General Coronavirus chit chat thread - non-travel specific

[get me outta here]

Here is the University of Chicago's paper on Fox's handling of the Virus reporting. As some us know, Fox called it a 'hoax and no worse than the flu' which Trump took up with relish and it leads where we are today in America. Suggest you look at that paper before telling me I am 'obsessed'. Otherwise, it may be thought of yourself.
I care not a jot that you think it, "looks like a bit of an obsession with Fox news".

I'm sure Fox considers this University paper a fake. So, best you you quote my whole post instead of just pulling out bits out of context and making judgemental comments.

ttps://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_202044.pdf

Here is the abstract from the report I posted just above :

“Abstract
We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States — Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News — on viewers’ behavior and downstream health outcomes. Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February. We first validate these differences in content with independent coding of show transcripts. In line with the differences in content, we present novel survey evidence that Hannity’s viewers changed behavior in response to the virus later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior earlier. We then turn to the effects on the pandemic itself, examining health outcomes across counties. First, we document that greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. The relationship is stable across an expansive set of robustness tests. To better identify the effect of differential viewership of the two shows, we employ a novel instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in when shows are broadcast in relation to local sunset times. These estimates also show that greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of county-level cases and deaths. Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert. We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects, they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population”.

That looks like a bit of an obsession with Fox news. I watch/listen to the ABC; I've said so many times (although I watch less these days), even Fairfax (Nine) media. Then I criticise from a first hand perspective.

Do you ever watch the dreaded Fox News yourself, with all your criticisms, to judge for yourself? If you strayed into non-ABC territory, you might be able to judge what absolute self-serving tosh Media Watch (as but one example) serves up, week after week.

 

[Major]

I think this is very clever

 

[Flying mermaid]

That looks like a bit of an obsession with Fox news. I watch/listen to the ABC; I've said so many times (although I watch less these days), even Fairfax (Nine) media. Then I criticise from a first hand perspective.

Do you ever watch the dreaded Fox News yourself, with all your criticisms, to judge for yourself? If you strayed into non-ABC territory, you might be able to judge what absolute self-serving tosh Media Watch (as but one example) serves up, week after week.

Many years ago on one of our trips to the USA, Mr FM was out shopping and I was flicking through news channels at the hotel and I found one that fascinated me. When Mr FM came home I said he had to come and watch with me, as he wouldn’t believe what the people were saying! He came over, sneered at me and said “what do you expect - that’s Fox”. I had never really heard of Fox - my first introduction

 

[p--and--t]

 

[drron]

Here is the abstract from the report I posted just above :


“Abstract
We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States — Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News — on viewers’ behavior and downstream health outcomes. Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February. We first validate these differences in content with independent coding of show transcripts. In line with the differences in content, we present novel survey evidence that Hannity’s viewers changed behavior in response to the virus later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior earlier. We then turn to the effects on the pandemic itself, examining health outcomes across counties. First, we document that greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. The relationship is stable across an expansive set of robustness tests. To better identify the effect of differential viewership of the two shows, we employ a novel instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in when shows are broadcast in relation to local sunset times. These estimates also show that greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of county-level cases and deaths. Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert. We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects, they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population”.

So you have shown that Hannity began adjusting his position in late February whilst the Mayor of NYC and his Health Commissioner didn't adjust their position against social distancing until the end of the first week in March.And NYC has the highest mortality rate in the USA.
On top of that social distancing on NYC subways wasn't enforced until the end of March.

New York City police will force people off crowded subway cars to enforce social distancing, even as trains fill to the brim with essential workers

Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement on a local news station Monday morning, even as straphangers reported packed commutes.

www.businessinsider.com.au

 

[RooFlyer]

Possibly more relevant to us here is the behavior of the 'Ruby Princess' inquiry Commissioner Bret Walker SC. Did anyone else see news excerpts last night, where a NSW Health worker was reduced to tears under persistent aggressive questioning by him? The person being interrogated was NOT one of the high-ups in NSW Health responsible for the protocols etc.

I know NSW Health have questions to answer, but I thought the aggressive questioning from Walker was completely over the top. I would have thought if the purpose of the inquiry was to get to the bottom of what happened, then humiliating an individual wasn't the best way to go. Can't find vision, sorry, but will post if I do.

 

[Pushka]

I think this is very clever

.
Thought the last line might have been stronger but needed to keep it PC I guess.

 

[Pushka]

Possibly more relevant to us here is the behavior of the 'Ruby Princess' inquiry Commissioner Bret Walker SC. Did anyone else excerpts last night, where a NSW Health worker was reduced to tears under persistent aggressive questioning by him? The person being interrogated was NOT one of the high-ups in NSW Health responsible for the protocols etc.

I know NSW Health have questions to answer, but I thought the aggressive questioning from Walker was completely over the top. I would have thought if the purpose of the inquiry was to get to the bottom of what happened, then humiliating an individual wasn't the best way to go. Can't find vision, sorry, but will post if I do.

I did wonder at the time where harassment and bullying comes into it and just hoped that person has support at work or home. And wonder why the Shadow Premier et al wasn’t calling the bullying out. But we know that answer to that don’t we.

 

[get me outta here]

I'm just sharing the research. I found it interesting that misinformation has quite an effect. It was you that called it fake news without any research in your earlier post.


"7 Conclusion Examining the effects of misinformation is particularly important during a pandemic given the large externalities involved and the significant consequences of misinformed behavior for individuals’ health and for the health care system as a whole. The two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States — Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News – originally took very different stances on the risks associated with the novel coronavirus. While Hannity downplayed the threat during the initial period of the virus’ spread in the United States, Tucker Carlson Tonight warned its viewers that the virus posed a serious threat from early February. In this paper, we show that differential exposure to these two shows affected behavior and downstream health outcomes. We begin by validating differences in content with independent coding of shows’ transcripts. Consistent with the differences in content, we present new survey evidence that Hannity’s viewers changed behavior in response to the virus later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior earlier. Using both OLS regressions with a rich set of controls and an instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in the timing of TV consumption, we then document that greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight increased the number of total cases and deaths in the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, the effects on cases start declining in mid-March, consistent with the convergence in coronavirus coverage between the two shows. Finally, we also provide additional suggestive evidence that misinformation is an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. It is important to note that our results do not speak to the longer-term effects of exposure to the two shows, which might include additional health and information spillovers. Still, our findings indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for health outcomes".

So you have shown that Hannity began adjusting his position in late February whilst the Mayor of NYC and his Health Commissioner didn't adjust their position against social distancing until the end of the first week in March.And NYC has the highest mortality rate in the USA.
On top of that social distancing on NYC subways wasn't enforced until the end of March.

New York City police will force people off crowded subway cars to enforce social distancing, even as trains fill to the brim with essential workers

Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement on a local news station Monday morning, even as straphangers reported packed commutes.

www.businessinsider.com.au

 

[Flying mermaid]

Possibly more relevant to us here is the behavior of the 'Ruby Princess' inquiry Commissioner Bret Walker SC. Did anyone else see news excerpts last night, where a NSW Health worker was reduced to tears under persistent aggressive questioning by him? The person being interrogated was NOT one of the high-ups in NSW Health responsible for the protocols etc.

I know NSW Health have questions to answer, but I thought the aggressive questioning from Walker was completely over the top. I would have thought if the purpose of the inquiry was to get to the bottom of what happened, then humiliating an individual wasn't the best way to go. Can't find vision, sorry, but will post if I do.

'Out of line': PM takes aim at Ruby Princess inquiry that left health worker in tears

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the questioning of a NSW Health worker who broke down in tears at the Ruby Princess inquiry was "out of line" and she was only doing her best.

www.abc.net.au

 

[VPS]

Anyone else resemble this at the moment

 

[RooFlyer]

Anyone else resemble this at the moment
View attachment 217205

I'm taking the 5th on that (of bourbon, of course!)

 

[RooFlyer]

'Out of line': PM takes aim at Ruby Princess inquiry that left health worker in tears

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the questioning of a NSW Health worker who broke down in tears at the Ruby Princess inquiry was "out of line" and she was only doing her best.

www.abc.net.au

People may not be surprised that I agree with him, but I think its great some-one in authority spoke up in defence of the NSW Health worker.

I remember other cases of OTT examinations in these public inquiries - its usually done by 'Counsel Assisting' in Royal Commission type settings, where m'learned friend is trying to garner a name for themselves (and are mostly then restrained by the Commissioner(s)), but to have that type of questioning done from the 'Bench', and directed to someone who is not a big player in the enquiry, gets up my nose like a virus test swab.

 

[SOPOOR]

No you may have Covid19 still. Some people have has Covid19 for much longer periods. However the point of the two weeks (14 days) is not for you to recover from Covid 19 should you have had it on day 1, but for you to not be a transmitter and infect people when you meet someone after 14 days.

At 14 days the consensus at present is that as long as you do not have a fever that even if you still have CV19 that your viral loads are such that you will not longer infect people.

This is why quarantine/isolation periods are set at 14 says.

Reportedly viral loads are greatest early on including when some people may be asymptomatic (or symptoms so slight that people do not notice them).

Positive tests can occur very late. The recent Victorian Teacher that caused the Primary School to be closed down this week is now believed to have contracted CV 19 on March 14.

Rather than the playground or staff room, it appears to be a Saturday night birthday party at the Eaglemont Cellars and Wine Bar, where Mr Campbell and his daughters are a popular, regular fixture with their rock'n'roll covers.


They each returned a positive test on (last)Friday, triggering the immediate involvement of government health and education officials.
"Basically they wanted to track all my movements from the past three to four weeks," Mr Campbell says. “It was pretty easy to do because basically, I hadn’t been anywhere. The only worry was the school.

Between performing his usual sets of Neil Diamond, Elvis, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley hits, it is likely Mr Campbell and one of his daughters contracted the virus from English guests who’d just flown into Australia from Britain for the party.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on March 15, the day after the party, that anyone arriving in Australia from overseas needed to self-quarantine for two weeks. It was not until 23 March that federal and state governments ordered the closure of pubs to stop the spread of the virus.

“On Saturday lunchtime, I got a call from them to say I had been released from isolation. They said you have got inactive or dead coronavirus cells up your nose. They have picked that up in the test and it has come back positive.
“Apparently, I was not contagious.”

Pub outbreak leaves primary school all shook up

The music teacher whose infection prompted the closure of Meadowglen Primary School was twice refused a test for coronavirus.

www.theage.com.au

A recent ACT positive test was also a case of someone with extremely low viral loads.

thats good points, I failed to incorporate the fact that the virus after two weeks gets "weaker"

 

[drron]

Quarantine is 14 days because most people have symptoms by day 14.
Problem is some people have a longer incubation period and mostly when released from quarantine they are not tested as certainly in the younger age groups there can be a high percentage of people that are asymptomatic and others possibly having picked up the virus in the quarantine hotel.

But even if tested there may be a false negative test anyway.

 

[Flying mermaid]

My friend in Victoria who is coordinating the sewing of caps for hospitals posted today that 9,520 have been delivered so far!

 

[drron]

The uptake of the app may slow down with news from the ATO that their early access to Super site has been hacked and least a 100 cases of people losing money have been uncovered.
Harder to counter the I don't trust the Government after this even though totally different from the app.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

• Brother In Law had flu like symptoms this week. With the expansion of who can be tested he went to one of the free public testing sites that have been set up to do 100,000 tests in 14 days. He was instructed to drive straight home and self-isolate till the test results where known which he did.
• Later another person was driving his car and was pulled up by the police wanting to know why they were breaching the self-isolation instruction! A quick ID check verified that this was not so. But it did demonstrate that the BIL's car rego had been entered into a database that the police were using and presumably his car had been identified by scanning of number plates

 

[lovetravellingoz]

and others possibly having picked up the virus in the quarantine hotel.

While I know you keep raising this as an issue the hotel, hotel staff and the person being quarantined have to following strict rules and guidelines.

For example:

https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/Files/Corporate/general%20documents/Infectious%20diseases/PDF/Coronavirus/COVID19-Accommodation-providers-that-have-guests-who-are-self-isolating-as-confirmed-cases.pdf

Plus cleaning of surfaces, physival distancing etc.

Now errors can occur. Which is why we also need other community measures, but hotel quarantines have been used in Australia for some time now for Covid19 and so far I have not read of any cases of people having been through hotel quarantine and then released having infected anyone post quarantine. So the process seems to be working well even if some initial teething problems have occurred.

And yes there have been some people who have tried to sneak out and break quarantine with at least one person jailed (though he was an interstate traveller rather than an international one. I suspect that international travellers would be held in hotels with a higher level of security due to the higher risk.

Whereas self-isolation at people homes has been shown to have a high incidence of people breaking isolation and with the Aspen couple creating a hotspot.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Quarantine is 14 days because most people have symptoms by day 14.
Problem is some people have a longer incubation period and mostly when released from quarantine they are not tested as certainly in the younger age groups there can be a high percentage of people that are asymptomatic

If asymptomatic spread from quarantined international travellers was a significant problem we would most likely have had reports by now of this being so. And if so we would have expected to see some toughening up of quarantine. (Though increased availability of tests, may now mean that more quarantine persons may now get tested anyway). Neither seem to be evident. Now a few cases may well have occurred, but if it was a significant problem one would by now have expected to have seen some warning flags by now.

Asymptomatic carriers are thought to be say one quarter of all carriers (It seems to vary somewhat and on the USS Theodore Roosevelt of the 600 odd infected 60% were asymptomatic). So that is a lot of people now who have returned to Australia who should have been asymptomatic during quarantine.

The lack of spread would seem to suggest that these returnees are not infectious when they leave quarantine. Various studies do now also seem to suggest that the viral load generated by carriers is greatest early on.

Now it also is the case that much is unknown about CV19, but the 14 day quarantine period does seem to be working for both the asymptomatic and symptomatic (who get tested and may get quarantined for longer). Some reports have suggested that the asymptomatic are less contagious than the symptomatic, but could spread it more to others simply because they do not know they have CV19 and indulge in practices that can spread it. But again the 14 day quarantine period seems to be preventing this.