Years ago, I was discussing a major "off shears" sheep loss with an old district wool grower.
He complained that his stockmen seemed to enjoy telling him of death numbers.
He fixed his irritation by responding, "forget the dead ones, how many are alive?"
We would do well to give the same order to the death crazed media.
The Italian story is dreadful but currently amounts to 14,000 deaths and 60 million still alive.
Perspective has gone as the media adds to panic and forces actions that haven't been thought out.
One should never enact laws that can't be enforced.
Experts have deep knowledge of their field, but usually lack wider experience, yet they are steering our besieged elected leaders.
During the Johne's disease farce I saw departmental vets become obsessive.
Producers were being crucified for no ultimate industry gain.
I won't forget my phone counselling efforts - two of which were unsuccessful attempts to prevent suicide.
For the past three years, Australia has recorded an average of nine suicides a day - 3000 odd a year (the US averages nearly 50,000).
At the time of writing, Australia has recorded 34 deaths from coronavirus and have over 25 million people alive. In the same period, there would have been over 600 suicides.
The stress of isolation, job/house/business loss will see such numbers explode.
In 1958, H2N2 flu killed 1.1 million people worldwide, in 1968 H3N2 killed 1 million and in 2009 swine flu killed 590,000 people.
Coronavirus is on 60,000 odd deaths at the time of writing.
The Spanish flu saw New York have 20,000 deaths in October 1918.
Deaths then tapered quickly. Influenza, Foot and Mouth Disease etc, all reach a herd immunity level.
This health disaster will end. The social/economic effects of lockdown will be long-lasting.
We are magnifying an economic depression that was already unfolding in the western world, caused by huge debts of the global bank derivative gamblers.
We will hopefully see the banking reform that followed the Great Depression (separation of investment and savings banks) which was later removed by Wall Street pressure on President Clinton.
Our Prime Minister should ensure the passing of similar legislation, which is before our parliament.
Meanwhile, our government is doing a wonderful job having some survival money transferred to our people.
A Reserve Bank can create unlimited credit from nothing, but only for use in its own country.
It won't be repaid as it would only be transferring the money from one of its accounts to another.
The big banks illustrated after they were rescued in the 2008 GFC.
Our government has the rare opportunity of returning control of our economy by big banks to the democratically elected government with the re-creation of a government owned bank.
Big global banks have caused more misery than all the terrorists combined, destroyed the western world's productive economies and handed world domination to China.
