No WHO for you
Coalition backbenchers have called for a review of Australia’s funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It comes a day after US President Donald Trump announced the US would stop their financial support pending a review into the organisation’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Australia contributes nearly $53 million a year to the WHO, with Morrison saying he sympathised with some of Trump’s criticisms. He added Australia wouldn’t rule out reviewing the WHO’s performance but would wait until the pandemic was over.
Six days of non-intervention and now we have a pandemic
Chinese officials secretly determined they were likely facing a pandemic when the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan but waited six days to inform the public. During that time, millions of people started travelling for Lunar New Year celebrations, while the city of Wuhan hosted a banquet for tens of thousands of people.
President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, January 20, when there were already more than 3000 infections.
China has also reopened its wet markets, selling fresh meat, produce and live animals with support from WHO (though WHO did advise against the selling of live animals). China has no animal welfare standards, and experts have warned that poorly treated and stressed animals are more likely to spread diseases. Morrison has berated WHO for its support.
Masks are the hot autumn trend
New York’s governor has ordered residents to wear masks in public where social distancing is not possible, which includes walking on the footpath, catching public transport or being inside a shop. Scarves or bandanas are permitted in lieu of a surgical mask.
Around the world, people have started making their own face masks amid a shortage. Czech citizens have been credited with starting the movement, releasing videos on how to make homemade masks, while Taiwanese officials have worn pink masks to encourage students to do the same without being ridiculed by classmates.
Hello, great depression
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is facing huge demand, with 102 of the 189 member countries seeking assistance. They’re set to lend US$1 trillion ($1.58 trillion) and suspend debt payments for low-income countries, warning coronavirus is likely to trigger the worst recession since the Great Depression.
School fights
School closures are back up for debate, with the national cabinet tonight discussing when kids can go back to class. Education Minister Dan Tehan is hoping schools will go back to normal within four to six weeks. States have once again dissented, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying she won’t direct parents to send children to school.
The lockdown may be necessary but it is immensely costly. We should be looking at everything we can do to minimize the time of lockdown. I have already published a proposal for the national one-day testing of all Australians if we can mass produce a reliable respiratory infection test kit. (Research probably has a ratio of three intellectual property lawyers to one scientist because I suspect that is the only reason we do not have one by now.) Using the augmented electoral process we could test the whole population twice for 1/1000th of the money the federal government is splashing around ($10 x 25 million = $250 million). Let us say the production of a test kit is a long shot, say, 10 to 1 against. To have the electoral commission liaise with the home office to prepare for such an eventuality might cost, say, $1 per name or $25 million. You don’t need to be Lloyd Williams to work out we ought to be taking the bet and spending the $25 million. And even if it does not come off, it would leave Australia with a database of actually who is living in the country which I would have thought would be a pretty useful thing for a government to have.
I cannot understand the value placed on testing.
If one is found to NOT be infected, does that not induce a false sense of security when they could be infected 5 minutes later?
> Chinese officials secretly determined they were likely facing a pandemic when the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan but waited six days to inform the public. During that time, millions of people started travelling for Lunar New Year celebrations, while the city of Wuhan hosted a banquet for tens of thousands of people.
Is a key assumption of such a report that other governments would have acted promptly themselves given a 6 day head start?
I wonder if this report is a blame shifting exercise and a what if exercise.
Do we need an accounting of how much time of our own government had wasted since learning of the virus existence before taking concrete action?
In March, Morrison, on a Friday declared a lock down for Monday and even suggested that people should go to Footy on a weekend. There’s at least 2 days of delay right there.
Our cruel live trade exports aren’t any better than what we accuse other cultures livestock practises of.
Most Asian commercial food courts/eateries have always provided in-situ hand washing sinks with soap, water and towels for pre/post dining hygene, unlike our equivalent and typically hidden filthy private toilets.
Or how about a good old Aussie Kangaroo cull? Give the vermin to your pet dog? What about croc, camel or roo burger? What about our Aussie dog food sitting alongside your dinner at the supermarket?
Our animal food farm/factories have special !egal protection now prohibiting any exposure of the cruelty behind the shed walls.
What steps did we take from the 20Jan when China did admit it had a problem, even though it was already widely know? When did we start any action?
For want of an Uplike button, I agree with all your points.
Especially the pen ultimate paragraph.
Some of these dates don’t add up. The virus was known in late December, I read an SMH report on the first Saturday in January. How is January 20 the seventh day? More like the 24th day.
And what is with Morrison’s desperation around schools? What holy roller stupidity informs that thinking? It’s only really an issue for years 11 and 12. The rest have years to catch up.
It’s a crazy unnecessary risk, even if the risk is small, which I find difficult to believe.
Is ScoMo’s taking instructions from someone who may not be a medical expert, or risk manager? It’s just dumb, or ideological.
The present China bashing by Australia has a long history dating back to the mid-19th century gold rush. Indeed White Australia’s first PM Edmund Barton stated (1901): “The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of an Englishman and the Chinaman.” The first case of Covid-19 in China may have been on 17 November 2019 but the Chinese Government notified the WHO that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December 2020, and notified the world about human-to-human transmission of coronavirus on 21 January 2020. The first cases were detected in the UK in January 2020 but were predicted because of regular flights to the UK from Wuhan that had been noted as a Covid-19 disease cluster by 31 December 2019. The UK Government adopted stringent controls after mid-March and UK schools were closed from 20 March 2020 but it was tragically too late. The first case of Covid-19 in Australia was detected on 25 January 2020, 11 weeks ago. However the incompetent, anti-science and neoliberal Coalition Government adopted an “evolving” response and has still declined to close schools in the face of mounting concern from numerous medical experts. If island continent Australia had acted in January 2020 to ban all foreign entries and to quarantine and test all Australian entries then Australia today would have zero cases of Covid-19. Such “ifs” aside, it is clear that (1) action should ideally have been maximal and as early as possible given human-to-human transmission and exponential growth of infection that threatens to overwhelm medical services, and (2) despite inevitable shortcomings and mistakes Australia is fortunately in a group of “good” countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Greece, Australia) that have remarkably suffered relatively few deaths through successful suppression policies. However severe socio-economic and health deficits put Indigenous Australians at high risk from travellers in the Covid-19 pandemic (see Gideon Polya, “UK-Australia COVID-19 deaths, deprivation deaths in Developing countries, Indigenous avoidable deaths”, Global Research, 8 April 2020: https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-australian-covid-19-deaths-versus-developing-country-indigenous-avoidable-deaths-deprivation/5708948 ).