Getting more dubious by the day

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy has joined Mr Morrison at the media conference and he has confirmed schools are staying open under these measures, for these reasons:

"I think it is really important to recognise that, as we've said before, we think the risk to children with this virus is very low. Only 2.4% of all the cases in China in Hubei Province were under 19, and there have been very, very few significant cases. Obviously we do have some concerns that children may have a role in transmission but most children who have seemed to have got the virus have got it from adults as you've seen in this case. We think keeping children at home when there is relatively no community spread is probably disproportionate given they probably won't stay at home anyway. They may be cared for by elderly parents. There may be circumstances where there are outbreaks in an area where we do need to close schools for a period of time. Our strategy for the next six months is to keep schools open and we think that risk is appropriate."

Sorry, but I am sceptical of this advice, given that:

a. other countries and states are obviously not closing their schools without having their own medical advice that it's a worthwhile thing to do;

b.  the advice from the same CMO  keeps getting tougher on the recommended social distancing, it seems a bit nonsensical to say that the age group most notorious for having little "personal space" are to stay in the place where they are going to rub up against maximum numbers of people;

c. "...they probably won't stay at home anyway..."  seems just a bit of guesswork, no?

d.  as I argued yesterday, why not differentiate between high schools and primary schools:  it doesn't have to be "all or nothing";

e.  this advice is being given on the same day a student caught Covid-19 from a teacher in Adelaide.   Are the State government immune from legal action by parents who kids catch it from teachers?   I have my doubts.   And, of course, transmission the other way is quite possible, too.

I don't know - I think the Teachers Unions might have to take this on....

What it's like travelling to Beijing at the moment

A European guy has explained on twitter what it was like travelling back to Beijing at the moment.  You can read the whole thing threaded together here. 

It's pretty interesting.   Gray Connolly would probably complain it's too sympathetic to the Chinese, who are our enemy after all and started this whole mess, etc, etc.   But it's hard to imagine America under Trump running posters like this:

The Trump equivalent would be:  

"Don't let the Chinese virus spread"

"President Trump is on top of this"

"Don't trust the fake news media - it will be over soon"

Some anti-vaping speculation

I see that the Washington Post is reporting:

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of U.S. cases from Feb. 12 to March 16 released Wednesday shows 38 percent of those sick enough to be hospitalized were younger than 55.

The report also notes that in parts of Europe, a lot of younger folk are requiring hospitalisation.

I wonder - will any researched in America be looking in future at a relationship between vaping and hospital admissions for Covid-19   I would not be surprised if vapers are over-represented in hospital admissions. 

So long, Tulsi

Vox has a good explanation of the controversial Presidential run of the rather strange Tulsi Gabbard.   Seems pretty fair to me in its criticisms.

The stupid conservativism of Gray Connolly

Jason Soon seems unduly enamoured of conservative Daily Telegraph columnist Gray Connolly, if the number of times he re-tweets him is any guide.

Being a conservative Catholic, Connolly has a soft spot for Donald Trump.   He is, for example, defending Trump's deliberate and childish continuation of calling Covid-19 the "Chinese virus".   Never mind that this virtually guarantees Trump wingnuts will continue abusing Asian Americans on the street for infecting their nation.

I was reminded on Twitter that George Bush after 9-11 went to a mosque within 6 days of the attack - but this was in the day when Republican presidents were not narcissistic emotional cripples whose appeal to the base was, from the very start, based in large part on drumming up fear of foreigners.

Basically, if you're a Catholic who isn't repulsed by this aspect of the Trump presidency, you're not following your Church's teaching and you are an embarrassment to your religion.

Next up:  Connolly doesn't like it that there are some doctors questioning the medical advice coming from the Australian government's CMO:

Being a conservative of military background (I think), he yearns for strong compliance with whatever the top says:

The problem is that, as I showed in yesterday's post about school closures, anyone can see (based on widely available credible material - not just what Twitter armchair "experts" are saying) that there is clear conflict between international experts on the details of a "best" policy response to this medical crisis.   And we also know that responses have consequences beyond the mere medical - obviously governments worry about the economic effects of (some) parents having to stay home to look after kids out of school.

Of course it is possible that the CMO could be giving questionable advice, and I think it is just a foolish version of conservatism to tell people that, in a field like this, there is only one expert who has to be given credence.   (And no - any smartarse reading this who thinks I should take the same line on climate change - there is no credible contrary opinion on the fact that it is real and requires urgent attention.   There is room for discussion as to the best policy response, though.)

Third of this tour of Stupid Takes of Connolly:   he tweeted this -

Again, any conservative who thinks they are smart yet cannot see the danger in the way Trump deals with all media criticism is just foolish and an embarrassment to what used to be intelligent conservatism.

A President who operates by teaching his base to disbelieve any and all news outlets that are critical of him because to do so is ipso facto proof that they are corrupt and out to get him - that is a "danger to the republic" - assuming, of course, that you want the republic to be one that is based on a democracy that has a concept of objective truth that is not dependent on what the Dear Leader tells them to believe (as endorsed by his de facto State media known as Fox News.)

For a conservative with a military background, Connolly seemingly has no interest whatsoever in the propaganda techniques and habits of authoritarian regimes.

That's all for now.

Oh look - another article on Singaporean Covid-19 success

At New Daily, they talk about the widespread body temperature scanning used in Singapore:

In the Asian city-state, anyone entering a public building, including offices or shopping centres, must first have their temperatures scanned at the doors.

Melbourne lawyer Henry Carlson, who is living in Singapore, said the devices looked like a remote control.

“They point it at your forehead, like a laser, then they click it and it shows your temperature,” Mr Carlson told The New Daily. 

If a person’s temperature is normal, they are given a sticker to wear that indicates they are healthy, he said.

If not, they must sit on an ‘isolation chair’ while they cool down.

If they fail again, they are refused entry and must go home.

And it’s not just happening in public buildings – waiters have been spotted with scan guns, too.

“I went for a burger and beers on Friday with some mates when one of the waiters came around with a temperature scanner,” Mr Carlson said.

“They scanned my forehead just as I was about to order.”

Gosh.   Can you imagine some Australia hot heads (a pun) accepting a waiter telling them they need to leave because their temperature is too high?  

And if people are isolated at home in Singapore, how do they check up on them?:

Smart technology is also being used to monitor people who have been ordered to stay home in self-isolation for 14 days.

At-risk or infected people who are meant to be staying at home receive a text message or phone call at various times during the day asking for a photo or GPS update of their location.

Fantastic.   I wonder if Singapore has legislative cover for this, or do they just assume cultural compliance?   (I suspect the former.)  

And how much are these infra red body thermometers, which I think teachers here should be using on their kids?   It appears you can get a good one for about $100 (although ebay has some at the suss price of under $10!).

The political lesson of Singapore would seem to be this - you can have a safe, functioning society that deals quickly and efficiency with novel viral threats, but not if you're in one which puts libertarian principles on a pedestal above safety.   

Libertarians are a menace to society.

A (former?) Republican regrets...

This guy, apparently a Republican Party insider, has a book coming out which is a mea culpa for the  state of the party.  From a Washington Post column:

Long before Trump, the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad. We worked overtime to squeeze it and shrink it, to drown it in the bathtub, as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist liked to say. But somewhere along the way, it became, “all government is bad.” Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention. That’s awkward.

Next, somehow, the party of idealistic Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic Bob Dole and heroic John McCain became anti-intellectual, by which I mean, almost reflexively opposed to knowledge and expertise. We began to distrust the experts and put faith in, well, quackery. It was 2013 when former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said the Republican Party “must stop being the stupid party.” By 2016, the party had embraced as its nominee a reality-TV host who later suggested that perhaps the noise from windmills causes cancer.

The Republican Party has gone from admiring William F. Buckley Jr., an Ivy League intellectual, to viewing higher education as a left-wing conspiracy to indoctrinate the young. In retribution, we started defunding education. Never mind that Republican leaders are among the most highly educated on the planet; it’s just that they now feel compelled to embrace ignorance as a cost of doing business. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, as an example, denounces “coastal elites” while holding degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and having served as a Supreme Court clerk.

The GOP’s relationship with science has resembled some kind of Frankenstein experiment: Let’s see what happens when we play with the chemistry set! Conservatives have spent years trying to cut funds for basic science and research, lamenting government seed money for nearly every budding technology and then hoping for the best. In the weeks ahead, it’s not some fiery, anti-Washington populist with an XM radio gig who is going to save folks’ lives; it is more likely to be someone who has been studying this stuff for decades, almost certainly at some point with federal help or outright patronage.

Finally, there is the populist GOP distrust and dislike of the other, the foreign. Yes, it is annoying that the Chinese didn’t come clean and explain everything to us from the start. But it appears that a Swiss company is helping to jump-start us in testing; and it is a German company that American officials reportedly tried to lure to the United States recently to help develop a vaccine for the virus. We talk about how we need to be independent even as we do all kinds of things that prove we aren’t.

This needs to be posted at Catallaxy

I just want to see the frenzy of spittle spraying outrage this would cause there (although it's not as if they need any provocation, really, the dimwits):

Accurate analysis

Let me be the expert

Clearly, there is conflict over whether school closures to slow down an epidemic are worth it.   At least one expert has said he strongly disagrees with our Chief Medical Officer Brendon Murphy's decision that it is too early to close them.

Apparently, the American CDC (which has dubious credibility under Trump) argues that it could be more dangerous to close schools than keep them open, because the rampaging students on the streets could help spread it throughout society.  This concern indicates a lack of knowledge of the behaviour of modern children.  As explained on Twitter:

Now, I have to admit, if you are talking young primary school children, and there is no way you can get a healthy, younger adult to babysit them, there would be a risk of the foolhardy grandparents who offer to do the job catching it from the (quite possibly) asymptomatic grandkids.   But, as I was saying to someone trying to work yesterday, when I were a lad, being left home alone for a few hours was not a very controversial thing once you were aged about 7 or 8.   In Western countries (not so much in Asia, where they positively like sending kids out on the street from an early age to teach them independence and common sense) we have become too scared of leaving them alone anywhere.    So a lot of primary school kids should be able to be left home alone.

But back to the evidence  - this interview in Science about how and when to close schools is really good, and makes a strong case for pre-emptive closures to slow it all down:

Q: How about proactive school closures, before there are any infections associated with a school? Are they helpful?

A: Proactive school closures—closing schools before there’s a case there—have been shown to be one of the most powerful nonpharmaceutical interventions that we can deploy. Proactive school closures work like reactive school closures not just because they get the children, the little vectors, removed from circulation. It’s not just about keeping the kids safe. It’s keeping the whole community safe. When you close the schools, you reduce the mixing of the adults—parents dropping off at the school, the teachers being present. When you close the schools, you effectively require the parents to stay home.

There was a wonderful paper published that analyzed data regarding the Spanish flu in 1918, examining proactive versus reactive school closures. When did [regional] authorities close the schools relative to when the epidemic was spiking? What they found was that proactive school closing saved substantial numbers of lives. St. Louis closed the schools about a day in advance of the epidemic spiking, for 143 days. Pittsburgh closed 7 days after the peak and only for 53 days. And the death rate for the epidemic in St. Louis was roughly one-third as high as in Pittsburgh. These things work.

The simple suggestion as to when to close?:

Q: How should jurisdictions decide when to pursue a proactive closing?

A: How many cases are there in the region? And what is the epidemiologically relevant region? If you’re in a mid-sized town you might say, as soon as there’s a community-acquired case in my town, whether it’s in my school or not, I’m closing my school.

 There is also this good point:

Q: Are there social distancing efforts short of closing schools, especially if there are no cases associated with a particular school? For example, canceling big events that bring together lots of families?

A: Yes, I’m so glad you mentioned that. We don’t have to have an all-or-nothing policy. We can have intermediate steps. For example, why not allow families who want to keep their kids home keep them home? Why not cancel all activities, like sporting events and musical performances that have large groups present?

So, my "how hard it is to be an expert? I've studied this for the last hour" approach is to recommend intermediate steps, as I already proposed a day or two ago, as follows:

a.   Close down the secondary schools in nearly all of Australia now.   No one going to a secondary school has to be babysat at home, so it won't stop any whose parents are nurses or health care workers from doing their job.    Those parents who can work from home should, and supervise that their teenage kids are actually doing something about being glued to their phone in their room all day.  

b.   For now, leave primary schools open, but institute mandatory temperature taking, amending legislation to do so if  necessary.  (I was told by a primary school teacher that they are not allowed to take a child's temperature!)     This is how Singapore kept their schools open.   And it is why it is a bit
spurious of any expert to be using Singapore as an example of a successful virus containment country which did not close all schools if we cannot do the same things in the school here.   Kids with a temperature are sent home to be kept there in quarantine.   Employers will have to cope with the reduction in employees who have no choice but to stay at home with their under 8 year olds.

See, I've got it all worked out.

Update:  from someone else at Twitter:

The appalling shamelessness of Fox News

Their role:  defend Trump, on whatever his take is on the day, with no regard for consistency with what he said the day before.   Exactly the same as what State media must do in authoritarian regimes, but Trump gets the treatment for free.  Thanks, Rupert. 

Things people panic buy

As many people have said, from last weekend, the panic buying expanded from mere toilet paper, pasta, pasta sauce, rice and disinfectants into meat and produce.   Hence, my local Coles is (as of today) still short of most meats and sold out of all chicken (and eggs).   (As others have said, surely fridge and freezer capacity is at its limits now?  People can't keep buying meat to last a month, can they?)

But I was curious as to the things that were still in plentiful supply:  dairy products being a key one.  It seems nothing will persuade people to buy much more yoghurt, butter and cheese, and the range of ready made dips were in plentiful supply too.  These are high calorie, filling foods, mostly with a good "shelf" life in the fridge too - but people don't seem to want to buy it. 

The vegan section still has quite a lot - no one is touching the fake chicken and Quorn is still available. 

The fruit and vegies got re-supplied overnight, although there was not much broccoli - it's probably gone.  

In other oddities - bleach sold out early in this panic period.  What are people doing with it? 

And now for a joke:

An explanation of sorts

I watched about half an hour of the ABC documentary Revelation, about priests convicted of paedophile offences, but didn't really feel like persisting in hearing the sordid stories.

But it was at least interesting for the (obviously controversial) explanation given by self confessed sex abuser of (from memory) 30 odd boys of age range 7 to 17?, Vincent Ryan,  as to why he did it:

“As far as I was concerned, I was in a relationship. I was getting the love and the human touch and belonging.”

To his credit, Ryan fully admits that this is something appalling for him to have believed at the time, and he understands people getting upset at hearing it.   (I don't think there is much risk that it works as a mitigating factor as far as the courts are concerned - he did serve 14 years in prison.)   But I don't see why we should disbelieve him - it is consistent with what I am sure some researchers of clerical child abuse have said about the inherent loneliness of the enforced celibate life being a recurring factor.  

It supports the view, which I think just has a lot of common sense about it, that relaxing celibacy rules for the priesthood would be a healthy thing to do for their emotional lives, and as a consequence, is likely to reduce inappropriate (and, obviously, in some cases, outright criminal) breaches of the rules which many of them cannot live up to.

Update:  here we go, a researcher into the Irish clerical abuse situation gave some evidence to the Royal Commission supports which what I said - 

To be sure, the men knew they could call children at will from classrooms or other venues and that the child would have no option but to come. However, at the level of the sexual and the emotional, their narratives paradoxically indicate that they saw children and young people as potential “friends” and “equals.” In a manner that might be difficult for many adults to comprehend, the clerical perpetrators did not countenance adequately the power imbalances that were involved in their “relationships” and “friendships” with children and young people. Their principal preoccupation was one of personal and individualised inner conflict and distress, mainly related to celibacy, sexuality and inner emotional turmoil and frustration. Many of the men did not feel powerful, despite the power positions they occupied in the communities in which they worked and in the minds of the Irish laity.

It does not appear to be the case that the abuse perpetrated by these men was about gaining power over the victims in order to feel powerful. Rather, their abusive behaviour was more likely to have its genesis in other factors: their interpretation of “friendship”; their blindness to their power position in Irish society, especially in the sexual, emotional and moral sphere; their preoccupation with Church rules and regulations; their fear of Church leaders and those in authority; their lack of empathy to childhood sexual vulnerability; and their own sexual and emotional immaturity and loneliness.  

A little bit about personal cleanliness in history

This short interview of an author of a book on personal hygiene tells us some stuff we have heard before:

The book is a history of personal hygiene in the West from the 17th century to the recent past. It’s about how people have thought about their bodies and treated their bodies. 

In the 17th century, people didn’t have baths regularly. They thought that to be clean, it was enough to change their underwear and wash their underwear frequently. 

The first person I mention in the book is Louis XIV of France, who had two baths in his adult lifetime. They were both for medicinal reasons. He had headaches and his doctors recommended baths. It didn’t work to cure the headaches, so he lived another half century and never bathed again.

but this little detail about the underwear issue was new to me:

That takes the argument back to the 17th century: People appeared to be clean by wearing clean underwear that showed over their outer clothes through collars and cuffs. If you look at Dutch art, one of those marvelous Franz Hals portraits or really any other Dutch artist in the 17th century, you’ll see these people who are very somberly dressed. But they all have something white coming out over the tops of their outer garments: a collar, a cuff. There are often slashes in the outer garments that reveal white clothes next to the skin. 

What these people were doing were displaying their cleanliness. They were differentiating themselves from the poor, who in some cases didn’t wear a second layer of clothing and in other cases couldn’t afford to wash their underclothes. It was a social statement of a different time, one of social differentiation rather than social inclusion. But right now, we clean ourselves to make a statement of social inclusion. We’re making ourselves agreeable to each other.

For those feeling corona-ed out...

...here's a photo from yesterday of our doggo:

Still clueless

I find it hard to believe, but Catallaxy is still running posts from Currency Lad relaying American conservative scepticism that Covid-19 is a really serious issue. 

Ironically, CL, who likes to remind us that he is a smoker (it was a thing 1950's men did, so of course he does), is by virtue of that a person more likely to be at risk of serious consequences if he catches it.

Clearly, until they know a few prominent Right wing figures who get really ill from it, they just won't believe it's a problem.   Italy doesn't convince them.   Of course, other Europeans shutting down to slow its spread just makes them think it's another European socialist plot.

They are - it is impossible to repeat this often enough to match the reality - really stupid.

Update:   This is what the Right is really getting hyped about - that Covid-19 means the West is suddenly going to say "hey, we're going to pull out of getting stuff made in China, because - Communists did this".   Again, the dumb arse of CL:

Australia is a country with fresh air to spare and if we want ourselves and future generations to go on breathing it, we have to learn from this crisis. We have to stop wasting billions on the ‘climate change’ hoax and comparably idiotic extravagances of the phony moral kind and man up. By which I mean, tool up. China has been indulged as a clumsy but incrementally improving boofhead for too long. It is, in fact, a state founded on communist terrorism, built on mass murder and dedicated to global chaos. We have re-build industries and economies that quarantine us from the party (not the people). Not absolutely. Autarky works for a ‘flu-stricken person in self-isolation but not for a country. But we have to do better than this. If we’re on a war footing, let’s fight to win.

Yet, the Communists seem to have shut down their viral problem pretty effectively.  It's the Freedom loving Trumpkins who had trouble coming to grips with it.

Australia's Covid-19 response isn't impressing me all that much...

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.  

Donald Trump is the counter-example

An article at the BBC:  Why we get nicer as we get older.

(Actually, that's the link heading at the BBC News website, but the article itself is headed "How your personality changes as you age".)

Remember this woman?

Remember my post last week about this complete and utter Trump flunky outraged at "the left" saying that Trump needed to stop holding rallies because of coronavirus?   Here she is, less than a week later:

Well, that's weird...

....an article at The Conversation in which a group of Western academics defend the Chinese practice of snake farming (for food.)

No.  I reckon the one thing they don't factor in is this:  we should want Chinese and Asian people to stop believing that specific animals have specific beneficial medical effects if eaten.   Encouraging eating snakes (which are considered one of the traditional medicine animals) only encourages them to yearn to eat other animals which are endangered or, for disease vector reasons, best left alone.