We may be doing better than the US in our response, and to be honest, I haven't put my attention on the matter of the UK response in any detail, but I can't say that I am overly impressed with the Australian response. In particular:
a. a key feature of the response in the countries that are considered to have been successful in containment (Singapore, South Korea, and even China) seems to have been the widespread use of temperature testing. From what I can gather, the average person going about their day in Singapore would have been tested on entering buildings at least a couple of times a day. In Australia, lots of people are saying that airports, or at least Brisbane International, have not been testing anyone in any fashion. It's all down to an honour system.
What does Australia have against widespread temperature testing?
b. I have also had the impression that there are not really enough testing kits.
c. I don't really understand why at least high schools cannot close down, as students of that age should be able to stay at home safely and without supervision. Also, even if "live" classes are a challenge to organise, cannot teachers record video to email out (or make available on a school website) to guide students as to what they need to be studying in their absence?
d. The PM's "not so serious/it is serious" response has been a bit Trump-lite, but just slightly ahead of the Trump response.
e. The government response to panic buying has been poor. It might not be something the government can stop, I guess, but they aren't really trying hard to get the message across that if neighbours and relatives just help each other with trips to the shop for those facing isolation, there is no way urban residents are going to starve to death in their own homes.
2 comments:
I think the major criticism is the lack of a public information campaign. This has only just started.
You may be right about this. But there is also an argument that we have to save some juice for when the pandemic picks up to a massive extent. Which will hit us around May or June. Thats when peoples vitamin D levels will be tanking. Thats when we will have the temperatures that the virus really loves.
In the Northern hemisphere the virus should start losing ground in the places its now big with. And take off far further north. When you make these viruses to your specifications, since we are hardly godlike figures, its usually by way of breaking things. To make it more infectious you are usually going to be weakening it in some ways. And this lurgie isn't great in terms of the temperature and humidity ranges it can deal with. It turns out in February all the major infectious places were in the same temperature zone for that month. Which sort of makes it possible to keep the non-biowarfare model alive. Just.
How long can we live in this way just for the sake of our boomers? But in any case it has to be a kind of all hands on deck approach when we get to May or June. We don't want to burn out before that. We certainly don't want any more grocery shortages. They better be tapped out by then.
But yeah thats a good idea sure. To have all those extra features in place by May would be helpful. As explained before. If the prudential buying is happening now, that means it probably will be all over by the time we really need those shelves full. So it will have served a very important purpose.
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