They all went away quicker than this one didn’t they? Stupid people are making this one stick around for ever

I guess we'll have to see. The Spanish flu, the Hong Kong flu and SARS all took years to contain.

What is your estimate of the number of lives saved through the mitigation steps taken Australia, versus the cost of those steps, so far Mick?

Round thousands of lives and round billions in cost.

Back of the napkin, lives saved would have to run to around 47,500 - 48,000 (that's taking the US/UK deaths/million rate and applying to our population less the number of deaths we've had). What would you put the cost at? The $311 billion budget number for government relief and support? That'd be around $6.5 million per life saved in crude terms.

This is the problem, lockdowns to most of you are the go to solution. F$&k that no lockdown let it go let’s experience what Italy and UK had ppl need to see what this virus can actually do. Make rest of Australia close to NSW costing 1 Billion a week let everyone see shop fronts boarded up The Ppl need to see hard reality. Ppl scared of getting vaccine because of BS they see on Facebook or Instagram without reading the real facts Then, the ppl will realize there is only one way out and that’s the jab. Plenty of AZ waiting to be used also Pfizer on the way. NSW could very well be the only state open to international by 2023 whilst rest of the country keep open close over 1 case of the next Delta variant.

This eradication rubbish by keep closing major city’s is not the solution 18 months on and we are in no better position then when this started.

And I am waiting to see what happens when the UK ‘goes rouge’. Let’s all have a Summer Holiday.

I predict it’s going to be a disaster. I hope I’m wrong.

It certain that the cost is far (far) more than the 'government' - do you mean Federal alone? - budget for just 'relief and support'. Given your obviously well-informed and researched posts, I'm surprised you'd price it on that very narrow basis.

I reckon Australia's 'let it rip' rate would have been lower than the UK and USA, given demographic differences, but I'll accept your numbers for 'back of napkin' purposes.

(SOPS: It's "goes rogue", not "goes rouge". The latter is a cosmetic...)

Yes, I just ran the Federal budget numbers there, at least in part for the sake of getting back to you in a reasonable timeframe. I'll have a further look at it over the next few days and look to roll in the state spending but there's at least a starting point there - we're going to be looking at something in the order of around $10+ million per life 'saved'.

The problem with trying to cost this thing beyond a fairly simple, fairly narrow basis is that calculations rapidly become complex. Even doing just lives saved versus federal government spending is a bit flaky in that it ignores the cost of a death, even if it's just in terms of whether there's a net cost/benefit to government (beyond that there's almost certainly a cost to the economy).

If you try to do it on a GDP basis then that needs to be comparative as well. We've doubtlessly spent more at the government level but our bounce-back in terms of GDP has been comparatively stellar. You'd have to ask if we were clocking over 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 deaths what would that look like in terms of business confidence, productivity, and the like.

As I said, as soon as you start breaking out from the super-simple approach the calculations get super-messy.

Yep, 35,000 cases overnight, with Wimbledon and the England v Italy Euro Cup Final tomorrow it should go ballistic. A Kent Dr that does regular Covid updates on his
Youtube channel predicting 100,000 cases in the next couple of weeks. What will Boris do? We will see how hospitalisation go as well. They are up to 50% vaccinations
so this could be an eye opener or a trial when we get to the 50% mark. Glady's is in dreamworld regarding her 80% figure.

Gosh you really love to promulgate some fear mate. I reckon you’re going to need plastic sheets with all the bed wetting nonsense you sprout here.

Sweden with no lockdowns, schools mostly open, little mask wearing has had 14,000 deaths and a population of 10mil.

Population is centered in cities but unlike Australia most people live in apartments and not houses. So for 25 mil in Australia would have been 35-40k. If it behaves the same way.

However that doesn’t count those deaths that were of the old and at risk who were likely in their last days and wouldn’t survive a bad cold let alone a 2 year covid pandemic.

No one seems to be able to explain why Singapore has 36 deaths from 60k cases.

Sorry.. spell check got me.

We will wait and see.

My understanding is that they took a pre-emptive approach to hospitalisations. On top of their very aggressive early testing regime they pre-emptively hospitalised anyone 45 and over who returned a positive test regardless of whether they were exhibiting symptoms or not. You can probably add the relatively compliant culture to that.

Because Asia is regularly exposed to seasonal coronaviruses they have a better innate immunity than European countries.

the days of mass casualties in overrun hospitals are over. Doctors have a good list of therapies now including corticosteroids, zinc and Vitamin D supplements, monoclonals..and other things..

they no longer send Covid patients home with useless remdesivir to wait it out.

Your information on Sweden is VERY wrong!

Many many months ago "people" all said that Sweden had it right with "no lockdowns" but even Sweden admitted they had it wrong.

Schools were shut (most) and they had very stringent travel restrictions (no more than 2km from memory) for a long time - cell phone were used for tracking!

Life was not normal in Sweden.

Many countries have "low" death numbers v COVID cases, there are a number of ways to count the deaths I assume?

But more telling is there are many countries with little or no resources to fight COVID and 12/18 months later the villages and small towns are not noticeably devastated. Australia did some testing in PNG and that result was 50% COVID positive many months ago now.

Can you provide a reference for that? I have family in Sweden with school age children and not once have they mentioned those sorts of restrictions or events. At one point they wanted to keep their children home from school and government authorities threatened action against them if they did so (not really good for Australian's living there that can't easily return home).

For the record I (and my family) don't disagree that the Swedish government got things wrong. Neighbouring countries shut their borders for a while to Sweden and the Swedes also got to a point where they were asking their neighbours for assistance with hospital admissions as their own were approaching capacity.

About 55K or the around 63K total cases were from the workers dormitories here in Singapore. They are all mostly young and fit individuals. So do not fall into the age brackets/risk categories most associated with death as a result of the disease the virus causes.

As for the other about 8K which is made up of about 5K of overseas infections and 3K of community since the start of all this, a positive result means it is off to hospital for treatment or if deemed well enough a stay in a community care facility until clear of the virus.

Onya gladys

Ok… the person was 90, however the first death has occurred. Police find people playing cards together.. and IKEA stays open. What wil it take, Gladys?