As a technical glitch is hiding the article

JUST CLICK http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20842&page=0 to read the article

Points 3 (on decisions by Australia's "states" and territories) and 10 (on central planning/messages) are very true.

Australia's 2 top layers of government system (of Federal Government vs States/Territories) presents an inbuilt weakness in handling an all-of-Australia crisis.

We need a vaccine against the Wuhan virus.

And we need vaccine against the myopic pursuits and plans of Australia's politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders whose actions over the past 30 years are the underlying causes of the predicament we now find ourselves in.

Sing it Mary http://youtu.be/y3KEhWTnWvE?t=44s

COVID Days my friend
I hope they sooner end
No song and dance
No stimulus this way
_______________________________________

To brighten up the day of OLO-pudlians reading this article, here's another poem I wrote:

With apologies to a pretty good band :) *

When we find ourselves in times of COVID
Months of hopefulness decree
There will be a vaccine
Let it be.

And in lonely hours of darkness typing
Listening to the crash of sea
Good Friday comes tomorrow
Let it be

Let it be, let it be.
Let it be, yeah let it be.
Whisper joys pre-COVID
Let it be

* Very much inspired by the Beatles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_the_Beatles – who perform it here http://youtu.be/7P6X3IWLECY

I know the author and while its a well clearly written piece, what he has done is simply log the actions undertaken by SCOM, Frydenberg and Dutton. So he should acknowledge this, rather than taking the credit forit. Whether your a Green meanie, Labourite , Liberal or independent they and we ciitizesn should thank the.

As for Plantagenet s comment on State and Federal government, mosts states did well, NSW fecked it up with Brad"hazard to shipping" Hazzard DR Kerry Chant and it would now seem The Ports Minister..I am sure more will be ducking for cover.

You exclude local government. I assume by omission, you think they did better! NO, please justify that angle mate!

Alison Jane,

Are you talking to yourself or us?

Dear plantagenet,

Not buying it on this occasion.

To me this really brought home the value of states. Only the most churlish would say the states weren't well ahead of the Federal government on this who often needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into action.

I think Daniel Andrews was one of the standouts as was McGowen in WA.

Scomo and Josh did finally catch up, in part because they were seen rightly by many to be well behind and that actions by the States were mimicking the actions taken by other countries more successful in keeping the virus under control.

There is little doubt that the Coalition was contemplating a UK, Netherlands, Sweden protocols of attempting herd immunity early in the piece. The utter disaster facing these countries means it is now clear what that would have meant for Australia. Ultimately the states have served to spur the Feds into actions that are now clearly saving lives and sparing us from the fate of some of them.

Hi Mr Opinion

An excellent doubt you raise.

Cheers

planta

"Are you talking to yourself or us?"
Just her normal senseless crap.

What are the lessons of the Wuhan CCP (Communist party of China) virus? Gee willackers, those are easy ones.

1. Totalitarian governments are not to be trusted and as their feudal leaders are only concerned with staying in power, so much that they will even threaten and persecute their own scientists who might make their leaders look bad by telling an inconvenient truth.

2. Those dreaming of a world government can take a good look at how the WHO, an intentional body largely funded by the western world who's only job was to prevent serious threats to world health, can be corrupted by totalitarians into doing the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do. WHO not only did nothing to prevent this epidemic, it actively promoted it's spread by being a mouthpiece and apologist for the CCP. It is no surprise that China, of all countries, is to be admitted as a member of the UN Human Rights organisation. What a laugh.

3. That instead of focussing on some fantasy of human induced global warming and spending squillions buying the votes of those people who like Chickenlittle think that the sky is falling, we should be funding our most intelligent and productive scientists in such magnificent organisations as the French Pastuer Institute and the USA's Centre for Disease Control, who can and will save millions of lives if we adequately fund them. These organisations have no equivalent in the totalitarian states that so many western pseudo intellectuals hanker for. This pandemic was foreseeable and predictable but all the media and the trendies could see was Greta.

4. That open borders are a really bad idea

Early lessons!? Really!? One has to be, the virus doesn't take a holiday! Another, it respects no border!

Heard that the Italian epidemic was started by a single Chinese visitor from Wuhan, who apparently had no obvious symptoms, yet from just that one individual, we got the Italian crisis and death toll? And in just a few short weeks!

Not suggesting any malicious intent, just another welcomed with open arms, cashed-up tourist?

Lesson? This thing needs to be taken far more seriously than self-evident in Italy! Imagine if all nations had closed their borders as soon as the epidemic in Wuhan became public?

Put all recent arrivals in offshore Isolation and shut the nation down at the shire border level?

We could almost return to normal now and get back into full productivity with only mandatory social distancing hand sanitising/washing still in play and likely to be the new normal until an effective and safe vaccine is rolled out across the nation!?

Take care and stay safe at home and remember, there's no vaccine for criminal profiteering/hoarding, wilful disobedience, rank stupidy or dummy spits by the privileged who suddenly discover, they're not anywhere near as important as they thought!

Never would occur to the latter, they could become the local equivalent of a single non-symptomatic Chinese tourist? Nor indeed any rat runner, cross border, drug distributor/smuggler/runner!

Except they KNOW, their wealth, power and privilege and a truckload of cash, protects them from everything and entitles them to first place in every queue? Or that the laws that apply to everyone else, just does not apply to them or theirs!

AND I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE! AND IF THE CAP FITS, H.B., !?
Alan B.

Unless the success rate of ventilators is high enough to warrant getting a whole lot more quickly if there aren't enough, like the banks the virus will extract the same pound of flesh, regardless of whether this is short and sharp or drawn out over months. It won't be eliminated by distancing, isolation and tracking, and a vaccine cannot be presumed, in any timeframe.

Science doesn't support the path we're on. The sooner herd immunity is reached the sooner the old and vulnerable can more safely come out of quarantine. Who are almost exclusively the dead now but these? It's a shared responsibility to protect them, but the longer we leave the window open the higher their morbidity stats.

Randomized testing should focus on determining how far down the path to herd immunity we are.

Luciferase, herd immunity will "ease" rates of infection down the line, but it isn't the answer.
Firstly scientists in Iceland found 40 mutations of the virus among their population alone. The UK and Italy have a more "potent" strain of the virus than other countries, so a vaccine or immunity will not have the effect it otherwise would have. Their data was passed on to the WHO but has not been widely reported for the same reasons we are kept in the dark about other things re this virus.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/iceland-scientists-found-40-mutations-of-the-coronavirus-report-says/

Secondly, south Korea reported on Thursday last week that 91 patients who had recovered from the virus and sent home in previous weeks/months have seen the virus "re-activate itself" in these individuals. Scientists are claiming that this is not re-infection from other people or sources, but they believe that once a patient recovers the virus lies dormant for a period and may infect that person again. So vaccines will have the same problem.

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-investigates-reports-recovered-coronavirus-patients-testing-positive-again-2020-4?r=AU&IR=T

While we among other countries are chasing a vaccine, the CSIRO is also leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world in sourcing an outright cure for this covid19. If successful, it would be a cure for all "SARS" based virus. That is our only hope of an end to this sh*thole virus.

Again, our government along with most other governments are keeping us in the dark about what is actually happening out there.

Some other lessons:
a) critical role of the ABC and broadcasting updates and reliable graphs;
b) Need for transparency from the word go (and not the lamentable delay in making the modelling data available as happened here);
c) base action on scientific advice and get roundtable of experts;
d) lamentable role of the Liberals in cutting funding to science and the ABC which has long term consequences, and its role in underfunding universities so that they built up reliance on international students.