Healthy surfing rules during COVID-19 pandemic

Surfing Australia, April 2020:

Surfing is fun, and a great way to get your daily exercise. It’s also non-contact and easily done by yourself whilst following the physical distancing rules, if we all adjust a few things together. 

EIGHT STEP SURFING ADVICE 

1. Surf the spot closest to your home ONLY. 

2. Wax up and prepare at home. Put on your wetsuit, boardies and other gear at home before driving to the beach. 

3. Follow physical distancing at all times coming and going to the beach. For example, if you have a narrow path to the beach wait an extra minute for it to clear before you walk down. 

4. Have a surf and leave immediately, don't chat with mates in the car park. Call them on your phone. 

5. If the surfing spot is overcrowded - don’t go out 6. 

Don’t paddle next to someone like you would normally. Give them more space. 

7. CRITICAL CHANGE – take it in turns. Do not paddle back over to the peak after catching a wave. Wait your turn patiently on the shoulder. 

8. Don’t change in the parking lot. Wrap your towel around yourself & go home. 

SPECIAL NOTE: Some beach closures have been a direct result of the public not making an effort to follow social distancing rules. Not all beaches are equal as it relates to observing social distancing rules and regulations. A local council's decision to close a beach is made up of multiple factors outside of 'surfing as exercise'. These decisions need to be respected by the surfing community.

By 24 April 2020 there were 1,346,172 unemployed people across Australia, at least 500,000 of whom had lost their jobs due to the pandemic

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in January 2020 there were est. 778,700‬ people of workforce age who were unemployed in Australia and, est. 207,200 (26.6%) of these were New South Wales residents.

By 24 April 2020 there were est. 1,346,172 unemployed people (between the ages of 15 to 64 years) spread across the nation and, it is likely that unemployed people in New South Wales then exceeded est. 224,700 individuals.

The national figure represents an additional 567,472 unemployed people between January and late April - with an est. 500,000 of this number out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Initial results in a Monash Univerity ongoing study suggests that 90% of those who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 public health restrictions/changed economic climate were given less than one week's notice and of those 44.7% received no notice at all.

Processing unemployment benefit applications for over half a million extra Australians in need is taking time and, est. 317,597 applications were still outstanding on 24 April.

Apart from an initial $750 economic support payment for those receiving Jobseeker (previously Newstart), no enhanced unemployment benefits or JobKeeper* subsidised wage payments commenced until after 27 April 2020, with some payments not due to be received until 11 May [See Senate Select Committee on COVID-19, public hearing transcript, 30 April 2020, p.22]. 

Which means that, commencing on 28 February, between est. 20,320 to 249,875 Australian citizens had been without income support** and those single people on unemployment benefits had been struggling to live on as little as est. $18-$40 per day.

According to a Senate estimates hearing on 30 April, est. 400,000 more people are expected to lose their jobs by September 2020, at which time the unemployment rate is predicted to be around 13 per cent.

Goldman Sachs analysts are reportedly predicting an effective unemployment rate*** of 19 per cent by June-July.

Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison is adamant that once the pandemic crisis passes all enhanced unemployment benefit rates will return to pre-pandemic levels - he is less clear about where the est. 1.74 million out of work Australians will be able to find a job.

Note:

* As of 28 April 2020 an est. 540,000 businesses have registered for the JobKeeper wage subsidisation scheme. The est. 3.3 million workers in these businesses are considered employed. JobKeeper wage payments to workers are subject to tax which is witheld by employers before payment is made.

** This last figure does not take into consideration unemployed non-citizens on student or work visas who are ineligible to apply for unemployment benefits.

*** An effective unemployment rate takes into consideration those who have had their hours of paid worik reduced, those who have given up looking for work since they lost their jobs and, those receiving JobKeeper payments but whose employer has temporarily ceased operating or is not operating at full capacity and therefore they are not going to work.

Pandemic bullies come in all shapes & sizes

The shrivelled soul of small business in Australia was on view in April 2020.....

Image found on Twitter

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April 2020:

A chamber of commerce on Sydney's north shore has been forced to back down from comments demanding local businesses refuse entry to customers and staff who had not downloaded the COVIDSafe tracing app. 

Ku-ring-gai Chamber of Commerce secretary Peter Vickers said he emailed between 1500 to 2000 businesses across its local government area on Monday directing them to ensure their customers had downloaded the app....

But Mr Vickers followed this email with another in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after some of the email's recipients informed him that such a direction was illegal.  

The federal rules governing the app's operation state that a person must not coerce another into downloading the app, or refuse them entry or services on the grounds they have not done so. 

Mr Vickers clarified in the subsequent email that businesses should only encourage people to install the app, while also taking aim at federal Health Minister Greg Hunt's decision to make the app voluntary. 

"In fact he (Mr Hunt) should have ordered Apple and Android to compulsorily download the app to all phones in Australia," Mr Vickers wrote. 

"The government forced businesses to close and even had the police chase sunbathers down the beach. They should be using the same force to open up again."..... 

He said the fact the app was optional should give businesses the right to refuse service. 

"You don't have to download the app but businesses should have the freedom to say we don't want infected people coming into our businesses."

Recent changes to COVID-19 gathering & travelling rules

NSW Premier, media release, 28 April 2020:

Update on COVID-19 restrictions

The NSW Government has announced an update on COVID-19 restrictions and how our schools and retail outlets will look for the month of May.

There will be three key changes that will take effect across NSW next month:

1. From Friday, 1 May up to two adults and their dependent children will be allowed to visit another household.
2. We will see a return of face-to-face teaching from 11 May, and then will consider accelerating a full return to school as soon as possible.
3. There have never been restrictions in NSW on what people can and cannot buy, however there may be increased retail activity, with some businesses choosing to re-open. It is important these shops maintain social distancing and hygiene requirements.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said this update on visits to households has been made to reduce social isolation and improve mental health.

“It extends the existing guidelines of being able to leave home for ‘care or medical purposes’,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“The two adults need not be related.

“The last thing any of us want to see is a huge spike in cases.

“We need anyone with even the mildest of symptoms anywhere in NSW to stay home and come forward for testing.”

There is no limit on how far you can travel within NSW so long as you respect the rules and the reason is consistent with one of the four categories for leaving home.

It is important when visiting another household social distancing is maintained and extra hygiene precautions are taken. When visiting, meeting in an outdoor environment such as home garden, backyard or verandah will help reduce the risk.

If you are visiting those aged over 70 or those with underlying health conditions we are urging you to be extra vigilant with social distancing and hygiene measures.

It is also important to remember that you do not visit anyone if you or they are unwell, even if you have mild symptoms like fatigue or a scratchy throat.

The two-person gathering limit still applies to public places.

Read about what you can and can't do under the rules.

Covid-19 deniers come from the same anti-science stable as climate change deniers?

DeSmog blog, Executive Summary, 22 April 2019:

“Government should be doing little or next to nothing,” Richard Ebeling wrote in a post about COVID-19 republished on March 24 by the Heartland Institute. “The problem is a social and medical one, and not a political one.”

“I just think we're going to be fine. I think everything is going to be fine,” Heartland editorial director and research fellow Justin Haskins said about COVID-19 during a March 13 episode of the podcast In the Tank. “I really don't think this is going to be a problem even two to three months from now.”

On Dec. 31, 2019, “a pneumonia of unknown cause” was first reported to the World Health Organization’s China Country Office — and in the months following that report, the disease now known as COVID-19 spread to infect millions of people worldwide and seems well on its way to killing hundreds of thousands — while experts warn that the presumed death toll may be significantly higher than we yet know.

As the virus spread, so too did misinformation: baseless predictions that the disease would not cause significant harm, claims of miracle cures, and conspiracy theories about the virus’s origins. That misinformation was often circulated by white-collar professionals — including many who have a history of casting doubt on climate science or seeking to debate issues that were already laid to rest within the scientific community. The overlap was so striking that it caught the attention of both former President Barack Obama and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in March.

Some of that misinformation on COVID-19 came straight from President Trump. But a river of faulty information on the coronavirus also flowed from think tanks, experts (some self-proclaimed), academics, and professional right-wing activists who also have spurned climate science and sought to slow or stop action to respond to the climate crisis.

Some compared COVID-19 to the flu or other threats, suggesting that the flu was a larger threat and that action to slow the spread of the novel virus was an overreaction. As the toll from COVID-19 grew, others argued that the virus was the most important threat and that action to slow climate change was superfluous. Some circulated false or unproven cures and remedies while others touted the benefits of single-use plastics during the pandemic (without regard for the health of those living in places where plastics and petrochemicals are produced — like Saint John the Baptist parish, Louisiana, which on April 16, had the highest per-person COVID-19 death rate in the U.S.)

Some attacked renewable energy, some the Green New Deal, and others the World Health Organization (WHO). Some framed efforts to “flatten the curve” of infections as infringements on liberty or simply unnecessary while others persisted in using terms that the WHO has warned can lead to dangerous stigma and discrimination. And some climate science deniers have circulated conspiracy theories, like claims that the virus was a foreign “bioweapon,” that it’s linked to “electrosmog” and 5G networks, or alleged that “the World Health Organization has carried out the greatest fraud perhaps in modern history.”

The decades that fossil fuel companies spent funding organizations that sought to undermine the conclusions of credible climate scientists and building up doubt about science itself ultimately created a network of professional science deniers who are now deploying some of the same skills they honed on climate against the public health crisis at the center of our attention today.

Many of the operatives spreading COVID disinformation have influence because of the fossil fuel industry.

• People like Steve Milloy and Patrick Michaels and organizations like  the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), The Heartland and Manhattan Institutes gained influence in the early heyday of climate science denial when the fossil fuel industry made a broad and concerted effort to mislead the public about global warming.
• We’re now seeing many of the same people and organizations utilize the tactics they honed in the 1990s to foment doubt about the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
• Many of the organizations now spreading misinformation received funding from fossil fuel companies and/or trade groups for years or even decades, as DeSmog and others have previously documented (e.g. Reason Foundation, Independent Institute, Texas Public Policy Foundation, etc.).....

COVID denial should forever discredit climate science deniers.

• These attempts to exploit a global pandemic to further the climate denial machine’s anti-science agenda will mean loss of life, and unnecessarily imperil frontline medical personnel by allowing the virus to spread further and more quickly. 
• Some climate deniers have pushed outright conspiracy theories on COVID-19: claiming, as Piers Corbyn did, that the pandemic is a “world population cull” backed by Bill Gates and George Soros; alleging, as a former member of British Parliament did, that COVID-19 is just a “big hoax”; or, like Alex Jones, seeking to profit directly off of COVID-19 through false marketing, according to the Food and Drug Administration and the New York Attorney General, both of which have warned Jones to desist from marketing a toothpaste he claimed “kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range.”
• Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit claiming that COVID-19 “was prepared and stockpiled as a biological weapon to be used against China’s perceived enemies.” Principia Scientific International claimed that economies were about to be shut down because “the WHO Director caused a global coronavirus panic over a basic math error,” (referring to early World Health Organization fatality rate numbers). Steve Milloy tweeted out a link to a New York Times op-ed by Dr. Cornelia Griggs, who described working in a New York City hospital amid the pandemic, calling her a “Hysterical doc” and writing “Stop the panic.” (Less than a week later, Milloy tweeted that “#Coronavirus has given us the #GreenDream: —Deprivation — Destroyed economy — Police state”). On April 10 — at a time when over 92,000 deaths had been reported worldwide — Bjorn Lomborg wrote that “Significant data indicate corona is no worse than the common flu.” And former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani tweeted out a list of leading causes of death on March 10, writing “Likely at the very bottom, Coronavirus: 27.” Six weeks later, more than 14,400 people in New York City had died after contracting the virus.
• Not only does their pandemic messaging undermine climate science deniers’ credibility, it also puts on display some of the faulty thinking that can be seen in their discussions of both topics — you see the same logical fallacies at play. There’s the rejection of basic modeling techniques (and early models on both COVID-19 and on climate have ultimately proved tragically accurate). There’s a failure to grasp the ways that an exponential problem can accelerate. There’s a willingness to make assertions that aren’t supported by evidence as well as a willingness to issue blanket assurances that things will be fine without taking into account the evidence. And there’s a reliance on ad hominem attacks and innuendo. These communications tactics used on both issues mirror each other.
• The individuals and organizations responsible for spreading disinformation on climate science and COVID-19 will forever cement their reputations on the wrong side of history....

In this series

• COVIDenial Executive Summary 
• COVID-19 Denial
• COVID-19 & Climate Comparisons
• Give Me Freedom or Give Me COVID 
• Climate Deniers & the 'China Virus' 
• Climate Deniers & Coronavirus 'Cures' 
• COVID-19 & Fossil Fuel Promoters 
• COVID-19 & Plastic Promoters 
• COVID Deniers & Attacks on Renewables
• COVID-19 Denier Attacks on WHO 
• COVID Denier Conspiracy Theories

Morrison Government's new virus contact tracing app

On the evening of Sunday 26 April 2020 the Morrison Coalition Government released its COVID-19 contact tracing app "COVIDSafe" for download and installation on mobile phones by the Australia public.

The stated intention for the release of this app is to widely surveil the Australian population with the aim of tracing persons who have been in contact with confirmed COVID-19 cases.

This release did not come after the promised full disclosure of the app source code. Indeed this source code if or when it is finally released will be a redacted version.

It did not come backed by a full legislative framework which had been scrutinised by the Australian Parliament. 

It came with a ministerial determination which had been published at one minute before midnight on Saturday 25 April 2020 and a one page website containing two download links, a link to "Privacy policy" and another to "Help topics".

It also came after the unannounced release of the promised Privacy Impact Assessment sometime on 25 April 2020.

Despite being assured that no federal agency can access data collected by COVIDSafe, one federal agency the Digital Transformation Agency has official permission to access data in certain situations.

To effectively use the app on a mobile phone Bluetooth has to be activated and some phones will be required to run the app in the foreground, others may find it can be run in the background. Recharging may have to happen more often and some existing phone functions may not always perform well.

Every mobile phone user with this app "will receive daily notifications to ensure the COVIDSafe app is running".

Once installed the app can be automatically updated (including with additional app functions) without notification to the user, unless automatic updates have been blocked on Google Play or Apple App Store.

It is up to each citizen and permanent resident to make their own decision concerning the downloading of this app as use of the app is voluntary.

UPDATE

Despite the Morrison Government insisting that "the COVIDSafe app does not collect your location", according to Google Play this app has GPS and network based functions so a mobile phone's precise location can be identified.

A perspective on society and the COVID-19 pandemic

This is a Twitter thread created by Janette Francis, a Walkley-award winning journalist, TV Presenter and podcaster.

Jan’s Twitter account was created in 2009.

The debate on the best responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is global and one cold-blooded aspect of this debate is currently found in British, American and Australian mainstream media articles and on social media - save the investments and assests of the well-off because old people and the chronically ill are going to die anyway.

This is Jan's contribution to this debate.

Jan Fran @Jan__Fran, 21 April 2020:

I keep hearing folks describe this pandemic as a kind of trade-off between public health and the economy. This trade-off is often framed around loss of life. 1

It usually goes something like this: if we ease the lockdown we’ll see people die from the virus. If we prolong the lockdown we’ll see people die from the consequences of possible economic collapse (i.e suicide, depression, poverty, ill health, violence). 2

We are led to believe that attempts to limit one set of deaths, will increase the other, that one group of people will have to sacrifice for the other. But whose lives are more important? 3

Do we sacrifice the sick now to save the healthy later; the old to save the young; the poor to save everyone else? We are led to believe that this is our dilemma and it is an impossible one. 4

Hey, here’s a fun thing to think about: guess how much money Jeff Bezos made today? 5

Jeff Bezos made 17,000 dollars. But he didn’t make it in one day. He made it in ONE SECOND. Every single second Amazon is reaping 17 thousand dollars worth of sales (this is AUD BTW) & this is happening SPECIFICALLY during this pandemic as more people seek deliverable supplies. 6

Jeff Bezos is now worth 216 BILLION dollars and good on Jeff Bezos, I say! I mean, the man is clearly providing a service that people need and reaping the rewards. That is #inspo, amirite?! Please speak at my conference, Jeff. 7

Thing is, there's a wee bit more to the world we live in. 8

We live in a world where, in the middle of a pandemic, one man makes 17 thousand dollars A SECOND and another is buried in a mass grave because his family can’t afford a funeral. 9

It’s a world where the homeless sleep in socially-distant quadrants in a hotel car park, while above them thousand-dollar-a-night rooms sit empty. It’s a world where folks are protesting their right to get sick in a country they can not afford to seek treatment in. 10

One thing this pandemic has done is exacerbated the gross inequalities we always knew existed. It has exposed them, brought them to the surface as the bodies of the poor and the desolate continue to be stacked beneath the ground. 11

The framing of this pandemic as ‘lives lost now V lives lost later’ is really just us tryna work out which sections of our society are more productive, more useful. Which sections are going to best replicate the system that was in place before all this Covid/lockdown malarky. 12

I mean, we all wanna get back to how it was ASAP, right? Now that we think about it we were having a great time. The system was working. But for who? 13

Not for the man whose body now sits in a mass grave on Hart Island NY, it wasn’t. Not for the homeless sleeping in their car park quadrants, it wasn’t. Not for the nearly 40 million Americans living below the poverty line, it wasn’t. This is the system we will replicate. 14

It is right to talk about sacrifice in this dark and uncertain time. I guess we all have to make sacrifices at some point so if not now, when? If not me, who? Before you answer that, know this … 15

Twenty-six individuals own as much wealth as HALF the world’s population - Lemme say that again: TWENTY SIX people (two. six) own the same amount of wealth as 3.8 BILLION PEOPLE. 16

That’s worth remembering the next time some legend waxes lyrical about why you might need to sacrifice yer nan for the sake of the economy. Maybe those 26 people should sacrifice the spoils they’ve reaped from a system that now needs saving from itself. 17

We do indeed have a dilemma but it might not be an impossible one. Maybe we actually don’t need to ask those who have the least to sacrifice the most, maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe that’s the trade-off? 18

Anyway, thanks for letting me share my thoughts on this website twitter dot com. 19/19

Banksy during COVID-19 pandemic quarantine in U.K.: "My wife hates it when I work from home"

Collosal, 15 April 2020:

Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director, active since the 1990s.

222 economists advise that lifting COVID-19 restrictions too soon will not help the Australian economy. But will Scott Morrison listen?

The Conversation, 20 April 2020:

In recent weeks a growing chorus of Australian commentators has called for social distancing measures to be eased or radically curtailed.

Some have claimed the lives saved by the lockdowns are not worth the damage they are causing to the economy.

Others have claimed the case for easing is strengthened by the fact many of the hardest hit by COVID-19 are elderly or suffering from other conditions.

Some might expect economists, of all people, to endorse this calculus.

But as economists we categorically reject these views, and we believe they do not represent the majority of our profession.

We believe a callous indifference to life is morally objectionable, and that it would be a mistake to expect a premature loosening of restrictions to be beneficial to the economy and jobs, given the rapid rate of contagion…..

Open Letter from Australian Economists

19 April, 2020

Dear Prime Minister and Members of the National Cabinet,

The undersigned economists have witnessed and participated in the public debate about when to relax social-distancing measures in Australia. Some commentators have expressed the view there is a trade-off between the public health and economic aspects of the crisis. We, as economists, believe this is a false distinction.

We cannot have a functioning economy unless we first comprehensively address the public health crisis. The measures put in place in Australia, at the border and within the states and territories, have reduced the number of new infections. This has put Australia in an enviable position compared to other countries, and we must not squander that success.

We recognise the measures taken to date have come at a cost to economic activity and jobs, but believe these are far outweighed by the lives saved and the avoided economic damage due to an unmitigated contagion. We believe strong fiscal measures are a much better way to offset these economic costs than prematurely loosening restrictions.

As has been foreshadowed in your public remarks, our borders will need to remain under tight control for an extended period. It is vital to keep social-distancing measures in place until the number of infections is very low, our testing capacity is expanded well beyond its already comparatively high level, and widespread contact tracing is available.

A second-wave outbreak would be extremely damaging to the economy, in addition to involving tragic and unnecessary loss of life.

Sincerely,

Professor Alison Booth, Australian National University

Professor Jeff Borland, University of Melbourne

Professorial Research Fellow Lisa Cameron, Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne

Professor Efrem Castelnuovo, University of Melbourne

Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, University of Sydney

Assistant Professor Ashley Craig, University of Michigan

Professor Chris Edmond, University of Melbourne

Professor Nisvan Erkal, University of Melbourne

Professor John Freebairn, University of Melbourne

Professor Renée Fry-McKibbin, Australian National University

Professor Joshua Gans, University of Toronto

Professor Jacob Goeree, UNSW Business School

Professor Quentin Grafton, Australian National University

Professor Simon Grant, Australian National University

Professor Pauline Grosjean, UNSW Business School

Distinguished Professor Jane Hall, University of Technology Sydney

Assistant Professor Steven Hamilton, George Washington University

Professor Ian Harper, Melbourne Business School

Professor Richard Holden, UNSW Business School

Professor David Johnston, Monash University

Professor Flavio Menezes, University of Queensland

Professor Warwick McKibbin, Australian National University

Assistant Professor Simon Mongey, University of Chicago

Professor James Morley, University of Sydney

Professor Joseph Mullins, University of Minnesota

Professor Abigail Payne, Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne

Professor Bruce Preston, University of Melbourne

Emeritus Professor Sue Richardson, Flinders University

Professor Stefanie Schurer, University of Sydney

Professor Kalvinder Shields, University of Melbourne

Professor John Quiggin, University of Queensland

Associate Professor Simon Quinn, Oxford University

Economic Advisor James Vickery, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Professor Tom Wilkening, University of Melbourne

Professor Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

Professor Yves Zenou, Monash University

Full list of signatories available on the economists open letter website.

Covid-19 testing in the Clarence Valley in February to April 2020

As of 20 April 2020 there were 56 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Northern Rivers region.

Eight of these cases were found in the Clarence Valley.

Image: Clarence Valley Council

By 20 April 2020 records show testing had been undertaken in a number of Clarence Valley post codes:

• 21 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2453, which covers Dundurrabin, Tyringham, Clouds Creek, Wild Cattle Creek and 16 other locations.
• 13 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2469, which covers Woombah, Tabulam, Ewingar, Moraro, Paddy's Flat and over 40 other locations.
• 13 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2466, which covers Woody Head, Iluka and The Fresh Water.
• 5 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2465, which covers Harwood Island.
• 109 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2464, which covers Yamba, Woolowyah, Angourie, Freebirn Island, Micalo Island and Yuragir.
• 110 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2463, which covers Maclean, Townsend, Gulmarrad, James Creek, Brooms Head, Palmers Island, Ashby, Tullymorgan and 10 other locations.
• 22 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2462, which covers Wooli, Minnie Waters, Ulmarra, Tucabia, Coldstream and 7 other locations.
• 0 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2461, which covers part of South Grafton.
• 340 COVID-19 tests had been conducted in postcode 2460, which covers Grafton, Nymboida, Coutts Crossing, Copmanhurst, Jackadgery, Baryugil, Lawrence, and over 30 other locations.

The Clarence Valley had a resident population of 51,662 people in 2019 and testing up to 20 April 2020 does not appear to have exceeded est. 1.2% of this population.

NSW Department of Health guidelines are that testing only occurs when a person presents with upper respiratory symptoms, such as a fever, sore throat, dry cough, breathlessness. Therefore any asymptomatic virus carriers slip through the net.

Despite the limitations of the 'flattening the curve' public health response to COVID-19, there has been no new cases in the NSW Northern Rivers region for the last 6 days and none in the Clarence Valley for the last 21 days.

I'm not exhaling yet, but this is a hopeful sign.

Morrison's insistence that NSW public schools are safe places during the pandemic is not an accurate claim

On 9 April 2020 NSW public schools began the school year's Easter holidays.

By that time school attendance was thought to be as low as 30 per cent of all enrolled students in state schools.

Even the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had withdrawn his children from a NSW private school sometime between 9 March and 2 April 2020 and moved his family into The Lodge in Canberra.

Yet he continues to harangue the states and teachers for the distance learning policy put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These teacher expressed her frustration at his attitude and comments.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 April 2020, p.20:

I find Morrison's comments that parents are doing home schooling offensive. What they are doing is assisting their children in understanding detailed, highly formatted lessons that are linked to the curriculum in a way to make it interesting for students. This is not home schooling as parents did not plan and link the work to the curriculum. As a teacher I spent 12-hour days combing the internet for interesting activities and tying it all to the curriculum, as well as running video classrooms, answering student questions and emails. When students were still having difficulties I was calling home to speak to the children to see how to fix the problems. That's not child minding: that's delivering quality remote learning for our students. Give us the protective wear, cleaning products and non-contact thermometers to screen children and teachers will be happy to go back to classrooms. 

 Jennie Kidd, Campbelltown

Coronavirus: PM won't send his kids to school while it's just childminding ⁦⁦@ScottMorrisonMP⁩ stating the online learning we, as a profession, have been busting our nuts preparing & delivering for a month, amounts to childminding is a total insult https://t.co/fyc9n9jfxD

— Vicki Lodge (@Vickster762) April 16, 2020

Morrison continues to insist that public schools are safe places for children to be during a pandemic.

NSW schools that have no hot running water, frequently no additional cleaning equipment and a limited ability to impose social distancing.

Under those conditions teachers were rightly worried about the risk to their own health and that of their pupils.

On 17 April 2020 there were est. 121 COVID-19 cases in NSW where individuals' ages ranged between 0 and 19 years.

This is an excerpt from a NSW Dept of Health media release dated 9 April 2020 at which point est. 112 individuals in that age range were infected with COVID-19 in the state:

This is another excerpt from a NSW Dept of Health media release dated 4 April 2020, at which point est.101 individuals in that age range were infected with COVID-19 in the state: