JK wrote:Spangas wrote:whufc wrote:What are peoples thoughts about Sco Mo's claims 'Lockdown' isnt the answer and doesnt work.
Every medical expert seems to be advocating a mass lockdown whilst we have seen alot of other countries go down that path.
ScoMo is getting advice from medical experts. He doesn't make these decisions on his own.
Better to play it safe now, than pay for it dearly later. People just need to be conscious of their personal hygiene and not lose their minds (whoops...too late.)
Don’t disagree. I think the lack of trust in politicians (especially this one) doesn’t help. The government has to weigh up the significance of a wounded but not dead economy with harm minimization. They might be working to a different mortality rate to others though.
I’ve still got the kids out of school, aided by having the luxury of both the missus and I working from home. Tough decision now whether to back our thoughts in against those of our Pollies, coupled with a concern of the kids falling behind their peers.
I don’t think I’ve ever flip-flopped on such a range of thoughts, in such a short space of time, as I have in the past 5 days.
There are studies that suggest flattening the curve will see the mortality rate drop from 3% to 2.5%.
Assuming 60% of people catch it, that change from 3 to 2.5% will "save" in the order of 75,000 Australians. A substantial amount by anyone's count.
On the flip side, there are other studies that show unemployment increases the death rate by as much as 20%.
If you completely crash the economy and unemployment jumps 5%, out of a labour force of 15m, that's 750,000 extra unemployed, if 20% of them die as a result, that's 150,000.
I'm not sure you can say with certainty either set of numbers is correct. We've never seen CoronaVirus so can't say how beneficial flattening the curve will be, if 60% of people will catch it, etc. Similarly, the numbers around the increased risk of death from being unemployed, over what period, etc.
Therefore, you have to take the two 'results' with a grain of salt, but the takeaway should be you can't focus on one and completely ignore the other.
Flattening the curve is important, as is ensuring we don't send 100s of thousands of people into unemployment.