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| Lest what is to come below seem all negative, I want to first share a piece of bright sunshine. Australia currently has arrival bans on all countries. The good news is, we don't need to. We could un-ban arrivals from China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan with minimal risk. Why? Becsuse their rates of undiagnosed Covid-19 are all far less than ours (and of course, they are not going to let people they know have Covid-19 on a plane). So the safest person you could meet, say on the streets of Sydney, would be someone just off the plane from China. So why is our government maintaining the ban? I think it's **because it would be enormously embarrassing for Australia to un-ban say China**, but still have hardly anyone come because they would know that **China would not let them come back**. Spin wins the day yet again! It shows how badly Australia has stuffed up. But it also shows how much hope there is, if only we could get our act together. We do not need to think pessimistically. China has completely solved its problem, they have half the active cases we do, despite around 50 times the population. And **South Korea** is dramatically reducing its active cases too. They are testing more people than us, and their new infection rate is far below ours, strongly suggesting that their undiagnosed infection rate is also way below ours. And they got there without huge social disruption. But the bottom line is, the whole of East Asia is now safer than Australia, despite going to Hell and back. So why are we still on that road to Hell???. | Lest what is to come below seem all negative, I want to first share a piece of bright sunshine. Australia currently has arrival bans on all countries. The good news is, we don't need to. We could un-ban arrivals from China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan with minimal risk. Why? Becsuse their rates of undiagnosed Covid-19 are all far less than ours (and of course, they are not going to let people they know have Covid-19 on a plane). So the safest person you could meet, say on the streets of Sydney, would be someone just off the plane from China. So why is our government maintaining the ban? I think it's **because it would be enormously embarrassing for Australia to un-ban say China**, but still have hardly anyone come because they would know that **China would not let them come back**. Spin wins the day yet again! It shows how badly Australia has stuffed up. But it also shows how much hope there is, if only we could get our act together. We do not need to think pessimistically. China has completely solved its problem, they have half the active cases we do, despite around 50 times the population. And **South Korea** is dramatically reducing its active cases too. They are testing more people than us, and their new infection rate is far below ours, strongly suggesting that their undiagnosed infection rate is also way below ours. And they got there without huge social disruption. But the bottom line is, the whole of East Asia is now safer than Australia, despite going to Hell and back. So why are we still on that road to Hell???. | ||
| - | Today, 1st April, the New South Wales premier, while making some otherwise reasonable announcements, said of covid-19 that "**it can't be stopped**". Initially, I thought it might be an April Fool's joke. But let's be clear, that is an **out and out lie**. China and South Korea have both shown that it can be stopped. OK, there may be some fuzziness around the edges of the Chinese figures (but to those fools pushing this line from the US, it's quite clear that the Chinese figures are more accurate than the American). But S. Korea is a robust democracy -- somewhat more so than Australia, to be honest -- there is no way those figures are faked. So if we all know this (which anybody who has been keeping touch does), why does Gladys think it is OK to simply and barefacedly lie? **To all politicians**: the best way to stop misinformation on social media is to **stop lying yourselves**. If your aim is to 'flatten the curve' rather than 'kill the curve', you are a fool, and the articles above explain why. But at least have the courage to be honest about it: it's not that we can't stop covid-19. It's that you don't want to. You are prepared to gamble with thousands of lives (though I accept you are too mathematically illiterate to realise how bad the gamble is). Have the guts to say so! | + | Today, 1st April, the New South Wales premier, while making some otherwise reasonable announcements, said of covid-19 that "**it can't be stopped**". Initially, I thought it might be an April Fool's joke. But let's be clear, that is an **out and out lie**. China and South Korea have both shown that it can be stopped. OK, there may be some fuzziness around the edges of the Chinese figures (but to anyone who is following them, it is clear that they are more accurate than, say, the American figures). But S. Korea is a robust democracy -- somewhat more so than Australia, to be honest -- there is no way those figures are faked. So if we all know this (which anybody who has been keeping touch does), why does Gladys think it is OK to simply and barefacedly lie? **To all politicians**: the best way to stop misinformation on social media is to **stop lying yourselves**. If your aim is to 'flatten the curve' rather than 'kill the curve', you are being foolish, and the articles above explain why. But at least have the courage to be honest about it: it's not that we can't stop covid-19. It's that you don't want to. You are prepared to gamble with thousands of lives (though I accept you may not understand how bad the gamble is). Have the guts to say so! |
| Prime Minister Morrison, on the slim chance you encounter this page, right now you have two choices. | Prime Minister Morrison, on the slim chance you encounter this page, right now you have two choices. | ||
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| If both those decisions are too distasteful, there is another: to distance the government from the difficult decisions that need to be taken, by appointing a supremo and giving them the power to take necessary actions. It needs to be someone with a demonstrated capacity for decisiveness, for listening to the experts, and sufficiently respected and independent that their decisions are followed. It could be a thankless task. | If both those decisions are too distasteful, there is another: to distance the government from the difficult decisions that need to be taken, by appointing a supremo and giving them the power to take necessary actions. It needs to be someone with a demonstrated capacity for decisiveness, for listening to the experts, and sufficiently respected and independent that their decisions are followed. It could be a thankless task. | ||
| - | One other concern: the UK seems to be softening people up for a strategy of getting to herd immunity as fast as possible, and with as few deaths as possible. If you're considering any variant of this strategy, including 'flattening the curve', **you need to consult control theorists** because it is a control theoretic problem: please do not filter their advice through others, you need direct advice from control theorists. Please see [[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.06967.pdf|this article]] for the beginnings of an analysis of why. I say 'the beginnings' because on a quick read, I think the model omits the key issues of stochasticity in response and stochasticity in measurement. Stochasticity makes the problem even harder. But it's a good start, the only one I can find on the web that even starts on the problem, and his conclusion seems to be pretty similar to mine: that a prudent 'flatten the curve' strategy would be essentially indisinguishable from an infection minimisation strategy. And because it would be faster **it would come at far less economic cost**. You're going to have to do it eventually. Do it now, when the recovery should only take a month or so. Don't wait till we have a full-on covid-19 disaster: that way lies three or four months of economic stagnation. | + | One other concern: the UK seems to be softening people up for a strategy of getting to herd immunity as fast as possible, and with as few deaths as possible. If you're considering any variant of this strategy, including 'flattening the curve', **you need to consult control theorists** because it is a control theoretic problem: please do not filter their advice through others, you need direct advice from control theorists. Please see [[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.06967.pdf|this article]] for the beginnings of an analysis of why. I say 'the beginnings' because on a quick read, I think the model omits the key issues of stochasticity in response and stochasticity in measurement. Stochasticity makes the problem even harder. But it's a good start, the only one I can find on the web that even starts on the problem, and his conclusion seems to be pretty similar to mine: that a prudent 'flatten the curve' strategy would be essentially indisinguishable from an infection minimisation strategy. And because it would be faster **it would come at far less economic cost**. You're going to have to do it eventually. Do it now, when the recovery should only take a month or so. Don't wait till we have a full-on covid-19 disaster: that way lies many months of economic stagnation, not to mention the excess deaths. |
| I've subsequently read that the UK plans to shut everyone vulnerable out of the way for four months (I guess that's how long they expect it will take to get to herd immunity) and just let 'er rip. That might be a good strategy **if** we knew pretty much everything there is to know about the virus and **if** the control problem was easier. But we don't and it isn't. Remember SARS? Remember Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong? That's where 321 people acquired SARS because the sewerage system was mis-designed and an aerosol of SARS-laden sewage was able to spread throughout the complex. It can't have been a very obvious problem (who would accept a modern apartment that stinks of sewage?). The Covid-19 virus is very closely related to that of SARS (that's why it's called SARS-COV-2). It's more likely than not that it could spread in the same way. Given Sydney's recent construction stuff-ups, if we can't trust developers to build structurally sound buildings, do you want to bet on the integrity of their sewer designs? More generally, we just don't know enough about Covid-19. Anything we don't know could put us back in the terrifying prospect of the preceding paragraph. Of course, if potential treatments such as [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0|Remdesvir or Chloroquine]] turn out to be effective, this might change -- but if they're effective enough, we may not need to aim at herd immunity (and we certainly shouldn't be letting 'er rip, or flattening the curve, until we do know). | I've subsequently read that the UK plans to shut everyone vulnerable out of the way for four months (I guess that's how long they expect it will take to get to herd immunity) and just let 'er rip. That might be a good strategy **if** we knew pretty much everything there is to know about the virus and **if** the control problem was easier. But we don't and it isn't. Remember SARS? Remember Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong? That's where 321 people acquired SARS because the sewerage system was mis-designed and an aerosol of SARS-laden sewage was able to spread throughout the complex. It can't have been a very obvious problem (who would accept a modern apartment that stinks of sewage?). The Covid-19 virus is very closely related to that of SARS (that's why it's called SARS-COV-2). It's more likely than not that it could spread in the same way. Given Sydney's recent construction stuff-ups, if we can't trust developers to build structurally sound buildings, do you want to bet on the integrity of their sewer designs? More generally, we just don't know enough about Covid-19. Anything we don't know could put us back in the terrifying prospect of the preceding paragraph. Of course, if potential treatments such as [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0|Remdesvir or Chloroquine]] turn out to be effective, this might change -- but if they're effective enough, we may not need to aim at herd immunity (and we certainly shouldn't be letting 'er rip, or flattening the curve, until we do know). | ||