mike carey

Well, it's now 2.05am in eastern Australia for the second time this morning. For the next 25 minutes, Adelaide and the rest of South Australia will be 30 minutes ahead of us.

I went to the bottle shop this evening. There they have a counter with two registers on it (usually only one in use) not checkout lanes. They had installed a clear perspex screen in front of each register (with a cut-out to one side so you could hand the register person your purchases). They also had a spot marked on the floor with 'please stand here' on it so you were squarely facing the screen.

Well, he cancelled and then the world was cancelled, otherwise we all might have been able to see him in Palm Springs in 10 days, but sadly that was not to be. It's Eric's birthday on 5 April (which is today here). So happy birthday @Eric Hassan, in your lock down in New York, and happy international poppers day too.

An interesting tangent to this discussion, there are hardship provisions in our superannuation system that allow you to withdraw funds if you have to. Leave aside the fact that if you don't absolutely have to, when there is a drop in the value of the funds is not a good time to make a withdrawal, but the government has specifically allowed people to withdraw $10K this financial year (up to 30 June) and 10K next during the crisis. Some real estate agents have written to tenants telling them they will not even consider asking landlords for rent reductions unless the tenant had investigated withdrawing retirement savings to cover costs they couldn't otherwise meet. The corporate regulator almost immediately put out a statement that real estate agents could face a $1m fine for doing that as it constituted illegal financial advice. You have to be a licensed financial advisor to give such advice.

A little older than that, at least the sentiment is. 'No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.' Samuel Johnson

While the short term loss is alarming, it might add some perspective if you look at what it was worth in April 2019 rather than just at what it was worth two months ago.

Here, the government has authorised a wide range of telemedicine consultations, and as I understand it they apply equally to telephone and video. I don't know if they are the same as an in-person consultation. Since payment is from the public health system, not an insurance company, the approval of the use of technology came with the approval of the payment and the amount paid. For a lot of things, providers can set their own fee and Medicare pays the 'scheduled fee' either to them or as a refund to the patient but these services apparently have to be 'bulk billed', that is the provider receives the scheduled fee direct from Medicare.

There are two factors, one as you suggest is that the number of cases recorded probably understates the actual case load. But the second, that should not be ignored is that the case load is counted two to three weeks ahead of when the resultant number of deaths can be.

There's no hint here of any restriction on bringing your own bags to the shops, and in Canberra single use plastic bags have been banned since 2011. Most people bring their own, buy heavier duty plastic bags (15 cents each) or load their groceries back into the trolley and unpack it into their cars. The most common reusable bags there are woven plastic with a rough finish that's unlikely to have virus persist on it, or cloth which is also lower risk. I generally use the self-checkout so I don't know whether checkout staff pack your own bags for you or make you to it yourself (or shop at Aldi where they don't pack any bags, it's all down to you). [Trolleys in this town require you to put a gold coin ($1 or $2) in a slot to unlock them from the row of trolleys, and once you've taken your groceries to your car you get it back when you return the trolley and secure it in trolley bay in the car park. Oh, and translation, trolley = cart.]

Well it's suddenly down to +17C here in Canberra and cloudy. Daylight saving ends tonight. On the positive side it's allegedly going to in the low 20s at the end of the week. I need to get out and start walking. You're putting me to shame, @Epigonos.

With most of our grocery shops being national chains, prices are mostly stable. There have been large increases in some produce but that was foreshadowed several months ago because of the drought and then the fires. I just heard a news item that said processors (canneries and frozen food producers) are adjusting their product mixes (more canned tomatoes and less tomato paste for example), and the decline in produce required for the restaurant trade has resulted in more produce available for retail, be that direct sale or through processors.

Thanks for sharing this, @purplekow. It is both inspiring and terrifying to read. Kia Kaha (stay strong).

I tend not to believe the use by or best by dates on things like mayo or mustard. On @Gar1eth's point on curry in mayonnaise, there is a commercial line here of peri peri mayonnaise, which I think is great.

Thanks for this @Epigonos. For those interested, Bloomberg has pages, one with world-wide figures and another for the US. They are updated several times a day. I realise that the site is paywalled, but they have an introductory offer of I think, $3.99 per month if you wanted to check those pages for a while (I think they offer a limited number of free articles if you only want to look once). https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-cases-world-map/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=covid_tracker&utm_content=bofu&sref=ExvOhfnN A car analogy occurred to me as I read this. We all know that drunk drivers kill people, but there was a time when we only knew about one of them if they had a crash or if they were pulled over for erratic driving. About 30 years ago, random breath tests were introduced here. Roadblocks were set up, people were pulled over at random just for a breath test (happened to me on a country road a couple of days ago), and anyone stopped for anything else was tested while they were there. The analogy, we increased testing and we had a far better understanding of how much drunk driving was going on, and as a result people stopped doing it. Well, not everyone, but most people did, and it became socially unacceptable. And fairly quickly the number of deaths on the road fell sharply. Not precise because drinking and driving is a conscious (well usually) choice, not an invisible pathogen.

Welcome back!

Thanks, thought so. In fairness Pensant was talking about post-COVID travel when presumably at least some of the restrictions will be lifted.

Is the Canadian border open?

[MEDIA=twitter]1245118409005809664[/MEDIA]

We don't know whether COVID-19 is seasonal, but we'll get a better idea of that over the next few months from what happens in the southern winter. I suspect that even if the virus itself isn't affected by the season, the fact that we are at closer quarters in winter will cause something of an increase. There is also the issue of how the disease runs with a simultaneous seasonal infection, like the common cold or seasonal influenza.

The two Australian airlines have extended all status tiers by 12 months, and Hilton have as well. Hilton have also extended the expiry date of points balances. I guess I need to find my yellow vaccination book.

I'm not expecting to make any trips till summer either, and that's considerably further off for me than it is for @VictorPowers. He's already told me to get my tongue back in my mouth, but I'm not sure if I have to do that from now to summer as well.

Woolworths is one of our two big supermarket chains. [MEDIA=twitter]1244923425308594176[/MEDIA]

I went to the post office today, they had separate entry and exit doors with the queue (only two of us) outside (1.5m lines on the pavement) rather than inside the office. They let one person in at a time.

I've recently turned my mind to this very question, and my initial thoughts were that I would do just that. Part of it is because a unit reunion is now planned for November in NOLA, but in part because I have a substantial airline credit to use by December 2021. But I'm a long way from booking anything that isn't cancellable or fully refundable.

For those who have a subscription to the NYT or have some of their free allowance of articles left (noting that the allowance is about to reset), here's a link to the article. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/magazine/i-think-sex-for-pay-is-wrong-should-i-stay-with-a-partner-who-disagrees.html