It will also dramatically increase cases of domestic violence injuries and deaths.

Lordy.

It's not junk bond, but, ouch. Presumably those that claim credit on the way up continue their claim to the Split S?
It's heading towards a buying opportunity. Not quite yet, but not far off. Check out their cash per share, and the value of their programa that aren't in strife. That takes a bit more digging, they have had a year to remember.

Its one of the few times that a stock market ticker has had need of a GPWS Mode I warning...

true, and not valid only for aviation, but other fields of industry. And it is getting worse in the future...SARS is just a beginning....nobody knows for instance what creatures from the past are waiting in the permafrost...which is melting...

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...r-covid-19-aoe

and to people who are dissmissing Covid-19 death rate - SARS Cov-2 is spreading much faster and aggresivly as influenza virus and can bring people with underlaying conditions to their premature death. Comparing flu with SARS spread is just plainly mad and irresponsible.
Imagine SARS type virus spread with EBOLA, where deat rate is 90%...

My sides are aching from laughter. Thanks T.

I've been looking at the TV while Fox news is running and trying to find a way to supplement the toilet paper scarcity.

Odd thing,... toilet paper?

really?

I mean to say, if you do a warm fuzzies leadership vignette, and you have 12 things to take to the desert Island, I'm sorry, toilet paper doesn't get a mention. I'll take the girl, the $5 note, the fillet mignon, the Cupano Brunello di Montalcino, 2002, the satphone, the solar still, probably an FN 5.7, a GPS, a piezo lighter, and a double sleeping bag. And a girl, and flares. Toilet paper is not on the list. So we get a bug, admittedly a rather nasty, escape the sandpit type of bug, that doesn't usually cause dysentery, If I have double pneumonia, the last of my worries is a clean butt. If I have septicaemia, the problem is on the inside, not on the outside.. If my cat sees the toilet paper roll, then it becomes discombobulated, and more of a model of fractal geometry at play... Nope.... not sure what the fuss is about. If they had gone for the biltong first, then I would indeed be worried.

toilet paper is for many people psychological link to civilisation. Ergo - no toilet paper = end of civilization.

Not IMHO. When I arrived in North Africa, there wasn't a toilet roll in sight. However we had bdays?. There was a plastic jug full of water within easy reach. That, was better than smearing sh&t all over your backside, using toilet paper. The classy ones had copper tubing, pointed at your backside, with a valve. Get the pressure right and your you know what, in the right position, it was quiet a thrilling experience.

Logging in for the first time in years to applaud this post. An excellent summary, well done.

Hear hear.

This version of capitalism does not work - too cut throat & loaded against employees - past & present (pensions?)

Mind Flightradar24 appears busy as ever!

Absolutely spot on. There must be a change.

If you want a better place to live then embrace change!

Have to disagree. Didn't it start in China without free media western style, without public debate and still lockdowns and production stops?

What we have is not capitalism but really pusedo socialism. The whole idea of capitalism is that you fail, not get a government bailout nor Chapter 11 protection.

If there was no bailouts, no chapter 11 and companies failed properly it would be a very different world.

Noone in big business is a real capitalist it is to hard core for them.

It did start in China but once awareness of it escaped those confines and western broadcast and later social media got hold of it the process began..

I do agree with Tacho's post, however it will be interesting to how aviation recovers from this.

People have short memories and I bet some are already thinking that when this is all over and they have escaped from "lockdown" they will reward themselves by catching up on stag do's in Riga or hopping across the Atlantic for a weekend of Christmas shopping (Christmas 2021 at the very earliest IMHO) in New York..

Just another Billionare building a moat around his wealth stopping people starting from nothing to being independently wealthy. Also alot of blurring of terms from what true free market ideas represent.

Has this chaos really just served to expose just how utterly dependant the ‘free’ world is on the totally un free Chinese ?? Perhaps that is a lesson well worth learning, before we get cut off for real!
David

Yes the virus started in China. As my post above says quite clearly, The Virus itself isn't the problem facing the world. This is now an economic problem. People are being laid off left right and centre not because they are sick (globally as a percentage the cases are actually very low), they are being laid off because the world and joe public is afraid of being sick. This has been caused purely by the media and peoples hysteria. To quote a wise man that I know. "They've kicked the snowball down the hill, and now have no way of stopping it". The media have given a germ a name, turned it into an entity and then released it. If no one had heard of corona, and there was just another type of 'flu' going around. Would we have known any different? Would the shelves be empty of toilet paper and other goods? The answer is no. It has become a self sustaining creature, that feeds on headlines... and I suspect the deaths globally caused by stress, depression and panic will eventually far outweigh those caused directly by the virus.

China is a different ball game. For the following reasons:

As I am sure you see aware it has a huge population, the normal rules of statistics lead to figures which sound big, but on a 'chinese' scale are not. I'll give you an easy example. If you have a skill or talent or condition that is 'one in a million'... in China there is, statistically, a thousand people exactly like you. So the 'outbreak' reported from china was hardly the catastrophe they were pushing.

Secondly China is a one off in the way it deals with things. The use of terms such as 'lockdown' as an effective means of dealing with the virus, might very well work in a society that is already oppressed and the individual only exists 'for the good of the state'... if we are going to copy china then let's get a few hospitals built in a week, I know I'm not doing anything else at the moment (I haven't got so much as a sniffle at the moment by the way, and I'm willing to make you a bet that neither have you). Did china face the problems of having a run (pun intended) on toilet paper and people decimating the shelves? Were people put out of work in china? Did their economy, whilst they were nailing shut their front door, say, 'oh by the way you still have to pay your landlord the rent'?

Thirdly, China's life blood is its manpower as a source of cheap labour. It is literally people powered. If there is even a small loss of production due to a mass cold, then the financial ramifications on economies of scale are colossal. They attempted to isolate it, not because of its fatality (which is actually very small). But because of its potential to spread in a very dense and overpopulated region that deals with vast amounts of production. I'm not going to add statistics here, but what I will say is if a percentage of a small number cant work, it isnt a big deal. If a percentage of a large number cant work, in a country that's life blood is the people churning out goods, then it is. They would have had the same reaction and taken the same measures if it was a bad case of gastric flu.

The fact that it originated in China with its closed media bears little significance, I dont understand your point. Western nations still report on global events and present their own 'spin' on it. The media in the UK still reported it, and as early as January they have been slowly ramping up the hysteria. To give a real life example BBC radio 1 'newsbeat' had an attention grabbing headline that announced 'Corona virus cases in Britain increase by one third'... yet when you listen to the report, which came at a stage where I think around 12 people in the UK were confirmed cases, it basically stated that 3 or 4 Britain's had returned back to the uk, after being diagnosed and isolated with corona elsewhere... they were not newly infected, and whilst statistically the number of cases on British soil had increased, the headline didn't match the facts.

To give you another example, The media have bandied around terms like 'outbreak' with reckless abandon (it was written in solid red on the front page of our national rag)... and perhaps more disgustingly 'superspreader' to describe a man who 'infected' other people. This 'superspreader' was so very much on deaths door with this plague like, flesh eating, zombie making, virus... that he went skiing! And then he so cruelly managed to infect his friends. I am almost certain that none of them died, but they may have had quite a bad hangover from the apres.

Anyway apologies for the long post. I'm off work at the moment you see, so need something to do. My new position won't take me in the current climate and my old position is also gone. As a now former captain, I'm about to apply for a job in a supermarket, as the economy still dictates that I must still pay my bills, and regardless of the 'dangers' of this virus, it seems that whilst we aren't allowed to go to the pub or fly in an aeroplane, it still is perfectly socially acceptable for the great unwashed to congregate en masse, in order to pillage the shelves to ensure they are better off than their neighbour... plenty of demand there. This is the true cost, symptom and infection of the 'corona virus'... not the sickness.

Stay well all.

Some people are thinking about that question. I have my doubts whether anything will actually change...the influence of money being what it is:

“When the virus peters out and the panic fades, China may be permanently rebranded and recalibrated by the world at large. Its trading partners will trust it far less to honor any commitments or to abide by any international agreements.”


“Some assembly plants will be shut down. Nations will be less trusting to outsource key industries to Chinese companies.”




https://www.amgreatness.com/2020/03/...de-down-world/

That is Trump.s view but not the liberals, Dems, Labour Conservative etc. Too many senior Tories have their snouts in the Chinese trough. Labour and the Dems love China especially Biden.

Well said TACHO , I totally agree. But unfortunately we are living in a (social)media driven world where an absolute majority relies and expects
somebody to tell them what to do and how to behave in preference of doing their own bit of critical thinking and research. And I see that media knows it and absolutely thrives on it! Just look at all those red flashing headlines and dedicated LIVE UPDATES pages everywhere where some random otherwise little known person finally gets his/her 5 minutes of fame yelling the "The End is Nigh". I feel as if it gives them a power trip of kind, so they sensationalise every aspect of information and then feed it to the public to get another high and boost their feeling of self-importance. On BBC, for example, not once have I seen an article with a level-headed analysis of the situation from likes of Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg or similar experts. Just fear-porn and 42 how-to different guides on how to wash your hands properly.

British and American economic shutdowns for Covid-19 virus
 

(Thanks TACHO)

NPR this am had Dr. John Ionides, Stanford University Professor. Maybe a summary sentence of his short presentation was: "If you ruin the economy, that will result in millions of people dying for other reasons."
(The clip said he would be on at greater length later.)

California and Pennsylvania governors just shut down all "non-essential" businesses. In PA this includes "State Stores," which are the only places all spirits are sold. Also, a large fraction or majority of the wine, since they were the only source until recently. So wine drinkers will head for the large food stores where they will be exposed to orders of magnitude more people for much longer time periods. (State Store customers seem to know what they want and don't spend much time procuring it.) For spirits, it will be road trips to surrounding states...interacting at rest, fuel and food stops with other travelers.

(State Store profits and wine&spirit taxes are also a large source of State income, where sales and income taxes will decline, and unemployment benefits and special expenses will increase, in this economic recession.)

I'm not so sure that everything will go back to what it was before. The fragility of the supply chains that resulted from globalisation will make a lot of people think whether there is another way to do things, especially when it comes to food security and medical supplies. I think we may well see the re-emergence of 'national champions' that allow countries to keep vital business production within the country.

.....or not

Supply chains have been vulnerable since we stopped doing everything in each village. But that made each village vulnerable to weather and/or crop disease.

Oh I think we would have noticed an increased death rate. Consider the problems that the Italians are having in their hospitals.

Thank you. I'm flabbergasted that this isn't obvious to some people.

+1 for Tacho, well +0.5 anyway. imo it's a good idea to have a bit of social distancing etc to slow down the spread, to give the medical system time to prepare a bit and to get a bit more understanding of the virus before it becomes truly pandemic (which it will, no doubt about that).

I've been chatting (at a social distance of course, since we're on different continents) with my brother about it all. He happens to be a virologist. We've agreed that the big problem with all the extrapolations and forecasts of millions dead is that nobody has a clue how many people get infected, have an immune response, but never have symptoms and maybe never become infectious. It's clear that pretty much all children and <20 follow this path.

As for becoming less dependent on China etc - ain't gonna happen, because the lowest price always wins. My favourite subject in that regard is supply of rare earths. They are essential for all sorts of things (notably electric motors) and they all come from China. There are plenty of reserves elsewhere, but every time anyone tries to reopen a mine, they fail because it's cheaper to get it from China. (Actually the last attempt in the US went broke, got bought by a Chinese company, then shut down). Do governments say "this stuff matters, we'll subsidise local production"? Hell no. Rinse and repeat for everything else.

I agree. Calling it "just a flu" is like calling MCAS running amok "just a trim runaway". Interestingly, initial reactions here when the MCAS issues were revealed were similar: "it's just media/social media induced hysteria" or "why is this such a big issue, you just do X".

I think the people downplaying COVID-19 will change their tune when their local hospitals are overwhelmed and long queues start forming at the cemeteries, like it's happening now in Italy.

Yes, technically it's a flu. But a flu that is very easy to spread and has demonstrated its ability to overwhelm healthcare facilities very fast, and seems to be more lethal compared to regular flu. But, since exponential growth is unintuitive to most people, it's hard for many to understand that having a perfectly manageable number of cases today can turn into hell in just a week or so.

Yes, we shouldn't panic, as panic doesn't solve anything. Yes, we should try to protect businesses and the economy. But don't call it "just a flu". It really isn't. And in my opinion the authorities are not overreacting. In fact I think in most cases they are underreacting and not taking strong enough measures until it's too late.

I am amazed at those who still brand this Virus a media hype; oh that it were. Speaking to my doctor the other day he quoted his contacts globally (he is a well connectd multilingual man) and from all the affected areas the feedback is the same. In his words "This is a very nasty virus; make sure you don't get it. If you do, you may have no more than 2 weeks left; that is a common exoerience speaking to doctors in Italy, Iran and the Middle East" So, go on dismissing it as just another flue bug and ignore the restrictions and whilst you may survive you could pass it on to someone who won't. That seems rather selfish.

I mean quotes like this were where we can start separating the smart from the less so. So much more to it.. UK and the USA. We’d to wake up fast.. and they are not alone.

What's happening in Northern Italy is a example of what could happen in any region if precautions aren't taken. Media hype my arse, the stories coming out of there are frightening.

+1. The flu is widespread and has killed 20k, covid has only reached a fraction of the population and has killed 3k. Not comparable. I can't understand why people still think this is over hyped when northern Italy is actually demonstrating in front of us what can happen in our own region. Was it a backlog of 132 bodies for a crematorium that can only process 25 a day? That's hardly business as usual ffs.

This thread has run amok and has little to do with aviation and more to do with what makes the sky fall.

I caution about listening to false prophets and instead pay attention to applied science to a collection of facts taher than what-ifs or one-offs

Lets get back to the thread subject

Bergamo - North of Italy
 

Bergamo is a lovely and very rich city in the North of Italy. Possibly one of the most efficient and beautiful towns on the planet. Bergamo even includes Unesco World Heritage sites. Top quality of life and highly productive across various industries. Very rich. Top of the top in Italy, highly efficient and highly organised. One of the best NHS in the world. Top Consultants. Top equipment.
Bergamo has witnessed military trucks moving coffins out of town. This means that the rest of the world is basically fuc**d.
All countries should take this virus very seriously and before it's too late or we will end up with millions of deaths. 9/11 will look like a non event vs Covid19. Wake up human race.

Not sure there will be an airline in the world that will survive the next 6 months other than in name. The phoenix will be interesting to see.

Whats the mean age of the hospitalisations there and what’s the mode age of the deaths recorded? Genuine question.

L.A. County confirms 61 new coronavirus cases, says median age among all patients is 47

Yes, Young People Are Falling Seriously Ill From Covid-19

In the U.S., 705 of first 2,500 cases range in age from 20 to 44.
And in Italy
More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority.

The media are spinning this regardless of how you regard the seriousness of the actual virus. I saw a banner headline the other day of a young guy in his twenties “killed by the Coronavirus”. Buried deeper down in the article somewhere it was revealed that he also had leukaemia (!) That’s disgusting journalism IMHO and is only feeding the frenzy, there’s a huge bit of context there that is being deliberately suppressed.

From the study (Italy) mentioned by Longtimer:
(death toll men, women, total)

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4ef7aaaa5d.png

Yeah... I take:

The "Who" to be an airline, rather than a person. Let's discuss the airline industry in this thread please. I know we all have our concerns ans beliefs with respect to the virus' effect on people, that's for a discussion elsewhere. Airplanes/Airlines/Pilot jobs here...

And crap ATC...(to bring it back to aviation :})