Victoria.Australia.
Hospital-in-the-Home OUT.
Quarantine-Jail IN.
Starting from Monday, Victoria.Australia is again accepting returning citizens*. In accord with the decisions of the other* state premiers (governors), they won’t be allowed to self-quarantine: they will have to pay for hotel rooms*.
The quarantine program will not be run by the Health department. It will be run by the Justice department, with a manager seconded from the prison service, overseen by the Police Minister.
*In Australia, “returned from OS”, that is, “returned from Over Seas”. What words do you use in countries where returning doesn’t necessarily imply crossing an ocean?
*The other state premiers have to all agree, otherwise we’ll be back to state border patrols again.
*They only have to pay AU100 per day, because the security guards are paid out of the Police budget.
After the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the United States on January 20, it took almost 100 days to reach 1 million infections. Now, the country has added more than 1 million cases to its grim total in just five days.
While we’re on the verge of getting emergency approvals for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, early availability of the vaccines will be limited, due to production issues.
We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms , in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.
But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they didn’t get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon.
I note that Derek makes no observation that the same issue might be at play for COVID itself.
Here in the UK a survey suggests that one fifth of people may refuse the vaccine.
The UK has this priority list. I calculate that I’m no higher than about eight millionth in the queue. But if the survey is correct, I just moved up a couple of million places.*
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(*) - yes, I know, probability of refusal might well correlate with a perception of low risk of serious harm from COVID. But I can hope.
FWIW, I’ve read that people are fairly terrible at predicting how they will act in the future on surveys, especially when there are tangible benefits to actually doing a thing that do not exist when you’re answering a hypothetical question on a survey. My guess is that the percentage of vaccination refusers will go way down by the time ordinary people are able to get the vaccine, especially if it’s required to do fun stuff like traveling or attending large concerts and sports events.
Actually, hard on the heels of a post suggesting all the excess COVID deaths are simply figments of our imagination, the idea that Die Hard is all we’ll get for Christmas and that the greed, violence, and self-centeredness inherent in the trope is how people should behave fits together rather nicely.
Washington Post is reporting that Trump announced via tweet that Rudy Giuliani has tested positive. He is 76. This is news, but I have to remind myself of what forum this is, and refrain from further comment.
Oops – didn’t refresh the thread, so I didn’t see that last post before posting.
It’s easy to test for COVID, but no easy way to test whether a vaccine caused a heart attack so not the same issue at all.
A common claim among COVID-deniers is that other causes of death are being counted as COVID, but studies suggest that it is the opposite – many COVID deaths are being counted as something else.
Yes, and especially if employers require the vaccine. While many people grumbled when medical facilities started requiring flu shots, and a few quit, most complied.
