Pandemic Positives - good things to come out of it

Caveat: not looking for this thread to descend to a political or ideological shight fight, nor a tussle about whether or not there has been an overreaction on the part of our various governments, or whether or not any restrictions should ever have been put in place.

Even if you don't know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone with the virus. :;

TOPIC:
In the midst of all the gloom and understandable negativity during the Covid 19 Pandemic, the ingenuity of humanity is producing, and will continue to produce remarkable breakthroughs, changes to lifestyle for the better, and so on.

What have you come across, or what can you think of that could make positive permanent changes to our way of life?

You are welcome to contribute ideas and constructive comments on such matters. Related digressions are ok (just for you Bushmiller :D) but let's stick mainly to the topic eh?
If you want to bitch about something then best start another thread.

The idea for this thread came to me this morning when I read this news article:
Coronavirus pandemic sees Australian manufacturing partnership make cheaper ventilator in four weeks - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

After all the enormous hooha in the USA over ventilators for weeks and weeks, this appears to be a very good-news story indeed. Producing ventilators at 10% of the cost with 10% of the parts, with just a 4 week development period sounds like an astonishing breakthrough. A product of fabulous co-operation between some unlikely actors too.

Mind you, it would seem that not only has our potential need for ventilators passed - in Australia we never had a massive need for them, or much need at all. That's good! We should be able to pass this technology on to countries that are just embarking on their C19 Tour of Duty.

My hope would be that we begin to rethink the whole idea of globalization. Depending on other countries too much for essentials (PPE, ventilators, pharmaceuticals etc.) is giving too many hostages to fortune.
Pete

I wonder. There has never yet been a vaccine made for any Coronavirus (is my understanding), which includes the common cold (NeilS might have access to good info on that). So if a vaccine is invented it may have excellent flow-through benefits for limiting common colds?

I hope that a big positive that comes from this is a realisatjon by people that we can do away with much of the stuff and activity we thought we needed and allow us to make longer term sacrifices, through increased mental resilience, for the benefit of long term environmental sustainability. If we can sacrifice this much for a Virus surely we will be more willing to entertain the idea of giving up more for the sake of our environment - that is 100% guaranteed to end us all if we don't.
I hope it leads to people being more open to living simpler, more local, and sustainable lifestyles.


Cheers, Dom

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Originally Posted by woodhutt

My hope would be that we begin to rethink the whole idea of globalization. Depending on other countries too much for essentials (PPE, ventilators, pharmaceuticals etc.) is giving too many hostages to fortune.
Pete

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Spot on Pete, and I'd be mightily surprised if very hard thinking on that is not already underway. Perhaps in some cases it might lead to a forging of greater bonds and partnerships between very small clusters of countries (ANZ comes immediately to mind)

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Originally Posted by DomAU

I hope that a big positive that comes from this is a realisatjon by people that we can do away with much of the stuff and activity we thought we needed and allow us to make longer term sacrifices, through increased mental resilience, for the benefit of long term environmental sustainability. If we can sacrifice this much for a Virus surely we will be more willing to entertain the idea of giving up more for the sake of our environment - that is 100% guaranteed to end us all if we don't.
I hope it leads to people being more open to living simpler, more local, and sustainable lifestyles.


Cheers, Dom

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Well said Dom. It will be interesting to see just what economic damage comes out of this. Will it indeed be as bad as the forecasts? Will we be able to recover much faster than we have thought? (in Oz I mean). If not, then perhaps it might give some encouragement to the people who are fearful of the economic damage they think will be the product of repairing and reducing our fossil fuel industries and dependence. Personally I see that as actually growing the economy, rather than the opposite. I believe that there will be enormous avenues of opportunity, and that new fortunes will be made from going away from fossil fuels. We have to sooner or later anyway (50 years for oil,150 for coal)

One would also hope that populations such as that of the USA rethink the concept of "personal freedom" as one that "with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities to the wider community."

The pandemic has highlighted how the wider community is placed at risk through actions which may be selfish, unwitting, deliberate, reckless, miscalculated or ill informed, or a combination of all/some of the above. One would hope we adopt a more altruistic attitude to freedom. ( altruistic - selfless concern for the well-being of others.)

One for the economists amongst us I suppose.

We are now essentially down to one airline in Oz. We all know what will happen to air fares as a result. Is it time to nationalise Qantas to ensure fair fares? After all, they were govt owned up until 1993. I have no doubt that it was a clunky operation then, but could it be done in a much smarter way now?

Remember what Branson once said: "The quickest way to become a millionaire is to start as a billionaire, and purchase an airline" :U

Are there any other industries or companies that might be better to be nationalised? The power industry? (come on Paul, that's just for you....)

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Originally Posted by Mobyturns

One would also hope that populations such as that of the USA rethink the concept of "personal freedom" as one that "with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities to the wider community."

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I don't like your chances of that Moby. I reckon these good ole boys would sooner point a weapon at you (safety OFF) than give any consideration to consideration.

How many of these rednecks would there be in the USA I wonder? Probably a reasonable sized army's worth I suspect.

Attachment 472409



This excellent pic bears repeating too. This is the result of being told to stay indoors for a few weeks. They are baying for the Governor's blood at the State Capitol.

Attachment 472410





They remind me of Trolls :D
The eyeless guy on the right, in particular.

Mr Grumpy here.

I think its possibly a bit too early to talk about positives as there are a lot more negatives to come out of this pandemic, like the deaths of a lot more people especially from hunger and probably a war or two. A hard nose view might see this as a positive?

The sort of positives I see are more along the lines of behaviours like
General improvement of hand hygiene helping reduce all sorts of disease transfer
Working from home helping reduce traffic congestion etc
Cashless purchasing - coins and paper money are after all filthy things
More on line purchasing - This should reduce prices but maybe not, and it has a negative side in the reduction of retail jobs - maybe they can do something more productive?
Telemedicine - some negatives but overall I think its positive. I've just had a reminder of an upcoming appointment/review with one of my specialists - he's in an area of the city that has limited parking. He always runs late so the 15 minute review plus travel and parking etc can require as much as 2 hours and parking can cost me as much as $23. He's emailed me this morning to tell me he's offering a telemedicine consult - suits me just fine.

Overall I don't feel at all confident there will be much of a local change it the level of selfishness of people/business/governments and they will mostly drift back to a short term ME-ME-ME mode of operation. Maybe if a few more COVID19 deaths had occurred in Oz it would have woken a few more people up - but there is of course plenty of time for this to happen.

In the meantime even though I don't watch much TV I'm enjoying the near absence of TV ads for money sucking 3rd party travel/accomodation providers, sports betting and sports in general. I'm surprised at how sport still rates a segment in the news - it's not like any commercial sport is actually taking place. Just shows how much of it is hot air.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by woodhutt

My hope would be that we begin to rethink the whole idea of globalization. Depending on other countries too much for essentials (PPE, ventilators, pharmaceuticals etc.) is giving too many hostages to fortune.
Pete

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Spot on Pete, and I'd be mightily surprised if very hard thinking on that is not already underway. Perhaps in some cases it might lead to a forging of greater bonds and partnerships between very small clusters of countries (ANZ comes immediately to mind)

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Just thinking a little more about this.

We know that internationally Australia punches well above its weight in a number of ways. We have a pretty decent sized economy, and a population that are generally very good thinkers, and laterally so. We have enormous basic resources too.

We know that NZ punches WAY above its weight (think about the number of Kiwis that are company leaders in Oz - very disproportionate to their numbers here).

Although little has been said, the two countries are undoubtedly showing the world how to restrict this pandemic very successfully, and hopefully come out the other side with fewer war wounds. Australia declared a pandemic fully two weeks before WHO did.

Jacinda Adern is talking about opening up NZ borders to Aussies pretty soon.



So, two things.
1. Should the National Cabinet actually be an ANZ Cabinet?
2. What areas are there where there might be much more scope for co-operation and collaboration between the two countries? With a view to being much more self-sustaining as a pair, but whilst retaining our separate sovereignties and individualisms.

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Originally Posted by BobL

Mr Grumpy here. I think its possibly a bit too early to talk about positives

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Signore Scontroso RobertoL, it is never too early to start talking positives. :D

(bold is mine)

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Originally Posted by BobL

The sort of positives I see are more along the lines of behaviours like
General improvement of hand hygiene helping reduce all sorts of disease transfer Yes
Working from home helping reduce traffic congestion etc Absolutely, a separate sub-topic in itself which I'm coming too.
Cashless purchasing - coins and paper money are after all filthy things Probably less than actual hand shaking, and I bet we'll go back to that
More on line purchasing There must have been a huge increase, plus many more virgins using it.
Telemedicine Seems so obvious doesn't it. Should have been happening years ago. Same for solicitors, accountants etc.

the near absence of TV ads SBS On Demand with an Ad-blocker works wickedly well - just a slight blip and the show carries on. You can even see the little dots in the time line when the ads are going to blip. Same for Channel Nine, should you find anything worth watching.....

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I see so little advertising of any kind on any medium that when I do it's a complete assault to the senses.

Further to what I was saying before:
ACCC boss Rod Sims warns against anti-competitive behaviour from Qantas - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Further to what I was saying before:
ACCC boss Rod Sims warns against anti-competitive behaviour from Qantas - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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I think any of those ACCC warnings are not worth the breath spoken. We has seen it all before about fuel prices, gas prices, electricity prices. The truth is they are powerless to act and are just a toothless tiger.

How do you successfully argue that an airline ticket is too expensive? It is easy to have your account team show spreadsheets of numbers justifying the price to their outgoings. You can even just argue the current pricing was unsustainable and hence the demise of Virgin.