A promised initiative to restore confidence in opinion polling has came to fruition with the establishment of the Australian Polling Council, a joint endeavour of YouGov, Essential Research and uComms. Following the example of the British Polling Council and the National Council for Published Polls in the United States, the body promises to “ensure standards of disclosure”, “encourage the highest professional standards in public opinion polling” and “inform media and the public about best practice in the conduct and reporting of polls”.
The most important of these points relates to disclosure, particularly of how demographic weightings were used to turn raw figures into a published result. The British Polling Council requires that its members publish “computer tables showing the exact questions asked in the order they were asked, all response codes and the weighted and unweighted bases for all demographics and other data that has been published”. We’ll see if its Australian counterpart to sees things the same way when it releases its requirements for disclosures, which is promised “before July 2020”.
Elsewhere:
• The West Australian has had two further local polls on coronavirus from Painted Dog Research, one from last week and one from this week ($). The McGowan government announced its decision to reopen schools next week in between the two polls, which had the support of 22.7% in the earlier poll and 49% this week, with opposition down from 43.3% to 27%, and the undecided down from 34% to 24%. The earlier poll found remarkably strong results for the McGowan government’s handling of the crisis, with 90.0% agreeing it had been doing a good job (including 54.2% strongly agreeing) and only 2.9% disagreeing (1.2% strongly), with 7.1% neither agreeing or disagreeing. No field work dates provided, but the latest poll has a sample of 831.
• The University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute conducted a 1200-sample survey on coronavirus from April 6 to 11, and while the published release isn’t giving too much away, we told that “about 60% of Australians report being moderately to very satisfied with government economic policies to support jobs and keep people at work”, and that “more than 80% expect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to last for more than 6 months“.
• The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage political science blog examines local government elections held in France on March 15, two days before the country went into lockdown: turnout fell from 63% to 45%, but the result was not radically different from the last such elections in 2016. Traditional conservative and socialist parties holding up well and the greens making gains, Emmanuel Macron’s presidential vehicle La République En Marche failing to achieve much cross-over success, and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National losing ground compared with a strong result in 2014.
Cud Chewer
It is a bit of a lol seeing comments like this.
lizzie @ #39 Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 – 8:43 am
All part of the media’s pre-coronation ceremonies for Comrade Morrison.
Much more to come yet. Will culminate in the standing ovation first footah game he attends.
CC
Interesting on whose management of the problem was right in the long term taking into account facts specific to each nation.
Cud Chewer
The chart has been a rock steady line from the start. From muttering I’ve heard recently from state governments I thought there would have been a recent v. sharp increase. Maybe showing up in the next few days ?
.
Coronavirus People Tested per 100,000 in Australia vs New Zealand
https://coronavirusgraphs.com/?c=dd10&y=linear&t=line&f=0&ct=&co=2,21,165,215,221
Speaking of unicorns:
Ivanka Trump
Shadow puppets and golf clubs: Why Ivanka Trump’s lockdown advice is so unpopular
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2020/apr/20/ivanka-trump-shadow-puppets-lockdown-advice
shellbell
There’s only three places on the planet I’d feel safe in. Here, NZ and Taiwan.
Morning all
2020 has been a bona fide shit show.
On a domestic level, four highway police being taken out by a truck on a local freeway is bad enough.
But to then have the driver they pulled over in the first instance post images of accident on Facebook.
Words fail me.
And also OH has been working in CBD which is a ghost town.
Yet the strangers he encounters feel the need to espouse conspiracies about the virus.
Yesterday he was on a call to co worker when a woman approached him with a flyer.
What did flyer say.
That the virus was a hoax and a govt conspiracy to enact new world order and to force people to have vaccines.
Grrrrrrrrrr
poroti compare NZ.. slow start but they are accelerating testing and are now way past oz
Morrison and the RW generally have railed against international organisations telling Australia what to do. Similarly for Trump and the US.
He doesn’t want the WHO or anyone else to have the power to forcibly enter Australia or the US. What he really wants is for covid-19 action to be focussed on China and some other Asian countries.
CC
The recent acceleration was when they started doing ‘sentinel’ testing. I had the impression Australia had also started doing that but “Chart Says No” 🙂
President Donald Trump said he’s told the US Navy to “shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea”.
Trump issued the warning on Wednesday after Iranian naval boats were filmed “harassing” and “taunting” US Navy warships in the Persian Gulf. Oil prices up $2 as a result.
Victoria
My partner is a GP. Her sister is an occupational therapist. Her ‘partner’ is a conspiracy theorist of the first order.
He called last night with the ‘latest’ news on COVID-19 via Zoom. So breathless… so excited I thought he was about to climax.
I told him point blank to ‘Fuck off with your ignorant, stupid and hateful views’ in front (via Zoom) of his partner and my partner’s parents on our daily ‘Zoom’ catchup’
I then point blank said to my partner’s sister… ‘Ditch this hateful, fear mongering, conspiracy-theorist “person” right now’ in front of everyone.
…
It was followed through two hours later.
Poroti
I hope its not the case, but it bothers me that the attitude that we are suppressing, not eliminating is going to have negative consequences in terms of how aggressive we are with testing.
Steven
Wow.
A nice, and effective, bit of passion there Steven!
Victoria
The only problem with all these fools, who will probably refuse inoculation with a smug look on their faces, is that although Darwin’s selection of the stupidest will catch up with them, they’ll infect the innocent. This virus is simply not the same as any old cold or flu.
Torchbearer: “So some are arguing that pensioners should be charged GST on food, kids with cancer should be charged GST on treatment and education as a fair way to raise revenue, but no mention of scrapping franking credits, negative gearing or super rorts?
Sound fair to anyone?”
Well, excluding kids with cancer from the GST on health and education wouldn’t be a hard thing to do. But, as there (thankfully) aren’t that many of them (only around 1,000 new cases per annum), it might be simpler to give them a special payment.
As I posted, making sure that pensioners are fully compensated for any increase to GST can be done with a single stroke of a pen.
And I agree that the income tax system needs reform, particularly in relation to the deductibility of costs relating to investment (eg, neg gearing). But Labor took a package of changes to franking credits, negative gearing and superannuation to the last election, and experienced a morale-sapping loss. So I’m not sure that avenue is open to them.
I think some on the left think that a case can be argued along the lines of “coronavirus has changed the ground rules, so people will be prepared for changes to these taxes.” But I suspect that the people who are affected, and their families, and the younger people who would one day like to invest significantly in shares, superannuation and rental property, won’t have changed their minds. And many of these people will have seen their investment portfolios greatly damaged by the recession.
Increased GST wouldn’t be an easy sell either, but it might be easier than going back to the failed policies of 2019.
guytaur @ #11 Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 – 7:15 am
‘the poisonous fruits of LNP ideology bear fruit.’
Doesn’t make sense.
Have another sherry.
Science ignorant nongs like Scotty from Marketing and Little(to be)proud (of) should perhaps spend some time looking at their own role in promoting zoonotic diseases through promotion of more intensive factory farming and environment degrading practices. Definite sources of emergent zoonotic diseases such as the so-called avian influenza (via intensive poultry farming) and Swine flu.
Bluster and BS seems to be one of Australia’s new political exports.
Just as pathetic as Trump distraction from reality, and just as likely to save anyone’s arse as Trump.
Once again via Proceedings of National Academy of Science (PNAS)
Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change
https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov/pmc/articles/PMC3666729/
Abstract
A systematic review was conducted by a multidisciplinary team to analyze qualitatively best available scientific evidence on the effect of agricultural intensification and environmental changes on the risk of zoonoses for which there are epidemiological interactions between wildlife and livestock. The study found several examples in which agricultural intensification and/or environmental change were associated with an increased risk of zoonotic disease emergence, driven by the impact of an expanding human population and changing human behavior on the environment. We conclude that the rate of future zoonotic disease emergence or reemergence will be closely linked to the evolution of the agriculture–environment nexus. However, available research inadequately addresses the complexity and interrelatedness of environmental, biological, economic, and social dimensions of zoonotic pathogen emergence, which significantly limits our ability to predict, prevent, and respond to zoonotic disease emergence.
Of direct relevance to new Australian zoonotic diseases
“The recent emergence of bat-associated viruses in Australia—Hendra virus, Australian bat lyssavirus, and Menangle virus—is associated with loss of bat habitat due to deforestation and agricultural expansion. Changes in the location, size, and structure of bat colonies, and foraging in periurban fruit trees have led to greater contact with livestock and humans, increasing the probability of pathogen spillover (29, 30).”
Most of the talk now is about lifting restrictions, but remember that the Spanish Flu had three spikes, the second of which was the worst:
https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk03oZGRxqGS04QoQFvaqJOkpcJh_0A:1587597737033&q=graph+of+the+spanish+flu+three+separate+spikes&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=safari&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDq6W5lv3oAhXO63MBHS8LBO8QsAR6BAgKEAE&biw=1397&bih=1266
And a role model of how to treat the virus was Singapore but then there has been a second spike:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/18/asia/singapore-coronavirus-response-intl-hnk/index.html
Vaccine news
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.046375v1
Sinovac: “A purified inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine candidate (PiCoVacc) confers complete protection in non-human primates against SARS-CoV-2 strains circulating worldwide by eliciting potent humoral responses devoid of immunopathology”
Twitter thread
https://mobile.twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1252984620242665473
meher
Or we could stop tossing cash at wealthier people. Worth a thought? Nah, you’d never admit that.
“And a role model of how to treat the virus was Singapore but then there has been a second spike:”
Except it turns out that Singapore want a role model. Their failure is pretty clear – they ignored a complete section of their population, foreign guest workers. That’s what’s getting them, not a failure in their strategy for the local population.
So if we’re going to get worked up about that, maybe nominate the population group here you think it’ll happen in.
And it is a very rich country. It is at times like these you realise how hollow ‘GDP per capita’ is when mixed with the politics and socio-economics of dog eat dog inequality.
— edit – and small (corrupted) government mentality. —
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tests-of-covid-19-per-thousand-people-vs-gdp-per-capita
CC: “poroti compare NZ.. slow start but they are accelerating testing and are now way past oz”
NZ have done something between 5 per cent and 10 per cent more testing per capita (the figures aren’t easy to compare precisely). It’s more, but “way past” might be a bit of an exaggeration.
Blobbit
Blackly amusing but having friends in Singapore, one of whom is a migrant worker taught me that Singapore has a dark side. And that attitude (of treating migrant workers as an underclass) has come back to bite them.
Re- an easier answer to the GST question. Dont raise it, dont extend it to food, health and education.
Chase tax rorts, off shoring, transfer pricing, increase the company tax rate, and top end tax rates, introduce a death tax and have a debt levy. All much simpler, efficient and unlikely to have the economic impact of raising the GST.
“NZ have done something between 5 per cent and 10 per cent more testing per capita ”
Look at the rate of acceleration.
Cud Chewer and BK
Thanks!
This guy was an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. He believed the internet was a secret tracking device for the NWO (New World Order) to keep tabs on society and should never be used… yet he was active on all social media channels and would often say ‘Saw this on YouTube… check it out’.
He also offended me continuously due to my profession (I am a librarian) stating… you are cataloguing all of our movements… day and night for the N.W.O.
A really nasty, vitriolic and unpleasant individual… Last night was the last straw…
Interestingly he was a fair decent musician and actor…
Blobbit
There interesting part is that it demonstrates action against multiple strains. Fingers crossed.
Blobbit: “Except it turns out that Singapore want a role model. Their failure is pretty clear – they ignored a complete section of their population, foreign guest workers. That’s what’s getting them, not a failure in their strategy for the local population.”
It wasn’t just the foreign guest workers. They didn’t require the families and housemates of any of the people who returned to the country in recent weeks to self-quarantine. They only placed this requirement on the returning individual themselves.
It would seem that they were over-confident in the effectiveness of their track and trace arrangements. For a country I admire greatly, they seemed to have been rather careless and are now paying the price. The only good news is that, presumably because the foreign workers have good general health, the death rate in Singapore remains extremely low: only 12 out of more than 10,000 cases.
Steven
That’s one way of handling the crazies!
The concerning aspect to all this is that there are more crazies out there than I thought.
Sigh……….
meher
deaths are always lagging..
Steven, well done. Call it out when you see/hear it. Being polite doesn’t cut through.
Scrott working overtime to show what a good little lackey he is. Buying US oil, leading a WHO+China blame/distraction charge for Trump and……………..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/22/australia-joins-us-warship-south-china-sea-tensions-grow/
Steven
Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 – 9:17 am
Comment #61
Thanks for your posts. I like them a lot. Unfortunately the recipient of your wrath will simply have one less outlet for his stupidity. I have one of these lunatics in my extended family.
I agree with PeeBee
Won’t change them but will make them go away.
Be kind to yourself. The assholes can make their own arrangements. 🕳️ (That’s a hole – the ass part is all pervasive).
Calling all committed gamblers who are willing to gamble with their lives…
Lizzie
Agreed.
as poster Steven recounted about his experience with these conspiracy nuts.
This problem is not just in the USA or other places, we have got lots of them here as well.
I am not on Facebook etc. But most of my family members are on social media.
They tell me that they have been getting memes from people they least expect.
They believe that this is all a conspiracy to have people vaccinated with a micro chip.
It is a hoax etc. And that Bill Gates is behind it all.
WTF!
I thought the Jim Jones koolaid crowd was for a more ignorant time in our history.
What the heck is wrong with people.
I am feeling quite defeated today.
Sigh……
citzen
wtf? We know that physical distancing works.
Citizen
You should check out the interview Anderson Cooper had with the Mayor of Las Vegas.
Probably part of reason why I am very down today.
Cray cray all round
Victoria
I had not realised that on PB we are privileged to be in touch with people with a brain! Far from being typical, apparently.
Torchbearer: “Chase tax rorts, off shoring, transfer pricing, increase the company tax rate, and top end tax rates, introduce a death tax and have a debt levy. All much simpler, efficient and unlikely to have the economic impact of raising the GST.”
Apart from chasing tax rorts, offshoring, etc – which both Labor and Liberal Governments have tried hard to do over the last decade – all of this will be very difficult to sell politically: most Laborites I know disagree with me that franking credits was the main problem for Labor last election, it was “Labor’s lies about a death tax.” So how do you reckon a truthful death tax policy would go down with voters?
Raising the company tax will drive investment away from Australia to other countries.
And all of the measures you list actually won’t raise that much additional revenue.
If we want to go with a really brave and daring set of measures targeting people with lots of assets, I would suggest:
– increase the capital gains tax to, say, 40 per cent, and extend it to profits from the sale of owner-occupied housing above a threshold – say $1 million – and have no exemption for sales from deceased estates;
– similarly, apply the pension assets test to owner-occupied housing above a threshold of $1 million (or maybe $2 million would be more politically palatable);
– put an upper limit on the amount of loss on unrelated investments that any taxpayer can deduct from wage and salary income in a single year ($30k or so would do it); and
– replace stamp duty with a land tax on housing with a steep upward curve in the rate for people who own millions of dollars worth of property.
These measures would potentially raise/save a lot more money, and would also strongly redirect investment away from the housing sector and towards more productive activities. And they would do a lot more to make new housing more affordable for younger people than Labor’s proposals re neg gearing on rental properties.
These measures wouldn’t punish the “top end of town” in the way some people seem to want to do. But it would create a much fairer tax system. Politically hard too, but I think it has more benefits than other ideas going around. And – apart from the pensioners living in high value houses – it doesn’t touch retirement incomes.
Thanks all
I felt bad after my rant / spray but a call my partner’s sister later indicated that she too was sick and tired of his rantings and verbal droolings and told him pretty much to pack his bags and peddle his piffle to NewsCorpse, SkyNews and any other lunatic fringe types and to perhaps STFU once in a while.
Parting shot to him: ‘You do have a brain right? Well perhaps once in a while use it and understand that you potentially are a specimen of an animal that can actually have independent thoughts … sadly you are a waste of space and an oxygen thief. Bye now’
Lizzie
Indeed.
Although I am surprised at how prevalent these conspiracies are being believed by people that should know better.
What has happened to peoples critical thinking skills.
Queensland has announced it is relaxing its funeral restrictions. That state will now allow 20 people at a funeral. Physical distancing restrictions remain.
Breaker – breaker ❗
Australian parliamentarians kitting up, checking weapons and four wheel drive vehicles as they prepare to invade China to search for the elusive signs of intelligence lost from this great nation as we prepare to advance back to the “good old days”.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/waste-not-want-not-a-piece-of-wisdom-that-never-gets-old/news-story/5ba3f37f83e94117a8eb27a0393e4bd8
Worth a read. I actually remember some of this stuff up to and including nothing on the table. 😍
Steven
I guess the question for this person is why they choose to go down this rabbit hole.
I am trying very hard to make sense of it.
Luckily my family are all sensible, but as I mentioned people in our sphere are buying into these conspiracies. WHY?
Very harsh Steven. All the guy was trying to do was warn his partner and her family of the insidious role that librarians play in the N.W.O. This has been written about extensively. It is well known that with the decline of traditional libraries that librarians have been retrained and re=purposed to undertake a range of tracking roles. The Dewey Decimal system is no longer the big deal it was. Your partner’s sister’s partner is a freedom fighter and you have cockblocked him. Shame on you.
KayJay @ #85 Thursday, April 23rd, 2020 – 9:47 am
Memo to the ALP, ‘Being polite doesn’t cut through.’
As we like to say here on PB. Finally.