up two points to 65%, its best result yet out of the five such polls that have been published (no sign yet of the poor rating, which hit a new low of 17% – the full report later today should reveal all).
Last week’s question on state governments’ responses was repeated this week, and with due regard to sample sizes that run no higher than around 320 (and not even in triple figures in the case of South Australia), the good ratings have been 56% last week and 61% for New South Wales; 76% and 70% for Victoria; 52% and 63% for Queensland; 79% and 77% for Western Australia; and 72% and 66% for South Australia. Combining the results gives New South Wales 58.5% and Victoria 73% with error margins of about 3.7%; Queensland 57.5% from 4.6%; Western Australia 78% from 5.5%; and South Australia 69% from 6.9%.
Also included are Essential’s occasion question on trust in various institutions, which suggests that all of the above might be benefiting from a secular effect that has federal parliament up from 35% to 53% and the ABC up from 51% to 58%. The effect is more modest for the Australian Federal Police, up two points to 68%. In other coronavirus-related findings, the poll finds “half of all voters think it’s too soon to even consider easing restrictions“, with a further 14% saying they are prepared to wait until the end of May; that 38% said they would download the virus-tracing app, with 63% saying they had security concerns and 35% being confident the data would not be misused.
UPDATE: Full report here.
I wonder if there is some correlation between the spaces people are sitting in when engaged in on line interviews and their personae. For example Sheridan’s is drab & soulless.
Moving in the direction where the doubling time in Oz will be measured in an Olympiad
Following on from the Quoll’s look at Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and its effects on morbidity and mortality, it’s worth mentioning the other relevant Nitrogen and Oxygen compounds. There’s Nitrous Oxide (N2O), a supplemental gas used for its analgesic properties in anaesthesia (out of favour) and obstetrics and ambos. But the one to watch is Nitric Oxide (NO).
Nitric Oxide is made throughout the body and is a key relaxing agent of the smooth muscle cells lining blood vessels, dilating blood vessels and improving blood flow. (Viagra uses nitric oxide as the intermediary.) It is especially effective in relaxing pulmonary blood vessels (when inhaled), lowering pulmonary hypertension, and notably in this COVID19 crisis, improves blood flow around the airways with the prospect of getting better oxygenation. The nasal sinuses also normally produce NO which is continually inhaled into the lungs, especially with nasal breathing, which is what all breathing should be, particularly when dealing with air borne diseases.
Trials using NO in COVID patients in ITU are underway.
There is absolutely no scientific study showing a causal relationship between habitat destruction per se and climate change per se and the genesis of new human diseases. None.
There are some theories about a relationship between habitat destruction (and climate change) and new pandemics and some people then readily adopt these theories as axiomatic truths, but the science to demonstrate causality is simply not there. They are hypotheses. The variables that need to be controlled to demonstrate these hypotheses are immense. The data is lacking.
On the other hand, there is a slew of direct scientific evidence that shows that there is a direct connection between hunting, capturing, transporting, trading, and eating wildlife and new pandemics. If humans had learned to leave horseshoe bats, Civet cats and chimpanzees alone there would be three less pandemics on the go as we speak.
There is a second set of animal vectors that have been demonstrated scientifically to directly cause pandemics: domestic animals, commensals and ferals. The pattern with domestics and commensals is the same as it is with wildlife: a pattern of large numbers of incidents of close human contact with the animals. Rabies, mostly delivered to humans by Canis familiaris, kills around 60,000 people a year. If you want to significantly increase your chances of catching a number of diseases and/or parasites shoot and eat a feral pig in the Top End.
And so on and so forth.
Shellbell @ #992 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 4:58 pm
Are you sure?
That’s now five years! 🙂
Whilst we’re on pollution, the political terrorists in the LNP and apparently with support from those posing as the right wing of the ALP, are set to drop their standards even further, both moral and pettochemical.
Taylor to loosen Australia’s lax fuel standards to support oil sector
https://reneweconomy.com.au/taylor-to-loosen-australias-lax-fuel-standards-to-support-oil-sector-81033/
“The measures to relax fuel standards accompany negotiations between the Australian and United States governments to secure additional oil reserves, to be held within the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in underground facilities in Louisiana and Texas.”
“these are uncertain times”
Says a British politician.
‘Quoll says:
Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 6:32 pm
Evidence free opinions from PB’s own Lord Monckton of zoonotic disease are never ending.
Still waiting for the link to their own lit review published in a peer reviewed journal, just the simplest way to put everyone out of their misery.’
You made, and repeated several times, the original claim: that habitat destruction and climate change are causing new pandemics. A link to a single paper demonstrating causality between these two mechanisms and actual (as opposed to hypothetical or speculative) new zoonotic diseases would be a reasonable starting point. If you can’t provide such a paper then you may apologize for (a) getting it wrong and (b) trying to demonstrate your scientific standing by resorting to repeated personal insults.
Wanna buy an airport? Guaranteed to have customers some time in the future.
Quoll @ #1006 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 7:08 pm
Australia is already =seen as a laggard with regards to fuel standards, with some vehicle manufacturers refusing to release vehicles into the Australian market, citing the lower fuel standards compared to jurisdictions like the European Union.
Talk about a race to the bottom, all the way with USA.
It’s great to hear Dan Andrews call out the latest COVID-related racist attack against Asian Australians. He correctly described it as evil.
The right is very busy trying to get debate back to “normal”.
Bw’s efforts are an example of this. Remember he has been very clear in being a bedfellow of the science deniers calling the Greens extreme.
That’s his framing.
Bad news for the right.
Science is back. Anti vaxxers. Climate deniers and neo liberal austerity are out.
Long term community cooperation is required for dealing with the virus. There is a society. Reality is in direct opposition to LNP ideology.
Then there are the long term effects of the Depression.
Then there is the oil shock.
Morrison has been the best socialist prime minister since Whitlam and has some way to go.
Murdoch has suffered big and maybe permanent audience loss.
World power structures are going to shift.
Returning to the right wing framing of the world is just not going to happen.
I remember a case 20 years ago of a woman who suffered horrific burns at a Housing Commission residence and they the nitrous oxide she was given during dressing/undressing of wounds was overdone and cause neurological damage.
Shellbell, nitrous oxide can’t be all bad. I see piles of little silver capsules all over the place. Someone told me they used to contain nitrous oxide and people sniff the stuff for a high.
ItzaDream
With the work I was doing a long while back I did a lot of testing of diesel. ‘Straya was a shocker. Shedloads of sulphur allowed to remain in it until mid/late Noughties. Literally 100s of times higher than the EU standards. Amazingly it was The Rodent’s government who sent us down the right path. Although that was probably forced as our fuel was so shit that modern engines said GAGF to our fuel.
Stephen Colbert talks to Michael Moore tonight..
https://youtu.be/wFKkVvUgUUk
https://youtu.be/zp8qpa3fGxI
max says:
Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 7:17 pm
It’s great to hear Dan Andrews call out the latest COVID-related racist attack against Asian Australians. He correctly described it as evil.
__________________
According to BB that’s just social distancing.
ItzaDream
Just realised when reading the locations of our proposed reserved. Scrott sucking up bigly to Trump. US frackers are forked so what a nice little brownie point earner to take some oil that nobody wants off their hands. Cynical me thinks it will be over priced and the cost of storage well padded .
PeeBee
Makes cars go fast too 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn-ivNPEUb8
Regarding Oil. If the prices stay below $20 a barrel for a long time Saudi Arabia may retain profitability.
North Sea Oil. Shale Oil are in trouble as are countries like Russia.
‘poroti says:
Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 7:35 pm
ItzaDream
Just realised when reading the locations of our proposed reserved. Scrott sucking up bigly to Trump. US frackers are forked so what a nice little brownie point earner to take some oil that nobody wants off their hands. Cynical me thinks it will be over priced and the cost of storage well padded .’
Morrison would be the only leader in the world (along with Trump) who thinks holding our strategic reserve 12,000 km from home is the way to go.
p
What’s a little bit of sulphuric acid in the crankcase between friends?
Interesting tweet
Kos Samaras
@KosSamaras
I have worked out why Swedish people like their herding policy. They are not the ones overrepresented in the infections and deaths. It’s migrants
https://mobile.twitter.com/KosSamaras/status/1252885674824396802
”Returning to the right wing framing of the world is just not going to happen”
I wouldn’t be so certain, 99% of all the money in the world wants just that to happen.
Shellbell @ #1013 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 7:21 pm
Sounds more like she was not given enough oxygen Shellbell, or suffered some other system collapse.
Nitrous oxide per se is pretty harmless short term. Long term its causes depression of the bone marrow.
But, critically, it is how much oxygen that goes with it that matters. It is a poor anaesthetic agent, needing to be given 100% to render unconsciousness, i.e. no room for oxygen, that in itself will get you unconscious soon enough! It was used in anaesthesia for its analgesic properties, and as a carrier gas, reducing oxygen levels to safe concentrations, (Oxygen is toxic outside its goldilocks zone), and was variably mixed with oxygen at 30-50%, unless higher oxygens were demanded because of clinical conditions. It fell out of favour in anaesthesia from the ’80/’90s on.
In situations like you describe, the usual procedure is to give Entonox (inhaled), a 50:50 pre mix of nitrous and oxygen. Or for burns, often a general anaesthetic. ‘Burns’ is a bad as it gets. The old adage was % burnt +age = >100 = death. Things have improved.
Steve
They will try. Trump is destroying their ideology. We are going to be back to FDR economics being a long term thing in the US.
Legacy media is being hit hard by the loss of advertising on top of a long term trend of losing advertising. Many new people have been forced to learn using technology for their news. No nipping down to the local shop for your paper.
This while we have a shrinking of the world economy that’s unprecedented.
Big big government saving people’s ability to survive.
The economies of the world that come out of lockdown and resuming relatively normal activity first having the competitive advantage. That’s not been the neo liberal countries.
The UK has been a stand out example.
The US not far behind.
The right is going to try but it’s going to a very different reality after the virus.
Boerwar @ #1021 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 7:44 pm
“twas Abbott initially wasn’t it?
The long term damage to this country by these vandals is something even Bw would struggle to list.
Boerwar
Ah, acid in oil, my career highlight. Worked up a chemometric method to analyse acid in engine oils using FTIR. Gawd that must sound exciting 😆 . Best bit as far as I was concerned was chlorobenzene was no longer needed. Well not really, it was the $ from the company innovation prize.
Itza
My main concern is whether the combo of post truth and post shame politics will eventually render our democracy terminal.
It is no accident that parliament no longer sits much at all.
ItzaDream
Oops
Maybe we should not have settled?
p
I took the view that it was there to dissolve the iron filings in the sump that were evidence of a bit too much wear and tear…
Shellbell @ #1030 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 8:05 pm
It’d be a good case to read.
Boerwar
Post truth and post shame is directly related to our ‘Fourth Estate” and it’s putrescence . No pollie could survive if they reaped the ridicule they richly deserve for being “post truth”. In Australia the lead up to the election of Abbott the Mad illustrated that in spades. He should have been laughed out court .
Boerwar @ #1029 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 8:03 pm
My main concern has been the climate, as the great overarching crisis before us, but watching the response to this pandemic, then any crisis and the bigger the crisis the better, is playing into authoritarian hands.
p
I agree but think there may be more to it than that.
poroti @ #1033 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 8:09 pm
And for a while there we (well, I) thought that social media would be means whereby truth could be still dispersed, a force for good. How wrong can one be.
Boerwar
Iron filings, saw a lot of that when biodiesel was introduced. The truckies tipping their old engine oil into the fuel tank did not work so well as it used to. Made for some pretty dire filters 🙂
Itza
FWIW, my view is that vested interests created post shame and post truth politics in order to protect themselves from climate action. Feeding into your view, both tend to foster the ultimate in post shame and post truth governance – authoritarian governments.
No shame, no honour and all blame – elsewhere…….about sums up democracy where is should count. To think Andrew Peacock resigned over some bed sheets or something his wife should not have bought. So long ago, I can’t remember the details……Short of murder by a leading politician, and the so-called leader of the Western World in Trump has said he could do it without running the risk of any backlash against him, says it all I suppose…..
The situation if ripe for fascist governments to predominate world-wide at the moment…
An example of how neo liberalism has failed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/21/trumps-company-asks-federal-government-include-it-any-rent-relief-offered-tenants/
Even Real Estate entities are trying to be tenants for rent subsidies.
Government saving people.
p
When a stripling seeking to buy my first car with less than $100 in my pocket, I was taught by an old timer to lift the dipstick out and run my fingers along the tip. If there were too many sharp little bits, move onto the next clunker!
In the end I bought a Pontiac. It had real leather seats, springs that felt like you were making a sea voyage, and a very satisfying engine rumble.
Boerwar
Largely ,very largely , agree , for me though the ‘trend setter’ was George Dubya, Iraq and the meeja. The so called journals of record like the NYT and WaPo still have not earned my trust since then.
ItzaDream
Just on your Queens’ Club lectures refelection, I think I delivered one in 2004 at the invitation of Dr Julian Lee, respiratory physician, although it might have been in the weird chuch place next to Piccadilly
Shellbell @ #1043 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 8:27 pm
The one I went to was way earlier. No idea why I went, but it was the one and only. 2004, however, had I known ….
Interesting article that looks legit in the NYT on early detection of COVID symptoms with a simple medical device called a pulse oximeter that detects hypoxia. On ebay for $50. Snake oil?
Link: https://nyti.ms/2XV6q9d
CC
Not much
Dealing with the fallout of a catastrophic meeting I held last night.
Confusion about the elective surgery lift.
On the larger scale, there is a big push for private public partnerships in health as a long term future. People will drop out of PHI and the public hospitals won’t cope and want mechanisms to get them done in private.
Four Victorian Police officers killed in freeway accident. Apparently a truck hit the officers who were attending to a traffic matter.
Rossmore @ #1046 Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020 – 8:37 pm
It’s the thingy that reads out the ‘sats’ that everyone is talking about. It tells you how well you are carrying oxygen, or not. Conditions apply – has to be put on correctly and have a decent circulation to measure. Doesn’t tell you why, only what.
Dio why catastrophic? Presumably everyone survived the meeting?
What I was really asking before was what is the feeling about whether there’s still carriers lurking in SA?