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PPR is pretty explicitly saying that permission is denied unless it has been specifically granted. But why do pilots think they should be able to land at a private airfield without permission? Would you walk down a random person's driveway into their backyard? It's the same thing. It's not the right thing to do - even if you are just looking for somewhere to go.

More antibodies... but they don't know whether it makes any difference to protection. What they do know is none of the vaccines give any protection until you receive them. The important thing is to get any of the available vaccines.

What would you do? Say F U to all the health care workers, who are already overstretched?

QLD and WA are shutting their borders because it keeps their economy going. People don't appreciate how normal things have been in Australia compared to other countries that haven't controlled COVID as well. Shutting borders has allowed hospitality, sports, mining, retail, manufacturing, even tourism within the states to continue relatively normally. All the people complaining about shutdowns in Vic and NSW are about to get a reality check when they discover how much worse things are with the virus circulating. Businesses shut down with no end in sight, instead of for a few weeks at a time. I am in Vic, and now the virus seems to have gotten away I expect we will be under restrictions for 3-4 months. We don't realize how fortunate we have been. Last year, I was wondering how many friends and family would end up dying from this disease. So far (touch wood) it is no-one. Talk to people with friends and family overseas to get a picture of what it has been like there. I know someone in New York who through their friends and acquaintances knows of 20 people who died. The dead don't complain, and the thousands of people whose lives have been saved rarely know who they are, so they don't appreciate it either. But it could be you or any member of your family. If you want to blame someone for the current problems, blame the federal government who were offered 40 million doses of Pfizer for delivery last January, but rejected it as too expensive. Things would be very different if we had higher levels of vaccination.

Seems unlikely to happen because a) health care workers don't work like that and b) vaccinated people are much less likely to require ventilation. They are not going to leave ventilators unused while unvaccinated people die, just in case someone who has been vaccinated needs one.

I'm still interested to see who is saying that, because it doesn't seem to correspond with reality. It seems most likely to come from the NSW or federal government, who are frantically spinning trying to convince people that this is all OK - but that's not what the experts are saying, or what you can figure out for yourself if you compare the situation here to overseas. Gladys said a week or 2 back "We thought Australia was different." Not if you had any sense. We are not different, but Libs in NSW still seem to be operating on the assumption that we are.

No idea where you saw that, but based on the raw numbers the situation can only get worse. Hospitalizations lag by a week at least, so the hospitalization numbers reflect the situation when daily numbers were no more than 6-800. Now they are predicting that NSW will keep getting worse until October, which means another 3 doublings at least, to about 10,000 per day. If they are very efficient at getting vaccines out MAYBE they can hold that to 5000/day but I don't see it happening. So they are likely to see the hospital load grow several times over. Nick Coatsworth is happily pointing to a stockpile of 2,000 ventilators, while everyone else is pointing out that there are only enough trained staff to run about 1/3 of them. Someone else was suggesting enlisting vets, because they are experienced at adapting to managing many different types of animals, and should have no additional difficulty with humans. Not sure whether they were serious... I think in other countries they did enlist vets to help administer vaccines.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. Are you saying fewer suicides is bad, because some may be COVID related?

The numbers are published. The Coroner releases them, not the government. https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/no-increase-in-vic-suicides-in-2021-data-c-3707259 https://www.coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-10/Coroners Court Suicide Data Report - Report 2 - 05102020.pdf https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/suicides-in-victoria-dip-despite-fears-pandemic-would-drive-increase-20210118-p56uwp.html https://medicalrepublic.com.au/suicides-didnt-rise-last-year-even-during-lockdown/39262

Suicide caused by lockdowns is another persistent myth. They do collect these figures. The suicide rate went down during lockdown. Also youth death rates went down overall, likely because young people were stopped from doing the stupid things that tend to get them killed. Not that that's a justification for lockdowns, but if you want to use death rates to make a point it is relevant.... The big suicide problem has been doctors and nurses in hard hit countries. They have PTSD and massive mental health problems from the sheer number of patients that unavoidably (or now, with vaccines, avoidably!) die under their care. It looks like NSW is going down that path.

Look at the plan for 70 and 80% vaccination. The modelling they are using says with 70% vaccination and less than optimal TTIQ (i.e. a lot of cases as they are currently experiencing in NSW) to keep the case numbers under control is likely to require: stringent capacity restrictions, group size limits, stay-at-home orders (except work, study, essential purposes) at least some of the time. At 80% you are still likely to require capacity restrictions, as in NSW 23 August 2020 With the NSW case numbers, it looks likely they will require High PHSM (no household visitors, curfew, stay-at-home orders except essential purposes & permitted work) even at 70-80% vaccinated to relieve the load on the health care system. Cases won't go down instantly - it will take weeks. If you are a state that is currently at zero COVID, the 70 and 80% plans require you to shut down large segments of the economy. You can see why WA is not too keen on that. For a state like Victoria, if we can get back to zero, we can open up more than we can under the national plan. For the 6 months over last summer/autumn, we had much more freedom than we will under the national plan. The point of the national plan seems to be to open up borders. I like travel as much as anyone else, but it is going to come at a big cost to other segments of the economy. It is reasonable to ask what is the rush vs. an extra couple of months for a more complete vaccine rollout? One motivation might be to start bringing in cheaper overseas workers again.

Not sure about the others, but Mildura was people from Mildura who travelled to go to the football. Who could have predicted country people travelling to see a sporting event...

Does Thangool Qld have any shops, where you can buy stuff that is not produced locally? A postal service maybe? Or anyone who travels somewhere these are available? There has been a significant amount of spread by truck drivers. If e.g. a shop owner likes to have a chat to the delivery drivers when they come through, that is a risk. There have been a lot of remote places that thought they were protected. It works, until it doesn't. Eventually it gets in, and then rips through because people were not expecting it. You might see some parallels with the situation in Australia in general...

That's all it takes - that's how it spreads. Members of your aero club might have more contact with other people, fly to other airfields etc. They bring it back, then you all catch it from each other.

The internet provides amazing resources to hear first hand what others are experiencing. Here is a thread with ICU nurses talking about what they are seeing;

It is "almost real time" but I don't know what the latency is. As I said, it could be 1 second, 5 seconds... the programmers will make a decision on how frequently to update based on resource usage, battery usage etc. The other question is what happens if the signal is shielded by structure - does it the display stay in the last received position, or does it move based on a calculation? It's not noticeable at normal distances. If you are within e.g. 1/2 mile, where you should be using visual separation, it could become significant. My understanding is that Airservices will not provide traffic info. Avplan display traffic info collected by (I think) one of the internet traffic display sites so you can see most ADSB traffic even if you don't have your own receiver. It also displays a lot of glider traffic from a different network. The latency in this display is likely unknown and variable. So you have more traffic displayed, but you need to be aware that there might be different levels of accuracy in the different types of traffic.

What we don't know: how long ago that was - it could be 1 second, 5 seconds, 15 seconds. I haven't found anywhere the EFB companies document that. I think where traffic is gathered from the distributed network of receivers it can be as much as 90 seconds behind reality. I have an ADSB receiver, often it will show 2 icons for the same aircraft until it works out they are the same - the position can be quite different. What happens if the traffic info is interrupted e.g. temporarily blocked by aircraft structure. It could 1) keep displaying the traffic in the last known position i.e. stationary 2) assume the traffic maintains course and speed and calculate a position or 3) remove it from the display how many aircraft are not being displayed. Some airports ADSB probably shows 80-90% of traffic, others maybe <50% due to traffic mix. You need to be looking out the window not at the screen. I fly from a busy airport, and most (not all!) traffic shows up with ADSB. How I use the EFB traffic display: 10+ miles out I listen on CTAF and look at the traffic on the EFB. In particular I want to figure out from radio calls how many aircraft do not show on the traffic display, and their sequence (if doing circuits) in relation to the ones that do show. Also, my position in relation to any other inbound aircraft. 3-5 miles out I have a good picture of the traffic and concentrate on spotting the aircraft visually Joining the circuit I might take a glance at the EFB to confirm if it looks like there might be a conflict, e.g. if I think there should be someone on crosswind/early downwind but I can't spot them. The traffic display might confirm whether they are there, or have left the circuit. Once in the circuit, the EFB is away and it's all radio/visual. It's too easy to lose sight of the aircraft you need to follow if you are looking at your screen. No-one is saying that EFB traffic isn't a useful tool. The issue is whether it would be a help or a hindrance in the case that opened the thread - a collision on final. Inside 1-2 miles the EFB position is not reliably accurate enough and you should be using visual separation.

What is the delay between the ADSB transmission and the aircraft appearing on the screen? If it's 15 seconds, the aircraft will have moved 1/4-1/2 mile or more from the displayed position. That makes it little use in the circuit. You are better off spending the time identifying the traffic out the window. There is a reason ATC have large minimum separation standards when they are separating aircraft using radar returns on a screen.

It might be difficult to legally define that difference. E.g. when does "additional patronage from passers by" become the primary purpose of the business? Is a business allowed to grow if the patronage from passers by grows? Are they allowed to refuse aviation visitors if they are booked out by passers by? The second 2 might not be an issue at this point, but it sounds like the first one was the hurdle they came up against.

Presumably someone has gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that the land can't be used for non-aviation uses - which has had some side effects. But isn't the usual complaint that airport land is being used for non aviation uses like retail to the public? People need to work out what they want. Would the DFOs at Essendon and Moorabbin be OK if there were gates available so you could fly in to shop? It's basically the same thing, albeit on a massively different scale.

Sounds like there was too much protection. According to the post, the airfield is zoned Specific Use - Aviation, and the coffee shop is not considered an Aviation use when it is accepting passing (i.e. non-aviation) visitors.

No idea what you're referring to with Qudos Bank, but this claim about the PCR tests is false. They are 100% specific for COVID. There are other PCR tests for other diseases, but the laboratories know which test they are running.

Meanwhile in Florida people are being warned to conserve water, because they are short of liquid oxygen used to treat water due to COVID demand...

We have never had more access to good information, thanks to the internet. You just have to find the real experts - not the media types pushing for attention. Back in January 2020, the people who had worked on controlling Ebola were raising the alarm, saying this virus looked way more scary than Ebola. We can hear first hand from the ICU doctors & nurses in hotspots. We can hear first hand from scientists working on treatments and vaccines. We can hear first hand from the patients in ICU before they are put on a ventilator. Peter Doherty, the Nobel Prize winning immunologist is regularly online answering questions about the vaccines. Mid last year he predicted that we would have vaccines, and we would likely start to hear good news from trials around October 2020. He was right within a week or 2. Many others (politicians and media) were predicting there would never be a vaccine. Information is there, if you can filter it from the rubbish. For some reason everything in the media seems to be written by political reporters, never health or science reporters. It shows in the framing of the stories, and has been very damaging.

Yes: unvaccinated people. Delta is making younger people, including children, sicker than previous variants. I don't know what makes you think you are in a group that is not at risk - if you are under 18, perhaps, but I would still be worried... otherwise you are definitely at risk. The only people with good protection against the disease are those who are vaccinated - protection is good after the first dose, much better after the second.