What does the Doherty modelling actually say? | Ask an Economist

In this episode, Matt & Richard, answer the question: What does the Doherty modelling actually say?

Full question: "I saw Casey Briggs tweet: I’m beginning to think a lot of people commenting on the details of the national cabinet agreed pandemic transition plan haven’t read the national cabinet agreed transition plan. So, what does the modelling say?"

Thanks for watching the Australia Institute's Ask an Economist -- with Matt Grudnoff, senior economist at the Australia Institute, and Richard Denniss, chief economist at the Australia Institute.

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[aussie]

So many people need to see this. This is why WA doesn't want to open to NSW.

[clem-]

good video, very good job reinforcing the differences between a model and reality and why that is so important. More people need to see things like this.
Helpful for me too to make sure i am thinking about this correctly.

[timbobau]

Thank you for the video and for putting it into language regular people can understand.
These insights are so valuable to the general public to drive behaviour modification and to circumvent the irresponsible spin put out by "leaders" like Gladys & Scotty.
I hope at least 80% of the population gets this message.

[madonnawaugh]

Matt and Richard, I have seen in the news that the feds will ask private health to help when we open up. Why is our taxes going to prop up a heavily subsidised private health instead of fully funding decent public health? Gympie has an underfunded public hospitals and no private hospital. So if the Doherty institute is to use private hopsitals, they clearly haven’t travelled in the regions where there are no private hopsitals. Also I see Barnaby Joyce is out today saying services will have to be cut as they can’t keep borrowing money.

[tonyashton]

To paraphrase a friend "~1000 views! Why hasn't this video gone viral?' Perhaps a two minute video summary?

[OOOO]

5:00 - There's plenty of debate about not vaccinating as fast as possible.
Why the hell are we asking economists about pandemic strategy? That's like asking a hairdresser to fix your car.

[sarahjulien]

Thankyou - I was starting to think the modeling just said we should open up. I didn't realise it pointed out the value of the TTIQ system.

[mspalmboy]

Tragic that the NSW and federal govts are not listening to health professionals and scientists, and are putting 25 million Australians at avoidable risk.

[mohammedyassien]

What happens to the contact tracers when we stop focusing on case numbers?
How will focusing on serious cases and deaths, make it easier to deal with large case numbers?

They should be trained in Big data (and cybersecurity depending on how many are needed in the contact tracing role)👍🏾

Cases should be logged in clusters not as individuals. You can then track the movement of the cluster..
You track how many fatalities, ICU, hospital, comes out of that cluster.
If these numbers increase, you need to lockdown the areas of outbreaks.
If there are outliers, ie. People outside of that area but part of the cluster, you might want to increase precautions and testing in that person's area.
Something like Tableau can show the patterns of severe cases and commonalities between them.

It would also allow us to identify if/when the strain mutates to something
benign/worse 😳

We know and expect it to be in the community, so asking people where they have been is pretty redundant, (but most likely caught it close to home or work.)

Increasing sensitivity of people getting tested, from "minimal symptoms", to a higher threshold, may reduce the number of cases that need contact tracers. 🤔
But you won't get all chains of transmission in the community until the individual requires medical treatment.

Is there a correlation between viral load and case severity?
Perhaps a quick test that could be preformed in the community, (chemists, testing centres...)that indicates the likelihood you will progress from a sore throat to a serious case.

This could limit the pressure on the health system, as well as the number of deaths. It could also limit the time spent in hospital, ICU and with long Covid, by taking preventative measures early.

Quarantine can also be implemented for the period the individual is infectious. By limiting the amount of time a person needs to quarantine, as well as increased fines, should hopefully lead to compliance, avoiding the need for an ankle bracelet!

"The effectiveness of the public health TTIQ is measured on a ‘time to case isolation’ basis."

But our focus has to shift to serious cases. There should be sufficient global data to predict who or what conditions lead to more serious cases ie.Hospital, ICU.
Deaths seem to be at this stage, correlated with comorbidities, which makes these people the priority.

If TTIQ is non existent, we need more sophisticated techniques beyond tracking on the phone.

We may always be playing catch up until The Creator of the Heavens and Earth ends the pandemic.

It just depends by how much?🤔

We ask The Creator of the Heavens and Earth to end this pandemic 🙏🏾

We ask The Creator of the Heavens and Earth for well-being 👍🏾🇦🇺🏝

We ask The Creator of the Heavens and Earth to lift this trial🙏🏾

[arturuzieblo]

At 10.30 you have said that Doherty guys assumed that TTIQ was always performing well.

Starting on page 6 of the model "TTIQ assumptions are based on the performance of the Victorian public health response at the height of the ‘second wave’ in 2020 as our best estimate of achievable effectiveness at high caseloads". TTIQ It was pretty bad at the time, equivalent to NSW right now. And it continues on Page 10 "Should TTIQ responses become only partially effective due to high caseloads, high PHSM would be needed to curb transmission ...". And it continues...

In summary, there is a lot of considerations of the TTIQ performance and its impact, as it should be.

So it is all there, the problem is that people take from the report what they actually want to see. Before we criticise people, let's just say, read the report yourself and you will see what you want to see.

[JT-xfmx]

I heard somewhere that Scott Morrison and Gladys are using this model and keep saying ‘% of ELIGIBLE vaccinated population. Why are they using them percentages as there’s a big difference between Eligible population and Actual population.

[gerardbiddle]

And to add TTIQ tracing would have been greatly assisted if the $4 million Federal Covid App had have worked!!! Another Federal shortcoming where the Android digital phones had problems communicating with I phones and vice versa. Remember that Covid App folks? And fit-for-purpose Quarantining apart from vaccine supply.

[AdamTrace]

Can you tell us the parameters that define partial ttiq vs optimal ttiq

[madonnawaugh]

Hey AI, you need to do a review on our public health system. The gympie hospital is now down to 68 beds and kids ward just closed. So can our public hospital system cope? And should the feds be funding all of the public health system? The feds have proved they can print lots of money. The feds are only giving gympie region health system 300 million over the next 12 years.

[thedamnedatheist]

That 80% modelling looks like 60 000 a day by day 180. the graph cuts off before it peaks.

[thettguy]

Er. how about we get more contact tracers to fight the fire? Why can't we do that?

[AdamTrace]

The word you were looking for is a simulation

[madonnawaugh]

The aus institute have never blocked my long emails. Thanks AI team. They may just go straight to spam😀😀. But The Doherty institute just blocked an email I sent to them and llew O’Brien.