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Thread: COVID-19 updates comments and concerns

  1. #241
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    Quote Originally Posted by DaptoDog View Post
    You couldn't pay me to get on a cruise ship given all that has happened. Assume you can't get your money back?
    Could, but they'll take a cut, and take ages afaik. I could take credit with a bonus, to use at a later date. Will be playing it by ear as it draws closer.

  2. #242
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    134 new cases from yesterday for Victoria... down a fair bit from yesterday, but this is just a one-off number that may not yet be a trend back down. They may have just been focussing most of their testing on known cluster areas that were already targeted in the last few days, which had already captured most of the new cases there... and it can take a week for new clusters or outbreaks in new areas to start showing up and then be targeted with testing.

    Melbourne is now back into the type of lockdown they had in April when the virus first hit... which for some it never ended, so this is like the fourth month of disruptions or isolation.

  3. #243
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    Edit - it seems that jetstar had a flight from Melbourne to Sydney last night, that allowed its passengers to leave the plane and airport without any testing or quarantining of anyone positive (or having them self-isolate as a precaution).
    The news report says there were about 50 people on the plane, and it was still a few hours before the NSW-VIC border closed... but considering how much is at stake at the moment, and the impending closure of the borders, it's like the Ruby Princess cruise-ship all over again, with NSW Health not screening a vessel from a known hotspot.

    From yesterday's cases announced today - another 2 infected people inside NSW that aren't returned travellers (one was from Melbourne), and 3 in the ACT (traced back to one person from Melbourne)... maybe the containment lines were just a little too late to prevent infected people travelling interstate.

    And now the NSW premier is telling her residents not to travel to any border towns. A scrambling effort that is now probably too late, when she could have had the borders limiting and screening travel between the two states for the last few months like other states... back when she kept saying that border closures are wrong and stupid.


    (on a side note, it was disappointing but not surprising, that the prime minister followed the example of trump and used the virus update press conference today to talk up a couple of coalition policies before taking questions... so TV channels had to stay on him so that they didn't miss the Q&A on the virus)
    Last edited by griffin; 8th July 2020 at 02:09 PM.

  4. #244
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    165 new cases in VIC from yesterday.

    The constantly changing status of the borders is really difficult to keep up with, particularly if you are planning ahead to travel interstate, or need to.

    Tomorrow, QLD is supposed to be opening its border up to every state except Victoria.

    Tasmania and South Australia are also closing off access to Victoria for the foreseeable future. I think NT and WA are also open to everyone except Victoria now, but I'm not sure without spending some time looking into it.

    This site has links to each state's covid-19 info page, so if you needing to find out and aren't sure, start there.

  5. #245
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    WA is very easy to remember. Nobody is welcome. And there is no timeframe now as to when this will change.

  6. #246
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    The numbers from the last two days were both over 200 on each day (288 and 216)... and now at least 3 cases in Albury, and 2 cases in the south of Sydney that is suspected of being from some travellers from Melbourne before the borders closed. Hopefully they didn't interact with too many people before they were tested... but it just takes one asymptomatic person they spread it to, to spread it around for a couple weeks without knowing that they were infected.
    One of the American military people in Darwin has tested positive, but hopefully those people are isolated like any other foreign arrival.

    It is being recommended that people in Melbourne should try to wear a mask or scarf across their face when out in public. (just don't wear a loose scarf and constantly be adjusting it back up every time it slips down off your face, like someone I saw in the background of a news report yesterday, because you are touching your face or the fabric near your nose and mouth with your hands, which are touching other things and people)

    It's going to be another hard slog, but if everyone follows the restriction level in their area/state, we won't be faced with a high death rate like Sweden (no restrictions to just let the virus infect everyone to build a herd immunity), or be faced with everything shutting down again with lots more people out of work like in America (a number of states that rushed to re-open to heed the call of their president and his protesters, are now completely shut down for a lot longer, which will kill off more businesses than if they had waited until the virus was under control the first time, like most states here, benefiting from being allowed back open with minimal risk of shutting down again if we stay vigilant).


    After 3 months of the government paying for the 14 days of hotel quarantine, any new arrivals now have to pay for it. I guess 3 months was more than enough time for people who needed to return home, could get on a flight back home, after it was announced in March that our borders would be closed and people should return home as soon as possible. I think if someone can prove that it has taken 3 months to secure seats on the limited number of flights around the world to get back from a remote location, should still have it paid by the government, but if people have chosen to stay where they are and just travel back at a later date by choice, then that seems fair to not be paid for by the taxpayers.

    Arizona in America is now the most infected place in America (and possibly the world), disproving the theory that warmer weather will prevent the virus spreading or surviving (early on it was said that it couldn't survive in environments above 27 degrees... but not only is the human body above that temperature, but Arizona has been in the middle of summer now, with temperatures at 35-45 degrees for at least a month).
    People in Arizona are testing positive at a rate of over 30%. One in every three people taking a test has the virus. That compares to here, of one in every 300 people taking a test being positive (that doesn't mean that 1 in every 300 people in the country have the virus, as most tests are only taken of people who are infected with symptoms and people suspected of being infected - we have done just under 3 million tests in Australia, which doesn't mean 3 million people being tested, as a lot of people get tested multiple times if infected or in hotspot areas).

    Could you imagine the news programs here if we had 100 times more cases at the rate of Arizona. Since the virus arrived, our main media have been competing with each other to have the most intense coverage of the virus outbreak here, and that was with Australia never going above 469 cases in a single day... imagine if we had the same proportion as America or Arizona with 5,000 to 10,000 new cases in a single day. We would be calling for the immediate resignation of our federal and state leaders and a complete shutdown of everything, just to do the more responsible thing of putting lives before profit.
    A couple of reasons why Arizona is so bad (and makes it a good example for the rest of the world to taken notes on what not to do), is that it takes about 8 days before test results to be sent back to people (which means they were spreading it for a week while waiting to know if they were infected)... and the state government being very pro-trump, which meant limited or no restrictions to prevent the spread before it came to the state, and no coordinated effort for testing which is why it takes about a week to get results, compared to a number of hours to 2 days in most other countries. The three worst states for cases in America now are run by governors who are trump's biggest supporters, so either don't believe they need to do anything to match his lead, or don't want to do anything that opposes his message of not needing to take precautions like preventing public groups and wearing masks.
    Just about every day has a new record of new cases, up to 65,000 in one day.
    Children (under 20) are still very very rare to show symptoms, but the percentage is not zero, so the more cases grow in America, the more children are being hospitalised and dying... and the president is pressuring states to send kids back to school, suggesting that covid funding may be tied to re-opening schools that the states pay for.
    How does it look, having a 1st world country with a worse infection rate than 3rd world countries.
    And the western media doesn't even report on the virus in 3rd world countries... so we might not even know how bad it is getting there.

  7. #247
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    Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
    With international travel unlikely to return to pre-virus levels for at least 2-4 years AFTER a vaccine is distributed across the globe (which itself would take a couple of years to produce and administer), a number of international airlines who had those giant double-decker A-380 planes, are retiring them, after little more than a decade of operation.
    QANTAS got their first one in September 2008, and I believe they were one of the first airlines to get them, and not many airlines ended up buying them due to the GFC that hit at that time, so I imagine a lot of the US and European airlines had to cancel their orders at the time, which is why we didn't see as many of them as was expected, as they were said to be the replacement for the 747. I remember many airports having to upgrade to cater to the larger A380, as their runways or gates/skybridges weren't able to accommodate them.

    With the virus preventing almost all international travel, and with smaller fuel-efficient aircraft now available from Boeing and Airbus, I would imagine that the A380 is unlikely to be seen in the skies again, because by the time there are passenger numbers to fill them, airlines would have replaced their older planes with the more economical planes that can fly further.

    I don't think I would have ever been able to afford (or want to) pay for a first class flight across to the other side of the world, but I'd always dreamed about one day being able to fly in the top level of an A380 or 747.
    As someone who has done a fair bit of international travel thanks to botcon, I'm a bit nostalgic about the big iconic aircraft that I've been on over the last few years... but I guess they'll just be something that lives in our memories and images, like the concord. I doubt there would be too many aircraft museums around the world wanting to waste a lot of space for one of these, just for a few people a year to look at in person.
    Today, after about 50 years of QANTAS using Boeing 747 planes, they were officially retired from service, with a special commemorative flight around the skies of Sydney.

    Nothing lasts for ever, but to me it was the type of plane I would fly to America for most of my 17 trips over there (at least 30 flights in total), and I just can't imagine seeing any other red-tailed QANTAS plane flying me there. The 747 was the iconic long-haul workhorse of QANTAS that most foreigners would recognise as a QANTAS plane, because it was the type of plane that would be seen with the red kangaroo tail in most countries outside of the nearby Asian region.
    I'm sad that I'll never fly one again, as they have a completely different feel to them to other planes, because they had a wider body, so it felt less cramped or claustrophobic. It's overall size and the central galley blocks and toilet blocks, meant that it had the look of compartments, to break up the large economy cabin, compared to a more narrower body that has you looking over the entire Economy section, to remind you that you are stuck in an enclosed space with hundreds of people.
    I also love the feeling you get of the bigger, heavier aircraft when it takes off and lands... it just feels so powerful and massive, which I don't feel in their other aircraft.
    Last edited by griffin; 13th July 2020 at 05:37 PM.

  8. #248
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    21 cases now found from a location in the south of Sydney, and it was a very public place from 9 days ago... which means it will be spreading faster than it can be tracked.
    It is suspected to be from someone in Victoria, due to it being in a transit corridor... so the original infected person could have been travelling anywhere.

    I guess it looks like NSW will be locking down again soon, and the QLD premier will no doubt want to close our border again, as she was pretty strict on the closure last time (which only opened 3 days ago). If the NSW infections came from interstate travellers from Victoria, other states will be wanting to prevent that happening to them... and even a partially open border is risky, as there were already about a hundred people trying to sneak into QLD from Victoria, by claiming that they weren't from Victoria. That sort of blind selfish stupidity is probably how it spread to NSW.
    It only took two weeks for Victoria to go back into lockdown after the virus spike started, so those people wanting a rushed return to open borders and businesses, are just making sure everything closes back down a few weeks later.


    My furniture warehouse workplace ended up offloading half of its staff, up from about 20% that I was first being told. Two months ago they were looking at the option of having the place closed one day a week, and the staff would end up with a 20% pay-cut from that missing day each week... so I don't know why they didn't use that option first, because they would be cutting costs and keep all of the jobkeeper money from the government. This option of cutting half of the staff may have saved them a fair bit of money, but now they have lost tens of thousands of dollars of "revenue" each week that they are no longer getting from the government, from all of those people they let go that the government is no longer paying the company to keep.
    I must be missing something there. Surely cost cutting that ends up cutting their operating revenue significantly when they already have sluggish sales, would be a more dangerous thing to do for the business. Because if their cash-flow takes a big hit all of sudden like this, it will make their budgets outlays look really red all of a sudden, and areas of the business, or creditors, that require regular payments could then suffer.

  9. #249
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    Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
    My furniture warehouse workplace ended up offloading half of its staff, up from about 20% that I was first being told. Two months ago they were looking at the option of having the place closed one day a week, and the staff would end up with a 20% pay-cut from that missing day each week... so I don't know why they didn't use that option first, because they would be cutting costs and keep all of the jobkeeper money from the government. This option of cutting half of the staff may have saved them a fair bit of money, but now they have lost tens of thousands of dollars of "revenue" each week that they are no longer getting from the government, from all of those people they let go that the government is no longer paying the company to keep.
    I must be missing something there. Surely cost cutting that ends up cutting their operating revenue significantly when they already have sluggish sales, would be a more dangerous thing to do for the business. Because if their cash-flow takes a big hit all of sudden like this, it will make their budgets outlays look really red all of a sudden, and areas of the business, or creditors, that require regular payments could then suffer.
    Possibly related to minimising leave/etc payouts for if/when they lay off large numbers/a solid percentage of staff after the stimulus period ends? I've read about a few businesses who don't feel they'll be able to pay out accumulated leave/etc. when they fold so they're just closing up shop early.

    Pretty terrible for the poor laid-off staff though.

  10. #250
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    Quick thought from something I was reading about today - with America back into a mostly lockdown pattern in most states, and likely to be shut down even more as the infection rate is still not slowing from the current restrictions... I wonder if cinema movies that were pushed back several months because of the April-May lockdown, will be delayed again, or will other countries that are able to open cinemas, be allowed to start screening them (America is the primary revenue market for cinema movies, so if they have to postpone or release more of the cinema movies online through paid streaming services, my guess is that they wouldn't bother allowing other countries see them in cinemas, because their box office takings would be insignificant).
    For example, the film The New Mutants (which was already delayed 2 years), was pushed back from April to August because of the virus shutting down cinemas in America. I really don't see too many states in America allowing indoor venues like cinemas operating in a month's time, with almost all states recording increases in virus cases. And maybe Warner Bros is thinking the same thing, as they had pushed back their Wonder Woman movie from June 5th to August 14 due to Covid, and then a couple weeks ago it was pushed back further, to October 5th. And that's a big budget film that needs cinemas across the US to be operating to make back its money.
    If we have cinemas operating here in the next few months, or at least in most states, I wonder if movie studios would consider releasing the movies here, because any cinemas or drive-ins that are currently operating here, are having to play older movies... so even if the cinemas can operate here, the American movie companies may not allow anything new to screen at them, forcing them to run at a loss or shut down without the new blockbuster movies to bring in the crowds.



    Meanwhile, it's getting worse for NSW... and there are now some winding back of the recently lifted restrictions. (unlike in most other countries that had restrictions lifted while the virus was still active in the community, which just allowed it to spread again, most of the Australian states were justified in lifting restrictions, because all of the new cases for 1 to 3 months in WA, SA, TAS, NT, QLD and ACT were foreign arrivals who were put into quarantine... the outbreak we are now facing was entirely avoidable if the Victorian government had been more careful with it security protocols at the quarantine hotels - the rest of the country is now going to suffer for that mistake, as borders are going to close again, businesses will be told to close up again, and any chance of a trans-tasman bubble with New Zealand in September to help tourism is now impossible)

    Unfortunately, with QLD only just 4 days into having it's borders back open with NSW, it has decided to do what NSW did with Victoria, and keep allowing people into the state if they claim that they aren't from an infected zone. Well, that didn't work so well for NSW, as they took too long to completely close the border, and it allowed people to spread the virus into a second state (it is never a good idea to just ask people to stay at home and not travel if they were from a hotzone, as there would always be those who don't care or don't take the situation seriously and do whatever they want... particularly if it is not a requirement, with significant penalties).

    QLD now has a range of penalties from $4000 to 6 months in jail if someone was found to be from an exclusion zone and didn't declare it... but there will still be people who find a way around it, and as seen in the Sydney outbreak, it only takes one person contaminating a high-traffic location like a hotel, to spread it everywhere (like an airport, just not as fast).

    One of the news programs last night when talking about the human trials that started in QLD yesterday (I think it might have been on The Project), claimed that there were new results from an ongoing study of infected people in Europe who have recovered from the virus, suggesting that only 17% of people still had the virus anti-bodies in their system after 3 or 4 months. If that is actually true, or close to it, it will not be possible to gain a "herd immunity" (having most people catch the virus, recover or die, and then it is over more quickly - which is the theory that Sweden is using, sacrificing a lot of lives in the belief that the virus will die out if enough people have been infected and recover).
    It also means that a vaccine will be virtually useless, if the anti-bodies it creates in the people who get it, don't stay active for more than a month in over half of the people.
    (best estimates of a vaccine being ready for general use is still at about middle of next year (12 months), with 6 months being the absolute earliest if everything goes right with the trials, and the test subjects don't catch the virus & there are no major side-effects... and even then, the rollout of the vaccine will take a few months as each batch is manufactured and distributed)

    Hopefully we hear more on "long term" studies of people who have recovered, to see if people are indeed vulnerable to Covid several months later, and see if any people catch it a second or third time by the end of the year. If it does happen, it might take a while to know for sure, because most people have no symptoms, so they might develop symptoms the second or third time, and not know that they've already caught it before.

    That would then be the worst case scenario (even if there is a vaccine), if people can catch it more than once, as it would never be able to be eradicated globally... and isolated countries like Australia would have to start adopting an eradication program, to eliminate the virus (which we had pretty much done in all states before the outbreak in Victoria occurred from the breach in security at a quarantine hotel). Once eliminated, the country would then need to have all arriving people be isolated in quarantine (preferably on an offshore Australian territory to prevent future breaches), and rebuild our economy away from international tourism and education, as inbound arrivals would stay.
    That's my thinking at least.

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