The beauty about the Victorian coronavirus rules are its a game anybody can play at home - not just Victorians. Google the restrictions and then apply them to your own life and see how much fun it is day in, day out, for months on end

I'd be more comfortable if every rule and proposal by Victoria had to be signed off on a case by case basis

It doesnt "necessarily mean" that, but it has been pretty much stated that mandatory face masks will be part of the Victorian life until the virus has been eliminated entirely from the community, which we know is impossible. it has also been said stage 2 as a minimum will be permanently in place

"Totally reasonable"? Yeah, I can see how somebody walking a dog down an isolated road in Mildura is a threat to the health and well being of Australians. Face masks havent even been proven as an effective defence mechanism so they certainly dont warrant emergency powers to enforce them. They are the VAR of this virus

The case numbers in Victoria as opposed to other states begs to argue measures are not excessive enough imho. 

Thats false logic. People tend to assume that any restriction will have a positive impact on reducing numbers and therefore any situation with restrictions in place will be hypothetically better off without them

NSW and Victoria had the exact same virus, exact same genome, started by the exact same people, in the exact same small numbers:
NSW - approx 200-300 cases
Victoria - over 17,000 cases

Social distancing works. We have seen with every single outbreak right across Australia that even the most extreme cases cap out after 150-200 cases because eventually the end points reach a dead end or point of resistance. Even the Ruby Princess debacle which started with 6 infected people and was nation wide capped out at about 800 infections

By comparison to the Victorian outbreak the Ruby Princess has seen less than 5% of the total infections

Social distancing doesn't work if people arent allowed to leave their house. It is undeniable the rules and regulations in Victoria caused the virus to accelerate. Other states dont have this problem because they have a better life balance and their citizens can make smarter decisions

I am openly going to need you to explain this one to me. 

If you want to eat a meal with a friend or another family in a restaurant you have to sit 1.5 meters apart and the restaurant needs certain hygiene, contact and distancing standards to stay in operation. Same as the super market. Same as public places like sports grounds or community parks

What this means is the chance of you transmitting the virus are very very low. Thats how social distancing works. So even though people with the virus are in and about the community at the very least you can avoid getting it. Sooner or later the virus reaches a point of resistance and dies. And we have seen this with every out break in every state. Even the worst of them

In Victoria you cant go to the a restaurant or bar. You cant go to the playground. You can't have a walking group. To meet up with friends or family members you have to do so at home. Use the same bathroom, same facilities, same cups and plates, same furniture. No social distancing. No hygiene

The virus in Victoria simply bypassed our only defence mechanism (after quarantine) and was allowed to spread from household to work place to household to work place. A point acknowledged by Andrews before any lockdown was imposed but one never acted on

Yes but you’re capping the number to the household this way...

Anyway, aren’t these measures signed off and made by the Victorian Health Department so it is apolitical?

I am very confused. I thought you were in Stage 4 restrictions, meaning you had to stay at home apart from:
- shopping for food or other essential items
- exercise (applies to outdoor exercise, and with only one other person)
- permitted work

I am confused where meeting up with friends or family members in your home, using same facilities and lack of hygeine, comes into this?

Right but what we have seen is one family infected give it to another family, give it to a third family, take it work, give it to their families etc... 

The virus in Victoria has been spreading through linked households, work places and facilities and the amount of infections so far (99% linked to 6 people leaving a hotel) is over 17,000 and still going

It completely bypasses social distancing measures where if 2 families meet up in public for a meal or a picnic, even if sick, the chance of spreading it one another diminishes (as we have seen by infection numbers)

People blame the hotel quarantine for this mess. Outbreaks are inevitable. We have seen them time and time again before and will see them time and time again. Thats the whole point of the suppression strategy. The real question is how did a small outbreak result in 17,000 infections when NSW with the exact same situation kept it at 200-300 (which is what we can expect in worst case scenarios)


As for signed off by the health department, there was an article the other day about public transport in NSW calling for mandatory masks. People can only look after themselves and advocate for what they want (we see this all the time with the PFA). They dont necessarily see the bigger picture and the impact it may have in other areas. Health ministers dont understand the need for people to go to work, go to school, catch up and socialise, play sport, camping, fishing, hiking etc... The only thing they can do is look at their front door and number of people in their beds and advocate for the resources they need and what will make their jobs easier

The job of the premier is to take all advice from all areas and make a balanced macro decision. Not narrow mindedly go all out on a mission of destroying a virus without seeing the bigger picture impact it is having. This approach has undeniably resulted in more infections, not less

Stage 4 restrictions dont prohibit social contact and visits on compassionate grounds. They were also introduced after it was already a problem

I think one point you're missing is with all these measures, social distancing is still required.

Murdoch might make it look like all of Victoria are after Dan Andrews with pitchforks, but it turns out only 36% of us rate the Victorian government's response to the pandemic as poor: https://essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport

They did hide their poll results in page 13 . They dont care

You make it sound like there aren't restrictions for home visits everywhere. Yes it's an important factor in spread and in many ways meeting up in public is safer. The rules here on home visits when we had a scare got tightened immediately but businesses didn't. However there are plenty of examples where clusters have started in public venues so the assertion that the risk of transmission is "very very low" is not true at all.

Unfortunately in Victoria there was a failure in contact tracing and the virus got into some places that it spread fast. From memory, the numbers only really started to be curbed 2 weeks after it went to level 4. To me that seems to suggest it's working. You can talk about suppression strategies, but with the numbers Victoria have relative to everywhere else in the country the numbers have to get down to much lower than they currently are for any state to want to open up. It's much easier to suppress the virus when there's a handful of infected people (in SA anyone that's infected or a close contact is immediately chucked into hotel quarantine) than it is with a Western United crowd's worth of infected people.

People need to realise that the death toll is misleading. Today 24 people with Covid died, but that is not the same as 24 people dying from Covid. Currently in Vic I could die in a car accident but if I had Covid I would be added to the stat. Very misleading and just part of the scaremongering the government is using to justify their actions.

Righto Andrew Bolt. 

Seriously starting to hate this above pseudo-conspiracy bullshit where the gubmunt are using COVID to "control the population". It takes some seriously impressive wilful ignorance to come to this conclusion considering the way its divesting the economy. 

Not to mention completely ignoring the rising evidence of the health impacts of those with mild to moderate cases of the virus. What sort of impact would that have on our society I wonder?

Happy for you to show how many of those 24 did not die from covid. I'll go with the broadcasted figures until notified otherwise though. 

100% agree, it would be great if the government reported actual deaths by Covid instead of their dodgy statistic. Ref below confirms what I said, and note this is a National practice, not just Vic.

Victorian CMO explains death classifications

By Rachael Dexter

Australia’s deaths from coronavirus include people who may not have specifically died from the virus itself. Victoria’s Chief Health Officer has explained the practice, which is a standard set by the Commonwealth National Surveillance Committee and consistent across the country. “Anyone who’s a confirmed case who dies is classified amongst the deaths, so it doesn’t have to be definitely from coronavirus,” he said. “In some instances, you know in aged care, there would have been some residents who were already receiving palliative care who became infected with coronavirus”.

At 12.24 in below blog.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-security-guard-contracts-virus-at-sydney-s-marriott-hotel-victoria-records-lowest-cases-in-a-month-australian-death-toll-stands-at-438-20200818-p55mxc.html

oops!! edumacate yourself, dont be a .....

Also interestingly, check out the guidance from the ABS on cause of death death

3.Chain of events

Due to the public health importance of COVID-19, the immediate recommendation is to record COVID-19 in Part I of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death.

4.Co-morbidities

Existing conditions, especially those which are chronic in nature, that may have also contributed to death should be certified in Part II of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death. Chronic conditions may include but are not limited to: coronary artery disease, COPD, diabetes, cancer or disabilities.

https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1205.0.55.001

So you could have an inoperable brain tumor and already be on life support, but test positive to covid and bang, you are added to the Covid "death toll" and Daniel Andrews uses your death to justify the lockdown.

Not saying there is a Bill Gates trying to microchip us all level of conspiracy, but inflating figures to make the problem scarier than it actually is does make the general public more compliant, isnt that right SFC1987?

How much do you think the numbers are inflated? 5% 25% 100%+?

😂😂😂 There's nothing left to do but laugh these days. 

Cant tell as there is no transparency in the reporting, but today in Vic it was a fair amount as I heard on the radio about majority of the 24 deaths were not in ICU, which is where you would think they would be if they were on ventilators suffering from Covid related pneumonia.

Another fun fact, in the UK if you die withing 28 days of testing positive, you are added to their Covid death toll, irrespective of way you die. It used to be 60 days until recently.

So when you check out the report below from UK Stats Board, makes for interesting reading:

There were 50,335 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) that occurred between 1 March and 30 June 2020, registered up to 4 July 2020 in England and Wales; of these, 46,736 had COVID-19 assigned as the underlying cause of death.

Of the deaths involving COVID-19 that occurred in England and Wales in March to June 2020, there was at least one pre-existing condition in 91.1% of cases; this is a similar level to that shown in March to May.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinjune2020

Not saying Covid didnt contribute, but have to question how many of these people would have died anyway if there was a flu or other respiratory disease also circulating

As you say it's hard to get exact numbers public which in many ways is understandable IMO. I'd very much doubt that "the majority" weren't seriously ill from the virus when they died.

The stat of 91.1% of cases having a pre-existing condition is meaningless really. Of course people with pre-existing conditions are more vulnerable.

How many of them would have died from a seasonal flu or other common respiratory disease is something you can estimate by looking at deaths by that cause in previous seasons. The numbers this year, are way higher than anything that we've seen in recent times.

I mean over 500 people in Victoria have died. Don't you think the Murdoch rags, who would love nothing more than to have evidence that this thing is overblown and Dan Andrews is power hungry, could find a handful of representatives from victim's families that would come forward to say "hey my family member x is on the covid death list but actually they tripped over jogging"?

This is in a document about Covid-19 deaths - not all deaths. Guidance for Certifying Deaths due to COVID-19. If you died from a brain tumour the causal pathway leading to death would be the brain tumour. If you died from Covid-19 the causal pathway leading to death would be Covid-19. Pretty standard and non-controversial unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat.

But they know how many people would die ordinarily on a month by month basis.  It's a pretty straight forward, if agricultural, check to see how many extra deaths there were this time this year vs this time last year. 

All of these studies have shown either the reporting on Covid deaths are pretty accurate or actually probably worse than what's being reported.

Not too mention that because of social distancing deaths due to ordinary flu, which run into thousands every flu season usually, are down to just 10's of cases.  So you can probably add a couple of extra thousand to the Covid pile too.

(Talking about countries where 10's of thousands have died.  Like the UK, the US, Brazil etc.)

And which is the entire point for me.

The fact that, apart from freak cases like someone with COVID getting hit by a bus (improbable though, as they shouldn't be outside with a confirmed case), the most vulnerable people who have a much higher chance of dying if they get it - are actually getting it! Where are the deflated stats for how much longer they would have lived if COVID was not added to their pre-existing conditions? 

AJF confirmed my interpretation of his/her thoughts, admitting he/she "can't tell". There is nothing to do but go on official figures until proven otherwise. 

I just did a very probably incorrect method of research, so feel free to show me where I went wrong. Referencing the below website, which I found via google, for full transparency:
https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/research-and-data-services

This site says 41,387 people in 2019 died in Victoria. If I divide that by 365 I get approx 114 deaths per day in VIC in 2019 (please correct me if I'm looking at this wrong, my maths gets ever so slightly fancier from here). If I ignore seasonal deaths and assume I can use that daily figure for every single day of the year, and then I take Victoria's COVID death stats from yesterdays update, I get 24/114 = 21.1% of expected daily deaths either died from COVID, or at the very least had COVID. That is roughly every 5th death in the state, regardless of context, had a confirmed COVID case. Note I realise my percentages are off the moment I ADD the 24 cases to the expected 114, as this is the entire premise for my rebuttal to AJF to begin with - saying the COVID cases add to the daily number. I think my percentages go down to 17.4% of daily deaths linked to a COVID case if I did that - which is what every 6th death? 

Now finishing writing this, I am not entirely sure what I am concluding, if this kind of "research" is already done and available, etc. But in essence I wanted to allude to a shit tonne of Victorians are currently dying, linked to COVID, and I find searching for pedantics like how many minute amount of positive cases died from auto erotism asphyxiation (sp?) vs actually from COVID largely irrelevant because there is just no information to say that happens regularly enough to warrant debate.