Home values
Only four properties were reported as sold in Melbourne's preliminary auction figures at the weekend, as dramatic lockdown restrictions continued.
Home values have levelled off elsewhere, but Melbourne's housing prices continue to decline for a sixth month, although it must be difficult to measure this with any level of granularity given that transactions levels are so thin.
State stamp duty revenues and many real estate businesses are being crushed through this trend alone, even before considering the wider economy.
In Sydney, by contrast, auction numbers are running 18 per cent higher than a year ago, with a preliminary clearance rate for the week of 69.5 per cent from 625 auctions over the week, according to CoreLogic.
Stage 4 lockdown
The 7-day moving average for new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia continued to decline gradually, hitting a 62-day low today.
Victoria's breakout, initially related to failed quarantine security measures, does now seem to be declining, although daily case numbers are still running at above 60 per day.
Elsewhere there has been almost no community transmission for some time, as we now move towards the warmer summer months, although New South Wales has had a small number of isolated clusters reported.
Protecting the elderly
Victoria's official death toll has increased to 666, with the total for Australia reaching 753.
Those with pre-existing conditions and the elderly have been more vulnerable, with close to 95 per cent of reported deaths being in those aged 70 or above, and the reported deaths being most commonly reported for the cohorts aged 80 to 89, and 90 plus.
Source: Department of Health
It invariably feels distasteful to reduce such intensely emotional events down to raw statistics, but of Victoria's 666 officially reported COVID deaths, more than 500 have been in aged care facilities.
As time passes this alone will not result in a noticeable spike in total death rates, since the average age on entry to permanent aged health care is 85 for females and 82 for males, while the average completed length of stay is only 34 months.
This vulnerability does suggest is that aged care facilities need to receive special consideration in terms of processes and policies, testing, resources, and funding.
In Europe there have been reporting issues related to the distinction between deaths from COVID-19 with deaths of persons with COVID-19, to the degree that some UK authorities have stopped reporting the total death counts altogether.
The original methodology was deliberately chosen so as not to understate deaths, presumably being a policy designed to create a level of trepidation in the minds of the public:
Source: UK Government
But under the new methodology total reported UK deaths have just been running at a handful per day, with even fewer hospital deaths being reported (e.g. a total of three on Sunday).
Despite repeated assurances 'that the buck stops' with the state government leadership, there hasn't been transparency on how Victoria's breakout was allowed to happen through mismanagement of hotel quarantine, or acceptance of full discussion of the situation with aged care facilities.
The Australian reported this week that nursing home deaths have fallen by 1,000 across the first seven months of 2020, compared to the prior year, even when taking into account those who have died with or from the coronavirus, possibly due to increased influenza immunisation.
Melbourne rolling lockdowns to continue
Unfortunately for Victorians the lockdowns and restrictions looks likely to continue for many weeks to come, apparently for another two months.
The arbitrary target for moving down to a less stringent lockdown appears to be getting the moving average for new cases down to 5 or below, and only if this takes place after October 26.
This is a phenomenally challenging target, which also raises the awkward question of what happens if the target is achieved only temporarily.
Some other countries, including New Zealand, saw cases fall to zero, only for 116 active cases to again be reported subsequently (albeit with barely any deaths), while countries such as Hong Kong and Vietnam also found no cases for close to 100 days, before new cases were suddenly discovered again.
Aiming for zero cases
The policy think tank Grattan Institute put out a report last week demanding that Australia targets zero cases before easing restrictions, while international arrivals should be quarantined as "the quest for a vaccine continues".
There even seems to be implicit consideration from Grattan's Health Program Director of perhaps locking down the 8.2 million residents of New South Wales 'for a couple of weeks'...although Retweets may not automatically reflect endorsements, of course!
On a practical level locking down an entire state economy and all of its population and incumbent businesses for 14 days as a precautionary measure is unimaginably impractical, and there are no guarantees that it would actually work anyway.
New South Wales is not reporting any deaths at all from COVID-19, although there was an aged care cluster of deaths at Newmarch House back in April.
Source: Covidlive.com.au
While achieving zero cases is ostensibly an admirable goal, the experiences of other countries suggest that this isn't likely to be sustainable for an airborne virus.
Grattan's report also fails on a cost-benefit analysis level - simply listing the destructive effects of lockdowns (suicide, domestic violence, unemployment, mental health, physical health, and so on) doesn't adequately measure them, and nor does comparing suicides in 2020 to date with prior years, especially given that ongoing lockdowns are in the post for Victoria.
Less charitable observers imply that it's easy for those with unaffected employment to call for indefinite restrictions or lockdowns, but Grattan's report does arguably present something of a false binary choice - zero cases or many deaths - suggesting either ongoing tight restrictions in the pursuit of zero cases, or to, quote, 'let it rip', which almost nobody of any standing is actually recommending.
In Europe there has been a renewed surge of new cases of COVID-19 in Italy, Germany, France, UK, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal, partly due to the widespread availability of PCR testing, but this time around there have been remarkably few deaths reported to date.
Victoria's lockdowns to continue
Moreover there seems to be a high level of confidence being placed in university and other modelling, which to date has often proven to be so far wrong it would be almost comical...if this were not such a serious issue.
As Philip Tetlock found, forecasts from experts can often be less accurate, due to overconfidence in their own expertise, a trend which may become more pronounced the better known the expert is (partly since notoriety is achieved through bold, rather than accurate, predictions).
In other words, there can be an inverse relationship between the accuracy of an expert's prediction and their level of renown or self-confidence.
The original commitment from the Victorian government was for a Stage 4 lockdown for the 6 weeks until next week, but this is now defunct, with the state's contract tracing proving to be less effective than that of New South Wales.
The third stage of the reopening is now not expected for a further 11 weeks until November 23 - and that's only if zero new cases are found for 14 days - making life all but impossible for retailers trying to plan for their normally busy Christmas season.
Unfortunately for Victorians the dramatic restrictions look set to continue for many long weeks to come, with there being absolutely no doubt in the mind of Andrews that there's no alternative.
Many businesses and jobs will surely have gone for good following another two months or more of such dramatic measures.
