You are missing the point that in a libertarian society it is up to the individual to decide what is right for them and not be dictated to by a government authority.

And you are smoking alot of drugs if you think anyone in the Australian Commonwealth has most of their liberties back. How long have the so-called "state of emergency" laws been rolling on for now?? 18 months?? How long are they going to be around?? What's your freedom of movement within in your own country looking like?? You realise this sort of stuff would have started civil wars 100 years ago, but now we are so soft that it is all just 'accepted'.

The problem with all this is that it could be used as a basis of a proper permanent removal of liberty and a move toward a much more totalitarian state. Only time will tell on that one.

Maybe they prefer their freedom and are happy to take the risk?

I don’t think the point was missed at all. Libertarianism requires a level of maturity in order for it to work. It has nothing to do with not giving a fvck about your fellow humans, even though most think it does. The way it is applied in the US (disguised as freedom) is pretty poor.

Have freedom and take the risk.. ok.. fill you pants. Enjoy.

Mark is that you? How is Rockingham this evening?

Does that person also accept responsibility if they don’t wear a mask and infect others, or don’t get vaccinated and clog up the medical system? Eventually a society of millions individuals doing what they want will lead to disaster. Look at how well East Asian societies have controlled the pandemic, with their emphasis on collective rights and following the directives to stop the outbreaks vs most western nations, especially “Liberty Central” USA and how all those individuals deciding they weren’t going to let the government tell them to wear a mask worked out?

Yeah, you’re right, about 100 years ago there’s no way Australians would’ve tolerated this bullsh-

The Australian Quarantine Service monitored the spread of the pandemic and implemented maritime quarantine on 17 October 1918
The city of Sydney implemented strict measures in an attempt to limit the spread of the disease. This included closing schools and places of entertainment and mandating the use of masks.
In Perth, the combination of the city’s relative isolation and effective state border quarantine control ensured that pneumonic influenza didn’t appear there until June 1919.

1919: Influenza pandemic reaches Australia


Ok live with that paranoia if you want. In Australia we’ve already decided as a society we don’t want the extreme libertarianism of the USA by having things like gun control, universal healthcare and mandated annual and personal leave provisions.

Exactly what excuse can Sydney use as covid fatigue? It’s been about a week of a full blown (not quite Melbourne style) lockdown. If anything people should be more vigilant. If it was three months on and people showing no interest that is different.

Some people are selfish beasts though, carry on like this and the only thing to save Sydney will be the vaccine. How that plays out time wise is anyone’s guess.

Somebody posted that it took us here in melbourne 16 weeks to get numbers of around 100/day down to a few a day,we were getting 700/day at the height of it which was prob late aug/early sep last year.
It looks like the current restrictions arent working so its either keep going as they are & see how far it goes or the lockdown has to be made exactly that,a true lockdown.
I guess a big decision is imminent.

I would expect at 11am announcement of 100+ cases for SY, half of those at least in the community during their whole infectious period. Then about 11:15 she will have to announce something a little tougher seems Sydney ppl are just not getting it.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. You framed the line of inquiry - number of lives saved through mitigation versus cost of mitigation - I'm just plugging some best estimates into that. If you think that there's something specious about that approach, let's deal with that now before I waste any more time looking into it.

That's not what I proposed. You suggested that a range of non-financial factors - things like the curtailment of liberties, the mental health implications of the 'lock downs' and other government actions - should be costed. I pointed out that that is difficult. What's the objective dollar cost of, or a reasonable surrogate cost for, the 'curtailment of liberties'? If it can't be costed the alternative is to see if it can be reflected in the other factor we're looking at, the denominator - deaths (negative lives saved). Is there an estimate of the number of deaths that arose from the 'curtailment of liberties'?

Getting back to the question asked, what I proposed was that if you could cost those factors for the mitigation scenario we're living in, might the cost be somewhat similar to the costing of the range of non-financial factors associated with some 40,000-odd excess deaths. Just to be clear, do you think that there would be mental health implications associated with some 40,000-odd excess deaths?

Flipping the question around now into the 'currency' of deaths, might the number of deaths that have arisen due to the curtailment of liberties, the mental health implications of the 'lock downs' and other government actions be roughly equivalent to the number that might have arisen due to having to deal with some 40,000-odd excess deaths? Any thoughts on what the numbers might be for each scenario?

So people we need to get a bit of perspective here.
Lockdowns for a few weeks are nothing compared to what 63,000 of us endured when we had our lives turned upside down for 2 years back in the 60s.

The 1860s?

112 cases in the 24 hours to 8pm Sunday

112 cases, 34 in the community while infected. Onya Gladys.

Someone infected went to VIC and SA....just fantastic

So what if it's 'difficult' to cost?

Are you suggesting that because it's 'difficult' to cost, the curtailment of liberties and other intangible consequences of lockdowns should just be valued at zero?

Might it? You're just speculating.

That's my point: We shouldn't be speculating.

Ummm. I'm pretty sure I know the correct answer to that one. Is it 'yes'?

There you go again: "might" there be "roughly equivalent" costs?

I say again: That's my point. We shouldn't be speculating. We should be formulating proper estimates.

Let me do some flipping around.

Let's say another country wants to invade and take over Australia. The new regime will initially control when and where we can travel, go to work and run businesses, but promises that we will 'eventually' be 'allowed' to make and implement those decisions ourselves.

Fighting a war with the other country will cost an estimated 150,000 Australian lives.

Why wouldn't we just surrender, in order to save those 150,000 lives? No lives lost and the 'only' sacrifices are things that are difficult to cost in dollar terms. The business case writes itself, surely?

Right, let's draw this argy-barge to a close because I do not have the time to be formulating "proper estimates" for non-financials.

If you want to compare a speculative 'let it rip' scenario to the actual solution that Australian Governments have pursued, run with a cost of around $450 billion (that's $350 billion for the federal response (including tax revenues foregone), $60 billion for the aggregate state based responses an $40 billion for the 'non-financials'). If that doesn't suit, put your own numbers in.

Lives "saved" - 35,000 if you use Sweden to calculate the likely deaths under a minimalist mitigation approach; 45,000 if you use UK/US.

Raw dollars/life saved is in the range $10 million - $12.9 million. Adjust to suit your needs.


We came into this with a Federal government with a two seat majority in the House and the minors controlling the Senate having to work under the Constitution with the various State governments, three or four of which were facing upcoming elections. A low/no-mitigation approach was never a realistic alternative. Either the states would have done there own thing or on the day we reached a deaths milestone (5,000 in total, 500 on one day, etc, take your pick ) the Federal government would likely have lost a vote of confidence.

If your going to compare our actual camel of an approach/outcome with a unicorn of a speculative scenario, gee, I wonder how that's going to play out? The problem of course is that unicorns aren't real.

10 to 12.9 million per life. And the average age of those who die is around 82. Certainly that is the case in the uk and Australia. Which is about 1 year over the average age of all deaths. Hmmmmm. I wonder how many people would take on a family debt of 10 to 12.9 million to keep 82 year old grandpa or grandma alive for perhaps another few years.. that debt passed down through the generations of that family until it is repaid. Just like the 500 or whatever billion we have just spent will be….

answers on a postage stamp please. Just food for thought.

I would have thought that kind of money would be better spent on the overall health budget, medical research or social housing or education.

but then I guess nobody had any idea how this would play out and we still don’t.

oh to be a national leader..

Great response!
 

Good summary of the “other factors”. It’s never as simple as the personal liberty VS lockdowns argument is put (by most people).

Even if we had followed a minimal restrictions approach and instead spent stacks of $$$ on health etc, business demand in various sectors would have dropped.

So a large number of business would have gone under anyway due to a change in spending patterns due to a large outbreak.

Airlines would have still put a lot of staff on unpaid leave because demand would have dropped at least 40%, plus international would have dried up because of the various restrictions all around the world.

Having quarantine on arrival made sense as a policy for Australia (an island). Plays to our massive strength. Having the nationwide lockdown last year made sense, originally to flatten the curve….

But that time should have been used to rapidly build “donga cities” in BNE/SYD/MEL/PER by mid year 2020.

Instead of arguing over a couple of dollars, Australia should have negotiated a similar deal to Israel for the Pfizer vaccine (as well as the AZ deal for onshore production, plus the failed UQ vaccine). This would have given us much better options. And a way out of the current mess!!

The general strategy wasn’t bad. And as mentioned was politically possible in our federation (states actually run the various health sectors, feds control the money). But around October last year, Australia was to busy saying “awesome job!” “Look how good we are!” when they should have been working harder than ever….

‘Lockdown’

https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn...862&height=575

This is a photo of police in Fairfield. What’s with all the cars? Sydney really does not understand ‘ lock down’, does it?