Australia leading the way
It makes common sense what the government did to assist in controlling the Covid 19 Virus. It was always about making sure the health system could handle the epidemic.
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Now the system and health authorities are confident it's time to open a few more doors and see where it takes us, especially pubs and clubs
So far so good. It's up to everyone now to practice and maintain our distancing and continue to take all the necessary precautions.
All shops should have hand sanitizer at their entry points, maybe the government should consider supplying.
Now is the time more than every to continue to practice social distancing. It may even lead to an opportunity for our musicians in this town to start performing again. Now that would be great
Mike Vee, Tamworth
Check the facts
Twitter has suggested fact checking two of President Trump's tweets and it makes the headlines of most papers and now President Trump is issuing an executive order to remedy the situation including possibly shutting down Twitter.
The Washington Post has a list of apparently 18,000 false or misleading claims by the President and yet they are still publishing - maybe they should be careful of a fire and brimstone response in the near future. Maybe the truth should be published and be subject to being checked.
In this line I did some online searches for interesting facts to review. Fact Check: I didn't, I just went with what I already know.
These are some of more popular online facts that I couldn't fact check reliably.
- The earth is flat
- We didn't go to the Moon
- Lizard people rule the world
There were hundreds of other items online that I have some doubt about although I would be happy if Elvis was still alive.
These are some facts that seem to escape many people:
- Your child is not the most important person in the world.
- Being good on a sports field doesn't give you the right to be bad off it.
- Influencers don't influence me.
- Dumb people and their opinions are more common than you think.
On a more serious side we also need to accept that Vaccinations do work, the 5G network didn't spread the COVID-19 virus and couldn't. We need to know the truth although we might not be able to handle it.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne
Snowy hydro
On the balance of probabilities, Mark Rodda will get something right eventually.
He wrote (NDL 30/5) that the Snowy Hydro scheme has been privatised and "..around $13billion has been consumed in Sydney on cost overspends and waste.."
In fact the Federal Government acquired NSW and Victoria's shares of Snowy Hydro to expand power generation through the construction of Snowy 2.0
The State's 'Snowy Hydro Legacy Fund 2018' legislation mandates the proceeds must be spent outside of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong - "The purpose of the Fund is to improve economic development in regional New South Wales and, for that purpose, to fund infrastructure projects that primarily benefit regional New South Wales."
Mr Rodda also fails to mention the State Government regulates network charges.
In 2014 it introduced the Electricity Price Guarantee, which required total network charges to be lower in 2019 than they were in 2014.
Scot MacDonald, Guyra
Virus toll
One statistic about the corona virus which doesn't get much of a mention is the measure of its deadliness - the number of cases for each death. The higher the number of cases per death, of course, the less deadly the virus has been in one place or another.
This can lead to some unexpected results. The USA (17.10) and Brazil (16.08) are doing better than Canada (12.93). Even Spain (10.46) is doing better than the UK (7.13).
On the whole, though, the figures do not give any comfort to the open-the-borders-right-now crowd.
In Scandinavia, for example, locked-up Norway (35.74), Finland (21.38) and Denmark (20.31) are doing much better than let-it-rip Sweden (8.31).
Australia's national figure is 69.31, which is good. But the State-by-State figures are really surprising.
The worst is hermetically-sealed Tasmania (17.53). Completely-open ACT comes in at 35.66. WA, NSW and Victoria are respectively at 63.33, 64.35, and 85.15. But the best are South Australia (110.00), Queensland (151.14) and the Northern Territory (no deaths at all).
Whatever the reasons for these three outstanding results, sealed borders are a prominent common factor in all of them.
So, memo to Gladys Berejiklian, Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson and Queensland's LNP: do not criticise the success of SA, Queensland and the NT. Instead, please explain Tasmania and WA's failure, as well as the relative awfulness of the ACT, NSW and Victoria.
And bear in the mind that the closer the Queensland State election gets, the better your explanation will have to be.
G.T.W. Agnew, Coopers Plains Qld