Coronavirus | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
  • IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.

Coronavirus

That to me is the biggest flaw in private health. What doctors charge is completely unregulated and controlled.

The biggest flaw to me is the lack of price transparency and relativity to the public cost but if you don’t have transparency then 100% agree you need some kind of cap ratio.

Higher income earners are effectively forced into the private health system due to the way the levy works. I’m not sure being forced to spend on something makes it very efficient though. You don’t need to compete as hard to win customers in the base case vs public.
 
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Yeah but don’t they stand to make more from operating on a private person than a public one ? Ie perhaps a conflict of interest when making that statement ?
They may or may not, don't know the economics, but the issue the surgeon had was less medically critical patients were being sent from public hospital to private thus pushing out private patients he believed had more pressing needs.
 
I think that private hospital cover is actually a detriment to the health system.

NIB, BUPA, whichever, aren't collecting premiums with no view for a profit.

I just can't fathom why there is a tax incentive for individuals to pay private companies to deliver services that ought to be provided and funded by the government.
The insurers don't provide the services. Alternative might be an even higher Medicare levy for all. Though on that I am not sure why we have a health levy at all. There isn't an education levy, transport, welfare levy. All tax goes into one big bucket, govt doles it out.
 
You couldn’t make it up for a TV show if you tried.

His girlfriend, who lives in those houso northern suburbs, is as *smile* as he is.

Hobart isn’t a huge city, so word gets out about who these people are. Piecing it together, she perhaps wanted to bust him out of hotel quarantine to get her share of the drugs. Rumour is she stole the car to pick him up in.

Looking up both of their names. Over the second half of 2020, they appeared in magistrates courts on the Gold Coast, in Albury and Wodonga. And they have records in Tasmania too. Full points for completing the eastern seaboard set.
Oh well, at least he's been immortalised in song...

Tim gunn Hobart's covid escapee - YouTube
 
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Just came back from a few hours in the city. First time I’ve been in there for a while. Few people getting about.

Another prediction beyond the vax rush from 4 or 5 months ago. This one maybe just as obvious but here goes: whatever health impacts ie deaths, hospitalisations, sickness etc Covid presents going forward from here on in, it’s going to be centred around a combination of 35 y.o’s and less and blue collar workers - tradie/construction/roadies in particular. You can take it to the bank.

I reckon I could safely say that 80%-85% of the people I saw breaching Covid safety were under 35 y.o and/or tradies. There were a LOT of them. Going into retail outlets with no masks, working and sitting around indoors on top of each other with no masks. Walking around with no masks, on trams with no masks etc etc. Standing at a set of lights I even heard a foreman sounding guy on his mobile saying to someone and I quote “Ah don’t worry about it. If he’s been in contact with a few Covid positive people as long as he hasn’t been too close to them he’ll be fine. Tell him to come into work.” I’m not joking. Ffs I even had to get into a lift with a dhead tradie not wearing a mask.

There were one or two others indifferent to being safe at a time when we still need to be eg a couple of vagrants, alternative hipster types, one or two oldies etc but 85% of them were young people and tradie construction types - unbelievable given everything we’ve been through and what this community cohort have been told.

Anyway with vax numbers finally getting towards where we always needed them, there will be a lessening adverse health outcome across the broad. But whatever we do have, based on the behavioural patterns I’m seeing, it’ll have a level of centralisation within these two groups. Maybe a bit of a city or metro concentration as well. Lower safety behaviour linking into lower vax rates.

We probably won’t get any stats to back that up - we don’t now except for age based data - so I’m not expecting to see anything to confirm it. But I’m pretty certain it’ll be the case.
 
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Just came back from a few hours in the city. First time I’ve been in there for a while. Few people getting about.

Another prediction beyond the vax rush from 4 or 5 months ago. This one maybe just as obvious but here goes: whatever health impacts ie deaths, hospitalisations, sickness etc Covid presents going forward from here on in, it’s going to be centred around a combination of 35 y.o’s and less and blue collar workers - tradie/construction/roadies in particular. You can take it to the bank.

I reckon I could safely say that 80%-85% of the people I saw breaching Covid safety were under 35 y.o and/or tradies. There were a LOT of them. Going into retail outlets with no masks, working and sitting around indoors on top of each other with no masks. Walking around with no masks, on trams with no masks etc etc. Standing at a set of lights I even heard a foreman sounding guy on his mobile saying to someone and I quote “Ah don’t worry about it. If he’s been in contact with a few Covid positive people as long as he hasn’t been too close to them he’ll be fine. Tell him to come into work.” I’m not joking. Ffs I even had to get into a lift with a dhead tradie not wearing a mask.

There were one or two others indifferent to being safe at a time when we still need to be eg a couple of vagrants, alternative hipster types, one or two oldies etc but 85% of them were young people and tradie construction types - unbelievable given everything we’ve been through and what this community cohort have been told.

Anyway with vax numbers finally getting towards where we always needed them, there will be a lessening adverse health outcome across the broad. But whatever we do have, based on the behavioural patterns I’m seeing, it’ll have a level of centralisation within these two groups. Maybe a bit of a city or metro concentration as well. Lower safety behaviour linking into lower vax rates.

We probably won’t get any stats to back that up - we don’t now except for age based data - so I’m not expecting to see anything to confirm it. But I’m pretty certain it’ll be the case.
Your concerns will all most likely play out. Weddings, 21st birthdays, concerts etc will ramp this up. If they won’t do the right thing when in a professional environment sober. They won’t socially.

Huge amounts of people aren’t taking the mask wearing seriously for months. I think it’s time to only have them inside and outside if you can’t socially distance. Before Covid we were seen as the nanny state. With our restrictions compared to NSW now this further validates their opinion.

Having GP respiratory clinics that have been announced is a practical way to deal with what is next.

 
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Your concerns will all most likely play out. Weddings, 21st birthdays, concerts etc will ramp this up. If they won’t do the right thing when in a professional environment sober. They won’t socially.

Huge amounts of people aren’t taking the mask wearing seriously for months. I think it’s time to only have them inside and outside if you can’t socially distance. Before Covid we were seen as the nanny state. With our restrictions compared to NSW now this further validates their opinion.

Having GP respiratory clinics that have been announced is a practical way to deal with what is next.

Yeah. I don’t see the point now with masks - at least outdoors. Problem though being, you set that level and it degenerates or seeps into attitudes indoors as well. Maybe just do away with them all together and cut the wheat from the chaff more quickly. Expose the dheads and get to a proper herd state of immunity eg 98% quicker. More sickness short term but gets us to herd quicker. Not sure.
 
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Yeah. I don’t see the point now with masks - at least outdoors. Problem though being, you set that level and it degenerates or seeps into attitudes indoors as well. Maybe just do away with them all together and cut the wheat from the chaff more quickly. Expose the dheads and get to a proper herd state of immunity eg 98% quicker. More sickness short term but gets us to herd quicker. Not sure.

I firmly believe the opposite/fully agree if that makes sense.

You need to focus on high risk activities and clearly communicate the risk.

When you focus on what are perceived rightly or wrongly as low risk activity compliance you drive total non-compliance.

This is the failure of leadership in Vic that has actually driven the massive case explosion IMO.

I’ve seen this play put in safety where a focus on all injuries (including first aid band aids) almost equally means you don’t focus enough resources on serious near misses where people almost die (isolation lock out / tag out procedure break downs esp. electrical , confined space entry without BA, working at heights without fall protection). When you shift to focus to what let’s people go home and see their families you get much better compliance to EVErYTHING.

We’d be much better off policing / monitoring for indoor high risk activity than focusing on people in the park running around without a mask or talking to each other.
 
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I firmly believe the opposite/fully agree if that makes sense.

You need to focus on high risk activities and clearly communicate the risk.

When you focus on what are perceived rightly or wrongly as low risk activity compliance you drive total non-compliance.

This is the failure of leadership in Vic that has actually driven the massive case explosion IMO.

I’ve seen this play put in safety where a focus on all injuries (including first aid band aids) almost equally means you don’t focus enough resources on serious near misses where people almost die (isolation lock out / tag out procedure break downs esp. electrical , confined space entry without BA, working at heights without fall protection). When you shift to focus to what let’s people go home and see their families you get much better compliance to EVErYTHING.

We’d be much better off policing / monitoring for indoor high risk activity than focusing on people in the park running around without a mask or talking to each other.
Yeah. Get what you’re saying.
 
Hah hah hah. Ok. Saving lives or whatever else you want to describe it in the public sector. Although morning tea is still very important you know.
and those ladies have not had a chance to practice their craft for a while now. (think the private surgeons save plenty of lives too, its not all breast enlargements)
 
If anyone can explain this they might just get a Nobel Prize.

It is very confusing the way that we locked down earlier and harder and yet ended up with more cases.

Sure, NSW got some extra vaccines and managed to get the vaccines out a bit quicker as a result, but the trend of cases versus vaccination percentages do not align between Victoria and NSW.

I'm sure there are plenty in the government and in the health research community trying to work this out too.

DS
Reckon it has a lot to do with the difference in Pfizer vs AZ.

As much as people get upset about mentioning it, Pfizer is more effective at preventing hospitalisations and transmission.

It may drop off faster, but it's higher initially.

Sydney have proportionally more Pfizer vaccinations. Makes sense they would level off quicker.
 
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The biggest flaw to me is the lack of price transparency and relativity to the public cost but if you don’t have transparency then 100% agree you need some kind of cap ratio.

Higher income earners are effectively forced into the private health system due to the way the levy works. I’m not sure being forced to spend on something makes it very efficient though. You don’t need to compete as hard to win customers in the base case vs public.
There was a big push a couple of years ago for all specialists to list their fees on a website so private customers could shop around. It lost momentum with COVID
 
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