The "they" of course are the Australian political class: many of whom want you to hand over more power to them via a politicians' republic. After what they have done over the past two years, the scant regard they have shown citizens, do you really want to give them any more power when the next referendum on a republic comes around? Do you want more "galloping authoritarianism"?

The less the government is involved in our lives, the better off we are.

Austrians for Science and Freedom!? The debate is over, the lockdowns didn't work!

Of course, they didn't work! Because non-compliant idiots refused to comply with health orders! And that required even stronger measures to compel compliance! Even to the chagrin of cage rattling drug dealers and the criminal element in our midst.

Pregnant mums should be the first in the queue. If only to protect the unborn, who have absolutely no natural uninherited resistance.

Let's be clear, this virus has killed more people than two world wars!

The Spanish epidemic with its horrific death toll many of whom were health professionals, was started by a single Asymptomatic Chinese tourist.

If science was our guide, and not risibly ridiculous pernicious propaganda, then we would have Island quarantine stations, mandatory vaccinations/boosters and vaccine passports, mandatory masks even now, restricted travel and curfews.

If we can eliminate this virus and we can! Then our personal freedom could be restored in full.

If young people were the preferred target of this virus? We wouldn't even be having this conversation!

Just because old people are old, just doesn't mean they have nothing left to contribute! Even in the face of, full of themselves, walking gonads, young, narcissistic, supercity complexes!

They might astound with world changing, science-based contributions. Put energy even the poorest can afford on the table and with that get the economy and manufacture up off the floor and producing at the max!

Take mankind to the literal stars.

And I am not talking about those poor souls in God's waiting rooms/nursing homes! But those with (wasted) still active minds and still in their own homes.
Alan B.

I don't know what universe you were living in Ramesh, but from where I am sitting, the lockdowns in Victoria were very effective. You only have to look at how huge the numbers of daily infections are now, without lockdowns, compared with the low numbers in the early days of the virus when we had effective lockdowns.
David

" Lockdowns did not work"

If only we'd had some way of knowing it at the time...
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=9129#301593

Lockdowns did not work, but there will be no convincing those who live their lives through the Lying Left media. Finding the truth entails a lot of reading, and taking notice of people like Ramesh, whom the average poster would never have heard of. He is one of the knowledgeable people the Lying Left media refuses to give a voice to. He is well known and respected in intelligent circles, and I am pleased to see him on Online Opinion. Some of you will learn a lot from him if you open your minds.

What a blitheringly stupid article.

Rolling out the Nazis in the first paragraph certainly set the tone early and it went downhill from there.

Of course lockdowns worked, amazingly well in the case of Australia and tens of thousands of lives were saved as a result.

We didn't have the 800 people per day dying like what happened in NYC, filling morgues across the city.

The lack of government involvement was the largest single lament of so many on the ground in that country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpSgEQKVNE

We should be extremely grateful for what our governments did in Australia. Businesses and people were supported, lockdowns prevented Delta running rampant and brought time until the vast majority of us were vaccinated and able to face Covid infections.

Yet here we are giving breathing space to articles like this. Moreover the vapid sniping of people like mhaze pissing over the effort that Australians put in to keep themselves, their families and there fellow Australians safe.

It is shameful.

With you Steele, 100+++%

Ditto !

Congratulations mhaze, you were right. I was also a member of that group, which had some stellar members. But the dopes that run most of the world were too scared to follow the facts where they led. And now you have some of our fellow commenters trying to defend the indefensible. Victoria, the most heavily locked-down state, did no better than anywhere else, and that is just counting COVID deaths. https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19/case-numbers-and-statistics. And then there are the victims of lock down. The suicides, the missed diagnoses, people reduced to poverty who can't now afford proper care. Plus we couldn't afford to lock down like that again - the cost didn't justify the benefits, and paying it has destroyed other people's lives and health.

'Tens of thousands of lives' were saved by totalitarian lockdowns?

What a "blithering stupid" and unsubstantiated claim by one of the blithering stupid dupes who, as I said, live their lives in ignorance thanks, to the Lying Left media, as well as prostrating themselves before increasingly totalitarian governments.

Dear Graham,

Why on earth are you talking about facts when you and mhaze studiously ignore them?

Suicide rates in Victoria fell markedly during the lockdowns and have not dramatically risen afterwards.

Many businesses which normally would have failed due the the standard churn were instead supported to continue.

As of October the 2nd the overall covid death toll in your poster country of Sweden is current triple that of Australia. The US suffered 6 times our rate.

mhaze was not right then and he isn't right now. In fact the only thing right about the both of you unfortunately is your ideologies.

Sorry Graham, we did better than elsewhere, some of it via stupid blind luck and some of it due to our location and climate. Not assisted by the infected passengers on the Princess, being allowed to leave while still infectious. Like the keystone cops' version, of border control.

Others saying it was no more than a mild flu and making the economy more important than lives. We didn't have the mass graves of NY.

But none know what internal damage this thing does even in its mildest form, or how many years it may shave off of your normal life expectancy.

If blockheads like ttbn had their way, it would have been, let her rip, Boris. As it was, our health service was pressed way past its limits and the cost of hospital health care/Medicare has never been higher.

You cannot go past one fundamental truth, to have a healthy economy we need a healthy populace. One doesn't have one without the other.

Now, we can expect a spike from the footy finals, the Melbourne Cup and so on. And even more ambulance ramping at our hospitals!

I'm glad your Mum passed before all this and didn't have to see your current undisguised attitude to the elderly vulnerable, i.e., the people who built this country. I believe, she would have been shamed.
Alan B.

Hey ttbn,

"do you really want to give them any more power when the next referendum on a republic comes around?"

- I've formed the conclusion that a bias government wouldn't bring a referendum of any kind that they didn't already have reason to believe would go their way.
A 'no' vote would do more harm to their agendas in the first place, so they won't do a referendum in support of agendas they want that they don't already think they can game and win.

As of yesterday in Australia, there were 240 deaths from Covid in a day. The only way we can bring that down is by mandating masking where lots of people gather, such as public transport and dare I say it, sporting crowds, shopping centres. The list goes on.
David

"Congratulations mhaze, you were right."

Oh dear....I blush. But tell me more (grin).

Being right about this wasn't really hard or particularly praise-worthy. By the time I first wrote of my doubts about the lockdown mania, it was the result of two weeks of going forensically through the data. Even more so, it was the result of reading and absorbing opinions from outside the government/medical cohort. Even in those early days, voices were being raised. But they were being drowned out by the censorious authorities who sought to silence any dissenting opinion. It was just a question of finding and verifying those sources.

Since those days, there are literally dozens (even hundreds) of reports, analyses and scientific papers examining and detailing the errors behind the lockdowns. That they were an expensive failure is now quite clear - although as we see here, some will take longer to catch on or catch up, and some are simply incapable of conceding they were led down the garden path.

As the world slides into recession, we see one of the results of the profligate spending accompanying the lockdowns. This was another prediction of those opposed to the lockdowns at the time.

Throughout that period, the government claimed to be following 'The Science'. But as with climate, there is no such thing as 'The Science'. There were a range of views. The governments chose one and then pretended that there were no other. Occasionally the mask (!) would slip and they'd admit that they were receiving alternate views. I mentioned one such incident around Berejiklian last year. Even last week Albanese admitted that he received a range of views over the mask mandate.

But they (the authorities) chose one set of views and sought to suppress all others. And the anxiously gullible bought it.

Thankfully the lockdowns are over (except in China), never to return. But the adverse consequences will be with us for years to come.

Dear mhaze,

You are an amusing fellow.

You claim;

"Since those days, there are literally dozens (even hundreds) of reports, analyses and scientific papers examining and detailing the errors behind the lockdowns."

Remember when you quoted from one of these anti-lockdown papers but failed to include the following finding from the same.

“When comparing across countries, the only countries in which we observe the introduction of SIP policies negatively changes the trajectory of excess deaths are Australia, Malta, and New Zealand.”

It did your brain in trying to wriggle past that one.

You really are a shocker.

The two of you can blissfully skip off patting each other on the back until the cows come home but the facts are lockdowns worked in this country despite your and Graham's ideological refusal to acknowledge such.

SR,

I pointed out all three places were islands. You chose to ignore that. The end.

I've always said that the quarantine made possible in places like Australia, NZ, Taiwan, Japan etc was a significant advantage, at least for a while. But that was quite different to locking down the peoples already inside the quarantine.

We've seen more than a few instances where statistics have bamboozled you SR. This is another. The reports on lockdowns compare similar places with differing policies to determine what worked. They find that lockdowns didn't affect the outcome. Just cherry-picking places with low numbers and lockdowns isn't how this works since there were also places with high numbers and lockdowns. Other factors come into play eg the ability to successfully quarantine. There are even quite a few statistics in this very article. Just whistling past them in the hope that you can avoid the import of those numbers isn't the path to the truth but instead a search for confirmation.

I get that its not in your nature to admit, even to yourself, that you fell for the government line (again!) but most of us have moved on to look at the effects of these failed policies and how to avoid them in the future.

As the article points out, part of the issue was the concerted efforts to censor wrong-think. We have to ensure that never happens again. Perhaps if people were exposed to both sides of the argument they wouldn't fall for and become wedded to the approved story such as you have.

Dear mhaze,

All those words and still a refusal to acknowledge the lockdowns worked here. They worked when there was a breach of quarantine, they worked when there was an outbreak. They worked when Delta was ravaging the rest of the world and they worked to keep us safer until vaccination rates were sufficient to ease them. They worked in Victoria. They worked in NSW while NYC with a similar population was experiencing 800 Delta deaths per day.

They worked and your pathetic, petty, post event sniping will never change that fact.

SR,

Lots of claims that "they worked" there. But a distinct lack of evidence. Just saying "they worked" over and over might convince some, but I'd doubt it.

Laughingly, the only fact you try to use to 'prove' your point is wrong.
You wrote: "NYC with a similar population was experiencing 800 Delta deaths per day." That's simply untrue. Apart from the very early days when the moron Cuomo was putting positive cases in nursing homes and killing off the elderly by the score, they rarely got above 250 deaths per day and never above 500, even for one day. Certainly they never got within cooee of 800 daily deaths in the Delta era. Oh and NYC was also a pro-lockdown locale so quite how their experience helps your case is unclear.

When you just have to fabricate data to support your failed beliefs its time to give it up.

Dear mhaze,

Really? Are you really diving for a diversion this early? Standard fare of course but a bit premature to be going defensive already.

New report from April 7th 2020:

New York City reports a record 800-plus coronavirus deaths in one day
http://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html

I will grant you it seems not all the statistics sites agree with that figure but I haven't found 2 which agree at all.

Whether it was meant to refer to New York State rather than NYC as quoted by CNN who knows, it was still a horrific figure which we were thankfully spared here because we had governments willing to make the hard decisions.

You talk about a distinct lack of evidence yet the proof is plain to see for the rest of us less ideologically tainted folk.

"As of October the 2nd the overall covid death toll in your poster country of Sweden is current triple that of Australia. The US suffered 6 times our rate."

End of story really.

I'll assume this will confuse you.

The Delta version of the virus was first identified in November 2020 and first arrived in the US somewhere around February 2021.
I virus that didn't exist in April 2020 couldn't have caused 800 deaths in April 2020.

Here endeth the lesson.

Oh (and this will confuse you even more) in April 2020 New York City was completely locked down. If lockdowns work as you think, how did they get 800 deaths a day?

If lockdowns work as you think, how did they get 800 deaths a day?
mhaze,
I think lock-downs only work in smaller communities & boost infection in the jam-packed cities !

Dear mhaze,

Firstly since you have repeated the 800 figure it appears you now accept it. Well that is a start.

You ask "If lockdowns work as you think, how did they get 800 deaths a day?" well they happened because there was not a unified federal and state approach and secondly we do not know what the figure might have been if lockdowns were no put in place in New York.

And once again you have dived to the minutia to avoid addressing the substantive matter. It looks like Delta wasn't the strain that was killing 800 people a day in NY but it was still a virulent variant unleashed on a unvaccinated population, something we manged to avoid here using many tools including lockdowns.

"It looks like Delta wasn't the strain that was killing 800 people a day in NY"

A red letter day....SR sorta, kinda, somewhat, more or less admitted error.....

and then deflects. It was, apparently, "minutia". When he raised it, it was the ONLY testable 'fact' he used, but now it minutia.

Still we have progress. SR is now advising that lockdowns were just one of many tools. Ten years from now SR will be telling anyone who listens that he always knew lockdowns wouldn't work.

So moving on....

During the height of the WuFlu scare, there were few tools available to test the various hypotheses. Although most nations issued death numbers, there was little uniformity in the way those numbers were determined. Even within jurisdictions there were differing methods as to how to count Covid deaths. Additionally, the numbers coming out of countries like India and especially China were highly suspect and therefore skewed any attempt at international comparisons.

Not to mention that the entire thing became highly politicised.

As data became better, more and more analysis has demonstrated that the original fears about the virus were spectacularly overblown as were the original estimates as to deaths.

Most importantly, time has allowed for better statistics to be generated. From the outset, it was clear that comparisons between jurisdictions would only be possible when excess death data became known, since it would eliminate the problem of differing definition as to what constituted a covid death. We still have problems with some jurisdictions such that China's claimed death numbers are usually disregarded in international analyses.

Excess death data reveals that a nation's lockdown policies had little effect on their overall excess death rate. New York locked down more heavily than most yet ended up with among the highest excess death rates on the planet. New Zealand also was at the forefront of the lockdown mania and they ended up with low excess deaths. Conversely Sweden rejected the lockdown philosophy but ended up with low excess deaths.

The data reveals little correlation between lockdown policies and excess death rates. And as the data improves, the relationship breaks down ever more.

Dear mhaze,

Struth you are an utter drongo mate.

You continue to display a pathological refusal to budge an inch on the fact that lockdowns worked in Australia. Even when irrefutable evidence is there you are utterly unable to concede even the smallest point.

Yet when I concede even the smallest point you are a derisive clown about it.

Growth the hell up.

As to a higher excess death rate in a populous place like NYC of all places being higher than countries like Sweden and New Zealand? Why on earth do you think that might have happened?

"As to a higher excess death rate in a populous place like NYC of all places"

You raised NYC because you thought it somehow helped your failed assertions. Now that you realise it doesn't you wonder why I talk about it.

Moving on to the issue - ie lockdowns didn't work....

There are any number of reasons why death rates were higher or lower in this place or that. As we've seen, being an island under quarantine was a major advantage. It also helped if you were in the southern hemisphere since there were several months of data available before the onset of the winter uptick in infections.

Research is showing that vitamin D levels were a factor which of course also advantaged Australia and places like Florida.

Having a culture of multi-generational living (grandparents living with their kids and grandkids) was a detriment since it made isolating the most vulnerable doubly difficult. Of course for many ideologs, just accepting that there were different risks based on age and that the risks to the young were effectively close to zero was a problem.

There are of course some holdouts but generally those who once touted lockdowns have moved on and are trying to not discuss their errors. That's a good thing and will ensure that that mistake won't be repeated. What will and indeed is being repeated is the active suppression of alternate views, which in this instance, turned out to be correct. We see today attempts to suppress any voice that opposes the transsexual movement and body modification (mastectomies and the like) just as we've seen for years the attempts to silence voices raised against homosexual marriage.

Suppression of momentarily unpopular views is never right and in this case was a disaster. The lockdowns went on for far too long and did irreparable damage to lives, livelihoods and economies. Every time you see the next piece of bad economic news, remember that its origins lay in those errors made in mid 2020.

Dear mhaze,

Well that was another long winded and disingenuous way of not conceding that lockdowns worked in Australia.

Vitamin D? Really.

Of course quarantining an island helped us but containing the outbreaks which did occur took lockdowns which dramatically halted the spread of a deadly virus and saved the lives of 10s of thousands of Australians. That is completely irrefutable yet you sullenly refuse to acknowledge it.

The NYC comparison to Sweden with regard to population density is also completely valid. NYC has a population density of 11,313.71/km2 while Stockholm is 370/km2.

To dismiss this as a factor is inane.

I wasn't trying to find a "way of not conceding that lockdowns worked". That case has already been prosecuted and resolved many times over.

I was just going back over some of the reasons covid had different effects in different locales, whereas some (no names mindyou!) think its all to do with the stringency of the lockdown regime.

"Vitamin D? Really."

I had mentioned this in earlier threads. Perhaps you missed it or it couldn't find a place in your lockdown mania....
http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33744444/

Should I mention ivermectin as well?

Of course population density is a factor. But a minor one as compared to the others. New York's problem was that it was run by a foolish governor, and even dumber major, who did things like put people with active cases in nursing homes to protect the hospitals and reduced public transport to force more people to travel cheek-by-jowl.

What you need to understand here, SR, is that the data is now available to look at the big picture. Picking out one or two data points and then trying to make sense of the world-wide response is a fool's errand. Looked at a whole, a location's level of lockdown stringency is not predictive of its covid outcomes. I know you want it to be not so, but the data is clear.

Dear mhaze,

You write: "I wasn't trying to find a "way of not conceding that lockdowns worked". That case has already been prosecuted and resolved many times over."

And there you go and do it again. You just can't help yourself.

The studies you yourself have linked to concede lockdowns worked in this country.

Why are you still struggling with this?

"Why are you still struggling with this?"

I'm not struggling with this. I'm struggling to get people who don't want to admit error to see the nose on their face.

I've given you this analogy before but you ignored it. I assume it went over your head but let's try again....

To test whether aspirin cures cancer you give two tablets to cancer patients. 98 of those patients continue to have cancer. 2 recover.
Do you say the 2 recoveries proves aspirin works on cancer or do you assume there was something different about those two people and investigate that difference? Outliers never prove an hypothesis.

Islands were outliers. Why?

The world's moved on and all the data now shows that the length or stringency of lockdowns had no effect on the ultimate outcome. Some of us recognised that from early on. Some will takes a few years yet to come around.

Yes. Thank goodness the US state of Florida had DeSantis to prevent mandatory masking, vax and closings. Florida lost a mere ~80,000 to COVID compared to the millions upon millions of Australians that COVID died.

Yep anti-lockdown Florida ended up with about the same number of deaths per million of population as pro-lockdown New York.

It's almost as though locking down or not made no difference.

Doesn't the arguing on this sound like Global Warming arguments.
Not the detail of course, but the tone.