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Your NZ 
David
/ 16th April 2020I see the chambers of commerce have welcomed the nothing that was the 3.2 billion business package which is in effect getting your tax back quicker and delaying being evicted and having your assets pawned and it could have something to do with the 25 million they got to provide business advice.
Its great politics and will be repeated for the noisiest of charities and iwi groups to keep them quiet as well. Clark did this to great effect when Ardern was a staffer there. Step out of line and criticise and watch your funding get declined.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020David,such a bundle of joy you are.As an aside who would have handled it better than PM Jacinda Ardern(mother of the nation)
Blazer
/ 16th April 2020~oh try to remember …that time in…..’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/92569855/apology-over-threat-to-withdraw-funding-from-government-opponents
Duker
/ 16th April 2020It was only ever called tax loss rebate package…. to sounds of teeth knashing and wailing
If it wasnt introduced there would be screams of outrage….and wailing.
Where are the entrepreneurs who respond to the challenges of of the business cycles…all we hear from are the rent takers and the mine mine mine brigade.
Maybe they should join the mums and dads with their money safe and secure on term deposit if they cant stand the heat in kitchen
David
/ 16th April 2020https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12325044
Feedback from a business organisation thats not part of the 25 million buck lolly scamble.
Blazer
/ 16th April 2020you can never please ..everyone David.
Duker
/ 16th April 2020Heart of the City ?
Funded by the Council through level on inner city business.
But they are getting something …wailing is just how they operate all the time
“In response to the criticisms of the tax relief package, Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash said there was already a range of government assistance for small businesses – both directly targeted at wage costs, and more indirectly by buffering the banking system.”
Apparently all sorts of contradictory things will happen!
Because they arent getting rent relief from government, shops will close and the city will be a wasteland and landlords will get nothing.
Its obvious the land lords will have to give ‘rent free periods’…thats very common when getting a new tenant in, now they will have to do it to keep them in business.
The glory days of charging key money for the privilege of signing a lease are long gone. Now it will be ‘keep the doors open money’ the landlord will pay the tenant.
Welcome to the business cycle!
Gezza
/ 16th April 20208°C @ 7.30 am this morning. Nippy, but clear skies & a fabulous sunrise happenng over the Eastern hills. Looks like another nice day for outside projects. Have a good one folks.
Pete George
/ 16th April 2020It’s already 9.4 here in Dunedin and looking like being a much better day. We’ve had two days of strong cold winds and rain, but we had three very nice days over Easter. One thing we’re guaranteed to get here is variety of weather.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 202017C here. Looks better than yesterday which was hot/cold windy all day.
David
/ 16th April 2020Christchurch has been freezing for a couple of days, looks good today.
Maggy Wassilieff
/ 16th April 2020Bit of a chill in the air here at 15C… 10am… brilliant day tho’, no wind.
I’ve had 1 fire so far (last week).
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2020What’s a fire ? 😀
I had the fans going a few days ago.
Yesterday was one of those days that couldn’t make its mind up from minute to the next; hot, windy, hot again…
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2020THREE tuis were in my big tree, but there are still too many leaves for me to have taken good photos. One was enormous; he looked as if he’d been inflated with a pump. The other two were smaller; wife and child ? The huge one gave me a lovely view of the back of his iridescent tail, spread out as he preened himself. Stunning.
Gezza
/ 16th April 2020I’ve got at least two tui regulars. I put two bowls of sugar water out for them everyday & they repay the favour by singing their little lungs out constantly all thru the day. Their turquoise colours on ther backs & wings are very striking and glossy.
I’ve read that tuis are very territorial & my two bear this out. The bigger tui often chases the smaller one away.
They are very comical too, the way they hop sideways up to tbe sugar bowls. Mine turn up & start singing at daybreak; but no sugar water, no tuis.
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2020I see them from time to time, so they may be more frequent visitors than I realise. It can be hard to tell when they’re in a tree out of the sun. I haven’t seen three together, though, except on flax bushes.
Maggy Wassilieff
/ 16th April 2020A very good article by Peter Dunne.
Get Parliament cracking again.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/15/1129673/end-this-orwellian-version-of-nz
Blazer
/ 16th April 2020wasted time reading that.
Maggy Wassilieff
/ 16th April 2020Not only has the willingness with which we seem to have embraced the restrictions imposed upon us become increasingly concerning, but also the corresponding extent to which tolerance for dissenting views has diminished. Our national television news was never a paragon of stimulating reporting and commentary, but now it has descended into little more than a nightly banal morality lecture about how we should all be behaving, and how well we are all doing.
– Peter Dunne
Blazer
/ 16th April 2020Bridges LOTO heads the ERC…Dr..
‘“I’m coming to a pretty clear view we should come out of lockdown next week,” he told Morning Report’s Corin Dann. He referred to an idea he attributed to Peter Gluckman, formerly the prime minister’s chief science advisor under National, of a “level two plus”.
“We can walk and chew gum at the same time on health and the economy,” he said. “I look at that Australian experience, where baristas are still making coffee, and builders are still building.”
For all that, he continued his stance of broadly endorsing the government’s response to Covid-19, and said he was “not suggesting we we’ll be at level two overnight”. When asked whether raising stimulus as high at $20bn was warranted, should unemployment near 10%, he replied “in general terms, yes”, indicating a consensus on continued spending to stare down the worst of Treasury’s economic projections.
Dunne…nothing ever.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020TV is unwatchable and most of Stuff and the Herald is unreadable.
Thank heavens for overseas news sites and this one, PG! Many thanks for what you do and we all enjoy.
duperez
/ 16th April 2020The dire state our media has descended to was vividly demonstrated yesterday. A nationwide radio station had Peter Dunne on for an hour.
David
/ 16th April 2020Wise words Maggy. Stuff have been pretty good at times, Herald is utter crap and never watch TV news but I hear Garner has been pretty exceptional in the mornings.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020Is this person Nationals replacement for sir Bill English??, I don’t think so but he can talk and write books, but he would need my wife’s budgeting skills which he lacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Goldsmith_(politician)
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Is he as tolerant as your wife, Lurch?
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020Alan, this person would be an ACT or New Conservative voter in the name of free speech, personal liberty and all that,in NZ,in other words, a fool
https://t.co/U0gekf7Xed?amp=1
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Disgusting, Lurch. He used public transport. No self-respecting ACT supporter would do that.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020More tolerant than you,Alan…but thanks for worrying and enquiring
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020I’m very patient, Lurch. I am intrigued about your wife’s opinion though.
Call me Ishmael...
/ 16th April 2020A very good perspective by Kevin Baron.
“If Trump and conservatives want a better WHO and a better United Nations, then they should work to improve them. Lead that effort. Rewrite the entire UN Charter. Do something. Anything. But be honest about it. Trump could be leading the entire global pandemic response through the United Nations Security Council, banging his shoe at Xi Jinping there, instead of gabbing with Sean Hannity.
If, however, Trump’s team really just wants to wipe the United Nations off the face of the earth, then fine, get about doing that. Call up Morning Joe and re-up Scarborough’s 1995 bill. Take it to the campaign trail for November re-election. Hell, pulling back from the world is pretty popular for the far right and left, right now.
But cutting off America’s WHO payments doesn’t make the United States safer.
Continually undermining 20th century institutions that are designed to slow national leaders from racing into conflicts and to prevent world wars, and then blaming the institutions for not working well enough for you, doesn’t save American lives. It only makes things worse.”
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/04/trumps-cuts-who-arent-about-coronavirus/164631/
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020I’m tweaking my model a bit to better handle the probable infectious periods of infected intrrnational arrivals. I’m assuming if they are confirmed cases they are in their infectious stage when reported and if probable then their infectious stage is past when reported. Since we don’t know the date they were infected I have to work with averages not individual cases.
More complexity makes the solution much slower because the data has to be recomputed as the parameters vary. I’ve also tweaked the solver package to work with whole numbers of days since that is the granularity of the data and model which improved the fit a little.
And I might try an Excel add-on which can generate estimates of the uncertainties in the derived parameters and their co- dependencies. I don’t think it’s worth playing with the hospitalisation and death rates because the numbers are so small and I don’t have a time sequence of data. At least I have plenty of time!
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Hmm. First cut produced a dramatically better fit to the early data especially but some big changes in parameters, in particular the number of undetected cases in the community, which makes the number still infectious out there much less pleasant. I’ll have to think about whether it is working correctly.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020Don’t waste your time with excel Al, try a real analysis toolset.
https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-download-Stata-12-for-free
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020I’d use my R if I wanted to be professional, C. But Excel allows everyone to check it and play with it. And gives the same results.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020I think you’ve bamboozled everyone Al 😉
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020You need to install the standard Solver to Excel that’s all. If I can be bothered I’ll install Solverstat to add the stats.
At the moment I’m finding the % of undetected infections is crucial. The best fit is when that is allowed to go up to 80% but even given the asymptomatic young I doubt that is realistic. It also is the most pessimistic picture of the number of current infectious people running around.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020How many infectious people (pessimistic) are running around? If it’s in the model can you post the links again
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020It varies hugely from none (if we sre detecting all cases) to several thousand depending on how many are undetected. I’ll put up a version with 50% undetected.
This link should still work I think.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020Awaiting link
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuhKWHlH5hzQhN50oLXSJK08YO5r_A
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020Okay so if I understand the fraction detected represent the ratio of infectious people running around who haven’t been tested to the number of people who have been tested and become a ‘case’? Or is it the ratio of infectious people running around who haven’t been tested to the sum of the total number of infectious people who have been tested and become a ‘case’ plus the number of infectious people running around who haven’t been tested. Which of the two is the ‘fraction detected’?
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020Correction, I was referring to the fraction undetected
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Here’s another one unconstrained which lets the Fraction Detected go where it wants and finishes up at 24%. Makes the Fraction Undetected 76%.
You can see from the Model sheet that the Detected calculation which is matched to the total reported cases by the Health Dept = (Total calculated infected as at the incubation period back from the current date) * Fraction Detected. So it is the fraction of the total cases estimated by the model that the Health Dept is detecting with allowance for the delay between infection and symptoms/infectiousness..
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Unconstrained: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuhKWHlH5hzQhN8mqpjRweYhtWW0jQ?e=DgGo4d
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020If the number of infectious still running around is anywhere close to your figure I’d say we were in a spot of bother. What say you o wise one?
Btw what number does the 0.24 represent?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Also note the infected don’t stay infectious so the actually infectious people are the green line – a separate column on the Model sheet.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020The ‘fraction detected’ I’m seeing in the parameters looks like a hard coded value rather than a calculated value. What are two values that have produced a value of 0.24?
Back to my original point. To clarify, the total cases estimated by the model is the ‘infections’ value on the graph. Am I correct?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Yes to the last q. The parameters look hard-coded but the top 7 were varied by the solver process to produce the minimum sum of deviations between the Detected line and the Reported line. The solver process is accessed from the Data tab.
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020No further questions your honour
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Sorry about the delays. Many things intervened including food!
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020See further question above
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Yes, but I’ll need some confirmation that there are so many undetected cases running around before I’ll believe that 0.24 (meaning 76% are going undetected). We need more random tests properly controlled and reported. Even at that rate you could only expect to find one in a thousand random tests so would have to do a lot.
Duker
/ 16th April 2020This may be useful Iceland has 17,000 tests done of people who dont have symptoms…ie not testing for Covid but testing for the people who dont have it , and picking up the number with no symptons
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing-coronavirus-intl/index.html
fewer than 1% are positive from a semi random sample.
And herd immunity would be 50-60% …… serious problems clearly
Conspiratoor
/ 16th April 2020By definition you’ll never get confirmation of undetected cases. How about throwing caution to the wind and telling us how many bums are currently represented by the 76% undetected
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020You can see all that for yourself if you click on “Model” at the bottom of the screen to look at the data sheet.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020You can get an estimate of the undetected cases with a random sample to see how many turn up in a given sample. Of course they need to be detectable, just not previously recorded.
Zedd
/ 16th April 2020just got an eye on AlJz.. looks like MrT has run out of hair dye.. OD HS NM 😀
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2020Now that IS an emergency. I have a test pot of orange paint, if that’s any use.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020Cabin fever is hell,I’m talking more to the dogs and listening to their replys
Pete George
/ 16th April 2020More media cutbacks, this time wages.
Duker
/ 16th April 2020You Tubers are taking big cuts in come as well, even though views have soared
The reason is advertising even there is dropped significantly.
But those who create contenet on youtube are employees.
Employees wages dont rise if advertising goes up . Thats for the shareholders and executives.
This is what made the 1930s depression so painfull and long lasting , wage cuts, which led to less sales and that let to lower wages.
Any economic model would say the same about cutting wages like employers are likely to do now in a wholesale manner.
duperez
/ 16th April 2020Go to check this weeks episode from the young women and right at the beginning get a touch of New Zealand!😊
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020Someone on YSB is hitting the bottle early and wants a return to the past, UNDERMINING the current National team…he can see the future and it isn’t good for the right
“Capricorn One April 16, 2020 At 2:05 pm
Shame- Now more than ever our economy needs the likes of Key, Joyce, English and co..
I was quietly hoping maybe they might do a Winston Churchill and come ‘Out of the Wilderness’ to save their country from these lunatics!”
I smell the stench of fear from the right, the personal abuse of our PM Jacinda Aedern (the mother of the country)is expanding, sad really
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Really, Lurch? I think a lot of people are like me and don’t want to be patted on the head by Jacinda but just want their children and grandchildren to still have jobs when she has finished playing dictator. And at present some think or know they won’t.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020Well Alan as an intense righty struggling through 3 years of the (mother of the nation) PM Jacinda Ardern reign,JESS my farm rescued heading girl dog(JESS identifies as a girl) could be a rampaging lesbian so Alan as a staunch righty how should i handle JESSs urges with sheep
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020We have the same problem when Coco attaches to Gemma’s hind leg (which is as big as she is). Best to look the other way.
lurcher1948
/ 16th April 2020But what about the farming community,when will it end??,sex raising its ugly head,what does Simon Bridges church say
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2020Probably not much in lockdown, Lurch. What does Jacinda say?
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2020We are adults, Lurch, we don’t want to be told what to do by Mummy (Mummy knows best, dears) as if we were backward children. The PM is there to represent us, not be a dictator.
Gezza
/ 16th April 2020Nice