News Coronavirus Thread

[The Dingrel]

One of the great early morning sport viewings of my life.

It was played at Upton Park (home of the Hammers) though from memory.

Wish I was there you lucky bastard.

Glad I’m not there, nor in NY visiting my bro and his family right now though with Carona running rampant.

Yes you are right, it was Upton park, remember now as one of my mates was a spurs fan and the other hammers, and we were giving him a bit of banter about possible relegation.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Yes you are right, it was Upton park, remember now as one of my mates was a spurs fan and the other hammers, and we were giving him a bit of banter about possible relegation.

Up the Irons.

 

[The acurate one]

I reckon Roscoe lost us that game too.

So my recollection is correct as a ten year old. He must have been really s**t

 

[The Dingrel]

Immigration is going to be stalled and pressures are sure to arise with regard to "multiculturalism".

The great lie that has been forced upon the Australian people in order to keep labor costs down.

Immigration is the only reason we haven't had a recession since 1991. That and a free floating currency. Simple maths, grow the population 2pct a year, they add consumption, investment, and in some cases government spending. Australia is no economic miracle that some politicians would have you believe. We have had recessions just like everywhere since 1991 on a per capita basis.

 

[The Dingrel]

Well, its started already...

UNITED STATE OF WA: Premier shows border force

Western Australian will effectively close itself off from the rest of the country and declare independence as its “own country” as the State’s borders slam shut to keep out the spread of coronavirus.

thewest.com.au

Coronavirus crisis: WA Premier Mark McGowan declares State as its ‘own country’ with borders to close Sunday

Josh Zimmerman
The West Australian
Friday, 3 April 2020 2:00AM


Western Australia will become its “own country” and shut its borders to all overseas and interstate travellers from midnight on Sunday.
The new “hard border” will stop any international visitor or Eastern States resident from travelling to WA unless they first obtain specific exemptions that will only be granted on work, medical or compassionate grounds.
West Australians who are overseas will still be permitted to return home after Sunday but those currently visiting the Eastern States will also require an exemption to return home if they do not arrive before the end of the weekend.

Declaring “isolation is now our best defence”, Premier Mark McGowan said the unprecedented step would prevent COVID-19 cases from creeping into WA from States such as NSW and Victoria that are grappling with larger outbreaks of the deadly virus.
“I want the message to be absolutely clear to any West Australian over east: If you are thinking of coming back to WA you need to come home now,” said Mr McGowan, watched intently by Treasurer Ben Wyatt.
“I cannot stress that enough. If you’re an Eastern Stater and thinking about visiting Western Australia, forget about it.
“We’ll be turning Western Australia into an island within an island, our own country.”
Mr McGowan said exemptions to the “hard border” were still being finalised but would include freight and essential workers such as those in health and emergency services.
West Australians forced to quarantine in hotels in the east of the country after returning from overseas will also be permitted to return home.
“There will also be exemptions for FIFO workers and their families (but) strict 14-day self-isolation measures will need to be followed when they first enter Western Australia,” Mr McGowan said, adding some Eastern States resources sector workers and their loved ones would temporarily relocate to WA.

WA Police have established a hotline (13 26 84) to help answer the questions of people unsure if they are permitted to travel west, as well as queries related to travel between the State’s regions, which was banned for non-essential purposes earlier this week.
Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said airlines would be required to confirm passengers were permitted to travel to WA before letting them board flights.
“If you board for instance in Sydney, and you are not a West Australian, and you don’t have a legitimate reason to come here, we are saying ... don’t board them,” he said.
“Don’t board them from an East Coast city ... if you do bring them, we’ll be asking you to take them straight back.”
Further details on the implementation of the new border rules will be released in coming days but Mr McGowan flagged travellers would be required to apply for an exemption prior to their departure.
“What we’re saying is don’t get on the plane over east and come here unless you have the exemption in the first place,” the Premier said.
“If you get here and don’t meet the exemption, you’ll be put on a plane and flown back.”

Woohoo, sounds like we wont be playing in Subiaco. Perhaps WCE and the dockers can play each other 17 times, without their interstate players who've gone home.

 

[The Dingrel]

If this goes on for 6 months or longer (until vaccine is ready) it would be an absolute disaster. And this virus isn't worth this type of hysteria IMHO.

My office has been split in 2, with half of us working out of our disaster recovery centre and the other half at the regular office in the city. Each team can run the whole ship independently, and we are not to have any social contact whatsoever with our colleagues in the other team. Of course we work from home as well. Office building in the city is now being shut down floor by floor. We've been told this is likely to be the situation until at least January next year! Many of the experts are calling the "peak" in the US in the next month so, but gonna be a long while before travel bans start getting lifted.

 

[rickety]

33 years ago I wrote a 2000 word essay on Bismark

I cannot remember one single thing about him.

Remember this mate? I was just a pup myself

 

[The Dingrel]

your argument has so many holes. The mortality rate of the normal flu is harder to trace because virtually no one gets tested for the flu.

but your biggest argument hole is that we don't know what the mortality rate of Covid 19 would be if these places hadn't gone into lock down. If the hospital systems were over run how many people would be dying??

In Australia, modelling I've is for a 1.5pct fatality rate without flooding hospitals, which grows to around 4pct flooding the hospitals. Why social distancing is important. Those are just models with a lot of assumptions, of course you don't know until after the event, and obviously there is a lag of a few weeks from catching it to dying. Our mortality rate is likely to be lower than overseas because we are testing at relatively high rates. I've copy and pasted APAC data which shows death rates around 3.5pct. On one hand you are going to have countries that test more, others that test less, others who only record the fatality if they die in a hospital etc.

 

[Hojuman]

All over. Copeland has defeated Covid - 19.



Praise the Lord, Hallelujah and Amen

 

[Tas]

I never tried to compare Covid mortality to flu mortality. It's the others who did.
I simply said that Covid is WAY overblown, to the point that the world is on its knees over a respiratory virus that MAY lead to pneumonia in 15% of cases, of which very few with pre-existing conditions may suffer more serious form of disease, which means they have to take extra precautions. Instead we've put everyone in a situation from which many will never recover.

There is a big difference between the flu, which we have functional vaccines for, and this virus which we have no vaccine for. Thanks to the vaccine, the numbers we get from flu outbreaks do not overly tax the health care system, because something like 85% of children and the elderly are vaccinated against it in Australia we greatly reduce the number of people who become badly sick.

The problem with this coronavirus is that there is no vaccine for it so we can't implement similar flu controls for it. We have seen what it is like in Spain and Italy where they were very late to shut down the movement of people and the spread of the virus. 115,242 infected, 13,915 dead with a death rate of 12.1% and this is the critical thing, 18,278 recovered. So it has been about a month since the infection rate started to climb, roughly 20% of those infected need hospitalisation including ventilation and they need it for a long period of time. This thing spreads fast and it seems the more you are exposed to it, the harder it hits you, which is different to flus. Despite the lockdowns in Italy that have gone on for weeks now, this thing has spiked hard in a very short period of time and it completely overwhelms health systems because you have patients in there for weeks or months.

My sister got pneumonia from the flu during the bad outbreak in 2017, she was in hospital for 3 days, she was put on a ventilator for 1 day. This thing *s you up and it *s you up for a very long time. If we could get people in and out in 3 days it would be less of a concern. NYC has 4k ventilators, despite lockdowns they estimate they will need 18,000 to cope with that they expect to be the peak. If you can't breathe and get on a ventilator the younger you are the more likely you are of surviving, but if there are no ventilators, you will most likely die regardless how young or how healthy you are.

So we are trying to do two things, minimise the amount of virus out in the community, those who do get sick we hope end up with a mild version of it, and we are trying to reduce the load on the health system. If we do nothing and allow this to hit 80% of the population, we are going to hit similar mortality rates to Italy, across Australia that would be about 2.5m deaths and it is going to wipe out our health professionals in the process.

 

[rickety]

All over. Copeland has defeated Covid - 19.



Praise the Lord, Hallelujah and Amen

Reminded me of this :-D

 

[ferball]

Yes I recovered myself but it took over a month. I had lived in South East Asia for 5 years, and was pretty laid back about the whole travel shot thing and didn't get any. But that hit me for six, and the docs didn't want to prescribe antibiotics unless they were sure it was bacterial. I got ill abroad but didn't want to admit myself to the local hospitals as figured if things go pear shaped I'd be in the poop big time. Was literally shitting water over there and had a fever, but when I got back developed a cough that I'd actually get dizzy and black out from coughing so hard. That was Dec 2018. Boss had a mate who recently passed away having caught something in Vietnam, turned into sepsis and he went from being healthy to dead 2 weeks later aged mid 40's so you can imagine how panicked he was when I came back with a temperature over 40. Was at the doctor almost every day for different tests, they were fascinated as never seen anything like it and sent samples to lots of different labs. I didn't feel that sick after a couple of weeks, but my temperature just kept going haywire. Eventually it calmed down, and that's when one of the labs said I'd had typhoid at some stage of my life but couldn't be sure it was the cause of my recent illness. Real eye opener for me. Swine flu in Singapore I was basically in a fetal position shivering for a week straight in the tropics with my missus putting beach towels under me to absorb the sweat and changing them every half hour, and just contstantly taking fluids with my cycling powders (carbs, electrolytes, and protein). Lost 7kg's would have to say that was the sickest I'd ever been. Quite a few mates hand Dengue up there and were hospitalized, that looked real scary as blood vessels breaking etc.

Dec 2018 was full on.

I looked up Typhoid symptoms, it usually has a constant prolonged fever. Not up and down like you described a few pages back. That's just the Internet tho.

I'm glad you recovered.

I can understand if you might have thought you were still sick, the way we started last year.

 

[ferball]

All over. Copeland has defeated Covid - 19.



Praise the Lord, Hallelujah and Amen

Phewwwww.


Thought we were in trouble there for a minute.

 

[The Dingrel]

Money is created. When you go to the bank to get a mortgage for 500k, they're not loaning you 500k of money they already have. They get it from the RBA who essentially create it.

The pedators will be in plain sights. Let's see how banks handle people getting behind on mortgages, foreclosures, 'mortgage holidays'.

Also the foreign investment board has to have really big balls. China will be eyeing off our companies, and they have to be staunch.

Well actually the government has reduced the FIRB rules to 0, ie all potential foreign takeovers will be examined. Banks don't borrow money from the RBA to create mortgages, they raise their own capital in lots of different ways, approximately 60pct is from depositors funds, the other 40 in the capital markets, including bundling up mortgages into Residential Mortgage Backed Securities, unsecured commercial paper for short term funding, domestic bonds, foreign bonds, etc. There are a lot of rules and ratios as to what and how much of each funding source is allowed and is strictly governed. The RBA is the lender of the last resort, and steps in to help short term liquidity issues. Banks need to hold substantial liquid assets, some of which (such as government securities) can be swapped with the RBA on a short term basis, that's the repo market. CB's of late have been making a lot of cash available in the repo market. People will get behind in their mortgages, (US estimates 30pct of households will, the unemployment rate while not official yet will surpass the great depression if its not there already with 10 million Americans filing for unemployment in the last fortnight alone) and no its not the RBA that is magically creating money. To keep things relatively simple Commonwealth Treasury is issuing Government Bonds to investors who buy them. The RBA has guaranteed to purchase an unlimited amount of those in the secondary market (not direct from the government) targeting keeping the yield on 3 year bonds at 0.25% to ensure interest rates stay low. That is Quantitative Easing (QE) you might have heard about. And the idea there is effectively, as you go further into debt, your debt gets riskier and so investors want a higher rate of return (higher bond coupon or price discount). The RBA stops that from happening by expanding their balance sheet, buying the bond and keeping interest rates low. So effectively the government is going into a load of debt at very low interest rates, and that's ok as we have a relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the US, Japan etc. As long as interest rates are low, tax revenues can pay the interest in future and eventually repay debt. Ideally debt is used to invest in infrastructure which improves productivity, so there is a positive rate of return. In this instance, that debt is used to continue to pay people, support business, etc, and there are a few other things the RBA is doing to ensure bank liquidity etc that gets a little complicated. "building the bridge" to the other side that will allow business to get back on their feet and employ people thus restoring tax revenue. But in a nutshell, government debt will be paid back down the track via higher taxes, lower spending, OR hope to inflate their way out of it, which is why the RBA has a 2-3pct inflation target, so that 100 billion dollars of debt today isn't worth as much tomorrow. Inflation though has been dead for years, which is why they keep cutting interest rates (negative in Europe and Switzerland). Modern monetary theorists on the other hand think you can keep just printing money. They say that because there is no inflation so why not (I think that's more to do with structural changes, cheap oil, more efficient engines, move to renewables where marginal cost of producing a unit of energy is near zero). There is a contradiction back there where someone said, "CB's will just keep printing worthless money"......well if money was worthless, then we'd have hyperinflation, back to wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread. That could yet happen, and if you believe it well having debt is a good thing as long as you have it securing some real assets. Right now, if you haven't already, I'd pay very close attention to where your superannuation is invested. Equities have made a pretty good recovery since all this fiscal and monetary stimulus has been announced. BUT with the government allowing people in distress to withdraw 20,000 out of their super, just think what that could do equity valuations as fund managers need to potentially force sell to raise cash and pay withdrawals.

 

[The Dingrel]

Dec 2018 was full on.

I looked up Typhoid symptoms, it usually has a constant prolonged fever. Not up and down like you described a few pages back. That's just the Internet tho.

I'm glad you recovered.

I can understand if you might have thought you were still sick, the way we started last year.

Cheers Ferball, yeah was bizarre, one time I went into the doctors office sweating profusely, and my temperature literally dropped 2 degrees from start to finish of the appointment.....Other thing that would happen is my blood pressure would drop rapidly whenever I stood up.. But the whole time, just had a mild headache, popped a couple of Panadol and otherwise felt ok. I'd actually laugh at the doctor though, would get excited to see me as was fascinated by it and I'm guessing hoping to discover something new. Remains a mystery.

 

[The Dingrel]

Probably more to do with Indonesia at this stage and it could really get out of control there. Either way, you would probably still need to do 14 days quarantine in September.

I have a villa in bali (long story, big fk up) but anyway I'm in regular contact with the manager over there who is actually from Milan so is well aware of how serious it is. All our bookings have cancelled, that said most of our customers these days are/were Chinese tourists. We have sent all our staff home on 1/3 wages. But obviously they are so reliant on tourism, they want to get opened asap. I think the government has generally try to ignore it as they know they don't have the infrastructure and just want to avoid panic and rioting. An example of their idea of social distancing, is there's an annual holiday in Bali Nyepi day,,,,, day of silence where you must stay home, no lights, fires, no activity whatsoever. This year due to the corona virus they decided to extend it to 2 days instead of 1! After the terrorist attacks, anyone from Java who wants to move to Bali has to be sponsored by a local employer, so it could be the case they introduce strict travel arrangements from the mainland to try to quarantine Bali from the rest of Indonesia to try to attract foreign tourists again, but its too early to tell what happens there. If I was you and I can get a refund now, I would. There'll be plenty of cheap flights and accommodation down the track if you want to rebook!

 

[Horace]

I never tried to compare Covid mortality to flu mortality. It's the others who did.
I simply said that Covid is WAY overblown, to the point that the world is on its knees over a respiratory virus that MAY lead to pneumonia in 15% of cases, of which very few with pre-existing conditions may suffer more serious form of disease, which means they have to take extra precautions. Instead we've put everyone in a situation from which many will never recover.

I doubt if the Italians, Spanish, the Brits (its going to be shocking over there) and a number of other countries would agree with you on that.

Thank God our Government never went down the herd immunity pathway.

 

[Horace]

The current cure is far more invasive that the virus itself.

No its not. Unless you think substantially more dead people is the way to go.

 

[Horace]

Money is created. When you go to the bank to get a mortgage for 500k, they're not loaning you 500k of money they already have. They get it from the RBA who essentially create it.

The pedators will be in plain sights. Let's see how banks handle people getting behind on mortgages, foreclosures, 'mortgage holidays'.

Also the foreign investment board has to have really big balls. China will be eyeing off our companies, and they have to be staunch.

That is definitely not the way it works. Among other sources, banks source money to lend, by taking deposits from customers, which is basically "borrowing" from those depositors. They make their money by charging a margin on the lending above the amount that they pay to the depositors. They raise funds from a variety of other sources, with the same aim, to maximise the difference between what they receive and what they pay out to obtain the funds to lend.

Governments creating (printing) money is the best for them to destroy their economy and devalue their currency.

 

[krakouers]

Cheers Ferball, yeah was bizarre, one time I went into the doctors office sweating profusely, and my temperature literally dropped 2 degrees from start to finish of the appointment.....Other thing that would happen is my blood pressure would drop rapidly whenever I stood up.. But the whole time, just had a mild headache, popped a couple of Panadol and otherwise felt ok. I'd actually laugh at the doctor though, would get excited to see me as was fascinated by it and I'm guessing hoping to discover something new. Remains a mystery.

I swear, maybe it’s just the threat of going to a doctor, that makes me seem less symptomatic when I go

 

[TennisPlayerAndy]

No its not. Unless you think substantially more dead people is the way to go.

Well, it is.

There are industries that are grinding, have ground, to a halt.

The government is borrowing billions of dollars to hand out. Unemployment is going to go through the roof.

These measures are not sustainable for an extended period of time.

I’m not advocating a Trump Like head in the sand approach, but at what point does it come back to those who may be adversely affected to take responsibility for their own good health?

 

[ferball]

I have a villa in bali (long story, big fk up) but anyway I'm in regular contact with the manager over there who is actually from Milan so is well aware of how serious it is. All our bookings have cancelled, that said most of our customers these days are/were Chinese tourists. We have sent all our staff home on 1/3 wages. But obviously they are so reliant on tourism, they want to get opened asap. I think the government has generally try to ignore it as they know they don't have the infrastructure and just want to avoid panic and rioting. An example of their idea of social distancing, is there's an annual holiday in Bali Nyepi day,,,,, day of silence where you must stay home, no lights, fires, no activity whatsoever. This year due to the corona virus they decided to extend it to 2 days instead of 1! After the terrorist attacks, anyone from Java who wants to move to Bali has to be sponsored by a local employer, so it could be the case they introduce strict travel arrangements from the mainland to try to quarantine Bali from the rest of Indonesia to try to attract foreign tourists again, but its too early to tell what happens there. If I was you and I can get a refund now, I would. There'll be plenty of cheap flights and accommodation down the track if you want to rebook!

Gasometer read this.

 

[Gasometer]

June

August

 

[ferball]

Well, it is.

There are industries that are grinding, have ground, to a halt.

The government is borrowing billions of dollars to hand out. Unemployment is going to go through the roof.

These measures are not sustainable for an extended period of time.

I’m not advocating a Trump Like head in the sand approach, but at what point does it come back to those who may be adversely affected to take responsibility for their own good health?

Did they let all those people off that boat?

If we get the virus under control which actually might happen, believe it or or. (I genuinely wouldn't have that last week and it's still a big if.) Then it will be easier to manage the situation and monitor your own health.

Either way, as people recover they should develop some immunity. As this happens with minimal losses even more stress comes off the system.

It could be a manageable situation. Parts of Asia are already claiming to be in this position. We may have to asses how much surveillance we want but it would be about time so that could be a good situation. Then people would be in a position to take responsibility for their own health.

Apparently Morrison reckons we are in the "suppression phase." If he is right and not just talking s**t then we have contained the virus. You can't suppress it until you contain it. That's a very positive situation. It's hard to believe tho.

If it's accurate I think a rolling series of lockdowns will probably happen as they try to manage the spread of the virus across time.

If we manage it right we can hide these infections in the future and spread them will manageable immunity, some sort of vaccine or both.

 

[Tas]

So every country is going into debt to pay for boosting their economy's.
So who is lending all the billions and will be raking it in plus interest for decades?
Serious (perhaps naive) question

It isn't naive, people generally do not understand how the global monetary system works, it is extremely complicated and there is much more devil in the detail, but I will try to explain it in general terms.

Generally speaking, governments can raise debt by issuing bonds, roughly 40% of Australian bonds are taken up by the Australian public, corporations, superannuation funds and sometimes even government or semi-government bodies who have large reserves of cash and need it for the future, but do not need as much for the present so will sometimes take up bonds which give the government access to it for the short-term. The other 60% is taken up by foreign governments, corporations, investment funds, etc.

Our superannuation funds are increasingly become significant government and infrastructure lenders, because they are accumulating a lot of cash through superannuation contributions and they only need relatively small amounts to meet retirement pay-outs in any given year so they invest the vast majority of it.

We are in the middle of a fourth global debt wave, the prior three resulted in significant world wide downturns, crashes and significant harm to national and global economies. The world bank and the IMF was trying to encourage countries to deal with it before the coronavirus hit.

In theory, with interest rates dirt cheap it makes a lot of sense to borrow money for the short term because at current cash rates, they do not need to offer significant interest rates to attract large sums of money. The theory is debt now, particularly fixed rate debt, is far more valuable now than the future when interest rates are much higher. Clients of ours thought we were mad when we bought up billions of dollars in long-term bonds in the 90s with fixed rates around 16% when we on average had a return on investment average of over 30%. With investment or monetary policy it has to be looked at in terms of long-term strategies and risk management.

Globally, nations owe more than 250 trillion dollars and it has surpassed 3x GDP, it is why they were anticipating another debt crash before the coronavirus, now everyone is looking to borrow heavily to compensate for it and looking for cheap interest rate bonds to fund them but the more debt is taken on the harder it is to find those willing to purchase it and the higher the interest rates they will have to offer to get access to the money. There is a certain point where the world banking system can't cope and countries are faced with the dilemma that they have to print more money to pay for things, that usually doesn't end well.

Countries like the USA, Australia, etc will find it much easier to find money, because our economies are relatively safe, other countries not so much, especially those already heavy in debt, there is a real risk those nations could default on loans or pay back a fraction of them.