Coronavirus cases and deaths among UM members

[CiG]

I tried to order groceries online but both Coles and Woolworths are backed up by at least a week, so I'll have no choice but to venture out. I'm good for toilet paper for a couple of weeks but I definitely need more basic foodstuff. Got a shitload of pasta too so worst case scenario I'll just buy canned tuna and make something.

I'm wondering if smaller grocery stores are less impacted by the panic buying rush, for example I have a Spud Shed and a Farmer Johns pretty close by.

 

[Slammed]

Woolies have stopped home deliveries in Vic because they were having trouble fulfilling orders.

You are better going down at opening time. It sucks to have to do it but unless you can find a small IGA type independent everything is gone off the shelves. It's getting slightly better with the limits in place but you just know people are circling back and doing two and three trips to the same supermarkets.

Our butchers were less effected until this week, but our small family owned fruit and veg store who organise their own delivers from the markets still have reasonable stock by mid morning. IGA's etc around the country seem to be reporting higher stock levels later into the day but many are still struggling to keep the shelves stocked.

 

[CiG]

I think our Woolworths and Coles will soon do that too. They have already cancelled online pick-up orders due to low stock, and they have limited how many of the same item you can put in your online cart depending on the item. Things are moving very fast in that sense.

I'll probably drive around and check out the least obvious shops before I try my luck at one of the bigger ones. Honestly if I could get about 10 tins of Steggs chili and some corn chips I'll just live on nachos (have many tins of kidney beans already also) until the hysteria calms down. Really kicking myself for allowing myself to run out of rice just as this shit kicked off.

 

[Slammed]

Strangely enough here Woolies are letting pick up orders go but cancelling home deliveries. Coles in the town over are advertising for home delivery drivers.

If you get to Coles early there is only limits on 2kg rice, not sure about the others.

Be like those stupid cunts in Melbourne town. They organised a bus load of people to travel to the country towns and buy from the small country IGA's. These supermarkets serve small communities and if they don't look after the locals the locals don't look after them and those inconsiderate cunts think it's their fucking right to just travel a few hundred ks and buy whatever they want because they have the money. In one of the towns the store owner saw them all pile out of the bus and locked the door on them. I'd support that store owner!

 

[CiG]

You'd think adversity would bring people together, as cliche as that might be. But no, literal old women beat each other up over toilet paper and yuppies flood the countryside to raid their small shops smh.

 

[Slammed]

It is pretty fucked up what humans become when a small amount of shit hits the fan. Imagine what would happen if this shit was serious!

 

[CiG]

People who have lived in the burbs and cities their whole life probably don't know there's anything out of the ordinary about it, but there's a slight culture shock for me having grown up in country towns and small communities most of my early life. Like really, you're fighting over hand sanitizer and toilet paper? You're hoarding every kind of meat there is and leaving others with nothing? No rice? No canned goods? smfh.

If there's one major complaint I'd have about capitalism is that it has slowly eradicated communitarianism and created these individualistic bubble existences where we don't even stop to think about anybody else. As long as I have an abundance of shit in my house, fuck everybody else.

 

[Slammed]

Well it's kind of obvious that most city people don't understand anything but that which is in their own backyard, if they did they'd realise they can survive without date roll. However the problem is that there is still people in the country who think the same, they must be fucking exports from the city

It's like a different mentality down here. City teachers are calling for schools to be closed and parents all should work from home, (no idea how half the jobs people do can be done from home but that's city logic). Our teachers want to be at school. Stores down here are like everywhere else selling out of shit quickly, but the mentality of most people is, 'well fuck it I'll get what I can and life goes on'. No one is treating this virus like a joke but they aren't running around fearing it and changing their entire world to adapt to it either.

 

[CiG]

Country people are far from perfect of course, I just remember experiencing much less selfishness. Totally agree about your last point too, it's fucking infuriating.

 

[Slammed]

Country people are far from perfect of course,

I'm living proof that your statement is false

It would be good to see community spirit rise out of this shit. I know of several small communities who after the bushfires have all banded together and supported each other. They may never have fortune 500 businesses, they may never be millionaires but they are going to survive because of how they came together. Communities are harder to organise in the city/burbs for many different reasons, but it can be done and communities have a much better survival rate than every man for himself.

 

[CiG]

When you posted about potential COVID-19 cures, were you referring to the Australian who may have discovered HIV medication's usefulness? If so, I think a very recent study in China has not shown it to be effective after they did several tests with it.

 

[Slammed]

There is actually two drugs from Australia, one from the US and one from maybe France. I can't remember the name, it's in one of the posts, apparently has been trialled for more than 6 days and they still have positive outcomes on day 6.

 

[Bloopy]

What an Australian doctor is saying, though maybe hasn't gotten quite as crazy there yet as what she worried about. Quoted some interesting bits:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=502590283981747&id=276755156565262

We cannot stop the spread of the disease - we all know that eventually we have to come out of quarantine and we will have a reemergence of disease: This is why people in Bejing and other large cites still have a strict quarantine. IN Shenzhen factory workers have been in quarantine for 8 weeks - office workers were released last week to test to see if their release triggered a spike in numbers. It has

Large studies conducted show that an asymptomatic carrier has a higher viral load than a sick person (health host is a perfect host) and can spread the disease for weeks/months unknowingly. We know that children are more often than not asymptomatic but on CT scan they still have bilateral pneumonia and VERY high viral load throat swabs.

 

[Slammed]

I was reading an Aussie forum before and every 10 minutes someone posts a link to another doctor, or medical expert saying one thing or another. Some are saying it's dire, some are saying it could be dire and others are saying it could also not be as dire as other make out. Then add to all those posts the posts where people quote/cite/link graphs that might mean something to other countries but really mean nothing more than estimates or guess work to Australia and it's amazing people can even keep up with themselves, let alone each other.

I saw a government release to schools before (but ssshhhh I wasn't suppose to see it) that outlines why our governments are not prepared to close schools yet. No one is suggesting kids don't get this bug, or pass it on, or even carry it, but the actual numbers they are going off are extremely, mega, ultra low that it's easy to see why they are making the decisions they are. I don't know if the figures are right, and I doubt anyone but someone whose studied the cases does, but with what happens if schools close weighed up against the low figures of risk to kids and teachers it is easy to see why our government is making the choice they are. It makes no difference if another country has done it, or not done it, our government is basing the non-closure of schools on data they have.

Tasmania has closed it's borders to all travellers now too. Three people a day will be so pissed off

 

[Bloopy]

Well yeah, closing schools doesn't eliminate kids, it just scatters them around! This post screenshotted in the comments is arguably more convincing, and consistent with the claim that people showing no symptoms spread the virus:
https://www.facebook.com/carmen.lee.315865/posts/10219137252533597

 

[Slammed]

It's an unconfirmed report but something I was reading before suggested that in Australia we'd loose 40% of our health care sector if parents were forced to stay home and look after their kids when schools closed.

 

[CiG]

Borders closed to all non-Australians by tomorrow morning, thank fuck.

 

[Slammed]

We should all start jumping up and down and move the country while no one is watching.

 

[CiG]

 

[Bloopy]

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/03/19/1090839/nzs-new-covid-19-strategy-explained

With appropriate monitoring of hospitals and communities, countries could reopen schools and ease social distancing requirements whenever the number of ICU beds occupied by Covid-19 patients dropped below a certain number. In the UK, for example, that number would be 50. If the number of patients in ICU then rose to 100 again - as researchers say it would - those requirements would snap back into place.

In other words, that's two months on intense social distancing, one month off - for the next 12 to 24 months.

Life to potentially get pretty damn uneventful for some time. At least I have you bastards!