There are only two circumstances in which we should be releasing restrictions and starting to mingle in open groups:

1. There is a readily available vaccine to prevent us from catching the Wuhan virus, or

2. There are no reported infections in the community over a period of at least 8 weeks.

I'll be staying inside my bubble but I have no objections about sending out guinea pigs to test the waters just as long as I'm not among them.

Speaking to an paramedic friend of mine he says his workload has dropped right away. Attempted suicides way down, car accidents way down, sporting injuries and deaths way down, assaults way down.

I have a sneaking suspicion we will experience lower suicide rates for 2020 than for the year before.

I have spoken to many people who are now working from home. They are enjoying it, expecially the increased contact with family.

Wartime suicide rates paradoxically decrease. The best thing our leaders could be doing is promoting the message that we are all in this together and everyone's efforts are have made a real difference.

I know to this author that effort as a collective is an anathema but if his thinking was prevelent then we may well see rates increasing. Thankfully he does not have a wide platform to dispense his message.

The male suicide rate has nearly doubled since the family violence amendments to the family law Act
In 2010: Male 10.5/100,000
Female 5.3/100,000

In 2018: Male 18.7/100,000
Female 5.8/100,000

What is not available in the Australian statistics is the number of divorced male suicides.

Dr. Kposowa 2003 showed that divorced men were nine times more likely to die by suicide. This 9-to-1 ratio dwarves the 3.5-to-1 male "advantage" we typically see in suicide deaths.

Dr. Kposowa suggested that society has undervalued the strength of paternal-child bonds, and thus underestimated the traumatic effect of severing those bonds through typical custody arrangements.

“The sharp increase in male suicide is largely custody-related… while social, psychological, and even personal problems facing women are readily denounced, societal institutions tend to ignore or minimise male problems as evident in suicide statistics.

Men are far more likely to be subjected to DVO abuse , pauperised, criminalized, incarcerated with the consequence that they are banned from the professions & government, denied employment, and subjected to lawfare & reduced to child support servitude which all contribute to hopelessness and despair. False allegations are made without consequence or evidence

“to deposit someone within the family court system is tantamount to a slow motion assassination or torture chamber, wherein that targeted individual is slowly, methodically, and painfully destroyed over many years, sometimes decades, subjected over and over to repeated fear, bankruptcy, incarceration or detention, for crimes/transgressions that did not even exist before the family court even got involved.”

This is the result of the prevailing ideological (Duluth) model of family violence, which is based on the false, unscientific, unjust, and blatantly offensive premise that men are innately violent and abusive toward women, making all women victims of men.

The Duluth model is compete bunkum, a scam on the order of Bernie Madoff, to take the money and power of the government and place it firmly in the hands of feminists. This is our family law system.

Gillard's family violence amendments - "the Hate Men" laws - need to be repealed and replaced by a presumption of equal shared care

Thanks for the article. It's a thought I had once I saw the nature of the lockdown, industry and employment losses, especially coming off the backs of extreme drought and bushfire conditions. Rural Health data has routinely found the suicides in middle aged farmers is associated with a poor social network and financial stress. Suicides rise during drought as many farmers become stranded in inactivity, powerlessness, stock, productivity losses and the threat of loosing the farm, and social isolation. A lot of suicides are preventable however the prevention strategies lie in social empowerment strategies and these don't exist within the mental health framework. Nor should they. They would exist more properly in a community development framework and would require devoted long term budgets at local government levels.
Community development strategy is linked to democracy development strategy. Health of all kinds are primarily a function of our community network (and that is considering community in all its forms). The more powerful the community network in supporting the participation and well-being of its members, directly or indirectly, the more healthy a person will be. Powerful community networks are a function of leadership. Networks don't exist magically. The best geographical social networks have purposeful community leaders. Examples are the CWA, Service Clubs, Sport Clubs, Churches. However due to the nature of these networks, there are people (mainly men) who fall outside the social network. Male farmers are particularly susceptible to being without a social network even as they work with other farmers and the industry in the growing and marketing of their produce.
It may well be that the enhancement of purposeful social connectivity during the COVID-19 pandemic, may, as one commentor suggested, actually connect with those who would be otherwise forgotten. That would be a fantastic outcome and would be further evidence of the real-life community structures that should be in place for us to have the life that works for us all.

Howard.

I think you miss the point.
I think men should be capable of coping with the rough end of the pineapple.

Women should and too often need to be protected from their " wrong choice" of male.

It's totally unacceptable to level any type of violence towards a femal, whatever the reason.

Dan

Misopinionated,

"There are only two circumstances in which we should be releasing restrictions and starting to mingle in open groups:

1. There is a readily available vaccine to prevent us from catching the Wuhan virus, or

2. There are no reported infections in the community over a period of at least 8 weeks."

As my son might say, "No sh!t, Sherlock !"

No. 1 is out for a year or more. There might be argument over No. 2's time-frame: 8 weeks might be necessary if incubation periods are longer than assumed, which seems to be around two or three weeks. But every extra week is costing billions to our economy, so much thought would have to go into this: probably lifting restrictions region by region, after a couple of weeks of no new cases, then state by state, and eventually over the whole country, in order to link up economically with NZ.

Of course, this all might be academic in relation to the US, where lock-downs have barely ever been properly enforced, and thus the entire prevention process hasn't yet got off the ground - at the same time as the Half-Wit-in-Charge wants to lift all restrictions in order to boost his re-election chances, hang the consequences.

My bet is for the numbers of cases in the US to rise dramatically in the US in a couple of weeks, and deaths in about a month - and for those numbers to keep rising, to new horrifically-high Curves. Horrifically-high numbers of innocent people, Americans, dying.

Joe