Coronavirus: There is no second chance - "14 days until we're Italy" - Dear Scomo, Please Close the Borders, City Lockouts & Mandatory WFH RIGHT NOW!

Archive note: This opinion piece was written in March 2020. Its references to health guidance, treatments, travel rules and restrictions reflect that historical moment.

China may have prevented 95% of virus cases if it enacted measures after silenced whistleblower's warning

For official Australian Government announcements: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19) March Update- causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, pathology (original embedded resource unavailable)

A great video by Osmosis.org detailing what COVID-19 is in a broken down easy to understand format.

Shielding Australia

As of writing this, Australia's boarders are still wide open to the US and UK (and very much the rest of the world) which are struggling to contain their blast radius's of COVID-19. Off the top of my head we've only blocked China, South Korea & Italy and introduced a new 14 day quarantine rule for people entering Australia from overseas. (Totally not monitored btw, meaning people could easily break the curfew).

As an immunosuppressed 26 year old who almost died at 23, I can very much verify that you do not want to be hospitalised at any cost. Especially when a cure is not imminent. Although on the contrary I did find that there were two potential cures from Brisbane, Australia being tested. I have been precautionary self isolation for the last 10 days at home in fear of catching Coronavirus.

Australian researchers ‘within reach’ of coronavirus cure

I personally can't believe some (50-100+ people) meetups are still running like Lingos and SydJS (a lot of organisers have rightfully cancelled, thank god). All of Atlassian, Twitter, FB & Google (and many office jobs) are working from home. I highly recommend you encourage your company to do the same if it isn't already. No work is worth a life or severely degraded life at that.

Also the fact that Mardi Gras went ahead when the Government would have the confirmed and unconfirmed (expected) cases of Coronavirus in their sights is a complete oversight or lack of foresight. I think the whole world reacted a little too late once WHO announced COVID-19 was a pandemic. I believe WHO was slow at announcing this as well. I was reading some Facebook live stream comments about how China is funding WHO and WHO was hesitant to name it a pandemic. Every decision we make will only show its result 2 weeks later. So the spikes we're seeing now are from events 2 weeks ago (namely Mardi Gras, Electric Gardens Festival, Ultra etc).

Viruses don't discriminate on group size or location so I'm not sure what this 500+ group ban is about in Australia. Other countries are moving to 5-50+ size group bans. (Austria, US). I'm predicting supermarkets will be transmission highways as we move forward into this virus period.

This Coronavirus also transmits asymptotically, meaning the transmitter doesn't need to have any symptoms. They could be just talking to you, or somehow coughed or sneezes and walked by you or you walked by them. I'm hearing from WHO that these asymptomatic people can transmit the virus even 7 days prior to having symptoms themselves despite what our Australian Government is saying with Peter Dutton and 24 hours prior. Scott Morrison still hasn't been tested and he works a highly people interactive job. If he has it, he would have unknowingly infected so many other ministers by now. It takes up to 14 days to see any symptoms as well. The fact that we're still taking on international travellers still mind boggles me. If they get sick, then our health system will be even more full and may get to a point where we can't take anymore Australian Citizens, when there would be foreigners inside our hospitals too. We aren't preparing for the worse yet but should be, because we can't prepare later, later is too late.

We should move towards a lockdown (even if it's just a few high density suburbs) in hope the virus will quickly pass us over, but I hope we don't see second waves when people think it's over. Wuhan, Beijing / China in general will be the first to see if a second wave arises. Denial and negligence cannot be afforded here when making decisions that can save 100s and 1000s of lives, not just from COVID19 but also from any health condition, since the best approach frees up our health system to cater for everyone.

Aussie Man Reviews: Coronavirus in Australia:

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Also while we're here, people can't get the groceries they need, not online or in-store due to panic buying (I would hate to be a vulnerable person to this virus and having someone else can't find the groceries you need). Woolworths & Coles have suspended online shopping (but are opening an hour earlier for seniors and disabled people). I hope the government is planning something for this. It will only get worse as the virus spreads. The shelves are literally empty.

Work from Home to Save Lives

Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian Bought A Billboard In Times Square To Inform People About COVID-19

8 tips for getting it done when working from home

The Latest Around the World:

31,000 Chinese students arrive in Australia despite coronavirus travel ban

San Francisco Going on 24-Hour Lockdown for 3 Weeks

Latest from WHO (17 March):

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The New York Mayor just closed all schools, bars and gyms as well as in New Jersey and Connecticut in a Facebook live stream. The UK seems to have followed Australia in keeping schools open for now.

NEW YORK LOCKING DOWN (original embedded resource unavailable)

Meanwhile Italy, Spain, China and most of Europe are screaming LOCK IT DOWN now.