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.
@DrDenaGrayson tweeted
#Ohio man John McDaniel – who railed on social media against @GovMikeDeWine’s lockdown order and posted, “I Say Bullshit! (DeWine) doesn’t have that authority” – contracted #coronavirus weeks later and now has DIED from #COVID19.
#CoronavirusPandemic
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/man-who-called-ohios-lockdown-order
The Overton window is shifting. All that work by Steve Bannon being undone by reality as was inevitable.
_____________________________________________
@JonKudelka tweets
Print some more damn money, buy an airline.
I think the Government want Hostplus to buy it …
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/04/20/wayne-swan-new-social-contract/
Paywalled
Sigh, Obama is Trumps Labor Party once, and tiresomely and childishly, again.
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/20/21227903/trump-blames-obama-coronavirus
@Picketer tweets
When you see the stories about Virgin going into into administration with more that $5 billion in sub-investment grade debt, remember that only a few days ago the PM suggested Industry Super Funds buy it……..
Morning people. For anyone still following the graphs, I made this one last night.
It’s a bit busy but essentially it says that Australia started a 2nd wave of infections on April 9, and this second wave can be described as approximately 21 new infections per day.
Reasoning to follow, thoughts welcome…
KENNEDY MP, Bob Katter says he won’t be signing up to the Federal Government’s contact tracing app full stop, and if it becomes compulsory he’d rather be thrown in jail.
“I will not now, or in the future, agree to a contact tracing app,” Mr Katter said.
“The Christian Brothers, and other educators, insisted on us reading 1984 and A Brave New World, and now these Orwellian predictions have never seemed more real.
“Whatever argument you have for forsaking your freedoms, at the end of the day you will find it’s a poor trade off.”
The grey-blue diamonds are the number of cases reported each day. The grey-green line is a cumulative log normal distribution fitted to the number of cases, prior to April 9. (In my analysis a log normal curve performed better than a normal curve.) The red line is the interesting curve. It represents the daily projected peak number of infections, based on only the infections on that date. If you like, it tracks how we were going. For example, based on all reported infections up to April 1, the curve projected to an eventual future maximum of 7,133 infections. By the end of the next day, April 2, the best log normal curve projected a total of 6,731. This trend, of a lower number of eventual infections, continued until April 9 when the projected eventual maximum started climbing again. And it continued to climb day after day. (The overall error in the curve fit also started to climb after April 9.)
I concluded that the log-normal description that works well until April 9 is not appropriate after April 9. Something new or additional is needed after April 9.
One way to look at the “extra” infections is to treat them as a second effect or “second wave” that started on April 9. And do this by subtracting the daily log-normal projections from the actual daily infections.
The chart shows these additional infections as orange crosses, with a straight line regression for those additional infections. It’s crude, but so far the second wave can be described as roughly 21 new cases per day.
??
@MrDenmore tweets
Common sense, common humanity and global cooperation need to be the lessons out of COVID-19 – not nativism, nationalism, distrust and hatred – from David Miliband. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2020/04/four-contests-will-shape-post-covid-19-world
Doesn’t surprise me. There were signs that some people didn’t stay home at Easter, for example; the impact of that will take a few weeks to wash through. *sigh*
@sarahinthesen8 tweets
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s comments today that the Govt will take an “aggressive deregulation agenda” post Covid19 is code for cutting corners for big biz. The first things they will attack will be laws that protect the environment.
The Greens will fight this & fight hard
Liberal Dearth squads are too much for the focus groups:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/liberal-social-distancing-critics-told-to-put-clubs-away-20200420-p54ljf.html
Poor dills, must have a mundo putting together their message. The excuse for their stupidly, our leader didn’t tell us death was not popular. You couldn’t make this shit up.
What about Gigi Fostert on QandA? Kill em off.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/how-can-you-say-that-economist-s-view-of-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised-20200420-p54llq.html
guytaur says:
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 11:14 am
@sarahinthesen8 tweets
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s comments today that the Govt will take an “aggressive deregulation agenda” post Covid19 is code for cutting corners for big biz. The first things they will attack will be laws that protect the environment.
The Greens will fight this & fight hard
Who let the toothless tiger out of the cage?
‘Living in a failed state’: Devastating column slams Trump’s administration for being ‘too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering’
In an op-ed for The Atlantic this Monday, columnist George Packer argues that the coronavirus didn’t “break” America — it revealed what was already broken.
When the virus began to emerge in the U.S., the country already had a number of underlying conditions, according to Packer — conditions that were being “ruthlessly” exploited. “…a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years,” Packer writes. “We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.”
Packer contends that while the U.S. needed a response to the outbreak that was concise and goal oriented, the Trump administration acted like the governments of Pakistan or Belarus — “like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”
“The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare,” he writes. “From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/
Virgin Australia administrator Vaughan Strawbridge said more than 10 parties were interested in taking part in recapitalising the airline.
He said expressions of interest would be sought in the next three weeks and then he would run a sale process of about a month.
QLD back to 6 cases. We aint out of the woods yet.
FredNK
Yeah a Green saying the same thing as Wayne Swan and David Milliband is so toothless tiger.
Her priority is the environment. Its the same kill people for the economy mantra from those that oppose environmental regulations.
Reality. No environment no economy. Just as no health no economy.
Covid-19 Immunity Compared to 6 Other Diseases (Common Cold, HIV, SARS, and More) | Cause + Control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylot5uGyyLA
Still on c19, New Zealand’s and Queensland’s numbers are similar, though arguably Queensland is doing slightly better at the moment. Populations are similar (NZ 4.8m, Qld 5.1m) and infections too (NZ 1440, Qld 1019).
Jaeger @ #111 Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 – 11:11 am
Yes. If you live in or near a holiday destination, you could see that this was going to be a likely outcome. All the states should have been shut down hard over Easter. We shut down our accomodation, but we see groups of people “free camping” all over the place down here. Any forest opening they could find. Some of our back roads have never seen so much traffic – I don’t know where they all go each day, but they were clearly not “isolating”.
“The chart shows these additional infections as orange crosses, with a straight line regression for those additional infections. It’s crude, but so far the second wave can be described as roughly 21 new cases per day.”
Nice. My thoughts:
1. Rests on the assumption that a log-normal is appropriate. Seems as good as any, but everything sort of flows from that
2. Not sure if it’s a second wave, or more just the “mopping up” as the last of the cases come through.
3. I think to really determine if it’s a second wave, the cause of the cases needs to be looked at. At least for the WA cases they’re still reflecting people coming from cruise ships.
frednk
The LDSs are getting plenty of support from the orcs over at the Rupertarium. Come on down Adam Creighton.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/jobless-disease-a-greater-threat-to-far-more-people/news-story/108156dcd6328dcefd0589ab5d4dbd45
Here’s a thought – given we’re about to go into mass unemployment, compulsory retirement for those > 60?
guytaur says:
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 11:19 am
FredNK
Yeah a Green saying the same thing as Wayne Swan and David Milliband is so toothless tiger.
I saw no mention in your post that the toothless tiger was standing being some real tigers. I’m sorry but the greens really don’t bring much to the table. Just a lot of posturing, it really is tiresome.
LR @11:03
Its impossible to tell with such small numbers.
What I think we are seeing is that the R(eff) isn’t homogeneous. The thing that worries me the most is the persistence of a low level of local infections with unknown source, particularly in certain parts of Sydney. That quite possibly reflects certain sub groups being less compliant with social isolation.
Outbreaks at things like nursing homes/hospitals etc are in a sense easier to deal with. The contact tracing is easier. And even though you have a more susceptible group of people, there is less chance of getting outside that group. Whereas if you’ve got entire suburbs with higher levels of infections that are untraceable you’ve got a real problem.
I can imagine us getting down to the point where there are roadblocks around certain suburbs.
In any case I do expect a long tail and that will look to the stats like a second wave. I think you’ve also got to make a distinction between the states and territories where its clearly under control, and again, bits of Sydney. Reading the NSW database of cases is a bit sobering.
My hope is that the closer we get, the more we can concentrate resources on those problem areas. Again, visions of roadblocks and testing of entire suburbs come to mind.
frednk
You may not like it but the Greens have been proven right.
Reality is the economy has to take second place to science.
The virus has comprehensively proved it. Slagging off someone for pointing this out just shows you are out of touch with reality.
Blobbit
I don’t know about compulsory but we need to be a bit more willing to extend a “UBI” to people above 50.
guytaur says:
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 11:28 am
frednk
You may not like it but the Greens have been proven right.
The Greens have been proven right about what guytaur, they have made a lot of noise about a lot of things and contributed about nothing. It really is boring.
I see initial acceptance of the app, according to Essential, is 38%. Not bad for a new idea (“new” to your average non-news-junkie Aussie punter, anyway).
I see that arty-spectacles-wearing and seemingly full-time Drum diva, Jenna Price, has written a by-the-numbers rejection of the app, citing the Census stuff-up and MyHealth data concerns as reasons to avoid more government supplied software magic solutions. She neglected to throw in the recent MyGov meltdown, but I’m sure she would have if she’d had more time to think before putting finger tip to keyboard.
The argument seems to be that an overload problem with the Census, and reports of nefarious data leakage of private Health information renders “the government” untrustworthy on IT matters. She makes a general point soon after that you just can’t trust gummits nowadays.
She turns rare agreement with anything Barnarby Joyce spurts out into a Plus. Mock-grudgingly, she admits this time he’s got it right, apparently because he is correct in not wanting “the government” being able to track which staffer he’s breeding with this week.
And so on, et cetera. All very predictable stuff. As I said at the top: written by-the-numbers.
The agreement with Joyce IS interesting, however. It signals a rare conjunction of opinion between the Loony Left and the Rabid Right. Throw in the Anti-Vaxxers’, 2nd Amendment Gun Nuts’ and the Trumpistas’ opposition to Social Distancing and an image begins to form out of the mists that swirl around all consipracy theorists of this ilk: they’re crazy, and we’re better off without them. Let Darwinian principles sort it out.
The 38% already indicating readiness to use the app will grow over time as doors around the nation are not kicked in, Secret Police fail to arrest innocent citizens in the streets, healthy individuals are not intubated in ICU dungeons against their will, the Deep State forgets to confiscate arsenals of AR-15s, and euthanasia conspiracies run by Bill Gates evaporate after the sun comes up. Drama Queens will then be able to go back to their performance art YouTube videos that nobody watches.
Put at its most basic, it is absolutely in the government’s own interest to kill this crisis as near to stone dead as it can, so that normal social and economic activity can revive, if not fully, then at least to a semblance of its erstwhile prosperity. If the app helps they will go out of their way to make it work. That 65% Essential “Approve Response To Virus” rating could be 75% if it works well.
The source code will be available for anyone to check out. Not just you or me (I personally wouldn’t have a clue how to analyse it, as my software skills are machine code-based, and rooted in the Stone Age), but serious programming people will all take a look.
The aim is to anonymously exchange Bluetooth handshakes between consenting app users. If any one of them is found to have been infected with the virus, everyone on a list of physically proximate Bluetooth contacts over the past fortnight will be contacted with a recommendation that they go get tested. If you’re clear, you’re clear. If you test positive then you can seek early intervention medical treatment, rather than wait until you become soaked in the virus from head to toe and get really sick. Our ample hospital infrastructure will then be able to give you a better chance of survival. Incidentally, and equally important, by knowing you are infected the chances of your infecting others will diminish.
If the person found to be infected is, say, a drug dealer, and his contacts are other drug dealers or their customers, you can bet that they won’t be using the app. Just associating with a drug dealer is a bit suss, and if the data is leaked to and misused by Police things could get sticky for them. So cross drug dealers, armed robbers, break and enterers off the list of New Tech Adopters in this particular case. But do we really care about the rights of criminals and their associates?
Likewise, I suppose in the case of adulterers or randy tattooed studs sneaking into houses and apartments via their mistresses back doors (couldn’t resist that) for a bit of non-socially-distant nookie.
I can think of other demographics who might not want their association with a person who turns out to be sick to be known to anything like “the government”: terrorists plotting throwing a bomb, anarchists plotting the overthrow of governments, old hippies still paranoid from their uni days and so on.
There’s a last category: innocent, rather boring, law abiding citizens that unwittingly come near a baddie who’s infected, just by walking past them in the supermarket (even baddies go to supermarkets). How do we know the baddie is infected? Because he’s gasping for breath in an ICU ward somewhere with a confirmed diagnosis. Then you have to ask yourself the question: do you want to know whether you have been infected with the virus or not? Do you want treatment, or not?
Mind you, all of the above assume that the data is misused. What if it is? Do we care whether baddies use it? Do we care that for a few minutes we might be under suspicion as a criminal associate? Or do we just want to get well, quicker?
Of course, if the data is NOT misused, then such clandestine activites will go on anyway, once again not affecting law abiding citizens, only making it harder for the baddies who don’t use the app.
Apart from having been nearby to someone who is subsequently found to have been infected, the data the app collects is minimal. It doesn’t list your religion, whether you’re a smoker, where you were born, who you voted for, what you earned last year, the value of your assets. As far as I can see it has basic stuff like age demographic and phone number associated with it (there’s a little bit more, but I can’t remember what it is). In short: nothing too revealing, certainly not as revealing as your census data or your entire Health record. So Jenna Price’s tinfoil hat worries about a reprise of the previous data disasters are a bit overdone, in my opinion.
The main objection I can see is that the app alarm will go off too often. This was an annoying feature of the Fires Near Me app earlier on in the year. You got the same information almost TOO regularly, just in case you missed it the first, second or third time. But did anyone delete the app, or switch it off? That app was credited with saving hundreds of lives. Loquacious or not, it did a good job.
As, I argue, will the virus app. As hidden cases get dug out of communities, the national interest can only improve. If there are a few scares involved, or doubts, then I am willing to put up with them. Word will get out pretty quickly if anything untoward is happening with our data. If the worst comes to the worst we can delete the app, turn our phones off, let the battery run down, or just buy another phone. The anticipated ScoMo Facist takeover by stealth will fizzle pretty quickly if mass denial of service by a sceptical public takes root.
The power to do that is in OUR hands, not theirs. Don’t let your distaste for this government, or ANY government or of governance itself take too great a hold of your paranoia. They’re probably not coming to take you away. They just want us all, including you, to get well.
This app sounds like it’s worth a try. It’s not a hydroxychlorquine sort of “worth a try” Ithat I’m referring to. The app won’t kill you. It may well save your life, and the lives of your loved ones.
And if you think that’s being over-dramatic please remember: we are only at the beginning of this pandemic. 99.9% of the human race has NOT been infected yet. In the case of Australia the number is 99.97%. They, we, are still ALL susceptible to infection from a highly contagious disease. All we’ve done is survive the initial barrage. there’s a very big war to come, and we should try anything we can to win it.
Put the ideology and the fashionable dissent in the bottom drawer for a while.
frednk
Yes your whining really is boring
“Cud Chewersays:
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 11:29 am
Blobbit
I don’t know about compulsory but we need to be a bit more willing to extend a “UBI” to people above 50.”
I’m thinking of all the graduates who are now going to be screwed. Maybe a reduction in the retirement age to 60 then.
This presupposes that unemployment is inevitable. It isn’t. The federal government ultimately controls the unemployment rate, whether it exercises that control actively or not, whether it recognizes its role or not. It is obscene that the federal government is claiming that it is a good thing that unemployment might “only” reach 10 percent instead of 15 percent. There is no excuse for such a high unemployment rate. It can and should be down to 1 or 2 percent – frictional unemployment only. These are people who are spending short periods between jobs. That should be the target – 1 or 2 percent. With no under-employment or hidden unemployment.
Blobbit @ #122 Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 – 11:23 am
Yeah. I tried a “simple” normal too but the log normal fitted better. It was a few days after April 9 that I became uncomfortable with the log-normal description. And by yesterday it had become untenable (for me). And of course the curves are merely a useful description to hopefully spot a pattern. They don’t describe a mechanism.
Agreed. Maybe “next stage” is a better label. And it’s only been 2 weeks so a linear “curve” is all that I think is worth it right now.
Perhaps some of the professional modellers are doing that. (I wish they’d be more forthcoming.)
Thanks for your thoughts!
@swrighteconomy tweets
Wages paid by business fell 6.7% in the three weeks to April 4, says ATO. Almost 10% of people under 20 lost their job.
guytaur
Nowhere is it more evident that a lot of economists are disconnected from reality than in this pandemic. Had we not had an official lockdown, the economy would tank regardless. In fact it would have been worse. We saw people voting with their feet at least two weeks before the government finally took action.
Also the “magic knob” assumption is all too pervasive. The idea that you can turn a knob to fine tune deaths versus economic output is based on the nonsense that such a setting in reality exists and that the system is controllable.
Van Onselen:
Just when you thought life couldn’t get any more bizarre Alan Jones is pushing for Tony Abbott to head up the World Health Organisation
Btw LR are you keeping overseas acquired infections as a separate group?
Cud
We must have faith that the Greens are wrong and that reality doesn’t count with economics. The right wing narrative is inevitably going to win.
You know it makes sense.
Edit: https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-on-parallels-between-climate-change-and-coronavirus-82316357739
@Reuters
Exclusive: Brazil considers further flight cuts as coronavirus crisis bites https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-airlines-ex-idUSKBN22233O?taid=5e9e4ec7bea27e00015dfcd7&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1252411567032827910/photo/1
US source: North Korean leader in grave danger after surgery
CNN) — The US is monitoring intelligence that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after a surgery, according to a US official with direct knowledge.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
CC at 11:28 am, 11:38 am
Thanks for your response.
Agreed wrt small numbers. It’s easy to convince yourself you’ve spotted a pattern in random dots. And I’m not separating out any group, though I can see that it may be a way of inferring mechanisms behind the numbers. Fundamentally though I have doubts about the data themselves regarding testing and tracing. (I might look around for data sets that don’t need to be curated.)
Speaking of New Zealand. Today’s cases is 5.
G’day all, and happy birthday BK
I’m sure I won’t be in the majority on PB with this view, but I really can’t go along with Albo’s call for the government to bail out Virgin, and feel it is symptomatic of the growing problem in Labor’s ongoing close ties to the ever-dwindling union movement.
As was the case with the now defunct car industry, and in some other manufacturing areas, for a long time Labor appears to have been very comfortable with the idea of gifting large amounts of Australian taxpayers’ money to overseas investors to sustain jobs for unionised workforces. The cost per job of these subsidies can be quite high, and the end result is usually that the company eventually goes belly-up anyway.
Arguably, Virgin is a superior recipient of subsidies because – unlike the Australian car industry – it has some prospects of eventually recovering. But there’s also going to be a strong risk that the overseas investors who own it could take all the subsidy money that the Government can throw at them and then decide to up stumps anyway.
I reckon the best future strategy would be to let Virgin fold and then, when the airline industry eventually recovers, use trade practices powers to encourage QANTAS to divest itself of Jetstar. And, if Rex and any other small operator can survive the crisis , there is also scope for trying to help them to expand their operations as well.
My thoughts and prayers are with the North Korean people in this dark time.
lizzie @ #125 Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 – 11:28 am
Let’s not forget how he appointed Malcolm to ‘destroy the NBN’
A pity Labor did.
baba
I am with Labor and the unions not the LNP we must do everything to undermine workers.
@unionsaustralia tweets
The Morrison Government has the power to #SaveVirgin. They can choose to save the jobs of 16,000 Virgin Australia workers, or they can choose to abandon all these workers and hand Qantas a monopoly. #SaveAviation #DontClipOurWings #ausunions @sallymcmanus #qanda https://twitter.com/unionsaustralia/status/1252383980810199043/video/1
A car industry would be really handy at the moment, and into the future, to provide a backbone of manufacturing capability, and a broader ecosystem of developing and producing stuff locally.
I’m of the opinion that we let the market deal with market failures. If Virgin can’t stand on it’s own two feet (wings?) then it’s not going to just “crash”, it will go into administration (as it has) and it will then be bailed out or dissolved.
If it’s deemed at that stage that we must have a second airline then the government can step in and provide capital or just nationalise it if its THAT critical.
Either we are a free market or we are not. Personally a free market is either free, in as much as Labour is free to organise as they fit and Capital is free to deal with such organised Labour OR it’s not a free market and therefore any pretense should be dropped.
At this stage Australia’s “free market economy” is nothing more than a bunch of corporate teat suckers where government stacks the deck based on the loudest voice and biggest wallet.