This article is at least honest, in that it unashamedly presents the neo-liberal argument, that the elderly and the vulnerable are expendable, and the rest of us are not.
So, let's make a choice. Die now, if you're old or vulnerable, so that the rest of us can get on with our everyday lives.
Sort of like 'taking one for the team'.
They say Bergamo in Italy has lost most of its older generation in the last two months. That is not a solution I am prepared to live with.

On the one hand they they moan about the cost of old people, on the other they spend billions on keeping us alive. The China virus, like the flu followed by pneumonia, are ideal for culling these nuisances. I'm in my 77th year. I ache all over 24/7. I'm grumpy. Apart from a little bit of gardening, reading and doing crosswords,and watching Netflix, I have little interest in life. I don't necessarily want to catch the virus, but I know that I'm going to pop my clogs from something sooner rather than later. And I don't expect young people with decades ahead of them to be out of work, losing their homes and so on because of something I am much more likely to get than they are.

assbucko: Well said, Sir!

Albeit a few folks who wouldn't look too out of place in jackboots/brown shirts would quite likely agree with Graham or Donald Trump and just let er rip and that's ok, given the victims will be old/useless, etc.

Young survivors will tell you the symptoms, even if "mild", are #@&* horrible, may take months before your compromised lungs are back to 80%? By which time the virus may have mutated to a more virulent/deadly strain? And reinfect again?

While we may be able to restart many enterprises, they will be manufacturing where the entire staff work inside a covid free bubble!

Pubs will need to be able to trade as drive-through bottle shops. Other retailers will need to up their home delivery services, retain social distancing inside their premises! Until we have an effective and safe vaccine!. And 80% vaccinated. We may need annual
shots for some years, until the virus is eliminated?

Church services/entertainment can pivot to drive-ins? Many jobs will be created achieving that!

Sporting comps will also need to be played inside covid free bubbles. Which could be seen as buses/caravans in convoy to provide quarantined covid free transport/accommodation, for the duration?

Cricket comps will be easier, given that game can be played contact-free/at a reasonable social distance?

I don't see clubs opening any time soon given the crowds that jam in.

Trains/trams will be able to provide a low passenger capacity service given just how much work can be conducted from home by traditional service industries?

Essential in a service-based economy, which will be more negatively impacted by a global downturn of a magnitude not experienced since the great depression?

Means we need to become a self-reliant independent economy that makes stuff again and exports to niche markets around the world! And that recovery an outcome will need to be based on cooperative capitalism!

And resisted to the last man by hard-right ideologues and their robber baron masters/operators?

Take care and stay safe.
Alan B.

Fascinating the references here to blackshirts and jackboots! The fact is this whole sorry nonsense is just about that. The government people see a chance to be the Kapo in the camp bossing the rest of us around, oh and giving themselves much better pay and conditions too.
This fiasco was never needed, if people worry let them do something for themselves as we do not need ABC idiots setting any sort of course for our country.
Economy wrecked and mass unemployment, Trump has halted immigration what will our government do?
I say this as a migrant in his seventy third year.

There're apparently already 31 strains of covid-19, 19 of which are new mutations? The strain affecting Europe is far more virulent than the one infecting the USA?

All too easy for some folks to believe they are safe, only the old/useless are on this virus's shopping list?

The 19 new mutations may have a younger stronger shopping list? Means, we need to keep our borders closed, all new carriers, human/animal need to go through compulsory quarantine for up to a month, to ensure none of these new mutations get a foothold here!

Moreover, those deciding how we react, need to be guided by the medical experts rather than (sorry Graham) calloused, indifferent, political enthusiasts.

Who would be better served, using their prodigious skills/knowhow, to get us back to self-reliant independence as a nuclear-powered, manufacturing-based, self-reliant, independent economy where everything that leaves these shores, leaves, as value-added exports!

We could start vehicle manufacture as ocally owned, employee co-ops, and designing/building a small range of all-electric, right-hand drive vehicles for niche markets, export/domestic.

Marketed direct, to eliminate the profit demanding, paper shuffling middleman! Service contracts awarded after a thorough, competitive tendering process here!

All manufacture to be completed on a single site, by a single company to eliminate all the cascading tax imposts that made our vehicles as uncompetitive as they were!

And compounded toward the end, by (greed is good) energy prices higher than the wages bill that killed it more than lack of subsidies/withdrawn tariffs!

Employee co-ops, all their product line manufactured by a single entity, from a single site, marketed via an NBN supported, direct marketing strategy. And powered by unconventional, thorium/nuclear waste burning SMR MSR"s With it the cheapest powered and hugely automated economy in the world! Given ALL the above, able to take on/beat any emerging economy!

In so doing, create a carbon-free, economic template, the rest of the world has to follow, if only to survive economically!

Take care and stay safe.
Alan B.

I believe immigration has stopped.

I have to say I'm sick of hearing about the bloody Chinese virus. Most of the nightly news is made up of breathless reports of new cases, no new cases, as many 'alternative' views as can be dug up from ratbags looking for five minutes of fame. There's a feeling of depression and hopelessness, right down from the prime minister to the weather girl. Are they doctoring us up for a permanent change to our political system and economy, or are they just miserable bastards who have had the old Australian spirit driven out of them by multiculturalism, mass immigration and globalism.