Thread: CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

Originally Posted by AlexS

If you think the toilet paper and tissue shortage is bad now, wait till they close the schools and you have thousands of teenage boys at home with nothing to do.

I doubt that they will stay home but rather hang around shopping centres. The girls will be just as bad.

Well, (apart from a few people visiting us and taking me out to see mum who is in dementia care, or for coffee) we have been confined to the house for the last 4 weeks because I have a broken ankle and SWMBO has vertigo and cannot ride in a car let alone drive. For a week or so we've had friends and relatives visiting and bringing groceries but for the last 3 weeks we have used on-line shopping so we're reasonably practiced at this now. It's not perfect but we have not gone without everything except dunny paper, and have even built our pantry up this way. I hope I can get the Moon Boot off early next week and get a few more things including some specialised bulk roo meat pet food which we purchase from a specific supplier.

As far a dunny pape goes we have some but we also have a bidet tap next to one of the dunnies.

According to QLD health authorities they only have about half the required numbers of ventilators needed for even a modest projected outbreak and NSW have even less. Small simple ventilators are available from china but the more advanced ones come from Europe/Japan but I guess we won't be getting many from those sources.

NZ have only 6 confirmed cases and they are about to tighten their borders far tighter than we are.
I cannot see why we are still allowing flights to or from anywhere in SEA.
China may be ok sooner than elsewhere but they may not be letting any Aussies in.

But modelling of previous epidemics show that travel restriction does very little, only high levels of social distancing can really put a dent in the progress of an epidemic.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

. I would much rather hear directly from the Director of Public Health.

Is this the same idiot that said, when this first started, there was no need to check the temperatures of people entering Australia or restricting flights in from countries such as China?
South Korea and a Japan have been doing this for some time.
BTW I agree the Scott Morrison’s performance last night was pathetic.

Latest news states they don’t know how long the virus lasts for on surfaces eg door knobs etc. Information suggests between a few hours and maybe a couple of days.

So once again, why are they saying public transport is OK?

Originally Posted by Chesand

I doubt that they will stay home but rather hang around shopping centres. The girls will be just as bad.

The only places open should be supermarkets and pharmacies and they should be playing classical music.
It might not matter if schools are open or closed eventually enough students will be staying home that the ratbags will be the first to skip classes. Italy is offering free downloads , might be away to keep them at home??

I would hark back to post #64 (page 5) and point out little that Craig warned of has not eventuated.

Coronavirus: Analysts Don't Understand It - Craig Dalton | Seeking Alpha

This was the final warning in the last paragraphs:

"But the purpose of this article is not to predict an outcome, but more to promote a sceptical assessment of analyses suggesting this is a short term event on a par with SARS or recent pandemics.
(Blog post updated 19th February, 2020)
Dr Craig Dalton is a public health physician and conjoint Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is a former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and runs Flutracking.net one of the largest national surveillance systems for influenza-like illness in the world."

It could be a protracted pandemic and this in itself sets it apart from previous flues and other significant illnesses. In the last 24 hours we have at work implemented precautions. We are a group of people where working from home is not an option!

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Tccp123

Going off on a slightly different tangent, given the chaos reported in supermarkets yesterday, what do YOU plan to do (in terms of shopping) to ensure you have enough to get through the weeks/months ahead? Will you just act normally and allow all the nervous nellies to strip the shelves bare or do you wade in with them so you have enough to keep you going?

I might chip in on this one, as I do have a bit of cocktail-party knowledge.... My son works alongside the owner of a fairly large IGA here. He is a "Do-All", but mostly ensuring the shop is kept spiffing.

There is absolutley NO SHORTAGE of anything other than for shelf-grabbers. Metcash, the supplier to literally all supermarkets regardless of brand, has storerooms stuffed to the gills.

The only reason TP is short, is because stupid people are grabbing 10 packets at a time. Rational rationing of this stupidity will guarantee supply to all.

If people thought there was a sudden shortage of Grunkohl or Surströmming they would stack their pantries. Yes, Grunkohl is a thing they stock!


--> ON MEDS

However, I might add, importantly, I did ask the local chemist about blood pressure and cholesterol management drugs... YES there is a shortage. YES it will get worse. YES they will run out. ALL the bases are made in China and India and they are NOT getting more for the foreseeable future.

My local bloke is a compounding chemist and I had a joke with him that all he needs to do is release the recipe to the local meth cooks and it would be solved overnight, he advised its not that simple. The bases are super important and not readily "brewed up".

DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS IF YOU NEED THEM.


Be safe.


IMG_20191228_165425.jpg

Here is a link to a first hand Italian experience : From an Italian to the rest of the world: you have no idea about what'''s coming. : China_Flu

On another note, my three contact in China are gone. I have no word. Last I heard is they had run out of food and money, ones father was sick.... now, nothing. Not even a post. IDK what this means.

I would ask you to go to the Wuhan live cameras. See how many residential lights are on? None. It is 3 hours behind us (+8 GMT), so its 9pm right now.....

Be safe.

Originally Posted by BobL

NZ have only 6 confirmed cases and they are about to tighten their borders far tighter than we are.
I cannot see why we are still allowing flights to or from anywhere in SEA.
China may be ok sooner than elsewhere but they may not be letting any Aussies in.

It looks as though the NZ Government is doing a Ken Henry -- go fast, go hard, go big, go families


depending on how the NRL reacts, the 2020 season might be abandoned, given that if the NZ Warriors return to NZ they will face a 14 day quarantine and thus miss the Eden Park double header with Australian Rugby.



would be nice if the Aus Gov were a little more proactive with encouraging social distancing.

Originally Posted by ian

It looks as though the NZ Government is doing a Ken Henry -- go fast, go hard, go big, go families

an update based on what Alberta and the rest of Canada is doing

Canada's population is about 36 Mil.
Australia's population is about 26 Mil. So population wise, an approx 50% difference.


Canada has 218 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
As of Saturday morning (March 14), Australia had 197 confirmed cases. Say 1.5 times the number of confirmed cases in Canada.


Alberta. Gatherings of more than 250 people are actively discouraged and outright banned if the 250 will include vulnerable people e.g. over 65s, travelers from outside Canada. BTW,
In AUS the restriction is on gatherings of 500 or more and importantly the "ban" doesn't start till after this weekend's footy matches. Go figure!


Canada is leaving the flu season.
Australia is entering the flu season. Not good.

I'm afraid that once again our leadership is letting us down badly. Scotty from marketing announcing to all and sundry that he intended to attend a footy game before the crowd ban comes in tomorrow because "it might be the last one I'll see for a while". Then he announces that he doesn't need testing for CV while cleaners in bio suits swab down the Cabinet Room after Peter Dutton because he's been advised that it's unnecessary.

I put the whole panic thing down to social media. In Oberon, where NO ONE walks up the street with their head buried in a smartphone, there's the normal stocks of dunny paper on the shelves. No wait! I did see one bloke with a loaded trolley five days ago. SWMBO reckons he's probably a loo paper scalper from Sydney set to make a killing from the fearful.

Marshall McLuhan was spot on. "The medium is the message. That is merely to say the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale which is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology."

Rumoured shortages = panic buying = unexpected production demand = longer lead times = empty shelves. We saw it all in industry in the early 80s. Thank goodness the supermarkets are applying the brakes. Hopefully pharmacies will take their lead.

mick

Originally Posted by ian

an update based on what Alberta and the rest of Canada is doing

Canada's population is about 36 Mil.
Australia's population is about 26 Mil. So population wise, an approx 50% difference.


Canada has 218 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
As of Saturday morning (March 14), Australia had 197 confirmed cases. Say 1.5 times the number of confirmed cases in Canada.

.

Using in your figures, Canada’s infection rate, as a percentage of population, is 0.000606 and Australia’s is 0.000758.

Where is this “1.5 times” coming from?

The toilet paper fiasco is bizarre. Millmerran, a town of a little over 1400 people, has two supermarkets and there is no toilet paper to be had. people from Brisbane travelled to Toowoomba with the express purpose of buying up toilet paper but found the shelves bare so they continued on to Pittsworth, another 40Kms away, where they found the same bar shelves. Not to be daunted over this they went another 40km to millmerran where they bought everything on the shelves loaded up their vehicles and left.

Millmerran is now out of loo roll.

I have to assume these people were scalpers and not just your everyday fearful person in the street. So perhaps the government could make itself useful and introduce emergency legislation to make it illegal to sell such product at more than the recommended price: Just for a few months perhaps before reverting to normal commercial practice. This would be more to discourage similar activities with other products than solely for the once ubiquitous and humble loo roll.

Regards
Paul

EDIT: This story has been debunked. Full apology on next page (post #204)

how to solve the TP shortage by Rob Cosman

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