COVID

In the interest of keeping everybody safe, I'll share this little virus test you can perform in your own home and get immediate results.
Step one: fill a shot glass with your favourite whisky and lift it to your nose and inhale. This tests your sense of smell, the loss of which is a common virus symptom.
Step two: now drink the shot glass and "swish" the whisky around in your mouth. This tests your sense of taste, the loss of which is also a common virus symptom.
I repeated this test at least seven times yesterday and found I was symptom free.

Anyone know if a headache is a symptom

What I deduce from the results is that the more open space you have ,the lower chance of getting the virus.......I can quite imagine if I lived in 1 1/2 rooms on the 16th floor of a hi rise Melbourne slum ,I d be wanting to get out too........I got all the space I need ,to stay clear of any infection,and a lot of you have a thousand acres to stay clear in........thats why there is hardly any virus in Queensland ,..oh and the closed border.

Queensland.....Beautiful one day...covid free the next! I was in Karumba last week and stuggled to spot a qld number plate, hundreds from Victoria and NSW though. I work out of the northernmost suburb of Melbourne (Port Douglas) and it seems to be business as usual, full of Victorians dodging the covid lockdown.

Qld, Beautiful one day, locked down the next and isolated from the world there on! :lol:

Cobba

Funny thing at the border. Before the lock down there were lines of traffic 6 km long trying to go north waiting for checks while on the opposite side of the road there was one car every 5 minutes going south. 85% of the northbound traffic had interstate plates. Only the trucks are rolling now.

Common sense prevailed and Tweed Shire was included in Queensland because of the Albury/Wodonga combined community situation.

Yes, we had a free kick with no Ruby Princess or Quarantine hotel breakdown but it proves the point that if infected people are kept away it works. Those in the southern states can achieve a similar result with personal "lockdown" or closed personal border gates (face masks). If you do not go near an infected person (social distancing) you will more than likely not get Corona Virus. There are situations of difficult separation such as family groups which will prolong cross infection rates but these few numbers can be traced and controlled.

Lang

Prodrive, you asked for considered thoughts on this bloke. Well here are mine.
We are all entitled to our personal opinions and that should be respected.

To me he is a self opinionated individual, knocking the media for spreading fear and apparently doctored figures, yet he is using the very same platform, ie the media, to push his barrow.
He has himself convinced that he has more knowledge about pandemics than the best experts in the world and how to handle this situation. Yes, I believe that isolation will cause many people stress and even have fatal consequences for some. Many will lose jobs. NZ had a total lockdown for a month, with the Government paying the wages for the entire country and they have not had a single new case in over three months. Got to be a lesson there.

But what would I know about how best to handle this? Absolutely nothing. About the same as the commentator in the clip. Leave it to the experts, I say.
Yes, they will make mistakes sometimes, but as they say, no-one, I repeat, no-one has had to handle a situation like this in modern times and therefore, have to make a lot of decisions on the fly.

Belarus dictator Lukashenko says you should drive tractors ,drink lots of vodka ,and have very hot saunas,and you wont get the virus.....Sounds a lot better advice than Trumps.

WeeAllis,
Thanks, its hard to dispute your considered response! I agree, all that we know comes from the various platforms, and we tend to read and accept what we agree with- the 'echo chamber" effect.
I must say though, what I really dislike is the "fear" that is continually whipped up. Rightly or wrongly, as you say, we don't have the tools to know. But what strikes me, and this is in Australia generall, is that often the "rules" are more important than the reality. ie, the Stop go sign bloke out on his own, with a mask on.. or the people fishing on a jetty, miles from anyone, with a mask on. It seems people aren't that afraid of getting the virus, they are afraid of getting fined.. And I had a freind say that to me this morning at our exercise class, she wasn't worried that what we were doing was wrong, (we were in groups of two) she was worried about someone seeing her and informing on her to her work... I just think that's bloody sad. Is that what we have come down to, a nation of snitches and informants?
And the media pumps out number liks lotto figures "x many cases, and x many deaths per day"- but there are 400 DEATHS PER DAY in Australia, every DAY!!
I just don't get why the media isn't questioning, looking, probing.. I'm certainly no conspiracy theorist, but it strikes me that the governemts tell us kinda what they reckon suits their case- and not what they don't want us to know. Like the Hotel inquiry in Victoria, "ah, yeah, nah, wasn't me, dunno".... I'd have a lot more faith in them if they came straight out and said "look, we all stuffed up, we are sorry, it was a balls up, but it won't happen again" . I think we'd all say fair enough, lets get on with it. And I think we'd be a lot happier in SERIOUSLY punishing people who broke the quarantine, as they should.

And the other point, and correct me if I'm wrong- arent we all going to get this evetually anyway? Ie, like the flu. We can either go for suppression, "flatten the curve", which is what we aimed for the first time around, and we smashed it, not just flattened it- but without completely sealing off our borders, we are ALWAYS going to get new cases? Then what? second wave/third wave/ and so on?
I'm very interested in Sweden- and I know they lost a lot of people in the first instance- but i really wish we had the same degree of faith in our government, and the government had the same degree of faith in us.
It seems that the second thing out of everyone's mouth here in Australia, is that "Oh yeah, people can't be trusted, they are dickheads"... And that may or may not be true, but if you treated your kids that way, woudn't they grow up to be untrustworthy people????
Is it true that we are just a nation of dickheads? And is that OK? Are we happy with that?
Questions, questions, questions.....Except for Lukashenko's advice- thats definitely the go I reckon!
Cheers!
Rich

I agree with most of what you say, BUT, yes in Australia in 2018 we lost just over 400 people per day from ALL causes. Do we just ignore the fact that we now have an INCREASE of well over that, (and some days nearly twice that amount), ON TOP of the 400 others. That doesn't make sense to me. Bit like ostriches.

I might add that I too wear a mask when in crowded places where others don't maintain their distance. I'm neither scared nor alarmed. Just aware. At my age, with a compromised plumbing system, I feel I need to be careful. Not being aware of others condition as far as the virus is concerned, I don't don't judge them should they choose not to.

Yes, I get that.
Ultimately I guess the reason i'm so cynical is that bloody governments have ALL the authority, and yet take none of the responsibility. Witness the Vic Gov just getting a pay rise- they had the chance to knock it back, but no... So these people telling everyone else what to do, business to close and so on, in reality don't lose anything at all- whilst telling us "we are all in this together".. Yeah.. sure.
It's a bit like driving a truck and dealing with the authorities- as the driver, you have ALL the responsibility, yet you have NONE of the authority. And yet these buggers can make rules and regulations in the exact opposite direction, once again, taking ALL the authority, whilst holding none of the responsibilty..
So if the Covid thing goes well, who will take the credit? The Government on "how well they responded".
If it stuffs up and goes pear shaped, like Victoria has, who will take the blame? Yep, you guessed it.....
So no, certainly not saying we should be ostriches about it. But I'm thinking that the biggest thing to fear, is fear itself? It amazes me what people can be made to do when they are scared... Who would have thought that in Australia, we'd have a curfew? And police fining people for not being a "permitted worker"...Thats bloody Orwellian I reckon. And a slippery slope to a place where we as a country never should be going. But we are, slowly, and surely..Sobering stuff, I reckon. Scarier than the fear of disease - and yet no one seems afraid of that?
Maybe most people have more faith in the government than me!

Anyway! One thing I do know is that we aren't going to change it, so it's basically head down and get through it as best we can eh.
Cheers
Rich