Coronavirus: could the 2020 AFL season be called off?

[hujsh]

Be careful what you wish for. Most the leading vax candidates are new fangled mRNA vaccines which IIRC have not been used before.

Google how mRNA vaccines allegedly work. What could possibly go wrong?

Everyone I know bar one idiot don't want a bar of them. They are not anti-vaxxers, they have just read up on how mRNA vaccines work.

Obviously I'd want to hear from people qualified to give a proper medical assessment of what the implications/risks etc are but... you're not wrong it does sound pretty dangerous as a layman.

[Twodogs]

I do not want anything like what’s happening in US or Brazil or what happened in Italy, Spain or UK here. I am AOK with controls applied by federal and state government and the funding for those under hardship. Businesses can rebuild. If a friend, relative or colleague died or their health was seriously compromised as a result of covid it would be one too many for me. We also have no idea if long term health impact on those that have “recovered”.

I am 50 50 as to whether season will continue - x fingers it does though as long as we keep being competitive!!

I'm with you Josie. Economies exist to service humans, not the other way around. We can rebuild businesses or start them again but we can't bring .loved ones back to life.

[josie]

Thx Dry Rot - I will read more about mRNA approach. ABC net has good article called “the virus and the vaccine”. Does not go into dangers of mRNA though.

[anfo27]

I saw doctors deciding on who would live and who would die in Italy and health care workers in anguish after appalling mismanagement from Trump. I know where I would rather live. Economies can recover. Australia survived the last gfc well due to good government policy. We can do it again. Retail did well last quarter with some easing of restrictions. Respect your opinions however beg to differ.

What you see on the television is nothing more than fear porn. Mark Twain got it right when he said 'if you don't read the newspapers then you are uninformed but if you read the newspapers you're misinformed'.

This is a quote from Prof Riccardi scientific advisor to Italys minister for health "On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three.” The numbers are not a true reflection & whats going on the US is much worse than that.

Economists will tell you that 1% unemployment in the US equates to 50-60 thousand deaths. Now this has been studied for many decades. We could see upto 30% unemployment rates there, maybe more. Viruses come along every year since the dawn of time & cherry pick the vulnerable from society & thats the spike you always get. Now we want throw the everyone into the mix. I'm not saying let the vulnerable die, my parents are in that demographic but i don't expect people to lose their jobs & eventually their homes to protect my parents. My parents need to do the right things for themselves first & foremost before we try to help.

People will say 'listen to the experts'. I am listening to the experts! There are many many many experts in their fields who are saying the opposite of what our government officials say & i'll take an independent expert over a government one any day.

Corona virus vaccines have not gone on to human trails in the past because the animal trials were problematic. When the animals received the vaccine they were fine but once the animals were challenged with the virus the animals got worse. The vaccine created a 'cytokine storm' or a hypersensitivity to the virus & they weren't sure why that was happening. Now they are talking about an RNA vaccine that has never been done before & when you look at the details of this type of vaccine its quite concerning. Then you hear things like rushing this vaccine through the normal process, which is madness. Thats rushing through the safety of this thing when they want every man, woman & child to get it.

There are a lot of very concerning things going on here but the silence is deafening from our media.

Dry Rot has some good advice with taking natural vitamins to boost your immune system. Vitamin D3 has been proven in studies to help your immune system fight against virues like the flu. I've been taking it for years. You should also think about vitamin C & zinc. Its not going to cure you but it will help your immune system. Why haven't we heard a single word about simple things like this from our health experts?

[josie]

I trust reputable news sources like the guardian- it was not all a media beat up.

[soupman]

At risk of being severely out of my depth I'll add a few comments.

What you see on the television is nothing more than fear porn. Mark Twain got it right when he said 'if you don't read the newspapers then you are uninformed but if you read the newspapers you're misinformed'.

The media is stuffed in this country (and worldwide), heaps of biased sources and lots of flat out propoganda. On top of that horror sells so everything will be geared around the negatives, the AFL media is a perfect example of this.

This is a quote from Prof Riccardi scientific advisor to Italys minister for health "On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many had two or three.” The numbers are not a true reflection & whats going on the US is much worse than that.

The bolded quote in particular is what I want to address.

There are two issues here:
A. "Coronavirus isn't killing people, they are just dying of other stuff and happen to have coronavirus as well"
B. "Coronavirus deaths are being overreported. It's not that big a deal"

On A, this mindset is really not well thought out. Most people that already have an ailment are still alive, and are in a position where they can monitor and maintain their health to the extent that they aren't about to die. They might have some form of cancer, they might have a compromised immune system, they might just not be very healthy. For these people they would all otherwise live for longer, but the added burden of their body having to deal with Coronavirus means that their ability to do that it severely compromised. Coronavirus may not be the only issue these people have, and may even be a minor issue comparatively, but it is very capable of being the straw that breaks the camels back.

So how do we prove this? We compare total deaths in a country from a non coronavirus year to 2020, as this graph shows for Italy, comparing death totals for the previous 5 years.

That's pretty clear to me that something is killing a lot more people in 2020 than in any of the previous years, and i doubt it was just a bunch of people whos time would otherwise have already come. Even if Coronavirus doesn't directly kill people, if it's the thing that pushes someone who already has health issues from alive to dead is it not virtually the same thing?

On B, is the over reporting even happening? Again i cite the same analysis of Italy. This graph shows the excess deaths in 2020 vs 2016 in red, along with the reported COVID deaths in blue. Based on that I think it's fair to say that at least in Italy COVID deaths have probably been mostly under reported, especially when you consider the effect the lockdown would've had on other causes of death like traffic accidents and people overestimating their abilities.

While we are on this we might as well address the other issue that if we fail to contain coronavirus and it does get out of hand as it did in say Italy, then what other repercussions does it have healthwise? The classic example has become that there are only so many ICU beds and that if we fill them all up then other people that need them might die. I guess they don't die of Coronavirus though, so technically they can't be added to the tally.

Economists will tell you that 1% unemployment in the US equates to 50-60 thousand deaths. Now this has been studied for many decades. We could see upto 30% unemployment rates there, maybe more.

Now this is the big issue. Clearly keeping the economy as healthy as possible is super important in so many ways, it's negative impact on health could also be catastrophic, like COVID.

How do we fix it? I don't know. But I don't think the "just go back to normal" strategy is the right one. The economy has already taken a huge hit, but if Coronavirus kicks up again, and it will if we disregard it, then our economy is proper stuffed. Sweden is an example of the "ride it out" philosophy, and like everyone else their economy has had its arse kicked.

Our government is clearly trying to walk the line between the "stop coronavirus at all costs" and the "economy ftw" strategies, which basically means we will be in semi lockdown for a while longer. We are in a good position relative to most other countries with our case numbers, which allows us to atleast have a go at this. Community disdain and impatience notwithstanding, it seems to be somewhat working as well as could be hoped, and realistically is the best of an atrocious bunch of strategies available to us. It's like picking between Ryan Gardner, Ed Barlow and James Mulligan. They are all f*cked, so lets choose the one that will probably f*ck us the least (Ed Barlow fwiw).

Viruses come along every year since the dawn of time & cherry pick the vulnerable from society & thats the spike you always get. Now we want throw the everyone into the mix. I'm not saying let the vulnerable die, my parents are in that demographic but i don't expect people to lose their jobs & eventually their homes to protect my parents. My parents need to do the right things for themselves first & foremost before we try to help.

While it's easy to say this, when people (and there will be a lot of people in this boat) are actually faced with the prospect of their parents/grandparents/themselves sacrificing themselves for an economy that is stuffed anyway I'm not sure we will see much community buy in.

Corona virus vaccines have not gone on to human trails in the past because the animal trials were problematic. When the animals received the vaccine they were fine but once the animals were challenged with the virus the animals got worse. The vaccine created a 'cytokine storm' or a hypersensitivity to the virus & they weren't sure why that was happening. Now they are talking about an RNA vaccine that has never been done before & when you look at the details of this type of vaccine its quite concerning. Then you hear things like rushing this vaccine through the normal process, which is madness. Thats rushing through the safety of this thing when they want every man, woman & child to get it.

Yeah I agree with you, the whole idea that the vaccine is just upon the horizon is probably not a realistic one, and it's certainly not something we should be rushing into. I don't think that's a realistic solution for the immediate future. Maybe we are angling for this to be the way out, but I think the priority regardless has to be to get it under control here and then assess how we go forward.

I imagine they are refraining from giving vitamin recommendations and the like because that is not the governments role. Vitamins and the like might be hugely beneficial, I don't know, but I can understand the authorities not wanting to send out an official recommendation when they have no strong supporting evidence to back up any recommendations they do make and if anything could lose respect from a public which is already questioning if the government knows what it's doing.


I think it's clear that very few countries were at all prepared for something like this and have been making it up as they go at least early, but we are in a good position relative to the rest of the world it would seem. I personally think our economy is completely stuffed, especially once Job Keeper and the rent deferments stop, but I have no idea what we could have done significantly better thus far. All the options involve losing, mostly in a big way, and each path was very hard to predict how it would actually play out.

I imagine we won't be seeing International travel for a long time, and that we will be alternating between opening up and locking back down for the next few months minimum.

I kind of feel sorry for the government (not really), because they are on a hiding to nothing. Just look at the headlines from dickheads telling them to open everything up whilst also asking how they could be so irresponsible to ease restrictions whenever the case numbers flare up again. This is coupled with a public which has a lot of people twisting the published rules to suit themselves even when it is clearly in contravention of the rules intent.

We will obviously see how this plays out, and I hope it is with the minimum pain for everyone involved, but I'm not sure we are doing too much wrong so far.

Btw if you are interested in reading the report i sourced the graphs from it is available through this link. Like any typical argumentative commenter on Facebook I have no idea as to how reliable this source is, but it passes the glance over test and backs up some things I've read here and there so hopefully it's sufficient.

[EasternWest]

"are two issues here:
A. "Coronavirus isn't killing people, they are just dying of other stuff and happen to have coronavirus as well"
B. "Coronavirus deaths are being overreported. It's not that big a deal"

On A, this mindset is really not well thought out. Most people that already have an ailment are still alive, and are in a position where they can monitor and maintain their health to the extent that they aren't about to die. They might have some form of cancer, they might have a compromised immune system, they might just not be very healthy. For these people they would all otherwise live for longer, but the added burden of their body having to deal with Coronavirus means that their ability to do that it severely compromised. Coronavirus may not be the only issue these people have, and may even be a minor issue comparatively, but it is very capable of being the straw that breaks the camels back"

Cannot believe this even needs to be explained.

Some of the commentary here is bordering on tinfoil hat stuff.

[jeemak]

Yeah, my mother has type two diabetes, and she and her partner who are both in their seventies and are both prone to severe bronchial infections really needed to be managed early in the piece because they didn't understand the impacts of secondary infections or inherent health problems being coupled with COVID 19.

They get it now. After a lot of stern words.

The government is in a really tricky position because their main constituency is closer to the most at risk demographic than it isn't, though their younger voters who are more oriented towards libertarianism are aching to see the restrictions reduced. Quite the pickle in the wings for them should we not be able to fully contain the virus nationally.

If the virus can't be contained, then I think the public tolerance for high levels of infection will rise. If for nothing else other than sheer boredom in addition to the economic consequences of continual restrictions. I border on physically ill when people conflate this experience with the war time experiences forebears went through (don't get me started on footy), it's completely different and people's tolerances vary depending on the circumstances. There's only so much people will be willing to sacrifice economically before they hit the streets (which will be a reality sooner than we think).

Anyway, in Melbourne and other parts of Victoria it's a complete shit show again. Shelves are emptying, people are being selfish arsehats, and it's going to be interesting to see what this latest spike does to people.

[1eyedog]

How do we get through a season of football when the Queensland Government requires a 14 day iso period for anyone from Victoria or when any Queensland team plays a team that has played a Victorian team within 14 days? Absolute chaos!

[comrade]

How do we get through a season of football when the Queensland Government requires a 14 day iso period for anyone from Victoria or when any Queensland team plays a team that has played a Victorian team within 14 days? Absolute chaos!

Leave those games until the end of the season, put them in a Vic hub and then wait 2 weeks before finals starts?

Or just send the entire league to the NT for the next 3 months and get it over with.

[jeemak]

Apparently McKenna is going to be suspended for one game due to committing a minor breach of the AFL's COVID-19 rules, as he visited his former host family after the test taken on the Friday that was confirmed as a positive on the Saturday. Nothing said about attending the open for inspections for rental properties.

Suspension was served the round just gone.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/...29-p5579h.html

[bornadog]

Apparently McKenna is going to be suspended for one game due to committing a minor breach of the AFL's COVID-19 rules, as he visited his former host family after the test taken on the Friday that was confirmed as a positive on the Saturday. Nothing said about attending the open for inspections for rental properties.

Suspension was served the round just gone.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/...29-p5579h.html

Free to play Friday

[Sedat]

Or just send the entire league to the NT for the next 3 months and get it over with.

I have yet to hear a better option than this one, and I don't know why it wasn't more seriously considered when it was initially offered by the NT Chief Minister. At the very least all Vic clubs should base themselves in NT for the remainder of the season.

[DOG GOD]

How can the AFL expect a “relative” fair competition. Today is a spanner in the works. All the wheel nuts are lose, and the AFL convoy is on the bumpiest road imaginable.

[comrade]

I have yet to hear a better option than this one, and I don't know why it wasn't more seriously considered when it was initially offered by the NT Chief Minister. At the very least all Vic clubs should base themselves in NT for the remainder of the season.

I can't imagine Dangerfield agreeing to that.