CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

[BobL]

Well...yeah...but it's not much of a way for a country to live.

Sure, but washing one hands on a regular basis is not much of a change, let alone requiring a shut down or lock out.

I'm looking more at any overall positives and things we can learn from this - as my old professor used to say - when you "stuff up" or something unfortunate happens try to see if it comes with a learning opportunity.

I'd say a lot more workers and bosses may find they want to work more from home than in the past, reduced need for public transport, less densely packed roads.

I reckon more uni stuff than ever will stay on line.

More telemedicine - shoulda been done years ago.

What else?

I'd also like to think they review and upgrade air ventilation on planes and cruise ships.

[Lappa]

Good old telemedicine.

YouTube

[FenceFurniture]

I'm looking more at any overall positives and things we can learn from this

What else?

LOADS! Where to start.....I was actually discussing this with a mate this morning.

There must be huge savings that businesses will be able to make. Less real estate for offices, desks, parking lots, cafeterias etc etc etc. Massive savings there.

Suddenly people will be able to work from Melbourne, Perth, Bullamakanka for a Sydney based company, and fly in one per month or something for a day or three. Stay at a colleague's house for some bonding.

Less traffic on the roads
Less stress
Less pollution from vehicles.
Less consumption of "stuff" (tyres, petrol, work clothes, make-up, and so on)
More room on Public Transport during peaks.
More Teleconsulting of all sorts of things (legal, economics, sorry, accountancy

There must be an enormous amount of other stuff. Woodpixel will be good at nominating things.

Think of all those work computers that only get used for 8 hours a day in the old system. A massive share of them can go. All that office space real estate that is only used for 8 hours a day.

In short, and when we recover somewhat, I think commerce is going to severely disrupt itself for the better with a fundamental and seismic shift towards working from home permanently, with all that comes with that scenario. There will be opportunities that disruptors will make new fortunes from.

A huge casualty will be printed media in all its forms - people won't be travelling to work on the train, just for starters.


One thing is absolutely certain - there has never been a better time to become an IT professional - in all the associated fields of sales, service, programming etc. They are going to be in huge demand, travelling around to employees homes to do stuff to improve their efficiency.

[GraemeCook]

...

I reckon more uni stuff than ever will stay on line.

....

I agree with you, Bob, but the critical words are "than ever": its an accelaration of existant trend rather than something new.

A few years ago I went back to uni as a (very) mature age student and did another degree and found two major changes from my prior undergraduate and graduate experiences of c.40 years ago:

• all lecture theatres equipped with video cameras and all lectures were recorded and available online about ten minutes after each lecture ended, and
• Lectures tended to be faster paced and more information dense than I remembered.

Initially I found the latter aspect difficult, very difficult to keep up with notes until I realised that I did not have to. I could just listen to (and watch) the recording at whatever pace was best. I quickly came to appreciate this innovation.

Occasionally, perhpas 5-10% of lectures were "online only" - code for a rebroadcast of last years lecture (or earlier?). Almost all students, myself included, hated those "online only" lectures; there is a tangible benefit of being in a live lecture theatre. The perpetual grumblers attributed "online only"lectures to penny pinching by the university, but often it could be attributed to staff sickness, interstate travel, or something else.

Unfortunately, I think that you are correct.

[Tccp123]

Sure, but washing one hands on a regular basis is not much of a change, let alone requiring a shut down or lock out.

I'm looking more at any overall positives and things we can learn from this - as my old professor used to say - when you "stuff up" or something unfortunate happens try to see if it comes with a learning opportunity.

I'd say a lot more workers and bosses may find they want to work more from home than in the past, reduced need for public transport, less densely packed roads.

I reckon more uni stuff than ever will stay on line.

More telemedicine - shoulda been done years ago.

What else?

I'd also like to think they review and upgrade air ventilation on planes and cruise ships.

How about in future we avoid this response "always planning for the worst, avoiding all risk instead of managing it sensibly"?

[BobL]

How about in future we avoid this response "always planning for the worst, avoiding all risk instead of managing it sensibly"?

Hum . . . . . there's a lot of water still to flow under this virus bridge yet.
We still don't have enough experience or info about this virus to "manage it sensibly".
I'd say we have been on the lucky side so far and think we have only been able to "minimise it" so far because we have been on the hard side. Just a tad sloppier and we could easily be where Italy/Spain/US/NY are right now.

This virus is far from over and could still turn around and bite us hard.
Second wave, with limited/no immunity, no vaccine, and a population who think they've seen it all before and misbehave, and we'll be down there with the third world.

[Tccp123]

Hum . . . . . there's a lot of water still to flow under this virus bridge yet.
We still don't have enough experience or info about this virus to "manage it sensibly".
I'd say we have been on the lucky side so far and think we have only been able to "minimise it" so far because we have been on the hard side. Just a tad sloppier and we could easily be where Italy/Spain/US/NY are right now.

This virus is far from over and could still turn around and bite us hard.
Second wave, with limited/no immunity, no vaccine, and a population who think they've seen it all before and misbehave, and we'll be down there with the third world.

There you go again Bob "always planning for the worst,"

OK so we keep lockdown in place. We don't have any new infections. It's six months from now.

What do we do then?

[Tccp123]

If this was a game of chess I'm thinking we'll all beginners, thinking one step ahead. We need to do more...

[Lappa]

I am one in the throws of going from face to face teaching to online as a teacher, not a student. It certainly is a huge shift as we have had 2 weeks to get it up and running and that’s on top of mandatory training sessions and online meetings. Most of us will spend the Easter break at work. The one problem is equipment. Those who have been doing for ages have excellent videoing equipment so face to face sessions can be recorded then available for students - my sister was heavily involved in it at Uni so I am well aware of the gear they had. I would love to video some prac. demonstrations but it’s not easy to do with a web cam on the laptop. Mobile webcams etc are like hen’s teeth with 6 week plus waiting times.
We have to start from scratch and present online - no face to face. It’s all new technology to both us and the students. Trial sessions have shown vast difference in bandwidths which makes things like streaming videos truely problematic. So, we can provide links but most students have stated they have limited data so online sessions need to be kept short as do videos. We have talked to employers about providing the equipment at work but some of the smaller shops have pretty average equipment and small data allowances.
So, it’s going to be trial and error for the first few weeks while we sort out connection issues, get both us and the students up to date and familiar with the programs we are using. We do however have resource books, text books and some online companies that have excellent online resources so we should be OK.
Actually looking forward to it.

[Tccp123]

I am one in the throws of going from face to face teaching to online as a teacher, not a student. It certainly is a huge shift as we have had 2 weeks to get it up and running and that’s on top of mandatory training sessions and online meetings. Most of us will spend the Easter break at work. The one problem is equipment. Those who have been doing for ages have excellent videoing equipment so face to face sessions can be recorded then available for students - my sister was heavily involved in it at Uni so I am well aware of the gear they had. I would love to video some prac. demonstrations but it’s not easy to do with a web cam on the laptop. Mobile webcams etc are like hen’s teeth with 6 week plus waiting times.
We have to start from scratch and present online - no face to face. It’s all new technology to both us and the students. Trial sessions have shown vast difference in bandwidths which makes things like streaming videos truely problematic. So, we can provide links but most students have stated they have limited data so online sessions need to be kept short as do videos. We have talked to employers about providing the equipment at work but some of the smaller shops have pretty average equipment and small data allowances.
So, it’s going to be trial and error for the first few weeks while we sort out connection issues, get both us and the students up to date and familiar with the programs we are using. We do however have resource books, text books and some online companies that have excellent online resources so we should be OK.
Actually looking forward to it.

I feel your pain. I've worked in IT all my life and am very aware of the limitations both in terms of technical know-how and bandwidth availability to make this work. It won't be easy.

[FenceFurniture]

some of the smaller shops have pretty average equipment and small data allowances.

Re data allowance - in the context of a business it's chicken feed to go unlimited - probably $10-20 per month extra, and perhaps the same again to go up in speed if it's required. Not sure where NBN availability is up to though.

Maybe that's an area that the Fed Govt should look at - getting good equipment into small businesses and getting them on a good data plan. The Govt will need the country to recover as quickly as possible.

[BobL]

There you go again Bob "always planning for the worst,"

OK so we keep lockdown in place. We don't have any new infections. It's six months from now.

What do we do then?

Even if./when a vaccine becomes available I doubt there will ever be zero new infections over say a weekly basis.

If we have zero community (unknown source) infections for 2 quarantine periods (ie total of 28 days) I don't think we need to wait for 6 months..
It will even be OK to have small numbers (1-2 per day) of "known" source infections during and even after that period as long as they are immediately chased up and relevant contacts are quarantined.

But we can't go fully open after that period it will have to be staged recovery otherwise if it gets out of hand again we'll have to go back to a hard lock down and the will really people off.
The staged reopening could follow the order of locking down with about 2 weeks periods between each stage.

We will almost certainly have to have a tight lid on OS travellers for the foreseeable future as it appears the rest of the world will be raging for some time with this thing. People can come in from select countries but need to quarantine for 14 days.

The hardest thing will be to decide on fully opening of large/dense people gatherings.

[Tccp123]

We will almost certainly have to have a tight lid on OS travellers for the foreseeable future as it appears the rest of the world will be raging for some time with this thing. People can come in from select countries but need to quarantine for 14 days.

The hardest thing will be to decide on fully opening of large/dense people gatherings.

...or we go with the hard option?

[Tccp123]

I realise this won't be a popular option for the Pollyannas but is there a choice? I should add that I turn 70 in June and I have high blood pressure...

But I'll take the chance.

[BobL]

I realise this won't be a popular option for the Pollyannas but is there a choice? I should add that I turn 70 in June and I have high blood pressure...

But I'll take the chance.

Not me. I have 4 co-morbidities that are currently just managebale, mum is 92, a sister and brother are recent cancer survivors, and another sister has a raft of health concerns.