Thread: CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

something one of my relatives sent me - I left out the "churchy" bit at the bottom.

Screen Shot 2020-03-18 at 6.41.09 am.jpg

Originally Posted by BobL

It wouldn't be a complete break as my understanding is, on average, the number of new students that come direct from school only represent about half of the intake (it differs markedly for each course). The other half would be overseas students, and deferring and mature age entries.

given the current travel restrictions on overseas students, if they're not currently in country they probably won't be able to enter at all this year.

I know that UTas is particularly exposed to the revenue lost if overseas students are not enrolling in current numbers.

Originally Posted by BobL

I've been following the pros and cons about closing down schools. I don't buy the herd immunity concept but there is some research that suggests that unlike the flu kids are not cross infecting each other as rapidly as first thought. What is more likely is infected kids infecting adults so eventually schools will have to close when too many teachers get infected. While enough teachers are still standing it appears the authorities will keep the schools open. Teachers are therefore being treated as sacrificial to keep the kids, who's parents are in vital service employment (trucks, nurses, grocers, doctors, food producers), at school. I don't like it but when I thought about this it's not too far removed from some decisions that are made even when there is no pandemic eg ramping of ambos at hospital emergency facilities. Perhaps teachers could think of the risks being taken by medical staff on the front line of this problem?

I also struggle with the "herd immunity" concept. As far as I can tell the concept is based on allowing "just enough" people to die that the remainder build up a sort of herd immunity, which could be expected to suffice till there's an effective vaccine.

In the current context and using numbers from the UK 200,000 ("only" 40% of the projected no intervention's 510,000 deaths in the UK) are allowed to die so the herd builds up immunity till a suitable vaccine is available. Assuming that the first vaccine is just good enough to reduce the death rate by 30%, a person might require 2 or perhaps 3 jabs as the vaccine's effectiveness improves to something akin to the current flu and pneumonia vaccine.


Perhaps, we need to think of the current pandemic as being akin to being in a war zone that covers the entire country.
At some stage everyone will be exposed to the virus. If the disease's progression can be slowed there's a very good chance of minimising total deaths.
But to slow the virus's progression, current suppression methods might need to be in-force till the end of the flu season in late October.


Not a pleasant prospect for a person currently in Canada.

Originally Posted by Tccp123

"but when the logistics supply chain for essentials relies entirely on the person driving the delivery truck"

Where's Elon Musk when you need him? Surely a few hundred of those autonomous trucks he's been spruiking should make a big dent in the problem?

at this time of the year, the lane and edge markings have been scrapped off Canadian roads by the snow clearing operations.
Elon Musk's "autonomous trucks" is mostly marketing hype. They can operate sort of OK on a fully grade separated highway that has clearly visible lane markings, and there are some roads in the south west of the US that are suitable. But in the Australian context, only about 20% of the Hume Highway is suitable for their operation, and even less of the Pacific Highway is suitable.
And you don't want to know the cost of upgrading the Hume to allow fully autonomous trucks to operate.

Here are some Regional Italian stats from a major Italian Newspaper.

Ricoverati con sintomi - recovered showing only symptoms (mild case)
Terapia Intensiva - undergoing/gone intensive therapy
Isolement dom - domestic isolation
Totale etc = total positive cases
Dimessi/Guariti = discharged from hospital recovered
Diceduti - deceased
Casi Total = total cases
Tamponi - total numbers tested
Screen Shot 2020-03-18 at 6.51.56 am.jpg
What you can see is (like China) that most of the cases and deaths are occurring in about 4 regions (with about the same population as Australia) the other regions have lower numbers because they are still behind the curve and are probably better protected because they went into lockdown before their numbers got too high.

The death rate as a percentage of cases in the main infected region ( Lombardia) is >10% probably because of lack of ventilators and staff.
In Veneto (mums rellies) where they have enough ventilators and staff the death rate is 2.7%
In Trento (Dads rellies) where they don't have any big cities, only a few large towns and lots of little isolated villages. They have excellent health facilities and the people are in some ways more germanic than italian so are less likely to cut corners, has a death rate of 1.8%

Originally Posted by ian

at this time of the year, the lane and edge markings have been scrapped off Canadian roads by the snow clearing operations.
Elon Musk's "autonomous trucks" is mostly marketing hype. They can operate sort of OK on a fully grade separated highway that has clearly visible lane markings, and there are some roads in the south west of the US that are suitable. But in the Australian context, only about 20% of the Hume Highway is suitable for their operation, and even less of the Pacific Highway is suitable.
And you don't want to know the cost of upgrading the Hume to allow fully autonomous trucks to operate.

The comment was intended to be tongue in cheek while having a little bit of a dig at the whole idea of autonomous vehicles (at least for the foreseeable future) and AI in general.

Originally Posted by Tccp123

The comment was intended to be tongue in cheek while having a little bit of a dig at the whole idea of autonomous vehicles (at least for the foreseeable future) and AI in general.

I wasn't sure.

However, I'm not a believer let alone a convert when it comes to autonomous vehicles.
To my mind, the road system is just too complex an environment to allow for automated vehicle operation.
And requiring a live person to "monitor" the operation of the autonomous vehicle is beyond a joke. NASA has done experiments that clearly demonstrate that even when highly trained people are required to "monitor" the operation of a vehicle they just can't. Their reaction time climbs into the 10s of seconds, if not minutes, primarily because their attention wonders onto other things. Even a thing as seemingly innocuous as cruise control leads to a person's attention span blowing out.

CBC news for Alberta March 17 at 18:00 MDT
Parks Canada closes all visitor centres across Canada Parks Canada closes all visitor services across the country to limit COVID-19 spread | CBC News
Alberta's Premier declares public health emergency '''This is a serious moment in our history''': Alberta Premier Jason Kenney declares public health emergency | CBC News
International travelers ordered to self isolate Calgary says it'''s no longer a suggestion for international travellers to self-isolate — it'''s an order | CBC News

Originally Posted by Tccp123

"but when the logistics supply chain for essentials relies entirely on the person driving the delivery truck"

Where's Elon Musk when you need him? Surely a few hundred of those autonomous trucks he's been spruiking should make a big dent in the problem?

Hahahha! This is EXACTLY what I was going to write!

In the OTHER thread, on climate change (that thread was the biggest until this), is that auto-cars and auto-trucks would be an excellent advantage to have now.

I can almost guarantee that the trucking companies are ramping up their automation efforts.

I'm reminded of a book I read a looooong time ago, by Bill Bryson, in which he discussed as part of his style of rambling narrative, about how the plague locked Isaac Newton indoors for quite a period. In this period he had time to reflect (haha) on many of the attribute of existence and supposedly came up with calculus, the anatomy of light and a few other interesting things.

So good can come of bad. Ill see if I can find that. There is reference to it here: Isaac Newton - Wikipedia

Originally Posted by ian

I wasn't sure.

However, I'm not a believer let alone a convert when it comes to autonomous vehicles.
To my mind, the road system is just too complex an environment to allow for automated vehicle operation.
And requiring a live person to "monitor" the operation of the autonomous vehicle is beyond a joke. NASA has done experiments that clearly demonstrate that even when highly trained people are required to "monitor" the operation of a vehicle they just can't. Their reaction time climbs into the 10s of seconds, if not minutes, primarily because their attention wonders onto other things. Even a thing as seemingly innocuous as cruise control leads to a person's attention span blowing out.

Hi Ian, You may want to qualify that belief system. Fully autonomous vehicles have already been utilised within the mining, farming, construction and warehouse sectors and shown drastic improvements in the productivity, worker safety and economy of these industries. Mining in particular continues to make multi-billion dollar investments in this tech. And if you get the chance, get a tour of some modern logistics operations. No forklift drivers or yard vehicle drivers in sight.

I agree that the use case for consumer level autonomous diving is overhyped. The main issue however won't be so much the technology, but legislative environment.

I suspect that the first use cases we will see will be "trackless trains" where certain highway corridors would be cordoned from general traffic, allowing platooned trucks to make long-haul deliveries.

Originally Posted by RossM

Hi Ian, You may want to qualify that belief system. Fully autonomous vehicles have already been utilised within the mining, farming, construction and warehouse sectors and shown drastic improvements in the productivity, worker safety and economy of these industries. Mining in particular continues to make multi-billion dollar investments in this tech. And if you get the chance, get a tour of some modern logistics operations. No forklift drivers or yard vehicle drivers in sight.

I agree that the use case for consumer level autonomous diving is overhyped. The main issue however won't be so much the technology, but legislative environment.

I suspect that the first use cases we will see will be "trackless trains" where certain highway corridors would be cordoned from general traffic, allowing platooned trucks to make long-haul deliveries.

Just a qualification of this (and without wanting to hijack this thread) just thought it worth mentioning the BHP autonomous train that had to be deliberately derailed almost exactly a year ago in the Pilbara after having travelled 91km without a driver. At a cost of $55m per day till the track was repaired one can only speculate how far that set autonomous trains back in their development...and that was only going from point A to point B!

Originally Posted by ian

I wasn't sure.

However, I'm not a believer let alone a convert when it comes to autonomous vehicles.
To my mind, the road system is just too complex an environment to allow for automated vehicle operation.
And requiring a live person to "monitor" the operation of the autonomous vehicle is beyond a joke. NASA has done experiments that clearly demonstrate that even when highly trained people are required to "monitor" the operation of a vehicle they just can't. Their reaction time climbs into the 10s of seconds, if not minutes, primarily because their attention wonders onto other things. Even a thing as seemingly innocuous as cruise control leads to a person's attention span blowing out.

Hi Ian, You may want to qualify that belief system. Fully autonomous vehicles have already been utilised within the mining, farming, construction and warehouse sectors and shown drastic improvements in the productivity, worker safety and economy of these industries. Mining in particular continues to make multi-billion dollar investments in this tech. And if you get the chance, get a tour of some modern logistics operations. No forklift drivers or yard vehicle drivers in sight.

I agree that the use case for consumer level autonomous diving is overhyped. The main issue however won't be so much the technology, but legislative environment.

I suspect that the first use cases we will see will be "trackless trains" where certain highway corridors would be cordoned from general traffic, allowing platooned trucks to make long-haul deliveries.

Originally Posted by 44Ronin

Not it is not, its not a strain of influenza.

Not quite accurate.

I got a reply from my friend, the specialist in public health, sent at 3.30 am this morning - "... so much going on that I can't sleep so I may as well answer your email..." and then essentially gave me a lecture. Summarising:

You should never refer to the rogue virus as coronavirus; it is COVID-19.

Coronavirus is a massive family of closely and not so closely related viruses that are constantly mutating.

By analogy with the animal kingdom: lions and tigers are both members of the cat family, neither are dogs, and there are several sub-species of tigers. All can interbreed including lions with tigers and other large cats but commonly do not because of geographical or preference factors. Corona viruses are less well studied than cats, and probably more complex. The constant mutations are a real challenge to researchers and pose the limitting factor with flu vaccines and treatments.

COVID-19 is a type of coronavirus.
SARS is a type of coronavirus.
MERS is a type of coronavirus.
Influenza is a series of types of coronavirus.

So simple, so complex.

An absurd situation at ALDI this morning. They have decided to open at 9.30 instead of 8.30 to allow staff extra time to stock the shelves. Last night they sent out an email to those who have set previous "product availability" reminders. (also advising that you could no longer return bumroll because you were an idiot and purchased 100 packets).

At the time of reading the email I thought "good idea, and fair enough" because retail staff would have been copping heaps in the last weeks.

So this morning I showed up at 9.30 because I wanted to panic buy a $100 coffee grinder (which is pretty good BTW). There were two queues outside the two ways in to the store (which meet at the main entrance, and there would have been about 200 people - which will soon be illegal...).

The main point here is that NONE of these people were practising social distancing, and were all within 30-50cm of the next person ahead of them. I was the only person to stand on the other side of the 1.5m wide ramp (3 ramps each at least 20m long). That gave me a triangular distance of about 1-1.2m from the people before and after me. Those people respected my wishes as the queue slowly inserted itself into the store at 9.30.

But what about the people at the head of the queue? They must have been there for at least 20 minutes I'd say...with dickheads right on top of them.


I quickly grabbed the grinder and headed for the checkout. The woman behind me wasn't just close....she was brushing against me in her rush to place 4 small items on the rolling counter (I was just holding the grinder box to avoid contact with anything). I turned around and gestured for her to keep back a bit (just held my hands up slightly) and she objected! Decided she should feign a cough for my benefit. I said "That's why" and apparently it was only because I was "carrying on" (by a slight gesture with my hands). W.T.F. is the matter with people? I said to this idiot "I am only trying to do what the health authorities have told us to do".

The manager was standing there on my way out so I said that whilst I understood their need for more hours to restock, the queue that was the result was a disaster, and that the needed security guards to keep people apart in the queue. He said "We've got one there." Yes, standing at the door doing NOTHING. They need one on each ramp for about 20-30 minutes before opening, or at least a staff member (probably sufficient) to ensure people stay apart.

I'd be pretty sure the whole opening an hour later at 9.30 has only increased the panic. It must be bedlam in the big(ger) smoke.

Originally Posted by Tccp123

Just a qualification of this (and without wanting to hijack this thread) just thought it worth mentioning the BHP autonomous train that had to be deliberately derailed almost exactly a year ago in the Pilbara after having travelled 91km without a driver. At a cost of $55m per day till the track was repaired one can only speculate how far that set autonomous trains back in their development...and that was only going from point A to point B!

And IIRC it was a human error in the first place that let the train go out of control....