Potential POSITIVE effects of corona virus

[steveb]

Didnt mean to lecture, just that already I have seen so much economic destruction, that is going to take years, for some people to recover, if they ever will. I know a young woman who worked so hard and spent so much money becoming a commercial pilot. She worked hard at secondary airlines, and finally started at Air New Zealand, domestic. It was starting to look as if it was all going to pay off. Now out of work, each day passing, no doubt will mean her skills will slowly subside, and if Air NZ ever recovers enough in the next 5 years, she will no doubt require full retraining. I could relate many such stories and I hardly know anyone. More deaths in NZ. When the government realises how much this has cost them, be prepared for, superannuation cuts and surcharges, less benefits, working for families cuts, GST increases to 20%, health system cuts and a whole lot more. That is where the depression will really hit.
You may think I am being negative, but it is just realism. If I dont buy shares as they reach an all time low, no doubt there will be many others to take my place.

Bottomfeeder,I started this thread so that people could try and think of positive's that might come from this pandemic and pass them on.Your comments however seem to border on the alarmist.
I take it due to the lockdown you are unable to walk around wearing your sandwich board,with the "end is nigh repent now" written on both sides.

[Bobdn]

Quite right Steve! There's lot of things to be positive about and negative thoughts can be contagious! (pun intended.

For me this crisis has given more time to brush up on events in NZ's history like the impact of the Great Depression on our country. It's fascinating stuff and many New Zealanders will be unaware of what life was like back then. People did have more time for walks and board games with family members but on the downside (and I say this for completeness, not to be negative) there was widespread unemployment, poverty, riots and just an overall feeling of the "blahs" across the country.

Apart from reading, I've also painted my front fence - I'd been meaning to do that for years!

https://thegreatdepressionofthe30s.w...nt-impact.html

[clip]

Well done Bob.. we got the last pot of stormy slate fence paint before lockdown and completed the second/final coat on the back fence. Apart from one panel that we ran out of paint for - shhh you cant notice it and we're telling ourselves its completed.

Also found leftover deck paint in the garage so have painted the unfinished trellis around the edge of the deck - as well as planting, sowing grass seed and tidying up the garden and building a path. Definitely a positive having time to do all these things!

[lissica]

Tend
A new virtual consultation for doctors consultation
A good idea to protect front line health care workers
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...onavirus-fight

This is a company trying to capitalise on the pandemic. It is hardly a 'game changer'.

Many GPs had already implemented teleconsulting before the pandemic- it is part of the healthcare home initiative. The fact it accelerated in response to the Covid crisis shows how responsive general practices are to patient need. Right across the country, they put in place a strategy to go 70%+ virtual consults on the weekend of the 21/22nd March, before the Level 3 alert was announced on the 23 March.

As soon as you need an examination, the business model comes unstuck. If your enrolment is with a virtual practice, then when you need something done (vaccination, long acting contraceptives, suturing or wound management), you will have to find a bricks and mortar practice 'and' pay casual rates. Virtual consulting augments traditional general practice, not the other way around.

Also, unless you are a frequent health user, it's simpler to log into a virtual GP waiting room (eg with Doxy.me), than to have an App on the phone which you hardly ever use.

[dodgy]

Hi All,
Just to join this discussion I have the following comments.
NZ (if you believe current diatribe), appears well placed to exercise a move toward capitalising on the prospect of exporting virus clean product to a world currently depleting its food stocks and that will soon be seeking to restock.I see the potential being huge if carefully managed. The downside facing us is insufficient tight controls to prevent off shore investment buying our temporarily distressed companies.
Collectively from this forum I urge you to please start moving youself and your contacts from the doom and destruction, by talking down our share / company and real estate values and start to turn over every stone to find upsides.
New Zealand can do it - abundant resources including energy and a well educated and healthy workforce full of innovation.
Try and win, neglect and fail.
Live well, stay happy.
-dodgy

[Leftfield]

I'm with you Dodgy! We can do it.

[Balance]

Well said, dodgy!

Nothing to fear but irrational fear itself!

Once in a decade opportunity!

[ratkin]

Have enjoyed every minute of this lock down. It so pleasant with no cars on the roads, If it was up to me I would ban the lot of them like parts of Utrecht have in the Netherlands. Great to see families out cycling together.

The change of pace generally is so welcome, no rushing around for work, even enjoyed something as simple as doing a jigsaw puzzle this week.
Reports from around the world of wildlife making a resurgence, less pollution with better air quality. Much of it is not due to the lock down as such, more the lack of cars, maybe people will learn from this. I doubt it though, not in this country. Christchurch had a great chance to change things after the earthquakes, but it just ended up the same congestion as before. Waste of a great opportunity.

[kiora]

Have enjoyed every minute of this lock down. It so pleasant with no cars on the roads, If it was up to me I would ban the lot of them like parts of Utrecht have in the Netherlands. Great to see families out cycling together.

The change of pace generally is so welcome, no rushing around for work, even enjoyed something as simple as doing a jigsaw puzzle this week.
Reports from around the world of wildlife making a resurgence, less pollution with better air quality. Much of it is not due to the lock down as such, more the lack of cars, maybe people will learn from this. I doubt it though, not in this country. Christchurch had a great chance to change things after the earthquakes, but it just ended up the same congestion as before. Waste of a great opportunity.

Maybe the Amish have got it right after all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg

[Valuegrowth]

http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#rates-peaked

Commentary updated: 10 /11Apr 2020
SHOW DATA POINTS

• The graph shows daily increase in confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. A Holt-Winters moving average filter with constants α=0.5 and β=0.5 has been applied to smooth the curves as differences are very noisy. This is a moderate amount of smoothing and it imposes a about a days lag, but it does extract trends fairly well. The curves are not offset, today is Day 0 for all curves.
• On this graph I show the countries that I believe have likely peaked, and I have aligned the day they peaked at day 0.
• It doesn't really make sense to show Chinese cases per million inhabitants, when 82% of the cases were in Hubei province. I have therefore used the Hubei population as the China population when calculating cases per million inhabitants. Really all I care about on this graph is the shape of the curve.
• It is notable that China and Korea rose faster to their peaks and declined faster from their peaks than western countrie
• Italy's peak appears to be rather broad. In part this may be due to a large increase in testing just after the time of the peak, which might give the impression cases are not falling as fast as they really are.
• New Zealand appears to be exhibiting a broad peak, similar to a number of European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands.
• Finland was previously on this graph, but no longer looks to have peaked.

SHOW DATA POINTS

• The graph shows cumulative number of confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. The country curves are shown offset by the amounts shown.
• Canada was following the Italy curve relatively closely until about two weeks ago, and has steadily dropped below since then. Canada may have peaked on April 2nd or perhaps on April 5th, but there has been no significant decline since then, so it is too early to tell if this was the real peak.
• Australia peaked on March 28th and has show strong declines since. New Zealand peaked on April 5th.

SHOW DATA POINTS for Warm Countries

• The graph shows cumulative number of confirmed cases, plotted on a log scale, against time. The country curves are shown offset by the amounts shown.
• Most warm countries do not have enough cases to establish a clear increase rate trend. The graph shows number of confirmed case for some typical "cool" countries and some "warm" ones.
• India, Indonesia and Egypt are all warm countries and have all were experiencing roughly 14% daily growth. The last few days Egypt and Indonesia have seen a significant decline in growth rate, and Egypt may be peaking, though we won't have confidence in this for a few more days.
• Australia was on the 14% curve, but then switched to the 22% curve. This appeared to correspond to temperatures reducing, but more analysis would be needed to know if this is significant. Since then, Australia's daily confirmed case count has peaked, then declined significantly.
• Malaysia had been tracking close to 14%, but has not seen exponential growth since March 16th. Malaysia peaked either on March 26th or April 3rd (the two peaks are similar), but declines since have been slow and it is possible another peak may still occur.
• Brazil was tracking roughly along the 35% line for a while, which seems to run counter to warm weather inhibiting the spread of the virus, but recently it has moved to lower growth. I have now aligned Brazil with the 14% curve experience by other warm countries, and Brazil has roughly followed this track for nearly three weeks. Brazil actually has both tropical and equatorial climate zones, so it unclear how this should manifest in COVID-19 progression.
• Bahrain and Kuwait have very low recent increase levels. This may indicate that most cases were imports, and that local spread has been effectively contained.
• Qatar previously was following the same curve as Bahrain, but the last week has increased suddenly to match the 14% daily increase rate of Brazil.
• Although Singapore has a warm climate, I have omitted it from this graph, because strong contact tracing there dwarfs any climate-dependent effect we might observe.
• Vietnam and Cambodia are shown on this graph; both have warm humid climates and very low recent growth.
• In general, it does appear that COVID19 may spread more slowly in warm climates, but the evidence is inconclusive, and it appears to require relatively hot temperatures to have much effect.