CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

[ian]

How long was the British lease on Hong Kong?

99 years

when the lease was about 5 years away from renewal the UK Government Minister -- I don't recall which one -- completely dropped the ball and essentially promised China that the lease wouldn't be renewed.



There is something in English -- and by extension Australian -- common law that treats a lease longer than 99 years as a permanent territorial acquisition

[Tonyz]

hopefully my last comment on this thread

[Lappa]

Any decent a$#e would reject that toilet paper

[GraemeCook]

I agree with you Bushmiller and likewise you hear criticism of the gubberment providing financial assistance to the big end of town and our airlines but just like the banks, it is in the public’s interest that these companies are still around after the crisis ...

I can see strong social arguments for assisting our regional airlines, and possibly Qantas, but I fail to see why any charity should be extended to Virgin Australia.

Virgin Australia is over 90% foreign owned and largely by foreign governments whose pockets are far deeper than the Australian Governments.

Ownership of Virgin Australia
20.94% Etihad Airways - Owned by Government of Abu Dhabi
20.09% Singapore Airlines - Majority ownership (56%) plus “golden share” owned by Singapore Government.
19.98% Nanshan Group - Ownership is rather murky, but “…Nanshan (Corporation) is effectively the government of Nanshan (City of 150,000)…”.
19.82% HNA Group - Owned by Hainan Provincial Government
10.42% Virgin Group - British private company founded by Richard Branson.
8.75% ASX - Publicly listed shares.
Source: Virgin Australia Holdings - Wikipedia

[GraemeCook]

well CommBank has already made an "accommodation"

"Defer your [mortgage] repayments

Home loan customers requesting financial assistance during this time will be able to defer their repayments for 6 months, with interest and fees added to their home loan and loan term extended."
......

I am also watching to see how this plays out, Ian. Basically banks have said that they will capitalise interest for three months, review each client, and then perhaps capitalise for another three months. Then different banks will either adjust montly repayment amount or extend the length of the loan. Unclear if they will charge fees for this "service".

But mortgage loans exist in a dynamic market; it is ever changing.

It might be relevant to compare to what happenned after the GFC.

Prior to the GFC the commercial mortgage rate for a most favoured client with a debt equity ratio of better than 70% might be 9%. This means that they would give the loan up to $700,000 on a $1,000,000 at prime.

Immediately after the GFC the banks reviewed their risk template and deemed that a debt:equity ratio of 60% was required for prime. So the client with 70% D/E would be charged a risk margin of, say, 1% - his interest rate would rise to 10%.

Then they got all collateral revalued and (secretly) directed "independent" valuers to value conservatively in these volatile times. That $1mill property would now be valued at, say, $850,000 and the $700,000 loan woud mean a D/E of 82.4%. They would again reassess the rish exposure, add another risk premium and the interest rate might rise to 12%.

These figures are very close to actual cases. I expect that bank customers will start experiencing mortgage shock and pain in about six months time.

[BobL]

The virus has an average size of about 100nm. That means the virus can be suspended in the atmosphere indefinitely. I imagine that any ejecta from a person would have a distribution on particle sizes ranging from around 100nm to booger sized. I'm not saying there would be heaps, just not none.

The further away you can stay the better - Id recommend 100m if you can. That's what I target when we go to the park with the dogs.

The majority of air borne viruses do indeed ride primarily on a substrate, goober, water droplets, hair, skin flakes, clothing fibres etc.
Larger substrates can carry more virus and VV
There are relatively very few lone viruses out there in the general public and the other significant factor is just like air molecules and very fine dust, lone viruses are so small they will pass right though even a P3 mask, be breathed in and then be breathed straight back out. This is why we don't concern ourselves too much with <0.3 micron dust.
The likelihood of infection by any direct airborne transport is much less that hand transfer and then touching your face.

Risk of infection amongst other things depends on total viral load uptake - the more viruses taken aboard the greater the risk. That's why medical staff at the front line are at such high risk - they are constant surrounded by virus carriers and why those most at risk wear full face air respirators.
The majority of Virus carriers will range in size from a few microns upwards.
Most substrates will be in the >10 micron range which carry the greater viral load but also fall out of suspension rapidly both in terms of time and distance. The half residence time in the air will vary from <1 second (1m) for the larger ones carrying more virus, to a minute or two for the lighter ones carrying less viral load.

All this is why Social Distancing of any kind matters. Let's say you are cycling in a close peloton and the lead rider coughs - chances of following riders copping a fair size gobby in the face are higher if the peloton is close packed, less so if they're spaced out. Same with crowds etc. The chances of being infected by touching a virus ladened droplet on a surface and then touching ones face is much greater than breathing said goby in directly. This is why washing hands and surfaces is more significant for the non-infected person than a mask and why anyone with a suspected infection should wear a mask.

None the less if you want to gain that extra % or two of lefty then a P2 or even simple surgical masks will also increase safety. They don't have to be full face air respirators to eliminate the bigger carriers. Even a bandana will usually stop a booger.

[NeilS]

Now the more important part. Here's a YouTube link that talks about "the numbers", specifically the exaggeration of them. This is something that has crossed my mind many times in the past two weeks. It also talks about why this might be being done. This sounds a little bit too much like a conspiracy theory to me but you be the judge. It's not overly long...

YouTube

OK, I watched that video and also looked up the guy on Wiki. I invariably do that to get my own perspective on the author before investing any of my time on them. I was highly dubious about looking at the video after reading about him on Wiki, but did so anyway and here is my judgement:

• This video is a self-promotional video, which becomes increasingly obvious by the end of it.
• He has no credibility on the topic, having not practiced medicine for almost 40 years and was only ever a GP and with no specific qualifications in the fields of epidemiology, virology or immunology.
• He is a self-publisher (of 100 books) as no publisher will do so. That sends off a flashing light for me.
• He has been censured by various formal bodies and organisations, including the British Medical Journal.
• He is full of conspiracy theories himself (on "hidden agendas"), but IMO I would't elevate him to the status of a conspiracy theorist as his efforts seem to be too shambolic to deserve that status. IMO (again) many topics he covers in the video have no relevance to his assertion that the 'CV-19 scare [is] the hoax of the century'.
• Choosing my words carefully here; he will probably make an extra quid while people are casting around for answers in these uncertain times.

He states that if the death toll from Covid-19 is not above 50,000 worldwide by mid-April then his assertion that the figures on the virus have been exaggerated will have been proven and that this will be because of the various 'hidden agendas' he has exposed. I hope that he is right on just that one matter (ie <50k deaths), but with it is already at 30,000 I fear he will be wrong on that too.

Summary: I would not recommend anyone waste a valuable 12 minutes of their time watching this video.

[GraemeCook]

Something to help anyone who may feel that they have been cyberbullied .....

Do you mean by you, or by other people?

[BobL]

Latest production run of son's 3D printed Visor headbands for a local kids hospital.

Can print two at a time and it takes about an hour to do this.
Slow, but every bit helps.

3DprintVisor.jpg

[doug3030]

Do you mean by you, or by other people?

After the number of PM's I got last night thanking me for calling it out for what it was you have to ask?

[FenceFurniture]

Summary: I would not recommend anyone waste a valuable 12 minutes of their time watching this video.

Thank you Neil, you have done two valuable things: you saved each of us who have not watched it 12 minutes, and some download bandwidth, but more importantly (much more) you have denied the vid guy some oxygen because hits might earn him money.

[Tccp123]

OK, I watched that video and also looked up the guy on Wiki. I invariably do that to get my own perspective on the author before investing any of my time on them. I was highly dubious about looking at the video after reading about him on Wiki, but did so anyway and here is my judgement:

• This video is a self-promotional video, which becomes increasingly obvious by the end of it.
• He has no credibility on the topic, having not practiced medicine for almost 40 years and was only ever a GP and with no specific qualifications in the fields of epidemiology, virology or immunology.
• He is a self-publisher (of 100 books) as no publisher will do so. That sends off a flashing light for me.
• He has been censured by various formal bodies and organisations, including the British Medical Journal.
• He is full of conspiracy theories himself (on "hidden agendas"), but IMO I would't elevate him to the status of a conspiracy theorist as his efforts seem to be too shambolic to deserve that status. IMO (again) many topics he covers in the video have no relevance to his assertion that the 'CV-19 scare [is] the hoax of the century'.
• Choosing my words carefully here; he will probably make an extra quid while people are casting around for answers in these uncertain times.

He states that if the death toll from Covid-19 is not above 50,000 worldwide by mid-April then his assertion that the figures on the virus have been exaggerated will have been proven and that this will be because of the various 'hidden agendas' he has exposed. I hope that he is right on just that one matter (ie <50k deaths), but with it is already at 30,000 I fear he will be wrong on that too.

Summary: I would not recommend anyone waste a valuable 12 minutes of their time watching this video.

While absolutely respecting Neil's right to his view I hope his opinionated prose doesn't put anyone off just viewing this. After following this thread for 878 posts what's another 12 minutes? There is no self promotion, at the end he just suggests you visit his website which is free and ad free. I didn't visit it. He doesn't proclaim any medical expertise (in fact I didn't even realise he was a doctor till Neil mentioned it). It's about the numbers (and no he doesn't claim to be a statistician either .

[FenceFurniture]

CAVEAT: Any figures worked around the number of cases, such as the death rate, have several reasons why they are rubbery, as we have previously discussed (so I won't repeat what they are).

I have done a little Excel work with some of the figures from the Johns Hopkins site, and some interesting things (for me anyway) have come out of it. Firstly here is a screenshot of today's figures, sorted 3 different ways. On the left is # cases descending, middle is # deaths (not death rate) descending, and right is population infection rate (cases/pop%).

Notes:

• white text on red is the worst example, white on magenta is next worst, followed by paler pink. Yellow represents the better examples.
• I was going to talk about 1000+ cases as the cut-off, but as you will see, <2000 cases yields skewed results, so the cut-off in future will be 2000 cases.
• Johns Hopkins talks about recoveries, but eventually they will equal cases minus deaths, and they have a long way to go. Only China appears to be near the end of the cycle (which is pretty encouraging in itself, if it can be trusted....)
• If there is interest I will be happy to post a summary every 2 or 3 days (every 3 probably makes the best sense)
• I may well add a "Continent" field, for another sort. (and I would expect Antarctica to be the world leader of success! )

1z. Covid ALL 29th Mar.jpg

Now Bob, as our resident mathematician/statistics guy might have some valuable input here, so please feel free to say so Bob. These are just my observations of these figures. There are a few different stats that could be added to give this more meaning (such as poverty rates, international travel rates, pop density, and so on) but that's just getting on for a bit too much research....

• The number of deaths is pretty much in the same order as the death rates, particularly at the bad end and especially if you take what I would think are dodgy China stats.
• The total population of the countries with 2000+ cases is approx equal to the 1000 to 2000 bracket population (this is only for the moment though)
• WRT only 2000+ cases, the totals for that category for cases, deaths, death rate are more or less the same as for the total world population (blue figures). The population infection rate is very different though.
• European countries are streaking away with Pop Infection Rate (10 of the worst 11 spots)
• By next Wednesday I expect virtually all of the 1000-2000 case countries to be included in 2000+.
• Look at Japan's astonishing figures, considering their population and proximity to China!
• Taiwan, with its 23.82 mill pop, 283 cases and 2 deaths is never going to get on that list! Death rate is 0.71%, PIR is 0.0012% which will in time become the lowest rate of all, I suspect
• Forget India's numbers at the moment, they will explode.
• I also expect figures from Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Philippines, Pakistan to deteriorate badly and rapidly. Maybe even Russia.... if they tell the truth.
• WRT only 2000+ cases, Australia is almost at the bottom of deaths and death rate, and not far off that for Pop Inf Rate. This might change, but that gives me quite some hope that we are doing pretty well.

*I have just noticed that some of the colour coding is wrong so I will fix it, and upload again.

[FenceFurniture]

While absolutely respecting Neil's right to his view I hope his opinionated prose doesn't put anyone off just viewing this.

Well I respect Neil's view too, but I also trust it. He has access to an expert who is DNA linked to him (which means no bullsh). So no, I'm not going to give oxygen or a click to some guy that you seem to think might be a bit conspiratorial. It doesn't matter if you watch it for a second or 12 minutes, it still counts as a click, and therefore oxygen and possibly $$.

[doug3030]

He has access to an expert who is DNA linked to him (which means no bullsh).

What does that actually mean?