News: 1589179003

Does sound like their precautions and quarantine have been sensible and reasonably handled and communicated.

Also seems like they've handled the time in quarantine well, too.

Hope both are safe and looking forwards to getting home

Yep. Yet at Gatwick we have reports, back when lock down started, or a plane from China landing and being allowed through with no checks. And the same person that mentioned this, a baggage handler, who was worried for his health went to the office and grabbed a mask and started to wear it. He was then pulled into the office and given a warning and told to remove the mask.

So, we know the management at Gatwick are dicks and don't give a shit about the health of their own staff. Anyone dies from it there, those managers need to be charged with corporate manslaughter.

On the brighter side, Gatwick Airport doesn't look very likely to survive this.

Not brighter for me as it's closer than Heathrow :)

The only thing that doesn't sound "right" is no opening windows and not being allowed out of the room, that would drive me stir crazy, I don't like AC air and I can only sleep with the window open.

I don't see why they can't organize a short walk in the hotel grounds / in the entrance-way in small groups with distancing - I assume that guards are on duty 24/7, so putting up a fence and letting them walk around guarded should make them feel better.

I think it's time Oz was booted from the Commonwealth, just like Zim. How did it become such a police state?

You really think anyone would notice? Fuck sake, being booted from mySpace would be more newsworthy.

Please read the history books and discover how we created Australia..

But note that the UK is now proposing the same thing. At this point it is just Quarantine Theater, Typhoid Mary would have sailed through modern quarantine efforts and gone straight back to work.

The UK is now proposing the same thing, a couple of months after it would have been useful.

One gets the idea they're just going with whatever plays well in focus groups.

That seems to be exactly what they're doing. All the while hiding behing the science and the data so they can point fingers if it doesn't go as they hope . I won't say as they plan , because clearly there is no plan.

Jealous much that they have 1% of the deaths per head of population compared to the UK?

Corona would cause more deaths, but it just isn't though enough to stand up against all the native predators (and the really aggressive sheep) Oz has. Like throwing a tomcat into a raptor pen...

... of lack of situational awareness. It looks we can't really blame governments only for having underestimated and mismanaged the crisis for far too long.

Hmmm not sure I agree with you there. If we were talking a 1 or 2 week holiday then I would agree with you, but thinking they should have tried to guess the situation a month in advance, before there were any lockdowns being discussed, no quarantines in place, is harsh. Things changed very fast at the start of the outbreak, not being able to predict it a month in advance is not something i feel you can put on Alex and his partner. A lot of governments with a lot more info then them got it wrong (and continue to do so!).

Australia started requiring all arrivals from overseas to self-isolate at home for 14 days on 15 March, almost exactly when the couple would have started their holiday. Qantas announced on 19 March that they would be shutting down most of their international operation at the end of the month. A total ban on Australians travelling overseas was issued on 20 March and at the same time Australians overseas were advised to return home immediately. The lockdown started on 22 March.

Sorry, no sympathy. Especially since I am awaiting a test result and am currently required to self-isolation (and yes, the police may come to check I am here). I could have only caught it from food shopping or exercising in the local park.

Australia initially introduced the self isolation that the UK is now proposing weeks ago. It didn't work as selfish idiots did not stay home. Mandatory quarantine was introduced instead. This allows health authorities to treat and trace existing cases without having to worry about importing new ones. It worked. There are virtually no new cases and we can open the country back up with relative safety. Compare and contrast to the absolute clusterfuck in the UK. Less that 100 deaths in a country of 25 million compared to 31,000 deaths in a country of 68 million.

I am in the NT, which has had no deaths at all. I am glad I am here, while at the same time have a raging fury at what has happened in the UK as we still have so many friends and family there suffering due to the ineptitude of Boris and his cohort of fuckwits.

For those of us who don't fully comprehend Australian-style distances, how far away is home from Sydney for them? Judging by the line regarding flight availability, I'm guessing it will be "...and then it's only a quick four-hour flight back to the airport to pick up the car for a three-hour drive to home sweet home" sort of deal.

From an AC on the other side of the world: you have my sympathies!

12 hour drive, one hour flight.

As someone who drove (early January) from Sydney to the north end of the Gold Coast coast, and then a week later flew from there to Melbourne, I concur.

The drive took about 12 hours, including a couple of short breaks. Thank for automatics and cruise control!

The flight down to Melbourne, which of course passes Sydney about half way down, took a little over 2 hours, and being domestic, you only needed to be at the airport about an hour before the flight.

I'm glad the DBA and his partner look to be ok and will be able to go home soon, but the quarantine is one one the main reasons Australia is right on top of controlling the spread of Coronavirus and has had a death rate a few orders of magnitude less than the UK.

Mandatory quarantine for all people arriving in the country is also something the UK government have singularly failed to do which is complete madness, and with the garbled and incoherent announcement from Boris last night we will see another spike in the confirmed cases in about three weeks which will set the whole country back at least another two months. I can see this outbreak will rumble along in the UK until November due to our governments complete lack of decisive and responsible action in controlling the Pandemic here. It's like they don't give a shit about anyone else in the country.

OTOH, as there are so few people flying now, it is a good time to impliment quarantine. Far less people to handle while the scheme is brought up to speed and issues ironed out. There is a lovely detention centre just over the A4 from Heathrow that is apparently almost empty now. That's where I'm guessing the first 'guests at Boris's pleasure' will be sent.

Yes, the Government has made mistakes in the handling of CV-19. They are writing the user manual as they go.

I didn't find 'Boris on TV' last night garbled at all. There is little detail that could be conveyed in 10-11 minutes. We'll need to wait for the 50 page document. Then we can properly assess the next stage in the plan. I'm not a supporter of Boris but I do appreciate that he is very much caught between a rock and a hard place. No matter what he does, he'll antagonise someone.

Personally, I don't think we will be properly in 'Level 3' until late June.

Look forward to lots more working from home people.

I've done it for the past 8 years so nothing much has changed for me apart from the lack of Traffic noise when I have the windows open.

"Yes, the Government has made mistakes in the handling of CV-19. They are writing the user manual as they go."

Maybe if they had bothered to RTFM from other countries who had it first they'd have made fewer mistakes. It is becoming harder and harder to claim that the UK has not badly mismanaged this: we squandered several advantages (Island, reasonably wealthy, state health service AND MOST IMPORTANTLY at least two headstarts [China and Italy]).

The fact that some will criticise the government whatever they do does not invalidate all criticism of the government.

Two flies in the ointment:

1) There are a couple of clusters of unexplained Coronavirus outbreaks in the UK in December and many more in January (two choral societies in Manchester for instance) - all linked to people travelling back from Wuhan. The illness already had a foot hold well before the WHO announced the problems.

2) Some people in the UK refuse to do as they are told! The self isolation of travellers has been generally ignored if you look at the clusters of illnesses that surround many of them, and the general public seem to be even worse!

So we really cannot learn from the lessons of China - where people do as they are told (often forcibly) - see fly no. 2 above.

But we have learnt from Italy, as our Health Service was not overwhelmed like theirs was.

We can learn from those countries that still impose quarantine, such as Australia. We only did it for the first flights from Wuhan, but now we have to enforce it - see fly no.2 above.

Working back from the death rates (although they are a little skewed by the Care Homes) and WHO figures for the number of asymptomatic or mild illnesses, we get figures of 5-10% of the population have been infected. Now is the time for the next stage, but yes, we will see the numbers of infected bounce back up again, but if people follow the rules, this should be well within the limit of the NHS.

Remember this is an illness of age:

2 deaths in under 10's - both with pre-existing conditions

27 deaths in under 25's - most with pre-existing conditions

1% of all over 90's dead from this virus.

In my view school children could be back, if there are sufficient young teachers available, so parents can get back to work - except for those children where they live with the most vulnerable. This half school year can be generally be written off - not because the teachers have not tried to provide remote work for the children, but because so many children (with their parents blessing) have not done any of the work. These will all have to be "brought back up to speed" in September to the detriment of the rest of the classes :-( I have many reports of this from teacher friends, where those who do not bother much in class, have not returned any work since they have been at home!

Sorry rambling - I'll get my coat!

our Health Service was not overwhelmed like theirs was.

No, the UK pushed the problem into care homes.

Fewer! - Stannis Baratheon

The reports of those instructed to 'self isolate' and failing to do so having flown into the UK from high risk areas (Indian and Pakistan especially) shows the Australian enforced quarantine measures are probably required here.

Internationally it's reported that in Bobcaygeon Ont. a retirement home owner having flown home from overseas ignored the Canadian 14 day stay at home and self quarantine order, the owner was initially asymptomatic, at last report 27 of 65 residents had died from Covid-19, as have family members who'd visited them before the place was locked down, the health body declared a Covid-19 community outbreak 'incident' in March, and unlike others it's still ongoing:

http://www.hkpr.on.ca/category/my-community/outbreaks/

https://www.centraleasthealthline.ca/displayservice.aspx?id=51212

https://www.kawartha411.ca/2020/03/28/wife-of-pinecrest-nursing-home-resident-dies-of-coronavirus/

Still if 14 days is too hard for some to do, along with all the potential spread as they travel 'home', they should be thankful it's that short, quaranta giorni the original Venezia quarantine was 40 days long.

I do hope Boris has the balls to stand-up to the PC brigade and bring in a strict 14 day enforced secure quarantine, and close our borders properly to the undocumented...

Banning foreign visitors ( which is what a quarantine would do ) is exactly what Trump was lambasted for, until the EU did it and suddenly the anti-boris-and-trump-whatever-they-do people went quiet and moved on to something else.

Britain didn't ban international travel because you may remember at the time it was believed that it would only delay the peak by 15 days.

Nonsense! They care a great deal about their old school chums who sit on the boards of multinational conglomerates.

Uber eats, Netflix, remote working, hotel wifi, plus all the other trappings of "modern" tech existence.

It makes a chap wonder what the situation would be like if this virus had hit 10 or 15 years ago.

While many of those things were possible for a few, they would not have been widespread enough (or familiar enough) to scale to a national level.

I was ill whilst on assignment and couldn't travel home for 2 weeks in 2001. I was stuck in my hotel room (too sick to get out of the room, not sick enough for a hospital bed).

I could order food from the hotel, I had wired Internet and I could order food deliveries from the local pizza parlour etc. Not that I was actually capable of eating, I lost nearly 40 lbs in under 2 weeks.

The best thing about being ill with a high fever in a hotel was calling room service at 3 in the morning and getting them to change the bedding. I will be forever grateful for the outstanding service and understanding of the staff at the hotel.

It seems to me that 10-15 years ago is difficult to call, but make it 25-30 years ago and I imagine - given that working from home was a realistic option for very few - that most people would have just had to carry on going in to work, and hope. But it'd be more interesting to hear an opinion from someone who would have been regarded as having some relevant expertise at the time.

After being cooped up for that long, a Mexican meal is at the top of the list, I would have put a nap in my own bed ahead of keyboards or monitors though...

What you chose depends how much of a geek you are.. I've got friends who would chose a decent keyboard and monitors over Air given the chance..

Honestly, how many of us have sneaked into our offices for supplies?

My 32" at home makes a wonderful second-screen for the work laptop that easily compensates for not having my usual laptop + dual-24" (one wide, one portrait). I also have a trackball mouse at home; not the same model as at work, but possibly better in the long run -- I may have to switch them in the future. (I don't type much aside from Reg comments so the laptop keyboard is good enough.)

But I did grab a couple things from work when I was in the neighborhood: my "Peanuts" daily calendar and my Sharp EL-1197 PIII printing desk calculator (needs a new ribbon, though). The first was for kid-safe laughs and to help remember what day it is. The second was to simplify some unit conversions (inch / mm) thanks to one-touch ×RATE and ÷RATE keys (using the on-screen calculator just sucks).

This calculator has a bigger story. Someone left it behind at my old job when they took the Engineering Buyout of Summer 2016. It was filthy but I could see it had potential, and it made the migration with me in 2018 to a new employer. Only recently being at home, and after reading so many comments about keyboards, did I actually take the keys off for a deep cleaning -- it's a full-travel membrane system. Scraped/wiped out all the key hollows with a small screwdriver and Clorox wipes, and soaked the keytops in a measuring cup with hot water and Dawn dish soap. Let everything dry, reassembled, and it looks almost-new and the keys work great (smell better, too)! Of course, this was under the impression that it was old, but quite the contrary -- they're apparently quite a popular office item with various outlets selling them for $65 - $100! Just another thing my former employ forgot to charge me for on my way out; a $5 ribbon is worth it to bring it back to full life!

That is what Agile was turned into - a cult.