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This shit race managed to make themselves detestable. Filthy, smelly, obnoxious and disgusting.
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IP addresses are NOT logged in this forum so there's no point asking. Please note that this forum is full of homophobes, racists, lunatics, schizophrenics & absolute nut jobs with a smattering of geniuses, Chinese chauvinists, Moderate Muslims and last but not least a couple of "know-it-alls" constantly sprouting their dubious wisdom. If you believe that content generated by unsavory characters might cause you offense PLEASE LEAVE NOW! Sammyboy Admin and Staff are not responsible for your hurt feelings should you choose to read any of the content here. The OTHER forum is HERE so please stop asking.
The emotional toll of Indian covid crisis cannot be quantified by samleong numbers
- Thread starter bart12
- Start date
This shit race managed to make themselves detestable. Filthy, smelly, obnoxious and disgusting.
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696m tiongs die and the universe will celebrate.
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Where are the photos of "people cremated in parking lots"?
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knn all the evil that rained down on you people
due to your karmic debt
shit and shit of evil karma you all committed
covid is just one little reminder
more covids will rain on those who had committed hideous crimes
against humanity, against nature, against the animal world
more to come
be prepared for disasters and catastrophes
evil man begets evil receive evil
due to your karmic debt
shit and shit of evil karma you all committed
covid is just one little reminder
more covids will rain on those who had committed hideous crimes
against humanity, against nature, against the animal world
more to come
be prepared for disasters and catastrophes
evil man begets evil receive evil
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I notice that among people I talk to not many people are sympathetic to Indians dying, most of us REALLY dont like Indians
Some are even hopeful there will less Indians when its all over
So lesson is they can die but leave your disease there dont spread to us
they bring it upon themselves
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They should take the leaf from nazi camps and build giant burners - stack and cremate hundreds in one go. They gonna scatter the ash into Ganges anyways.
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USA will lose a strategic ally
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Wat about the devastation caused by the lockdowns? Y no one talk about Tat? Save one life.. destroy the livelihoods of thousands..
The Great Lockdown Is Saving Lives While Increasing Poverty And Hunger Globally
More From Forbes
To contain COVID-19, governments have imposed the great lockdown in spite of its devastating economic impacts, intoning that we cannot put a price on human lives. It’s a pious sentiment, but wrong. As the economic costs mount, the belief that the great lockdown is putting human lives ahead of the economy is shown to be based on a false dichotomy. The trade off is not between saving lives versus saving the economy. Instead, it is between saving lives from COVID-19 versus saving lives from a massive increase in poverty and hunger globally as a result of the great lockdown, especially among the poorest and most vulnerable.
The great lockdown, being what it is, has shut down economic production from manufacturing to services, affecting businesses large and small. It has halted much of the international flows of goods as well as movement of people. As businesses closed their doors and factories shut their gates, unemployment surged. For example, some 26 million American workers filed jobless claims since the lockdown; and weekly jobless claims climbed from 0.3% of the labor force before COVID-19 to an astonishing 4.1% by the end of March. The situation is similar in the U.K. and Europe. Governments in these high-income countries are able to dramatically hike their fiscal spending to support businesses that are forced to cease operations as well as workers that are laid off. For the vast majority of the affected in low-income countries, there is no such luck. Their outlook is getting bleaker with each day that the global economy is kept in hibernation.
For example, citing research conducted by the Australian National University and Kings College, London, Oxfam is warning that global poverty is rising for the first time in 30 years. It has estimated that between 400 to 600 million people will be pushed into poverty in developing countries as a result of the great lockdown. Over one-third of these new poor will be in some of the least developed countries in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia. Because of rising poverty, the UN World Food Program has warned that the number of people suffering from acute hunger could easily double this year.
People in Bangladesh wait to collect handouts [+] MAMUNUR RASHID/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Global remittance flows have already started to decline as a result of the great lockdown. Today, remittances are the biggest source of capital flows to low-income countries, accounting for up to 9% of their GDP. Increasing proportions of the poorest households in these countries have come to rely on remittances to make ends meet, helping them stay one step ahead of poverty and hunger. The World Bank estimated that the current decline in global remittances is the largest on record, affecting countries as small as Tonga, Haiti and South Sudan, and as large as Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Given the projected increase in poverty, it is not hard to see that poverty-associated premature deaths in many of these low-income countries will rise. For example, infant mortality rate could rise again after having improved in recent decades. A rise of 10% in infant mortality would mean an increase 400,000 deaths of those under one year old, mostly in the least developed countries. Similarly, rising poverty will also lead to higher maternal mortality in these same countries, affecting particularly the poorest households. In other words, while the great lockdown is saving lives in reducing COVID-19 deaths, there is no question that it is also increasing poverty associated with premature deaths across the world, affecting the poorest households in the least developed countries. Deaths from the latter could be as high as in the millions.
The great lockdown is also increasing premature deaths in some of the developed countries, and in particular the U.S.
Angus Deaton, an economics Nobel laureate, has documented the relentless rise in mortality and morbidity among the less educated and low-skilled white non-Hispanic Americans as a result of their dwindling labor market opportunities and rising poverty. Shockingly, the life expectancy of these white Americans has dropped since the turn of this century because of wide spread drug overdose, suicide and alcohol related health problems. As the great lockdown continues, the economic prospects of these Americans will undoubtedly diminish, leading to their rising poverty and increases in premature deaths.
The great lockdown is clearly needed to contain COVID-19 in the absence of proven treatments and vaccines. But it is not a case of prioritizing the saving of lives ahead of saving the economy. As such, at some point in time, governments need to consider how much longer should the great lockdown be kept in place regardless of the progress in containing COVID-19 because of its consequences in pushing hundreds of millions into poverty and potentially increasing premature deaths on a massive scale. Worse still, these dire consequences will most likely affect the poorest and most vulnerable in low-income countries. It would be both irresponsible and hypocritical to focus only on saving lives from COVID-19 and ignore the lives lost from the great lockdown.
The Great Lockdown Is Saving Lives While Increasing Poverty And Hunger Globally
More From Forbes
To contain COVID-19, governments have imposed the great lockdown in spite of its devastating economic impacts, intoning that we cannot put a price on human lives. It’s a pious sentiment, but wrong. As the economic costs mount, the belief that the great lockdown is putting human lives ahead of the economy is shown to be based on a false dichotomy. The trade off is not between saving lives versus saving the economy. Instead, it is between saving lives from COVID-19 versus saving lives from a massive increase in poverty and hunger globally as a result of the great lockdown, especially among the poorest and most vulnerable.
The great lockdown, being what it is, has shut down economic production from manufacturing to services, affecting businesses large and small. It has halted much of the international flows of goods as well as movement of people. As businesses closed their doors and factories shut their gates, unemployment surged. For example, some 26 million American workers filed jobless claims since the lockdown; and weekly jobless claims climbed from 0.3% of the labor force before COVID-19 to an astonishing 4.1% by the end of March. The situation is similar in the U.K. and Europe. Governments in these high-income countries are able to dramatically hike their fiscal spending to support businesses that are forced to cease operations as well as workers that are laid off. For the vast majority of the affected in low-income countries, there is no such luck. Their outlook is getting bleaker with each day that the global economy is kept in hibernation.
For example, citing research conducted by the Australian National University and Kings College, London, Oxfam is warning that global poverty is rising for the first time in 30 years. It has estimated that between 400 to 600 million people will be pushed into poverty in developing countries as a result of the great lockdown. Over one-third of these new poor will be in some of the least developed countries in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia. Because of rising poverty, the UN World Food Program has warned that the number of people suffering from acute hunger could easily double this year.
Global remittance flows have already started to decline as a result of the great lockdown. Today, remittances are the biggest source of capital flows to low-income countries, accounting for up to 9% of their GDP. Increasing proportions of the poorest households in these countries have come to rely on remittances to make ends meet, helping them stay one step ahead of poverty and hunger. The World Bank estimated that the current decline in global remittances is the largest on record, affecting countries as small as Tonga, Haiti and South Sudan, and as large as Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Given the projected increase in poverty, it is not hard to see that poverty-associated premature deaths in many of these low-income countries will rise. For example, infant mortality rate could rise again after having improved in recent decades. A rise of 10% in infant mortality would mean an increase 400,000 deaths of those under one year old, mostly in the least developed countries. Similarly, rising poverty will also lead to higher maternal mortality in these same countries, affecting particularly the poorest households. In other words, while the great lockdown is saving lives in reducing COVID-19 deaths, there is no question that it is also increasing poverty associated with premature deaths across the world, affecting the poorest households in the least developed countries. Deaths from the latter could be as high as in the millions.
The great lockdown is also increasing premature deaths in some of the developed countries, and in particular the U.S.
Angus Deaton, an economics Nobel laureate, has documented the relentless rise in mortality and morbidity among the less educated and low-skilled white non-Hispanic Americans as a result of their dwindling labor market opportunities and rising poverty. Shockingly, the life expectancy of these white Americans has dropped since the turn of this century because of wide spread drug overdose, suicide and alcohol related health problems. As the great lockdown continues, the economic prospects of these Americans will undoubtedly diminish, leading to their rising poverty and increases in premature deaths.
The great lockdown is clearly needed to contain COVID-19 in the absence of proven treatments and vaccines. But it is not a case of prioritizing the saving of lives ahead of saving the economy. As such, at some point in time, governments need to consider how much longer should the great lockdown be kept in place regardless of the progress in containing COVID-19 because of its consequences in pushing hundreds of millions into poverty and potentially increasing premature deaths on a massive scale. Worse still, these dire consequences will most likely affect the poorest and most vulnerable in low-income countries. It would be both irresponsible and hypocritical to focus only on saving lives from COVID-19 and ignore the lives lost from the great lockdown.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2018
- Messages
- 29,394
- Points
- 113
Most Read of 2020: Lockdowns Could Kill More People Than COVID-19 - Australian Institute of International Affairs
06 Jan 2021
By Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur FAIIA
Share
There has been a remarkable lack of observed statistical difference in the rates of death for countries, and for US states, that have and have not locked down. An assessment of the models used to project different scenarios must be evaluated relative to the lived reality.
This article was one of the most read in Australian Outlook in 2020.
There are strongly divergent views among software engineers, epidemiologists, medical scientists, physicists, chemists, and statisticians over the quality of the computer code behind the original Imperial College London model of 16 March, the reliability of modelling, the infection fatality rate (IFR), the evolutionary curve of the virus, the proportions and infectiousness of asymptomatic cases, its controllability by severity and timing of lockdowns, the threshold at which herd immunity is achieved, and if there is any realistic alternative to herd immunity. Some experts now believe there is cross immunity from people’s exposure to the existing endemic coronaviruses, or natural T-cell immunity in certain genetic populations, while WHO said most recently that it’s very rare for asymptomatic cases to infect others.
There is little observational data that the reproduction rate has shot up alarmingly in places that have opened up. Instead the trend remains downward at broadly comparable rates logarithmically, providing mathematical confirmation of the observed reality. As people like Karl Friston, one of the world’s topmost statisticians, Sunetra Gupta, John Ioannidis, and Michael Levitt have been predicting in opposition to the modellers from the beginning, the pandemic is as fast burning out in Europe and the US as it did in China.
It’s hard to see much evidence in India either of the effectiveness of a stringent lockdown after two-and-a-half months, or of a self-flattening curve (Figure 5). On 30 May, India reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases by almost 8,000 for a total of over 180,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. Yet, on that very day, India announced a substantial easing of lockdown restrictions. By 9 June its total death tally was 7,750. The explanation for the lifting of lockdown measures despite the continuing high numbers of infections and deaths is simple: the rise in deaths and misery caused by the lockdown, well beyond the capacity of India’s health and transport networks and social safety nets to support, had become a huge national shame and scandal. India is not alone. The Wall Street Journal reported that many poor countries have shifted to easing lockdown restrictions despite rising infections and deaths because they’ve concluded that the cost in lives, livelihoods, and destitution are just too high.
On 29 May, Zaria Gorvett reported for the BBC Future program that most COVID-19 deaths will be not from the virus but from the collateral damage inflicted by the various lockdown measures. “Across the globe, patients have reported being denied cancer care, kidney dialysis and urgent transplant surgeries, with sometimes fatal results,” she said. Reports from reputable bodies like Oxfam, the UN, and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have contained mutually reinforcing warnings that the severity of the lockdown measures could reverse a decade’s worth of gains in infant and child mortality with over a million additional deaths, exacerbate health, hunger, and misery insecurities, and push another half billion people into poverty. There are some impassioned attacks on the immoral and callous indifference of epidemiologists to the deadly consequences of their prescriptions for millions of lives and livelihoods around the world.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just a “Third World” worry. Australia’s top mental health experts warn that a lockdown-induced 50 percent jump in suicides could kill ten times as many as the virus. Similarly the Royal College of Psychiatrists reports a sixfold increase in suicide attempts by the elderly in the UK because of depression and anxiety caused by social isolation during the lockdown. With elective surgeries and routine screenings suspended, many cancers and heart diseases that are treatable if caught in time will dramatically elevate the death toll.
An analysis of the official UK data from the Office for National Statistics concluded that of the excess deaths in England and Wales this year over last year’s data to the week ending 1 May, only one-third can be explained by COVID-19. David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, said on 12 May that, of the “staggering burden” of 30,000 more deaths than would normally be expected, only 10,000 have had COVID-19 specified on the death certificate.
Meanwhile Germany is in damage control after a leaked report challenged the established narrative. Its main conclusions are that the lethality of COVID-19 was overestimated compared to the normal flu level. The report highlights the grave, manifold, and heavy consequences of the measures to fight the virus and warns that more people are dying because of state-imposed mitigation measures than are being killed by the virus. Initially, the government dismissed the report as the work of one employee. But it turns out the 93-page report was drafted by a scientific panel that included medical experts from several German universities. Its authors issued a joint press release on 11 May criticising the government for ignoring expert advice. The German government has not yet reacted, but on 23 May authorities confirmed that 52,000 cancer operations had been delayed.
Politicising Science
It’s instructive to compare the lack of robust science behind epidemiological modelling with the depth, breadth, and longevity of the science underpinning climate change. Or, to put this another way, the policy has been transformed from a scientific to a political mission. Boris Jonson’s top adviser, the by-now notorious Dominic Cummings who made a questionable 260-mile roundtrip to Durham during the lockdown, is said by Bloomberg news to have pressed the independent scientific advisers to recommend lockdown measures. On the excessive two-metre distancing rule, Prof. Robert Dingwall is reported in The Telegraph on 7 May to have said a senior public health specialist told him “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was.” So “we doubled it to be on the safe side.”
In the UK, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies. Under pressure from a legal challenge from aviation tycoon Simon Dolan, on 29 May the government released the minutes of SAGE meetings from the period leading up to the lockdown announcement on 23 March. Lawyer Paul Chaplin went through the minutes. On 18 March, SAGE advised that “the measures already announced should have a significant effect,” and additional measures might be needed only “if compliance rates are low.” At no point before 23 March did SAGE recommend anything resembling a full lockdown. Instead, at a meeting on 10 March, the group noted that banning public gatherings would have little effect since most viral transmission occurred in confined spaces, such as within households. Based on the earlier broad summaries provided, Christopher Snowdon from the Institute of Economic Affairs concluded: “the strategy which preceded the lockdown… was based on science whereas the decision to go into lockdown was political.”
A scandal is brewing in Denmark because of a leaked email to the Politiken newspaper. The head of the health ministry told the head of the Health Authority to suspend his professionalism as a public servant, and instead adopt an “extreme precautionary principle” when giving political advice based on a deliberately inflated reproduction number (2.6, not 2.1). Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen then proceeded to mislead the public, it’s alleged, by implying that her decision to impose a strict lockdown on the country was based on advice from the health agency. Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young’s logic on school closures is also primarily political. She accepts the evidence that schools are not a high-risk environment for the spread of the virus but closing them helps to convince people how grave the situation is. “So sometimes it’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging.”
We Need a Royal Commission to Look Back So We Can Go Forward
The one thing in common that all the coronavirus-successful Asia-Pacific examples – Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore – have is they learnt from the earlier avian flu and SARS outbreaks. They made preparations in advance and their institutions and procedures were activated with exemplary swiftness and efficiency. Perhaps Australia too needs the equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Like the latter, Australia and New Zealand could consider a Trans-Tasman centre (TTCDC).
All countries should undertake brutally honest retrospective analyses of the modelling used to design and implement mitigation, suppression and elimination strategies in order to answer basic questions: how many deaths did lockdowns forestall; how many more could have been avoided by earlier hard lockdowns; how many excess deaths were caused by the direct and indirect effects of lockdowns? Typically, the models project various scenarios based on different policy interventions, from doing nothing to a growing list of mitigation measures as the best-case outcome. Yet the wide disparity between the predicted figures of deaths in Sweden and the observed reality as it played out is significant. The same would appear to be true of the Australian modelling released on 7 April. Here too the reproduction rate (R) had fallen below 1 and the number of recoveries had begun to exceed the number of new cases when stage 4 restrictions were imposed at the end of March (Figure 6). This then provides an independent and objective check against real data of the predictive utility of the models. Only that can give confidence about their predicted mortality tolls without the hard lockdowns. Governments that refuse to publish the modelling they based their decisions on back in March almost certainly are trying to hide their embarrassment. In Australia, on 5 June, a 29-strong group of economic and political figures called for the public release of modelling used by governments to make decisions on health emergencies and for governments to rely on broader sources of advice than just epidemiologists and public health experts.
As things stand, there are too many holes in the dominant narratives being peddled by governments, many of them inconsistent with one another. The federal government is unlikely to face significant backlash even if the inquiry concludes that the tough lockdown measures were not necessary and may have caused more harm than good. Most people recognise that the situation looked fearful at the time and the authorities acted with the best motives for the collective interest. Citizens treated with respect as adults will reciprocate, provided mistakes are acknowledged and learned from. New institutions and procedures are needed to better prepare for future crises and move forward instead of being stuck in the past.
To return to Norway, on 27 May, Prime Minister Erna Solberg went on television to confess she had panicked at the start of the pandemic and introduced the tough measures unnecessarily. In particular, closing of schools was not just unnecessary, but counterproductive. Margrethe Greve-Isdahl, the NIPH expert on infections in schools, told the UK’s Sunday Telegraph that if schools had stayed open, they could have played a role in informing people in badly hit immigrant communities of hygiene and social distancing rules. It’s important to admit the truth, Director-General Stoltenberg said, because if the infection levels were to rise again, or a second wave hit Norway next winter, the country needed to be brutally honest about the effectiveness of lockdown.
Just so.
Ramesh Thakur FAIIA, a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, is Emeritus Professor of the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and co-convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. Ramesh is a fellow of the AIIA.
This is part two of a two-part article on the need for a critical assessment of national responses to the pandemic. “Foreshadowing a Coronavirus Royal Commission” was published on 11 June 2020.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
06 Jan 2021
By Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur FAIIA
Share
There has been a remarkable lack of observed statistical difference in the rates of death for countries, and for US states, that have and have not locked down. An assessment of the models used to project different scenarios must be evaluated relative to the lived reality.
This article was one of the most read in Australian Outlook in 2020.
There are strongly divergent views among software engineers, epidemiologists, medical scientists, physicists, chemists, and statisticians over the quality of the computer code behind the original Imperial College London model of 16 March, the reliability of modelling, the infection fatality rate (IFR), the evolutionary curve of the virus, the proportions and infectiousness of asymptomatic cases, its controllability by severity and timing of lockdowns, the threshold at which herd immunity is achieved, and if there is any realistic alternative to herd immunity. Some experts now believe there is cross immunity from people’s exposure to the existing endemic coronaviruses, or natural T-cell immunity in certain genetic populations, while WHO said most recently that it’s very rare for asymptomatic cases to infect others.
There is little observational data that the reproduction rate has shot up alarmingly in places that have opened up. Instead the trend remains downward at broadly comparable rates logarithmically, providing mathematical confirmation of the observed reality. As people like Karl Friston, one of the world’s topmost statisticians, Sunetra Gupta, John Ioannidis, and Michael Levitt have been predicting in opposition to the modellers from the beginning, the pandemic is as fast burning out in Europe and the US as it did in China.
It’s hard to see much evidence in India either of the effectiveness of a stringent lockdown after two-and-a-half months, or of a self-flattening curve (Figure 5). On 30 May, India reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases by almost 8,000 for a total of over 180,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. Yet, on that very day, India announced a substantial easing of lockdown restrictions. By 9 June its total death tally was 7,750. The explanation for the lifting of lockdown measures despite the continuing high numbers of infections and deaths is simple: the rise in deaths and misery caused by the lockdown, well beyond the capacity of India’s health and transport networks and social safety nets to support, had become a huge national shame and scandal. India is not alone. The Wall Street Journal reported that many poor countries have shifted to easing lockdown restrictions despite rising infections and deaths because they’ve concluded that the cost in lives, livelihoods, and destitution are just too high.
On 29 May, Zaria Gorvett reported for the BBC Future program that most COVID-19 deaths will be not from the virus but from the collateral damage inflicted by the various lockdown measures. “Across the globe, patients have reported being denied cancer care, kidney dialysis and urgent transplant surgeries, with sometimes fatal results,” she said. Reports from reputable bodies like Oxfam, the UN, and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have contained mutually reinforcing warnings that the severity of the lockdown measures could reverse a decade’s worth of gains in infant and child mortality with over a million additional deaths, exacerbate health, hunger, and misery insecurities, and push another half billion people into poverty. There are some impassioned attacks on the immoral and callous indifference of epidemiologists to the deadly consequences of their prescriptions for millions of lives and livelihoods around the world.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just a “Third World” worry. Australia’s top mental health experts warn that a lockdown-induced 50 percent jump in suicides could kill ten times as many as the virus. Similarly the Royal College of Psychiatrists reports a sixfold increase in suicide attempts by the elderly in the UK because of depression and anxiety caused by social isolation during the lockdown. With elective surgeries and routine screenings suspended, many cancers and heart diseases that are treatable if caught in time will dramatically elevate the death toll.
An analysis of the official UK data from the Office for National Statistics concluded that of the excess deaths in England and Wales this year over last year’s data to the week ending 1 May, only one-third can be explained by COVID-19. David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, said on 12 May that, of the “staggering burden” of 30,000 more deaths than would normally be expected, only 10,000 have had COVID-19 specified on the death certificate.
Meanwhile Germany is in damage control after a leaked report challenged the established narrative. Its main conclusions are that the lethality of COVID-19 was overestimated compared to the normal flu level. The report highlights the grave, manifold, and heavy consequences of the measures to fight the virus and warns that more people are dying because of state-imposed mitigation measures than are being killed by the virus. Initially, the government dismissed the report as the work of one employee. But it turns out the 93-page report was drafted by a scientific panel that included medical experts from several German universities. Its authors issued a joint press release on 11 May criticising the government for ignoring expert advice. The German government has not yet reacted, but on 23 May authorities confirmed that 52,000 cancer operations had been delayed.
Politicising Science
It’s instructive to compare the lack of robust science behind epidemiological modelling with the depth, breadth, and longevity of the science underpinning climate change. Or, to put this another way, the policy has been transformed from a scientific to a political mission. Boris Jonson’s top adviser, the by-now notorious Dominic Cummings who made a questionable 260-mile roundtrip to Durham during the lockdown, is said by Bloomberg news to have pressed the independent scientific advisers to recommend lockdown measures. On the excessive two-metre distancing rule, Prof. Robert Dingwall is reported in The Telegraph on 7 May to have said a senior public health specialist told him “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was.” So “we doubled it to be on the safe side.”
In the UK, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies. Under pressure from a legal challenge from aviation tycoon Simon Dolan, on 29 May the government released the minutes of SAGE meetings from the period leading up to the lockdown announcement on 23 March. Lawyer Paul Chaplin went through the minutes. On 18 March, SAGE advised that “the measures already announced should have a significant effect,” and additional measures might be needed only “if compliance rates are low.” At no point before 23 March did SAGE recommend anything resembling a full lockdown. Instead, at a meeting on 10 March, the group noted that banning public gatherings would have little effect since most viral transmission occurred in confined spaces, such as within households. Based on the earlier broad summaries provided, Christopher Snowdon from the Institute of Economic Affairs concluded: “the strategy which preceded the lockdown… was based on science whereas the decision to go into lockdown was political.”
A scandal is brewing in Denmark because of a leaked email to the Politiken newspaper. The head of the health ministry told the head of the Health Authority to suspend his professionalism as a public servant, and instead adopt an “extreme precautionary principle” when giving political advice based on a deliberately inflated reproduction number (2.6, not 2.1). Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen then proceeded to mislead the public, it’s alleged, by implying that her decision to impose a strict lockdown on the country was based on advice from the health agency. Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young’s logic on school closures is also primarily political. She accepts the evidence that schools are not a high-risk environment for the spread of the virus but closing them helps to convince people how grave the situation is. “So sometimes it’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging.”
We Need a Royal Commission to Look Back So We Can Go Forward
The one thing in common that all the coronavirus-successful Asia-Pacific examples – Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Singapore – have is they learnt from the earlier avian flu and SARS outbreaks. They made preparations in advance and their institutions and procedures were activated with exemplary swiftness and efficiency. Perhaps Australia too needs the equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Like the latter, Australia and New Zealand could consider a Trans-Tasman centre (TTCDC).
All countries should undertake brutally honest retrospective analyses of the modelling used to design and implement mitigation, suppression and elimination strategies in order to answer basic questions: how many deaths did lockdowns forestall; how many more could have been avoided by earlier hard lockdowns; how many excess deaths were caused by the direct and indirect effects of lockdowns? Typically, the models project various scenarios based on different policy interventions, from doing nothing to a growing list of mitigation measures as the best-case outcome. Yet the wide disparity between the predicted figures of deaths in Sweden and the observed reality as it played out is significant. The same would appear to be true of the Australian modelling released on 7 April. Here too the reproduction rate (R) had fallen below 1 and the number of recoveries had begun to exceed the number of new cases when stage 4 restrictions were imposed at the end of March (Figure 6). This then provides an independent and objective check against real data of the predictive utility of the models. Only that can give confidence about their predicted mortality tolls without the hard lockdowns. Governments that refuse to publish the modelling they based their decisions on back in March almost certainly are trying to hide their embarrassment. In Australia, on 5 June, a 29-strong group of economic and political figures called for the public release of modelling used by governments to make decisions on health emergencies and for governments to rely on broader sources of advice than just epidemiologists and public health experts.
As things stand, there are too many holes in the dominant narratives being peddled by governments, many of them inconsistent with one another. The federal government is unlikely to face significant backlash even if the inquiry concludes that the tough lockdown measures were not necessary and may have caused more harm than good. Most people recognise that the situation looked fearful at the time and the authorities acted with the best motives for the collective interest. Citizens treated with respect as adults will reciprocate, provided mistakes are acknowledged and learned from. New institutions and procedures are needed to better prepare for future crises and move forward instead of being stuck in the past.
To return to Norway, on 27 May, Prime Minister Erna Solberg went on television to confess she had panicked at the start of the pandemic and introduced the tough measures unnecessarily. In particular, closing of schools was not just unnecessary, but counterproductive. Margrethe Greve-Isdahl, the NIPH expert on infections in schools, told the UK’s Sunday Telegraph that if schools had stayed open, they could have played a role in informing people in badly hit immigrant communities of hygiene and social distancing rules. It’s important to admit the truth, Director-General Stoltenberg said, because if the infection levels were to rise again, or a second wave hit Norway next winter, the country needed to be brutally honest about the effectiveness of lockdown.
Just so.
Ramesh Thakur FAIIA, a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, is Emeritus Professor of the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He is Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and co-convener of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. Ramesh is a fellow of the AIIA.
This is part two of a two-part article on the need for a critical assessment of national responses to the pandemic. “Foreshadowing a Coronavirus Royal Commission” was published on 11 June 2020.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
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u.s. have already creamed off the top 6.9% of ah nehs from shitdia. only losers remain. easy walkover for prc.
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USA still needs the shitskinned cheap labour for manufacturing
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terrible supply chain and logistics, horrible quality control, screwed up processes, minimal training, disruptive workers, incompetent and corrupted management. factories there have tremendous labialities and liabilities. can erupt into riots anytime.
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Indeed. If i keep laughing this hard eveyday intestines will come out
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I honestly don't understand all the fuss about India. Of course those with political agendas will hype the situation and the mainstream media has to echo the narrative set by their owners will milk the situation for all it is worth. However the reality is that deaths in India are very modest in comparison with the very Western nations that are critical of the Indian government's response.
India's death's per million stands at 150 as of 30th April. Even if we accept that the number is vastly under counted and the actual figure is 10x higher overall that puts the figure at 150x 10 or 1500 deaths per million.
UK, USA, Belgium, Italy and many other European states are way above that figure.
India will be fine. In a couple of weeks the numbers will start dropping and everyone can move on.
India's death's per million stands at 150 as of 30th April. Even if we accept that the number is vastly under counted and the actual figure is 10x higher overall that puts the figure at 150x 10 or 1500 deaths per million.
UK, USA, Belgium, Italy and many other European states are way above that figure.
India will be fine. In a couple of weeks the numbers will start dropping and everyone can move on.
To someone like you who is desensitized to the calamity that is the Pandemic this is natural. You suffer from a Personality Disorder, possibly schizotypal but to be sure an assessment is required.
At some point your inability to process emotion will take its toil as you seek to numb yourself from the pain and suffering you seek to medicate through denial and other sociopathic behavior.
We have told you to come in but you refuse. And your mental issues clearly continue for all to see in plain sight.
kindly contact us for an assessment:
https://www.imh.com.sg/
Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747
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Wrong. Again. Call it 0 for 159 tries.
https://abc7ny.com/india-covid-cases-coronavirus-case-count-underreported-in-vaccine/10569181/
Why number of COVID cases in India is exponentially higher than reported
By Carla K. Johnson, AP Medical Writer
Sunday, May 2, 2021 9:02AM
NEW DELHI -- Even after more than a year of devastating coronavirus surges across the world, the intensity and scale of India's current crisis stands out, with patients desperate for short supplies of oxygen, pleas for help from overwhelmed hospitals, and images of body bags and funeral pyres.
As daily case counts soar far beyond what other countries have reported, experts caution the official COVID-19 numbers from the world's second most populous country are likely a massive undercount. But why is India's data considered inaccurate? Is the data any less accurate than what other nations report? And which numbers give a good indication of the crisis?
Is India counting every COVID case?
India is not counting every coronavirus case, but no nation can. Around the world, official tallies generally report only confirmed cases, not actual infections. Cases are missed because testing is so haphazard and because some people infected by the coronavirus experience mild or even no symptoms.
The more limited the testing, the more cases are being missed. The World Health Organization says countries should be doing 10 to 30 tests per confirmed case.
India is doing about five tests for every confirmed case, according to Our World in Data, an online research site. The U.S. is doing 17 tests per confirmed case. Finland is doing 57 tests per confirmed case.
"There are still lots of people who are not getting tested," said Dr. Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto. "Entire houses are infected. If one person gets tested in the house and reports they're positive and everyone else in the house starts having symptoms, it's obvious they have COVID, so why get tested?"
Jha estimates, based on modeling from a previous surge in India, that the true infection numbers could be 10 times higher than the official reports.
What about deaths?
Deaths are a better indicator of the shape of the pandemic curve, Jha said, but there are problems with the data here too.
"The biggest gap is what's going on in rural India," Jha said. In the countryside, people often die at home without medical attention, and these deaths are vastly underreported. Families bury or cremate their loved ones themselves without any official record. Seventy percent of the nation's deaths from all causes occur in rural India in any given year.
MORE: 18 COVID-19 patients killed in India hospital fire as country steps up COVID vaccines
Eighteen COVID patients were killed early Saturday, when a fire broke out in a hospital in India.
Counting rural deaths can be done, as Jha's work with the Million Death Study has shown. The pre-pandemic project used in-person surveys to count deaths in rural India, capturing details of symptoms and circumstances with results of the " verbal autopsies " reviewed and recorded by doctors.
Many low- and middle-income countries have similar undercounts of death data, Jha said, but India could do better.
"It's a country that's got a space program. Just counting the dead is a basic function," he said. "India should be doing much, much better."
Does it matter?
Knowing the size and scope of the outbreak and how it is changing helps governments and health officials plan their responses.
Even with the known problems with the data, the trajectory of COVID-19 cases and deaths in India is an alarming reminder of how the virus can rocket through a largely unvaccinated population when precautions are lifted.
"What happens in India matters to the entire world," said Dr. Amita Gupta, chair of the Johns Hopkins India Institute in a Facebook conversation Thursday. "We care from a humanitarian perspective, a public health perspective, and a health security perspective."
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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health & fitnesscoronaviruscovid 19 vaccineindiau.s. & world
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I notice that among people I talk to not many people are sympathetic to Indians dying, most of us REALLY dont like Indians
Some are even hopeful there will less Indians when its all over
So lesson is they can die but leave your disease there dont spread to us
Indians can fuck off and die in their shithole, nobody likes these disgusting filthy parasites.
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Shitskins can dig one massive hole and fill it with kerosene to keep the fire burning.
All the shit corpse will be thrown into the fire, shit rapists can be thrown in alive too, any filthy indian can just walk into it and burn themselves alive.
All the shit corpse will be thrown into the fire, shit rapists can be thrown in alive too, any filthy indian can just walk into it and burn themselves alive.
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I take it you are not a fan of them, in any case
No shit sherlock...
Find me someone who's a shitskin fan....
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