Far be it for me to want to give any succour to right wing figures who are screaming "Think of the economy! We have over-reacted!", but I do get the feeling that it's not unreasonable to be starting to think that Australia might have caught COVID-19 in time. I've been looking at the Worldometer table, and note that:
a. as everyone knows, the South East Asian rich countries did exceptionally well;
b. you can ignore the poorer SE Asian countries which currently show tiny case numbers, but presumably they have tiny testing rates, and I think the WHO should rightly be warning everyone of terrible death tolls that may come from those places over the next 6 months;
c. but compared to other Western nations, including virtually all of Europe and the USA, Australian figures do seem remarkably good, especially on a per capita basis. We're still under "1" for deaths per million of population, and our "total cases per million" at 195 is close to that of South Korea, and a fraction of the figures for the likes of Germany, France (around 1/4), the USA (about 1/3) and the UK (about 1/2). In fact, looking at the UK, why is their death rate running at 35 per million, while ours is barely 1?
The trick, of course, is going to be how to judge an appropriate rate of "return to something like normalcy" without risking the numbers getting out of control.
But, the figures do seem to give some optimism that early action may have worked well, and the government should not be shy of saying that. I think that, for general economic confidence reasons, it would good for the government to also start talking about the criteria it will be using to look at when they will start to relax the present semi-lockdown. It's probably a pretty hard thing to communicate, as I expect the expert opinion on that will be divided.
Update: here's a report on the same topic in The Guardian today.
Update: I see from Bolt's blog (I can only see the header - no way I would part with a cent of money to a Murdoch publication) that he is saying something similar to what is in my last paragraph. (Except he puts it in his bombastic way, that the PM must tell us how the lockdown will end; it can't go on for 6 months, that would be a disaster, etc) The problem with Bolt's take on it all, though, is that he helping encourage the dangerous Right wing views that it was never a serious danger; it's enabled something like a Left wing dictatorship; and it's already low risk to go back to normal. Just have a look at the headings of his other posts.
5 comments:
Indeed if you do a Z test on say deaths when all nations had 1000 cases we are statistically significantly different to all other nations I know of.
It appears on current trends if you get the virus the worst that will happen is 14 days alone.
the ICU s will not be overrun.
I would like to keep it at that.
Bolt ,as usual, has no idea.
Take off too early and the virus comes back and people will not trust anybody and guess what occurs to consumer spending then!!
you have to beat the virus before the economy takes precedence.
Go and have a look at the Catallaxy response to the lock down measures. The conservatives in this country have become whinging malcontents who are obsessed with criticizing all and sundry. If Sky News and that blog are any guide there are so many experts on the conservative to tell us how to handle the crisis that it could all be fixed in a weekend.
"Our numbers do seem pretty good." Sure but winter is coming. And they cannot keep us locked down forever. When everyone can get hold of a new mask every day then they should let us out. They can even strong-arm unemployed people to always have a mask, since their pay goes up at the end of April. If rent rates are held down and the government puts pressure on landlords, they basically have enough money now, to get into an apartment without a bond, and build up the bond and rent in advance, slowly over the course of the crisis.
So while I didn't deserve that much of an unemployment increase, the fact is it was a good move on the governments part tactically. We needed maybe another $200 to deal with the disappearance of food specials. Or at least I did. I was basically eating meat, yoghurt and milk that was just about to drop out of their use by date. Most of these deep bargains aren't out there anymore. Paying full price would have gotten very difficult. But I get a $550 increase instead at the end of April. But its quite a good move because they can scoop everyone off the street and potentially have total enforcement of a mask policy.
But other than that they are being too generous in other areas. $1500 a fortnight is too much. Bailing out big business is not what we ought to be about. The government should let them crash, scoop up all their shares at bargain basement prices and let THAT extra cash be the bank bailout. Anyone who was thrown out of business could get a zero interest loan to get back in business again at any time of their choosing. Only its not okay to use the money to buy property. Except if they were forced to sell.
Virgin is owned 90% by foreigners. Scooping up all their shares at a 30% discount, breaking it up into small competitors. and only selling the shares back to AUSTRALIANS for fucksakes. We need to have purely Aussie owned firms. Because then if we have to launch a series of zero interest loans its not foreign aid. Like for example when we subsidise solar panel and it becomes foreign aid to the Chinese.
Thats not good enough for Australians any more.
So we must have the concept of the Australian company wherein only Australians ought to be the owners.
The reason I say this is if we want double digit small business and sole trader growth. We don't want to get this by continuing subsidising the banks. So we need to force the banks to get cash from the public. Cash. Not ponzi money. Term loan money not on-call money. Then lend it for term loans. They fucking must earn a living and not be subsidised.
So then if we want to avoid subsidising the banks and get that double digit growth we might want to extend zero interest loans to sole traders and strategic small companies only (100% Aussie owned). Skip the fucking bludging banks. What a bunch of pricks they are. The expansion of sole traders and strategic small business will get everyone back to work. Even the bankers that lose their jobs. And the public servants. There is a place for everyone and all these bigshots need to be put in their place.
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