CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

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Originally Posted by justonething

I find that its difficult to compare countries by the number of cases, because of the extent of testing is different and also the counting of cases are different. In New Zealand, they have included probable cases in some of their figures. But looking at the picture, New Zealand is about 2 weeks behind Australia in its progress of cases, probably indicating that it took 2 weeks longer to reach NZ.

On another note, while I think the Govt has done a good job of containing the spread, I really think we are the lucky countries. Govt, and its citizens, our more remote location/island all work together to bring this about.

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You are right, JOT, but it is the best available data. Every country must and does under report cases, unless they do 100% testing, there are zero false negatives, zero false positives and zero infections between test date and publishing date. But the important issue is the gestalt of the charts, not the minutiae. Look at the chart profiles.

My view, based on a little manipulation of those bar charts is that NZ is about 5-6 days later then Aus, rather than 2 weeks.

finally, agree that it is a team result; Team Australasia has done a great job. Geography has helped, but the human effort was/is critical.

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Originally Posted by Tccp123

Surprise, surprise someone has cherry picked NW Tassie as the exception to the rule. Not unexpected as this is certainly a major outbreak when compared with the rest of Australia. I might add this occurred after lockdown had been brought into effect which would seemingly question the effectiveness of lockdown.

But my point was that "in Australia" this problem doesn't have anywhere near the same degree of importance as it does in say NYC. If I lived in NYC I'd never leave home without being fully kitted up in PPE. But I don't live in NYC so my chances of coming into contact with a carrier are still something like 1:10,000. Still good odds IMO. To fine some poor guy $1652 because he set off to go mountain biking BY HIMSELF is the ultimate in stupidity (and there are plenty of other examples of this jackboot behaviour).

My other question was what do we do once the virus has been eradicated from Australian soil? Presumably it is still active in other countries so that would suggest we cease all contact with them (AKA "close our borders"). That means no tourism, no exports, no imports blah, blah, blah... Where's the money coming from? How do you think that $130bn was funded?

I can't see an alternative to herd immunity but I'm open to ideas. Anyone?

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The Tassie hotspot is clearly showing how quickly escalation can happen. And it's showing that the little shortcuts that some people think they are "safe" doing are actually big deals. Again, the problem we're trying to solve for is to not put everyone in hospitals lining up for ventilators at the same time. This certainly is not cherry picking; again, this is the example that nobody wants to follow.

You've watched the simplistic demonstration of an epidemic's spread yeah? YouTube Even if they're not representative of a population's actual behaviours, they do show how social distancing and restrictive transfer between populations can go a significant way to protecting us all.

How we exit from here is going to be interesting - and I don't claim to have any idea what will happen or when. In this regard I can only sit back and watch what the medical experts and the people who have much more information available to them than we do, guide us through. There's no way I'd expect that we'll get to the point where we could say we have eradicated it from Australian soil.

Just on mountain biking. The reason the rules should have to apply equally to this is that it's not dissimilar to not driving unnecessarily for holidays, there are additional safety factors that could put stress on hospital resources away from his "normal" area. And as we learn more about the virus, unlike walking along the footpath or riding along the edge of a road where there's room for you to take slightly different paths to everyone else, MTB tends to be single file with little wiggle room, so anything left behind from a previous rider becomes a hazard for you that you can't avoid (and probably didn't know you needed to)

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Originally Posted by poundy

... the video response by the exec was awesome :) Supermarket boss’s blunt reply to toilet paper hoarder wanting refund

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He even has the facial expression to go with it :)

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Originally Posted by BobL

This is probably because of their vertical ventilation method. This seems to be aN "elephant in the room" issue that is not being used from hospitals, restaurants ETC.

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While visiting our local hospital, creatively named The Canberra Hospital, I saw last week a VAST pile of big HEPA like filters that had been obviously pulled out/replaced.

Must have been a thousand of them. Not some little toys, but the big ones like I saw you post once ages ago BobL, maybe 1/3rd of a sheet of MDF in size. Super thick, perhaps 15 or 20cm. Some were probably 50x50 and 30cm thick.

They look pristine. VERY nice! I was going to shanghai a few, then I remembered.... plague.

It seemed so fantastically wasteful (Mottainai). But I can understand why.

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Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Up until January I would have agreed with you, but then things changed drastically.

The companies may be based in Miami and traded on the New York and London stock exchanges, but they are incorporated in tax havens and their ships are registered with flags of convenience. They are real parasites and have eroded their political capital.

Now they have close to zero revenue, their major assets, the ships, are either docked or searching for somewhere to dock. Wonder what current "valuation" is?

They have also got a massive number of extremely upset passengers. The law suits will start to flow very soon. Carnival accounts to just under 40% of cruise passengers but almost 80% of coronavirus cases - the lawyers will surely seize on this dichotomy. "why do the other 60% or cruise ships account for only 20% of cases, so far."

I do not think that the cruise market will be so foregiving.

My prediction is that Carnival will file for bankruptcy protection within six months. In the US this is known as Chapter 11 protection.

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Graeme,

Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code doesn't generally mean the company goes out of business. It's the U.S. equivalent of administration, as we call it, which can mean liquidation but it can also mean that other debtors cannot sue to wind up the company when an administrator has been appointed. Assets are valued at depreciated cost or otherwise but not at their current earnings potential.

In Australia, the Ruby Princess has been a major story but it hardly caused a ripple in the international press according to my international correspondents. While the cruise companies might have been irresponsible to have accepted passengers after the pandemic was announced, the latter boarded of their own free will, including one of my sisters on the Costa Victoria and two old friends on the Greg Mortimer, I might add. It's hard to see any legal actions succeeding unless wilful negligence can be proven.

I had an interesting discussion with a mate yesterday about ports of convenience. The crews aboard get better wages, food and accommodation than they would have in their own countries. That's why they sign up. By our standards they're paid a pittance but they don't live here or anywhere in the first world. If it weren't for them, very few could afford a cruise. Compare the cost of the Broome-Darwin cruises with Australian crews versus what you get with Carnival or Royal Caribbean. Of course, the tax havens are another matter...

Time will tell,

mick

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Originally Posted by Glider

?......

Time will tell,

mick

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Precisely.

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Originally Posted by poundy

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You've watched the simplistic demonstration of an epidemic's spread yeah? YouTube Even if they're not representative of a population's actual behaviours, they do show how social distancing and restrictive transfer between populations can go a significant way to protecting us all.

How we exit from here is going to be interesting - and I don't claim to have any idea what will happen or when. In this regard I can only sit back and watch what the medical experts and the people who have much more information available to them than we do, guide us through. There's no way I'd expect that we'll get to the point where we could say we have eradicated it from Australian soil....

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Poundy, spot on. Your other point were exactly correct, but I thought to comment on just these, as they twigged with a post-grad thing my daughter did last year.

It was a statistical analysis of TB in Algeria. All the reports were in French so I translated it for her.... so it was a lot of reading!

The Algerians problems in crushing TB, which is horrific in its social, economic and environmental impact, are the same as the points you raised.

Getting the genie back in the bottle requires cooperative society wide changes. People, cultures and essential rights need to be subserviated for the greater good. Tracking individuals, changing culture and habits, removing taboos, proper treatment, getting people to hospitals, all of these things were (are) a massive undertaking in a poor country like Algeria.

Treatment, and providing an EFFECTIVE vaccine, cost something like 43 cents. It stops it dead..... BUT the population harvested and continued to construe all sorts of myths about the treatment and recoveries that hamper efforts to this day.

Stupidities abound, like those treated are forever "tainted". Hiding those so diseased from a fear of ostracism. Anti-Government conspiracies. Corruption. Coverups. People questioning the veracity of the science (those who do so had/have ZERO education).

.... FOURTY THREE CENTS....


TCCP123, I keep reading your posts and it only keeps vividly bringing back every single argument for the reasons behind the failure of eradicating TB in Algeria. Many of the points you raise are the same as those who oppose treatments, for whatever reasons, that leave their country on its knees.

I don't think you get it.

Man, I think you really need to have a bloody good hard long think about the types of media you read and the messages you are adsorbing from them, because, frankly, they are misleading you. You are dangerously ill-informed and many of the postulates you put forward are so identical to the naysayers within the Algerian problem that its scary.

The Algerian culture faces a lot of hurdles, but they aren't stupid. They know where the problems lay and might I say, euphemistically, they are addressing them.

There may be a time, here in Australia, where such problems may need to be equally euphemistically addressed.

Please try and see this pandemic for the real danger it is.

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Originally Posted by NeilS

This 30sec clip presents the argument for distancing very succinctly, I thought.

YouTube

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reminds me of this one YouTube

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Originally Posted by NeilS

Of potential concern are recent reports out of South Korea that some cases that had tested negative to the virus after recovery have since tested positive again. There are a number of reasons that may account for that, but it is too soon to know the significance of this, if any.

South Korea Reports Recovered Coronavirus Patients Testing Positive Again - The New York Times

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the coronavirus is labelled "novel" because it is a "new" virus and no one in the community is immune to it.

Therefore it is not surprising that some people who previously tested negative to the virus are now testing positive to it.
Also, I understand that the tests being used to detect the virus have significant rates of "false positive" and "false negative" results. Ideally a Covid-19 test would be definitive, yes (>98% assurance) you have it, or no (<0.01% chance) you don't have the virus. My understanding is that the false positive and false negative results are greater than 15%.

What would be most worrying would be if a person who had previously been hospitalised because of the virus was readmitted after catching the virus a second or third time.

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Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

LOADS! Where to start.....I was actually discussing this with a mate this morning.

There must be huge savings that businesses will be able to make. Less real estate for offices, desks, parking lots, cafeterias etc etc etc. Massive savings there.

Suddenly people will be able to work from Melbourne, Perth, Bullamakanka for a Sydney based company, and fly in one per month or something for a day or three. Stay at a colleague's house for some bonding.

Less traffic on the roads
Less stress
Less pollution from vehicles.
Less consumption of "stuff" (tyres, petrol, work clothes, make-up, and so on)
More room on Public Transport during peaks.
More Teleconsulting of all sorts of things (legal, economics, sorry, accountancy

Think of all those work computers that only get used for 8 hours a day in the old system. A massive share of them can go. All that office space real estate that is only used for 8 hours a day.

In short, and when we recover somewhat, I think commerce is going to severely disrupt itself for the better with a fundamental and seismic shift towards working from home permanently, with all that comes with that scenario. There will be opportunities that disruptors will make new fortunes from.

One thing is absolutely certain - there has never been a better time to become an IT professional - in all the associated fields of sales, service, programming etc. They are going to be in huge demand, travelling around to employees homes to do stuff to improve their efficiency.

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Brett

your envisioned future is a very very dystopian one.

Prior to just now, almost 79% of the Australian workforce WAS engaged delivering services to other people. Scott from Marketing's "job keeper" initiative is really just a fudge to keep the official unemployment numbers somewhat under "control". In reality, almost everyone who worked in hospitality (deliberate past tense) is now unemployed. A few thousand will pick up jobs stacking shelves or changing adult nappies but the vast majority (>1,000,000) have suddenly appeared queuing outside Centrelink waiting (fruitlessly?) to be seen and get their details sorted.

There is a very good reason that the "New Start" below poverty level payments were doubled and became "Job seeker" ones. (Talk about massaging the optics !!)
Without "Job keeper" I believe we would be looking at an unemployment rate >30%. That's well into Great Depression territory.
Locally -- and admittedly the Bow Valley is a highly tourist dependent economy -- unemployment jumped to around 85% in less than a week.


With "nearly everyone" working from home long term Turnbull's internet "solution" will need to be replaced sooner than pronto. Internet traffic maps the population's spatial distribution so if everyone is working from home -- need I say more?


It will take a very very long time for the service industry to come back if it can ever come back.

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Originally Posted by Tccp123

There you go again Bob "always planning for the worst,"

OK so we keep lockdown in place. We don't have any new infections. It's six months from now.

What do we do then?

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well for starters, maintain the existing quarantine restrictions on all inbound passengers.
i.e.
you go on a cruise -- 14 days in quarantine in isolation at the dock when you get back.
you fly into Australia from O/S -- 14 days in quarantine isolation at the airport when you arrive.

Currently, I'm in Canada on an extended visitor's visa. If it's 14 days mandatory quarantine -- do not pass GO, do not collect $200 -- when I get back what should I do?

Uh??

some edits for your

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Originally Posted by Lappa

Interesting sms from a relative who lives in California.

“ Seems like good news for both Australia and New Zealand with the lock downs. Also seems like Commonwealth countries are doing lockdowns on a national level and following up with enforcement - friend from the UK said they are only allowed out to for one exercise/day and are stopping cars and people and fining if people do not have a legitimate reason for being out. Very different here - the federal government will not take ownership for anything and have left it to the governors and mayors for each of the states to decide on a state-by-state or even city-by-city policy - which is very haphazard and also has state bidding against state for equipment and supplies and then the federal government will come in and out bid and then give it to the state that Trump likes (read republican) or the state that has been most appreciative of him - he has even said “states need to appreciate him”.

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unfortunately that situation is a direct consequence of the US constitution.
State governors (or in some instances State legislators) get to determine what should happen within their own state. The US President might be the Commander in Chief, but he (or she) has no control over what a State Governor does.
I may have mentioned this previously but the US System of Government is deliberately designed to be particularly weak -- the founding fathers' were obsessed with protecting the original 13 colonies from control by a future "tyrannical government" so deliberately set up non-democratic system where each state got to select who could vote for President -- aka the electoral college -- and other systems including that even the US military has to be specifically reapproved by Congress every TWO years.

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Originally Posted by Lappa

Good that they are being realistic with the time for lockdown - here again Trump is itching to get the country back to work (only because if the economy is still in bad shape come election time in November he will not do well) - the medical experts are warning that this would be a huge problem and a return to where we were - he said he will listen but then make up his own mind - the good thing is that governors will make up their own minds on a state-by-state basis and that goodness California has a good intelligent governor who is making decisions based on medical advice. California is also doing well in flattening the curve and we are not forecast to peak until mid May - schools in California are closed until next academic year. “

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same here in Alberta. Schools are closed till next academic year (first Tuesday in September) and all uni entrance exams (called diplomas) are cancelled.
Kids are all working from home.

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Originally Posted by BobL

Aspects of your suggestions are not as silly as it sounds.

Just as wood working fine dust can be controlled by the use of ventilation the same could be applied to restaurants and I reckon I could set up a restaurant whereby the transmission of any breath base bug could be very significantly reduced.

1) diners wash/sanitize their hands when entering

2) Social spaced seating goes without saying - diners 1.5m apart. -- you've just reduced the seating capacity if the restaurant by a factor of 3 (1 m spacing) or maybe 8 (if you maintain 4 sq.m per dinner)

3) Vertical airflow curtains - a bank of HEPA Filters covering the whole ceiling dumping clean air down over diners to vents in the floor and recycling it back to the HEPA filters. -- total re build of every restaurant. $$$

4) Chefs, kitchen hands and wait staff in PPE - apron mask, gloves and face shield. -- double or triple the number of kitchen staff required. Think of the work duration of staff clothed in "space suits" during the recent Ebola pandemic.

5) Air flow curtains between chefs and food being prepared

6) Food covered immediately after cooking and uncovered only at the table in front of diner.

I'm surprised no one has set such a thing up - could be a good marketing opportunity.
The PPE could be theme styled eg punk, goth, renaissance, space age, grunge, wild west, etc could even be fun!

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the answer is economics,

staff costs are increased by a factor of 3
$$ per table reduced by a factor of 4

meals now cost 12x what they would have previously.

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Originally Posted by derekcohen

One of my friends died last week from Covid-19. In the UK.

Derek

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Derek
That is so sad for your friend and terribly upsetting for your friend's family and loved ones.



As I look out the window here in southern Alberta, it's snowing lightly -- there was about 2" overnight -- and we are in an effective, but not rigidly enforced, lock down.
Covid-19 is spreading (not as yet rampantly) through the nursing homes in Calgary. In terms of number of confirmed cases, Alberta has completed almost 83,000 tests and detected around 1870 cases, 2/3rds of which are in the Calgary health zone.

All the schools, libraries, gyms, places of worship, restaurants, etc have been closed for 4 weeks now with the virus peak not expected till early May. (Will is finishing his HSC equivalent via home study.)
The stores that are still open are open for on-line or phone orders only. All deliveries are "touch free".
Currently there are no travel restrictions, but with nothing open why would you bother?
And I can't get my hair cut till the "public gathering" restrictions are lifted.


As I mentioned in another post, Banff is effectively a ghost town -- for a town that attracts >3.5 million visitors each summer (May to September) seeing no one on the street when we were there earlier in the week was confronting.
All the clothing stores are closed, and the Chateau at Lake Louise closed three weeks ago. About the only places open in Banff are the two supermarkets. Apart from purchasing fuel, there is no stopping between the Banff Park gates and Golden. I'm not even sure you can still buy fuel in the Lake Louise village. BTW, Canmore to Golden is over 160 km and Calgary to Golden is more like 260 km.
Canmore the is not as bad, but official unemployment in the Bow Valley (Canmore through to Lake Louise) is now about 85% of the entire pre-pandemic workforce -- and that number includes those laid off by the local councils.

Finally someone credible is talking about ventilation.

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Good ventilation lowers riskTo mitigate the risk of catching the virus through the air, there are a few extra precautions. Good ventilation for enclosed spaces reduces the chances of the virus hanging around in the air, said Professor Morawska, who is director of QUT's International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health."We don't have quantitative data about this and, of course, every environment is different," she said.
"But what I do if I go to any place, I look around. How many people are there? How, according to my judgement, is the place ventilated?
"If I see that potentially it's not ventilated places, the risk is high, I don't go there."

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There's more in this link if you want to read about it
Can coronavirus be spread via the air, and how do I protect myself? - Health - ABC News