freebooter posted:

Feeling depressed about the IPCC report so I finally got around to changing my super from Rest (which actively invests in coal companies) to Australian Ethical. It takes all of ten minutes to sign up, if anybody else is still using the same super fund from their first hospo or retail job:

https://www.australianethical.com.au/

Animal Friend posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...d-to-keep-funds

lol who could have seen this coming

quote:

As an experienced respiratory physician at a major western Sydney hospital, I am gravely concerned about the NSW government’s ineffective response to the Delta outbreak. As it has overseas, the pandemic is disproportionately affecting low-income migrant populations with insecure jobs.

NSW is almost certainly on the precipice of a massive deterioration. Contact tracers are overwhelmed, with reporting of infection hot spots lagging by days. The whole strategy of relying on contact tracing for infection control is failing, or indeed has failed.

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, emphasises the federal government’s overall aim is to eliminate the virus until adequate vaccination rates are achieved. However, the NSW government appears to have abandoned the first part of this strategy. Worryingly, it is now relying on achieving sufficient vaccination rates to allow society to progressively reopen.

This will take time. As a result, overseas evidence strongly indicates the Delta variant will continue to wreak havoc with untold numbers of infections, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and death. This is already happening now. No responsible individual has ever advocated for COVID elimination to be pursued indefinitely. However, it is critical until herd immunity is achieved.

NSW is suffering from a conspicuous failure of leadership. Are we trying to lock down to eliminate COVID, or are we attempting to vaccinate our way out of this pandemic? People are no longer clear what our COVID strategy is. People are losing faith in the lockdown. There is increasing resentment – going both ways – between south-western Sydney and the rest of the city. Of most concern is the loss of a sense “we are all in this together”. A lockdown that people understand and are motivated to comply with in western and south-western Sydney is essential.

So why is the lockdown of western and south-western Sydney failing?

The reasons are complex, but in my experience, some are evident on a daily basis at any outpatient clinic in our region. Between one-third and half of consultations have to be conducted with an interpreter. This could be in-person, over the telephone, or using a family member. Sometimes, doctors must use a common language such as Arabic, even though the patient may be Assyrian. Other patients, often refugees, are not literate in their first language. Federal and state government public health advertising has arguably not even been communicated well in English. To expect multicultural communities to quickly comprehend ever-changing public health directives is almost impossible.

Second, home isolation in south-western Sydney is particularly challenging in smaller homes with multiple family members living under the one roof. The option for hotel quarantining is restricted by the limited local availability.

Furthermore, some patients attending emergency departments are staunchly refusing to get tested because of the implications for their family. The necessity to quarantine close contacts would prevent hard-up family members from working. Some households are very sick, but their members do not seek help as they are trying to avoid restrictions.

Tragically, in certain western and south-western Sydney hospitals, COVID-infected patients are presenting so late in the course of their infection that it is necessary that emergency teams intubate them immediately upon their arrival. Such late presentations are not being seen at hospitals from the north, centre and east of Sydney.

With no economic safety net, no ability to work from home and distrust of governments, some residents fear the public health interventions being delivered. Many have been traumatised in their native countries, so seeing police on horses and troops patrolling neighbourhoods, may not result in the desired outcomes. This is not to say law enforcement should be abandoned, just that sensitivity is required.

If a greater level of COVID elimination is to be achieved, the failures of the current lockdown must be overcome. The NSW government must urgently re-establish trust through targeted advertising in multiple languages. Use local leaders in the community, social media influencers via residents’ children and grandchildren, and even beloved local sporting personalities.

Above all, affected communities must be supported. A large part of the solution to breaking this cycle is financial. A decent level of financial assistance must be offered in conjunction with a lockdown to allay people’s fears of economic loss from disclosing their infection.

NSW urgently needs strong leadership with clearly stated goals in place of the current void and mixed messaging. A vaccination strategy by itself will not work for months. Case numbers in western and south-western Sydney must be dramatically brought down for it to bear fruit.

freebooter posted:

I did a bit of research and they seem about as transparent and on the level as you're gonna get, plus they genuinely have good returns (I've had shares in their index fund for years and it's easily my best performing stock).

But they way I figure it is, any fund whatsoever which styles itself "ethical" is probably going to be more ethical than your run of the mill fund.

quote:

No responsible individual has ever advocated for COVID elimination to be pursued indefinitely. However, it is critical until herd immunity is achieved.

Centusin posted:

This is by an anonymous doctor, it's a pretty good article about the western sydney situation, it mostly hits the points everyone has been saying for a month that financial assistance is needed and better multicultural communication.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-is-almost-certainly-on-the-precipice-of-a-massive-deterioration-20210809-p58h9w.html

Centusin posted:

This is by an anonymous doctor, it's a pretty good article about the western sydney situation, it mostly hits the points everyone has been saying for a month that financial assistance is needed and better multicultural communication.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-is-almost-certainly-on-the-precipice-of-a-massive-deterioration-20210809-p58h9w.html

perepelki posted:

"It doesn't matter how you start the race, it is how you finish the race. It is how you finish the race. We are going to finish this race and we are going to race all the way to the finish line but we are going to do it as Team Australia"

Laserface posted:

How does one man manage to use so many words and say absolutely nothing.

Eediot Jedi posted:

It is amazing how inept at marketing he is despite his previous work experience.

kirbysuperstar posted:

the race to get his good mate off charges for protecting his rapist dad lmao

SuddenCactus posted:

https://twitter.com/AmyRemeikis/status/1424968957333630981

It's not a race except when it is

Eediot Jedi posted:

It's been a while since I've heard a good Team Australia and I can't remember the previous contexts.

freebooter posted:

Feeling depressed about the IPCC report so I finally got around to changing my super from Rest (which actively invests in coal companies) to Australian Ethical. It takes all of ten minutes to sign up, if anybody else is still using the same super fund from their first hospo or retail job:

https://www.australianethical.com.au/

AFR: Frydenberg fires Jobkeeper missile at himself posted:

Like the kind of buffoon once played by Leslie Neilsen, Josh Frydenberg has fired a heat-seeking missile at himself.

The Australian indulged a bizarre and lame outburst by the Treasurer on Tuesday, in which he revealed the entirely unremarkable information that Australian trade unions received a total of $22 million in JobKeeper.

Frydenberg claimed that “Labor’s hypocrisy knows no bounds” because the opposition has been calling for the repayment of JobKeeper by certain companies and religious groups but not to “unions who have made donations to the [ALP]”.

This is an utterly false equivalence.

Labor has never called for all companies or churches to pay back JobKeeper. Nobody has. Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh and others (including this column) have identified organisations that profiteered off JobKeeper and called for them to repay it.

Public companies that qualified for JobKeeper by projecting revenue declines but then increased profits, dividends and executive bonuses (Frydenberg is now easing the crushing burden of their disclosure obligations). Tax-free firms like Hillsong, which banked at least $5 million in JobKeeper, but whose revenue never fell by the forecast 15 per cent. The trade union for professional board members, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, which gobbled $5.2 million of JobKeeper and achieved only a 15 per cent revenue decline by voluntarily deferring the due date of its membership fees. Then they hosted the Australian Governance Summit!

This is the timbre of the $25 billion of our money that Josh Frydenberg categorically wasted.

So what if labour unions received JobKeeper? Only them and 850,000 others! The Treasurer has completely missed the point, as he so often does.

The issue is not JobKeeper’s receipt, but its misapplication. And Frydenberg has not shown us a single union that used the wage subsidy to pay a seven-figure cash bonus to the general secretary. Let alone a catalogue of them.

If he could name a trade union that received JobKeeper, increased its revenue and then increased its annual donation to the Australian Labor Party, then absolutely, the Treasurer would have scored a political hit. On himself, by highlighting the unforgivably poor design of his own scheme.

Frydenberg was damned either way but couldn’t even see it. Because he is lighter than helium.

Who, in his position, would be out there drawing more attention to the fact he has misspent more public money than any elected official in the history of the Commonwealth?

The Liberal Dries have been absolutely nowhere on this, presumably bored by budget emergencies and expenditure restraint, only the very point of their existence. Victorian senator James Paterson is barely recognisable from the young purist manufactured by the Institute of Public Affairs. “I’m someone who very much cherishes taxpayer dollars and doesn’t want them spent anywhere that they’re not necessary,” he said, before defending a program that paid $25 billion to firms that never experienced the revenue declines they forecast in order to receive it. “What else could anyone have done in that period of uncertainty that we were in?” Paterson wondered, gormlessly.

Geez, James, how about some rudimentary mechanisms of quality control? A real-time public register, perhaps, or the retesting of recipients’ revenue four or six weeks into the scheme? When you’re turning on a massive fiscal hose and nobody’s watching, senator, when you’re inviting every business in the land into a game show booth of free money, how about just something more than nothing?

The Peccadillo posted:

Thank gently caress

PotatoManJack posted:

I know it was on 7:30 last night, but I'm really surprised we're not seeing more about the Brian Houston BFF with Scomo story. I know Covid is top of mind, but it seems like a much bigger deal than it's getting credit for in the media.

Also, it makes me detest Scomo that little bit more, which I honestly thought wasn't possible.

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN posted:

229 unknown cases today when nsw gets to 300 they go up a tier to

Animal Friend posted:

"team Australia" always puts this image in my head

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN posted:

229 unknown cases today when nsw gets to 300 they go up a tier to

Eediot Jedi posted:

John wore them on his power walks yeah?

Free lambda strain with every 500 cases.

Zetsubou-san posted:

BOFA-CoV-69

Animal Friend posted: