Yeah/nah, he'll close it for one case. One thing we've learn't from this is that epidemiologists have now become god and other medical doctors are unheard.

The federal government appointed a contractor to perform a critical function that included ensuring that their representatives were properly trained and accredited to perform those critical tasks.
They failed to do that.

That is why Hunt is looking for heads to chop off while simultaneously diving for cover.

Much like the castigation that Daniel Andrews has been subject to for appointing incompetent security contractors.

yes partly true. But you forgot the bit about Andrews being offered help by the commonwealth government in relation to hotel quarantine and him refusing it on more than one occasion and then blatantly lying about it despite emails proving it.

as a general point though, while aged care is a federal responsibility the vaccine rollout should really be a state responsibility as they are the ones who employ the doctors and nurses en masse in hospitals. The federal government is not equipped or practiced in delivering this kind of service.

You're saying that with a straight face?

Yep, one study here showing a 27% flu vaccine uptake in Australia in 2017. And although the data is still being processed the 2020 flu vaccine uptake is certainly substantially more, from an estimated 60% to approximately 70% uptake.

If we could get those numbers with the totally free Covid vax this industry would be back on track.

Not defending Andrews at all. And don't disagree with your assertion that responsibility for the vaccine rollout should be a states responsibility.
But it isn't. It IS a federal responsibility so Mr Hunt needs to come out from under his desk and perhaps explain the selection process that saw the contract going to a company that, within a few days of starting the vaccination operation, made a very serious cock-up of it.

That is both interesting and surprising.
I am sure that there will be some really interesting analyses come out of this little episode in a year or three.

I had already assumed that the very low flu count in 2020 was mainly the result of social distancing and increased attention to personal hygiene.

Haven’t found a source that backs your numbers (and not saying they are not there, but) ...however quite an amount of that 2020 uptake could very well be attributed to the fact that those who wished to visit loved ones in aged care we’re required to produce a certificate, or at the very least declare that they had had the “flu shot” prior to moving past the front desk.

For each Care Resident you might find that there were quite a number of “flu shot” recipients who would otherwise not have been injected..

Numbers and percentages are one thing, reasons for uptake are another.

But I have no doubt you have an argument that counters that....(sigh).

So the next time a pilot stuffs up the CEO is to blame??
I have always said that you can have a s#!t load of rules and regs but it is the nut holding the levers or in this case the needle, who can still stuff up.
It is always someone fault other than the person who actually stuffed up.

But that is the logic that has been applied to Daniel Andrews for the last 194 pages.
Why would you want to change it in this case?

You know......the buck stops here.

From a discussion with those in both events there is a difference. In the Victorian quarantine case, the securing/security of the hotels was contracted out to private operator who were expected to know what to do; that is minimal direction from the relevant authority.
In the case here in Queensland, the contract with the provider did state the requirements and the contractor agreed that they would be met and their staff were qualified. In the end it was basically a case of negligence on the part of the administering doctor. A friend who has been administering the vaccine indicated that it would be arguably incompetent to have administered all four doses from one vial, even if he'd had no more than his normal qualifications. As she said, if he'd followed his normal procedure it would not have happened. A failure to follow SOPs I guess.

I'm not questioning at all the degree of incompetence of the administering doctor. Even I'd have known not to give the full bottle, that aspect has been covered on TV multiple times.
And ask any nurse, many doctors don't know how to give injections anyway. They so seldom need to do it.

I am just a bit jaded after reading nearly 200 pages of attributing blame for every minor detail to the the person in the highest position THAT THE CONTRIBUTOR DOES NOT LIKE.

Fox and Co laughing all the way to the bank again, courtesy of the Victorian Labor party.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp....25-p575yu.html

ha. Not only a Labor premier doing the bidding of his billionaire mate but Bill Kelty , ex union official also best mates with the billionaire. And yet Labor and their supporters scream how the Liberals are the party of billionaire mates and interests. And these same Labor supporters are too stupid to realise the big unions sold out workers as did the Labor party ,one and the same, to big business decades ago. We saw that with Bill the pieman Shorten during the union Royal Commission.

and of course people like Simon Bourke federal Labor were regular guests at the billionaire Pratt family ski lodge.

But this article is yet more proof Andrews needs to resign or be forced out.

examples of Labor and unions selling out workers, especially penalty rates, doing the bidding of big business.

Both Coles and the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association (SDA) had fought for years to keep the previous deal which paid tens of thousands of workers less than the minimum rates of the award, the basic wages safety net.

The old deal slashed - or did not pay at all - penalty rates and other entitlements in exchange for modest increases in hourly pay.The SDA is well known for its conservative social positions whether on abortion, euthanasia and for many years on same sex marriage.

It is the largest affiliate of the ALP and has substantial political sway in Labor and the ACTU.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/work...wwo.htmlBurger

giant McDonald's is underpaying its Australian workers tens of millions of dollars a year under a cosy deal struck with Labor's largest union affiliate that excludes weekend penalty rates.

A Fairfax Media investigation has found the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) negotiated a 2013 agreement under which some McDonald's employees are paid nearly one-third less than the award – the minimum pay and conditions safety net.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/work...18-goycw5.html

There was an article on The Australian online today regarding an extension to Jobkeeper for the aviation sector (behind paywall). I can't find it now. It looks like it might be happening but perhaps the strategic leak from the Treasurer's office was a little too early and the article's been pulled until it can be more opportunely leaked/ announced.

https://www.newcastlestar.com.au/sto...ation-support/

same deal happening in QLd with a toowoomba Quarantine center at well camp

Still ridiculous? 14 cases and counting

Holy snapping duck**** :eek: meanwhile, there's a death in Australia every 3 minutes and 13 seconds but..............Nobody cares unless the covid boogey man gets a boomer.

haha, ain’t that the truth

If you die WITH Covid it appears to be recorded as a Covid death. Apparently being hit by a bus is a result of the virus.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/cli...pre-existing-c

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/death-...ause-of-death/

yep, but there might be more. They need to anally probe people as it is more accurate. The nasal probe gives more false negatives apparently. All together now, bend over and spread em.

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

Except that isn’t what your linked articles are saying. If Covid isn’t either a contributory or underlying cause, then it isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) recorded as a Covid death. As I understand it, it basically comes down to a question of ‘would this person still be alive if they didn’t have Covid-19?’ Someone who is flattened by a bus while they have Covid is not considered to have died from from Covid..

seem to have a problem in the UK. The actual quantity unknown, could be a few, might be a lot.

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

C’mon Daily Mail? Quoting anonymous funeral directors (no formal qualifications needed) and anonymous unqualified family members who don’t want to accept their relations died of Covid for some reason?

We have factual evidence the pandemic is causing more death than usual, and that’s due the much higher excess death figures in every country affected by it. It’s the overwhelmed ICUs now with an increasingly younger cohort, the health staff running out of oxygen, important surgery being cancelled, ambulances told to not transport patients due to full hospitals, frontline health workers describing the conditions are the worst they’ve ever seen, the mass graves, etc

I know a lot of pilots want to believe medical experts are idiots and got it wrong (or are liars in some grand conspiracy). The facts aren’t with you. There is a serious pandemic, measures had to be taken and it caused negative effects to the aviation industry.

There is no doubt Covid is killing people in significant numbers. The fatality rate somewhere between 2% and 3%.

I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist but I know that if there is an incentive to pad the figures then it will happen.

Reading your post, you are certainly correct about the "excess death rate" being a useful measure. I did wonder though about these...

which would no doubt lead to people dying who could, with surgery, have survived...

again that would mean people who would normally be admitted and treated being turned away.

So not all the excess deaths are due to Covid directly, some are no doubt as a result indirectly as they were not treated or even admitted to hospital. Also the numbers of people avoiding presenting at a doctor or hospital with symptoms (not Covid) because they do not wish to be a burden on the NHS.

Mass graves in the UK? Really? Where?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/e...S&region=World

This is an interesting graph of excess deaths. Its shows that for short periods in the UK summer the excess death rate was NEGATIVE. Meaning less people were dying than the usual average.

Half of the expected doses given in first week. It’s not like they haven’t had time to plan this. Useless twats.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-.../13197518?nw=0

I expect in Australia the timeline will be pushed out past the planned end of Oct 2021 for all who want the jab....how far out, is anyone’s guess! And this may have some effect on international, unfortunately.

Those excess deaths wouldn’t have occurred had the beds not be filled up by Covid patients, had ambulances not been otherwise occupied etc. So directly or indirectly it was the pandemic which caused that excess death.

Mass graves were dug in the United States and Brazil, morgues were overfilled in Italy and Spain, amongst others.

Check my maths...

Assuming 20,000,000 people to vaccinate, over eight months, March to October...

That requires 2,500,000 people per month to be vaccinated.

Assuming thirty days in a month, that requires 83,333 people PER DAY to be vaccinated.

OR

March to October is 245 days. 20,000,000 people into 245 days requires 81,632 PER DAY vaccinated.

Perhaps 20,000,000 is too ambitious?

The Pfizer vaccine needs special storage, transport and staff, but other vaccines like AZ can be transported and injected by GPs and pharmacists like a flu vaccine.

At the moment there’s less than a dozen vaccination sites in each state for Pfizer, as opposed to hundreds of GP clinics and Pharmacies that will be available when the more easily distributed vaccines come on line. So the rate of vaccination will shoot right up.

The UK has triple the population and is vaccinating up to 400,000 per day. So Australia could get up 130,000 per day for the same rate and according to that math would only need 80,000 per day to reach the October target.

So it’s easily achievable, and for most Australians who are located in major urban centres should get access within months. The later time frame will be to get the vaccine to more remote communities I would say.

Pharmacies? Will they be able to provide the injection? Only with a nurse on staff surely?

Nope. Most pharmacists can give a flu vaccine (and a whole host of other shots). No nurse required.

Pharmacies and GPs to participate in coronavirus vaccine rollout from phase 2a - ABC News

​​​​​​

come on, dismissing something solely because you don’t like the source.

so did this happen or not. I guess not simply because it was reported in the Daily Mail.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, said: ‘The Government should call a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic immediately with an interim investigation into all Covid deaths that should report as soon as possible

did this happen. I guess not solely because it was reported in the Daily Mail. Notice the quotes in both extracts.

Tory MP Paul Bristow, a member of the Commons health committee, said: ‘It’s almost certain that a number of deaths have been wrongly attributed to Covid-19.

‘Not only has this skewed figures when data has been so important in deciding how we respond to the pandemic, it has caused distress and anxiety for relatives.

‘Whether we have received the most appropriate figures should definitely be considered in any future inquiry

Did Clare really say this. Obviously not as it was reported in the Daily Mail.

Professor Clare Gerada, former chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: ‘When this all comes out in the wash, we will find out we have over-recorded Covid-19 as a cause of death.’


we get it you don’t like the Daily Mail and therefore EVERYTHING reported in it is completely false. As I said in my previous post, the amount of over reporting may be a little or maybe a lot but what is certain is that it appears there has been some.... despite your ridiculous dismissal of the article.

The way experts count the actual toll of a pandemic is excess mortality.

Every verified data source puts it much higher than in previous years:

An additional 104,520 people have died since March 2020 across the UK. Since the onset of the pandemic there have been six deaths for every five people who would be expected to die in an average year.

Excess deaths are fatalities above the five-year average and are seen as the gold standard in interpreting how many people have died as a result of the pandemic.

UK's excess death toll since start of Covid pandemic passes 100,000

Comparing that to the recorded 96,000 COVID deaths in the UK to around that time and the figures are similar enough to match.

Wondering whether or not some (and it would be a very small percentage) of recorded Covid deaths in the UK were classified incorrectly does not invalidate the health response to the pandemic.

The UK records every death within 28 days of a positive COVID test as a COVID death, regardless of whether they died on a ventilator or under a train.


People die, it is the one undisputed fact of life. You can move statistics around, call it excess deaths or anything you like, but none of us are staying around forever, and I am not sure when we, as a society, became so arrogant that we felt natures laws no longer apply to us. The medical profession need to rebalance their view of risk, or hand control back to politicians, but either way people will still die every year.

I know someone who died in a Melbourne care home from COVID, so I dispute neither its existence or virulence; but the individual was late 80's, morbidly obese, with alzheimers and emphysemia. Was the cause of death COVID? or was COVID a contributory factor in the same way that pneumonia is classified?

There is now a Brazilian strain - this sh1t is going to roll on for years. Its time we learned to live with it before the cancelled surgeries, undiagnosed cancers and mental health issues eclipse a virus with a 1.9% mortality rate.

If the medical profession were secretly controlling politicians then we’d have bans on things like Tobacco, Alcohol advertising, Trans Fats, junior contact sports etc.

In reality we had a dangerous virus spread uncontrolled outside of Australia for a year before a vaccine was available. It is the vaccine that will ensure we can manage this risk to an acceptable level. That way the pandemic subsides and we manage it like a respiratory illness. Future variants are managed with different targeted seasonal vaccines, like influenza.

So yes this is how we are “learning to live with this”

Although the numbers sound high, in the pre-Christmas rush as a country I think COVID testing eclipsed 100K per day. The physical testing and vaccination process takes about the same amount of time.

Saw in the papers today McClown wants to keep the borders closed beyond COVID. He might win this election but the place will be decimated if he gets his way on this one