44 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

But will there be enough toilet paper?

bidet sales to soar.....get in quick

48 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

bidet sales to soar.....get in quick

And the sales of The Hun will rise astronomically. For once it will justify the purchase price but the sewage system might complain.

 

 

1 minute ago, Demonland said:

 

Poor Kochie will be devastated 

his Ca$h junket has been thwarted 

4 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

Poor Kochie will be devastated 

his Ca$h junket has been thwarted 

The cash actually goes to the hosting team. In this case St Kilda. Will be interesting to see if Saints receive compensation. Loss of the million plus they get for playing in China would put a big hole in their revenue budget

7 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

The cash actually goes to the hosting team. In this case St Kilda. Will be interesting to see if Saints receive compensation. Loss of the million plus they get for playing in China would put a big hole in their revenue budget

The compensation should be the fact that they get to play in the comfort of their home ground, not needing to travel and re-claiming the home ground advantage they clearly lost had it been in China.

Their CEO confirmed on radio that they would lose some or all of the money if the game got moved to Marvel.

25 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

The cash actually goes to the hosting team. In this case St Kilda. Will be interesting to see if Saints receive compensation. Loss of the million plus they get for playing in China would put a big hole in their revenue budget

Kochie wouldn’t be going to China for nothing...

I am sitting at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The Place is almost deserted 

Fantastic!!

this Coronavirus is a huge scam. It’s a serious Flu, i saw more people die on motorbikes in Thailand

Masks are a complete waste of time  gloves offer far more protection  

hardly noticed anything in BKK unless i turned on the TV ? 

CNN are going beserk!!!

Edited March 3, 20205 yr by Sir Why You Little

On 2/28/2020 at 10:06 AM, Colin B. Flaubert said:

Update from an overseas correspondent:
Things are starting to get tenser here in Japan. 
The event I am organizing which was mentioned in the 'To Hell and Back Pt 3.' thread had to be postponed due to the fact that numbers would be down and no-one knows how far this thing will spread. Certain people decry diversity in decision making but I nearly fell over when the Japanese government, basically made up of a council of well connected, out of touch, and elderly Japanese men, let all those people off the Diamond Princess without really performing comprehensive checkups. Alas, age and length of tenure in any unrelated position here is associated with 'wisdom' and competence, hence people without the specialized skills have been put in charge. (Point in case: the Olympic/Technology Minister admitted to not even having used a computer in his life until recently, yet was given this posting). With this in mind, and remembering the cockup at Fukushima, we are just hoping for serendipity. 
Pretty much all social events where crowds are expected to gather have been cancelled or postponed. School will be closed for the month. Two of those weeks overlap with school holidays, BUT Japanese schools have a long tradition of running club activities which 80% of the student body turn up to. My job has also put out guidelines for COVID-19 which include prohibiting visits from researchers from Hubei. 
While concrete measures were never really implemented until today,  Nagoya, where I live close to, has seen a huge drop off in people gathering in the entertainment and shopping districts. It's not quite like that scene from '28 Days Later' where Cillian Murphy wakes up from his coma, but you can get seats in coffee shops and restaurants way easier.
I have kept an open mind on much of this. The virus itself has killed mostly the elderly and infirm and while the death of anyone is tragic, it also means that contracting the virus isn't a death sentence as might be assumed. The big issue here is to contain this until the weather warms up and there is not such a strain on the hospital system (as is the case during Winter and early Spring). Hopefully, Australia can keep it under control and the monumental incompetence on display during the bushfires has been learned from.
@TeamPlayedFine39 what's the situation in HK?

Tensions are starting to ease here in Hong Kong.  We had all schools closed since Chinese New Year and wont re-open until at least the 20th of April.  Most places that can have people working from home have been doing so.  This has largely worked in limiting the spread here to about 3-4 diagnosed a day.  For a city of 7.5 million people crammed together, it's impressive that we have had under 100 cases.  But, this is in main part because Hong Kong has been through all of this before and ghosts of SARS have never been far from people's minds.

As far as how extreme people are being (lining up for masks, raiding supermarkets, staying indoors for days on end), these seem to be run along cultural lines.    It's very rare to see a local out without a mask on, whilst the only time I've worn one is when I walk in the door for work, until I get to my office.  Many people even just wear the mask as it is the 'socially acceptable' thing to do.

Hotels, bars, restaurants, malls, and attractions are all either empty or closed.  There's a lot of bargains and great spots at exclusive places to be found at the moment. We're probably six weeks ahead of Australia, in that we've already had out ridiculous stampede on toilet paper and now the supermarkets are all overflowing with the stuff.  

We're now seeing a lot more people returning to work.  The public Service started back on Monday and more and more firms and businesses are asking people to come in.  This will be a big test as the only real proven control for COVID 19 is isolation. 

Socially, more and more people are getting out and about as the panic has now subsided (Protestors even came out to play on the weekend and set some stuff on fire).  The atmosphere is probably one of caution, rather than the stress and high tension of six weeks ago.

 

20 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

I am sitting at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. The Place is almost deserted 

Fantastic!!

this Coronavirus is a huge scam. It’s a serious Flu, i saw more people die on motorbikes in Thailand

CNN are going beserk!!!

Flew through KLIA2 a few days ago.... very quiet

Will probably cancel my trip to Italy and Greece next month.Not worried about the virus per se  but the possibility of travel restrictions and the closure of tourist spots makes it not the best time to travel.

Managed to pick up a bad cold on my last few days in India.... People sure look at you differently. Have now stocked up and will self isolate !! Plenty of toilet paper

One unintended consequence of Covid-19 is that it might free up some space on the MCC waiting list.Silver linings folks. 

Edited March 3, 20205 yr by Rab D Nesbitt

On 2/27/2020 at 11:34 AM, JakovichScissorKick said:

Thanks, China.

Doing a superb job of destroying the earth, wildife and humanity.

What an idiotic comment

18 hours ago, jumbo returns said:

What an idiotic comment

 

Nope.   Just the truth.

[censored] china.

Can somebody spare some dunny paper please? 5 supermarkets later and nothing. 

7 minutes ago, Dee Zephyr said:

Can somebody spare some dunny paper please? 5 supermarkets later and nothing. 

Bunnings are now running out of 240 grade sandpaper. This is starting to get out of hand. By the weekend I’m going to have to decide between taking a dump and stripping back an old work bench I picked up on gumtree. 

For those interested, here is WHO's report on Covid-19.  China gets vigourously applauded for its actions which will disappoint those who would rather score political points than contain a new disease.  

It doesn't call for the cancellation of any AFL games.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

11 minutes ago, sue said:

For those interested, here is WHO's report on Covid-19.  China gets vigourously applauded for its actions which will disappoint those who would rather score political points than contain a new disease.  

It doesn't call for the cancellation of any AFL games.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

I heard on the news this morning that worldwide 41,000 people had been diagnosed with the disease, as the worlds population is around 10 billion this equates to a very miniscule percentage.

3 hours ago, JakovichScissorKick said:

 

Nope.   Just the truth.

[censored] china.

There's 1.4 billion people in China.
Every one of them?

 

20 minutes ago, drysdale demon said:

I heard on the news this morning that worldwide 41,000 people had been diagnosed with the disease, as the worlds population is around 10 billion this equates to a very miniscule percentage.

Not sure where you got those numbers, but they're wrong (currently approx 90,000 people out of ~7.8 billion). But the problem is that the number of cases won't increase linearly, it will increase exponentially (because each person with the virus will likely pass it on to multiple others). 90,000 cases could turn into hundreds of millions extremely quickly, and the mortality rate is about 3.5% - do the math.

No one knows quite how bad it will get, but people have good reason to be concerned (although panic buying dunny paper is just plain weird).  

1 hour ago, drysdale demon said:

I heard on the news this morning that worldwide 41,000 people had been diagnosed with the disease, as the worlds population is around 10 billion this equates to a very miniscule percentage.

try about 7.7 billion (and climbing)

There is next to no chance of a game being cancelled. The worst case would be a game played with no one at the game ( a lock out) but televised. The AFL will do nothing that intreruptes the flow of media money.

12 minutes ago, old dee said:

The worst case would be a game played with no one at the game

Sounds like a few MFC games I have been to

46 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

try about 7.7 billion (and climbing)

A pee in the ocean still

1 minute ago, drysdale demon said:

A pee in the ocean still

Most of the world's problems are simply the result of too many people on the planet.

Make sure you wash your hands afterwards.