The softening up for the rollback of virus-related border protections rolls on, via AFR:
The Morrison government will consider Thursday whether to start easing the travel ban on Chinese students amid warnings by health authorities that the crisis will run for several months more, prompting fears of a recession.
…Ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the National Security Committee, the Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy and his Australian Health Protection Principal Committee will look at relaxing the ban on students from China.
With the university sector among the hardest hit by the coronavirus, Professor Murphy said any relaxation would have to be “very gentle” and monitored by state medical authorities.
…The NSC is likely to extend the travel ban for another week when it meets today but, after considering Professor Murphy’s advice, may make exemptions for students.
If all Chinese schools remain shut why on earth would we open ours?
Meanwhile, at The Australian, the “dreaded reality is beginning to dawn” on ScoMo and Co:
The dreaded reality for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg that the May budget may not deliver the “first surplus in a decade” is beginning to dawn.
Not the “dreaded reality” of thousands of dead elderly Australians as lapsed border controls sweep coronavirus into Australia in a homicidal attempt to reach a surplus:
The only responsible decision is to extend the bans for another month and NOT REVIEW them in between to silence the interests. The bans should be extended to wherever a material outbreak occurs.
To put it bluntly, Chinese data cannot be trusted, via Epoch Times:
The novel coronavirus outbreak in eastern China’s Shandong province is much worse than what has been officially reported, according to a series of internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.
Each day from Feb. 9 to Feb. 23, Shandong authorities underreported the number of infections, according to internal data compiled by the Shandong Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The CDC kept a tally of the number of people who tested positive for the virus during nucleic acid testing—using a diagnostic kit to test patient samples and detect whether they contain the virus’s genetic sequence.
The CDC’s daily new infection numbers ranged from 1.36 times to 52 times greater than the officially published data by the Shandong health commission and China’s National Health Commission.
As of Feb. 25, the Shandong government stated that there were a total of 755 infections in the province. But the internal document showed that 1,992 people had tested positive for the virus via nucleic acid testing as of Feb. 23.
The government publicly stated that there were four newly diagnosed coronavirus patients on Feb. 22, but the internal document said that there were 61 positive tests that day.
In recent days, official data has shown new infections leveling off. For example, on Feb. 25, the National Health Commission reported only a total of nine new diagnosed cases outside of Hubei province, where the outbreak is most severe.
In fact, Shandong alone had new infections in the double-digits daily. On Feb. 20, new infections spiked, with 274 people testing positive.
To date, it’s the most definitive evidence that Chinese authorities routinely underreport cases. Previously, The Epoch Times interviewed workers at funeral homes in the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, who said they had to work around the clock to keep up with the dramatic increase in workload.
Health experts have also hypothesized that Chinese official figures are inaccurate, based on their statistical modeling. Recently, a group of U.S. researchers published a study, not yet peer-reviewed, in which they suggested cumulative infections and deaths in China could be “substantially higher” than officially stated—by a factor of 5 to 10.
U.S.-based China commentator Tang Jingyuan told The Epoch Times that authorities reporting fewer infections is likely a tactic to convince Chinese citizens that the spread of the virus was contained and thus, it would be safe to return to work.
Chinese businesses were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday, which was extended in order to prevent cross-infection in the workplace. The central government, fearing the economic inactivity could have long-term ramifications, asked firms to resume operations on Feb. 10.
“It [Beijing] is trying to create an image that most of the country is safe enough to resume production,” Tang said.
The internal data shared with The Epoch Times includes a breakdown of diagnostic results from all 16 prefectural-level municipalities in Shandong province, which had been sent in an email to the disease control department of the Shandong health commission.
The Shandong CDC compiles daily statistical reports about coronavirus diagnoses, tallying positive test results at all hospitals in the province that were qualified to conduct such testing.
80% of Australians agree the border should remain shut:
There is also strong support (80%) for the travel ban that prevents Chinese visitors entering Australia, and only 20% say the border with China should remain open to protect revenue from tourism and overseas students. Both the Morrison government and the media get the thumbs up from the sample for managing the risks and reporting the latest developments.
What kind of psycho ignores this data?
