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aro

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Everything posted by aro

  1. aro
    They do specifically say make sure your mask does not have a valve.
  2. aro
    The majority of the benefit of the mask is to others - if you are infected it keeps your virus out of the air and off surfaces. There is also some protection to the wearer, but it is less than the protection you get from infected people (who may not know they are infected) wearing masks. There is most benefit when everyone is wearing a mask - to get infected particles containing the virus need to pass through 2 masks.
  3. aro
    Glad it was quiet for you, it certainly wasn’t when I was out!
  4. aro
    What does the chart look like over a longer timeframe e.g. 1 year? It looks more like there was a peak around March-April then back to normal (or even a bit above) rather than a decline.
  5. aro
    There has never been a particular need for one in humans until now, so no money to develop one. My understanding is that vaccines are used against coronaviruses in other animals (much cheaper to develop and test I imagine). Immunologists are predicting that multiple different vaccines will be successful out of the 100+ under development. In the last few days I think 2 different vaccines have reported success in phase 1 trials - no safety concerns identified, and antibodies produced against the virus.
  6. aro
    Can you multiply by 10? Case numbers were going up by a factor of 10 about every 2 1/2 weeks. Starting at 3 cases/day, 2.5 weeks later 30 cases/day, 2.5 weeks later around 300 cases/day. Another 2.5 weeks and it's 3,000 cases/day, 2.5 weeks after that it's 30,000 cases/day. 5 weeks without action and we would be in deep trouble. We can't cope with 30,000 new cases every day. That's the same way the disease progresses everywhere, unless you lock down to stop the spread. To deny that would happen here you need to find some reason we are special, and the maths that apply to the rest of the world don't apply to us. (Hint: we're not.) More good news: https://www.newsweek.com/scans-reveal-heart-damage-over-half-covid-19-patients-study-1517293
  7. aro
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-effects/scientists-just-beginning-to-understand-the-many-health-problems-caused-by-covid-19-idUSKBN23X1BZ
  8. aro
    Look at what happened in New York. Italy. Have you e.g. read the guidelines hospitals in these places have used to determine who gets ventilators when they run out? Watch what happens in Florida, Texas, Arizona over the next 2 weeks. It seems to take about 3 months to go from just a few cases to totally overwhelmed, if strong action isn't taken i.e. lockdowns. Victoria is about 6 weeks in. NSW looks like it is about 3-4 weeks behind. When you cry "enough" and lock down cases keep climbing for a couple of weeks, doubling or more again before they start to fall.
  9. aro
    And crowds in shopping centres, opening cafes and bars, gyms etc. doesn't send that message? If anything, the protests have prompted a large number of people to point out that social distancing is still important. Strangely though, many are the same people that say COVID 19 not that bad, or we should just open up and get it over with...
  10. aro
    Indoors is much higher risk than outdoors. How many people have been to shopping centres, bars, cafes, gyms etc since they started reopening? If you're complaining about the BLM protests but not about shopping centres, cafes and gyms, it's not spread of coronavirus that you're worried about, it's BLM.
  11. aro
    Looking on the bright side, we know aircraft owners tend to be shall we say older, and higher risk... If the outbreak really gets out of control 30-40% of aircraft owners are likely to die or lose their medicals. If you can stay healthy, there are likely to be some bargain aircraft around. ?
  12. aro
    We are a long way from herd immunity - probably years before it will make a difference. Herd immunity means the number of cases declines because there are not enough vulnerable people to infect. Herd immunity by mass illness means that the decline in cases starts from a very high number, and will take a long time. Peter Doherty won the Nobel Prize in immunology, and is optimistic that we will have a vaccine within 6-12 months. There are currently well over 100 candidates under development. If Peter Doherty is optimistic, that is enough for me to be optimistic. Also, treatments are improving as we learn more about the effect of the disease. It seems likely that medicine will provide solutions in the medium term. In the meantime, we need to minimise the number of people who die, and the number of people who end up with perhaps permanent disabilities.
  13. aro
    If you're not worried about this virus, you really haven't been paying attention to what is happening in the world.
  14. aro
    The original post was obviously tongue in cheek, not so much some of the replies I think. If you ask me the government has been way too soft. I have been following what is happening in other countries, and there is no reason it won't happen here too. We need to decide, do we want to be in the same position as New Zealand, or the same as the USA or UK? They are running out of storage space for bodies in Texas, and bringing in refrigerated trailers. Many people who survive the disease end up with lung damage, kidney damage, strokes, blood clotting disorders, brain damage. People who ran 1/2 marathons still can't climb a flight of stairs 3 months later. They have recently discovered that x-rays of children who they thought had asymptomatic, mild disease shows lung damage. If we let it run 90% of people are likely to get it eventually. We need to take this more seriously and do whatever it takes to turn things around. Australia should be aiming to look like New Zealand.
  15. aro
    That logic would justify paying a commercial pilot to fly your aircraft (i.e. work). It does not mean you can fly it yourself. As long as you don't need to get out of the aircraft away from home, i.e. it would probably work for Lindsey Fox or anyone else with an airstrip at home, but if you need to go to a public airport, no go.
  16. aro
    The government is under fire for being overly harsh on some of the lowest income segments of the community with the strict public housing towers lockdown. One way to deflect that would be to implement restrictions on (perceived) high income people e.g. pilots. If people keep pushing the boundaries, they are likely to ground private and recreational pilots - and we would get no sympathy from the public. It has happened in other countries. If we were grounded, it might not be lifted for 12 months or more. Please follow the rules, and do not draw undue attention to us!
  17. aro
    You need a CASA Part 61 license. A RAA certificate holder can get a Part 61 RPL by filling in an application form and completing a GA flight review. You can cover CTA in the flight review. I believe that flight review will also count as your RAA flight review. You need a medical but it is not more onerous than required for a PPL to fly in CTA. There are also conditions on the aircraft (see CAO 95.55), but from a license point of view an endorsement is simple and available.
  18. aro
    RAA can get access to CTR by filling in a RPL application form and doing a flight review that can double as the CTA endorsement. How much simpler do you want it?
  19. aro
    Be aware, it's not the controllers job to police the rules. Just because the controller gives a clearance doesn't mean that a RAA certificate holder is allowed to fly into the airspace.
  20. aro
    It's not as simple as that. My experience is that the hardest guy to understand on the radio was Irish. Scots would probably be hard to understand too. Chinese students are usually OK, except that like most students they sometimes make errors or are unsure of their calls. (Who hasn't been a student?) That problem is magnified because their schools tend to be very active, so there are a lot of students flying in the same area. Having traveled to the USA a number of times in the last few years, I can tell you Americans often have a lot of trouble understanding Australians. Should we be prevented from flying there, if we are hard to understand? Guys over 70 seem to be the main offenders when it comes to giving their life history over the radio. And instructors like to use it to organize their social life.
  21. aro
    The Basic Class 2 requires you to unconditionally meet the commercial license standards, which is not as straightforward as you describe. It is strict enough that CASA had to specifically exempt glasses and hearing aids, and strict enough that if you do not meet the standard for a Basic Class 2 you might still be able to get a normal Class 2. The Basic Class 2 has 2 advantages: It is cheaper and easier to get You might be able to find a doctor who will fudge the standards, and CASA will look the other way because all the responsibility falls on the doctor.
  22. aro
    A lot of international cargo was carried on passenger jets. The reduction in traffic has caused a huge disruption to cargo services. I have heard that freight charges have increased as much as 10 times over what they used to be e.g. a shipment that used to cost $3,000 now costs $30,000.
  23. aro
    45 cases in the Melbourne meat processing plant are reportedly because a person who was infected back in March said they had not been to work, and so no followup was done on the workplace. You can see why an app to automatically record contacts would be useful.
  24. aro
    You are misunderstanding the design of the app and the reverse engineering. There is no way they can collect your details at the time someone tests positive, because the app does not collect any details from your contacts other than the identification code. It is important that person running the app has no way to link the codes their app has collected to any individual, so it cannot collect e.g. a phone number. The contact tracers need to be able to tie the identification code to contact information, so you need to register the details up front. There is no other way to get it from the contact information collected. This has always been the way it is designed to work and publicly described. What you are suggesting would involve less privacy, because your contacts would have to record your details on their phone and could theoretically access the information themselves. The list of contacts (list of codes) is not sent until you test positive, so they can't do any large scale contact monitoring.
  25. aro
    Only the identification codes of your bluetooth contacts are sent to them, if you test positive. They need the phone number to translate those codes into a number they can call. The government already knows your phone number, but obviously the app doesn't extract it from your phone. That is a good thing. The government can also track your location via your phone. That is not new. People have reverse engineered at least the Android version of the app, and it is what they said it is. Reverse engineering and monitoring the actions of the app are better than source code anyway. If you don't trust the government, why would you trust that provided source code was an accurate reflection of what was running anyway? There is a ridiculous level of paranoia going on with this app. What are we doing that is so important the government doesn't find out?
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