Coronavirus

[maxjam]

1 minute ago, Albert said:

Noting Europe as a 'Covid epicentre' is a bit of an odd argument to make in this instance, as tourism was already virtually dead by the time that Europe became the main epicentre.

Europe is a covid epicentre and has heavy traffic between neighbouring countries that can't easily be shutdown or controlled. 

Covid was obviously in the population before we started seeing inflated numbers admitted to hospitals - and don't forget that we're not just talking about visitors to the UK but holiday makers from the UK to places such as Italy, a popular skiing resort in the lead up to the initial outbreak bring the virus home with them.

 

11 minutes ago, Albert said:

The UK has not gotten 25 million European visitors this year.

I did not say that we had.  I quoted China >Australia 1.3m and EU>UK 25m (your figure for 2019, cba to check it) as typical yearly numbers.

 

14 minutes ago, Albert said:

To suggest that Australia, with strong travel links to the location of origin of the disease, did not have a worse risk profile is quite frankly absurd.

I did not suggest that Australia didn't have strong links to China though?  I said that 'I think you're performing quite acrobatics to argue Australia had a higher risk than the UK'

What I do find 'quite absurd' is your acrobatics to suggest that despite far greater numbers passing through the UK we would be at a lower risk and find it easy to lockdown.  Over 18m people entered the UK in the 3 months prior to our lockdown.  I am not saying that the airline industry is more important than people but literally no one would have locked down in Jan/Feb when the virus was being spread quietly throughout the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/just-273-people-arriving-in-uk-in-run-up-to-lockdown-quarantined

 

[Gone]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

People said the same in Australia at first. The country is ridiculously urbanised, and the east Coast cities have very dense centres which sprawl out for arguably hundreds of km in each direction. 

Equally, Australia isn't the only comparison, there are places like Taiwan, which have even higher population density, and the same issues with sprawling population centres. 

I don't know, it just comes off as a copout. 

Forums are an interesting one, and this characteristic you note is quite the weakness. I still recall reading some papers a while back regarding methods of controlling forums through, in essence, flooding out criticism, and bumping praise, for certain ideas. No system is perfect though. 

At points I wonder why people make such comments without much research backing them. 

Heathrow is busy, no doubt, but in relative terms Australia is a very busy country in terms of air travel. 

Heathrow and Gatwick, the two biggest airports in the UK, shifted 80,888,305 and 46,576,473 passengers respectively in 2019. There's the other players like Manchester (29,397,357), Liverpool (28,124,292), Luton (18,216,207), Edinburg (14,737,497), are also quite notable. We can compare these with Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two biggest (and Australia has a lot of airports), which had 44,446,838 and 37,490,978 respectively. Going through the other major players, there's Brisbane (24,114,833), Perth (~14.5 million), Adelaide (~8.5 million), Gold Coast (~6.4 million) etc. Not quite as large as the UK, but larger relative to the population. 

As to tourism, Australia gets around 9.3 million per year, compared to the UK's 39.2 million. Australia gets about 0.372 tourists per population per year, while the UK gets 0.588, so they do perform better here. That said, 24.8 million million of the UK's tourists in 2019 came from the EU. With that in mind, however, the bigger point is that travel with Asia initially, as tourism is virtually dead at this point in time, and should not be driving infections. To that end, it's worth noting that 5.2 million of Australia's tourists in 2019 were indeed from China, compared to 0.833 million for the UK. 

To put that another way, in the delicate stage at the start of the pandemic where it was spreading, but borders were not closed, it was indeed Australia that had the much higher risk profile. As noted before, much of this traffic was to and from East Asia, including Wuhan. Australia, unlike the UK, managed these risks effectively as Australia, unlike the UK, shut borders promptly, and put strong controls on early, despite knowing this would have an impact on its airline industry, which as noted shifts a larger volume of passengers per capita than the UKs. That really is the tradeoff though, and one that paid off for Australia. 

I’ll be completely honest I gave up reading your posts because as much as I love Oz and its people I couldn’t give a toss how COVID is going over there and how they’ve dealt with it, there are far too many variables to compare it to the UK. What I care about is the Country and how we’re dealing with it and the poo storm that’s coming our way because of how we are doing it. 

[Albert]

21 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Europe is a covid epicentre and has heavy traffic between neighbouring countries that can't easily be shutdown or controlled. 

Now, yes, but at the start it was a different story. My point is that Australia did what was required, and dealt with the risks effectively, despite the costs associated, and are reaping those benefits now. 

Again, if the UK thinks that public health is less valuable than the airline industry, well, there's your answer. 

21 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Covid was obviously in the population before we started seeing inflated numbers admitted to hospitals - and don't forget that we're not just talking about visitors to the UK but holiday makers from the UK to places such as Italy, a popular skiing resort in the lead up to the initial outbreak bring the virus home with them.

The same thing happened to Australia, we just had more direct links. 

21 minutes ago, maxjam said:

I did not say that we had.  I quoted China >Australia 1.3m and EU>UK 25m (your figure for 2019, cba to check it) as typical yearly numbers.

 

I did not suggest that Australia didn't have strong links to China though?  I said that 'I think you're performing quite acrobatics to argue Australia had a higher risk than the UK'

You're the one who is conflating risks now with risks at the start, which is the point I'm making. None of the numbers have any relevance after late February, as the numbers have tanked across the board. 

21 minutes ago, maxjam said:

What I do find 'quite absurd' is your acrobatics to suggest that despite far greater numbers passing through the UK we would be at a lower risk and find it easy to lockdown.  Over 18m people entered the UK in the 3 months prior to our lockdown.  I am not saying that the airline industry is more important than people but literally no one would have locked down in Jan/Feb when the virus was being spread quietly throughout the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/just-273-people-arriving-in-uk-in-run-up-to-lockdown-quarantined

 

Except, as noted, if we're discussing that period around January to March, that's when Australia's risk profile was worse. We had flights going directly between Australia and Wuhan, and a larger fraction of our visitors were from China in that crucial period. The difference was that Australia made the tough choice to start closing borders early, and begun dealing with the risks across the board. 

Also, as noted, it's not 'far greater' numbers in the UK. We can look at the full figures from 2019, which is 300,467,792 across all UK airports, and 164,260,013 across all Australian airports. In terms of per capita figures, that's 4.508  for the UK and 6.573 for Australia. So yeah, nearly double the volume in absolute figures, but Australia has greater numbers in terms of their population.

[Albert]

8 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

I’ll be completely honest I gave up reading your posts because as much as I love Oz and its people I couldn’t give a toss how COVID is going over there and how they’ve dealt with it, there are far too many variables to compare it to the UK. What I care about is the Country and how we’re dealing with it and the poo storm that’s coming our way because of how we are doing it. 

So, what you're saying is you think that UK is dealing with it poorly, but don't want to look at how countries are dealing with it better? That's a weird way of looking at the problem. 

[Gone]

 

[maxjam]

40 minutes ago, Albert said:

Now, yes, but at the start it was a different story. My point is that Australia did what was required, and dealt with the risks effectively, despite the costs associated, and are reaping those benefits now. 

Again, if the UK thinks that public health is less valuable than the airline industry, well, there's your answer.

The lead up to the lockdown is a critical period.  There was an argument that we could have shutdown a few weeks earlier but the virus was being spread through the country and around the world from Christmas.  Literally no country would have, or indeed did, enter a lockdown at such an early date.

 

43 minutes ago, Albert said:

You're the one who is conflating risks now with risks at the start, which is the point I'm making. None of the numbers have any relevance after late February, as the numbers have tanked across the board.

Because it is a critical period in which the virus spread throughout the population.  Ignoring this time frame in an attempt to improve your argument doesn't prevent it from being fact.

 

46 minutes ago, Albert said:

Except, as noted, if we're discussing that period around January to March, that's when Australia's risk profile was worse. We had flights going directly between Australia and Wuhan, and a larger fraction of our visitors were from China in that crucial period. The difference was that Australia made the tough choice to start closing borders early, and begun dealing with the risks across the board.

No it wasn't.  As noted, the UK is a global hub with many more people passing through it than Australia.  Australia may have had more directly travelling from Wuhan than the UK but we had far, far more travelling from other areas at a point in time when the virus was already spreading around the world.

 

52 minutes ago, Albert said:

Also, as noted, it's not 'far greater' numbers in the UK. We can look at the full figures from 2019, which is 300,467,792 across all UK airports, and 164,260,013 across all Australian airports. In terms of per capita figures, that's 4.508  for the UK and 6.573 for Australia. So yeah, nearly double the volume in absolute figures, but Australia has greater numbers in terms of their population.

Not far greater?!?  Its the virtually double, literally millions of people more. Arguing its not a far greater number is now starting to get silly.  Per capita plays no role in this twice as many people are passing through the country each of whom having the potential to be carrying the virus.

Furthermore, as noted, significant numbers of visitors to the UK come from the EU (and the US) which make up 5 of the top 10 worst effected countries by covid.  Playing down that fact to suit your argument is imo ridiculous.

CBA anymore, I find your reasoning to be extremely blinkered, wilfully ignoring arguments that don't fit your narrative.  As the repetitive back and forth has begun again I'll leave it here.  Hopefully I won't be accused of running from an argument because of repeating a tired, defeated argument again.

[TuffLuff]

 

 

[Ramarena]

1 hour ago, TuffLuff said:

 

 

Chris Christie is the latest from the rose garden

 

[Stive Pesley]

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

I find your reasoning to be extremely blinkered, wilfully ignoring arguments that don't fit your narrative

I can confirm that the kettle is indeed black (can I  still say that?) 

[Pearl Ram]

Yes, yes you can because black kettles matter. ?

[maxjam]

24 minutes ago, SchtivePesley said:

I can confirm that the kettle is indeed black (can I  still say that?) 

Happy to debate my points but not when the opposition doesn't seem to understand the UKs geographical, economic and cultural location in the world. It just results in a tedious back and forth that moderators eventually get bored with and delete pages of posts.  Not worth my time or effort.

My key arguments are that covid was already widely spread in the country between Jan-March and we were infected from secondary sources and cited the huge numbers of people passing through the country compared to Australia.

Fed up banging my head against a wall but will leave these to links to back up my claims;

Could Covid-19 have reached the UK earlier than thought?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/spate-of-possible-uk-coronavirus-cases-from-2019-come-to-light

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52993734

Coronavirus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, a major analysis of the genetics of the virus shows.

The analysis also finds China, where the pandemic started, had a negligible impact on cases in the UK.

As for the UKs response compared to other countries at the risk of repeating myself again multiple factors come into play including for example the mentalities of the populations involved.  Some people decided that the best time to have mass BLM rallies was in the middle of a pandemic, others decided to protest against the lockdown or go out partying in the street after 10pm etc. 

I'd agree that some Governments have performed better than others but would strongly argue that individual countries have their own unique problems, be they economic, geographical or social.

Interesting research into my some regions handle lockdowns better than others;

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/why-some-states-handled-lockdown-better-than-others-20200929-p560e3.html

[Gone]

Amen

 

[jimmyp]

TexasRam is your real name Nick Burton?

[Gone]

26 minutes ago, jimmyp said:

TexasRam is your real name Nick Burton?

Haha no I actually think Nick Burt does post on here however 

[Gritstone Ram]

12000 + today. 

[Gone]

17 minutes ago, Van Gritters said:

12000 + today. 

No one has a clue what is happening, very worrying 

[Gritstone Ram]

3 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

No one has a clue what is happening, very worrying 

It makes you wonder if them graphs are nearer the truth.

[Uptherams]

 

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, Van Gritters said:

12000 + today. 

Apparently, it is caused by a 'technical issue' which was responsible for the under-reporting of figures from previous days - figures which had been used on here to suggest that the rate of increase of number of new cases (not: not the actual number of new cases) was declining.

It's going to be a long, dark winter, I'm sorry to say.

[EtoileSportiveDeDerby]

57 minutes ago, Uptherams said:

 

As Bojo the clown would say, we are on our way to "quash the sombrero"