"But are we facing a possible pandemic?"

It's been rather obvious now for at least a fortnight that there will be no "possible" about. So now it is already a pandemic. Anyone who believes that it isn't and that it can still be contained is kidding themselves. Check out- http://wuflu.live

This web site is a running count of current infections/deaths/recoveries. It shows that every single country in Western Europe and all other first world countries now have cases. But what is scarier is that hardly any countries in Africa and South America are listed as having it. So what does that mean?
Well it means that since every country with advanced health care and proper reporting has it then it is basically 100% certain that Africa and South America have it also but for these continents it is in the main unreported and thus unmanaged and thus out-of-control.

In general, at this stage we can conclude with very high confidence that any country with substantial unrestricted international travel that is listed with 0 cases means that it only 0 since it is not being reported properly. Thus it is actually present there and out-of-control.

This conclusion is particularly worrisome for us because Indonesian is listed as having 0 cases.

"As well, cases continue to appear at an alarming rate in China."

One report says that the deaths in China have peaked at 75,000. Who do we believe? Nobody until the scaremongering media finds something else to obsess about. Oh and we can't believe reports from China, just those from our own mischief-makers and 'experts' who have already panicked the bogans into cleaning out supermarket shelves.

Take reasonable precautions, get on with life, and most certainly do not rely on the government to do anything.

This is a pandemic going somewhere to happen and the death toll 20 times higher than the flu. Getting your flu shots a waste of time given you'd still get the flu if the shot doesn't match the mutation! And this is an entirely unrelated virus strain!

Our government is reactive to frozen ( bunny in headlights) when it needs to be proactive given the likely death toll among the elderly and those with compromised immune systems like all those fighting against death sentence cancer!

What can we do? Well, we could ensure our hospitals and pharmacies lay on extra stocks of antivirals, like those currently used to treat HIV/aids.

Well, a virus is a virus and an antiviral is an antiviral and these are stronger and more efficacious than Tamiflu etc?

Isolation ought to be in hyperbaric chambers flushed with inflowing pure oxygen, as oxygen is by all accounts, a natural killer of viruses/infections? Thereby assist the treating carers from contamination or cross-contamination in overcrowded wards etc.

Could even be placed as plastic portables in the patient's home and they be asked to use it for fourteen nights as they improve? And sprayed out with liquid nitrogen between users!

Other than that, we could do worse than spray used wards etc with liquid nitrogen. sure to kill any remaining pathogen stone dead and totally ineffective!

Plus instruct all carers in old-fashioned postal drainage and proper phlegm shifting, slap, slap massage techniques for pneumonia! Just above the kidney region. It's like Goldilocks stuff not too hard, not too soft!

What prevents our government's timely reaction? It's called the Sargent Shultz syndrome and already in plague proportions in all political ranks! And these folk are supposed to approve best practise!? God help my poor bugger country!
Alan B.

Given the highly infectious nature of Covid-19 it will be extremely difficult to contain indefinitely. The only viable strategy is to delay the spread as much as possible, hopefully until a vaccine can be developed.

The government can only do so much! Does not have unlimited funds and having attached the economy to services, education and tourism plus a few holes in the ground, is now shackled by those decisions and the exodus of our manufacturing sector and corporate Australia offshore!

And as a direct consequence of privatisation/corporatisation of the power generation/grid, making energy more costly than the stalling wages bill.

And shock horror, folk are choosing to stay at home as much as they dare to thus drawing done the piddling discretionary spend already decimated by mortgage repayments /rent and utilities/energy bill demands!

None of which was assisted by those apocalyptic bush fires or hard on its heels, the Conara virus.

Well, does the economy need assistance or not? Particularly if we are to survive this pandemic in the making as a first-world
economy?

In a word yes, if we just lift a few energy prohibitins and allow the nationwide rollout of Chinese built MSR, SMR's connected to microgrids.

There's over a trillion dollars of lazy money in the global economy looking for a home and Australia would not be hurt by a huge infrastructure spend and modernisation that this would bring, followed hard on its heels by all manner of high tech, energy dependant manufacture/recycling. And I know you know where this is going and what I'm referring to!?

Recycling hamstrung in this country also by our current cost of energy and the government's prohibition of vastly cheaper forms of already available technologies!

Time this insanity was ended! And the blinkers/blindfolds taken off, the earplugs pulled out! Get real!
Alan B.

I doubt the average person realises how much of our lifestyle depends on imports from China, especially regards pharmaceuticals. Smart people will stock up on their prescription meds and common viral supports like paracetamol and nurofen.
We have no way of avoiding the infection becoming widespread in this country, given the ease of travel these days. When you consider that in 1919 the Spanish flue epidemic reached even the remote areas of the Kimberley then nowhere here is safe.
All we can do is try and keep the elderly and babies from becoming infected as they are the most at risk group..

It would have been rather easier for Australia to remain free from this disaster. We are an island and a wealthy first world country which makes border control pretty easy. So all it had to do is:
1) close the borders to all new short term entries. Such as short term tourists and short term business visa (business people just have to use internet solutions in place of physical presence)
2) All people with current non-working short term visas (such as tourists) who are already in the country can stay longer as long as they don't use any government services outside of those allowed by their current visa (eg: short term tourists can contine to say here as long as they pay for themselves)
3) Those on working visas already here can stay longer extending/renewing the existing conditions of their visa (eg: backpackers on working hoilday visas can stay another year provided they do another 3 months of rural work)
4) any people coming long term or permanently as a professional, business person, a family immigrant, tourist, refugee, etc... have to complete an appropriate mandatory quarantine which they pay for
5) likewise any citizens/permanent residents returning home have to be quarantined but the government pays for it.
6) Any imported goods are quarantined/treated appropriately.

Of course arguments against such measures would have been raised. The main one being that the cost is too great- particularly the impact on the tourism industry. But is protection of the tourism industry in Australia really worth the lives of 1%-2% of the population?

As of today it might still be possible to contain and then eradicate the virus here by way of large a effort to locate and deal with any current potential cases already here. And also by implementing an immigration policy like that above.

Tragically it certainly will be too late within just mere days/week-or-two.

Will the Government protect us?

The dead need not worry themselves over this question.

Dan

Stop travelling & tell your friends to do the same & don't whinge when the Govt puts on travel bans !

And says ttbn.

*...Take reasonable precautions, get on with life, and most certainly do not rely on the government to do anything...*

Well they have up here in NSW la la land. The Government has chosen this moment in time, to close the district hospitals emergency ward.

Very happy decision among the locals...not.

Dan

Coronavirus and Flu Likely April/May Melbourne

Our flu season is badly timed with coronavirus' likely spread.

Melbourne may have the "right" conditions for people on a large scale to start catching coronavirus and flu simultaneously. Timing likely April/May onwards.

"right" conditions include:

- onset of cool weather "good" for viruses
- crowded city (on streets, transport and in flats)
- many from overseas, and
- international airports

"If we face a new pandemic will our government protect us?" That should've been the question when decisions were being made to trash our self sufficiency for globalism.

"Because the data so far released by China cannot be trusted" True but have to say it's kind of amusing when our government and media say it.

Our governments and agencies will try to protect themselves. Trust in that.

"If we face a new pandemic will our government protect us?"

No, they're already hanging the people out to dry.
They gave their medical stockpile of masks up for the bushfires;
Now they're telling people NOT to get facemasks because medical professions might go without.
They're actually willfully putting you at risk for their incompetence.
And they're so petrified of the economy tanking that they won't stop trade or foreigners coming here, which might've prevented infections.

This is the price of not keeping some money in the bank for emergencies
This is the price of governments living week to week and not saving for a rainy day.
This is the price of globalism and becoming too interconnected.
This is the price of government and citizen complacency.

Did the government protect the people from the bushfires?
No. The government was so hamstrung by political bs it created the bushfires though it's own incompetence and complacency.
- Likewise it has allowed this contagion onto our shores from the very same incompetence and complacency.

The answer is no.
People are going to have to protect themselves.

Let those who travel excessively & unnecessarily fork out extra. That'd slow down the spread !