The Reality of Living in Australia and Covid

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Partially off topic but perhaps relevant to some - I came across this article about the reliability of Covid data from various places and Benford’s law. It seems like some of the data from the UK, Scandinavia, Canada and much of Europe isn't that great, perhaps others more educated than myself could comment.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...68504211021232

Analysis of data sets using different "goodness of fit" tests following Benford's Law is a quite powerful mathematical test for made-up or corrupted statistics, commonly used in social sciences. Made-up or corrupted statistics (and we know that a lot of statistical data sets are filled up with data which is partially made up, manipulated or simply containing some garbage -- human nature and/or sloppy work) are somewhat identifiable mathematically. An interesting exercise, but the results do not condemn the pandemic data from any but a few countries:

"Conclusion


The author extended the sample size and related goodness of fit tests, as stated earlier. This approach has improved the quality of the analysis and, thus, the reliability of the findings in this study. According to the K-S statistic, Germany seems to disclose the most compliant data worldwide. Other countries obeying Benford’s law, such as China, the United States, and France, pass all goodness-of-fit tests applied in this study. These outcomes are, to some extent, in agreement with prior research.5–8
The records of cumulative infections and deaths from the United States, Japan, Indonesia, and most European nations adhere well to the law. Koch and Okamura came to a similar conclusion and also confirmed China’s compliance with the law. Furthermore, consistent with prior research, all European countries (with the exception of Latvia), demonstrate Benfordness by satisfying at least one of the goodness-of-fit tests. This is also the case with North and Latin American as well as Asia Pacific countries."

The only countries with clearly suspect data based on this method are Russia, Latvia, Iran, and a couple of others. Which does not prove that the other data is all perfect; it just means this particular technique doesn't find much to talk about.


But it's good that you brought this up, because at the same time it's also wrong to assume that all the data around the world is perfect, or even good. At the beginning of the pandemic in particular there were wildly different definitions of what is a covid death, making data from different countries not comparable at all. This was considerably improved in the summer of last year when the WHO produced some standard methodology which was adopted most everywhere, and some of the datasets were even retroactively corrected with the harmonized methology.


But there are other factors which affect the data -- for example, case rates are enormously impacted by testing rates. Case rates might appear to be 2x, 3x, or even lower than they really are, when there is little testing, compared to a country where there is a lot of testing. This is also influenced by WHO is being tested in a given society and whether or not you have to pay for it (for example in Denmark for much of this year there was enormous availability of free testing and very high rate of testing, 4x or 5x the rate of testing in say Finland, and that no doubt exaggerated the daily case rates in Denmark compared to Finland where we pay €200 for a test unless we are referred by a doctor for a suspected infection). We look at the pretty graphs from Our World In Data (and I am the most guilty one of all) and it's easy to be seduced by the neatness of them and forget to take it all with a grain of salt, but the underlying data is not NEARLY so neat as the graphs.


The very best data of all for the impact of the pandemic on mortality is not the published pandemic death rates, but the demographic excess death rates. This is by its nature practically uniform around the world and practically impossible to manipulate or corrupt through garbage except in the most undeveloped countries who don't have means to keep up with their own demographics. If you look at total mortality for a given year and compare it to previous years you can wash out almost all the noise in the data and see a real picture of the actual impact of the pandemic on the population. This picture often strikingly diverges from comparative death rates. Seaworthylass has been following this data a lot more closely than I have and has written a lot of really good stuff about this; I have been lazily using Our World in Data presentations of death statistics.



And the overall picture we get from demographics is that the total impact of the pandemic has been much less than you might think from looking at the death statistics in many (NOT ALL) countries. One obvious reason for that is that the death of a person already at end of life which might have been accelerated by only a month or even a day, does not show up in demographics, but might well be counted as a COVID death.



And looking at excess mortality also reveals countries where the death stastics seem to be understating, rather than overstating the real impact of the pandemic -- most strikingly Russia and the U.S.

[CatNewBee]

https://youtu.be/FtU5MnPfW84

Finally, some pushback. Australia is waking up slowly from agony.

[HankOnthewater]

I have been absent for 4 weeks from CF, just too busy dealing with issues relating to Covid. Over the last 5 months I was living and working in Melbourne. Because I am in 14 day quarantine right now (in West Australia), I have time reading this thread. I must say, it has not enlightened me much.

Thank you Wotname for that link in post #1147, interesting reading about reliability of data.

For my work I follow all the numbers, more or less. I made my own spreadsheets to see trending; that also can show skewed figures. I mainly use figures from government sources, but even then some may not be reliable. I would say most governments manipulate the data at some time, just some more than others.
Here is another source (for Australia), those numbers are very close to mine. https://covidbaseau.com/vic/ This owners of this site are teenage kids by the way……….

While in Victoria, I met many people from all walks of life (although less so during lockdown, but I was an authorised worker). And the general psyche is not very positive, really depressing. The well to do, are doing relatively well, the lower classes and the younger ones are struggling. Cannot comment on the elderly people, have not met any.
Indeed, the death rate of covid is small compared with other causes, and indeed the damage of restricting social interaction will be far greater than expected. Both economic and mental wellbeing.

Now the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) has also made a “roadmap out of lockdown", joining NSW (New South Wales) and Victoria… in de understanding that a situation with “zero covid” is not achievable anymore. Only time will tell if Queensland will go the same way. I would say “yes”. Hmmm, New Zealand might not manage zero-covid either.

Met antivaxxers, covid deniers, conspiracy proponents, covid positive persons, persons in 14 day self isolation, extremely anxious people, scared people, politically charged persons, and ignorant people. All kinds. Hehehe, maybe similar to the audience here on CF. But they all had a reaction to this Covid situation.

And my reaction? The demand for my kind of work has further improved already healthy work opportunities. Covid is real. Not sure which government in the world got it right though, if any. The real mistakes were made years ago by scaling down health care and particularly aged care.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

To put Australians "suffering" and "mental health" issues into perspective I found this interesting.

Yes, I realise it's a piss take site but it is pretty much right from what I am seeing and hearing

https://www.legianstreetjournal.com/...-to-open-again

To understand this right, you have to be able to look beyond your own demographic and personal interests and have some empathy for the fates of people who are in different circumstances from you. Brushing off the impact on people in different demographics from you, based on what you are "seeing and hearing" among your own demographic, is dangerous.



From the point of view our demographic -- white, well-provided, over 60 (or at least over 50), not working or easily able to work from home, we see it one way:


Virus: Big risk of death to us personally.
Economic: No threat; we are already set up, or we work in jobs which are not under threat.
Development: We are already educated and developed; have no friends or small well established social group.


Therefore: We have little to lose from pandemic measures no matter how harsh; and everything to lose if they don't work.


Note that this demographic rules the world and has wholly disproprotionate political influence. Most campaign donations come out of our demographic.



Note however that MOST of the population has VERY different interests from this.


Take, for example, children:


Virus: Risk virtually zero
Economic: Those with young or poor parents are highly explosed to economic risks.
Development: Every year, ever school term is a crucial part of development; a lost school term can never be recovered (abundant science on that). In many countries (perhaps not in Australia) children out of school are even suffering hunger because they depend on school lunches for nutrition.



Or, working, young, poor people (who are often parents of the previous group):


Virus: Risk extremely low
Economic: Highly vulnerable to the economy. Millions of unemployed in most countries from pandemic measures sometimes for more than a year; jobs of this group account for almost all of the unemployed

Development: Being out of the job market for as much as a year or more can damage the fragile prospects of career development for this group. Some particularly severely affected groups include theater actors; many careers simply destroyed.


So for other groups, they have almost nothing to gain personally from pandemic measures, and EVERYTHING to lose.


Now ALL groups in society have interest in the health and well-being of other groups -- we live in a society, after all. So just because you don't directly benefit from pandemic measures doesn't mean that you don't have an interest in other groups not dying off en masse. But doesn't it look like in many countries that there is a significant risk that some groups might be simply being thrown under the bus, simply ignored, in favor of just one especially powerful demographic?


This is not the only big social question where we have to be careful to think of others, whose situations are not like ours. I think the pandemic has caused a big freak-out in some quarters, which has impaired some people's ability to do this.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

https://youtu.be/FtU5MnPfW84

Finally, some pushback. Australia is waking up slowly from agony.

Agony?
most of the world would wish to be cruising through it like we have been here

Oh and in the video the same meatheads complaining about a jab and not putting strange things in their systems are happy to smoke and snort all manner of backyard concoctions

A pair of tradies railing against Covid jab requirements on work sites have been caught snorting drugs as Melbourne's streets descended into chaos.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-protests.html

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

To understand this right, you have to be able to look beyond your own demographic and personal interests and have some empathy for the fates of people who are in different circumstances from you. Brushing off the impact on people in different demographics from you, based on what you are "seeing and hearing" among your own demographic, is dangerous.



.

I was doing it from the point of view that people here are whinging about how hardly done by we are in a land where we are throwing out of date vaccines away, we even have a choice on which too get, we have first rate medical and govt support for those not working and most of the country is open and generally, unaffected.
Yet Australians are still whinging about how they cant travel or do all the nice things they want to do.

Other parts of the world, our near neighbors have vaccine shortages, poor healthcare, running out of oxygen and hospital beds if not run out and zero govt support for those out of work.
People are dying.

Some people need to get a grip on reality.

From that article

What is clear is the Balinese have survived on no income for more than 18 months, many have died, the island ran out of oxygen, hospitals were at capacity and they are largely living on rice and donations - but it’s the Aussies that are really suffering.

They paint a desperate picture as they spend hours on ex-pat groups every day - waiting desperately for the news of when Bali will open to them. No one else - just them. The problem is - Aussies also live in a bubble and let’s face it, are generally as dumb as a box of hair. Sadly, most haven’t realised that their own borders are closed. They are actually locked into Australia and have been for 18 months. And word is they will be locked in for quite a few more.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

I was doing it from the point of view that people here are whinging about how hardly done by we are in a land where we are throwing out of date vaccines away, we even have a choice on which too get, we have first rate medical and govt support for those not working and most of the country is open and generally, unaffected.
Yet Australians are still whinging about how they cant travel or do all the nice things they want to do.

Other parts of the world, our near neighbors have vaccine shortages, poor healthcare, running out of oxygen and hospital beds if not run out and zero govt support for those out of work.
People are dying.

Some people need to get a grip on reality.

From that article
'What is clear is the Balinese have survived on no income for more than 18 months, many have died, the island ran out of oxygen, hospitals were at capacity and they are largely living on rice and donations - but it’s the Aussies that are really suffering.

They paint a desperate picture as they spend hours on ex-pat groups every day - waiting desperately for the news of when Bali will open to them. No one else - just them. The problem is - Aussies also live in a bubble and let’s face it, are generally as dumb as a box of hair. Sadly, most haven’t realised that their own borders are closed. They are actually locked into Australia and have been for 18 months. And word is they will be locked in for quite a few more.'

I think something must have been lost in translation.

I struggle a bit with Finnish humour.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

I was doing it from the point of view that people here are whinging about how hardly done by we are in a land where we are throwing out of date vaccines away, we even have a choice on which too get, we have first rate medical and govt support for those not working and most of the country is open and generally, unaffected.
Yet Australians are still whinging about how they cant travel or do all the nice things they want to do.

Other parts of the world, our near neighbors have vaccine shortages, poor healthcare, running out of oxygen and hospital beds if not run out and zero govt support for those out of work.
People are dying.

Some people need to get a grip on reality.

From that article

OK, fair enough.


And I'm sure you're right that some of what we hear is just whinging.


Just don't forget those people who are really being damaged. You might not know them personally because they are from a different social or age group. That's all I was trying to say.

[fxykty]

Queensland, West Australia, North Australia, Tasmania and (I think) South Australia have all so far avoided wide spread outbreaks of Delta and are wide open behind their closed borders. Just like New Zealand was until the current Delta outbreak, which looks like it will keep Auckland locked down (pretty) tight and the rest of the country loosely restricted (masks, no large gatherings, …). According to this interesting Bloomberg report https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...lRLRW0rKm1Iw44 NZ has slid from 1st last November to 38, while Australia went down less sharply to 34 (of course, with big state by state differences).

Here in Queensland it’s like there’s nothing going on different than before Covid, except for masks in malls and stores (public transport?) and ubiquitous sign in QR codes. We’re at Great Keppel Island and there’s not a mask in sight, lots of people pressed up together on the passenger ferries and no distancing at all in the bistro. Closed borders are tough, but strong control there and in quarantine (unlike what we see with New Zealand’s porous quarantine system) means that we can live easy.

But closed border means eliminating Covid is still the goal, which I suppose makes sense if the vaccination numbers are not great, and I see that Queensland is similar to New Zealand: 42% fully vaccinated and 64% one dose (NZ is 44% and 78% respectively). However these lagging rates mean that switching to endemic Covid and reopening is still a ways away. That is reflected in the Bloomberg report.

Countries that managed Covid poorly early on (high infection rates and relatively high deaths) are doing much better now due to higher vaccine rates and higher levels of (partial?) immunity. Once this is all over (one day!!) it will be very interesting to evaluate the winners and not so winners. Of course, by that time climate change will likely be really affecting us and no one will be worrying about a piddling few Covid deaths.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by pdjb

History is repeating itself, Germany, control the population thur propaganda

Or Facebook in the US

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Queensland, West Australia, North Australia, Tasmania and (I think) South Australia have all so far avoided wide spread outbreaks of Delta and are wide open behind their closed borders. Just like New Zealand was until the current Delta outbreak, which looks like it will keep Auckland locked down (pretty) tight and the rest of the country loosely restricted (masks, no large gatherings, …). Closed borders are tough, but strong control there and in quarantine (unlike what we see with New Zealand’s porous quarantine system) means that we can live easy.

But closed border means eliminating Covid is still the goal, which I suppose makes sense if the vaccination numbers are not great, .......

NZ's border was pretty porous when I went there in July. All my paperwork was checked at both ends but plenty in the press saying that was the exception.... which is how Delta got in.

The Auckland border ( to the rest of NZ ) is closed is closed as tight as a crab's bum at 40 fathoms and their restrictions are 'Melbourne on Steroids'. Even all take-away including KFC was closed until a few days ago.
Which may explain why these likely lads - having done a drug run down to Hamilton decided to invest some of the proceeds in KFC to sell at a considerable profit when they got home - either that or they just had the munchies https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...ot-full-of-kfc

I don't think NZ or any of the outlier Australian states think that 'zero covid' is a thing.
Its all about getting people vaccinated so as to take the load off ICUs.
I was told today that the total number of ICUs in all of NZ is in the very low hundreds - not too hard to overwhelm that.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

To put Australians "suffering" and "mental health" issues into perspective I found this interesting.

Yes, I realise it's a piss take site but it is pretty much right from what I am seeing and hearing

https://www.legianstreetjournal.com/...-to-open-again

Thanks for the link to “The Legian Street Journal” [1], and that excellent article.
Good, and entertaining, stuff!

[1] Where Only The Headlines Matter. For the discerning bule [2] who wants the whole story but is just too damn lazy to read it.
[2] foreigners and/or non-Indonesians, usually ‘white’.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

….. at the same time it's also wrong to assume that all the data around the world is perfect, or even good. At the beginning of the pandemic in particular there were wildly different definitions of what is a covid death, making data from different countries not comparable at all. This was considerably improved in the summer of last year when the WHO produced some standard methodology which was adopted most everywhere, and some of the datasets were even retroactively corrected with the harmonized methology.

Hi Dockhead
Yes, it was all over the place at first with some countries only reporting confirmed hospital deaths, not those in nursing homes. Lack of good data has hindered good management.

It is still flawed. I do not know how uniform the method of reporting a death is worldwide currently, but in the UK it does not follow WHO guidelines and is not even consistent between its different countries. In England COVID-19 deaths are counted as “People who have died within 28 days of their first positive test for coronavirus.” In Scotland it is “deaths registered in Scotland where the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was mentioned on the death certificate.”

This will skew data.

Originally Posted by Dockhead

But there are other factors which affect the data -- for example, case rates are enormously impacted by testing rates. Case rates might appear to be 2x, 3x, or even lower than they really are, when there is little testing, compared to a country where there is a lot of testing. This is also influenced by WHO is being tested in a given society and whether or not you have to pay for it (for example in Denmark for much of this year there was enormous availability of free testing and very high rate of testing, 4x or 5x the rate of testing in say Finland, and that no doubt exaggerated the daily case rates in Denmark compared to Finland where we pay €200 for a test unless we are referred by a doctor for a suspected infection). We look at the pretty graphs from Our World In Data (and I am the most guilty one of all) and it's easy to be seduced by the neatness of them and forget to take it all with a grain of salt, but the underlying data is not NEARLY so neat as the graphs.

I commented on that way back in December last year when I first started contributing to COVID discussions:

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Hi Dockhead
…One comment regarding the graphs you are presenting. “Confirmed” cases will depend on the number of tests being done. This has varied dramatically from week to week, let alone from month to month, let alone from country to country. The significance of the graphs needs to be viewed with that in mind.

Comparisons between case rates in different countries is difficult when testing rates vary so markedly. Even trends within a country need to be considered hand in hand with testing rates (testing numbers suddenly jumped substantially in the UK when lateral flow tests started to be used at least weekly on children returning to school and adults to work). Numbers can’t even be extrapolated as criteria for testing is varying so much both between countries and over time.

Testing rates for several countries are seen below. With similar populations, France’s testing rate is about half that of the UK, Italy’s about a third and Germany’s close to a fifth:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ies-worldwide/

Japan’s testing rate was so low I could not include it in the screenshot. It is about 1/23 of the UK’s! How can case numbers possibly be compared?

SWL

[HeinSdL]

I have a question which is somewhat beginning to bother me, as follows. Let's suppose we reach 100% vaccination coverage, first with two initial shots followed up by the first booster to further strengthen the immune system. The pandemic seems to be under control with the occasional break-through cases and deaths, nothing too serious, all underpinned by the covid pass which is more or less essential to participate in public life.

Then, in the coming years new variants are identified, the epsilon from South America, the phi from Asia, etc. Every time big pharma stands ready with a new booster to take care of this and that threat, needed on a personal basis to keep the covid pass valid. The question I thus have is, how do we know this entire vaccination programme remains essential? Only because governments, egged on by big pharma, tell us so. There no longer is a control group who would otherwise and presumably be dying en-masse to provide the real evidence.

This outcome scares me and is this where we want to end up? I want there to always be a control group of 15 to 20% of the population to keep things under control. Agree? And if indeed a control group therefore is considered a must-have, then this government assisted bashing of the unvaccinated must stop. Otherwise we end up, as a society, in a place where we really do not want to be.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

... I want there to always be a control group of 15 to 20% of the population to keep things under control. Agree? ...

NO, I DON'T AGREE!
That seems, to me, to be a rather psychopathic perversion of utilitarian philosophy.