Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) 2020

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morsie said:
We had 40000 cases of swine flu in 2009 including 1000 deaths.
We didn't lock down anything.
Real question what's the difference this time?
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Almost 1,500 schools shut down in the US. Australia just happened to escape it.
 
Just on my little outing today in Brisbane suburbs
Went to Bunnings Keperra. Overheard staff member talking "word is we will close by Friday". not sure if just that store or all stores. no way of verifying though.
Next needed a haircut : Brookside shopping centre. Just me and 2 others. When i left about 2pm no customers and 8 staff. This place is usually overflowing no matter what day it is.
Then Big W and Target i doubt if their were 30 to say 50 people in each store, felt eerie.
 

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BangyBangy said:
There's going to be so many victims of this pandemic. Strippers for example. Strippers have to pay the rent too. I bet you all the strip clubs are like ghost towns, strippers probably outnumber patrons like ten to one.....

Anyway, see you later guys & gals, I'm gonna head out for a while.
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What about hookers? Pretty hard to avail yourself of their services while practising social distancing.
 
BangyBangy said:
There's going to be so many victims of this pandemic. Strippers for example. Strippers have to pay the rent too. I bet you all the strip clubs are like ghost towns, strippers probably outnumber patrons like ten to one.....

Anyway, see you later guys & gals, I'm gonna head out for a while.
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If you see any dunny paper in your travels, pick up some for me.

I don't know how much longer I can hold on.
 
Jason mp said:
I'm a baby boomer, baby boomers rule.

giphy.gif
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that has got to be up there with one of the greatest dance clips of all time
 
Dylan12 said:
Like any other generation following baby boomers will be able to buy a property in a blue chip suburb for like $50-$70K that are now worth $2M+ 20-30 years later?

So following a similar logic, the property that our generation buys for $750K - $3M will be worth like $20-$30M in the same period?

And we'll get super / pensions etc like Baby Boomers get when we retire; yeah right...
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Slightly of topic.
But lets look at property values .
Is it the baby boomers or is it in many cases investors driving up the price.

It's the bloody governments feeding realestate booms , why , because of the friggan stamp duty they collect.
Bloody governments
Told you it was off topic.
Back on topic , I still haven't got my vege seeds to plant.
Should I be planting winter crops ?
 

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Kernel Kurtz said:
Slightly of topic.
But lets look at property values .
Is it the baby boomers or is it in many cases investors driving up the price.

It's the bloody governments feeding realestate booms , why , because of the friggan stamp duty they collect.
Bloody governments
Told you it was off topic.
Back on topic , I still haven't got my vege seeds to plant.
Should I be planting winter crops ?
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I understood that its also the demand from immigrants and the first generation that has helped kept property prices high...
Yes, plant some crops (legal of course) for winter.
 
luthor said:
Death rates will fall as more testing is done

www.businessinsider.com.au

The coronavirus death rate is roughly 3.4%, but that doesn't tell the full story. Here's everything we know so far about how deadly COVID-19 really is.

The death rate will likely drop as more cases are diagnosed, but experts say it's still at least 10 times higher than that of seasonal flu.
www.businessinsider.com.au www.businessinsider.com.au

Even though that article is five days old, the points made therein are still valid
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Our doctors, both here and in the USA, keep saying they don’t have enough tests.

Nor do we have the lab capacity to test such high numbers.
 
I work as a store manager for ALDI, if anyone has any general questions about the shortages and stuff, let me know and i'll do my best to answer. Obviously i can't go into great detail on some things, but i do think we are at the point where the general public need a bit of understanding and education on how and why things are out of stock and why 'can't you just fill it'
 
carnthemlions said:
I don't see how you get from economic collapse to "full scale disintegration of civilisation". There are many possible forms of life and ways of organising societies. For one thing, dependence on wage labour and market economies doesn't have to be inevitable. But that's not what's on the table now. In previous moments of crisis of the scale we're potentially looking at, what we've seen is a turn toward state control- varying degrees of state planning, state control of key industries, rationing, price controls etc. Some countries have begun down this path already, and at this rate these may become the least transformative option possible. If anything is likely to lead to societal collapse it's attempting to maintain the illusion of normalcy as we currently are.

The more disturbing and more likely scenario is the continued turn toward right wing authoritarianism continuing (probably minus neoliberal economic policies). Say, Herr Dutton installs himself as PM. The borders are already effectively closed, the underlying xenophobic sentiment is there, all we need if a bit more internal repression coupled with a few carrots. Republicans in the US are already proposing previously unthinkable redistributive economic measures, Tories in the UK are beginning to consider the same. I don't want to know what happens with people this unstable in charge if we see breakdowns in global supply chains or increased competition for a vaccine.

Getting back to the state of the economy, the reality we're looking at is more coronavirus + potential oil shock + numerous underlying weaknesses. Outside Australia nothing was learned from 2008 (especially in the US), global debt levels are now much higher, companies have been artificially jacking up share prices by buying up their own stocks with government support, ever increasing financialisation etc. It's all a sham. Austerity has also left Europe in an incredibly vulnerable position, cutting and selling off public assets comes back to bite you sooner or later.

Our position might actually be weaker because the main thing that limited the effect of 2008 was China's unprecedented stimulus program. Some people have been arguing that China and Australia only staved off the effects of the crisis and would get hurt sooner or later for years, and they might turn out to be right. Massive levels of household debt, years of no wage growth, sky high youth unemployment, property prices etc. For many people the recession's been here for years anyway due to the combination of underemployment, casualisation, precarity and welfare payments that no one can afford to live on.

Of course none of the status quo was sustainable anyway. This fire season was nothing compared to what will happen over the next 20 years of climate change that we're already locked into. Societal transformation in one direction or another is inevitable, the question is whether it's possible to shift that in a direction that benefits anyone other than the utlra-wealthy.

At this rate the service economy is dead and fu**s knows what else. The longer this goes on, the more sectors will be crippled no matter what governments do here to force people to continue going to work. This crisis is everywhere. The US treasury secretary has apparently told some Republicans to expect 20% unemployment (Great Depression levels). It's up to governments (or if not, communities) to support workers and the unemployed through this. That means fu** bailouts, fu** landlords, fu** bosses. After all, if companies fail isn't that just the free market at work? Richard Branson and his ilk can save their own companies if they're willing to spend enough of their net worth.

The last thing I'll say is that if you're going to get into perverse cold equations stuff about saving the economy etc you have to be honest about the numbers. How many deaths are acceptable? Because that's what we're talking about. Overwhelmed health systems also mean more deaths unrelated to coronavirus and likely more people needing medical care for years to come. And what about rural communities and even regional centres? That's a massive disaster waiting to happen. Remote Indigenous communities even more so. Also, what happens if governments allow mass deaths? Hard to imagine there won't be significant resistance from large parts of the population or from people within governments or even police/the military in that sort of scenario.

The thing is that there's still a lot that isn't known, which is why it seems fairly reasonable to treat this very seriously rather than leaving it to chance and hoping something changes.
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Well said. I just can’t imagine a world where someone makes a decision that we let the disease run it’s course for the sake of the economy.

It’s amazing all the cardiac arrests, car accident and strokes etc that we can fix and get these people back home. That capacity for most of the world has significantly reduced and in some countries it’s no longer possible. Its going to happen in Australia. Even cutting out elective surgeries is going to leave most Australian ICUs 1/2 or 2/3 full. I hope we are somehow lucky in Australia, our hospitals have had more warning than most butthe prediction is that we won’t cope.
 
chopperduck said:
I work as a store manager for ALDI, if anyone has any general questions about the shortages and stuff, let me know and i'll do my best to answer. Obviously i can't go into great detail on some things, but i do think we are at the point where the general public need a bit of understanding and education on how and why things are out of stock and why 'can't you just fill it'
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Thanks.....can you tell us why we have a meat shortage?
 
chopperduck said:
I work as a store manager for ALDI, if anyone has any general questions about the shortages and stuff, let me know and i'll do my best to answer. Obviously i can't go into great detail on some things, but i do think we are at the point where the general public need a bit of understanding and education on how and why things are out of stock and why 'can't you just fill it'
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I was in my local Aldi two days ago and was dismayed at how so many shelves had been picked totally clean. This was about 4 pm.

There was no (as in zero)

MEAT (apart from ONE rack of lamb)

Toilet paper, paper towels, serviettes

Canned food

Bread. rolls or wraps

Flour

Pasta of any sort

Not even a bottle of vinegar which I needed because we had run out.

Frozen food was in very short supply.

There were about 8 cartons of eggs (nil free range) but I was able to make up a carton of "Cage Free" eggs by combining two that had two or three broken eggs in each carton.

Amazingly, even things like tomato sauce and other condiments were sparse.

I asked the guy at the checkout whether there were shoppers maybe filling up entire trolley loads full of one or two items. He said no that wasn't the issue, it was just the sheer volume of customers going through the place.

Nevertheless it seems to me that "shoppers"/ hoarders are specifically targeting certain foodstuffs/ groceries

Weird

I mean what the hell do you do with multiple bottles of vinegar?
 
Kernel Kurtz said:
Slightly of topic.
But lets look at property values .
Is it the baby boomers or is it in many cases investors driving up the price.

It's the bloody governments feeding realestate booms , why , because of the friggan stamp duty they collect.
Bloody governments
Told you it was off topic.
Back on topic , I still haven't got my vege seeds to plant.
Should I be planting winter crops ?
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Asian greens, shallots, snow peas, lettuces, cherry tomatoes, coriander, zucchini and beans go all right atm.

And don’t waste your time on capsicums. I’ve spent a fortune trying to get a single intact fruit to grow. Either too much/not enough water and the fruit always gets stung. I’ve even covered each individual fruit and the insects can still sting them.
 
MacMum said:
Thanks.....can you tell us why we have a meat shortage?
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Short answer to any stock shortage at the moment is demand out doing supply. Problem exists because of a rapid increase in sales and demand, and the ability to physically ship stock to stores can't match that. This isn't a big deal if it is a one off issue, where like we have had floods in the past and people panic buy a bit but it is only over 1 or 2 days, but this is dragging into weeks, and is increase by the day. When you suddenly need 3 x the stock, it is very hard to logistically get that product to stores.

For instance, even if i could get a delivery tomorrow morning that had all the stock i needed on it to fill my store back up, i don't have anywhere near the staff required to run it. It would take multiple days to fill that stock. So first problem is stocking from a store level. But if you take that back a step, to getting trucks to deliver that stock, you run into problems. If every store for example, suddenly needed 3 times the normal stock, you don't have 3 times the trucks and 3 times the drivers available to deliver it. And before that transport issue, you need staff at the DC (Distribution Center) to actually get the stock in from suppliers, get the orders from stores and physically put that stock on creates to be sent (picking). Suddenly you have 3 times the amount of stock that needs to be picked, requiring 3 times the amount of labor.

So all along the lines, it gets very very stretched. Again, for short period, staff can work extra hours, a few extra shifts or delivery runs can be put on, but when that increase doesn't normalize and needs to be maintained, it breaks the system and there is no quick easy fix for it. And the problem we have is that demand is still increasing and cascading from isolated product lines, to nearly the entire stock. For example, 5 days ago meat and freezer lines weren't a problem, yesterday and today supplies are wiped out.

Things can return to normal, and i'm sure all supermarkets are doing the best to increase the staff issues at various levels, but this does take time. The other thing that is being done is the purchasing limits, to bring that demand back down to more reasonable levels and allow the supply to catch back up. These restrictions will increase from a couple of lines like toilet paper and pasta, to close to, if not, flat out entire stores.

The key take away is that this entire problem is driven from the panic buying, and literally if everyone was just buying what they normally would, there would be no issues, at all.
 
Saucery said:
You've got to feel for the market traders because a few weeks from now, when the herd run out of places to horde $h!t, the shelves will be full and they won't be able to move any of it.
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I seldom wish ill will on others but I hope these selfish hoarding bastards get the kind of come-uppance they richly deserve.

Their giant chest freezers breaking down at 5.05pm on Easter Thursday would be a good start.
 
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