The Guardian reports Essential Research’s latest weekly round of coronavirus polling includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which have Scott Morrison’s approval at 64%, gaining a further five points after his 18-point hike a month ago. Anthony Albanese is down two to 42% — we must await the full report later today to see their disapproval ratings. Morrison holds a 50-25 lead as preferred prime minister, out from 46-27 last time (UPDATE: Full report here; both are at 27% disapproval, which is a four point drop in Morrison’s case and a two point drop in Albanese’s).
The most interesting of the latest tranche of coronavirus questions relate to other countries’ handling of the crisis, with 79% rating New Zealand’s response very good or good, whereas (if I’m reading this correctly) the United States’ response is rated very poor or poor by 71%, and the United Kingdom is similarly rated by 48%. Another question finds 57% support for maintaining Newstart either at its current level “after the current crisis passes” or aligning it with the rate for single pensioners, with only 28% in favour of returning it to its earlier level.
The poll also finds growing appetite for easing restrictions, with 37% now saying it is too soon to do so, down from 49% a fortnight ago, and 36% wanting restrictions eased over the next month or two, but still only 10% wanting them gone as soon as possible. Respondents were also presented with a series of propositions about school closures, which found 45% sayig schools should reopen, “half” saying schools should teach students remotely until the outbreak passes, and 41% saying they would keep their children at home even if schools reopened.
The latest news on the by-election front is that NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro has announced he will not run in Eden-Monaro, and Senator Jim Molan has likewise withdrawn his intention to pursue Liberal preselection, with both allowing a clear run for Andrew Constance, NSW Transport Minister and member for the seat of Bega, most of which is within Eden-Monaro. The by-election now looms as a straightforward contest between Labor and Liberal, with the Nationals sure to be only a minor presence in Barilaro’s absence, if indeed they run at all.
Constance was the subject of sympathetic media attention after nearly losing his Malua Bay house in the summer bushfires, a particularly helpful asset given the federal goverment’s handling of the fires loomed as its main liability in the campaign. He revealed in March that he would be quitting politics when the bushfire recovery was complete, albeit without making clear when that might be. The by-election that will now be required in Bega will thus be less disruptive than one in Barilaro’s seat of Monaro would have been, and the seat is also at less risk of being lost by the government. No indication so far as I can see as to who might be in the running in Bega.
Well said Pegasus. A more cogent, thoughtful and intelligent post than anything Barney has ever posted.
Continually Insufferable @ #212 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 1:17 pm
This is unmitigated garbage. Some people need to get a grip.
A heinous crime, I tell ya!
“Well said Pegasus. A more cogent, thoughtful and intelligent post than anything Barney has ever posted.”
And horses might fly.
phoenixRED @ #241 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 1:43 pm
Someone smelled the cordite in the air after someone shot someone else in the head for no good reason other than that person’s wife was asked to wear a mask in a store by a security guard. Sean Hannity is smart enough to figure out where it could end and to draw the threads together.
Cheers, nath.
I always note with interest what shows people say they watch. atm we are enjoying taped episodes of Lego Masters ….the creativity, technical expertise, conceptualisation of space and ability to work under time constraints is awesome.
At least the WA Nationals know what their supporters want and are calling for Boarding Schools to be opened ASAP.
Just been to the local medical centre for vaccination. The reception area remains taped off with red and black danger tape and all interactions occur by shouting across the room. They have now added a corona virus checklist to complete with warnings about decontamination charges if you have lied and state fines if you don’t isolate when advised.
Doctor and nurse no longer wearing masks, but chairs have been moved to a taped off area across the room from Drs desk. I had no problem getting pneumonia vaccine administered at same time as flu vaccine.
Interesting thread.
The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
Replying to
@JohnRLamb1
and
@20committee
Just devil’s advocate for a sec:
-Of all the cities in China, in Wuhan, where the only institute with 500+ novel bat coronaviruses archived and where species jump was studied.
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5:47 AM · May 3, 2020·Twitter Web App
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
Replying to
@oscwi1
@JohnRLamb1
and
@20committee
-Within 10 days, in a place with so many flu-like illnesses, this illness leads to military style shutdown of a region, building a hospital with 2000 beds, spraying down every street in Wuhan. This is when the death count was what, under 100? Why was this even on their radar? (2)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
-Disappearance of doctors and reporters bringing info to the world, not letting the WHO in for weeks, not letting US scientists in, claiming it was not transmitting between people. If it is a zoonotic jump like all the others, why not bring in the world experts at that point (3)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
-Now, rejecting a chance for scientists in the West and WHO to come in and clear it all up. Scientists so eager to use a sequence deposited in Jan 2020 as the basis for closest relative strain, already presenting ONLY data supporting natural evolution.China won’t let them in (4).
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
Lets not even get into the 10,000 plus case adjustments when WHO showed up, the highly questionable death counts (by any scientific extrapolation)… why so much coverup and fear over a species jump, no different than any other (5)?
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
As to what may have happened- lab accident:
1- Unmodified virus, simply one of their 500+ in the strain collection, being studied, discovered to infect human cells.
2- Modified virus, with small variation from a strain among the 500+, the sequence of which was never deposited
(6)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
No need to imagine biowarfare or anything beyond scientific endeavour and curiousity here. A survey of the NATURALLY occurring bat viruses identified one with human tropism, they studied it further, and extensively, perhaps even mutating along the way to understand it (7)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
They never deposited the sequence, because you don’t deposit sequence unless you publish it, and something as novel as this may have required more study, maybe it was to be published, maybe not. Now we have a ‘close relative’ recently deposited sequence. Irrelevant. (8)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
Other evolving bat viruses with similar mutations, also irrelevant to a naturally occurring unpublished variant, OR to manmade mutations that use the very same known evolution patters as guidance for what to mutate/study (9)
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The I in THIEM (sometimes the Y Y Y of Kyrgios)
@oscwi1
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May 3
Lab accident happens, or crazy disgruntled employee takes virus out into the world, lets them know. Could still be a natural variant stored in that lab.We do not know. But I suggest a more scientific approach is consider all hypotheses -esp when you cannot do the experiment (10).
There is nothing racist about saying there should be less reliance on immigration in the short term. The issue is a core responsibility of the federal government so has long as the debate doesn’t single out any one group then it is a legitimate debate.
Victoria
Did you watch Media Watch last night?
Pegasus says:
Tuesday, May 5, 2020 at 2:08 pm
Cheers, nath.
I always note with interest what shows people say they watch. atm we are enjoying taped episodes of Lego Masters ….the creativity, technical expertise, conceptualisation of space and ability to work under time constraints is awesome.
________
we have been enjoying that too. A good family show, entertaining and it has the delightful Hamish Blake. I just love that guy. He is contagiously funny.
yabba @ #251 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 1:59 pm
What it is is a Panglossian ‘analysis’ in service of an agenda.
It leaves a lot of facts which are inconvenient to the agenda, unstated.
Also, to set the record straight, I, for one, have never blamed the Wet Market, as it is construed to be the fish market in Wuhan, to be the source of COVID-19.
Also, I guess the WHO, Imperial College, London and the University of Edinburgh are ‘Sinophobes’ too:
https://in.news.yahoo.com/covid-19-silently-circulating-even-025800525.html
mundo:
The thing about “racism invigilation” is that it is asymmetric:
– one gets points for spotting possible “racism”; but
– one does not lose points if the spotting is found to have no substance (the “debate has moved on”, as they say)
Basically just a failure of proper accounting, but there you go.
Victoria
Sorry I think such theories are nuts and I give them no credit. Gene testing allows Covid 19 and its spread to be traced accurately once detected. All the people whose knowledge I respect on this topic say it shows all the signs of evolving and mutating naturally. China was guilty of hiding evidence of a serious disease outbreak it had allowed to develop but that was incompetence not malice.
Well if there was a guy in France who had covid19 on December 27 it means the virus was loose in China before then – which is entirely possible given those datings.
Will be interesting to see if they establish a link between the patient in France and China.
Pegasus @ #243 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 1:54 pm
Mr Alabanese was in no mood to quibble and followed up by saying, ‘there is nothing racist or xenophobic in taking the opportunity to develop and implement a domestic national employment strategy to lift everybody who is unemployed and wants a job into a job that is either economically productive or socially useful’
It was clear Mr Albanese was putting the Prime minister on notice and that this is debate we need to have.
It was an uncharacteristically forceful and impassioned press conference by the opposition leader.
Socrates
I agree that the phylogenetic evidence says that without doubt its not the result of deliberate manipulation. Also from what I’ve heard, the lab had a bunch of corona viruses but nothing similar to this one. So the chance of it even being an accident are remote.
D P:
Imagine if we’d done things properly—bonds for income, stocks for growth—instead of diverting investment away from useful business and into the financial sector:
– growth companies would’ve gotten investment needed to grow, thus growing the economy
– fixed income seekers would still be receiving income from their bonds; now they’re in a hole instead
Anyone who relies on dividends for income has no justification for doing so. Many people have done this based on advice from “financial advisors”, and it will be quite interesting to find out if this advice is actually of any value.
Cud Chewer says:
Tuesday, May 5, 2020 at 2:21 pm
Well if there was a guy in France who had covid19 on December 27 it means the virus was loose in China before then – which is entirely possible given those datings.
Will be interesting to see if they establish a link between the patient in France and China.
__________
I think Covid-19 was cooked up between C@tmomma and BB in C@t’s kitchen sometime in August 2019. Prove me wrong.
Few posts back someone was banging on about “where the ABC was ” in relation to serving country areas.
This is a hoot considering $800 million or so has been been cut from the ABC budget over the last few years….largely from cries of “bias” from the hard-right of the Liberal party and their fellow travellers in the Nationals.
One feels really sorry for the Nationals, in particular, being only able to get 20 seats plus in the HR on the basis of just over 800,000 primary votes, not being able to run the county from Armidale.
Best of all, the hayseeds loathe “the Greens’ because they are clearly ruining the country – that is, for the National’s and their constituents.
Tough being a Green supporter to see one of the over 1 million primary votes barely providing one member in the HR………………And, I am not bloody Green voter, but I can see rank hypocrisy very easily….
Cue chewer
No I didnt
Socrates @ #246 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 1:54 pm
The main reason companies lease rather than buy (by taking on more debt), is that it makes their balance sheet and P&L look better, by disguising their true level of actual debt style commitments. Investors and analysts who are too lazy to look into page 55 or so of the ‘Notes to the Accounts’, and to recast the accounts to a realistic basis, are gulled into believing that the company is lower geared than it really is, and that it is producing a higher return to capital employed than it really is. The leased assets a company is using to generate revenue are not listed in its balance sheet, the interest component of the lease payment is not recognised as such in the P&L, so the ratios look better and the share price is boosted.
The only real tax benefit to a company that leases an asset is that the effective tax depreciation rate built into the lease agreement is often much higher than the rate set out in the Tax department’s tables. In other words, you get the tax deduction much earlier. When you are evaluating the real, after inflation effects, return on a capital intensive project this can be significant.
C@t The last case on the Central Coast was on the 18th of April. More than 2 weeks ago.
The last case in the Hunter New England health district was in Taree on the 25th and that was from overseas. Otherwise HNE has been free of the virus for over 2 weeks.
Cud Chewer @ #275 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 2:35 pm
And hooray for that! 😀
Still, last Friday at the Gosford COVID-19 Clinic there were a lot of people attending to get the test.
Socrates
I don’t think malice is involved, but a stuff up.
The only cases outside Sydney in the last 2 weeks are Coffs Harbour on the 21st and Wollongong on the 30th.
C@t its good they are showing up to get tested. I would do so too if it wasn’t pointless. I’ve been isolated since.. er.. fuck.. I can’t remember now!
Victoria
A stuff up even if it were possible is still only a tiny possibility given all the other ways that the virus could have come to that market. And I’ll have to double check this but I think I heard one expert say that the lab simply did not have a virus that was anything like covid19. Lots of other corona viruses yes, but there is a reason they called it “novel”.
Victoria if you can catch Media Watch on iview, please do.
They were dealing with the Wuhan lab beatup in the media and had several experts.
Cud Chewer @ #280 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 2:41 pm
What day is it, Cud? Who’s the Prime Minister? 😆
Cud chewer
By stuff up, I mean handling it. Culturally the Chinese are big on saving face, but they failed to contain and it got away from them.
So do I believe in a deliberate cover up. Yes.
Dr. Tony Fauci contradicts Trump and Pompeo — and says there’s no evidence COVID-19 came from a lab
On Monday, in an interview with National Geographic, NIH infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that there is no evidence to support the claim, often entertained by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese research lab.
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” said Fauci. “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
Fauci added that he also doesn’t see any evidence to support the idea that the virus was brought into a lab via a wild animal and then was spread from the lab by accident.
Despite claiming to have seen intelligence supporting the lab theory, Trump and Pompeo are in a minority view. Intelligence officials with closely allied countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have declined to back up their claims.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/dr-tony-fauci-contradicts-trump-and-pompeo-and-says-theres-no-evidence-covid-19-came-from-a-lab/
It is “ALL CHINA”S FAULT will be trumpeted bigly as it is about the only thing left in Trumpenstein’s re-election campaign locker.
Poroti
That is what Trump is counting on. But it won’t fly.
Yabba 2.34
“The main reason companies lease rather than buy (by taking on more debt), is that it makes their balance sheet and P&L look better, by disguising their true level of actual debt style commitments. ”
Thanks interesting, and the balance sheet explanation makes sense. Still lousy public policy of course.
Just had the displeasure of listening to Morrison and now he’s onto the covidsafe app. Again he is projecting it will keep you safe, yes it will help stamp out clusters once identified, but will do nothing to keep you safe from asymptomatic carriers which includes the children who are being sent back to schools.
The app is not about keeping us safe it is an unspoken acknowledgement from the government that the public will not be willing to go back to normal until they feel safe. To my mind this app is all about selling safety not providing it.
Key U.S. Allies Skeptical of Trump’s Coronavirus Lab Leak Claims
Five Eyes members and intelligence analysts push back against attempts to pin the virus on Chinese biosafety mistakes.
Despite claims from the Trump administration of a growing consensus that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese government lab, three members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership and sources within the U.S. national security community are throwing cold water on the theory.
Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada have pointedly not backed up America’s apparent surety that the novel coronavirus was either deliberately or accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab. All three countries are members of the Five Eyes, the postwar espionage pact designed to share intelligence between like-minded governments, along with New Zealand.
There is some circumstantial evidence suggesting that an accidental leak from the lab was, at least, possible. The Washington Post has reported on leaked cables from U.S. officials highlighting serious security and protocol lapses at the Wuhan lab, which is China’s only level 4 facility—meaning it is cleared to handle the most dangerous pathogens.
Even if the virus did emerge from the lab, it is highly likely to be a natural virus, rather than a deliberately engineered one. The journal Nature Medicine published a paper from researchers in the United States, U.K., and Australia in mid-March, concluding: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/04/coronavirus-lab-leak-trump-five-eyes/
poroti @ #285 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 2:51 pm
He’ll do Tara Reade too.
Should blow up in his face for all the obvious reasons, but he’ll still go there anyways.
Victoria
Yes agree on the stuff up, and the cover up. Stuffing up the response to a serious threat to your whole countries trade would be covered up in many countries by people afraid of being sacked.
Imagine if an incompetent Federal agency let the Covid19 virus into this country by mistake – say by letting an infected person get off a boat. I could easily imagine that agency might try to cover it up 🙂
a r
Has Tara Reade popped up since cancelling her interview with fox news
a r
He’ll not need to, Fox News will look after that.
The USA/Trump line “Covid19 is China’s fault” meme is getting a lot of airplay. Like it is a deliberate tactic.
So much so that fivethirtyeight has a quite readable explanation of why it is almost certainly false.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-scientists-think-the-novel-coronavirus-developed-naturally-not-in-a-chinese-lab/
Who’s the Prime Minister?
I really don’t want to know!
Reminds me, last time I was in hospital (for an operation on my nose) before they wheeled me in they asked me “Ok, so you’re here to have (some vital organ – forgotten which one) removed?”
Yeah, they really did pull that one!
mundo
What is the purpose of you repeating posters comments and adding a labor politician said to it.
If it’s to annoy the original poster in my case it’s working, if it’s to infer that it’s something the politician would or should never say then argue the point.
poroti @ #286 Tuesday, May 5th, 2020 – 2:51 pm
That, and going into a hot war with China. None of this ‘war’ with a microbe stuff. 😀
Victoria
“By stuff up, I mean handling it. Culturally the Chinese are big on saving face, but they failed to contain and it got away from them.”
Yeah, they did that.. till it became obvious they couldn’t get away with it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/08/opinions/coronavirus-bociurkiw/index.html
If you’ve got nothing to hide then… 🙂
………………………………….
Home Affairs undecided on Ruby Princess inquiry co-operation
The home affairs secretary, Michael Pezzullo, has just told the Covid-19 Senate committee that no decision has been made about whether to respond to subpoenas from the NSW special commission of inquiry into the Ruby Princess.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/05/australia-coronavirus-live-updates-nsw-victoria-ruby-princess-qld-schools-latest-news-update
So C@t, two eminent experts (and I am sure that they are) estimate that the virus identified in Wuhan originated in very like its current, nasty, ever evolving form, some time between August 7 (at the earliest) and November 6 (also at the earliest!), at some location A, from where an individual carrier was, later, in a position to found an outbreak in Wuhan some time in early December. This location A could have been in Wuhan itself or anywhere that the carrier was before he or she travelled to Wuhan. Wuhan is a very concentrated city of 11 million, like New York. We have observed what happened there in a matter of weeks.
Is it possible for you to understand that this non-data that you have posted provides almost no information as to the ultimate source, and early spread of this virus? It is all conjecture. All of it. And it is likely to remain so. Like Spanish Flu, and SARS, and MERS, and ‘bird flu’, and on and on.